I’ve now field tested a pair of Northern Watters oiled wool mitts on a protracted tire change in the freezing wind. I had to chip the flat out of the ice that had built up in my driveway while I was out of town, and I discovered after starting that my jack was missing half the handle, requiring me to use the wrench instead, one laborious half-rotation after another. The verdict: They may look like they should be hanging by an idiot string from your kid’s coat sleeves, but these are working men’s mitts. After forty-five minutes of handling frozen iron, my hands still thought they were at home in bed. Next I’m getting one of their sweaters. Check out their site from the sidebar.
Update: Took the same mitts on a walk in the wind today, and they are NOT WINDPROOF! The car must have given more of a lee than I’d thought. Still, pretty warm overall, and downright toasty in my pockets and between blasts. Maybe next winter I’ll check out their sheepskin mitts.
Here’s the first try. I’ll have to come up with a better header image, for starters. And the pictures are too big. Any other critiques?
In the next little while, I’ll be trying to bring Ditch Doc’s general appearance into this century. I’ll probably try a few themes for a few days each. Let me know what you think of them. (I know the pictures are off, but they should be fixable. I just don’t want to invenst too much time in it until I’ve picked a theme. Concentrate comments on non-picture matters.)
I’d forgotten what a comfort the Husky gas station and diner is. It’s the only chain built on that bastion of small hospitality (and therefore of Christendom), the leathery, blunt old waitress with a heart of gold. Countless weary truckers would turn nowhere else to fulfil the sacred rite of breakfast. You may suspect as much when she asks the second patron in a row: “Just the usual, Bob?” But you know it with perfect certainty when she greets you, an obvious out-of-towner, with a cup of coffee and a well worn “Do you need a menu this morning, sir?”
Well THAT was unexpected:
I will never know exactly how many hours I stood at the Huron’s transom, watching the Pacific go by, trying to stay awake, and waiting to pitch a lifebuoy after some poor sailor on his way to the bottom. In the end, it’s the old dear herself that’s found her final rest, leaving the lifebuoy and I to meet over a beer in the Lower Deck pub in Halifax. Here’s to her memory.
Last time I visited Peggy’s Cove, I tried, and loved, Solomon Gundy and fish hash with beans and green tomatoes. This time, I discovered blueberry grunt. It may have been invented to disguise a dropped upsidedown cake, by breaking it in pieces and serving it in bowls. But it was certainly named for the noises of animal satisfaction you make as you eat it.
Homeless can collector, Spring Garden Road, Halifax:
“Well, the first year students don’t drink as much as they used to; just have their heads in their books. I lost a lot of clients when the school year changed over, and it takes a while to build up a clientele. And the competition is STIFF.”
As I sat with a Rosary after Mass today, my attention was arrested by a grunt at my ear, which sounded like “Excuse me”. I became acutely aware of a form looming over me from the aisle, and a hand gripping the end of the pew at my shoulder. Turning, I found myself fixed by one good eye staring out of a pale, swollen face, the other resting inertly on the pew behind. A meagre nest of disheveled blond hair ringed the man’s dry scalp and spilled over his ears. His open mouth hung over a grey and red wool scarf sticking loosely out of an old brown windbreaker. I barely had time to wonder what sort of spirit he was before he spoke again, with such awkward haste that he seemed to be shouting, though he never raised his voice much above a whisper.
“It’s nice to see people doing the Rosary. It gives me a lift… gives me faith. Pass it on, ‘kay?” He waited just long enough to collect my startled nod of assent, then ambled out without a pause.
I hereby pass it on. When he gets to heaven before me, I hope he’ll keep me in mind.
Good children’s books give as much pleasure to the adults reading them as the children being read to. Which means Tove Jansson’s are phenomenal. Give these two a glance for starters, and see if you know a Hemulen, a Little My, a Groke, or a Squirrel With The Marvelous Tail in your own life. (Or whether you are one yourself!)
Of all the names used for the 1962 Missal, (Usus Antiquior, Extraordinary Form, Traditional, Tridentine), the worst is ‘Latin Mass’. It implies that the new one is the non-Latin Mass. Always in essence and ideally in practice, the Novus Ordo is in Latin. It’s even in Latin when it’s not, since the vernacular texts derive their validity from their reflection of the Latin. When we call the traditional Mass the Latin Mass, or worse yet, call the Novus Ordo the English Mass, we join those who are trying to amputate the Church’s patrimony. It doesn’t matter that the rest do it to throw it away, and we do it to keep it for ourselves. The language of the Church is for the whole Church. We need to stop hogging it.
