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Sequential art (or, how I spent the week after Thanksgiving)

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Well, maybe “art” is too much to claim, but this was last week’s craft project, anyway. It’s called “Modern Windsor Rocking Chair.” (No subtitle.)

All 10 of the back pieces were a fresh-cut white oak log on Monday, and like the arms and seat — red oak and pine, respectively — were shaped by hand. The arm and leg spindles are maple and a few of the pins are poplar.

My hands are still sore, but we have a new place to sit and I’m amazed at what’s possible in seven days. Long days, for sure, but it all came together. Plenty of finishing work to do still, but it’s already an actual chair you can sit in, and is quite comfortable.

Luke at LongLiveWood.org is an excellent and patient teacher, and attracts students from all over the world to take his classes. And well he should. Recommended!

Splitting timber.
Splitting timber.
Sitting at the shaving horse, making big pieces of wood smaller
Sitting at the shaving horse, making big pieces of wood smaller.
The scent of fresh oak was lovely.
The scent of fresh oak was lovely.
The uprights, rough shaped but not yet steam bent. (A draw knife, my best friend for the week, is off to the right.)
The uprights, rough shaped but not yet steam bent. (A draw knife, my best friend for the week, is off to the right.)
And now the back/headrest, also rough shaped and unbent. (I was bending, though!)
And now the back/headrest, also rough shaped and unbent. (I was bending, though!)
Raw spindles.
Raw spindles.
In the forms after steaming.
In the forms after steaming.
This will become a seat? Really?
This will become a seat? Really?
Layout. I tended to get too precious with this, which was a bit of a waste of time given what comes next, but you can't carve the engineer+librarian out of me.
Layout. I tended to get too precious with this, which was a bit of a waste of time given what comes next, but you can’t carve the engineer+librarian out of me.
You start by making a place for your butt... Note all the holes, all of which are at weird double angles: 26.5deg, 17deg, etc. Drilling freestyle was THRILLING, but did use a laser, a bevel gauge, and a prayer (in order of tech sophistication) to do so w/o a jig. Got 'em all within tolerance, to my shock.
You start by making a place for your butt… Note all the holes, all of which are at weird double angles: 26.5deg, 17deg, etc. Drilling freestyle was THRILLING, but we did use a laser, a bevel gauge, and a prayer (in order of tech sophistication) to do so w/o a jig. Got ’em all within tolerance, to my shock.
7/8" down at its deepest, swooping up.
7/8″ down at its deepest, swooping up.
A travisher and a scorp. (Not shown: spokeshaves.)
A travisher and a scorp. (Not shown: spokeshaves.)
There are the spoke shaves! And a kinda sorta seat shape.
There are the spoke shaves! And a kinda sorta seat shape.
Okay, I'm done. (Okay, I'm not.)
Okay, I’m done. (Okay, I’m not.)
Bent and smoothed uprights.
Bent and smoothed uprights.
Holy #$%&, they fit and are vaguely symmetrical!
Holy #$%&, they fit and are vaguely symmetrical!
Armrest blanks. As with a few other parts, the rough shaping was done on a bandsaw (which I'm lousy at). Unlike other parts, you cut these along two sides, taping the pieces back together after the first cut so you can end up with a piece that's curved in two dimensions. Again, harrowing.
Armrest blanks. As with a few other parts, the rough shaping was done on a bandsaw (which I’m lousy at). Unlike other parts, you cut these along two sides, taping the pieces back together after the first cut so you can end up with a piece that’s curved in two dimensions. Again, harrowing.
Kinda sorta how we got to the previous step. These aren't my pieces. The tear out there caused concern for one of the other students, but as with so many things, our teacher Luke said "Don't WORRY about this. It'll be fine, you'll see." (We did worry, but we also did see in the end.)
Kinda sorta how we got to the previous step. These aren’t my pieces. The tear out there caused concern for one of the other students, but as with so many things, our teacher Luke said “Don’t WORRY about this. It’ll be fine, you’ll see.” (We did worry, but we also did see in the end.)
Arms shaped, drilled, and spindles fitted.
Arms shaped, drilled, and spindles fitted.
The uneven, blocky, square, ugly but now curved back spindles.
The uneven, blocky, square, ugly but now curved back spindles.
Not something you'd want against your back.
Not something you’d want against your back.
And 30 (or so) minutes later, something you might be okay with resting against.
And 30 (or so) minutes later, something you might be okay with resting against.
Fast forward through more bandsawing, dimensioning to 1/1000", and sanding to an exact 10degree bevel, the rockers are now on and pinned. (I didn't take many photos of the final assembly. Things happen fast once you're gluing.) I promise that there was more harrowing drilling from underneath — you really needed a good spotter for that, since the headrest isn't much larger than the drill holes... ...and at this point, Luke's "It'll be fine" gave way to "Don't mess this up, because I can't help you recover from a mistake here." Thanks.
Fast forward through more bandsawing, dimensioning to 1/1000″, and sanding to an exact 10degree bevel, the rockers are now on and pinned. (I didn’t take many photos of the final assembly. Things happen fast once you’re gluing and wedging.) I promise that there was more harrowing drilling from underneath — you really needed a good spotter for that, since the headrest isn’t much larger than the drill holes…
…and at this point, Luke’s “It’ll be fine” gave way to him saying “Don’t mess this up, because I can’t help you recover from a mistake here.”
Thanks.
All of these pieces have to go in at the exact same time, so you torque and bend and squeak to fit. Have I said harrowing before?
All of these pieces have to go in at the exact same time, so you torque and bend and squeak to fit. Have I said harrowing before?
Again with the Holy &^%$! They fit and are aligned.
Again with the Holy &^%$! They fit and are aligned.
Again, fast forward. This time all the way home, with all the spindles glued in the bottom, slotted in the top, wedges driven into every support, and pins added to the head rest.
Again, fast forward. This time all the way home, with all the spindles glued in the bottom, slotted in the top, wedges driven into every support, and pins added to the head rest.
The end.
The end.

Einstein is here. (He’s always been here!)

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Our book about Einstein is out now. It’s been a long trip from conception to publication, and I’m proud of Absent-minded Albertwhat Jerel Dye and I (along with Alison Acton and Alex Lu) have made. I’ve been talking about it a lot on the social media sites, so if you follow me there you’ve seen many excerpts. We’re celebrating its launch with some events:

Nov. 15, 7pm: Brookline Booksmith

Nov 16, 7pm: An Unlikely Story

And I’ve done a little media about it as well:

Pint o’ Comics

John Scalzi’s “The Big Idea”

The Virtual Memories Show

So if you want to learn more about what we did and why, please join us at one or more of those real or virtual places and we’ll talk about genius, science, and how those come together in comics!

 

Book recommendations

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I’ve recently read a few terrific books that are worth telling people about. So let me tell ya…

Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands, by Kate Beaton is subtle, sad, beautiful, and doesn’t waste a single panel.

Ragnarök, Volumes 1 & 2 (The Last God Standing & Lord of the Dead) by Walt Simonson are witty and simultaneously nostalgic and new.

Why Knot? How to Tie More Than Sixty Ingenious, Useful, Beautiful, Lifesaving, and Secure Knots!, by Philippe Petit will teach you things. It’s quirky and unique, like its author…whose resume you should look up, if he’s not already familiar to you.

The Glory of Their Times: The Story of the Early Days of Baseball Told by the Men Who Played It, by Lawrence S. Ritter is a book I avoided reading for years, and I have no idea why. These reflections by ballplayers of yesteryear, not all of whom are famous, will warm your heart.

And to round out the list, I should mention Einstein by me and Jerel Dye. It comes out November 15th, and you can pre-order it here.

(The panel excerpt is from our book, of course, and is a nod to this year’s Nobel Prize in physics, which relates to one of the many things Einstein wanted to be wrong about, but wasn’t.)

Review — Arsenals of Folly, by Richard Rhodes

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[Since I have a new book coming out I’m thinking about reviews lately. Here’s a rejected review, commissioned based on my book Fallout, for which I was paid a generous kill fee. I wrote it long ago, while George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were still in office. It’s a great book, and though I wish it weren’t so, it’s still topical.]

From Russia, With…Pragmatism

“The blubbery arms of the soft life had Bond round the neck and they were slowly strangling him. He was a man of war and when, for a long period, there was no war, his spirit went into a decline. In his particular line of business, peace had reigned for nearly a year. And peace was killing him.”

The action in Ian Fleming’s fifth book about 007 opens in Russia and remains there for roughly its first third. Only when we reach the eleventh chapter (“The Soft Life”) do we see James Bond strangled by those blubbery arms, his spirit in decline, dying from peace.

Richard Rhodes’ latest book on nuclear weapons, Arsenals of Folly, also opens and remains in Russia for a long time and paints a similar picture of despair. And as with a good thriller, the apparent misdirection of initially focusing on the Chernobyl accident will make you wonder where he’s leading you. But just as readers from Kennedy to Reagan came to trust Ian Fleming to tie things together and deliver a thrilling and satisfying story, readers have come to trust Richard Rhodes to do the same when it comes to nuclear weapons. And he does.

The Making of the Atomic Bomb and Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb began with scientists at work, and Arsenals of Folly follows suit. That’s where the similarities end, though, as Rhodes quickly moves from the disaster at Chernobyl — as seen through the disillusioned eyes of physicist Stanislav Shushkevich — to a detailed examination of Mikhail Gorbachev’s background and rise to power. Gorbachev ascends amidst a corrupted leadership and dual-use economy, where virtually every industry has to service both military and civilians, and where when push comes to shove, guns trump butter.

And shove always came. Ignoring warnings from doves like Eisenhower (“You can’t have this kind of war. There just aren’t enough bulldozers to scrape the bodies off the streets.”) and Churchill (“If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is make the rubble bounce.”), the fledgling U.S. neo-conservatives advising the executive branch promoted nuclear arms as useful deterrents and nuclear war as winnable. Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and Paul Wolfowitz all make early appearances. They and their agendas have been with us for decades, but were held somewhat in check by their presidential patrons; Nixon, Reagan, and the first Bush often ignored their advice. Cheney in particular is foiled by George H.W. Bush (via James Baker and Brent Scowcroft) in his efforts to undermine Gorbachev via his proposals for forcing regime change. Rhodes likens him to “the troll under the bridge, watching for billygoats,” and is clearly not a fan.

So as we move into the middle section of the book, the contrast with his previous books becomes particularly stark in that Rhodes shows us no great breakthroughs or discoveries in engineering or science, nor do we feel a sense of adventure, no matter how misguided. All we get is unenlightened self-interest and deception. And, though Rhodes’ subtitle at first seems a misnomer, when we reach this middle section he provides the appropriately depressing details of how the arms race was literally manufactured through the chicanery of the military-industrial complex players on both sides of the Bering Strait.

Rhodes makes the argument throughout that the Soviet Union wasn’t a real threat to the U.S. for technical reasons (even during Kennedy’s so-called missile gap the U.S. had better and more numerous weapons, and a greater capability to deliver them), and neither was a real threat to the other for practical reasons: neither side had a first strike policy, though each believed the other had.

So much for military intelligence, and the efficacy of real-life secret agents.

This section of the book closes with a chapter titled, “The Warheads Will Always Get Through,” which analyzes Ronald Reagan’s background and how it serves as a prelude to his meetings with Gorbachev. His evangelical fervor, his strong and unshakeable belief system, his willingness to ignore the science behind SDI, and his disinterest in details all imply a comparison to the current president Bush. However, Reagan’s genuine and visceral fear of nuclear weapons and their use provides for a sharp contrast with other presidents and Soviet leaders.

Rhodes does an excellent job of proving out Einstein’s quote “The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking” in this middle section. After the heroic Gorbachev in the first part and the delusional policies and politics of the second, you’re primed and relieved to cheer on Reagan’s optimism and belief that the two leaders can put an end to the nuclear arms race.

So, the mood lifts in the eleventh chapter, which opens the third and final section of the book. Titled “Common Security,” it focuses on the negotiations between Reagan and Gorbachev at the end of the Cold War. Like many, including  John Arqilla in The Reagan Imprint (reviewed by Mark Williams in the May/June 2006 issue of MIT’s Technology Review), I thought of its conclusion as mainly a demonstration by Reagan that U.S. Visa cards had a higher credit limit than their Soviet counterparts. But while it was about the economy, by this point in the book Rhodes has already made the case that the change had been a long time coming, and Gorbachev was already looking for a way out of the game.

Even with all the details and nuances of arms negotiations offered here, the book gets simpler: Gorbachev and Reagan. Geneva and Reykjavik. Testing SDI in the laboratory or in space. Both leaders realizing, in the words of J. Robert Oppenheimer, that the U.S. and U.S.S.R. were “two scorpions in a bottle, each capable of killing the other, but only at the risk of his own life.”

Reagan escaped these negotiations with his political life, despite the best pre-Geneva efforts of some of his advisors. (Though after Reykjavik, many changed their tune, at least temporarily.) George H.W. Bush did not, and neither did Gorbachev, an irony for Rhodes, who paints Gorbachev as heroic throughout; much more so than Reagan, calling SDI his “hubristic dream.” Further, according to Rhodes, Gorbachev was much more willing to share credit for ending the Cold War with the U.S. than Reagan or Bush, with the caveat that in sharing credit he also wanted the U.S. to share the blame for creating and promoting it.

Rhodes puts forth a convincing argument that Chernobyl is a pivotal event in all of this, and one of Gorbachev’s few failures in implementing the openness in public discussion about current and historical problems that characterized glasnost. In the process of canonizing Gorbachev, readers carried along by the narrative might forget the extent of the cover-up of this accident. But in the end, Chernobyl is Chekhov’s Gun, placed in the hands of Stanislav Shushkevich. Now president of Belarus, the man who lost faith in Gorbachev because of the way he handled the dissemination of information about Chernobyl becomes the one to deliver the news to Gorbachev that he, along with Leonid Kravchuk (president of Ukraine) and Boris Yeltsin have agreed to dissolve the Soviet Union. He does this only after Yeltsin has already told George H.W. Bush the news of Gorbachev’s ouster.

Fleming’s From Russia With Love ends with an unconscious Bond crashing to the floor, his triumph compromised by a last minute (though of course temporary) victory for the Soviet spy organization SMERSH. Rhodes ends his book by painting the end of the Cold War as an equally compromised victory, accusing the U.S. of “obstinately misreading the failure of our authoritarian counterpart on the other side of the world, to our shame and misfortune…”

It’s an emotional way to close, but appropriate. Facts and figures aren’t the point of this book.
On page 242, Rhodes explains Gorbachev’s and Reagan’s incorrect recollections of their first meeting at Reykjavik by noting that “[f]actual memory is more fallible than emotional memory.” I think the same will be true for readers of Arsenals of Folly; it certainly was for me. The book is dense with both fact and emotion, and in the end it’s the emotions that stick. (One of the few facts that stuck appeared near the end, where Rhodes quotes Carl Sagan’s calculation that the Cold War cost the U.S. $10 trillion–enough to buy everything we collectively own except for the land itself.) Bewilderment during the opening section, depression throughout the middle as both sides engage in “threat inflation”, and hope tinged with amazement and despair in conclusion. That’s what Rhodes makes us feel.

This is the third important book on nuclear weapons Rhodes has written in as many decades. I hope the one in the 2010s can be his last — not because he’s done writing, but because the problem is solved. Given that some of the bit part villains in Arsenals of Folly later found starring roles in the U.S. government, I look forward to Rhodes’ next book, but we may have to look to fiction for the safer world it deserves.

Meeting Billy Collins

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We met our favorite poet twice last weekend,
the second time in captivity,
the first time in the wild.

Up on the porch,
in the rocking chair,
he probably sought solitude and calm before blustering adulation, but we two fans,
opportunistic predators,
had other things in mind.

“Is that?” and “Should we?” gave way
to stepping off the sidewalk, looking up, feigning ignorance,
and asking was the bed nice, the breakfast tasty, and would he recommend this B & B?

They were and he would, though he’d only been there two days and was leaving tonight. That’s when we came clean.

“We thought we recognized you, and now hearing your voice…
we look forward to seeing you at the reading.”

He said yes, he would rock here a bit longer, then go rock the joint.

Upon entering the joint we switched roles.
When he finished rocking it we lined up along with the rest of his prey,
books and hats in hand,
hungry for a few more moments.

Our turn came and we came cleaner.
“So, we actually knew it was…” but didn’t get any further, because Billy Collins interrupted,
the top predator’s prerogative,
telling us with a sharp-toothed smile “Yeah, I clocked you before that. You can’t get away with that bullshit.”

It had been bullshit, but our favorite poet was wrong.
We got away with it.

[This didn’t happen last weekend, but had when I wrote the first draft of this. He’s our favorite poet, and maybe he could become one of yours as well. I particularly recommend The Lanyard, The Trouble with Poetry, Litany, and a couple on dogs. I also wrote another tribute to him, in a rough approximation of his style, a few years ago. It’s about salad.]

He really is that tall: meeting Lyle Lovett, once, for a second

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Since he has a new album out today, the first in ten years, here’s a Lyle Lovett memory:

My first full-time professional career was as a consulting nuclear engineer. Kind of like Sherlock Holmes’ “consulting detective”, maybe, but practiced in places where they’d only put nuke plants. So when, during the job interview, the company asked if I was open to travel I should have figured that they weren’t going to send me to London or Tokyo or some other cool city.

Anyway, when I wasn’t living in an extended stay hotel room out in the middle of nowhere I lived in Philadelphia, but I didn’t like it there either. It is a cool city, but it turns out I like living near big cities, not in ’em. I’m currently not far from Detroit, and can get to Toronto or Chicago in a few hours, and that’s how I like it.

One of the fine things about Philadelphia was the music scene. I saw performers ranging from the Indigo Girls (not so great live, at least on that tour) to John Lee Hooker (so so great live). I’m not sure I’d even recognize this version of me now, but record hunting on South Street was a thing I actually did many Friday nights.

And the radio was terrific. WHYY, home of Fresh Air, for news and WXPN for music. Around 1990, towards the end of my time there, the latter did the unthinkable for a college station and hired a professional morning host named Michaela Majoun. Professional, as in she showed up on time and didn’t leave your clock radio to serve up absolute dead air when the alarm went off so you didn’t wake up in time for work, an experience I had with previous college stations…looking at you WCBN in Ann Arbor. (Yes, I hold a grudge.)

I had an invisible crush on her. Or at least her taste in music, and between her and Terry Gross she locked me in as a public radio listener. So much so that I started sending money in to pledge drives. And at some point, I decided I should volunteer to help take those pledges, so one morning in the spring of 1990, I think, I got up even before her show began and stumbled over to Penn’s campus to answer a land-line and eat stale bagels and glance over to the broadcast booth when it was quiet to see the magic happen.

It was fun, but Ms. Majoun didn’t have much time to hang out, meaning her good taste wasn’t going to literally rub off on me. So when my shift was over and I had to head for the door and the day job, I got a wave and a mouthed “thank you,” which was cool.

On the way out I stopped for a drink of water, and with head down, out of the corner of my eye I saw that the person waiting to get a drink after me was wearing a truly fine pair of cowboy boots. I wore a truly utilitarian pair of cowboy boots when I was on site at the nuke plant — they were quite comfortable for a full day on my feet, it turns out. So I appreciated ’em, and as I lifted my head from drinking I was about to compliment the owner when I realized I had to keep looking up. And up. And then up some more. When I reached Lyle Lovett’s eyes I realized I had to keep looking even further if I wanted to see all the hair, but I stopped myself from doing that, stuttered out “I really like your new album,” and he gave that crooked smile he has and out of the corner of his mouth he drawled “Well, thank ya verruh much.” and maybe we shook hands, but I don’t remember anything more than that the encounter carried me through the rest of the day.

Through to now, in fact.

There’s no point to this story, I guess, but there is a take-away: go listen to “If I Had a Boat” now and read your copy of “Becoming Duchess Goldblatt” tonight (trust me) and wake up to your local public radio station tomorrow and discover something new and cool.

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  • Sequential art (or, how I spent the week after Thanksgiving) December 8, 2022
  • Einstein is here. (He’s always been here!) November 15, 2022
  • Book recommendations October 10, 2022
  • Review — Arsenals of Folly, by Richard Rhodes June 12, 2022
  • Meeting Billy Collins June 1, 2022
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