"Plumbing Instructions for the Dead."
Water-logged sidewalk chalk on damp concrete board + copper water heater supply line. May 25, 2019 (three years ago).
From lemons to lemonade...
Wednesday, May 25, 2022
PLUMBING INSTRUCTIONS for the DEAD
"Plumbing Instructions for the Dead."
Water-logged sidewalk chalk on damp concrete board + copper water heater supply line. May 25, 2019 (three years ago).
From lemons to lemonade...
Wednesday, May 11, 2022
CHI ISHI
Making some chi ishi ("strength stones") for the backyard dojo. We'll see how they turn out...
Tuesday, May 10, 2022
RHODODENRONS and BONSAI
As many times as I've visited the Pacific Bonsai Museum, I've never visited the adjacent Rhododendron Species Botanical Garden. Today, however, The Wife and I visited both as part of my staycation.
The weather has been abnormally cold (April 2022 was the coldest April on record in Seattle), which has delayed the blooming of many flowers, so it was wonderful to wander among patches of color here and there on the grounds of the Rhododendron Garden.
There were plenty of splashes of color peppered throughout the evergreen leaves.
The Rutherford Conservatory had these enormous ferns (fifteen feet tall) that were in various stages of unfurling. This frond was the size of a human fist. The Wife liked the "knuckles" at the center.
I think every variety of rhododendron must be included somewhere on the grounds. Round leaves, oblong leaves. Thin leaves, thick leaves. Chunky leaves, tapered leaves. Every shade of green. Blossoms of red, pink, white, yellow, orange, purple, blue. China, Japan, India, Nepal, the rest of Asia, North America.
We spent a lot more time with the rhododendrons on this visit, but made sure to stop in a check out the bonsai on display. This was one of my favorites this time. I like the playfulness of the "dead" trunk with the branches growing out of the top. It reminded me of a nurse log.
New on this visit was a series of "prints" on two of the walls near the exit. I didn't spend a lot of time with them, but I'm intrigued, so I'll have to visit again!
The weather has been abnormally cold (April 2022 was the coldest April on record in Seattle), which has delayed the blooming of many flowers, so it was wonderful to wander among patches of color here and there on the grounds of the Rhododendron Garden.
There were plenty of splashes of color peppered throughout the evergreen leaves.
The Rutherford Conservatory had these enormous ferns (fifteen feet tall) that were in various stages of unfurling. This frond was the size of a human fist. The Wife liked the "knuckles" at the center.
I think every variety of rhododendron must be included somewhere on the grounds. Round leaves, oblong leaves. Thin leaves, thick leaves. Chunky leaves, tapered leaves. Every shade of green. Blossoms of red, pink, white, yellow, orange, purple, blue. China, Japan, India, Nepal, the rest of Asia, North America.
We spent a lot more time with the rhododendrons on this visit, but made sure to stop in a check out the bonsai on display. This was one of my favorites this time. I like the playfulness of the "dead" trunk with the branches growing out of the top. It reminded me of a nurse log.
New on this visit was a series of "prints" on two of the walls near the exit. I didn't spend a lot of time with them, but I'm intrigued, so I'll have to visit again!
(It appeared that they were printed onto sheets that were then glued to the wall? Canvas? Lithographs? Wheat-pasted prints? Like I said, I need to return to explore them in more depth.)
Monday, May 09, 2022
STEEL WEEDER
Five weeks ago, I wrote "I'm tired of garden tools with plastic pieces that break. Metal and wood! Full tang!" about a new hori hori knife I purchased. Well, that full metal tang snapped in two! Fiskars included a small notch in the design for cutting vines and gardening twine but I think it weakened the overall structure because that is where it broke. So I replaced it with a Black and Decker Steel Weeder. It's a quarter of the price, will do what I need it to do, and (hopefully) shouldn't break. I'll get a better designed (most likely of Japanese manufacture) hori hori soon.
•
Not only is the blade well-designed, but the overall ergonomics are excellent.
I was/am quite pleased with this tool. Highly recommended. And only $10.
Friday, May 06, 2022
TWT in TACOMA
The start of a staycation meant wandering into Tacoma to visit some of my favorite spots.
The Red Hot. Am I one to pass up the opportunity to enjoy a Tacoma Dog (Chicago-style) with a pint of ale. I am not.
The Red Hot. Am I one to pass up the opportunity to enjoy a Tacoma Dog (Chicago-style) with a pint of ale. I am not.
To drink I had the FRRMNT IPA blend, which was listed on my receipt as "Blend-O-Nator 5000." Whatever it was called, it was another delicious win for the blended beers The Red Hot has had on tap.
This pint was a blend of Fremont Brewing's Lush IPA and Ferment Brewing Company's IPA. It was approximately 6.5% alcohol by volume. The body was hazy, butterscotch yellow with a thin white head. The nose and tongue were biscuity bitterness, with hints of lemon, citrus peel, and butterscotch.
Hi-Voltage Records. I spent about an hour just bouncing from one bin of albums to another. A band would pop into my mind and off I would go to see what was in stock. Then another band or album and off to another bin. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
It was record release day for Radiate Like This by Warpaint, so that's what I eventually purchased. I can report that it's a spectacular album. It's "quieter" than their previous albums. It's more vulnerable. More feminine. And I am really digging the second track, "Hips."
Hi-Voltage Records. I spent about an hour just bouncing from one bin of albums to another. A band would pop into my mind and off I would go to see what was in stock. Then another band or album and off to another bin. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
It was record release day for Radiate Like This by Warpaint, so that's what I eventually purchased. I can report that it's a spectacular album. It's "quieter" than their previous albums. It's more vulnerable. More feminine. And I am really digging the second track, "Hips."
Update: It's turned into "Warpaint Week" during staycation. This album is so damn good. Songs just keep surfacing inside my skull, so I've got to go and give the record another spin!
•
And it wouldn't be a true Troy's Work Table day without books to accompany the art (music) and beer, so I also made stops at King's Books and Tacoma Book Center.
Sunday, May 01, 2022
(REDISCOVERING) REDISCOVERING PRAYER
I rediscovered a text that I never published here. It was published elsewhere two years ago as part of a series with other participants.
—
TEXTS from the EMPTY TOMB • 05/01/2020
“Rediscovering Prayer,” for Friday, May 1.
•
After [Jesus] had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray.
TEXTS from the EMPTY TOMB • 05/01/2020
“Rediscovering Prayer,” for Friday, May 1.
•
After [Jesus] had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray.
—MATTHEW 14:23
After saying farewell to [his disciples], [Jesus] went up on the mountain to pray.
After saying farewell to [his disciples], [Jesus] went up on the mountain to pray.
—MARK 6:46
Now during those days [Jesus] went out to the mountain to pray; and he spent the night in prayer to God.
Now during those days [Jesus] went out to the mountain to pray; and he spent the night in prayer to God.
—LUKE 6:12
•
The life of Jesus was a prayer. Oh, that my life was likewise a prayer, lived out as a beautiful and breathing thing. Spirit-filled.
•
The life of Jesus was a prayer. Oh, that my life was likewise a prayer, lived out as a beautiful and breathing thing. Spirit-filled.
•
My prayer life prior to “Stay Home, Stay Healthy” emergency measures had mostly atrophied. Sure, I prayed when I had to. During our weekly staff meetings. With my daughter before she went to bed. (Sometimes.) During worship.
But, for the most part, it had dried up. Withered away.
And then the “global pandemic” known as COVID-19 arrived.
•
When the various components and compartments of my life—work, [The Child's] school, the ability to go somewhere other than my home—collapsed onto my art desk in the basement, because they had nowhere else to be, I took to walking. A lot.
I was wandering everywhere.
One of the places I regularly passed was All Saints Catholic Church in downtown Puyallup. It had the “now familiar” COVID-19 sign on its doors, telling those who read it what All Saints was doing, wasn’t doing, and what the “new normal” in its space entailed.
All masses and gatherings were cancelled. Except that All Saints was providing their sanctuary as a place to pray each day from 3:00 to 6:00 p.m. with proper social distancing. I was curious as to how they could do that.
After my third day of passing by, I decided to check it out for myself. I’ve been praying there every couple of days for a few weeks now.
My prayer life prior to “Stay Home, Stay Healthy” emergency measures had mostly atrophied. Sure, I prayed when I had to. During our weekly staff meetings. With my daughter before she went to bed. (Sometimes.) During worship.
But, for the most part, it had dried up. Withered away.
And then the “global pandemic” known as COVID-19 arrived.
•
When the various components and compartments of my life—work, [The Child's] school, the ability to go somewhere other than my home—collapsed onto my art desk in the basement, because they had nowhere else to be, I took to walking. A lot.
I was wandering everywhere.
One of the places I regularly passed was All Saints Catholic Church in downtown Puyallup. It had the “now familiar” COVID-19 sign on its doors, telling those who read it what All Saints was doing, wasn’t doing, and what the “new normal” in its space entailed.
All masses and gatherings were cancelled. Except that All Saints was providing their sanctuary as a place to pray each day from 3:00 to 6:00 p.m. with proper social distancing. I was curious as to how they could do that.
After my third day of passing by, I decided to check it out for myself. I’ve been praying there every couple of days for a few weeks now.
•
Jesus prayed.
He prayed in the wilderness places. He prayed during his temptation. He prayed in the garden at Gethsemane. He prayed from the cross.
He prayed with his disciples. He prayed for his disciples.
He prayed in the synagogue. He prayed in the Temple. He prayed at the table. He prayed sitting around with his friends, his disciples.
•
Prayer is a rhythm. Like breathing in and out.
•
While my mother was dying and I was keeping vigil each night in the hospital, I prayed with her. When I would end with the Lord’s Prayer, she would mouth the words with me. For all intents and purposes, she was unconscious, unable to respond to me. But when the Lord’s Prayer arrived, something deep within her responded. The Spirit breathed out through her lips with the words that Jesus taught us, with the words she had been praying since she was a child, as a confirmand, as an adult.
It was a moment that I will never forget. It was moments I will never forget, because it happened more than one night.
•
Praying at All Saints allows me a space where I can be alone.
I'm grateful for this Catholic parish being open for prayer each afternoon. It's helping keep me grounded, calm in the midst of "corona chaos."
I walk there as an act prayer. I pray as an act of prayer. I walk back home as an act of prayer.
•
I’ve returned to prayer with a newfound fervor.
I pray the words of the psalms as though I were “slow reading” a play for the first time. Only speak what my eyes can capture, and my mind can hold. A phrase. A verse. A line of a psalm or half a line of a psalm.
Inhalation: lift the words from the page. Exhalation: speak the words to God. In, out. Inhale, exhale. Lift, speak. Pray, pray, pray.
•
With my book of fixed-hour prayers, The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime, in my lap, and my prayer beads in my hands, I sit in one of the pews of All Saints Catholic Church and I pray the Midday Office, an amalgamation of the traditional prayer hours of terce, sext, and none.
Rhythm and ritual and refrain. A pattern. A reframing of traditional prayers, prayed for centuries by countless Christians before me.
The Call to Prayer. The Request for Presence. The Greeting. The Refrain (which will be heard three times throughout). A Reading. The Midday Psalm. My own petitions. The Gloria. The Lord’s Prayer. The Prayer Appointed for the Week. The Concluding Prayer of the Church. (I think of them as the “minutes” of the prayer’s “hour.”)
I like these prayers because they anchor my own prayers. A cloud of witnesses who prayed before me, pray with me, and will continue to pray. Those of the Psalmist(s) and the prophet Isaiah, many of the same prayers that Jesus likely prayed.
But also those of Brother Lawrence and Julian of Norwich and St. Francis of Assisi and Martin Luther and theologians and hymnwriters and faith-filled lay people.
•
“Prayer is the little implement / Through which Men reach,” writes the poet Emily Dickinson. “Pray without ceasing,” the Apostle Paul writes to the Thessalonians. We must pray. We must breathe. We must let the Spirit speak through us.
If this is indeed true, then why are we always holding our breath?
•
“Lord, teach us to pray,” the disciples ask of Jesus. Jesus teaches them.
He bestows the words of the Lord’s Prayer upon them, just as he bestowed them upon the church fathers and the church mothers and my own mother and myself and you.
I weave these words into the prayers of others and those of my own, as I sit in a Puyallup sanctuary on a quiet afternoon, near (but not too near) to two or three people who are also praying.
And these are the words I pray, they pray, we now pray:
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. Save us from the time of trial and deliver us from evil. For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours, now and forever. Amen.
•
Image: “Praying Mary,” photograph, 2020, by Troy Kehm-Goins. Garden at All Saints Catholic Church, Puyallup.
Jesus prayed.
He prayed in the wilderness places. He prayed during his temptation. He prayed in the garden at Gethsemane. He prayed from the cross.
He prayed with his disciples. He prayed for his disciples.
He prayed in the synagogue. He prayed in the Temple. He prayed at the table. He prayed sitting around with his friends, his disciples.
•
Prayer is a rhythm. Like breathing in and out.
•
While my mother was dying and I was keeping vigil each night in the hospital, I prayed with her. When I would end with the Lord’s Prayer, she would mouth the words with me. For all intents and purposes, she was unconscious, unable to respond to me. But when the Lord’s Prayer arrived, something deep within her responded. The Spirit breathed out through her lips with the words that Jesus taught us, with the words she had been praying since she was a child, as a confirmand, as an adult.
It was a moment that I will never forget. It was moments I will never forget, because it happened more than one night.
•
Praying at All Saints allows me a space where I can be alone.
I'm grateful for this Catholic parish being open for prayer each afternoon. It's helping keep me grounded, calm in the midst of "corona chaos."
I walk there as an act prayer. I pray as an act of prayer. I walk back home as an act of prayer.
•
I’ve returned to prayer with a newfound fervor.
I pray the words of the psalms as though I were “slow reading” a play for the first time. Only speak what my eyes can capture, and my mind can hold. A phrase. A verse. A line of a psalm or half a line of a psalm.
Inhalation: lift the words from the page. Exhalation: speak the words to God. In, out. Inhale, exhale. Lift, speak. Pray, pray, pray.
•
With my book of fixed-hour prayers, The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime, in my lap, and my prayer beads in my hands, I sit in one of the pews of All Saints Catholic Church and I pray the Midday Office, an amalgamation of the traditional prayer hours of terce, sext, and none.
Rhythm and ritual and refrain. A pattern. A reframing of traditional prayers, prayed for centuries by countless Christians before me.
The Call to Prayer. The Request for Presence. The Greeting. The Refrain (which will be heard three times throughout). A Reading. The Midday Psalm. My own petitions. The Gloria. The Lord’s Prayer. The Prayer Appointed for the Week. The Concluding Prayer of the Church. (I think of them as the “minutes” of the prayer’s “hour.”)
I like these prayers because they anchor my own prayers. A cloud of witnesses who prayed before me, pray with me, and will continue to pray. Those of the Psalmist(s) and the prophet Isaiah, many of the same prayers that Jesus likely prayed.
But also those of Brother Lawrence and Julian of Norwich and St. Francis of Assisi and Martin Luther and theologians and hymnwriters and faith-filled lay people.
•
“Prayer is the little implement / Through which Men reach,” writes the poet Emily Dickinson. “Pray without ceasing,” the Apostle Paul writes to the Thessalonians. We must pray. We must breathe. We must let the Spirit speak through us.
If this is indeed true, then why are we always holding our breath?
•
“Lord, teach us to pray,” the disciples ask of Jesus. Jesus teaches them.
He bestows the words of the Lord’s Prayer upon them, just as he bestowed them upon the church fathers and the church mothers and my own mother and myself and you.
I weave these words into the prayers of others and those of my own, as I sit in a Puyallup sanctuary on a quiet afternoon, near (but not too near) to two or three people who are also praying.
And these are the words I pray, they pray, we now pray:
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. Save us from the time of trial and deliver us from evil. For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours, now and forever. Amen.
•
Image: “Praying Mary,” photograph, 2020, by Troy Kehm-Goins. Garden at All Saints Catholic Church, Puyallup.
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