Gone podcasting...

I've interrupted my posting of 365 Jobs.  I'll get back to it in a few weeks.  Every once in a while - I'm sorry - but I have to do a podcast.  I just have to.  I've started recording a new one, and it will take a few weeks.  It's an obsessive, all-consuming project.  There's no time for anything else.

I became interested in podcasting about 5 years ago, when it was a relatively new frontier.  I'd just finished writing my novel Clear Heart and was looking for what every writer needs, the two "pubs": publicity and publication.

I ended up self-publishing Clear Heart and self-publicizing it by recording it as an audiobook to be distributed as a podcast.  I hoped that people would hear the podcast (for free) and then want to buy a copy of the book (for money). 


The podcast was and still is a popular success, but it didn't convert into book sales.  And why should it?   People listen, then they're done with the story - why read it again?

In the process, I came to love podcasting.  I love making audiobooks.  It's like a street performance with my hat out on the sidewalk seeded with a few dollar bills.  There's very little money to be made - a few people leave "tips" for the podcaster, but most people simply listen and then move on.  And that's okay. 

Five years after I started, the podcasting of audiobooks remains a relatively obscure subculture.  With the worldwide reach of the web, podcasting has the potential to reach billions of people.  One could at least dream of reaching millions.

In reality, I've reached about 60,000 people.  I'm still reaching a couple of thousand new people every month.  As a radio show, those numbers would mean I'm a dismal failure.  As a podcaster, I'm not ashamed.

For the new podcast, I'll be recording Danny Ain't.  By now I have realistic expectations.  There's no recognition by any other media.  It won't help sales of print or ebook versions.

I do it for love.  I love giving voice to what I've written, and I get satisfaction from having people hear it.  I love literature as an oral tradition, and I love being part of that tradition. 

I want to thank Evo Terra and all the folks at podiobooks.com for hosting my podcasts and for their technical help.

If you're interested, you can download my podcasts from the iTunes "store."  They're free.  Simply go to the iTunes store and search for "Joe Cottonwood."  The most popular title is Babcock, followed by Clear Heart and then Boone Barnaby.  Clear Heart is strictly for adults.  Babcock and Boone Barnaby are for all ages.

And of course, I'll let you know when Danny Ain't becomes available for downloading as a podcast.

If you don't care about podcasts, my apologies.  I'll get back to blogging (which I love as much as podcasting) in a week or two.  Or three.  It's summer.  Let's have fun.

Picnic Table

Sunday, June 10, 2012

For several years now I've been buying outdoor deck furniture from a strong young woman who sells from the back of her pickup truck, usually accompanied by her mother riding shotgun in the cab. 

She makes chairs and side tables using the kind of redwood that would be rejected by most self-respecting furniture makers: full of sapwood, wanes, knots and voids.  The design is somewhat chunky and the workmanship is less than thorough.  I'll be lucky if they last ten years through our soggy winters. 

finished with clear linseed oil

And yet I like them.  They have a simple honesty.  They use lumber that would otherwise go to waste.  They're inexpensive.  They're local.  I like buying directly from the craftsperson.  The young woman has a simple honesty, just like the chairs.  Most important, she has a vulnerability that brings out my protective instinct.

So I asked her if she built picnic tables, and she said yes.  I ordered a round one, five feet in diameter, plus four rounded benches.  I needed them in one week.

A week later, she delivered. 

The table was massive.  Immediately I saw that it was too tall, which seemed to surprise her.  "How high should they be?" she asked.  We measured two old picnic tables on my deck, which are 30" high.  Hers was 32". 

She agreed to cut the legs down, so I got my power saw.  "Is that a hand saw?" she asked.

Clearly she had no idea how to use the worm gear Makita, and also she seemed puzzled as to how to mark the angled legs to remove two inches.  So I measured and cut the legs myself while she watched, learning.

After she left, I whacked a few nails that she'd left sticking out.  The table still looked kind of crappy, and upon study I realized that it was the massive edge that made it look like the work of an amateur.  Running my half inch rounding router bit along the edge created a much more pleasing effect.  Later, I stained it with Superdeck Red Cedar so it will shed water, at least for a while.

I bet it's the first large round table she ever made.  I bet she had to rush to meet my deadline.

She charged me about one fifth what it would have cost in a store.

I love it.

finished with oil-based stain

I spent my career hiring beginners, often teenagers, and training them.  This woman is no teen and not exactly a beginner, but I feel like I've just done it again.  Her next table will be better — and probably built in less of a rush.

Was I too soft on her?  Not by my values.  I remember when I was starting out, taking jobs I'd never tried.  How else can you grow?  Sometimes I failed.  My customers were usually kind to me even in failure.  The ones who were unkind hurt me badly.  A few more of them, and I would have quit.  Fortunately if you're straight with people, usually they're forgiving, as long as you do your best to make up for the mistakes.  In this case, the price made up for the problems.  I enjoyed my part in the process, helping to fix it up. 

Deck furniture can come with good karma.  I'll be buying more from this woman.

How to be a Fly in the Milk

An Evening in May

I'm a dinner guest among about a dozen people at a home in Palo Alto.  A house down the street is owned by, let's just say, a world-famous billionaire.  It's that kind of neighborhood. 

My hosts have lived in this home for less than a year.  It's a comfy old place with high-end conveniences tucked into a relaxed decor.  Knowing my interest in houses, the husband gives me a tour before we sit down to dinner.

I scarcely know these people, though I like them instantly.  I'm a guest because of relationships, though we're not related — it's complicated — and the hosts are gracious enough to include me as part of the package.  Among this small group are a Federal judge, two attorneys, and a Superior Court judge.

During dessert served with an exquisite French tea, the hostess notices that I'm staring at the ceiling of the dining room.  She follows my eyes.  There's a circular wave in the surface, about twelve inches in diameter, like a ripple on a pond.  It's subtle.  There's no discoloration, no crack.

I should have looked elsewhere.  I can't help it, though.  I notice these things.  And I know how to read drywall.

"What is it?" she asks. "Do you think the roof has a leak?  Do you think the ceiling is wet?"

Standing on a (lovely) chair, touching it with a finger, I say, "It's wet.  Isn't there a bathroom directly above?"

A minute later, the hostess is watching as I crawl into a space behind the shower and bath.  Parting some insulation, I place my hand between joists — and my fingers feel a puddle.  "Uh-oh," I say.

It's a huge bathroom with two sinks, a steambath/shower, and a separate Jacuzzi, all encased in elaborate marble slabs.  "Best case," I say, "it just needs recaulking."  I point to some areas of peeling sealant.  "Worst case, you need to repair or replace the Jacuzzi, which would require pulling out all this marble."

"Who do I call?" she asks.

This is exactly the kind of job that used to be my specialty: too small to interest the big contractors but too complicated for a handyman.  With my bad back, I just can't do it anymore.  Unfortunately, the only tradesmen I'm familiar with are people who lack the plumbing skills or else lack the, uh, social delicacy to work for such high-end clients.

"Well, thanks for looking," she says.

Back at the dining table, all eyes keep checking the ring on the ceiling.  "I wonder if it will collapse on me," says the Federal judge sitting directly underneath.

I whisper to my wife: "I don't think they'll ever invite me again."

Gino the Quiet

From 1983 to Sunday, July 19, 1992

Gino was a strapping gorilla of a kid with dark hair and thick eyebrows.  First time I saw him, he was racing his bicycle down a sidewalk and launching himself airborne over a concrete staircase.  He landed upright on two wheels on the gravel below.  No helmet.  He was thirteen years old.

Gino had a hearing impairment.  You had to stand in front of him to make sure his attention was engaged.  Then when you spoke to him, he was slow to respond and talked with a bit of a “deaf accent” which might give you the impression that he was retarded.  His eyes were bright; his body, quick.  Even with a hearing aid, his life was mostly silence interrupted by bursts of static like radio transmissions in outer space.

When Gino was sixteen, I asked his mother if I could hire him for a couple hours of digging.  He dug three foundation holes in thirty minutes, then stayed with me all day mixing concrete, moving piles of lumber, de-nailing old boards. 

Soon I had him building walls.  He could carry a 150-pound bathtub without strain.  Never complained. 

When you work with somebody, they don’t have to talk about their values.  With my 72-inch spirit level in his hands, it was obvious that Gino had no concept of “good enough.”  Plumb was plumb; level was level — and anything else was just plain wrong.

Gino would answer a direct question, but he wouldn’t chat.  Not that he was surly, just private.  Ask too many questions — and two was too many — he’d clam up and leave.

For school he lived with his father in a stucco neighborhood of San Francisco.  I could only employ him on vacations when he stayed under the redwoods with his mom.

At age 17 he was still doing stunts on his bike.  I asked if he was going to get a driver’s license, and he said, simply, “No.”  That’s all. 

I drove him to jobs.  One summer day I hauled Gino to Stony Ridge Ranch where he cut poison oak and helped me hang a power line.  At a house in Portola Valley, Gino dug a drain line.  At the dentist’s office in Menlo Park,  Gino sat in the truck while I got my teeth cleaned.  At an apartment complex in Palo Alto, Gino held my ladder and reported on the sharpness of the TV picture as I fiddled with antenna wires on the roof.  Back home in La Honda, though I’d kept Gino for 11 hours, he would only accept payment for 9.  “You can’t pay me for sitting in your truck,” he explained.

So I gave him a raise instead.

Gino used some of his earnings to buy equipment and set up a bicycle repair business in his mother’s garage.  He charged me $10 to give my bike a complete tune-up.  A month later when I broke a pedal, he repaired it for free.  “I guarantee my work,” he said, though it wasn’t his work that had broken.

In some ways I envied him.  Without invasive sounds, he seemed at peace in an orderly, private sphere.  Rather than feeling shut out of society, it was us he shut out.

Eventually Gino got a driver’s license — and an old El Camino that he restored — and enrolled at the state college.  He’d still join me for the occasional job. 

The last time he worked with me was in July of 1992.  He was 22 years old, a college graduate with a degree in Industrial Arts.  I remember a week of baking hot sun.  We were constructing a deck on a hillside, digging holes, erecting posts and beams.  You work nearly naked under those conditions, just shorts and boots.  For once I was happy to have a wiry body, built for rapid shedding of heat. 

Up against a deadline, we completed the framing on a Sunday around noon.  Wiping his face with a rag, Gino said, “I can’t come back after lunch.  I’m too tired.”

I was shocked — and stricken with guilt.  In the nine years I’d known him, it was his first complaint.  How he must have suffered sweating buckets with his bulky, powerful body in the sun.

At my house on the shady side of La Honda it is so much cooler.  After lunch on that same Sunday afternoon while I sat on my deck in the shadow of redwoods, I saw Gino riding his bike on the street below.  Too tired?  Weaving among gigantic trees, there was a pile of dirt that Gino was using to launch himself, again and again.  How he didn’t blow out his tires, I’ll never know.  An overgrown boy on a rock-solid bicycle, perfectly tuned, Gino performed stunts for no one’s pleasure but his own in a quiet, lovely world.

The Heroism of Ladders

Wednesday, August 11, 1993

The contractor was driving the family van with his wife and three kids.  Carrier boxes on the rooftop were whistling, crammed with camping gear.

The Interstate was brutal through Seattle and stayed bad through Olympia.  Farther south it was less hectic, a four lane highway.  After a gas stop, the contractor accelerated to what seemed to be the consensus cruising speed of 70 miles per hour, a strain for the old van.  

Ahead in a gap of traffic he saw a ladder fall off a pickup, which never stopped. 

The car in front of the van swerved, crowding into the left lane.  The contractor swerved to the right onto the shoulder, stopped, turned on blinkers.  More cars coming.  He got out, a dangerous move.  

"Please be careful," came a voice from the van.  The sun was bright and there was a dusty highway smell.

Dashing into the road, he picked up the six-foot sturdy aluminum stepladder and set it against a chain link fence.

Was he genetically programmed for this?  Or was he trained?  Was it just that he couldn't stand to see a good ladder wrecked?  Without hesitation he'd put himself at risk. 

He turned off the blinkers, pulled back onto the highway, made it through Portland listening to Beatles tapes.  We do indeed live in a yellow submarine. 

For his own contracting business at home the contractor had graduated to fiberglass ladders — for safety — three of them with different lengths.

That night in central Oregon the family pitched their tents among Winnebagos at Schwartz Campground.  It was a friendly place, mostly RVs in a field next to a dam and an artificial lake.  The old folks were out on lawn chairs under the Milky Way watching a meteor shower.  With each meteorite, everybody let out a cheer. 

The family built a campfire of store-bought wood and lay on their backs under the spectacular sky, watching not with cheers but with wonder, something akin to worship, feeling like tiny pieces of an awesome natural design.

Crucifixion by Ladder

(After posting 288 true* stories to the blog, this one is fiction.  It's from the first chapter of my novel Clear Heart.  I'm including it here because it fits with the ladder theme and because if you've read the previous four ladder entries plus an earlier entry called Impaled — all of which truly happened to me — you will know the origins of this fictional event as well.)

. . .

Somehow, each new day, year after year, the plywood seemed heavier while the quality seemed crappier—just like my body, Wally was thinking. 

Awkwardly balanced on the ladder, Wally pushed a raggedy four-by-eight-foot panel up toward the roof. Sweat trickled along the hairs of Wally’s armpits and dripped to the second-story subfloor fourteen feet below. He supported the plywood with the top of his belly, a splinter digging into his flesh, as he shifted his grip.

Standing above Wally, straddling two roof trusses, Juke was ready. While Juke took hold of the top of the panel and lifted from above, Wally pushed the plywood from below.

Laying the plywood over the trusses, squinting a practiced eye, Juke lined up the edge and set to work with the nailgun. Phap phap phap.

Wally slid the next sheet of 19/32 CDX ply up the ladder. 

With a final phap phap from the nailgun, Juke leaned down and grasped the top of the next sheet of plywood with his fingers.  He lifted.

And at that moment on that hillside where the frame of a house was rising among live oaks and wild oats with a red-tailed hawk soaring above, the world stirred. On this calm day, with neither Juke nor Wally noticing, clouds had formed. The oak branches bent. The oats flattened. The hawk shot out of sight.

Juke was just turning sideways when the wind hit. Suddenly, from out of nowhere a bolt of air was pulling the plywood—and Juke along with it—like a big, stiff kite.

Down below, meanwhile, Wally still had a hand on the plywood in addition to supporting it with his belly and, for one brief moment, no grip on the ladder. The updraft whipped the plywood out of his fingers and knocked his body off balance. Instinctively, Wally shifted his weight.

The ladder shifted, reacting to Wally’s sudden move.

Up above, Juke realized that if he didn’t let go he would be lifted to hang-glide into the sky under a four-by-eight panel of plywood. So he let go. The rough edge of the sheet ripped the tips of his fingers and sailed away. Juke fell back against the nailgun, which started to slide down the slope of the roof decking. Juke, with raw, bleeding fingertips, reached for the nailgun and at the same time saw that Wally had lost his balance on the ladder just below.

Their eyes locked.

Wally was fourteen feet up a ladder that was moving to the right while his body was twisting to the left. Juke lunged for Wally’s hand just as Wally, whose body had now spiraled a hundred and eighty degrees, was desperately reaching over and behind his head to grab the king post of the truss. Juke had the nailer in his grip. All three—nailgun, Wally’s hand, king post—met at the same moment.

Phap.

For Wally, it was a moment of absolute clarity. He felt—and even smelled—the puff of compressed air, stale from a hundred feet of hose, that had driven the nail through his wrist. He felt Juke’s hand grabbing his own free left hand, the one that wasn’t nailed to the post. He heard the sliding of the ladder and then the clatter as it hit the floor below. He heard a mighty thud and a splintering of wood as the nailgun, dropped by Juke, struck the floor a moment later. He kicked his feet in a broad arc searching for support even though he knew that nothing was there.

“Jesus fuck!” Juke shouted from above.

And there was a woman. Where she had come from Wally had no idea. Already she was lifting the fallen ladder, but she wasn’t strong and the ladder was heavy.

Inside the nailed wrist, Wally felt two separate bones grinding against the nail. Or maybe the nail had shot right through one bone, splitting it in two. He couldn’t tell. All he knew was that inside his body, bone was in contact with steel, that the bone and nail and flesh were supporting the weight of his body, that the flesh was ripping as he wriggled, that the nail felt solid and unforgiving, that the bone felt as if it was bending and would be torn from its little sockets and pop like a broken spring out of his skin. 

Weird explosive shock waves were racing up the nerves of his arm to overload and confuse his brain. Even more urgent, rising into Wally’s awareness above the flood of pain: He couldn’t breathe. The weight of his body was stretching the muscles across his chest so that only with a supreme effort could he exhale, making quick ineffective puffs. With rapidly de-oxygenating air in his lungs, he was suffocating.

Juke, still holding Wally’s left hand in one of his own, lay down flat on the roof decking and placed his free hand under Wally’s armpit. When he had a solid grip he moved his other hand to Wally’s other armpit, supporting all of Wally’s weight.

With an explosion of fusty air Wally exhaled, coughing, and then sucked a deep gasp of breath.

Juke’s face was now pressed up against Wally’s, cheek to cheek, stubble to stubble, sweat to sweat.

Wally was panting, catching up on oxygen.

Meanwhile, down below, the woman couldn’t lift the ladder. Whoever she was, she’d never before dealt with the unwieldy heft of an OSHA Type A Louisville fiberglass extension ladder.

Juke called down to the woman: “You—uh—you—”

Wally could feel Juke’s jaw moving against his own.

“You gotta—” Juke was trying to tell the woman how to raise the ladder but he was handicapped by his speech impediment—an inability to open his mouth without cursing. Juke’s personal law of carpenter etiquette wouldn’t allow him to swear in the presence of a lady. He might be rough but he was gallant. Or if not gallant, at least fearful: Juke still had nightmares starring angry nuns.

“Walk it up,” Wally said in a voice that sounded strangely high-pitched to his own ears.

The woman, confused, raised her face toward Wally. “What?”

For an instant, Wally stared. Her eyes, even at this distance, the eyes of a puppy, luminous and brown.

Juke, meanwhile, stared as well. He could see right down the front of her jersey. Nice rack.

“Grab one end,” Wally squeaked, trying not to screech, to remain calm, to ignore the electric buzz that was running up his arm. “Place the tip against the wall, and then walk under the ladder, lifting it higher as you go, keeping one end against the wall. Can you do that, please?”

The "please" came out a little higher than Wally had intended. Screechy high.

The woman tried. She raised the ladder half way, sliding it up the studs. A moment of extended arms, trembling. As she tried to shift her grip, she lost it. The side of the ladder bounced against her shoulder and then rattled to the floor.

“I’m sorry,” she said. Briefly she laid a hand on her shoulder, wincing.

“You all right?” Wally said.

“My God. What a thing for you to ask right now.” Already she was trying again. This time she seemed to get a better angle on it, walking the ladder up the frame of two-by-fours without overextending her arms.

With something like a ballet move, Wally was able to arch his potbellied body and swing his legs sideways while the woman slid the ladder until his foot, and then two feet, once again supported his weight.

Juke could now let go of Wally. There were bloody fingerprints on Wally’s arm. Wally’s body was blocking Juke’s access to the ladder. Juke whispered, “Now what, Boss?”

Wally spoke to the woman below. “See that saw? No, behind you. The Milwaukee. There. Yes, that. Can you bring it up the ladder and give it to my partner here? Carry it by the handle so you don’t touch the trigger.” Always Mr. Safety. “Make sure it stays plugged in to the extension cord. Okay?”

Oops. His voice had squeaked again on the "okay."

Juke whispered, “No, Boss. I ain’t cuttin’ your hand off.”

“Cut the post,” Wally said.

And that’s exactly what Juke did.

Wally walked on his own two feet out of the house and straight to his truck, his hair powdered with fresh sawdust, his left hand cradling an eighteen-inch piece of two-by-four Douglas fir that was still nailed to his right wrist, trailing blood…  

 . . .

*True:  Based on fact.  I frequently change names or other details to protect people's identities and avoid lawsuits by billionaires.  Occasionally for ease-of-storytelling I'll combine two characters into one, or I'll compress a time line or use other implements of the trade.  I've been wearing a novelist's tool belt just as long as I've been wearing a carpenter's, so it comes naturally now to reach for the handiest chisel, or pliers, or plot device.  I'll smooth the rough spot out of a messy story just as I'll rub a little sandpaper over a piece of wood.

The Loneliness of Ladders

Wednesday, October 14, 1981 
Quoting "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus" by William Carlos Williams

    According to Breughel
    when Icarus fell
    it was spring

The electrician was standing at the maximum extension of an aluminum ladder in an automobile body shop.  This was in the industrial section of Sunnyvale, California — a town less lovely than its name.

    a farmer was ploughing
    his field
    the whole pageantry

    of the year was
    awake tingling
    near

It was a steel building with a concrete floor covered by puddles of water.  Men were banging sheet metal.  Brt brt of pneumatic wrenches.  The roar of engines, gas and diesel, the smell of smoky exhaust.  A radio blasting rock and roll. 

The electrician, a beginner, did not have the $300 it would cost to buy a fiberglass extension ladder, though he was hoping to have it soon.  He had set the rubber feet of the aluminum ladder on a tarp as an extra precaution against providing an electrical path while he was working with live wires.  He was not a complete fool, and he knew how to handle live wires — cautiously — replacing ballasts in fluorescent fixtures.  The owner of the body shop did not want any circuits turned off, did not want any interruption to the flow of body jobs.

The electrician could have refused to work with live wires.  In that case, he would not have been hired at all.  Forgive us, somebody, please.  The things we do for money.  The chances we take.  As it happened, electricity was not the problem.

    the edge of the sea
    concerned
    with itself

Without warning, the ladder dropped.  There was a pipe to grab.  The electrician reached for it — got it — but he had already fallen four feet and the momentum of his body broke his grip.  He was falling toward the concrete floor.

    sweating in the sun
    that melted
    the wings' wax

I'm going to break my leg, he thought.  And there's nothing I can do about it.  That was the electrician's only thought during free fall.  That, and waiting for his leg to break.

He hit the concrete simultaneously with the ladder and somehow — he never figured out how — a rung of the ladder fell on top of one foot and beneath the other.

The painter nearby looked up from his paint gun, pulled down his mask and said, "Hey.  You all right?"

The electrician was standing upright.  Like a gymnast sticking a landing amid the clatter of aluminum on concrete, he had held his balance.

With all the din of a body shop, the other workers hadn't even noticed his fall.

The electrician studied his feet.  At that moment, he wished — aching — to smell a wildflower.  To hear his children laugh.  To touch a woman.

What he smelled was paint.  What he heard was brt brt thud clang.  What he touched — what he felt — was raw banging pain.

The electrician lifted his right foot off the ladder.  He pushed the ladder off his left foot.  He wiggled his toes.  They hurt — bad — but they moved.  Already they were swelling.  He thought of the cost of an x-ray.  A doctor.  No insurance.  No time.  A day's wage, quickly gone.  Family to feed.  At home.  Waiting.  Milk.  Cotton sheets.

    unsignificantly
    off the coast
    there was

    a splash quite unnoticed

Pain is an electrical impulse.  No more, no less.  That night, his feet would be purple.  "Yeah," the electrician said.  "I'm all right."

    this was
    Icarus drowning

The painter slipped his mask back over his mouth and nose. 

The electrician raised the ladder back into place, setting it at a higher angle this time.  You have to get the proper slant.  He had used this ladder hundreds of times.  Only once before had it slid.  This tarp was too smooth.  Sometimes, precautions cause new hazards.

Slippery base, he thought as he climbed again higher, rising gingerly, rung by rung, to his job. 



("Landscape with the Fall of Icarus" is from Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems by William Carlos Williams, a wonderful book by a wonderful man — doctor, poet, writer — who wrote poems between delivering babies or listening to hearts, a man who understood the nature of work, and the work of nature.  I hope I have honored him here.)