Independently Speaking

07/03/2025

Several members of my family discouraged me from climbing a step ladder to hang a picture in our stairwell, so I was forced to snorkel over the separation of the tectonic plates.

Perhaps more of an explanation is in order.

My brother-in-law is an artist, and about thirty years ago he created a really wonderful painting. I was just smitten by it, but at the time, I not only couldn't afford it, but because it was 80 inches tall there was no place in our house to hang it. Over the decades two things happened – we put a new basement under our house which left us with a ginormous stair well and he didn't sell the painting. I'd often admired it over the years and I guess I finally wore him down, because he gave it to us as a gift.

Best gift I've received in a while.

When it came time to hang it, I was generally discouraged from climbing a step ladder in the stairwell. The phrase “a man of your age” came up more than once.

Yeah, I know...crazy.

In a lucky coincidence, our extended family was headed to Iceland. I had some research to do for a book I'm writing, and the rest of the team decided to tag along. It was a big thing for us to pull off, but this year was our 50th wedding anniversary and sometimes you need be impractical.

Now, an interesting thing about Iceland is that it’s where the continents are drifting apart at about an inch a year. There's a spot where there's a “gap” about the depth of a football field, full of the clearest water in the world. With true Icelandic ingenuity, a snorkeling business has evolved that allows regular people to enjoy it. There were several elements of that activity I'd never done in my previous seven decades, so it seemed like just the place to plant my flag in defiance of age.

I had a few qualms, particularly when I had to go to the doctor to get a medical waiver because of my age, but I've been spending a lot of time on the treadmill so I decided to give it a whirl.

I'm so glad I did. It is perhaps the single most amazing thing I've ever done. Our guides, Tereza and AnnaMaria, were incredibly competent and careful. It took about thirty minutes to get all the gear on and get a short geography lesson and safety briefing, and then into the water we went.

It was amazing.

Really, absolutely amazing. We were told it is the clearest water on earth and I believe it. I could see forever down through the cracks in the earth's surface, the craggy rocks sometimes golden, sometimes softened by pale green moss. I can't convey how cool it was. I've done some stuff in my life, and I've never seen anything like it. It was also a little freaky. When they told us we’d be able to see a hundred yards through the water I thought, “Oh, that's cool,” but I didn't think about being able to see a hundred yards straight down. Wearing the dry suit made me basically unsinkable, but even though my brain knew that, the rest of my body was a little dubious.

If I'm going to be honest, it was a lot of damn work. I'm not saying our guide was worried about me, but I heard her say several times, “Papi, are you doing okay?” I was thrashing a little like a wounded water buffalo, so I can't criticize her at all, but at least she didn't call a rescue helicopter. One of my problems was that the giant fins and super buoyant suit didn’t let me move and kick in a usual swimming motion. Instead, I was supposed to do some sort of a frog like motion. When they demonstrated it, I realized it was a motion my body hasn't made voluntarily since I was eleven years old. I improvised by mostly using my arms for motivating along, which worked well enough, but led to a certain amount of puffing.

I'm a little tired, but feeling good.

When I get home, I may climb a stepladder.

Copyright 2025 Brent Olson

07/02/2025

Hard at work. It's a dirty job, but some one has to do it. And, honestly, as a guy who's done a lot of dirty jobs in his life, this one isn't bad.

06/27/2025

The weather report read “96 degrees, feels like 107.”

What the hey? I do not have a triple digit metabolism. No one wants to see an old scarred bald head dripping sweat. It’s not a good look.

Even so, it wasn’t a bad day. I plugged away at a few outside tasks until doing so made me feel stupid, then I retreated to the air-conditioned house. I’d filled the little wading pool for the ducks, put fresh water in three different bird baths, and under my wife’s direction watered the garden and various flowerpots. You can’t just check out on a hot day, there are still responsibilities.

The old Newfoundland was panting like a steam engine, so she came in the house too and was soon lying in the kitchen with every plausible inch of her belly making contact with the cool granite tiles.

When you live on a farm, triple digit summer weather is a lot like sub-zero temperatures in the winter. You spend so much time just keeping things alive. No matter how hard you feel like you’re working, your productivity feels like it’s cut in half.

On days like this, you don’t find many people talking about the good old days. At least, not if they recall them.

I remember going into the barn when it was time to milk cows (and twice a day, every day, it was always time to milk cows no matter how hot or cold the weather). Thousands of pounds of living, breathing flesh in a damp, confined area created a moist heat that needed to be felt to be fully appreciated. The cows didn’t like it any better than we did. You could feel the heat and irritation radiating off their bodies.

There’s a lot I could say about what hog barns were like in hot weather, but you probably don’t want me to go there.

Heaven forbid a hot spell coincided with the need to bale hay, because I can’t remember baling ever being canceled. The biggest concession to hot weather was to allow the last couple of loads to wait until the next morning to be run up into the hay mow.

Just because you got to unload the loads in the morning didn’t mean you were approaching the task rested and rejuvenated. I can easily relive lying flat on my back on the second floor of the old farmhouse, with a tiny fan rattling a few inches from my ear, desperately wishing I could just fall unconscious. Some hardy souls would sleep outside in hot weather, but then you had the relentless mosquitoes.

I wanted to double check my memory, so I did a little research into air conditioning. It was invented in 1902, and a cheaper window unit was produced in 1947.

They may have been produced in 1947, but they didn’t make it to my neighborhood until a few decades later.

The same article said that 90% of American homes now have some form of air conditioning and on days like today I can only say, “Good.”

Even the Newfoundland agrees.

Copyright 2025 Brent Olson

06/25/2025

The school is still running, serving several hundred children, in a good building with a good well... Sadly, the church stopped supporting it, but there's enough other money coming in to keep the wheels on.

Living Media International is constructing a new building for the New Life Primary School for over 120 children in Mizak, Haiti. | Crowdfunding is a democratic way to support the fundraising needs of your community. Make a contribution today!

06/20/2025

It's funny how often old stories still work.

There's a long-abandoned farm site a mile or so from our house. My guess is I'm the only person alive who knows that's where my father was born. Anyway, I noticed some work going on around it - tree cutting, a little digging, etc.

The only structure remaining was an old windmill. Pretty much worthless, peppered with bullet holes the way old wind turbines are in this part of the world. But I have the top off an old windmill working as a grape arbor and I figured there would be some project I could do with another one. I checked with the owner, and he didn't have the sentimental attachment to it that I have, so I added “windmill removal” to my to-do list.

In a splendid coincidence, Number Three was looking for summer employment.

I picked him up Wednesday afternoon and we loaded up the skidsteer, chainsaw and about a hundred pounds of tools and headed over to the windmill. There was a full-grown tree towering up through the middle of it that needed to be carefully sawn into pieces. Carefully, because wood is heavy and I've noticed over the years that chainsaw chains react badly to contact with angle iron. Also, my wife and I have an agreement about ladders, chainsaws, and me. Things went more or less according to plan, and we wrapped up the project about suppertime. After we ate, I lounged around for about half an hour, but I'd been watching weather reports, and was feeling a certain sense of urgency. I put my shoes on and went back to work. I unhitched the grapple from the skidsteer and hooked onto a mower. The next morning, I woke Number Three up a couple of hours earlier than any rational teenager would want to rise. I swung open the orchard gate and he mowed the out-of-control grass and brush while I lopped off volunteer trees. We finished that project and I handed him off to his grandmother to clean up a small garden next to the house while I put equipment away. We both finished our jobs in a light rain. The rain got heavier and continued for the rest of the day and then the next day we got seven inches of rain. Any outside work that doesn't involve ditches or pumps is on hold for a while.

A long time ago, I read some advice from a business consultant who felt that the most important thing for running a business is a sense of urgency. If you have that, many other things fall into place. I think about that idea often, and it inspired me to tell Number Three this story. My wife was in the room, too, but she's heard this story fifty or sixty times, so there's a chance she tuned me out a little.

One spring we had a brutal planting season – bad weather so we just couldn't get anything done. Finally there was a break in the weather, and everyone hit the ground running. I was watching the weather forecasts and there was a big front that started at the Rocky Mountains and moved toward me about a hundred miles a day. I worked harder and the last night I planted for 24 hours straight, finishing up about 6:00 a.m. It started to sprinkle about 7:00 and rained for the rest of the week. A few days later I saw a neighbor in town who hadn't gotten his crop planted and he said, “You must be the luckiest guy in the world.” I smiled and agreed, but inside I was thinking, “It's not all luck.”

Granted, tearing down an old windmill and cleaning up an overgrown orchard isn't particularly important, but I love crossing things off my list. And I enjoy the feeling you get when you push...just a little.

There's a lot out of our control in this complicated world, and sometimes what happens is due to luck, both good and bad.

But it's not all luck. I hope Number Three thinks about that.

Copyright 2025 Brent Olson