why I read the vulgate


I like dead languages. I like sick and almost comatose languages too (Sicilian), but let’s stick with Latin. Because Latin is awesome.

Sometimes for yucks I read the Latin Vulgate. I am weird, I get it.  The reason I like it is because it jars the brain, especially since it’s not my native language1 . I have to look hard at things, because I have to grab the dictionary a few times every verse.

 

What I like about Latin is that it’s precise. Texans get this, because you isn’t the same thing as y’all which isn’t the same thing as all y’all.  In English, we get you, and you alone.

2016-04-10 19.20.00

So here I am, reading Corinthians and I run across this awesome verse.

Temptatio vos non adprehendat nisi humana fidelis autem Deus qui non patietur vos temptari super id quod potestis sed faciet cum temptatione etiam proventum ut possitis sustinere.

Or in the King’s English (literally):

There hath no temptation taken you but  such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that which ye are able; but with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.

So big deal.  Yes, it is a big deal.

This is a scripture that I used to dislike. Maybe I hated it, I dunno. It was one of those chestnuts thrown out when a person is having a tough time with a problem, or struggling with a demon of some sort. It was thrown at people with addiction problems, which usually made them feel like garbage because obviously they weren’t able to have the faith to overcome their demon.

In short, it was a scripture that pious people used to attempt to make people feel simultaneous better and worse. Usually worse.

The modern translation of this verse is “There’s nothing God will ask you to do that you can’t, and if you can’t do it, you’re defective. Unlike me. I got this.”

This is why I love Latin2016-04-10 19.19.40. Here’s a rough translation:

…but God is faithful, who will not suffer all y’all to be tempted above that which all y’all are able; but with the temptation also make a way to escape, that all y’all may be able to bear it.

In short, it’s all about all y’all.  We are all in this together. Individually, we’re not able to bear everything that is thrown at us. Together, as a group, a church, a community, we are.

 

The word religion gets a bad rap, because it is tied to the crazies.  Ignore that. Religion is (wait for it) comes from the Latin word for binding together again. It comes from the same root word as ligament; something that connects things, and align, to make things fit together in some sort of order.

Religion should be about binding ourselves together to allow us to achieve a common goal; for Christians, it’s coming to know and emulate Jesus. For Buddhists, to bring the sangha (community) together toward enlightenment, together. With a few exceptions, religions are the manifestation of a philosophy, that together we can do better than we can apart, so long as we show up to the game to love and support, not to judge.

After church today, I find myself thinking about the people who are struggling with problems that they can’t solve themselves.  That would be, let’s see…everyone. We’re all struggling in one way or another, and I think it’s time to get rid of the judgement and just help bind ourselves together.

So give up your judgment to Judge Judy, she’s paid to do it.  We few, we happy few, let’s just support all y’all.

Respectfully submitted,

Canoelover

1. Well, duh.

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trying something new


Dear gentle readers,

I’m inviting you to be listeners.

I love pictures, and a great image is definitely worth a thousand words. That said, I listen a lot to old radio shows and podcasts, plus audio books and other forms that make me create images in my mind. I wanted to see if I could take you along with me on a river trip.

There are technical difficulties, for sure, and I’m just figuring out sound editing. But take a listen. I hope you can feel what it feels like on my River.

Respectfully submitted,

Canoelover

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an open letter to the outdoor industry marketing people


Dear outdoor industry peeps,

In my former life I was an epidemiologist, working on breast cancer incidence and prevalence. I sliced and diced data by age, race, city, county, even neighborhoods. It was my job to find where there were higher rates so the government and private programs could mobilize forces, to help those populations increase screening, early detection, and reduce mortality.

It was also a fairly sterile process. I was studying two million women with the detachment that comes with the territory, but when I went to conferences shook hands with a survivor, it was fundamentally different. Those people weren’t data points or statistics; they were individuals.

The outdoor industry is rapidly changing, and there is a lot of angst and chatter about how to engage people who are not in the outdoor tribe and recruit them. Sometimes I think we are less concerned about the desired outcome (getting people outside) than the process (making/selling stuff so we meet financial projections).

So when I hear someone say, “We need to capture millennials,” I want to flash a red card and eject them from the meeting. Really?  What are we? Trappers?Pull out the leg traps and get some of them eye-phones for bait, Frankie. Today we’re goin’ out for some of them mee-len-yuls. Like someone did here, but for real.

We need to use different language. We need to connect with a person who is from the millennial demographic, and then we need to do it thousands of times.Yes, we need studies and information about potential consumers, just like I needed to analyze data to see what was going on with cancer.  But when you get down to it, the numbers are just a means to an end: to identify one person who needs us, and then help them.

We all hear people say, “We’re in the people business.” I wholeheartedly and vehemently disagree with that statement.

If you take away only one thing from this, take this: I am not and never will be in the people business. I’m in the person business. I’m in the person business over and over again, thousands of times a year.

It’s not only retailers who should be in the person business; it’s all of us, CEO down to a part-time sales staff at a big box.

Only connect: Those two words from E.M. Forster’s Howards End make a powerful couplet.  We need to remember that behind the spreadsheets and studies and strategies to stalk a desirable population are real, live, complex people.

Get out of the people business and get into the person business. It’s more effective, and it’s a lot more satisfying. In the end, you’ll still make your projections and probably exceed them, but your focus will be on the person, not the people.

Person. Not people. Because a demographic doesn’t actually do anything. It’s just a bunch of crap on someone’s hard drive.

Respectfully submitted,

Canoelover

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addendum


To the fans of the E.M. White Canoe Company, Gilman Falls, ME; I send greetings.

So I don’t know how it happened, but I mixed up my stories. I am trying to figure out how the canoe ended up in a burn pile, because it didn’t. That story is too weird to be made up, so somewhere in the world, a wooden canoe was saved from a conflagration. No idea when or where, but it wasn’t an E.M. White, and it wasn’t Jerry who saved it.

I received a nice email from Mr. Stelmok himself today with some of the back story.

Hi Darren,

That is a nice tribute to E.M. White and our work at Island Falls Canoe that you posted and nicely illustrated with your selection of photos.

I’ve obviously been a big White fan for a long time and have been fortunate to be able to build my life around the E.M. White tradition.  I feel however that I should provide the real story behind the development of the Willow and WilloWisp.

Uh oh.

I went back to my archives and found Volume 2, Number 4 of Canoesport Journal, a now defunct magazine that died back in the early 90s. I still read mine for the good articles and the anachronisms.

The first time I saw one of these. I swooned.

Turns out that the Willow came back to life because of Jack McGrevey, who sadly died just a short time ago. He bumped his head and forgot more about wood canvas canoes than I would ever know, and he had a canoe in the shop for repair that was not marked necessarily as an E.M. White, but was probably a Featherweight 15, not built past 1923.

Jack had this boat in his shop and recognized it for what it was, and it was he who painstakingly pulled the lines off the boat. They were so accurate that when they were lofted to a larger size boat they were almost exactly the same as the larger E.M. White boats.

To quote the article:

The result, which Jerry calls the Willow, is a superb small canoe rescued from oblivion…it tracked with little effort, held course well in a breeze quartering the bow, turned right now, and did it all with what could only be called panache.

So in one way, I stand corrected. I was wrong about the origins of the boat. What I was right about was how the canoe behaves. It behaves outstandingly well.

Jerry continued:

I like your story much better, but this is the more mundane and accurate version of Willow’s development.

Thank you again for the fine tribute, and I know you will continue to get the most out of your Willow, and Jim’s 18’6” Guide.

Thanks for the update, Jerry, I appreciate it.

Respectfully submitted,

Canoelover

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things of beauty


Mr. Edward M. White started the E.M. White Canoe Company in the mid 1880s. He was one of the first people to build canvas over wood frame canoes, probably after seeing Evan Gerrish paddle one of his canoes on the Penobscot River where it flows through Old Town, Maine.

Canoes are things of beauty.1  I like the idea that water sculpted the canoe over hundreds of years of use. Native builders made modifications as they used canoes daily, and the evolution of canoe shapes was inevitable. No one knew this better than Edwin Tappan Adney. A Smithsonian scholar, Adney collected measurements and created line drawings and schematics of  a hundred different variations on the canoe theme. Published in 1964 by the Smithsonian, Skin and Bark Boats of North America is the definitive scholarly work on birchbark canoes.

It was no surprise when some early Canadian builders in the 1850s replicated birchbark building techniques, replacing bark with canvas, which didn’t leak as much. These boats were built like a birchbark boat, outside-in, starting with laying canvas on the ground and adding structure to the inside. The boats were not consistent but were an improvement. Yankees improved the process by inverting the building process, creating first the framework and stretching canvas over the ribs and planks.

bark3

This is why my own birchbark canoe looks so, well, modern. Since water hasn’t changed its physical characteristics, why would a canoe shape be better because it’s modern?

Case in point: a few years ago a designer for a fairly well-known canoe company tried to make something “totally new.” It was a canoe-shaped object, and from the moment I saw the prototype I said “This dog won’t hunt.”  We didn’t order any the next Spring, and the people who did (mostly big box stores with buyers who are more concerned with GMROI2  than paddlers) were soon disappointed that canoeists didn’t like them. They were ugly, and they paddled poorly. A double-threat to no one. The fact that I had to search far and wide for this image and finally found one on Sierra Trading Post is a good indication it didn’t meet sales expectations.

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I have removed all names and logos. That way the designer and I can remain friends.

But let us purge our minds of such images (scroll down, quickly!) and focus on what is beautiful.  Like anything E.M. White ever designed and built.

640px-White_canoe_image_1908

This is a photography of an E.M. White Wilderness Guide 18. The Guide was built in three sizes; 16, 18, and 20. The twenty footer was designed specifically for guides taking their clients into the bush in New England, so cargo room was paramount, and the ability to pole or paddle standing was of benefit for spotting a rising trout.

But the 18: goodness…I’ll just shut up and put up a picture.

emwhite18-2

Can you not see how this might be the object of desire of a canoelover? Or canoeluster? Sometimes it’s hard to distinguish between the two. Suffice it to say I have been bending the 10th commandment to the breaking point for over a quarter of a century. I wanted a Wilderness Guide 18. Not just to have, mind you, but to actually use as intended. Not to put in a glass case, but to paddle on glassy water.

Last year a friend of mine asked me to help him sell off his canoe collection. He was in a nursing home and not long for this earth, and he knew it. He wanted to make sure his canoes went to people who would appreciate them. There were few people in the position to help him out, and I know a few people who love canoes too. His sister sent me a list and I scrolled through them. And there it was.

An E.M. White 18 Wilderness Guide, built by Island Falls Canoe.

emwhite18

This picture was taken from Jerry Stelmok’s Island Falls Canoe website. To my knowledge, Jerry is only full-time canoe builder in the world who builds E.M. Whites. And that lovely grey-green canoe in the background is my canoe, when it was new.

Yes, I said my canoe. I called dibs on it, checked to see if it was okay if I paid them in installments. My friend said he wanted me to have the canoe.

It needed a lot of work. Sadly, the canoe had sat in his garage for years, with one side against a window, so the sun had oxidized the paint until it was white, and cracked the underlying filler. It would be possible to sand down to the canvas and reapply filler and paint, but I hate sanding so I decided to recover it and start over. This would also allow a few easy repairs.

I’ll be taking a trip with the 18 this fall. I can’t wait.

A lucky guy has the opportunity to find an E.M. White canoe once in a decade. A really lucky guy has the opportunity to find two in a year.

I am said double lucky guy.

I have wanted an Island Falls Willow since 1990, when I first read an article about them in Canoesport Journal, a now-defunct publication that was a great little rag about people who loved canoes, especially solo canoes.  I am sure Jerry will correct me if I’m wrong, but I think the story goes like this.

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Jerry was at a dump and saw what he recognized as the stem of an E.M. White boat sticking out of burn pile. He pulled it out and kicked some dirt on it to put out the smoldering end. He took it back to his shop, pulled the lines off it and they matched up almost perfectly with other E.M. White designs he had. It certainly was an E.M. White; it’s just that there was no record of it being built.

There are conjectures, of course. Perhaps it was a prototype that was built but was too tippy for the average paddler3 . No one will ever know for sure, but its DNA screams E.M. White.

Since these boats are all symmetrical, it wasn’t hard to turn to recreate the canoe from the part he had. So the Willow was born. Because of her initial “tenderness,” Jerry also build the Willowisp, six inches shorter and a little flatter on the bottom to make the new canoe more friendly to the beginner.

I sold a Willow to a customer twenty years ago or so. He wanted to get a lighter canoe, as he was getting older, and wanted a Kevlar boat to get the weight down to 30 pounds or so. I was delighted to trade him for a slightly used ultralight canoe for the not-so-ultralight-but-not-really-heavy Willow. It has seen some action, but the hull is sound and ready for Spring travel. My first solo trip when the ice is out will definitely be in this boat.

I own a dozen canoes, more or less. I paddle all of them, or else I sell them so they can be paddled. While these wood and canvas canoes are jewels, they’re not meant to be kept in a box on the dresser or on a rack in the garage. They are to be paddled. They are to be loaded down with a hundred pounds of canvas tent and packs, sleeping roll, wool blankets and a cast iron Dutch Oven. As much as I like 22 pound canoes and 35 pound packs, I also like fresh biscuits and a nice flank steak three days into a river trip. While I might dehydrate carrots, that’s so they’ll travel well, not to save weight. Weight? Who cares! I’m on a river, and the river is gladly carrying my gear for me.

I have owned a few wood canvas canoes, but I sold them, as none of them really had the feel of an E.M. White. The good news is that I have two of them; almost an embarrassment of riches. But I also have two children, and each will inherit one of these canoes. Yes, I am a good dad.

Respectfully submitted,

Canoelover

1. One could argue that the Coleman Ram-X canoe is not beautiful, but I can just as easily argue that it’s a canoe-shaped object, not really a canoe. I would win that argument. Statement validity remains intact.

2. Gross Margin Return on Investment. Businesspeak for “Does the item pay its own rent?” Because box stores sell items, not canoes.

3. This is a likely scenario, as the Willow is, as some say, a paddler’s boat. Without a load, she rolls over to the gunwale easily and if you’re not paying attention, will spit you out into the water without a thought. Loaded down, she settles down and is as efficient as a Prius with a tailwind. 

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the usefulness of being incompetent


In most of the aspects of my life, I have become competent.  Competent is an interesting word, from Latin, of course, as are most interesting words. Competere is the infinitive verb, meaning to compete, to vie, to be owed. No small coincidence that the word competition comes from competitio, a meeting of rivals. But enough etymology.

I look at competence as a internal competition, to always try to excel at something. The problem I have found is that good is the enemy of great. I don’t need to be great at things to enjoy them, but to settle for mediocre is not in my nature. I want to improve myself.

Add to that the Impostor Phenomenon (the idea that maybe you’re just lucky and you’re not all that) and you find a complex psychological stew between my ears. I am told on a regular basis that my business is a model for the industry, that we’ve achieved something amazing that no one else has done. etc. I am called out as a leader in the paddling community. It makes me uncomfortable, since I really don’t know if I am or not. It’s not false modesty; I have no frame of reference.

http://thisisindexed.com/

A brilliant illustration from Indexed.

On the other hand is the Dunning-Kruger Effect. In short, thinking you’re a genius when you’re really just a dolt. A few presidential candidates, anti-vaxxers, and talk show hosts come to mind. To quote Shakespeare,* “The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”

2015-11-04 09.12.09

Foot casting and pattern.

Background laid out, I want to tell you about how much I sucked last week.  A trip to the North House Folk School was in order. I needed to do something with my hands after a lot of brain work, and North House is the cure for that. Take a class there. Any class.

2015-11-06 11.40.41

Almost done.

 

2015-11-03 14.31.18

Tools. Tools! TOOLS!

My choice was the Scandinavian Turn Shoe class taught by Jason from Laughing Crowe. He’s a gifted shoemaker and an excellent teacher.  Even with his expert tutelage, nothing about this came easy to me. It was frustrating, it was aggravating, it was irritating. I sucked at this. I figured out why on the third day.

Metal behaves predictably for the most part. Heat up the steel to a certain temperature, hit it with the same force, and it will do the same thing most of the time.  Same with wood (at least clear-grain wood), where it behaves mostly properly and predictably. With leather, it can vary in texture on the same hide; heck, in the same square foot of the hide. That’s because cattle are not consistently one thickness. Go figure, neither are we. If you don’t believe me, pinch the skin on the back of your hand, then on your shoulder. Big difference.

I was doing my best, but the truth is that I was incompetent. I was really and truly stymied by the changes in texture and techniques and the inability to really be precise with the leather.

And, it was the best class I have ever taken. I experienced a lot of joy once I got over myself and embraced incompetence.  I got to feel like my students feel sometimes. When you are highly competent at something you forget that some people are just as incompetent at what you’re teaching as you are at something else.

Without comparing myself to Wolfgang in any way talent-wise, Mozart was a genius composer, but an atrocious teacher. He had a disdain for many of his students, criticizing them in private letters to his parents. He just could not see why they couldn’t hear what he hears in his head. I can’t imagine taking lessons from someone who just couldn’t see why this isn’t innate.

Maybe Mozart would have benefited from making a pair of shoes.

Respectfully submitted,

Canoelover

P.S. In the end, I have a wearable pair of shoes. They have flaws but they’re super comfortable and the flaws are only something I would notice. The next pair I make will be much better. And, I can make shoes, which is a pretty rare thing. When the zombie apocalypse comes, I will be shod. That black stuff on the bottom is barge cement mixed with dust from reground tires. Should be awesome.

2015-11-08 10.03.53
*Full disclosure: I had to look up that quote. I am not a Shakespeare scholar.

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christian vs. follower of jesus


This has nothing to do with paddling. But nothing says that I have to only write about paddling. My house, my rules.

I remember when I was a kid over at some friend’s house. His parents were expressing outrage over those gay people ruining the word for them. “You used to be able to say you were gay,” they complained.  I remember thinking “What, now you have to go with happy instead?”  What’s the big deal?

I admit that I am starting to feel that way about the word Christian. It used to mean a person who believes what Jesus says is true Gospel.  Now, I fear, it means narrow-minded bigots with martyr complexes who thinks anyone who doesn’t agree with them is a Godless atheist.

Screenshot 2015-10-07 00.13.35

This is why the south is flooding. God didn’t do it.

This is especially relevant right now as a few weeks ago one of the garbage-spewing televangelists was telling everyone the south is flooding because gay people are getting married.  Or whatever it is that will get them ratings this week.  It makes me sick to my stomach. The south is flooding because a) there’s a hurricane and b) the south is in its path.  Now while I did not consult God on this, I’m pretty sure the hurricane wasn’t on the agenda for the day.  “Oh, let’s see…yeah…let’s whip up a hurricane, those people have been pretty evil lately…”

Except the good ones who are being flooded out too.  Maybe the best way to be a sinner is to lie quietly among the saints and hope God doesn’t notice you.

People ask me, “Are you a Christian?” as if they’re asking me if I’m a Freemason. I want to respond to the question with another question; What’s the real question here? Are they trying to determine if I think like they do (assuredly not), or if I really believe that Jesus was who He said He was.

So what’s a person who loves Jesus to do?  Say, “yes, I’m a Christian,” and be lumped in with people who won’t bake a cake for someone who’s gay? Or someone who thinks it’s okay to beat your kids into submission (spare the rod, etc.), or not give them medicine because the Bible “says so”?  Or someone who’s wife is a shadow of her former self because of his bullying assertion that he’s the man of the house (again, the Bible “says so”).

Sorry, I can’t do that. I won’t do that. These people may call themselves Christians, but their behavior is more telling than any self-appellation. They may be Christians, but they don’t seem to be following Christ’s example.  As Gandhi famously said, he liked our Christ, but he wasn’t so sure about Christians.  I have to agree with Mahatma on this one.  Even as I am one, I’m not so sure about us.

In fact, I’m very much not-so-sure of it. I agree with Mahatma, as would Jesus. I don’t know everything, but I’m pretty sure of a few things. I’m sure that Christian who hold a God Hates Fags sign at a funeral isn’t loving his neighbor.  I’m pretty sure parents who thinks that they have to home-school their fifteen kids so the Devil won’t teach them about the earth being more than 6,000 years old are not open to loving their neighbors either.  People who claim to love the sinner and hate the sin usually get it half-right.  They pick and choose from the scriptural smorgasbord and take the stuff they like (women, submit yourselves to your husbands…) and ignore the stuff they don’t (neither do I condemn thee).

Now the irony here is that some of these Christians will read what I write and will say one of several things, and maybe all of them:

1)  “You need to repent.”
2)  “You are persecuting us.”

In response:

1)  Absolutely. But not for this.
2)  No, I’m not.  Just because someone disagrees with you doesn’t make you a martyr.  If you show up at a funeral telling a family that their son was killed in Afghanistan because Americans allow homosexuality, you’re going to get beat up by a former Navy SEAL because you’re being a dick, not because you’re suffering like Paul before Agrippa.   It’s the height of arrogance and narcissism to think you’re anything at all resembling an early church follower being martyred for their beliefs.

Because Jesus didn’t go around telling people they were going to hell. He told them what they could become if they wanted to.

He loved everybody. All of them. No exceptions.

So, agnostic or atheist friends (I have a fair number of them), I hope you remember that for every Christian who holds a God Hates Fags sign at a funeral or who thinks that they have to home-school their fifteen kids so the Devil won’t teach them about the earth being more than 6,000 years old, there are thousands of people just trying to be more like Jesus.  Followers of Christ. Not Christians.

I am not perfect. I make no claim to anything of the sort. I am a mess, and thankfully, I have a good example of how to behave in how I treat other people and how I treat myself.

billy-sunday2

You think Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and Oral Roberts invented the genre? Nope. This guy.

 

Back in 1915, Carl Sandburg must have felt a lot like me when he heard the tent-show preacher Billy Sunday use his particular style of preaching to “win souls for Jesus,” and to earn a little on the side, I’m sure. He saw through the theater and saw the lack of substance and emotional manipulation and saw what was really there. He wrote a poem about it, and I love that poem. While we are all hypocrites to some extent, we don’t all make a living at it.

Billy Sunday
You come along… tearing your shirt… yelling about Jesus.
I want to know… what the hell… you know about Jesus.
Jesus had a way of talking softly and everybody
except a few bankers and higher-ups among the
con men of Jerusalem liked to have this Jesus
around because he never made any fake passes
and everything he said went and he helped the
sick and gave the people hope.

You come along squirting words at us, shaking
your fist and calling us damn fools so fierce the
froth of your own spit slobbers over your lips —
always blabbing we’re all going to hell straight
off and you know all about it.I’ve read Jesus’ words.

I know what he said. You don’t throw any scare into me.

I’ve got your number. I know how much you know about
Jesus.He never came near clean people or dirty people
but they felt cleaner because he came along. It
was your crowd of bankers and business men
and lawyers that hired the sluggers and murderers
who put Jesus out of the running.

I say it was the same bunch that’s backing you that
nailed the nails into the hands of this Jesus of
Nazareth. He had lined up against him the
same crooks and strong-arm men now lined up
with you paying your way.

This Jesus guy was good to look at, smelled good,
listened good. He threw out something fresh
and beautiful from the skin of his body and the
touch of his hands wherever he passed along.

You, Billy Sunday, put a smut on every human
blossom that comes within reach of your rotten
breath belching about hell-fire and hiccuping
about this man who lived a clean life in Galilee.

When are you going to quit making the carpenters
build emergency hospitals for women and girls
driven crazy with wrecked nerves from your
goddam gibberish about Jesus — I put it to you
again: What the hell do you know about Jesus?

Go ahead and bust all the chairs you want to.
Smash a whole wagon load of furniture at every
performance. Turn sixty somersaults and stand
on your nutty head. If it wasn’t for the way
you scare women and kids, I’d feel sorry for
you and pass the hat.

I like to watch a good four-flusher work but not
when he starts people to puking and calling for
the doctors.

I like a man that’s got guts and can pull off a great
original performance, but you — hell, you’re only
a bughouse peddler of second-hand gospel —
you’re only shoving out a phony imitation of
the goods this Jesus guy told us ought to be free
as air and sunlight.

Sometimes I wonder what sort of pups born from
mongrel bitches there are in the world less
heroic than you.

You tell people living in shanties Jesus is going to
fix it up all right with them by giving them
mansions in the skies after they’re dead and the
worms have eaten ’em.

You tell $6 a week department store girls all they
need is Jesus; you take a steel trust wop, dead
without having lived, gray and shrunken at
forty years of age, and you tell him to look at
Jesus on the cross and he’ll be all right.

You tell poor people they don’t need any more
money on pay day and even if it’s fierce to be
out of a job, Jesus’ll fix that all right, all right —
all they gotta do is take Jesus the way you say.

I’m telling you this Jesus guy wouldn’t stand for
the stuff you’re handing out. Jesus played it
different. The bankers and corporation lawyers
of Jerusalem got their sluggers and murderers
to go after Jesus just because Jesus wouldn’t
play their game. He didn’t sit in with the big
thieves.

I don’t want a lot of gab from the bunkshooter in
my religion.

I won’t take my religion from a man who never
works except with his mouth and never cherishes
a memory except the face of the woman on the
American silver dollar.

I ask you to come through and show me where
you’re pouring out the blood of your life.

I’ve been in this suburb of Jerusalem they call
Golgotha, where they nailed Him, and I know if the
story is straight it was real blood ran from his
hand and the nail-holes, and it was real blood
spurted out where the spear of the Roman
soldier rammed in between the ribs of this Jesus
of Nazareth.

Thanks, Carl.

Respectfully submitted,

Canoelover

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rivertherapy


Another Silent Sports column not on their website. With permission from the publisher.  – DB

 


 

“I have a little BFF that showed up by my heart. His name is Mr. Hodgkins.”

That’s how Sarah told us she has cancer.

The good news is that she is young, healthy and fully recovered, and her BFF responded very well to the chemotherapy, a process of poisoning a person just enough that their hair falls out and the BFF gets the brunt of it.

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Two bald heads; one genetic, one chemically induced.

 

Sarah is one of the Bush family nonbiological daughters. A friend of our biological daughter, she is as much a part of the family as anyone, and I was a little shocked and saddened by the BFF. I promptly renamed Mr. Hodgkins TLF, not BFF. TLF stands for The Little Fiend, or some other F-word, depending on my mood.

Chemo affects different people different ways, and Sarah, descended from stoic, German stock and the eternal optimist, smiles through the whole process of chemo juicing. She usually feels fine for a few days after.

I have a theory that paddling has anti-TLF properties. Since living in Madison, her grad school schedule had kept us from dragging her to the Wisconsin River, one of the most healing places on earth. It was there I went after my father passed away to spend some time grieving. I knew it would have a salutorious effect, so we grabbed a canoe suitable for three and planned a post-juice therapy session.

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First Mate Sarah, duffer Kirsten, and Captain Stephanie

 

Sunscreen is critical for Sarah, as well as hydration and a few other cautions, but she’s no hot house flower. She was the paddler as well as the duffer, and being an introspective person, quietly absorbed the beauty.

Flowing water is therapeutic. The sound of it running through a pile of logs sings a song of comfort, the soft murmur punctuated by the humorous plops of turtles, too shy to stick around even when we were quiet. The water pushing us up on occluded sandbars with a soft kiss is even therapeutic, as we splash around tugging the canoes off the spots we high-centered.

——–

Before you read any further, I don’t like reading river-as-metaphor-for-life stories and I certainly don’t want to write them. But sometimes even I go there. So here I go.

The river is unpredictable. Sandbars and currents change dramatically with every flood, and the slough that was so inviting last season is now a field of quicksand. The little sand spit where I used to enjoy a summer nap is gone, the tree that created a little shady spot is now a strainer, and an inhospitable one at that.

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Sand is always in flux.

 

This constant change used to bug me. I would grumble that a favorite spot was gone, and not realizing that a new favorite spot was forming somewhere else. Unlike some of my more predictable regulars, the Wisconsin is a dynamic river. You can’t step in the same river twice, right? That’s doubly-true here.

My river has taught me many lessons, and one of them is that no matter how vigilant you are, you will run into hidden and unexpected obstacles. It’s part of being on a river; it’s what makes them interesting. Lakes are nice, but give me a river any day.

The day on my river was wonderful. It was a healing day, full of happiness and smiles and silliness, and, as the water was low, we ended up stuck in places where we didn’t want to land. We just scrambled out of the canoe, let it float free, then jumped back in when the obstacle was passed.

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That’s right, here it is; the clumsy, ham-fisted, overworked metaphor. Life gives us sandbars. We can break our paddles trying to pry ourselves off a sandbar, or we can step out, get our feet wet, possibly splash and fall and look stupid, but ultimately float free of the obstacle with little effort.

Sarah is the step-out-and-float sort. She doesn’t have the energy to waste being inefficient, so she just works with what she has, which is why she’ll be okay. She is evicting the TLF, not with anger or frustration, but with quiet optimism. Funny thing; the best paddlers I know are the same way. If you get angry, it’s not that many steps from anger to a nice, long swim. You just take what the river sends you and deal with it.

I have now become one of those writers. You know what? It’s not so bad. Maybe resistance to being a cliche has robbed me of a more meaningful experience both on the river and while going through a rough patch in our family.

——–

The day seemed to become more and more beautiful as it passed. Midwesterners know that perfect days are precious: it’s always beautiful here, but some days can take your breath away. 73 degrees, a light breeze, bright fluffy clouds that give you a little patch of shade just when you want it. The river opened up and still, no strong breezes, just a shimmering expanse of diamonds on the water. A dragonfly hatch of Midland Clubtails reduced the mosquito population, and white-throated sparrows provided a lovely soundtrack for the afternoon.

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Midland Clubtail

 

Thank you, Wisconsin River, for your Anti-TLF properties and for slipping past my defenses and teaching me that sometimes rivers are perfectly sound metaphors for life. They’re both beautiful, I know that much.

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rendezvous


While my re-enactor friends are at a rendezvous this weekend, dressed in period dress, eating period food and enjoying camaraderie, I am at a different sort of rendezvous.  I am at the Outdoor Industry Association Rendezvous.  It’s not in Bloody Lake, Wisconsin; it’s in Seattle.

This is a group of about 500 biggy-wiggies of the outdoor industry, and I mean biggy-wiggies in the most respectful way. These are some of the smartest people I know. They have built businesses from a few bucks and an unheated garage to multi-million dollar brands that have changed lives. Many of them changed mine…Kelty, North Face, Wilderness Experience (R.I.P.), Jansport (thank you, Skip), etc. etc.  I am surrounded by people I love, truly.

We listen to presentations, yes, but mostly we talk to each other. Furthermore, we shun people who call talking to each other networking. These people also use the words engagement, touchpoints (sic), disruption, pivot, align, connect, and of course, the worst buzzword ever, synergy. Shun these people, they are paid to move their lips. They’re televangelists without the Jesus part, viz., May you all maximize your GMROI via customer engagement touchpoints.  In nomine Abercrombie et Fitch, Amen.

This doesn’t mean this is not a worthwhile event, as I said before, we talk to each other. The best conversations happen by accident.

My shop has been selling Farm to Feet socks for a few seasons now. Just read the website. They’re cool. They’re 100% American made. Family-owned company.  But I digress.  That’s just about stuff.

The cool thing is that I sat at a table during a supply chain modeling exercise1 for three hours with Kelly Nestor, the dude behind Nestor Hosiery. The only reason I know about Nestor being the same thing as Farm to Feet is that I open the bills and write checks to Nestor Hosiery rather than F2F.

Nice guy, for sure. I asked him lots of technical questions about sock-making, yarn-spinning, wool-processing and all the stuff in between.  I also learned he’s a classical guitarist and pianist.2 After a nice ten minute chat, I invited myself to see his factory in November when I’ll be traveling in the area, and he gracious accepted.3

2015-10-06 10.12.19Kelly looked at his watch, said he had something important to do and held up his phone. He showed me two pictures of his young children and he needed to go call them before they went to bed.  I like this guy. These are the kind of people I like to be around.

Earlier in the day I had a shorter but nonetheless gratifying interaction. It was on the escalator going down to the lobby from experience, which really isn’t that random when you consider the milieu. The sales manager from Vasque footwear has a fabulous haircut (it matches my own shiny pate). I commented on his coiffure, he complimented mine. I noticed he was wearing a pair of the new Vasque Sundowners and admired them as well, and told him that I actually had my Sundowners with me, that I had used them at the service project. I told them they had been resoled twice but still had a lot of life in them.

That seemed to please him. I said I would send him a picture of them, and I did.

“I’d love to see it. And I’ll get you a new pair if you want.”
“No, I like these. They’re all broken in and perfect.”
“No, I mean you can keep those. I’ll just send you a new pair.”

“Really?”

He was serious. Chris could tell I was excited about the fact that they brought back the Sundowner after 1) a bad attempt to improve the original and 2) getting rid of it altogether since no one really wanted all-leather boots anymore. I received this email from him earlier today.

Darren,

Thanks for the entries on your website, very cool! It is incredible to work for a brand that has such passionate people wearing our product. I love it!

Where shall I send the new boots for you? I hope you like them and definitely do not put them out of rotation. Broken in boots with war stories like I am sure yours have are always the best.

Great to meet you.

Chris

vasque

So I made a few friends, got a factory tour and a pair of boots to augment my 20 year-old pair.

I like Rendezvous for a lot of reasons. Granted, a nice pair of boots from the sales manager of a brand you’ve been using since you were 14 are nice, but the best part is our own kind of camaraderie; shared experiences and stories, ups and downs, and all the white-hot crazy passion that keeps the industry leaders moving forward and the guys in Dockers and blue blazers wondering what the hell happened.

Respectfully submitted,

Canoelover

 

1. There should have been a warning sign: “Attention, please. If you or someone you love suffers from Attention Deficit Disorder, you might consider doing something less painful for the next three hours, like throwing a tire around like a cross-fitting orangutan.

2. This has become a non-surprise in my world, since our industry is so full of weirdos and regimental rejects who couldn’t color inside the lines. I mean, seriously…the talent hidden behind the plaid shirts and Chacos is immense. Singers, musicians, artists, poets, writers…this is a supremely talented population.

3. This is how geeky I am: I can’t wait to see the factory. Sheep goes in one end; socks come out the other. I mean, how cool is that?

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the best part about paddling


I wrote this a few months ago. It was published in Silent Sports Magazine but I’m allowed to put it here too, and I can add more pictures than I can in their publication.  DB


I’m sitting in an airport in Shanghai, about to fly home from a week of work. By “work,” I mean attending an international outdoor trade show where I was invited to speak. I added a few days on before the show for my wife and I to become tourists.

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Giving a keynote is fun. With an interpreter; strange.

We spent most of our time off the beaten path, trying to stay away from areas where people spoke English. Shanghai is an international city, but when you get away from the business district and main drags, we stuck out. In particular, I stood out as a tall, bald thumb.

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The backstreets of Shanghai are my favorite. Real people, real food.

One of the highlights of my week was paddling a canoe, Canadian style, in a 30×50 foot swimming pool. This was the first time many Chinese people had ever seen a canoe actually in the water. China is kayak-centric, and a canoe is an object from a book, paddled by Indians (wearing Sioux headdresses to the sound of tom-toms).

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小笼包 / 小籠包. My favorite street food.

After the demonstration, wherein my paddling partner Peter dumped me unceremoniously in the water playing what he called a “game,” I paddled over to the side and invited, in my worst Chinese (all of it), some kids to jump in too. PFDs were procured and two tentative volunteers came forward, parents taking gigabytes of pictures and movies.

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Just a few laps around the tank, that’s all. Soon there was a line of kids, all wanting to try, and most speaking excellent English. They had their turns, laughing and waving to their parents.  One jumped out, paused, turned around and reached down into the canoe to give me a hug.

I noticed a young boy, eight at most, watching from poolside. He was clearly enchanted, and every time I paddled past him he watched with fascination. I walked over to him while Peter took some kids for a spin. I asked him if he wanted to paddle too. I reached my hand out to him, and he took it. I hoisted him up to the walkway around the pool and we walked, hand in hand back to the loading area.

He said nothing as we spun around the pool, sitting as still as a statue.  I wondered what he was thinking, this little guy, sitting in the bow of a canoe as I knelt in the center.

I unloaded him and he climbed out, and took off his PFD, and that was the last I saw of him. My wife was watching him, though, and she told me later his skipped and jumped back to his parents as if he just won the lottery, which he had, in a sense.  In a nation of over 1.3 billion, he was one of a dozen kids, maybe, who had ever paddled in a canoe.

_______

Autumn is coming soon, and for me that means day trips. Day trips don’t require packing food or cooking, so there’s a certain liberation in terms of gustatory delights available to you based on your destination.  For me, it’s always the search of pie.

Most chain restaurants have pie, of course, but its crust has the texture of Play-Doh and the flavor of nothing. The filling is purchased by the 55-gallon drum and is more cornstarch than fruit. If it’s a cream pie, the topic is a barely edible cream-like substance. As a cause of my wife’s baking, I have become a serious pie snob.

When paddling a new river I always look for pie for my late afternoon snack. No chains, of course. I seem to have the most luck in medium-sized towns. The very small hamlets, often unincorporated, don’t have much to choose from, and the bigger towns are usually devoid of interesting Mom and Pop restaurants.

A few years ago, after paddling the Lower Sugar River, I pulled out and headed west into Green County. Dominated by dairy farms and cheese makers, it’s a prosperous little county in a very Midwestern sort of way. Nothing flashy, of course, but you can tell things are good because the barns aren’t ten years past the point where they needed a coat of paint. A well-painted barn is a source of pride for its owner.

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I found myself in Monticello, where I had been before but never in search of pie. I saw a place called the M&M Café and pulled over immediately. It was 1:50 p.m.

The M&M is a tiny place that opens early and closes after lunch, in this case at 2:00 p.m. My guess is that a lot of dairy farmers come in after first milking to have coffee and hang out with the other farmers after their first milking. It was late and the place was empty. I asked if they had pie.  Yes, they did have pie. I asked if it was made there on site. They replied that they made it fresh daily. “She makes the crust,” one woman said, indicating the other.

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Best. pie. ever.

I said I would try the banana crème. If the crust pasts muster, the filling has to as well, and I find banana crème an easy one to screw up. Too much custard, not enough bananas; the bananas can be too green, the filling too runny and saturating the crust. The topping has to be whipped cream.

She cut me a slice the size of a brick, if a brick were a triangle. The strata of bananas were visible, with enough custard to hold the bananas in place. Check. The cream was real. Not surprising, since we were in the dairy capitol of Wisconsin. The crust was flaky. It was a masterpiece of pie.

They had coffee cups with M&M Café printed on the side, and I asked to buy one. They were confused. Why would I want a cup?  “So I can remember the pie when I am drinking something hot.”  They sold me a cup for five bucks, still confused.

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My cup. Still have it.

I sat at the counter, chatting with these two no-nonsense Midwestern ladies, wearing sensible print dresses, and aprons and looking the part of farmers’ wives. They were chatty, but they were sneaking glances at the clock, and it was twenty after. They would never kick me out, so I decided to do it for them.

As I paid up and got up to leave, I saw the words “Restaurant for Sale. Inquire here” written in chalk on a small chalkboard above the menu.  I asked how long it had been for sale. They said it had for a while. They were hopeful someone who wanted to get up at 3:30 every morning to bake pie and prep the food for the day. You have afternoons off to fish (or paddle), but the restaurant business is a lot like work. Hard work.

_______

The next time I headed south I hit the Pecatonica down by Darlington. I was with my son but we didn’t have a shuttle vehicle, trusting fate and my thumb, as hitchhiking while holding a canoe paddle is an instant symbol of riparian brotherhood. I always get a lift.

As I was walking off to the road, I heard a voice from a guy angling for catfish as an excuse to drink a beer.

“Where you goin’?”
“Calamine.”
“You’re walking to Calamine?”
“Hopefully I’m getting a ride.”
“No you won’t.”
“I usually do.”
“No traffic on that road.”

He was right, the traffic counts were low, hence the popularity of that road with cyclists.

“Do you have any suggestions?”

He scratched his grizzled face, covered with a little drywall mud and three days of beard.

“I’ll take you.”
“Great.”
“For ten bucks.”
“Deal. What’s your name?”
“Maynard.”

I looked at his lawn chair. Only one beer can next to it. It was early in the day, about ten.

We climbed into his old white work van, which was full of plastering materials and ladders. We cleared a place for me and strapped my son into the front seat.

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Dog really is his co-pilot.

Maynard chatted about nothing in general, how he was getting close to retirement but still did odd jobs here and there for local contractors. He had a case of Budweiser in the back of the truck, and I think he had intentions to put a serious dent in it.  His Golden Retriever tried to crawl into the front seat and was giving my son a serious face wash. It was, fortunately, a short trip. Maynard was not particularly attentive to the rules of the road.

The paddle was nice, and I remember it being enjoyable, but nothing particular sticks out other than the beginning (Maynard) and the ending (Maynard again).

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The Proem, somewhere on the Pecatonica.

 

As we paddled up to the take-out we heard an exclamation of joy.

“Darryl!* You made it! Here, let me help you…”

No…nononononono….Maynard grabbed my bow thwart and gave it a good vigorous tug up onto the rocks. I said, “No, no, I got this…” but Maynard was undeterred. The scratches are still there. No harm, no foul. I was fouled.

Near the lawn chair was a fishing pole and half a dozen more beer cans. These Buds were for Maynard, and he had enjoyed all of them to the fullest. He yammered amiably as we carried our boats to the car, and waved and shouted a hearty farewell. But not without taking a picture.  Classic t-shirt.

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L. to R.: Ian, Maynard, me. Yes, his shirt really says that. Nice sweat vest, Darren…

______

When I think about the experiences in my life that really stand out, the most memorable events were interactions with other people, whether on thewater or off.  Paddling has a lot to do with the places I find myself meeting people, whether in a swimming pool in Shanghai New International Exposition Center (SNIEC), in a small café in southwestern Wisconsin, or riding in a rickety old work van with a local connoisseur of malted beverage.

Paddling has made my life unbearably rich. Most of my best friends I made because of paddling, whether it be a customer at my shop, a student in a class I teach, or a local character I run into at the put-in or take-out, or a couple of salt-of-the-earth sensible farm women who sell me a piece of really good pie.

*A common mistake.

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