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Last late summer, I was in the market for a new bed. I have been sleeping on a very thick and sturdy futon that I have owned for the last 12 years. Before that, it had a long life as a bed for a friend who was coming out in San Francisco. (Who is now wanting to become a Catholic monk, but that’s another story). So, even if it is suitably thick, firm, and good for another decade, I think it’s time for a new bed.

The problem arose when in the maze that is Ikea in Utah; I was overwhelmed with choices, all of which I didn’t like. I could find a mattress I liked, a slat set I liked, box springs I liked, but all the beds were…well, if you’ve been there you’ve seen the homage to Swedish design that left me with lots of light or black wood designs that were all very low to the ground. I am ready for a grown-up bed, preferably one as high as a fancy hotel bed, with high thread count sheets to match. Luckily, my frustration was met with a suggestion from Sam: “Well, we could make our own bed.” I hadn’t considered this. I assumed it took knowledge only a carpenter with a pencil permanently mounted behind the ear could do. But turns out, beds can be made by people with an eye for measurement and knowledge of where to get high quality fasteners. (check and check).

Of course, after purchasing the slats and mattress, strapping them to the top of our solar trailer and bringing it back through the winds of Wyoming to home; the proposed September/October project is still in design phase. But here is what has been done so far:

• Picked out a baltic birch plywood that has “a large number of thin, void-free plys”


• Picked out and tested a dark stain


• Drawn up some preliminary designs, inspired by this box:


• Determined a bed height desired of 28-29 inches


• Used Sketch-Up and Illustrator to determine the cut pattern for the different pieces of the bed


• Tested these preliminary designs on the CNC Router “Findy”, to ensure a depth that allows the light wood to show through the stain but doesn’t weaken the wood

We’re not done, obviously, but we need to finish determining the pattern and putting it into software, since the order of assembly goes: stain, cut pattern, cut pieces, sand, polish, and assemble. But hopefully it is finished in next month or two, and I get my new bed. Project time…

Over the last couple of months, I’ve been seeking out specifically themed films and shorts to create programs to show to friends. The first, an informal animation collection, required a lot more time than I expected, but was completely worth the result. More than a dozen shorts, demonstrating a variety of styles and stories. (No exchange of monies here, just what I paid to own the pieces).

Since then, I am helping to plan the warehouse’s blowout NYE bash. Our theme is that of a Speakeasy, leaving lots of creative options for decoration, costumes, activities, and drinks. It roughly parallels our journey from a start-up art cooperative to a more and more organized non-profit entity – an exciting process, of course. However, living out tales of prohibition and gangsters is more exciting, at least on a temporary basis. For the event, it was requested we have some visuals – something reminiscent of the 1920s. A friend who has experience both with lots of films and going non-profit warned me extensively about showing only materials that would not violate copyright with our private party status. Luckily, he also recommended archive.org, a website full of public domain films and music, complete with thumbnails to preview images and user reviews. Within a couple hours, I had tracked down old Betty Boop cartoons where Betty mimics both FDR and Herbert Hoover, and has visions of a mug of beer (not too subtle for the time). I found newsreels proclaiming the end of Prohibition, with footage of raids with men destroying barrels of whiskey with axes in the street. There were films both silent and talking covering scenes in nightclubs and speakeasies, with plenty of gangster and gambling action, and Felix the Cat cartoons where Felix learns about moonshine and quite enjoys it. A few days later, I have close to six hours of public domain and creative commons media (open copyright) ready to go for our gig. It’s pleasing to be able to find films like these and know they can be shown at an event to create atmosphere without running afoul of legal rights, even in creating a party specifically about law breakers 90 years ago.

It’s bizarre to reflect on what life was like for a country banning liquor production. December 31st, 1919 saw lots of private, undisclosed-location parties where people boozed up as much as possible before the January 16th, 1920 start of Prohibition. And yet, when Prohibition was headed for repeal, liquor prices countrywide dropped a full year before becoming legal again, just due to the change in expected market. I can imagine citizens easing off their stockpiles with legal alcohol on the horizon. It’s interesting to think whether this would happen with any other currently illegal drug – though nothing quite compares in terms of widespead legality the world around like alcohol.

Hopefully, tomorrow night will go something like this:

On January 16, 1920, Prohibition began. Only four days after, the 50-50 Club opened in New York City, becoming the first of some 30,000-100,000 speakeasies to operate in that city alone during the “Great Experiment.” The protocol was simple: Knock on a friendly (anonymous) door, give a pre-arranged password, and be permitted to enter. To order, one would “speak easily” (that is, in a quiet tone), and then be served a teacup of gin or whiskey that would either be the “real McCoy” or had just been mixed in someone’s bathtub, depending on the connection and the reliability of the bar owner.”

from “Joe Sent Me” by Dave Sikula

I for one, will be glad to break into a bottle of champagne tomorrow night – and have a sober driver cart me home eventually. And I won’t even have to hide my bubbly in a teacup.

It’s a week from Thanksgiving, but we are still eeking out the last of the fresh summer produce. I hate to see it dwindle away, so even the bowl of last-ripening tomatoes from the garden, even those turning a bit wrinkly, were used this week along with the leeks that grew slowly in the shadow of those tomatoes. Luckily, we found an excellent recipe for using lots of tomatoes quickly – it will tolerate canned tomatoes, but is well improved by homegrown ones, and fits well with the occasionally snowy weather lately.

Fresh Tomato Tiny Pasta Soup

• 1 tablespoon olive oil


• 1/2 to 1 cup alliums (onions are fine, we used the last of the garden leeks this time)


• 1-2 cloves garlic, minced


• 3 pounds (yes, pounds – or use 4 14.5 oz. cans of diced tomatoes) fresh tomatoes, coarsely chopped


• 3 cups vegetable broth


• 1 tablespoon minced fresh or frozen basil


• 1 tablespoon minced fresh or frozen marjoram


• 1 tablespoon minced fresh or frozen oregano


• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper


• 3/4 cup uncooked tiny bowtie pasta, rosamarina, tiny stars, or other tiny pasta


• 1/2 cup (2 ounces) shredded mozzarella cheese

Heat oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add alliums and garlic (technically also an allium); cook and stir until alliums are tender. Add tomatoes, broth, basil, marjoram, oregano and black pepper.

Bring to a boil; reduce heat. Cover; simmer 25 minutes. Remove from heat; cool slightly.

Puree tomato mixture in a food processor or blender in batches. Return to saucepan; bring to a boil. Add pasta; cook 7 to 9 minutes or until tender. Transfer to serving bowls. Sprinkle with mozzarella cheese. (8 servings-ish).

Yum. The last of the garden now consists of some brave lettuce and a handful of carrots, resting comfortably in the ground (easier than constructing a root cellar in a basement apartment). But we do have many jars of pickled green tomatoes, so even if a blizzard caused us to lose power, I suppose we’d be eating garden goods still. I have a feeling the soup is more satisfying than the pickled green tomatoes, though.

Early this morning, I heard a terrible sound from the toilet like a monster blowing bubbles as he rises to the surface. Falling back asleep, I heard a sharp crack: the futon I had fallen asleep on the night before was breaking underneath me, and collapsed on one end as I stumbled off of it. When I got to the bathroom, it turned out that both the toilet and the tub had overflowed, with a half inch of water across the entire floor.  And at breakfast, an angry white cat paced the windows, mewing to be let in and pushing at the edges, all while I’m rushing out the door for an engineering meeting.

The cat has since disappeared, the futon has been completely repaired, and the apartment fix-it dude scratched his head about the backed up drains and blamed the city’s street construction project a block away.

A non-skeptic would blame a poltergeist, but really, what would a poltergeist achieve by harassing in this manner? I’m not afraid of the cat, I knew the futon would need fixing soon, and living in a low-level apartment means plumbing issues on occasion, even if it regulates temperature nicely. Perhaps the coincidences merely push me away from musing about going for the first-time homeowner tax credit…it’s nice to call a dude when your bathroom floods and you have to go to a meeting ASAP. So if a poltergeist exists, it’d have to be a liberatarian conservative, annoyed by swedish furniture, energy efficient sublevel apartments and governments handing out tax credits for simply buying a home. Hmm. I think I’ve strayed further from the believable with this plan. Maybe “stuff breaks” is a more accurate theory.

They’re all related. Sort of.

We had an early frost here – meaning a busy twilight in the garden as everyone hurried to wrap sturdy plants in fabric, cut down weaker plants for the compost pile, and harvest everything possible for a bounty that seemed premature. I felt like I was preparing for a war to hustle among the other quiet and somber gardeners, passing plots that would not survive the night with what I could carry. We did take in ~100 tomatoes, still on big chunks of vine to drape all over the house – a trick I learned from my dad to keep the tomatoes ripening into the autumn. All the basil has been processed with olive oil and put in the freezer, we’ve pickled green tomatoes and brussel sprouts, have a crisper full of bell peppers that never quite reached the promised orange or purple colors, and paper bags full of onions and potatoes. These are all good things, of course.

But an early frost is so frustrating – it feels like a statistical aberration, like losing $500 at the slot machines in your first 20 minutes. Given all the averages, shouldn’t we get a couple more weeks to ripen the crops, enjoy fresh herbs, and maybe coax a few more marigolds and nasturtiums in the shorter days? Apparently not. Nature isn’t into observing averages on a regular basis.

Statistics is a huge (and not displeasing) part of my life right now, given that my new position involves drawing up experiments and checking them for accuracy by comparing their values to previous tests. It is a bizarre thing to realize that when I took engineering statistics in college, apparently it wasn’t the statistics I hated. It was our professor, and the 8am start time of the class (which I think I would still hate now). I’m glad to draw up fancy spreadsheets showing my colleagues with less experience that yep, my chemical concoctions are accurate and precise. Take that, Kompala!

Statistics is something that Sam struggles a little more with. A weekend in Blackhawk where admittedly I expected the odds to be against all visitors, cost Sam $120. The majority of that was for a practice run at poker, something he’s been working on – but like the friends who came with us there are many good poker players who show up at casinos on weekends to take money from those still learning. I respect statistics over skill at corporations that are very good at both, so I played slot machines for 20 minutes, and stopped once I had a $5 profit. Statistics would show a curve of winnings in any casino game that takes relatively little skill, and most of the curve would have me at a loss – so I walked away happy.

While fighting off the flies became exhausting the first day, it was more than a week before he fully realized the boy was never coming back.

Around 8am, most mornings, I look out the window by my desk to see a strange sight. A guy, dressed usually in non-descript shorts and t-shirt, trudges by carrying a plastic girl doll (like the one you dress up in the same clothes as your daughter) about 2 feet in length by it’s foot. Here’s what I know:

• It is always one of two guys, who work at a nearby warehouse that sells framed art to doctor’s and other professional offices.


• The doll is, shall we say, abused. The hair is matted and looks like it might have been burned, and there are marks all over it from shoes and some sort of violence.


• The guy isn’t running, but isn’t moving slowly – like it’s something he has to do but wants to get it over with.


• The doll wears a similarly abused lace thong (no, I didn’t previously know thongs were made in doll size either).


• The doll is always carried by a foot, like a kid holding a safety blanket.


• The doll lives on a  shelf in the warehouse the guys work at when not performing this lap.


•  While the employees at the framed art warehouse regularly have pep talks in the parking lot, we never see an interaction prior to the trip around both of our buildings.


• The shipping manager and myself are the only ones to have seen this, as far as I know – since we get there earliest in the morning.

Last week, something changed. The bigger of the two guys strode by with the doll wearing no shoes on his stockinged feet, and a construction helmet.

So WHAT IS GOING ON?

OK, I’ve already admitted, along with the shipping manager, that we don’t actually want to know. We suspect it is a punishment doled out on the employee with the lowest sales – some kind of punishment/motivation for working harder for your commission. But seriously, why did the doll have to be abused to create this situation?

I suspect I will never know.

It has been unusually rainy the past two months, which means that the lettuce and spinach in the garden didn’t bolt quite as quickly as most years. All the better to eat salads like the one here: multiple kinds of heirloom lettuce, topped with a nasturtium flower. Nasturtiums are edible flowers, with a spicy flavor. I have a large bush of them, meaning I’m not using even half of what’s there, unfortunately. But there are many bounties of the garden that I do get to take full advantage of: sugar snap peas, herbs of all kinds, collard greens, rainbow chard, onions, radishes, tomatoes (the walls of water from the smart and generous gardener Cynthia made a huge difference – we had ripe tomatoes weeks before most people we’ve talked to), and of course the crop that is like pure gold: basil. This recipe is my standby for pesto I can eat for weeks, it’s so good. Luckily, that is exactly what I’ve been doing after the first cutting – and there are probably two more batches out of what is still growing in the garden. This was exactly the plan for this year: 1 1/2 rows of basil, planted a couple weeks apart in both seed and seedlings, ensuring a summer full of pesto. It is that rare occasion where I got exactly what I wanted. And when I carry the bags full of the basil home on my bike, I cackle like a toothless miner, ready to trade in my gold for a good meal and a good time at the saloon.

NO! Sam’s grandmother is doing fine, you sick person. We are saying goodbye to the Biobenz – the mercedes on the left. It’s been a great car, treated us well on roadtrips, and we in return coddled its diesel engine through cold winters. And there’s nothing like the sound of an old diesel to tell you when someone’s just gotten home. However, it sits lonely in the parking lot most days now, and is better served at a new home in Tennessee. This week we’ll be looking for a different kind of trailer-puller – a Toyota pickup: it should hold up better in the winter, and be more useful for the trips to pick up big items as well as the road trips. Farewell, bio-benz – have a safe journey to Tennessee.

There are ways to tell if someone is from the same area as you. I haven’t lived everywhere, but for the places I’ve lived since being able to form complete sentences and paragraphs I am quite familiar with the litmus tests.

In St. Louis, you would volunteer the name of the high school you went to, and if you don’t, they’ll ask anyway. Why? It is my understanding that it tells people a lot about your upbringing: St. Louis public schools have a LOT of problems now, and have for some years – so most people have gone to either Catholic or secular private schools in the region – sometimes single-sex, sometimes magnet schools, all of this data which generally indicates something about your history in the city.

In Colorado, people often volunteer how many years they’ve lived here, but I prefer testing the reflex reaction to the following statement to indicate if I’m talking to someone who has lived in Colorado a long time:

“We’ve gotten a lot of rain recently!”

For those who aren’t already thinking it, the correct answer for Coloradoans is, “Yeah, but we can use the moisture.” And we can. Much of Colorado is technically speaking a desert. The annual moisture here is small enough that you better xeriscape your lawn or face months of intensively watering your foreign-conditions based bluegrass lawn. Gardens need daily watering for most of the summer, and farmers depend on irrigation systems that are the basis for some pretty crazy water laws in the state. It wasn’t until this year that rainbarrels were legalized…and even then, it is for people on well systems only. According to law, the rainwater falling on your roof isn’t yours, except, in some cases, if you own your well water rights. Water rights are really intense in the West for good reason: much of the water that falls in the mountains and trickles down rivers in Colorado goes to lawns in Arizona, golf courses in Las Vegas, and water fountains in California. A lot of Coloradoans bristle when thinking about lakes in the mountains dropping levels past sustaining their native animal life so a golf course a thousand miles away can be green. This is vastly oversimplifying the situation, but I’m always interested in learning more. I grew up on an irrigation ditch system – it’s where me and my elementary friends hung out (after swimming lessons and lots of rules about the swift water in the 8 ft. deep ditch). Neighbors must work together and obey seasonal rules to keep a ditch system working, and loss of water rights is cause of many a lost friendship and intense litigation.

This is relevant to a book I’m reading right now called Mayordomo: Chronicle of an Acequia in Northern New Mexico by Stanley Crawford about an irrigation ditch system in Northern New Mexico, and it certainly reminds me of the ditch I grew up with. It’s unlikely that water rights will simplify or become better distributed anytime soon, but it’s a good reminder of what it looks like when the water is the power.

Next on tap for the non-alky spot in the warehouse’s kegerator? Hibiscus soda!

I love root beer, but the ingredients are expensive, and I’m still on the fence about adding caramel color to make it more appealing to the masses. So what other sodas can be kegged? Numerous ones – though I’m not a straight-up cola fan, and am generally not into fruit sodas either. However, our other brewer on the premises suggested a hibiscus soda – not unlike a common Mexican summer drink, oaxaca or sweet waters – made with jamaica (hibiscus), lime, cucumber, strawberries, or other summery ingredients. After checking out several recipes, I opted for the simplest: dried hibiscus blossoms, sugar and water. The test batch, completed Tuesday night came out with great color and flavor – even working with a recipe that listed “sugar: amount to taste”. I already liked hibiscus in herbal tea – this just brings it to an evening drink with the carbonation. It also competes with the trendy pomegranate drinks, since hibiscus is also high in Vitamin C.

The keg is carbonating for several days with 4 gallons of water – on Monday, I’ll make up what is essentially the hibiscus soda syrup in one gallon of water to be added to the keg and carbonated for an additional 3-4 days. That makes it ready to go for 4th of July weekend – and the following weekend’s art show. Here’s the basic recipe in case you feel like trying it – the non-keg, quick’n’dirty way to carbonate is to make it with half the water and top up with club soda:

Hibiscus Soda

2 quarts water

1 cup dried hibiscus blossoms (at groceries stores in the West, or in Mexican markets)

1/2 cup sugar

Boil the hibiscus blossoms in the water for ~4 minutes. Let steep another 10-15 minutes and strain. Add the sugar and mix thoroughly. Carbonate and pour over ice. Makes 2 quarts (duh).

One of my strongest memories of my maternal grandfather was of him fishing. He loved to fish, mostly with rapalas, and to this day I could probably pick out for you what he considered the best rapala for rainbow and german brown trout. I of course learned to fish, though I haven’t used the skill in years – which is OK, since trout is not one of my favorite dishes. However, most of his visits to see us included long afternoons by a river or lake, complete with one cooler filled with sandwiches and drinks, and the other empty and waiting for the fish that almost always filled the cooler. Like all fishermen, his stories grew with time, although the photographs did his skills justice at least in number of fish caught, if not in size of each fish.

Bragging about catching fish is normal, but he had one skill while engaged in fishing that my brother and I found decidely NOT normal. One of his favorite spots near my parents’ place was a lake regularly stocked with fish due to its proximity to a fish hatchery. The lake wasn’t particularly interesting to kids, but it did have crawdads. Crawdads, as the smaller, blue collar version of lobster, were not worth good fishermens’ time to bring them home and fix them for dinner. But my brother and I could poke at them with sticks in the shallow water at least, with their claws swiping hazily at our efforts. But when my grandfather would discover one, he would scoop it up without a word, toss it in his trucker style hat, and plop the hat back on his head. He’d look at us and say, “What? That’s what you do with crawdads!”

Shocked and a little awed at the man who exposed his scalp (for his hair was starting to thin in his 70s) to the pinchers of the small beast, we’d tug on our mom’s shirt, to get her to explain this behavior. More than half the time, she hadn’t seen it, and so didn’t understand our confused looks. The crawdad would be kept under the hat for a while, and returned to the water soon after.

I still don’t know why he’d do that – other than to stop the fussing of his grandkids for a good half hour. And when I see crawdads now, I have a tendency to believe their first use is as something to keep under one’s hat, at least long enough to confuse children.

The new garden is going pretty well – with lots of bare spots as I think carefully about what to fill up the remaining space with. There’s a section for herbs that includes some Iranian varieties gifted by a fellow gardener (because who would refuse Iranian tarragon?), peas twisting around the fence, a scattering of greens that is fighting off some determined insects, basil that can’t grow fast enough for my taste, potatoes, onions, brussel sprouts and nasturtiums doing quite well, and multiple types of peppers and tomatoes that are fighting the irritating flea beetles. Sometimes organic gardening rules feel like a serious handicap, although usually it feels like cutting out additional work.

This is mainly true as we consider whether to raise beans. Since the green bean in black bean sauce recipe has been perfected (to be posted soon), it’s a nice fantasy to imagine bringing home healthy green beans and garlic from the garden to be mixed with black bean sauce, other seasonings and served over Texmati rice (my stomach is growling already). But if there is one thing I am being warned away from planting, it’s beans. Specifically, the bean beetle (I suspect it is the Mexican Bean Beetle described here) is a terrible scourge – serious enough that some gardeners propose that everyone make a pact to not raise beans for one year, just to discourage the insect. Others recommend an intensive plan of covering the plants in a tent of red tulle (red, I am told, lasts longer in the UV rays than white tulle. No other colors were discussed.) that you must quickly and covertly enter when harvesting beans. Stories of dive bombing beetles, of beautiful beans that disappeared overnight, of a garden plot turned practically brown with the thick layer of bugs all have me thinking I may have to give up on beans in this plot.

My only hope at this point is a friend’s suggestion: why not find a beetle-resistant variety of bean? I suppose we’re not too picky: just something with the texture and general taste of a fresh green bean. But the internet isn’t yielding any answers – most research into producing beetle-resistant beans has been limited to soybean crops. But if I could find a good resistant bean, I’d be all set – though I’d probably try the red tulle plan too just to be sure.

In the meantime, spinach, the garden’s first crop in most years is ready to eat! After this weekend, we’ll be able to start having summer salads and use herbs too. I can’t wait to see the crazy brussel sprout stalks shoot up, and tomato flowers forming. A drip irrigation system is in the plans and if I can keep up with the volunteer sunflowers and other weeds there will be much to enjoy out of the garden this year. Having sunlight kicks ass.

The warehouse project is going pretty well, with a good group of people, lots of project activity, and almost at the black line for finances. Our next big question is, do we go non-profit? In an ideal world, our LLC could go to classes on how to do this, ask questions about what we need to do to be in line with all the laws and regulations from an experienced teacher, and hand in a single application packet with a small fee once ready.

I am told this is not how it works.

We are lucky that one member has done some background research on what we need to do, what laws are really important to research, and what benefits and difficulties we can expect. But it will take calling different offices to ask questions, probably some legal counsel, some changes in how finances are handled, and probably more work for me as we change our spreadsheets and procedures. The benefits would be helpful however, and so we’re slowly moving forward. In the meantime, if there are any experts out there on moving to non-profit status in the Centennial State, let me know.

So for the past couple of years I’ve spent a few days in south Texas brush country – enjoying friends, hot weather, and a huge dose of gracious hospitality. It’s always a treat, with one exception. This is fire ant territory. Now there are several kinds of fire ants, and I respect the boundaries encouraged to avoid the large, threatened species of fire ants (that pack a bite bad enough to send you to urgent care). Those ants are actually pretty reserved, they want to do their work and you to leave well enough alone.

OK, so ALL ants want that. But the little, red fire ants in the area have determined that EVERYWHERE is their territory. And for whatever reason, when people step on their territory, they have favorites, those whom they look the other way for. I am not one of those people.

Last year, I had bites that looked like these all over my digits and ankles. They itch, burn, swell, weep, and generally don’t heal for weeks. My wounds are healed now, but I did my part to research what I need to do differently next time:

• don’t wear open toed shoes (bummer in the heat, but doable)


• don’t step on their mounds (I LOOK, but they must be everywhere!)


• fire ants do not like cinnamon. A perimeter of cinnamon around areas you are sleeping can help. (aha!)

So this is progress. And I plan to bring enough cinnamon next time to dose my feet and all around my tent to keep out the territorial insects. That is, until last night’s dream:

I dreamed last night that I put down the cinnamon, and was having a grand time with friends nearby when I looked over at my carefully poured powder perimeter. The ants were frolicking in the cinnamon, and to my astonishment, laughed at me: “Fool!” they said in their tiny ant voices, “You chose the cheap, false cinnamon, cassia bark! We love the stuff! It is true cinnamon, the Ceylon cinnamon that is abhorrent to us. HAHAHAHAHA!” 

I guess I better bring both kinds, just in case. And stop listening to Sam’s “true cinnamon” rant.