And now I don’t really have a new post, but since I imagine there’s some kind of 5-year statute of limitations (in my mind) about re-posting, I’m recycling this little gem I found in in the directory I sometimes tuck things I felt were important at the time.  [Edit: this was originally a guest post over at Bakerina’s.  Go poke around her archives around May 2005.  Wow, now that was blogging (and guest blogging) at its peak!] Without further ado:
——————-
Okay, since Bakerina asked real nice.  (Or maybe she ordered me to participate, I have a selective memory about such things).

‘Mouse responds:
Total number of books I’ve owned.
Not too many.  Probably under 1000.  Certainly under 2000.  From second grade, when I learned to sign my name in cursive in order to get my own library card I’ve loved libraries.  I check out at least 150 books a year—far more than I could afford or store if I was buying ‘em.

Last book I bought.
Probably The Fan Man, William Kotzwinkle.  I bought it and sent it to Orionoir and tried to get him to send it along to Bakerina.  Alas, the second part of the plan fell through.  I may have to buy another copy for our lovely hostess.  I cannot generally recommend this book to everyone.  Many won’t like it or understand it.  But those who do will quote it for the rest of their life.

Five Books that Mean A Lot to Me.
Illusions, Richard Bach.  If I recall correctly there’s a saccharine Christian message not-exactly hidden in this little gem by the author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull.  Normally I’d rebel against that, but for some reason this book follows me around and it’s one of the few books I’ve read more than three times in my life.  Comfortable like an old pair of slippers.

The Monkey Wrench Gang, Edward Abbey.  This, along with the ubiquitous Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and a whole lot of Kurt Vonnegut and Hunter S. Thompson defines my “question authority” period.  The Monkey Wrench Gang, with its eco-terrorism before the term was invented, and its sidekick who measures distances in beers, not miles represents the late-Sixties, early-Seventies, makes me cry for our country today.  It very nearly motivates me to buy a few hundred pounds of sugar to add to the gas tanks of every fuck-head who “needs” a 5000+ lb. vehicle to drive their precious kiddies to school. Alas, times have changed.

Speaking of changed times and past era’s,

How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive: A Manual of Step-by-Step Procedures for the Compleat Idiot
by John Muir.  This is THE ORIGINAL idiot’s guide.  Never drive an old VW without a copy in the trunk.  With this book you can literally re-build a VW engine on the side of a highway in the middle of nowhere.  I know.  I’ve done it.  There are few experiences in life better than fixing and tuning your own aircooled engine, unless it’s helping birth a baby goat (see below).

Country Woman (not the magazine, but the big book which is apparently out of print and which I cannot track down anywhere) was my mother’s bible for the back-to-the earth movement when she packed up the family, bought a farm and we raised goats, chickens, pigs and went years without refined sugar, white flour or television.  (Easy to sigh wistfully about it now. Huge parts of the experience completely sucked.)  As I recall it, this book was the complete idiot’s guide to country living.  It included instructions on, among other things, shearing sheep, spinning wool, making butter and cheese, castrating pigs, and, my personal favorite, reaching into your goat to turn a breech-position kid.  At the age of 11, as the one with the smallest hand and arm, I had the honor of getting nearly shoulder-deep in a goat to help her give birth.  Try that sometime for a thrilling connection to the natural world.  (Update:  I called my mother to verify the title and she said she’d recently stumbled across her copy while cleaning the garage – She spent many minutes in reverie.  This book’s going to be a family heirloom – bet I know what I get for Xmas this year.)

And a tie for the fifth entry:
The Joy of Cooking and The Joy of Sex.  In my opinion the former should be issued to every 10-year-old and the latter to every 12-year-old without fail.  Sure there are better, more updated cookbooks and sex books, but these are solid and stand the test of time.  Both are left lying around the house for my children to borrow whenever they feel the urge.

Tag?
Nah.  Everyone I know has been tagged already.  Oh, wait.  Keith, have you?

What I do think this meme really needs is something like “List five books all my friends should read before they die, arranged from light to heavy” or perhaps, “The five most recent books I’ve read that I’d heartily recommend (or didn’t hate).”  As I thought about this I found very little overlap.

Five Semi-Random Books My Friends Should Consider Reading Before They Die
- Time Enough for Love, Robert Heinlein
- The Fan Man, William Kotzwinkle
- Close Range, Wyoming Stories, Annie Proulx
- Lolita, Vladimir Nabakov
- 100 Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Five Books I Read Recently that I’d Recommend (or Just Liked Well Enough to Pass Along)
- Daughter of Fortune, Isabel Allende
- Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christopher Moore
- The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini
- The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences and Observations of Peter Leroy (“Little Follies”), Eric Kraft.
- About a Boy, Nick Hornby

Ouch.  Hard to stop here, but I must, before I think of several dozen others.

Fresh, homemade strawberry jam made with the best, freshest strawberries of the spring qualifies as, if not love in a jar, at least joy in a jar.

I’d write more, but this is really just an initial test to see if I can make a flickr image link work.

Walter is a truck.  A 3/4-ton Chevy long-bed pickup.  Original straight-six 216 engine.  Four on the floor with a granny gear.  Crash-box transmission from the days before syncromesh.

Top speed 50mph.

Interesting things happen when your truck is over 60 years old and your top speed is 50mph. When you have to think about every shift.  When you feel and hear the engine and the road.  You see more.  You hear more.  You listen to the engine and transmission to know when to shift.  You smell oil drips burning off the old block and you can gauge the truck’s temperature and its health.  You crank down the window (or even crank out the front windshield—the original air conditioning) and feel and smell the breeze. 

People smile at you and your slow old truck. 

You can feel the appreciation of the old timers as memories flood back.

You can see younger people’s eyes light up as they discover the visceral appeal of art deco curves and shiney chrome. 

All of a sudden there’s no destination—only a journey.

There are three rules in this household plus a few simple words of advice:
1) Don’t ride with anyone who’s drunk (or drive drunk).  Ever.  Call home and you get a free pass on the punishment you think you deserve for getting in the situation in the first place.
2) No heroin.  Ever.  (Expanded for 2008 to include no meth.  Ever.)
3) Do anything else and I’ll pretty much let it slide so long as you never get less than a B+ mid-term and an A- in any class.  Your grades go down and your ass is grass so do drugs, sneak out and party accordingly.

The advice is: drugs and/or alcohol lead to real stupid decisions about sex - don’t mix ‘em until you’re old enough to fully appreciate the importance of this advice.

That men are still closer to the monkey than women, I haven’t a doubt.  Men’s sexual impulse is triggered by the eyes, an inheritance from those simian ancestors whom the female summons when she is in heat by means of a noticeable change in her intimate parts, which turn red and take on the morbid appearanc of a ripe pomegranate.  For some reason, this works like waving a red flag at the males, should they not be paying attention.

  Among humans, visual stimulus is equally irresistible, which explains the success of magazines filled with half-naked women.  Attempts have been made to exploit the same publishing market among female readers, but images of well-endowed youths unfurling their charms on full-color pages have been a fiasco; they are more often bought by homosexuals than by women.  We women have a better developed sense of the ridiculous, and besides, our sensuality is tied to our imagination and our auditory nerves.  It may be that the only way we will listen is if someone whispers in our ear.  The G spot is in the ears, and anyone who goofs around looking for it any farther down is wasting his time and ours.  Professional lovers, and I am referring not just to lotharios like Cassanova, Valentino, and Julio Iglesias, but to the quantities of men who collect amorous conuests to prove their virility with quantity—since quality is a question of luck—know that with women the best aphrodisiac is words.

Sounds like a good reason to try to hone my skills en-blog this year. 

No running water.  No electricity.  No refrigeration.  Outhouse.  Had to hike in at least half a mile through the snow in winter.  (Despite popular belief, it was uphill only one way.)

It seems about 1000 years and a million miles from my life today.

Looking at my kids, I can’t say they’re any happier than I was.  And looking at myself, I don’t think I can claim to be any happier than my parents were then.  Life’s different.  Far more complicated.  It’s full of lots more material crap.  But strangely, it’s not “better.”

[/rambling]

Tree
It is foolish
to let a young redwood
grow next to a house.

Even in this
one lifetime
you will have to choose.

That great calm being,
this clutter of soup pots and books -

Already the branch-tips brush at the window.
Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.
      - Jane Hirshfield

——————-

There is a large 80- or 90-foot tall redwood which shades half of the back yard at my new home.  Sometimes we wish it wasn’t there so we could have more light.  Sometimes we give thanks for its cooling shade.  Always we are awed and made small and insignificant by its great calm being.

If you haven’t yet, and if you can afford to help, please go to her site and sponsor her.

You should be able to navigate from her site to the Blogathon sponsorship pages and make your commitment.

Without further ado, and with no hope whatsoever of identifying all the ... er, stuff… in that fridge, here’s Before:

During

and After (If you look carefully, you’ll see there’s plenty of room for more food in ther for a creative packrat like the esteemed Mrs.

The real story, however, involves removing cabinets to make room for the new fridge, widening the kitchen entry, since the old standard-depth fridge no longer intrudes, and moving the 700LB (700LB!!!) fridge around the house, through the patio doors and into position—which involved removing the kitchen light fixtures in order to have a higher-than-8-foot tipping radius to get the new fridge upright.  No wonder I sometimes see these monsters listed on Craigslist as “New / didn’t fit.” 

All said and done, this is the best fridge ever, and since Mrs. ‘mouse is pleased and enjoying trying (unsuccessfully) to fill it up, I’m ecstatic about the change. 

P.S.: the bruises on my legs have faded to a dull yellow and my back may actually recover one of these months.

P.P.S.  Look at all that icemaking (read “margaritamaking”) power there in the freezer!

Edit:  For the true voyeurs, here’s the link to Flickr where you can see the partial inventory and a picture big enough to read the labels.