Pop

It is rather fortunate that I am one of a small number of American sons who gets to work with his father. Not that it’s a rare thing, but uncommon enough. The days of growing up on the family farm and gradually growing into a role of running a farm with/for Dad are long gone for the vast majority of Americans thanks to advancements in technology and general hugeness of farm equipment; many kids simply know what their dad does at his job, but not how he does it. They see Dad in the morning and evening perhaps, but don't interact with him through the frustrations and joys, problems and accomplishments of the day's general tasks. But lamenting the fact of time lost with Dad would not make any family unit stronger.

Going along with Pop to work as a kid exposed me in a small way to the business. I wasn't much help except for background noise, and my short skinny 11 year old body couldn't do much more than sort the hardware, put the tracks together, run the drillers in with the impact, then clean up the trash and pack my pouch, impact, and extension cord into my toolbox- a WD cardboard box. At the time I hated it: I had glamorous dreams of being a brain surgeon thanks to a Reader's Digest article that I read and re-read. Working with Pop was more than a few notches beneath my level of dignity and high volume of peach fuzz. My hopes of being a surgeon were dashed when my hands proved unsteady in an 8th grade motor skills test. I did however learn how to wrap an extension cord quicker than anyone's business; it’s a talent I'm quite proud of to this day.

High school and jobs came and went. Frustrated at the lack of doing something I liked, Mom convinced me to go work with Pop. Originally the plan was to work there temporarily until I found something I liked; I soon found that I liked working there. This fall will be 9 years.

I like my job overall; I get to interact closely with dozens of people daily and thousands annually. My favorite person to interact with at work by any measure is Pop. I have to confess that in the early years of working there it wasn't something I saw as special; it was just something that was. I would see Pop in the morning at home, maybe on the dock for a few minutes at the shop, but then not until evening at home again. Now that I spend my days at the shop all day, I get to see Pop most of every day. The more time that we are blessed with together helps me realize how much I love the man, and how much he has taught me seldom with words or even discipline, but with his often quiet example. He has set me straight in some pretty big choices in life just with a half dozen carefully placed words and a look or two. Working by the piece taught me to work, but watching Pop taught me to live.

Pedaling

We are happy to report that we have faithfully been getting our share of exercise on our bikes. We drive our bikes in the trunk of our car to Blue Marsh and ride into Reading. Round trip is about 14 miles. Hardcore bikers we are not; there is no spandex involved, and if there are any creatures along the trail we stop to inspect them and offer any assistance. Today we helped a toad with an injury to a rear leg and a bat which seemed to be lost. It was struggling on the floor of a covered bridge making pathetic little squeaks, so it was helped onto a beam of the bridge where it could groggily crawl back to its place with its buddies making sqeaks that I suspect were bat snores and sleep until dusk. People sometimes fall out of bed in their sleep; perhaps this bat fell off its beam while having a bad dream.

The Spider's Cosmos

I was stopped this morning by the sight of a funnel spider's web. I thought "isn't it neat how the web resembles depictions I've seen of the theory of general relativity" Is it merely a great way for the spider to catch itself a meal, or the fabric of space-time on a tiny scale? Who is to say? But I digress. I was struck by the simple beauty intrinsic in the spider's web and so I spent the next hour wandering around our property in the mist taking pictures of other examples of arachnid architecture. And struggling to make our point and shoot camera focus where I wanted it to.

A person does not need to know me for long before they learn that I have an unusual appreciation for the insect world. I usually attribute this to the fact that I am equally fascinated by all life, but insects are far more accessible than a bird or a leopard. However I think that might be incorrect. I've concluded the real source of the appeal for me is that life should exist on such a tiny scale. This is a world where skyscrapers are built from shafts of wheat, the leaves of trees are separated by an unfathomable distance, and a human is a frighteningly large ogre. Lit only by moonlight, the world's spiders methodically create spinning wonders of gossamer stronger than steel. Taking literal leaps of faith on the end of their lifeline of silk, the very smallest throw themselves to the wind seeking an anchor for their webs. They can neither see where they will land nor comprehend the geometric beauty of their final creations; they do this simply because instinct dictates they must. I suppose a wonderful allegory for life could be drawn from that statement, but I will leave that for another time.




The affairs of men are of little import to the spider as it waits patiently for a meal, yet we squash them at every opportunity and create a toxic soup of chemicals to rid them from our homes. Little do we consider how intimately we depend upon even the smallest of creatures. If mankind were to obliterate itself tomorrow the world would gradually revert to the state it enjoyed ten thousand years ago. If spiders and the rest of the phylum of animals they represent vanished the damage to the balance of our planet's delicate ecology would be irreparable. So maybe the next time you raise your hand to squash a spider or another of the one million members of its kin, you'll wonder that we should owe a debt of gratitude to something so small and allow it to continue its work in peace.