The Brass Shakes

My first year of college didn’t go well.

I was a naïve kid from a small town in New Hampshire. I didn’t fit in with the rich prep school types. I didn’t like my alcoholic ex-Navy roommate. And I wasn’t interested in the courses. So I took a year off to figure out what to do next.

I went back to my summer job at Silver Lake State Park; but when fall came, I was out of work. I stopped for a haircut at Dick Navaroli’s barbershop in mid-September. The shop was located next to the Red & White, downstairs from Dick's apartment in the old hotel building everyone called The Block.

Dick was a nice guy and a good barber, and he loved to talk. When I walked in, Jack Boyd was sitting in the brown leather upholstered barber chair with a crisp, light-blue barber’s cloth snapped around his neck. Dick chattered away as he finished the haircut.

“What’s Mr. Karl up to today,” he asked. Dick always called me Mr. Karl.

“Looking for a job,” I replied

“What are you looking for?” Jack asked as Dick brushed the loose hairs off his neck with a powdered neck duster.

“Anything that pays well.”

Jack sized me up. I was a skinny eighteen year-old kid. “Think you can handle a tough job?”

“What kind of a job?”

Dick unsnapped the barber cloth and drew it aside. Jack stood up and looked me in the eye. “You know where Nashua Brass is?”

“Yes.”

“Be there tomorrow morning at eight. I need some help in the foundry.”

Then he paid for his haircut and left.

“That was good timing,” Dick said as I climbed into the chair.


I was there at eight sharp the next morning. Jack showed me around the old brass foundry. There was a furnace room with two big furnaces and a large molding room where a dozen men worked. It probably hadn’t changed in a hundred years, and OSHA was still eight years away.

The pay was good, so I took the job.

When I punched in the following morning , Jack introduced me to Lionel Ledoux, an avuncular French-Canadian in his early 50s who spoke with a thick accent. Lionel would be my work partner and mentor.

The daily routine was simple. For most of the day, we sat at grinding wheels in one corner of the molding room, removing the flashing from brass castings. Flashing is the extra material left by seams in the mold. It was a mindless job, interrupted every two hours when we helped with the pour-off.

Lionel and I hit it off right away. He talked constantly in his hoarse, gravely voice as we sat at adjacent grinding wheels. He was a diligent worker who had been at the company for 22 years. The high point of his week was Saturday night out at Duke’s, a bar and strip club in nearby Tyngsboro, Massachusetts.

“You come with us this week,” he said.

“I don’t have an ID.”

“Not to worry. You don’t need one with me.”

When a bell rang, we strapped on leather leg protectors that looked like something a baseball catcher might wear, a thick leather apron and heavy leather gloves with cuffs that went almost to our elbows. Then we walked to the furnace room for the pour-off.

Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc that has been made by man for several thousand years. The copper and zinc are melted together, and the molten liquid is poured into a mold made by packing fine sand around a master pattern in a casting flask. The pattern is then removed leaving a cavity with a channel for pouring in the molten brass. After pouring, the brass cools and solidifies, and the sand is removed.

The melting point of copper is about 2000 degrees F. The furnace room was the closest thing to hell that I ever experienced. The heat from the furnaces was overwhelming, and the roar was deafening.

The furnace operator was a huge bald man who wore a strap undershirt under his apron. His muscled arms and shoulders were covered with sweat and grime. In the glow from the furnace, he looked like a guard at Satan’s door.

Recessed into the floor in front of the furnaces was an oven for preheating large ceramic pots to the same temperature as the molten brass. When the cover was pulled aside, you had to straddle a three-foot wide, 2000° hole in the floor, reach in with a pair of long-handled tongs and lift out a twenty-five pound pot that was wedged in among a bunch of others.

There were no guardrails. It was so hot you couldn’t breathe. And the heat dried out your eyes almost instantly. It was the most frightening task I’ve ever faced.

After lifting the pot from the oven, it was locked into a large iron clamp and a long iron bar slid though a ring in the clamp. Lionel and I then carried it by the iron bar to the furnace, where it was filled with molten brass.

The pot had to be held very steady when the big furnace tilted foward. If the hot molten spilled onto the cool concrete floor, it spattered like water in a hot frying pan. Once filled with molten, the whole thing weighted about 150 pounds.

We then carried the pot out to the molding room where the molders would pour the molten brass into their casting flasks. There were three teams of two men, and each team repeated this procedure several times during each pouring. It was a hot, dirty and dangerous job.

One morning during my second week, a molder bumped a full pot of molten against the side of his casting flask as he began to pour. Molten brass spilled to the floor and spattered everywhere. A glob of it bounced up onto my left leg between the apron and my leg protector and set my jeans on fire.

I struggled to brush it away and put out the fire with my left hand while holding my end of the iron bar in my right and without spilling any more molten. The foreman saw what was happening and rushed over. He summoned another molder to take over for me while I went to his office for first aid.

The burn was painful but not serious, and the foreman dressed my wound.

“You handled yourself pretty good out there,” he said. “Somebody could’ve really got hurt.”

After that rite of passage, I was accepted.

Several weeks later, I came down with a strange ailment. Every night, I felt like I was coming down with the flu. I was feverish, nauseous and ached all over. I went to bed early and by morning was fine. I assumed it would pass.

It didn’t. One morning after a particularly bad night, I mentioned it to Lionel.

“Oh that’s just the brass shakes,” he told me. “I still get them. You get used to it.”

I left Nashua Brass soon after. I never got a chance to take Lionel up on his invitation to Duke’s.

I’ve since learned it was metal fume fever, also known as brass founders' ague, brass shakes or zinc shakes, and is caused by exposure to fumes from zinc or magnesium oxide. The symptoms are caused by an immune reaction when the inhaled fumes injure the cells lining your airways. It also modifies proteins in your lungs. The modified proteins are then absorbed into your bloodstream, where they act as allergens. Continued exposure can lead to leukocytosis, kidney failure and death.

I often wonder how much longer Lionel lived.

Drone Syndrome

Forty years ago, I worked for a military contractor. The longer I worked there, the more I came to dislike the job. When I could no longer live with myself, I quit.

In many ways, it was a great place to work. I worked with a bunch of very creative, highly motivated people. The pay was good with almost unlimited opportunity for overtime. The benefits were excellent. And job security was all but guaranteed.

The problem was that we were building weapons. When you’re building things like bomb fuzes, you lose perspective.

Bomb fuzes were the predecessors to today’s smart bombs. Screwed into the nose of a bomb, they determined when the bomb exploded, maximizing enemy deaths and infrastructure destruction.

One of the more bizarre projects was a Frisbee-like grenade that was designed to hover over the enemy in the swamps of Vietnam and direct the blast of metal shards down onto them.

We also built radar systems for anti-aircraft missiles and cannons. They were easier to rationalize since they were defensive weaponry.

Periodically, we were shown films on how our products worked, all cloaked in clinical terms of efficiency. The films included tests demonstrating the relative destruction of buildings by bombs detonated at different altitudes. Or the destruction of drone target planes by rapid-fire cannons that sounded like a giant fart as they fired 3,600 rounds per minute.

These days, drones have gone from prey to predator. They’re controlled from secret, remote sites halfway around the world by military personnel who might as well be playing video games -- except they’re not games. These men and women go to work and kill people thousands of miles away and then go home for supper.

And there lies the problem. War has become too easy.

American drones are being used in an ever-widening war in the Middle East. They give our military the ability to extend war into countries with whom there is no declaration of war. Like those bomb fuzes forty years ago, they are the predecessors of “Terminators” that will secretly carry out assassinations of suspected enemies and attacks on suspected targets.

Killer-drones have already been used in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Shrouded in secrecy, these technological predators have taken the decision to make war out of the hands of Congress and the American people. They have erased international boundaries. They allow our military to launch secret attacks 24/7/365 almost anywhere in the world against real and perceived enemies based on secret intelligence to which we’re not privy.

These enemies have often not been where the intelligence suggested, and innocent civilians have died. The use of these drones is turning us into the terrorist assassins that we so doggedly pursue—assassins with no accountability.

This is a frightening and significant development. It will most certainly initiate a rapid proliferation of new unmanned tactical weapons. Like the escalation of bomb technology born in World War II, it signals the beginning of a new arms race.

And the irony is that we’re the world’s only military super-power. The others are gone.

Our military budget already accounts for nearly half of all global military spending. Major nations like Russia and China are reducing military spending. So we’re creating an arms race with whom? For what purpose?

The only winners will be the military-industrial complex that I once worked for – the arms manufacturers, advanced weapons labs and think tanks that churn out strategies for future military domination.

It’s a one-nation race to the poor house.

Stephen Huneck

A Vermont folk artist and businessman who I admired took his own life this week. The papers said he was despondent over financial difficulties and being forced to lay off most of his employees.


Joy Ride

Stephen Huneck loved art and loved dogs. He combined those passions into a body of work that many artisans never accomplish. He was a self-taught artist, print-maker, woodcarver, furniture builder, gallery owner, childrens’ book author, illustrator and entrepreneur. He built a beautiful home, studio and gallery complex called Dog Mountain in St. Johnsbury, Vermont that included a unique chapel for dogs (www.dogmt.com/chapel) and ran another gallery in Woodstock, Vermont.


The Chapel at Dog Mountain

I once met Huneck and told him I how much I liked his work. I always hoped to sometime have a chance to talk with him at length. It’s a grim reminder never to put off taking time to talk with people you admire.

I wanted to ask him how he found time to cram all the things he did into his life. How he developed his quirky sense of humor. How he came up with his ideas. How he overcame his debilitating injuries. And how he balanced his art and business.

In addition to Huneck’s artistic ability, droll humor and keen sense of design, I admired his high standards of craftsmanship. His eccentric furniture was sturdy, beautifully built and flawlessly painted. His hand-made picture fames were perfectly mitered and finished. His art prints and greeting cards were beautifully printed on high-quality paper. And the detail on the chapel was exquisite.


Lab Rocker

His work is held in both private and public collections including the Smithsonian Institution, New York's Museum of American Folk Art and the Contemporary Museum of Art in Sydney, Australia. Stephen Huneck was a guy who I thought had the world on a string.

His suicide really resonates with me. I’ve had several bouts with depressions in my life. The worst one lasted for several years after my father died. During that period, my advertising agency floundered, forcing me to lay off loyal, long-term employees. Then a friend and business partner turned out to be a pathological liar who cheated me out of thousands of dollars, caused me to lose my investment property and nearly lose my home.

It was a period during which I struggled to find any reason to continue. I was obsessed with thoughts of suicide. Thanks to some excellent books, medication, a good therapist and a supportive family, I bounced back.


Selective Hearing

I can’t help wishing I could have had that talk with him. Told him I was once where he was. That I know how hopelessly overwhelming depression can be. And let him know he could be happy again. But he probably wouldn’t have listened any more than I would have back then.

Each one of us is valuable in our own way, but it seems more tragic when a person who has given the world so much joy feels so much pain and failure.


Tiger Maple Mini Chest

Putting a good spin on 2009

2009 was a disappointing year for me. Even more disappointing than the Bush years. With Bush you knew what you were getting—a pro-big business, pro-war, pro-rich, pro-crony looting of the public coffers and pillaging of the Constitution. He was liar, a thief and a charlatan. No surprises. No disappointments.

I had higher expectations for the Obama administration. The President came into office on an antiwar, anti-fat cat, pro-middle-class platform with his party in control of both the House and the Senate. Since taking over the helm from Bush’s band of pirates, the Obama Administration has expanded the war, catered to fat cats and given the middle class nothing. No real healthcare reform. No real banking reform. No Gitmo closing. No Iraq pullout. No investigation of the Bush crime wave.

I know we can’t blame it all on the White House. The fat cats still have their claws deeply dug into Congress. I just wanted to see the President act like he promised in the campaign.

As the New Year approaches, I’m trying to put a good spin on 2009. Maybe it was the transition year that the Obama team needed to ramp up for change we can believe in. Nah!

Painted Pine Man

Paul Evans calls himself “The Painted Pine Man", and it’s a name that fits just right. In a small one-man Vermont shop, Paul builds reproductions of painted antique country pine furniture.

Paul handcrafts each piece using tools and techniques from the past. He hand-planes the lumber and moldings. He uses square-head cut nails and hand-forged hinges. But it’s the painted finishes that give Paul’s cupboards an authentic aged look that few furniture makers can match; and if you ask him how he gets that look, he politely changes the subject.


Hanging Corner Cupboard

Paul and his wife, Jean, have a lovely little shop on their picturesque 19th Century farm that will delight anyone with a passion for country decor. It sits on a narrow country lane called Still Run after the whiskey stills that were once located there.

The tiny building, formerly part of a sash and blind mill, was moved to the farm in the 1930s. Jean has great eye for decorating, and the shop is a perfect setting for Paul’s work. His furniture is complimented by a charming array of decorative accessories—also for sale.



The shop is located in Peacham, one of the prettiest towns in what I think is the prettiest part of Vermont—The Northeast Kingdom. Peacham is about four hours from Boston, so it’s not quite a Sunday afternoon excursion; but if you plan to be in the area, it’s well worth a visit.

Paul and Jean are friendly country folks who love visitors. The shop is open weekends Memorial Day thru October from 10:00 to 5:00 or by appointment. You can take a virtual tour on their website at www.paintedpineman.com.


Stepback Open-Shelf Cupboard

If you see something you like, give Paul a call at 802-592-3219. He can sell you something from the website or custom-build a piece of furniture to fit a particular spot in your home in a color to match your décor.


Tombstone Corner Cupboard

War Birds

George Bush and his kettle of hawks must be feeling pretty smug about now. They were taking the rap for having gotten us into a no-win quagmire. Their ill-conceived invasion of the Middle East had turned into a monstrous albatross. The Chicken Hawk-in-Chief was stuck with terrible legacy.

Then along comes President Obama with this terrific speech on Afghanistan. He was eloquent, thoughtful and thorough. His speechwriters really strutted their stuff. And with that speech, he took that dead rotting bird and hung it around his own neck.

General McChrystal and his cohorts were able to sell the President on their testosterone-fueled fantasies about taming Afghanistan. Our Middle East foreign policy was hijacked by the military/industrial vultures and national security theorists who play war games with other people's lives and money.

Their foolhardy attempt to conquer Afghanistan has nothing to do with enhancing our national security. It’s an American intrusion into a civil war they don’t understand and can’t use military force to control.

This new troop deployment and its huge cost will have no impact on the insignificant number of al Qaeda in Afghanistan. It won’t keep the Taliban influence from growing. And unless we’re prepared to dump billions more into the illegitimate Afghan government, it won’t make any significant contribution to rebuilding Afghanistan.

Most independent analysts believe it will take at least 10 years to turn Afghanistan's illiterate and corrupt security forces into anything resembling competency. And cost us three to four billion dollars a year to do it.

The President’s contention that Afghanistan is a "war of necessity" is false. This is a war of his choosing.

I had hoped we elected a leader who would reject the same old interventionist mindset of those who profit from permanent war. But his Afghan policy shows he’s not that leader. He's a hawk in dove's feathers.

Holiday Doors 09

On the way home from shopping up in St. Johnsbury, I took pictures of some of the town's wonderful doorways decorated for the holidays. Click on the image for a closer look. Best wishes for a peaceful holiday season.
Karl

Faded Hope

If you read the very first entry in this journal, you know I was very excited about the election of Barack Obama. I had high hopes that he would restore the integrity of the United States Presidency and the American people.

I’ve been through enough election cycles to know that Presidential candidates say whatever they need to say to get elected. I’m not so naïve to think Barack Obama was any different. I did, however, hope that he might lead the country in a new direction

1. I hoped he would close Guantanamo as he said he would. Maintaining this illegal facility and our other “black site” prisons makes us no better that any of the repressive regimes we claim to oppose. There is not one valid reason why these prisoners should not be given due process. We were able to bring Timothy McViegh and a whole host of other terrorists to justice using our legal system and prisons. We’re a country of blind justice, not selective justice.

2. I hoped that he would give the American people a thorough investigation of the Bush Administration’s bailout of the financial industry. We know it involved extensive corruption, mismanagement and cronyism, but there has still not been a full accounting of the $700 billion TARP spending or the $2 trillion+ in loan guarantees by the Federal Reserve.

3. I knew that Obama opposed the military invasion of Iraq and supported the invasion of Afghanistan, but I hoped he would stand up to the hawks who think military action is the solution to all international political problems. I hoped he would have the insight to see that continued military action in Afghanistan is causing more harm than good.

4. I hoped that he would get us out of Iraq. Thousands of US troops permanently remain in Iraq to protect our business and political interests. By recommitting the United States to the imperialistic nation-building policies of the Bush Administration, President Obama is continuing the legacy of saying our country is doing one thing when it’s in fact doing another.

5. I hoped he would use the bully pulpit of his office to lead the country toward meaningful healthcare and financial reform. He came into office backed by a populist mandate and a Democratic-controlled Congress, yet he has done little to discourage the upward flow of our nation’s wealth into the hands of a decreasing number of people at the top of the income scale.

What attracted me to Barack Obama was that he seemed like a political outsider who possessed the idealism and commitment to bring about change. I may have projected more of my progressive goals onto him than was realistic; but I thought he would stand up to Wall Street, the healthcare/pharma industry and the military on behalf of middle-class America.

He has turned out to be a disappointing centrist focused on pleasing the same special interests as the last four administrations. President Obama seems more dedicated to maintaining the status quo than change we can believe in. He's not leading. He is placating.

I still have hope, but it’s fading fast. My biggest hope is that I’m wrong about him.

A matter of priorities

According to a recent study by the American Friends Service Committee, the United States spends $720 million dollars per day on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That’s $30,000,000 per hour - 24/7.

These wars have cost us more than a trillion dollars to date.

The Federal government today announced it will cost one million dollars per year per soldier to send troops to Afghanistan, and President Obama is sending an additional 30,000 soldiers to that country.

Don’t these numbers tell us something?

Our healthcare system is failing. Our childrens’ education is suffering. The polar ice caps are melting. And we’re spending $30,000,000 per hour to do what?

Round up a few thousand insurgents? Stabilize a country that has been unstable for centuries? Prove that our military doesn’t lose wars?

The President is fiddling while Rome burns.

It’s time to rethink our priorities. We need get out of Afghanistan. We must reduce our spending on war and instead focus on functioning schools, healthy communities, good jobs and stopping global warming. Instead of robbing from our grandchildren’s economic well-being, we must invest in it.

Let's spend that $300,000,000 per hour on things that will solve problems instead of creating them.

Even a small shift in our priorities would have a huge impact on our children's future.

Shop and Drop

In December of 1966, I was a recent college graduate with a good job in an industrial publishing department. I had a pretty young wife, an eighteen month-old son and a two month–old daughter. This was the first Christmas that our son, Brian would be old enough to really appreciate the holidays; and since it was the first Christmas following several years of college-induced poverty, it was the first year we had any money to spend on gifts.

We went shopping at the brand new Natick Mall in nearby Natick, Massachusetts. It was the first enclosed shopping mall in the area and situated near the very first New England shopping mall, Shoppers’ World.

I was feeling proud as we walked along the crowded mall toward the exit. After four years of going without, I was dressed nicely and my arms were full of gifts. No more worn out clothes and tennis shoes. No more apologies for paltry gifts.

The style in men’s clothing at the time was slim and trim. I wore a fitted button-front shirt with a narrow necktie, black tapered-leg chinos with no belt and black pointed-toe shoes. The look was made for a skinny guy like me.

Chris walked beside me carrying Kelly Anne while Brian toddled ahead, exploring the indoor plants and benches.

When we reached the doorway, I switched the packages to my left arm and squatted down to scoop up Brian in my right arm and carry him out to the car. As I stood up, I heard a ripping sound. The seam down the back of my pants had split open, and they began to slide down my hips.

I stepped out into the frigid winter weather walking bowlegged to keep the pants from falling to my knees. The throng of shoppers entering the mall stared as I struggled toward the parking lot. I turned to my wife for help, but she was enjoying my predicament.

The pants slid down to my knees after ten or twelve steps, prompting peals of laughter from Chris. I switched from walking bowlegged to walking with my feet apart, hoping to keep the pants from falling any further. It was no use. After a few more steps the pants dropped to my ankles. With both arms full, I hobbled the rest of the way to the car.

When I reached our Volvo Duett wagon, I opened the back doors and set Brian and the packages inside. Chris caught up with us, laughing hysterically. I pulled up my pants and lifted Brian into the rear seat.

We didn’t talk much on the ride home. I was nursing my wounded pride, and Chris was giggling the whole way.