More Badass Than I Look

     My hero Yvon Chouinard has written and talked about intentionally using one fly with Tenkara exclusively for over a year.  He would change size and pattern, but always a pheasant tail and partridge. 

     Unintendedly, I have fished most of my life exclusively with Rapala floating gold or silver lures-also in various sizes. The one deviation from this color pattern is a mackerel one for stripper fishing in the Atlantic.

     My memories of fishing really have no beginning...they just are.  We fished ALOT and OFTEN when I was growing up. We went as an extended family every Saturday night. We would pack up sandwiches and assorted snacks or cook hot dogs over a beach fire. I started out using a cane or bamboo pole and a nightcrawler. One of my earliest memories is of going with my father to his boss's farm and fishing from a rowboat on the farm pond.  I caught a bull head/hornpout and as it was swinging on the line in the boat waiting for my father to take it off the hook one of the barbs stuck me in the knee. I fondly remember fishing at Lake Algonquin also for bull head with my grandmother, parents, uncle and cousin. I graduated to an open face spinning reel- one of which took a swim in the Sacandaga after a humongous carp tore it from the shore, my fully clothed and shod father, madly running in after it until the water got too deep.  We regularly fished Abenaki, Lewey, Northville Lake, Nancy Pond and the Mohawk River.  We spent time on the lake in our boat drift fishing with crawlers and red and white spinners for walleyes. In those halcyon days things were cheap, you could buy cans of soda for ten cents apiece or twelve for a dollar. When the can was empty you simply sank it to the bottom of the lake-we weren't yet woke to what we were doing to ourselves and the environment. Eventually the old and temperamental Johnson Sea Horse had more bad days than good and was retired. 

 It was around this time that my father and I started fishing by the bridge that separates the little lake from the big lake in Mayfield (NY). The genesis of my decades long dance with the Rap. We would go after supper, him on one side of the causeway and me on the other (usually the left). We caught small mouth, largemouth bass, pumpkinseed, chub, pickerel and crappie; all catch and release. It was so gratifying to start with a fresh out of the box lure.  By the end of the evening that lure would have teeth marks and scrapes all over it. This is where I bested my phobia of bats.  At sundown was the best fishing.  It is also when the dinner bell rings for bats to start their nightly mosquito banquet. They cruised with mercurial precision around my ankles, so close and so fast I could feel their wing beats.

I would steel myself and coach myself through with the age-old angler affirmation "Just one more cast".  Eventually, darkness would require us to relent. Depending on the veracity of the fishing, I forgot about the leathery wings at my ankles.

Decades hence I continued to fish with Rapala. A catch and release enthusiast, I bend the barbs back and remove one of the treble hooks. I play around with the depth by cadence of retrieval and entice hits by twitches and jerks of the line. It's not often that I am skunked.  My catches are not record- setting, although I did simultaneously catch two small bass on the same lure at the same time once! I endured an ice fishing trip with a guy who stated he would rather fish all day and experience a single catch as long as it was superb versus a busy day of flags with "junk fish" on the hook.  I will attest that begets an undoubted tiresome day.

The joy is in the process not the outcome. Rapala Forever!

In progress

 This blog has been woefully neglected. A lot of water has gone under the bridge since I began this endeavor. I have been busy dipping my toes into that river and many others (including the Yellowstone this past summer).

Our baby is now 15, a freshman in high school, learning to drive and testing her own waters.  I am no longer working for Beacon after nearly two decades.  Friendships have gotten richer and poorer. We've all experienced life during a pandemic.  Climate change cannot be denied any longer.  I have thrown my hat into local government as a member of the conservation commission for South Portland. HE and I have been together over 21 years.  I will be 60 this year... time to get back to work.  The type of work that writing this blog gifts me.

And I am hard worker.

Blue Collar, but Not a Blue Hair

 

 The past few months have been interesting.  In July we went out West, fulfilling a long-time dream. Returning to my professional job of nearly 19 years I was notified that my role (along with several hundred others) was being "RIF"ed- a victim of a reduction in force. 

At my next birthday I will be sixty years old. I don't picture myself as a senior and am taken aback and slightly amused when someone in the general public treats me as such. There may be a factor of ageism as I continue my job search. It's hard to tell since I haven't had to look for nearly two decades and I am keen on changing my field.  

Within days of leaving my professional job I returned to work as a long-term high school substitute teacher.  The director of the school, who is a friend, told me she thought I would do well with the students because I was "like a laid-back gray-haired dude". Translation: I wouldn't get into power struggles with them. The work was similar to a lot of the education and support work I have done, enjoy and am good at offering.  I didn't walk away from that job kicking myself because I had finally found my life's calling after 40 years. 

My next money-making effort was with UPS as a seasonal personal vehicle delivery driver. I am proud of this one because I proved to myself I am suitable for labor involving heavy lifting, physical activity and exposure to the elements.  Activities I'm adept at romanticizing.

These forays required learning new skills and routines, using new technology and forging relationships outside of my comfort zone. Evidence of my resilient, adaptable and curious nature.

I may be adrift, but I am not floundering. 

Creative Blockage

Someone in our house recently had a colonoscopy and that has got me thinking about my own chronic mental constipation.  There is so much I want to be doing, but NEVER get to...and it's not like I don't have the time.  If anything I probably have more free time, in small bits at least, now that the kinder is getting older.  So, as I used to say to the eating disordered patients I worked with, "It really doesn't matter why, we may never know why, so let's focus our energies on moving ahead- toward what it is we want".

So, substituting sienna for Senna, I am going to paint, write, or work on a print daily.

A Random Olio of Things Occupying Space in My Bean

Declaration of Cultural Revolutionaries
multipotentialates
creating a better band aid vs. applying them
winter
Simplicity Parenting
the failure of public education
fiddle playing
art making
writing as a life's purpose
how much I love that little dog asleep downstairs
being youthful is about changing with the times-call Rachel Rae-a for cripe's sake
don't be a Debbie Downer
strive for hardiness and resilience
crossfit
love and embracing it
art
Canada

They Don't Call It Planet Fitness For Nothing

A new piece of equipment showed up at the gym the other day.

We all reacted to it like the hominins to the monolith in 2001 A Space Odyssey. Fortunately, nobody was clubbed to death-this time.

Existential Chafe

E.O. Wilson in his book Letters to a Young Scientist suggests that if you are not good at math, all is not lost, if your desire is to be a scientist  He coaches the importance of finding a field of science that supports your level of math competency while you continue to strengthen your skills. Oh, how I wished I had this guidance when I was in my early college years. While never the top of my class in my high school Regents chemistry and physics classes, I was able to hold my own. In college I withdrew from freshman chemistry with an average of about 19 the first go around.  I took it again and failed it. Third time, a night class after I had graduated, I nailed it with a B average, but by then my confidence and self image had been annihilated. This required a total revamping of my two year college plan and precluded me from advancing in the medical technology program I was in.  The problem was not the "science" but the math.

Helping Maisie ( who is quite skilled ) with her math has been exciting as I am finally getting some of the concepts and seeing patterns that I did not during my own education. Math is beautiful and extraordinary. I love reading and thinking about theoretical topics in physics and new ideas and advances in mechanics, computers,electronics, solar, energy, natural sciences. and yes, even math. This is more about the language and art of science.

Dr. Wilson also suggests one find what one was meant to do and pursue it-doggedly. If only knowing what I was meant to do was clearly defined and I could be passionately devoted and dedicated to it! I have made my career(s) in the social sciences and often try to think of myself as a social scientist. I know I have done some good and helped a few people and I hope that I have not caused any harm or suffering to those I have tried to help in my work (and in life for that matter). There have been times when my work has been exciting and felt noble and rewarding and many times when it has not;  when it has been a total soul suck.

What if what I am good at is something that I don't like?