RUDIMENTS

RUDIMENTS, pt. 882 (light over the moors) Sometime about 1994, perhaps, (this is going to be a sidebar diversion, discursive in its own way), a fellow named E. Duane Meyer contacted me. He was some sort of Professor, with a trail of achievements, who was currently (late in his life) a tutor of sorts at Montclair University, coaching kids through their PhD.s or whatever. He had a small displacement Kawasaki motorcycle, maybe a 650, tops, and was a reader of the monthly newspaper I was producing. Not much else. He asked for me to meet him, at his home, for a proposal he had. It wasn't much of a thing, but apparently he was again soon to be updating his computer system and, in this case, wished to turn over his system to the organization I was fronting. - All he wished for was for me to sign off, for him, some form attesting to his 'donation' and its tax valuation, which number was his own reckoning of value. I s...

RUDIMENTS, pt. 881 (oppressive regimentation) Every so often I get to thinking that the biggest problem with religion - well, I don't even know if it's religion : a sort universalized version of it maybe - Christian versions of it anyway - is that the idea that everyone on Earth is being watched over by 'God' really just doesn't seem to wash. And I apologize for that, and for stating the obvious, but on the evidences, all levels of evidence, it seems not to be, or, if it is, it's a bad and bogus bargain. ('He said, while stepping over the bones of the dead'). - While I was in New York City, I never heard any of that stuff. It seemed about the most irreligious crowd I'd ever been with - lots of things go one there, but I'm not so sure they include 'Providence' in any of it - unless of course, if it's maybe a trip to Rhode Island. Don't mistake me, there are plenty of c...

RUDIMENTS, pt. 880 (the way history tries to keep up) Certain things are markers for time and history; often seen, and most often overlooked. Silos are. for sure, one of them. They dot the old landscape like pylons; other times and other meanings. Over at Cook College, in New Brunswick, there are two silos at the agricultural school; each of them, long ago having lost their way, are now fairly meaningless. They are, yes, still in place, but have lost all of their functional meaning by having been stripped of use. What a sad spectacle that is. There was a time, I can remember, when they were still 'silos' - we'd enter the old barn there , and before it was all sealed off and made off-limits, and by taking the ladder built into the wall, get to the loft area, and right there was a shaft-entry over to the silo. There were scales and weigh stations for the sheep, pills and dispensation arrays for medical treatments, nursin...

RUDIMENTS, pt. 879 (painful toothache syndrome) The town of Sheds, as I pointed out, pretty much had nothing. It was a 'location' more marked on a map then anything else at all. The place called 'Unadilla' by contrast, had something going for itself. An actual silo company, famed and plentiful too. In my farm-time in old Pennsylvania I'd seen lots of Unadilla Silos. Unadilla Silo Company was a major name and I guess, or would imagine, they employed lots of locals. Whatever 'lots' may be for up there - these were pretty nice wooden silos, not in any way characteristic of factory or corporate production; they had somehow kept a smallish, hand-held and crafty artisinal feel. It was a nice thing, and then about 1972 the big silo guys started rolling in and many old-time silos and locations were pushed aside or taken over by the huge new types of 'modern' silos, like those 'Harvestore' ...