Bass Line to the Birds

Excellent weather lately. Its been dry and cool (highs in the lower 70s) and the bugs have finally given it a break. I found a cheap bass guitar amp in Houghton last week and I took it out on the porch and plucked some bass riffs to the birds and beasts. My old 1966 Silvertone bass lives at the cottage on Otter Lake now and it gets more use than it has in years. I'm glad it survived all these years. I had held it as a relic or sorts and seldom played it after I got a Fender. But after I set the "action" properly I re-discovered that it is amazingly easy to play.

Sometimes the simple pleasures are the coolest.

Espresso and the Wood Stove

Delicious!

A wonderful espresso made on the wood stove. An old camping espresso maker--kept mostly as a novelty--did its thing on the woodstove this morning. The maple cut in the last two years burns wonderfully slow and hot and the little espresso maker worked like a charm. Now if I can make it with locally roasted beans and some of the spring water from up the hill I will be on my way to brewing locally--even if I am not feeling particularly global this morning.

Wide Margins!!!

"I did not read books the first summer; I hoed beans. Nay, I often did better than this. There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hands. I love a broad margin to my life. Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sing around or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of some traveller's wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time. I grew in those seasons like corn in the night, and they were far better than any work of the hands would have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my usual allowance. I realized what the Orientals mean by contemplation and the forsaking of works. For the most part, I minded not how the hours went. The day advanced as if to light some work of mine; it was morning, and lo, now it is evening, and nothing memorable is accomplished. Instead of singing like the birds, I silently smiled at my incessant good fortune. As the sparrow had its trill, sitting on the hickory before my door, so had I my chuckle or suppressed warble which he might hear out of my nest. My days were not days of the week, bearing the stamp of any heathen deity, nor were they minced into hours and fretted by the ticking of a clock; for I lived like the Puri Indians, of whom it is said that "for yesterday, today, and tomorrow they have only one word, and they express the variety of meaning by pointing backward for yesterday forward for tomorrow, and overhead for the passing day." This was sheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen, no doubt; but if the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, I should not have been found wanting. A man must find his occasions in himself, it is true. The natural day is very calm, and will hardly reprove his indolence." -- Thoreau, Walden