Mistakes Are Proof

(Hat Tip:  The Vulgar Curmudeon)

 

Tales From Produce (A)Isle: The Box Compactor

 We have a fairly small amount of equipment we use on Produce (A)Isle.  We have small two level/four wheeled carts we use for our general activities (top shelf is for produce, bottom shelf has a small metal box for water/wipes/bags and a space for a cardboard box for culls) and longer six wheel carts called "U-boats" that hold the bulk of the produce in boxes for wheeling in and out of the walk-in.  Occasionally we make use of a pallet jack.

And then, there is the Box Compactor.

The Box Compactor lives at the end of the back-end wall behind the main store, at the corner of the building.  It probably 8-10 feet long, blue, and 8 feet or so high.  The theory is that one puts the puts one's cardboard into the chamber.  At some point it is full enough that one pulls down the outer cage door which is engaged by a magnetic lock and turns the key.  A giant orange plate descends from the top and compacts everything into below it, then slowly comes up.  The cardboard is crushed and one can add more.  At some point (seemingly undefined; there is no mark in the interior of the unit nor is there a picture anywhere) the unit is "full" and as such, needs to be bundled up.  There is a list of responsible departments by day of the week for performing this task.

The unit has a lot of capacity but not endless capacity.  And people keep adding cardboard to the compactor.

I am sure you can see where this is going.

At some point, the unit is simply "topped off" and no more cardboard can reasonably go in.  But no-one shows up to take care of the issue.

I suspect everyone finds work arounds.  We do.  We flatten the cardboard, stack the cardboard on carts. Others will drop the cardboard off by the the unit, as if to leave a visual hint that it is full.  

This is one of those odd things that I am not sure what the protocol is on it.  There are no instructions for who to contact in the vent it is full other than "department"; and I am pretty sure the new guy popping in and asking about if cardboard is going to be pulled out is as welcome as being the closing manager suggesting there are just "a few" more things to do to get done before closing time.  

There is a system and an order to all companies, a system which is beyond the training one does upon arrival:  it is the secret system of "the way things actually work", the observed portions of human behavior that are not formally written down anywhere but are incredibly relevant.  These are the pecking orders and rituals and daily routines of the workplace that act as the social lubricant to make things work and get things done. It is the hidden codex, locked away that no-one sees when they first show up - like any good game, one has to find it through one's own adventures and missed guesses.

And so I continue my trip back to the corner, cardboard on my cart, wondering before I arrive if I will find a compactor empty or full. It may not be world ending suspense, but it certainly makes every trip back there something of an adventure.

Greece 2023: This. Is. Sparta.

 When we first talked about going to Greece, my first immediate question was if we could go to Sparta.

I asked this knowing that the answer was likely no - the actual ruins of Sparta are pretty sparse and pale in comparison to what remains in Athens - even the Greeks of the Classic period commented that it would be hard to believe for future generations to believe that the location of Sparta had ever been as significant as it was because there was nothing like what one saw in Athens - for example, in the Archaic and Classical period there was never a wall around Sparta like virtually every other Greek city - as Thucydides said:

"Suppose, for example, that the city of Sparta were to become deserted and that only the temples and foundations of buildings remained.  I think that future generations would, as time passed, find it very difficult to believe that this place had really been as powerful as it was represented to be...Since, however, the city is not regularly planned and contains no temples or monument of great magnificence, but is simply a collection of villages, in the ancient Hellenic way, its appearance would not come up to expectation."

Beyond a dearth of things to see, there is the simple fact that it is three hours south of Athens in the Peloponnese, a city on the side of the road between other places.  One does not, I suspect, "go" to Sparta unless one has a real reason for doing so.

In a gift of great kindness, The Ravishing Mrs. TB paid for a tour and so Nighean Dhonn and myself got up early one morning for a day tour.

In going to Sparta, one has to pass the Isthmus of Corinth.  The isthmus is 6.3 miles/3.9 kilometers at its narrowest point.  Control of the Isthmus is what brought great wealth to the city of Corinth.  At one time, cargo and ships could be tran-shipped over the Isthmus by the Diolkos, a stone pathway 2hich may have used a wheeled cart.  The canal was finally dug and finished in 1893 - it is only 80 feet/24 m wide and around 21 feet/7 meters deep, and so really is only used for smaller boats at this point.

Driving by Corinth, one passes the Acrocorinth - the Corinthian equivalent of the Athenian Acropolis.  This has historically been a formidable fortress and used by Greeks, Byzantines, Franks, and Ottomans.

The Peloponnese is a peninsula of high mountains between valleys.  The road we were on is relatively new and allows one to cross the peninsula in 3 hours; before it would have taken 8-9 hours or more.

Unlike the Acropolis of Athens, Ancient Sparta is not teeming with tourists:  it almost reminds one of a regional park.  There is no fee for entrance and beyond ourselves, there were likely not half a dozen people there, including park personnel.  Like many sites, it is a hodgepodge of ruins from various periods.

Below are the ruins of "The Round Building".  There are no firm conclusions on what this was; the blocks are from the Roman Restoration in the early 1st Century A.D.

There are far more olive trees and grass than ruins there.

St. Nikon's Basilica, built in the 6th-7th century A.D.

The Sanctuary of Athena Chalkiokos.  This temple dates from Archaic Greek times (8th Century B.C.).  The Regent Pausanias, to avoid arrest by the Ephors, fled here in 479 B.C. for sanctuary.  He could not be killed as it was temple; instead, the Ephors blocked up the entrance, allowed Pausanias to starve, and just before he died dragged him from the sanctuary to prevent contamination of the sacred space.

Sparta had a theater since the 5th Century B.C.; this theater (which may or may not be at that location) dates from 30-20 B.C.  At its height, it could have had 14,000 spectators.

This building - called "The Two Niched Building" - dates from the 4th Century A.D.  Its uses are not fully known.

The Spartan Agora - Similar to the Athenian Agora, this building would have consisted of columns and a covered roof.  It dates from the 4th Century B.C.

The city of Sparti (the modern name of the location, re-founded as a city in 1834) includes a larger than life statue of Leonidas.

It also has a list of every winner of the Olympic Games since their founding in 776 B.C.  The most recent entry in 2004 is for a member of the Greek Men's Water Polo Team.

Sparta also has a small archaeological museum with materials - mostly stones and pottery - found at the excavation site.  Many of these pieces I had seen in books; it was fascinating to see them in person.

In the end, Thucydides' was correct:  The ruins of Sparta hardly demonstrate any sort of powerful city state at all, and belie the fact that it was one of the most powerful for almost 300 years.

A Piece Of Dry Bread

 "Once I asked an American who visited me at the Kalvyi  'What has this great nation of your accomplished?'  

'We went to the moon', he replied.

'How far is that?' I continued.

'Oh, perhaps half a million kilometers away', he replied.

'How many millions of dollars did you spend to get there?'

'Since 1950,' he said, 'we haver spent rivers of dollars.'

'Did you get to God?  How far is he?'

'God', he said, 'is very, very far.'

'Well,' I replied, it only takes us a piece of dry bread to get to Him!'

- Paisos the Athonite, With Pain and Love for Contemporary Man

Reaching For The Dead

 On Wednesday's post on the anniversary of the death of TB The Elder, Friend-Of-This-Blog Bob made the following observation:

"Dates affect people different ways.  My mother died first, and I remember on the one-year date, it really made no impression on me.  I called my dad, and he was much the same.  He acknowledged yes, it had been one year, but that was about it.  I think we both realized we didn't miss her more on that date than any other."

His comment, as I thought about it (and eventually responded), brought to mind a consideration of the finality of death and how we have come to view it.

Death, at least death viewed by cultures, is a funny thing.  I am no anthropologist, but it occurs to me that most cultures historically had some concept of an afterlife and that in some way or form, the personality we define as a "soul" continued on - be that as an individual or by being recycled.  Another thought that occurs to me was fairly universal is that death was a viewed as a sort of termination of the relationship, at least temporarily.  Communication was largely cut off from the dead except by things like necromancy (communicating with the dead) and special times where the spirit world and physical world of the living became very close, such as Samhain or Obon or even in more modern culture, Dios de Las Muertos. 

But underlying all of this was the sense that however it might be possible to communicate with them, it was some kind of effort.  There was a gulf, a wall, that could not easily be breached (if at all).

Thinking about how we view things in a modern sense, it strikes me we now see such things very differently.

In the modern world (and here I make very vague, generalizations about Western Culture), death is both something shocking and a revelation:  shocking in that for so many, we forget that death can happen literally at any moment (which was much more a perceived reality in times past) and that death creates a wall we cannot pierce. 

For the first part, we have come to accept that modern medicine and modern society keep death at bay in a way that it did not in days of yore.  That is true in the Western world although not so true in the developing world; once upon a time it was true everywhere (go look at an old cemetery and see how many young men and women died early).  For the second part, perhaps this is an outcome of our modern communication technology, where we assume that we can contact anyone at any time.  

And, perhaps, the fact that we - thanks to our entertainment and changing world view - see death as something other than what it really is:  an end, at least on this plane of existance.  

We have become used to people living a long time and being able to talk to them; the fact that this is not so - sometimes in shocking immediacy - seems to catch so many off their guard.  Reading of the death of young or old, too often some version of the words "I never thought this would happen" makes an appearance.

No matter what one may believe about the afterlife, I think it is fair to say that communication - meaningful communication, not "Guided by the memory of " or "What would X do?" - ends with end of life.  Would that we as a society paid attention to this more often.

And would that we, as individuals, sought to treat every communication as potentially the last one.

Greece 2023: Hadrian's Library

 The Library of Hadrian was built at the behest of the Emperor Hadrian in 132 A.D.  Hadrian was a lover of Greece and Greek culture and visited Greece at least three times during his reign:  124 A.D., 128 A.D., and 130 A.D (he traveled significantly throughout his reign, a difference from his predecessors). The library was designed, literally as a library (not just a pretty name) along with a series of lecture halls.

Entering the library (it had a single entrance):

The "books" (rolls of paypri) would have been stored in rolls in small slots.  The corners (as below) would have been lecture halls while the space between would have been reading rooms.

The back side of the entrance:

The center of the library would have been open and a long pool in the middle.

A mosaic from the period:

Sadly, the library struggled:  after its completion in 132 A.D., it lasted a little over 100 years years until it was burned in the invasion of the Herculi in 267 A.D.  It was formally repaired in the 5th Century A.D., but in Byzantine times lost its library functions as three separate Byzantine churches were built there over time.

The Collapse CXI: Weather

June 08 20XX+1

My Dear Lucilius:

Stepping out the door this morning, I stepped into damp grass.

Rain is not unknown here at this time of year, a far cry from where I grew up where the season had a hard end. Here, it can linger into June and even beyond a bit. It was always welcome in my book and even more so now, when the criticality of water (and not having to otherwise transport it) has achieved a greater importance.

An odd thing, the weather. Once in the not too distant past, we had weather at our fingertips. We could get forecasts by the hour, by the day, or by the week. We could watch (via models) the projected weather coming in. I have to confess that I always found a certain amount of interest in watching the computer models of projected storm fronts, focusing in on where we lived at the time, trying to see if we were inside of the zone or outside of it (of course I was never correct in my guessing).

It is absurd, of course, to say that we have no weather forecasting now: people have been forecasting the weather for thousands of years, just with much less technological means: cloud watching, nature signs, even the use of body parts to predict rain – while I have never been one to have my joints hurt just before a storm, I have known others and them have almost always been spot on.

And history and seasonality, of course. Live somewhere long enough, speak to people that have lived there and keep records, and in time one will form a generally effective weather climate record – not precise of course, but generally accurate in large swaths.

I do not have much skill, of course. I have learned to see a front coming in (even if it does not bear rain) and now know with reasonable accuracy when the first day to plant is and when, more than likely, the first frost will hit. And perhaps, given the situation I find myself in, that is enough to know.

After all, in the old world we had access to weather down to the minute – but so many spent their times in climate controlled buildings that the weather itself was nothing more than a sort of background entertainment, the equivalent of a computer screen saver that went on in the background and which was experienced by most in quick dashes and short trips out, only to return to the comfort of regulated heat and cooling. We knew the weather, but did everything we could to not actually experience it.

We now find ourselves in the opposite position – having to experience and live with the weather in a real way, we limited ability to know it before it happens.

It does, I suppose, give one the opportunity to enjoy walking in post-night rain as a true surprise instead of a foregone conclusion. I find it comforting to know such minor joys still exist.

Your Obedient Servant, Seneca

One Year On: The Death of TB The Elder

 As I was sitting reading on Sunday afternoon, something about the upcoming week nagged at my brain.  Relenting at some point, I went and did a little review.  Today is the one year anniversary of the passing of my father (if one can use the word "anniversary" for such an event).

It is clear enough where the thought came from: the program from his service is there on the desk in my room; I see it every day and it has become ingrained into my unconscious.  

It is an odd thing, this sudden realization.  It is one of those moments that is stuck in time - my time anyway, and those of my sister and our families.  But a time that will dwindle away in significance as we, too, pass beyond and his pictures become just another image in a family album that someone can vaguely identify.

It is odd as well to look at where I was last year and where I find myself this year.  There is so much that I would have liked to talk to my father about, to get his perspective on.  We talked quite often after my last layoff and the job search.  He would likely have said he thought things would work out and not to worry in the event that they did not, they would be able to help.  And he would have enjoyed seeing the pictures of Greece.

It strikes me as almost unreal that I have not spoken with him is such a way since January of 2021.

His gravestone remains the same in the cemetery where it is placed now. I try and go by every time I am out - not so much for him I suppose as for me.  I do talk a bit, but nothing like I would have on the phone.  There is a sense that I am talking to stone and grass instead of any sort of lingering presence.

For his wisdom and conversation, I have to resort to memory and imagination and fill in the blanks of what I think he would have said.  Hopefully I do him justice.

Indecision And Wrong Decision

 

Tales From Produce (A)Isle: Closing Time

 The last part of the day of working produce takes on a schedule all its own.

The generalized procedure, if there were to be one written down, is to front the produce/packaged produce with especial attention to things like berries (strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries) which have two to three different "kinds" (regular, organic, hydroponic), bananas, roma tomatoes, and avocados, perform a random inventory check, a final floor sweep - all to be followed by a manager check.  Ideally we are out the door by 2200 or a bit before.

It is odd how, even after working there a short time, a schedule locks in.

At 2030 I start pulling in the onions except for a single bin of each variety (fruit fly issues). I will then sweep by the berries - if I have stacked pulled everything forward (ensuring the oldest is on the top and all the newer ones are back) it becomes an easy job of just pulling things to the fore and backfilling.  Bananas are usually filled two to three times during the shift, so perhaps some spot filling there as well.  Tomatoes and avocadoes are just pulling forward and adding to existing bins or putting a new one up.  If I am paired with someone else, they often do the inventory check.  Front the packaged products and sweeping is the final step.  

There are always some issues of course, like something being completely stripped out or a lack of a particular thing that means that whatever is left needs to be spread out to cover the space.  But largely the last 1.5 hours of the day have been the same, shift in and shift out.

It strikes me as interesting that this "schedule" has come together so quickly - to be fair, I am basing my work on the work of my coworkers that do things in an established manner and there are fixed tasks, but this is the most quickly that a schedule has established itself, especially since I am only working part time.  

Would that so many jobs had such straightforward adjustments.

"We Must Not Open Up Too Many Fronts"

 "People today have many distractions because they do not live simple lives.  They open too many fronts and are overwhelmed with worries.  I only try to take care of one or two things at a time, and then move on to something else.  I never try to do too many things at the same time.  Let's say that I am thinking of doing something.  I will have to finish it before I start thinking about doing something else.   When I cannot finish what I started, I feel uneasy.  Too many things going on at the same time can drive us crazy.  The alone could turn us into "schizophrenics.

....

When I lived in a coenobitic monastery, there was a monk, Old Isidore, who served together with me in the carpenter's shop.  He had no patience at all.  He would start working on a window.  Then he would get worried and stop.  Next he would start working on a door, only to get upset and quit.  After that, he would go up on the roof.  He used to stop in the middle of a job, and leave everything unfinished.  He cut some logs the wrong way, or cut them to the wrong size.  This is how hard work can break one's back without achieving anything in the end.

There are some people who have limited abilities and can only do one or two things at a time well.  When they get involved in too many jobs, they end up doing nothing right and drag others down along with them, too.  As much as possible, one should do one or two things only, do them right, and then with a clear mind and a rested body start working on the next job.  What spiritual work can be done with a scattered mind?  How would we remember Christ?"

- Saint Paisos the Athonite (1924-1994), With Pain And Love for Contemporary Man

Greece 2023: Ancient Underground Athens

 One of the comments that our tour guide made more than once is that Greece is a country run by the archaeologists.  That is not quite the surprise that statement might seem:  with so many settlements built on ruins of older settlements and so many surviving historical buildings, Greece in a way is a museum  that is tied to its past in a way not every country is.  Especially in Athens, history is literally layered on history.

At the site of the Acropolis Museum where all of the original stonework and archaeological finds of the Acropolis are located, there is an excavated portion of ancient Athens which was found at the site of the build - and is now part of the exhibit of the museum.  The pictures below represent homes, workshops, toilets, and storerooms which were in use between 500 B.C. and 500 A.D.   

The narrow channels below represent a sewer system.

At our last hotel in the basement level (where breakfast was served), excavations had discovered part of the wall of Themistokles (479 B.C.), built after the Persians had burned down Athens.  There is a story about this wall that at the time, the Spartans had not wanted the wall rebuilt so Themistokles, the master mind of the battle of Salamis (480 B.C.), went on an embassy to Sparta and told the Athenians to build a wall with whatever they had.  He prevaricated, delayed, and put off the Spartans until the wall was built.  Seeing this was a special touch point for me between the history that I had read and the history that still exists.