“If You Can Read …” – Page 6

He fixed a flat and served mankind.

The first time I helped to change a flat tire was when I was not yet ten years old. The whole family was in the station wagon on a lonely two lane road in the middle of Minnesota, on our way to a lake. A car was stopped on the side of the road with a flat, left, rear tire. The woman driving the car was just starting to try to figure out how to change her flat tire. This was long before the days of GPS and cell phones. My dad pulled over to offer assistance. He then backed the car up so that we were behind the lady’s car, so our headlights could help us see. He proceeded to change the tire, instructing my brother and me on how to properly foot the jack and remove the nuts while the tire still had contact with the ground. My brother, Tom, who was six years older got to help pump the jack and loosen the nuts. I was in charge of stowing the nuts in the hubcap.

After the tire was changed and the jack and damaged tire secured properly in the trunk of the lady’s car, she thanked us and offered my dad payment of ten dollars. This was the early 1960s, so that would translate to be about $75 to $100 in today’s money. My dad thanked her, but told her to keep her money. I was just a little kid, so any paper money was a big deal. I couldn’t imagine turning it down. She insisted that my dad accept it. He firmly told her no thanks, and added, “The way you will pay me back is the next time you see someone in need and you are able to help, you will help them out.” When we got back in the car he repeated the conversation for my sisters to hear. He stressed that everyone is in need sometime, so if you hope to be helped in an emergency, you need to always do what you can when the opportunity presents itself. That was probably the most important life lesson my dad ever taught me.

This was not the only time he taught this lesson. It was repeated by example countless times and by words a few. But this was the time it stuck with me.

(Since then, I learned that stowing the lug nuts in the wheel cover is not always a good plan. If you step on the edge of the wheel cover, it acts like a catapult launching them in unpredictable directions.)

Charles Robert Coulter | August 15, 1924 – February 24, 2009

Charlie was the baby of his family, the youngest of four siblings born to Mae Wise Coulter and “Freeman” Joseph Coulter.

Craftsman Stained Glass & Lead

I tend to customize things to make them my own: like the Mercedes-Benz hood ornament and trunk star on my Scion xB. The windows I am installing are plain and undivided. We like them, because they let in lots of light, but they are plain. I decided to give them a craftsman touch.

Craftsman style is enjoying a revival these days in an ironic form. Craftsman is the shorthand name for the American arts and crafts movement. This movement was a response to the dehumanization caused by the industrial revolution, with its concentration of wealth in the hands of those who controlled the means of production and an erosion of the middle class. The industrial revolution with its mass production meant that only the very rich could afford art and beauty; the middle class could afford cheap, mass produced ornamentation; the poor laborers were left with tenements. The British arts and crafts movement was part of a socialist response to these conditions. At its core, it was a democratization of art and an assertion of the value of manual labor and the human touch.

When the movement crossed the Atlantic to America, the philosophy remained the same, but the forms changed. True Craftsman decor is to be made of local materials, whenever possible, and made, or at least installed, by the homeowner himself. The artwork is incorporated into everyday functional things. A “trademark” of the work is that much of the time some part of the work is left intentionally and prominently unfinished. This was regarded as the signature if you will that the work was done by the lord of the manor who was free to finish it or not at his whim. It was not the product of a machine or a servant who had to satisfy someone else’s demands. Finally! I have a good, socialist explanation for all the unfinished projects around here! It’s not because I am in over my head, or because I am lazy or too busy. It’s because I am a free man!

Back to the topic. The current revival of the Craftsman style is ironic, because it is mass manufactured and professionally installed. Just about every house on TV shows these days is an oversized McMansion wrapped in vinyl clad Craftsman accessories.

Back to the windows. Since they need to be insulated glass, I don’t have the luxury to make them true stained glass with lead dividers. So I went to my local arts and crafts big box store and bought self adhesive lead strip on a ten meter roll and several bottles of liquid “glass stain”. They make solvent based and water based stain. so, if you value your health and your indoor air quality, read the fine print and get the water based.

cardboard guide, self-adhesive lead, burnisher and trimmer on sash

I varnished the interior of the window sash frame, then applied the lead using a piece of cardboard cut to 2-1/2″ wide as a guide. I pressed it against the glass, while holding it tightly against the edge of the cardboard. I was simultaneously holding the cardboard flat against the glass making sure it was tight against the frame. Then I used the burnishing tool to press the lead firmly against the glass. This flattens and straightens it slightly and makes sure it adheres to the glass.

Then I washed my hands with cold water and soap, then hot water. It is lead. You don’t want any of it to stay on your skin. The lead was manufactured in France. Most of the back of the package was covered by a huge label in fine print warnings about lead. Below this there were about five lines of instructions for its use in French. This is where my two years of college French came in handy. Sometimes you need to be able to read a foreign language to do something.

Then I squeezed the faux stain onto the glass a section at a time, carefully smoothing it out as I went. I mixed colors on the glass and experimented with textures, blends and patterns. The first set of sashes I did was for the upstairs bathroom. I could be more playful with them, since I had already decorated the bathroom with a yellow and blue rubber ducky theme. The stain is opaque like Elmer’s Glue when it is wet. It takes between 8 and 72 hours to dry to be more transparent. That is, unless it is supposed to be more opaque when it is dry.

I decided to try a different pattern for the upper sash, utilizing the double strip feature of the lead I was using.

The upper right square was a failed attempt to blend red and blue to make purple. It reminds me of Spiderman. The upper left is clear stain with champagne swirled in a spiral. The lower left of the upper sash is very nice swirls of blue and yellow making green.

Anyway, you get the idea.

Most of the windows, we are just adding the lead on the bottom sashes with random colors and textures in the corners.The top sashes will just get lead with the circle pattern, but no color.

Simple accent colors and textures to dress up the window.

Aspiring Artist

Yesterday, I painted and mounted this cross on our barn. I don’t let the fact that I have next to no artistic talent stop me from attempting to make beautiful things with paint. This cross was originally made last year as a temporary marker for Ressom Asfaha’s grave. Memory eternal! Our priests had been given small, hand-carved, wood crosses from Ethiopia by one of the Ethiopians in our church. I photocopied them and chose one for the design of this cross.

I had to guess at the colors, as the wood cross was unpainted. I did some research on-line into Ethiopian art and chose my colors. I did it entirely freehand, as the artwork I saw all seemed to be fairly organic and not absolutely symmetrical. In hindsight, I should have measured and marked some guidelines. This is what I did when I repainted it to coordinate with our barn.

I knew from my research that the five blossoms should be red, as these represent the wounds of Christ: his hands, his feet, his head and his side. Ressom’s family told me that I had chosen the colors well. I made the cross out of a two foot square of 3/4″ plywood. It was one of many that the former owner of our house had used to cover holes in the floor in the second story of the barn. To make the shape, I measured equal distances from the corners and made a mark. Then I traced around a five quart sauce pan (that I use for candle-making) while holding the sides lined up with these marks. Then I cut them out with a sabre saw.

This was the third cemetery cross that I have made. I also made a three bar cross for dedication of ground for a mission. Each one is a little different, as I figure out better ways to do things with each go. They each were fastened to a metal fence post. The kind you can pick up for about $5 at Home Depot’s garden section. That way the wood does not come in contact with the ground, so no rot. Ressom’s brother-in-law wrote his name in his native language. That is what is painted above his name in English.

A Georgian St. Nina's Cross — A Georgian St. Nina’s Cross

I made a St. Nina’s Cross out of cherry. The “droop” on the cross bar was limited by the width of my board. The brown twining is stylized grapevine and the black crisscrossing the middle represents the Theotokos’s hair. Ksenia’s name is painted in English and Georgian in green; the dates of her birth and her repose are in red.

The picture of the cross on the barn also captured more of my work. The barn is over 150 years old, as far as we can tell. For many years, it had not been maintained, so the tongue and groove siding had shrunken to expose gaps for the wind to blow through. I added battens out of roughsawn pine to correct this. The first thing I did, however was to replace the old windows with modern, vinyl, insulated glass windows. (I didn’t know about how non-eco-friendly vinyl is at the time.) I fastened the flanges to the outside of the barnboards, then caulked and trimmed over the flanges as shown with roughsawn pine.

Are Lawns Green?

From the time I was six until I was twenty, we lived in Golden Valley, Minnesota. Golden Valley is a suburb of Minneapolis. In the 1960’s and 1970’s, it was home to General Mills, Honeywell’s MIRV control plant (making it the #16 strategic nuclear target for the Russians), Carl Sandburg Junior High (right across the street), Glenwood Hills Hospital, Theodore Wirth Park and Golden Valley Country Club. We were told that the village took its name from John Steinbeck’s Travels With Charley. This was Steinbeck’s journal of the time he bummed around the country with his standard poodle, Charley. They sat down in a field of amber grain and John said: “Now this truly is a golden valley!” I now know this is not true, but this is the myth of the place that we were taught at Carl Sandburg. Poetry apparently trumped science. Travels With Charley happened in 1960; the village was incorporated in 1886. By the way, Carl Sandburg attended the dedication of the school in 1959 and our family was there and we met him. I was only four at the time. I was dressed in a suit. He treated me without condescension.

At any rate, never let the facts get in the way of a good story. The point of this whole ramble through Golden Valley is that the valley still had some golden fields when Steinbeck may or may not have traveled through it with his poodle in 1960. By the summer of 1961 my dad had built our house in a subdivision of the last one. The fields of wheat were gone. We had a clean, new suburb with lots of green lawns.

But how green are lawns?

Before we get into the whole chemical fertilizer, gas power mower, crabgrass killer end of things; let’s take a look at just the idea and physical presence of lawns and see how things add up.

Why do we have lawns, anyway? Years ago, in a magazine called Country Journal, there was an essay on lawns on the next to the last page. From it I learned that the idea of the individual lawn came from English and northern European aristocracy. It was a sign of great wealth. It indicated that you had so much land that you could afford to mow some of it. You already had more than enough for your crops, more than enough for your livestock, more than enough, even, than for your herbs and flowers. You had so much land, in fact, that you could afford to intentionally waste some of it. It was the epitome of conspicuous consumption. This idea was carried forward to American farmers. It was a sign of prosperity and overabundance to have a small lawn around the farmhouse.

Then came the mechanization of farming with its accompanying great migration into cities. Those who managed to benefit from industrialization and centralization chose the same sign to advertise their prosperity. They had enough wealth to have a piece of ground that they could mow without even having to farm at all. On top of that, came the expanding middle class with the idea of a consumer society. Then came the cold war with its xenophobia which led people to want to have a buffer zone between themselves and their neighbors, as well as enough space to build a bomb shelter in the backyard. Then came the urban race riots of 1965 and 1968 that caused more people to be afraid of cities and flee to the perceived safety of the suburbs. Television evening news with its “If it bleeds it leads” policy combined with the economy of showing all the news that is convenient (i.e., urban) only reinforced these fears. White flight from the cities has caused so much urban sprawl that on a night time flight from Philadelphia to Minneapolis in 2000, I saw only suburbs below.

Just the fact of lawns existing, increase the need for transportation, because they increase the distance between us. Paradoxically, lawns cause more land to be paved as we need more and longer roads to get around them all to get anywhere. The more paved land there is, the higher the incidence of flash floods with its damage to life and property, not to mention the accompanying erosion. Lawns take land out of agricultural production and deplete wildlife habitat. By the lawns being clipped short, they do not produce as much oxygen and sequester as much carbon as would a farm, pasture, meadow or woods with undergrowth.

By taking land out of possible agricultural production, we have limited our opportunities for energy independence by means of biofuels. Although I have looked into the possibility of replacing my lawn with switchgrass or poplar trees to produce home heating fuel.

The bottom line is: No matter how green they appear to be, lawns are not green.

Next time, I’ll talk about the effects of lawn maintenance and some greener options.

The house pictured above is 4845 Lowry Terrace, Golden Valley, Minnesota, the location of the lawn I mowed as a child. My dad built that house in 1961. Photo is from Google Earth.

Screens and Circling the Square

As promised, I made and installed the screen on Saturday. I found a helpful person at Home Depot who actually listened to my description of what I wanted for a track for the screens and knew where the channel aluminum was. I say I made the screen, but I should add, it isn’t pretty. It is functional. I managed to bend the frame because I didn’t have it sandwiched properly when cutting it with a saber saw. I managed to straighten it enough to work. When I attached the aluminum screen to the frame, it ended up not uniformly tight.

This is where the weakness of the premise of “If you can read …” comes to bear. If the written instructions are not complete or clear, there can be trouble. Or if the activity requires a knack or natural or intuitive skill somehow, instructions will only get you so far. Also you need to have a good idea of what the final result is supposed to be to properly interpret the instructions.

I am very good at reading and following step by step instructions. I clearly remember when I was in kindergarten and Miss Richardson gave each student a square piece of paper. She told us that to make it into a circle shape, all we had to do was take a scissors and round the corners. I followed her instructions with precision. I ended up with a square shape with neatly rounded corners. It looked like a television screen, not a circle. Just about everyone else in the class made something more like a circle. It was obvious to me that they had not followed Miss Richardson’s instructions. I informed Miss Richardson that her instructions were deficient.

Miss Richardson had a lengthy absence that year, so we had Mrs. Carlson for a substitute. I don’t know why she was gone for so long. Perhaps it was a nervous breakdown. Later in my school career, I came to learn that they were fairly common among teachers in the schools I attended.

At any rate, for the rest of the screens, I asked my daughter Rosalie to make them. She is an excellent screenmaker.

Installed my first Window Sash Replacement Kit

Last month we turned off cable TV. Comcast’s digital on demand was costing us about $85/month. There was nothing on. Well, almost nothing. We will miss Keith Olbermann and some of the DIY programs, but $85?!
The new part of our house was built around 1845 and most of the windows are original construction. They are all single pane. Most are pretty drafty, rattle in the wind and need to be propped open. Fifteen of the windows are just slightly larger than 28″ x 46″. I didn’t want to replace them with the typical replacement windows, because we would lose too much glass area and damage the look of the house. So I researched sash replacement kits. In the reasonable price range there are two choices. Jeld-Wen Zap Pack sells at Home Depot for between $200 and $300 per window, depending on options, and comes in custom sizes. MW sells at Lowe’s, 84 Lumber and some independents and sells for $80 to $120 depending on options, but only comes in “standard” sizes.
Fifteen of our windows are close enough to the 28″ x 46″ standard size to use the MW kit. I ordered the basic wood window for $80.88. I am planning on replacing a window a month until the job is done. Wood is the better environmental choice. Vinyl or vinyl clad utilize some pretty toxic production processes. Wood looks better on this old house. And I figure some of the existing wood windows lasted more than 200 years and still look OK. No one knows what 200 year old vinyl looks like.

The sash kit came in two boxes. I had failed to specify low-E, argon glass, and I didn’t order it exterior primed, but it came with all of those options. I am not complaining. The instructions were thorough, with the exception of trimming the excess off the foam strips. I had to move both the exterior and interior sash stops. Nowhere in the literature or instructions did it mention that the sash tracks are 3-3/8″ deep. This is much deeper than our antique sashes. Thankfully, the sill lip was shallow enough I was able to finesse this. I had to add 1/2″ plywood filler to either side of the opening. I still have to shave down one side of the window sill a bit so that it will seal across the bottom.

MW only offers a full screen option at a pretty hefty price. We prefer a half screen, since we don’t like to strain our vision. I hope to add that myself on Saturday. It took a total of about three hours to install. I haven’t painted or varnished it yet. The next one should go faster, since I won’t have to spend so much time scratching my head over how to solve the thickness difference.

The cardboard packing and instructions will be recycled. The old sashes will be used as part of a room divider in the barn. The plywood spacers were made from salvaged scrap. Well that’s one more thing I can no longer say I never did before.

“If you can read, you can cook.”

My mom was a great cook. When anyone would compliment her cooking, especially one of her new, more adventurous dishes, she would reply, “If you can read, you can cook.” Both of my parents taught the four of us kids that if we could read, we could do just about anything we set our minds to. They taught us that each of us is ultimately responsible for our own education. I took this to heart. Through the years, I have had many different jobs and have attempted many different do-it-yourself projects and crafts.

These blog entries will try to document some of my experiences trying new things. They will explore both the truth of and the limitations of my mom’s maxim. This category will be part memoir, part current project reports, part cautionary tale. Taken together they will describe the explorations, accomplishments and misadventures of a restless mind; the confessions of a renaissance man.

Several years ago I attempted to recall and write down all of the jobs I have done in my life so far. I kept having to go back to that list and add more that I had forgotten to include. I lost that document in a computer meltdown a few years ago. I will make an attempt to reconstruct it now. These are only jobs that I did for money. They do not include the volunteer work, hobbies, crafts or DIY home repairs.

Before age 16: snow shoveling, garden weeding, bartending, babysitting, newspaper delivery, data entry, filing

Age 16 – 20: landscape nursery yardman (got to tip over a Bobcat), busboy in a lobster restaurant, grocery carryout, bicycle mechanic, bike store manager, sewing machine & vacuum cleaner salesman, door-to-door Bible salesman, janitor in a junior high

Age 20 – 30: housekeeping in a hospital surgery suite, floor waxer, painter, wallpaper hanger, machine operator in a machine shop, just about every job possible in a poultry processing plant from grinding bones to running the ovens and chillers to QC lab work, inspection & sanitation, aerial photographer, real estate salesman, computer & electronics salesman/instructor, prison chaplain, apple picker

Since age 30: prison chaplain and volunteer director for over 500 volunteers serving 8 different populations in three jurisdictions, blueprint printer, architectural office manager, project architect, purchasing agent, archivist, receptionist, landscape worker, lawnmower, newspaper ad salesman, roof inspector, roof designer/specifier, architectural specification typist/proofreader, furniture mover, warehouse organizer, scaffold builder, picker/packer, floor waxer, house detailer, painter, electrician, cement laborer, inventory taker, chocolate candy maker, home addition/renovation designer, floor refinisher, security system salesman, printshop worker, graphic designer, writer, icon installer, website builder, entrepreneur, icon maker, woodworker, artist, painter, electrician, plumber, floor installer, muralist, author

I’m pretty sure I forgot some of them. No matter. You get the idea. I have never worked in fast food, but I’m only 64. (re-edit, 9/16/2019) There will be opportunities yet.

I will list the hobbies, crafts, volunteer jobs, DIY projects and other miscellaneous skills in another entry. The next post is about me installing my first set of replacement window sashes.

St. Joseph of Arimathea

July 31st
Troparion
The Noble Joseph having taken your Most Pure Body down from the Cross, wrapped it in a clean shroud and anointed it with fragrant spices and laid it in a new tomb.
But on the third day You arose, O Lord, granting the world great mercy.

Joseph was a member of the Sanhedrin (the ruling council of the Jews). He was a secret believer after visiting Jesus by night with Nicodemus. (John 3) The two of them removed Christ’s body from the Cross and laid it in Joseph’s new tomb. (Matt. 27:57; John 19:38) For this public act of faith, the Jews fettered him and put him in prison. The resurrected Lord appeared to him there to confirm and encourage his faith. The Jews released Joseph, but banished him from Judea, driving him out. St. Joseph traveled to the ends of the earth to preach the Gospel. He spent some time with Apostle Philip in Europe, then he went to England. There, he was exiled to an island, where he fell asleep in the Lord after a long and fruitful ministry. He is depicted here with the burial cloth or epitaphios draped over his shoulder and arm.

St. Joseph is my patron saint. It was at Lamentations Matins of Great Friday that each myself, my wife and our four daughters each were drawn to the Holy Orthodox Church. It was over the course of several years, but particularly that service.

This icon is by the hand of Ilya Baladvadzhe. It belongs to Cranford Joseph Coulter, the former owner of “Come and See” Icons, Books & Art and the author of this blog. The inscription is in Georgian.

Make Room for 4,000,000,000 More People

Demographers predict that by the year 2050 there will be more than 10 billion people on earth. It is time that we start making room for them. A good place to begin would to make sure all the people who are here now are fed, housed, employed, respected and cared for.

This is what I intend this blog to discuss. It will be heavy on green issues, as these impact everyone at every stage of life and future generations. Economic inequities affect people in a given time. Using up resources that occur once in the lifecycle of the planet for the ease of a portion of three or four generations, while leaving toxic waste and a damaged global ecosystem to all future generations is an abomination.

I will not just rail against the current situation and powers that be. I will report on hopeful breakthroughs and suggest positive, doable actions. There will be people’s stories. Most people can’t really get their minds around caring for unseen, teeming masses, while they are just trying to see to their own families. I hope that we will start to recognize that we are all family.

The ‘featured image’ at the top of the article is entitled “Hope #15 Racial Equality” and is available for sale on www.shoutforjoy.net.