The Art of Diplomacy

You always hear about diplomatic talks, relations, and meetings between countries. And you always see the news reporters at exotic locations saying things like, "I'm here, Bob, at the G Minus 10 Summit where the Rhapsodians and YipYaps are having [pause for drama] diplomatic talks." But when I found out the meaning of diplomacy, it hit me like a 2x4 across the forehead. I'd been practicing diplomacy for years with my sisters!
I'm not sure when it started but I've always referred to my childhood sibling rivalry as the Eastern Carolina Contra-Affair Incident (or ECCAI). And I was young. I do wonder what my childhood would have been like without the ECCAI.

I can imagine my immediate family sitting down to a quiet supper and me turning to my older sister and inquiring, "Dearest Katie, might you please pass the salt?" "Why of course dear brother!" "Thank you kindly," and then turning to my younger sister and asking, "Dearest Hope, I would like another biscuit. Might you pass one?" "Why, certainly." I would then take a big bite of the biscuit, smile, and turn to mother and father and cry, "O mother! O father! I am quite content and happy in this harmonious familial relationship!" Mother would turn to father, after taking a sip of her chardonnay, and say, "What sweet little cherubs!"

But I think if that happened, I'd be the type of guy who plays badminton in his spare time and says things like "Gosh darnit! That kid forgot to double bag the produce again! Why, I've a mind to drive down to the store right now and give him a stern talking to!" In other words, I'd be the type of guy who makes me puke.
In reality, family dinners went something like this:

"Quit staring at my food, Katie" "Quit being ugly, Trey." I'd kick her from underneath the table, usually miss, and kick the shin of my youngest sister who would demonstrate her displeasure at my poor aim by screaming like a banshee and attempt to gnaw off my leg. I was never able to put that feeling in words, but I came pretty close with "AAAAYEEEAAAAAAGAAAAAUUUUGGGGH!" My mother would interject at this point with "YOU CHILDREN STOP THAT RIGHT NOW AND EAT YOUR SUPPER!" while my father would watch the whole thing with detached amusement and wonder if his meals would be quieter if he and my mother had opted for two dogs instead of three little children.

But here is where I truly learned diplomacy. I'd finish my meal, hunched over my plate and guarding my food like a hardened convict in the clink, glowering, thinking horrible thoughts that only a 7 year old's mind could think: "Batface...Butthead...Major Dinglehopper...I hope she scrapes her knee and gets sent to the principal's office tomorrow."
I'd opt to finish my battles later at my convenience while maintaining a somewhat neutral stance at the immediate time. I would have my revenge later. Under the cover of darkness I would conduct night raids, sprinting out at top speed into Katie's room, giving her a pillow across the face at full force. I'd deftly evade capture and egress back to my forward operating base. When the mediator, my mother, would arrive, I'd resume a diplomatic stance again, and maintain that I'd been in bed the entire time and suggest that Katie had a dream that her face was on fire and was attempting to put it out by slamming her head into the pillow. Katie's account differed from mine (doesn't it always?), but who's to blame?
Dealing with my older sister was eventful enough, but I had a younger sister to deal with too. And her teeth and nails were extremely sharp. Rather than risk bodily harm, I took a more diplomatic stance and decided to undertake a PSYOPS campaign against her:

"Trey, have you seen my barbie?" "No, why?" "Well, she's missing." "Strange...Missing...like the way my cookie was missing from my plate last night after I turned my head!"

She usually took umbrage at this campaign with her teeth and nails and it's now a pasttime at family reunions to marvel at the claw-shaped scars on my forearms.
But of course, the ECCAI wasn't in full force the whole time. I'd diplomatically wrangle for ceasefires when I felt my time would be better spent erecting Legos or building forts. Unfortunately, a ceasefire between me and my sisters didn't happen concurrently with the ceasefires between them. I vividly remember sitting in my room reading, only to hear a loud banging noise and the pattering of feet. My door was flung wide open and Katie came hurtling in screeching "HIDEMEHIDEMEHIDEME!" I would nonchalantly point at the closet door and continue reading while she hid, only to be interrupted minutes later by having the door kicked in by Hope with her hair dishevelled, eyes crossed eyed, out of focus, and lips bared back into a toothy snarl. "WHERE IS SHE?!" Hope would bellow. "I have no idea what you're talking about. Right now I'm Sweden." To my embarassment, I would later find out that I meant to say Switzerland. Perhaps that's why she never believed me.
But Hope would always lumber to the door in the distinctive stance she had whenever she was on the warpath, only to have Katie bounding out of the closet door and out of the room to find some other place to hide, and the two would continue until they ran out of steam.
Do I regret learning this very physical form of diplomacy? Absolutely not. It provided a great learning experience for how much pain I could tolerate, and the value of diplomacy, which is just a fancy way of saying to smile at your sister until you're accurate enough to kick her from under the table.

Xiaguan 2009 Gray Crane Iron Cake

I've made quite a dent on this bing, and I've noticed that it offers fairly similar tastes to Xiaguan's Baoyan brick. A nice rustic sweetness meshes with a woody taste and a lightly bitter finish, with later infusions turning sweet and very light. For $14 this is definitely a good bargain for solid sheng pu'er.

On Reading

There are few things as personal and intimate as reading. Reading can define us in a way, as a sort of cultural mirror that reflects our preferences, but at the same time, how we read books varies from person to person, and that in itself makes it personal. I think this has never been truer than a translation course I took in college where in addition to studying the different ideas of how to translate texts (ranging from transliteration to transcription to transposing words and sentences around for your expected audience) everyone was required to bring in a few small passages of whatever language you'd studied, translate it, and have the entire class review it. The review wasn't intended to determine the "best fit" translation (after all, there are valid arguments for and against how you should translate), but it was more of a review of how you implimented the ideas of translation.

Anyway, the piece I translated was "The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World." When I read, I usually visualize the story in my mind. By doing this, I effectively and unwittingly manipulated the story to my culture, preferences, and beliefs. The seaside in the story became a bleak Outer Banks with dunes and sea oats. The man's hands that were described as being like "oxen of the sea" gave no clue to me as to the cultural meaning behind the phrase (I've never seen a buey del mar, so I don't know how large they are, what they look like, the texture of their shells) apart from just having large hands. This text that I translated was slowly molded to something that I was familiar with, mostly because I didn't know the the cultural implications on word choice and the setting in the original text, but the same thing was true for each student in the course. Each and every person had a different, and yet personal way of translating their text.

The same is true for books that you read. The different types, plots, and characters you encounter in the different books you read have different importance for different people, either by people relating to some aspect of the book and thoroughly enjoying it or by thinking the book is a complete waste of ink and trees and wholly abhorring it. How often have you asked someone what their favorite books were, in part to get an idea of what book you want to read next, but also to get a better understanding of that person's personality? And how often have you read a book for inspiration or solely for enjoyment?

Deep Thoughts

Sometimes when I look at my dog, she looks back at me with her big, brown eyes but intelligence is behind them. 'Here! A sentient being,' I always think, 'that happens to be man's best friend! Oh if you could talk! I wonder what thoughts, wishes, and desires you have?' My dog then usually licks herself and attempts to push me off the bed.

Book boxes part II

Time to make another set of book boxes! I decided to use my carcase saw for cutting the dovetails, and it's not agonizingly slow like it was with the gent-sized backsaw. Retensioning and straightening my Disston D-7's sawplate worked wonders; with it I can get crosscuts that deviate only a couple of 64ths of an inch. Not too shabby. That meant less time trying to edge joint the boards using a block plane in the burning hot sun. Right now I've got the side tail boards cut and will cut the top and bottom boards' pins and pare most of the waste away. As far as cutting dovetails go, I'm getting used to the aggressive cut of the carcase saw and am trying to teach myself to use as little pressure as possible when cutting, but I'm getting better at laying at dovetails which is speeding things up considerably. One thing I definitely need is a vise or some sort of jig to hold boards so that I can joint them lengthwise.

On another unrelated note, my Ti Kuan Yin oolong is almost gone. I'll definitely be getting more of this. It reminds me of lungching tea, but more robust with slightly flowery notes in the background whereas the lungching I've had tasted like nutty grass.

2008 Xiaguan Baoyan Jincha

I'm almost finished with my 2008 Xiaguan Baoyan Jincha. Will I buy more of it? It's hard to say. Smoke, leather, and brown sugar are all that I can taste in the tea, with the later infusions taking on a sweet grainy taste. But honestly, I can't taste an overwhemingly difference between the jincha and Xiaguan's offering of their iron cakes which are priced cheaper at http://www.jas-etea.com/products/-2009-Xiaguan-Yellow-Crane-Iron-Cake-Pu%252derh-Tea-%252d-357g-Raw.html and for more product at 357 grams vice 250 grams.

Perhaps due to the warmer weather with temperatures reaching in the 100's, my tastes aren't inclined to the smoky, leathery teas and I'm finding them a tad overwhelming. Whatever the reason, this jincha is made with the same formula as Xiaguan's Baoyan brick (at least I think it is because of the "Holy Flame" moniker), but it just doesn't taste quite the same. The "Holy Flame" Baoyan bricks that I do own taste like mulled cider with hints of wood and the leaves are tinged with a beautiful rust brown at the tips due to the oxidation process. Perhaps it's due to the lighter compression with the bricks, or the increased surface area, or even because I've had them longer and more exposed to Virginia's humid climate that they've aged more than the jincha. But I'm still not in the mood for them just yet.

What I am in the mood for, and a lot of it, is the Ti Kuan Yin oolong. With its lightly nutty and vegetal taste, it's bridging the gap between a green tea and a strict black tea. But I still doubt I'll buy more than 100 grams at a time considering I've got several bings and bricks of spring harvest sheng pu'er to go through!

Book Boxes

I started building a book box for Lara on Saturday. It started off with a 5"x7' plank of rough cut alder that I dressed, jointed, and cut to length. And unfortunately jointed and jointed and jointed the end grain. The joinery I used for this is dovetails, but I got the idea for the box from Roy Underhill who based his book boxes off of Thomas Jefferson's who used these to ship his books around.

Neato.

I used a Stanley No. 5 corrugated jack plane, a Stanley No. 7 jointer plane, a marking gauge, bevel gauge, 1/2" chisel, and a Crown gent's backsaw to convert the plank into a box.

Lessons learned: start off by making sure all your tools are sharp. I don't know why, but I'm really sensitive to my plane irons being dull. I sharpened my jack and jointer plane which made dressing this board last all of 20 minutes. My block plane was another story. It took me a full thirty minutes of struggling to square up the end grain before I realized the iron was dull. But this was also thirty minutes of jury-rigging for a woodworking vise by just clamping the board upright to the workbench and thirty minutes of bashing my fingers into the bench top and having the board shift back and forth with every stroke of my plane while mumbling to myself that the pain and frustration were all part of the job. My little Crown backsaw is probably meant for cutting dovetails and the like in softwood stock that's less than 2/4 thick. The board was a little over 4/4 and it was a hardwood. Ugh. So that meant hideous dovetails until I took the time to file my saw, stone the sides, flatten the sawplate (it was slightly curved when I got it, probably from the factory sharpening), and tension the blade. It was worth it for the last board's tails, as it cut straight and true. The 1/2" chisel had about 5 different bevels on it in various skewed angles. When I'd gotten the pins and tails cut, I tried chopping away the waste between the pins and the tails which successfully ripped huge chunks of wood from the baseline, which made me whip out the coping saw to remove the waste. But that meant that I had to pare down to the baseline to get a flat surface for the mating board to rest on. And that's when I realized the chisel's bevel was all kinds of screwy. Fortunately I've improved at grinding, and using a light touch with a finger close to the edge to make sure I wasn't burning the steel, I ground a new bevel and sharpened up the chisel with my Spyderco stones so that I could easily pare away the waste. But I obviously need to work on my paring skills considering I pared away waste to create sloping, oblique spaces in between the pins and tails.

I did a dry fit earlier today and glued everything up. It's pretty snug for having large gaps in most of the dovetails which I repaired by cutting 1/32" slivers with the backsaw to hammer into the gaps and make the joint snug. Tomorrow I plan on chiselling off the hardened glue, smoothing the face boards with my No.3 smoothing plane (the iron's sharp; I checked) and applying a few coats of Danish oil to put this project to bed. Though knowing what I know now, I don't think a second book box would take this long to complete...

Oh well. For the positives, it took very little time for me to plane the board down and get rid of the small twist that was present towards the ends of the board. And keep in mind, I didn't cut it to length just yet, but dressed the full length of the board. My sharpening and grinding skills are improving since I turned a chisel that could've doubled as an icepick into a paring chisel that was leaving burnished wood in its wake. And my handsaw skills are improving in terms of sawing, sharpening, and tensioning. The tensioning was really apparent in this saw. I had to tension it twice, but now instead of the blade flexing, it's nicely taut and very easy to start. My only grip is that in the blade towards the handle the saw plate gently bends away from the main toothline, but I suspect this is just left over from it's original filing. Whatevs. I got the rest of the curve out.

For now the one thing I definitely need to get/work on is some sort of vise and a saw vise or saw sharpening horse. The saw sharpening horse should be easy enough to make. The vise I'll have to think about.