Useful Tools

The Fireteacher assembled some of his impressive garage sale acquisitions for me to photograph (his photography, his "eye", is renowned among those familiar with his work) and post here today. So, I turned the lens over to him. I only know what a small few of these tools are named and what they do, I'm asking the chippies visiting here to identify them. (This includes Lurking Chippies.) It took a number of uploads because after The FT got going, he gleefully upped the level of rarely used, but important items which he convinced me should be a part of the Accomplished Chippy's Inventory. Heh, just as I thought he had to be finished, out would come another medieval looking device, Perhaps, I wondered, for the interrogation of heretics?

Fortuitously, his years in collecting useful tools has value as currency in any economy or no economy and as such, further encourages him to wade through eBay for entire weekends as well as comb the countryside for garage sales. Mind you its not just any garage sale, its got to be a crumbling farm house front yard with rusting plows and scattered thresher parts. Its got to have items for sale spilling over the saggy front porch and must be crowded with lots of older men wearing overalls milling about as well as restored Studebaker trucks and Trail Boss trailers with haystraws sticking out between the slats just in case something big needs moving out.

He is curious if my chippies know their stuff. He is pretty sure he's in a class by himself so I caution you to research your answers before commenting. I'm sure he'll be around to check your work because this is a subject in which he has much interest. Although, it is up to you to decide if that interest concerns tools of the trade, your familiarity with them or making a superior comment or all of the above.

There will be a test. Not.

I'd seen these "things" coming into the house and grabbed the digital which was how this blog quiz got started. It seems to me that the man who possesses these tools and uses them with an expert's confidence is going to be THE go-to guy in this small and local, goods for services, economy we are entering.

I once criticized my best friend for having too many cleaning gadgets flowing from her overflowing closets. Her response was, "I'm a believer in the right tool for the right job." Well, that about says it all, doesn't it.

Come to think of it, she and the Fireteacher have a lot in common. Must be why I've spent so much of my life in their lives over the years.

We're not going to have any newsy items today because I am sick of them. I am sick of these elections and sick of them concealing what we're doing to the Pakistanis and the Afghanis. And the Fallujans, yes, the Fallujans. I am sick of Monsanto and BP , sick of peak deniers, sick of morphing statistics and what the pundits have to say while nobody else can get a word in edgewise. I get embarrassed for the people interviewed. And annoyed (saddened, brought down, you know ... ) the bumpkins suck it up like pork gravy while unable to afford their own healthcare, dentists for their children or vets for their animals. Imagine not knowing why you are juggling when you are juggling?

Disclaimer Newsflash: its called Obamacare and the winning party plans on reforming the "reforms" just as soon as they move the clock back to the original Bu-ad years. Which side is the Laureate community organizer on anyway? Maybe it will come to you as you are identifying tools. You don't have to research that one too extensively to know which way the wind blows.

Worst of all I've lost faith that any change will ever take place. When there is no oil and no money, they will still keep it up because their values do not change in spite of their circumstances. Whatever they think they want to come from all the shenanigans will only serve to make them want more. There is no end to it. Even if everything they push for came to fruition (a complete fantasy, sheer folly), there are others just like them on the way pushing harder, recreating, it should be this way, or that way, whichever way that suits them for whatever cushions their high lives in the villa of the season where conscience is muffled in Peacock feathers and softly whispering servants. Each time the helijets touch down on an Agean roof pad, another Indian farmer-husband-father takes his own life.

- - - - them and the horse they rode in on. (from the Changeling)

Meanwhile, let's live up right and share, exchange, enjoy, do no harm, worship the animals , the birds and the creatures of the sea, be genuine with one another and feel as good and get as healthy as we can. Think through your depressions so you are not operating from a compromised position and give everyone the benefit of the doubt whenever possible. Make the first move towards friendship at least as often as we make the changes we need to survive this journey. Reach deep down and share your soul every day through "inside to outward awareness" vs. "outside, taken inside, materialism, i.e.; upside down and backwards". If you understand this, you can do it. Don't desire recognition, you can do that for yourself if you require it. It is the only worthy recognition anyway. It is very helpful to never think about it at all, it has no place in what ultimately must be, if there is to be anything. In my humble opinion and I know nothing, doing the right thing, which is love, is all that matters and that is where our focus for the future fundamentally lies.

There will always be a place for you on Earth, but we have to make that place individually, with our skills, our tools, our involvements and our attitudes. If the chippies cannot identify everything shown in the photos, fear not. Within the next decade you will be working with your hands using tools much like these and loving it - unless you plan to expire from misery, isolation and starvation. And unless somebody purchased the rights to start fracking the ground upon which you stand.

... end transmission ...

post photos: c. the Fireteacher 2010