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Notes from The Swamp
When you live in The Swamp off the Saint Johns River in Central Florida and need to dry your laundry but you don’t have a line or clothes pins…
Last August I took a trip in my SUV to visit family in North Carolina and friends in New Jersey. On the way back to The Swamp in DeBary, FL, I stopped for a few nights at Three Rivers State Park in Sneads, FL. I took some photos and just for S&G (shits and grins) I posted them to Google Maps. This morning in my email I received this message…
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Notes from The Swamp
Closing in on 9 p.m. Been raining for over an hour A few peals of thunder every now and then. Weather radar shows blobs of activity all over central Florida. The weather forecasts call for rain to some degree every day all up into the weekend. That’s okay. I like hearing the drops on the cabin top.
Got thrown in Facebook Prison for another 30 days. What pisses me off is I’ve posted this EXACT SAME pic and another like it literally dozens of times…
This supposedly violates Facebooks nebulous “Community Standards” for “Bullying.” Up to now I’ve avoided anything political on this blog but that changes today. Right now with this post! Quite frankly I can’t stand conservatives and conservative Republicans are the scum of the earth as far as I’m concerned…
There will be more about this sort of thing as days pass.
I thought about leaving Facebook completely, but there are a couple of groups there that I run and I don’t want to drop them. There are also ukulele groups I follow that help me develop. So I’m just going to have to refrain from commenting on anything when I return.
In the meantime…
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Mardi Gras Music
In my last post I wrote about receiving my new Enya Nova Tenor Ukulele. Usually ukuleles have what is called “re-entrant” tuning. That is the top string is a “High G.” It has a higher pitch than the string beneath it. It gives the ukulele its unique sound. But many people remove that string and replace it with a “Low G” string. It gives the instrument a more “vibrant” tone and it is more like its larger cousin, the guitar.
Here’s the first song I recorded on my new uke. I have several others on YouTube I recorded with my Enya Concert which has re-entrant tuning when I was anchored off of Anna Maria Island, FL.
A note on the long hair. All through college I had long hair. I’d get a haircut before I’d go home for Christmas and the summer. Someone once remarked to my cartoonist friend, Skip Williamson, that I had “Bob Dylan hair.” Skip said, “Actually, Dylan has Dick Philbrick hair.” (I was called “Dick” back then) Once when I was going on liberty from the USS Lake Champlain – CVS39, the OOD told me “Get a haircut before you come back.”
Well, with the whole Covid thing along with the fact that I have sever COPD I take social distancing seriously. I avoid mingling with people as much as possible. If you think about it, who “mingles” with people more intimately every day than a barber? They’re in actual physical contact with a half dozen or more people every day. I see them as incubators and collectors fo harmful diseases, viruses, and bacteria. So I have avoided them for the past year.
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WOO HOO!!!
I got my new Enya Tenor Uke just a little while ago. It took a superhuman effort to drive all the way back from town before ripping the packaging apart.The traditional ukulele tuning runs like this, from top to bottom when holding the instrument…gCEA. The lower case g represents a “High G.” It gives a crisp sound. It SOUNDS like a uke. “Low G” tuning replaces the top string with one that’s thicker, and sounds an octave lower. It is essential for playing “alternating bass” which is commonly found in the kind of music I love which runs towards blues, folk, and country. You can’t get that with the High G tuning, technically called “reentrant tuning.”
I bought my first Enya uke in concert size. At the time it was the only size they offered. I got it since living on a small boat is tough on stuff and the Enya is made with a carbon fiber body that is impervious to water and moisture and can take tougher knocking around than a wooden uke. I love the thing and it had absorbed me for hours while bobbing around on the end of a rope off of Anna Maria Island and here deep in The Swamp off the Saint Johns River in Central Florida.The down-side of the instrument is that the frets are moulded into the fretboard so, naturally, they are made from the same carbon fiber material as the body. In the product description of the uke they specifically say, “NOT compatible with wound strings or strings containing metallic compounds.” Low G strings are generally wound with metal and while the uke material can take being banged around, the use of the wire-wound strings eats away at the frets, eventually ruining the instrument. (Before anyone comments, I KNOW they make unwound Low G strings, but many of THOSE contain metal particles in them and Enya says DON’T USE THEM.)When Enya blew up the size of the uke from Concert to Tenor they embedded metal frets so, as the product information in the ads says, “The frets are upgraded to metal material this time, with rounded edges. They never wear, and they never scratch your hand. Please feel free to put on the low G string.” The ukulele is shipped with reentrant tuning, so when I ordered it I also ordered a Low G string, too.
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It’s Been A Whole Year
When I opened Facebook this morning the “Memories” said it’s my anniversary here in The Swamp off the Saint Johns River in Central Florida….Prognosticators have prognosticated that the temp’s going to get up to the low 70sF with a 40% chance of rain in the afternoon Beats three foot of snow.
It’s a different Florida here than what I’ve been used to since coming down to attend the University of Miami. (“Attend” is the key word because I sure didn’t study a whole lot that year.) I spent 45+ years off-and-on around Fort Lauderdale and another 5 bouncing around on the end of a rope in a 22-foot sailboat off of Anna Maria island on the Gulf side. When my COPD got to the point where I realized i just couldn’t cope with that anymore my FB friend Capt’n Natural Lee offered my this spot in The Swamp. Traded dolphins and diving pelicans for gators, gobblers, and deet (lol. I meant to say “deer” but living here in mosquito land Deet has become my friend) . I like it here.
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How To Be A Mechanical Genius
I run a couple of boat-related groups on Facebook. Recently I posted this…
Someone commented: “I have one….works on BSW too! (British Standard Whitworth)” That led me to write:
My Whitworth story:
I sincerely doubt that many members of the group have any inkling of what a “Whitworth” is. Briefly: British Standard Whitworth (BSW) is an imperial-unit-based screw thread standard devised and specified by Joseph Whitworth in 1841 and later adopted as a British Standard. It was the world’s first national screw thread standard. Until then, the only standardization was what little had been done by individual people and companies, with some companies’ in-housestandards spreading a bit within their industries.
My first encounter with the Whitworth came when a friend and I were running a marine repair business in Fort Lauderdale years ago. We handled all the maintenance work for a large marine repo company. A Hong Kong-built trawler was seized and brought to the holding dock. It had a badly leaking stuffing box on one of the propeller shafts because of a missing bolt.
I tried to find a replacement but discovered that an American-standard bolt was too large, and a metric bolt was just a hair off in the other direction. As a last resort I went to Parker-Merrick Company, specialists in industrial fasteners and explained my problem.
“Oh,” the man behind the counter said, “You have a Whitworth.”
“What the hell’s that?” I asked.
“An obscure British standard. You can’t find them here. We don’t have any either. We can order one. It would take a few weeks to get it though and it would cost an arm and a leg.”
Well, I left and explained the results of my inquiries to my friend, a real gear-head, who said he knew what a Whitworth was. “Jaguar uses them. You can disassemble a Jag using American wrenches except for two bolts. For some reason those are Whitworths. I had to modify a couple of wrenches when I was working on Jags in New York.”
Interesting information for a trivia freak like me but no help for our problem. We eventually made some modifications to the stuffing box and stopped the leaking.
About a year later I was picking up some parts at Engine Rebuilder’s Warehouse for a Mercruiser we were repairing when an elderly black gentleman came in with a bolt in his hand.
“I’ve got a problem,” he said, holding up the bolt. “I’m working on a car and this bolt is weird. An American bolt is too big and a metric bolt is too small…”
“You’re working on a Jaguar,” I said.
“Yep,” he answered with a wrinkled forehead, surprised I’d say that.
“Well, what you have there is a ‘Whitworth'” I said.
“What the hell is that?” both he and the guy behind the counter said almost simultaneously.
I explained what it was to their edification and walked out of the place as if I was a mechanical genius. That’s hardly so as I have to constantly remind myself, “Righty, tighty…”
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Un-rueful C’est La Vie (That’s Life)
Polly The World’s Most Mellow Pit Bull, from next door, stops by daily to say hello and get some pats. Sometimes she just comes down to loll around on the gangplank in the sun for a while. That’s life here in The Swamp off the Saint Johns River in Central Florida…
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Smokers Are Gamblers
Smokers are like compulsive gamblers, but with their lives, not their life savings. We all bet we’ll be like the mythical “Uncle Bill” or “Grandma Betty” who smoked two packs a day all their lives and lived to be 103. In reality, don’t bet on it.
I started smoking cigarettes when I was 12 years old and continued puffing away for the next six decades. In addition to a pack to a pack and a half a day addiction, (and that’s what it IS, NOT a HABIT) I also consumed vast acreages of the produce of Mexico, Jamaica, and Colombia.
It all had it’s toll. Yesterday, Dec. 27th, 2021, I visited the pulmonologist for the results of my recent chest x-rays and a pulmonary function test. There was good news and bad news. The good news was the x-rays didn’t show any lurking tumors though there was no underlying reason to believe there were any.
The bad news is I’m plodding along on 21% of my lung capacity. I get winded making the bed, so I don’t do that. I sit in the car for several minutes to regain my breath after moving the 50 feet or so from the boat to the SUV. It SUCKS!
But for all that I’m in fairly decent shape for someone approaching 80. Sure, I envy the 80 year olds who run in marathons and compete in triathlons, but I wouldn’t be doing any of that even if I didn’t have COPD. My blood pressure is excellent. High normal, but in the “normal” range never the less. My blood/oxygen level, at rest, which is the benchmark, is always 98%. A person needs to be below 80% to be considered for supplemental oxygen therapy. On my initial visit to the pulmonologist I had to do a five minute walk while wearing the Covid-mandated face mask. The blood/oxygen thingy was on my finger. Of course the exercise made the blood/O2 level drop, but only by 5% which I don’t think is that bad.
Honestly I’ll be surprised if I see my 81st age-advancement day. But I’ve already beaten the national life expectancy average of 77 years which is, by the way, DOWN from 78.8 years because of Covid deaths. At 79+ I even beat the previous expectancy.
I’m not crying about my condition.I did it to myself even knowing what could possibly happen. I am one of the fortunate ones. All the things I dreamed about doing as a kid floating around in an 8-foot pram on Flax Pond at Nickerson State Park in Brewster, Mass, on Cape Cod, I DID! I’ve been down most of the Mississippi River, I have done the “Great Loop” which is a circumnavigation of the eastern half of the United States by water. I’ve been through the Panama Canal. I’ve sailed across the Atlantic Ocean. I had my own small sailboat and single-handed on a 9-month round-trip from Florida to Mexico, Belize, and the Rio Dulce in Guatemala. I published a book. I LIVED, not visited, in two foreign countries. I’m not looking forward to dying, though they say it’s the best part of a life which is the reason it’s kept till last, I’m ready. No one, taking their final breaths, ever says, “I wish I’d spent more time at the office…”
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SEASONS
Certainly no threat to the majesty of Vermont and New Hampshire in the Fall, but a little splash of color to remind us denizens of The Swamp off the Saint Johns River in Central Florida that winter’s coming on…
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One More Good Adventure 