LAKE VIEW FROM THE AIRPLANE

ARTS AND CRAFTS with, Josh Tate

In this special vacation installment of "Arts and Crafts" I'm going to teach you how to build a wigwam. The first thing you'll need are some woods with slender saplings. The saplings need to be tall but slender, about 14-16 feet tall and about the diameter of a fat thumb.

Once you have gathered approximately 16 saplings, it is time to select the site to construct your wigwam. Any flat spot will do, but locations that are sheltered from the wind but still get plenty of sun are especially good. Here we have oriented our wigwam with the door facing east. I don't know much about such things, but I read somewhere that the door to an Indian's Wigwam typically opened towards the east.

To begin construction of your wigwam drive a stick into the approximate center of the Wigwam's diameter. Then tie a length of string to the stick. By using the center stick as anchor use the length of string to mark a perfect cricle as the base of the wigwam. Then dig holes approximately one foot deep on opposite sides of the wigwam to place the lodge poles into. It is important that the holes and their attendant poles mirror one another as the next step requires that you lash the poles together by bending them toward one another until they form an arch. Using twine tie them tightly together. Once all of the arches have been formed, lash them tightly together so that they form the skeleton of a dome.

While you lash some cross braces onto the dome send some of the rest of the tribe (Photographed here are Bowden and His cousins, Elisabeth, Grace and Lucy Joy) into the woods to gather some birch bark for the Wigwam's covering. You're gonna need a lot of bark so get crackin'!!!

Indians stripped the birch bark they used for their wigwams in large sheets from living trees. I found all the bark I needed from trees that had already fallen down. It was pretty crummy stuff, but then again we weren't actually depending on the wigwam for shelter through the long winter. Thanks to Steve Maxon and my Brother Job for helping me gather most of this bark after church on the last Sunday we were in VT. There was great stand of dead birch trees in North Chittenden, VT. There is still enough there for a couple more such wigwams if you're in the nieghborhood, and need a place to stay this winter.

Poke holes into the birch and tie it securely to the cross braces. Use the same principle as though you were shingling a roof. Start from the bottom and work your way up to the top. Leave a hole in the top for smoke to escape. (Having a fire in a birch bark structure strikes me as a scary deal. There must have been a lot of wigwam fires back in the day.)

When the wigwam is complete, gather a pile of leaves or fir boughs for the floor then kick back and survey your forest kingdom. Truly these two, Ishkoodah and Wah-Wah-Taysee, are masters of the northern woods. Indians would have also lashed more saplings to the outside of the wigwam to hold the bark down, but I just plum ran out of time and energy on the project. I suspect though that in the spring my folks will come back out to the lake to find birch bark everywhere and tumble down pile of played out sticks where my proud wigwam once stood.

Little indians need bows to hunt. Here's how to make one using the same sort of sapling we used in the construction of the Wigwam. Cut a green sapling of nearly uniform width and about the same length as your wing-span. This will be your bow.

Cut a notch like so at both ends of the bow.

Then cut a length of tough twine approximately two-thirds the length of the bow. Tie a loop at either end of the string. Then, placing one loop into a notch, bend the sapling until you can fit the second loop into the second notch. If you really want to be fancy you can tie some feathers and beads to the top of the bow for decoration. Don't make the arrows for them as you don't want to do all the work for them, thus stifling their fecundity, and really any straightish stick on the forest floor will do.

I'M BACK!!!

Thanks to Steve for the brilliant job he did guest-hosting. I have never enjoyed my blog so much. If I ever get around to drafting a will I have decided to leave my blog to Steve. I did miss the Bummer-Free Zone a lot though. It was surprisingly difficult for me to take two weeks off from expressing myself. My two week silence has left me with a lot I want to say, but you can expect things to be a little photo-heavy around here for a while as I sort through the nearly 600 photos I took during my time in VT and post them here. Yes, I'm narcissistic and deluded enough to believe that all of you will find my vacation photos interesting.

Oh yes, there will be pictures to follow...

WINDING DOWN

So Josh is scheduled to take back over real soon, which is a good thing for a few reasons: my almost-constant travels (9,000 miles driven in the last two months) will soon become entirely constant (1,200 miles of driving over the next seven days); his strict policy against performance enhancement on his blog has been interfering with my Bobberball training; and, most obviously, because nobody does it better!

Anyway, I appreciated this opportunity to serve you here, but I do have some regrets. For example, here are the Top Five Things I Wish I'd Had Time To Post!

5. An "Overheard" from my visit to Roberts Wesleyan College, consisting of nothing but beastly grunts, plaintive howls, and gnashing of teeth.

4. Just one installment of "Kick" where something rotten doesn't happen to the poor guy. You know, maybe he could go bowling or something, maybe have a slice, pick up a crazy spare. Let him forget those Widjiwats for a bit. Or maybe eat one. By accident.

3. A handwritten letter to Dan Snyder, purportedly from Job Tate, offering Seabee assistance to build a bridge from the Red Zone to the End Zone.

2. Seasonally appropriate (Photoshopped?) shots of a showering Josh Tate enjoying a steaming mug of hot cider, to the further chagrin of his female audience and Lisa Richard.

And the #1 Thing I Wish I'd Had Time To Post.....

1. Little Josh Tate Meets Mr. Ben Gleason (the illustrated version).

That's it! From here on out, I'll see you in the comments section. Hutela!

JOSH'S SHOES -- #14

I know Josh said that the last pair of shoes he put up here were the last in his closet, but after some digging, I discovered he was holding out on us! Behold, the final pair!!


Purchased at a Palm Springs Payless on the advice of pushy assistant manager Ron, these classy gold Merona pumps don't make it out of the closet very often -- but when they do, you know it's gonna be a special occasion! Maybe an anniversary dinner, a sermon at Idyllwild Baptist, or just a late-night cabin visit to quiet down the rowdy youth of the Evangelical Formosan Church of D.C.! These pumps can do it all, and what they do, they do with an understated, graceful elegance that, quite frankly, has come to embody Josh's entire wardrobe.

With the recent failure of so many of Josh's trusted friends, could we be seeing more of these tasty talarias? One can only hope -- because shoes like this make a statement! "I may be a harried father of four, studying for the ministry in my meager spare time, but sometimes . . . I just wanna be a pretty, pretty princess."

THEY MIGHT NOT BE AS TIMELY, BUT...

I can do Tate children pictures too...

TODAY IN MIKE VREELAND HISTORY

An exhaustive list.

October 19, 1999: Vreeland writes up Steve Maxon and Beau Beckwith for "running" and confiscates Maxon's water gun
October 19, 2001: Vreeland hosts Maxon for impending trip to Game 3 of the American League Championship Series at Yankee Stadium

Stay tuned for further updates, as events warrant.

I know this blog is called the Bummer-Free Zone and all, but what a sad and disturbing article by Malcolm Gladwell in The New Yorker today, about the cruel similarities between dogfighting and professional football.

"There is nothing else to be done, not so long as fans stand and cheer. We are in love with football players, with their courage and grit, and nothing else—neither considerations of science nor those of morality—can compete with the destructive power of that love."

QUESTION OF THE DAY

If you were forced to cede control over the most important decisions of your life (e.g. spouse, career, homeland) to a small panel of celebrities of any ilk, whom would you choose to chair that panel?

FOOTBALL REPORT

My prediction wasn't quite right: 533 total yards, only two combined turnovers (and a safety), and a Redskins loss. But sadly unrealized optimism only seems appropriate for this blog, when it comes to this team and this season. I shall say no more.

And although Lance Moore was the right play after all, it looks like my fantasy teams are going to 10-2. Next week I'll go back to giving advice, rather than failing to get it!

SOME HOUGHTON IMAGES

Fancy diagonal lines mowed into the muddy Quad.



The view from what was once known as "the Snake Pit."

October Break means an empty box. But I have the name and information if you need it, Josh.

FANTASY FOOTBALL QUESTION

My two teams are a combined 8-2 this year, and those two losses have come by a total of five points. But in the spirit of the Bummer-Free Zone, I have a lineup question.

Should I sit Terrell Owens?

PROS: He's had poor stats all year; his team is awful; his quarterback is horrible; he's playing against my favorite team this week; in the league where I don't own him, he's already been dropped.

CONS: If he scores a touchdown against the Jets and I don't have him in my lineup, it'll hurt double; because of byes, my other options are Lance Moore, Mark Clayton and Mohammed Massaquoi; he might get off another dunk; I don't want to make him cry again.

Any input?

In this Wall Street Journal op-ed, Rush Limbaugh excoriates those on the left who got him removed from a bid to purchase the St. Louis Rams.

It stuns me, given the league's newfound distaste for controversial statements both real and imagined, that Keith Olbermann (who most recently compared Glenn Beck to a sexually transmitted disease and referred to a [gorgeous] conservative female blogger as "a big mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick on it") continues to serve as the face of the league's Sunday night halftime showcase.

I stand with Josh Tate. "C'mon football, let's go somewhere else."

I MADE A HOUGHTON SNOWBALL

But it barely made it out of Mount Morris.





And that is NOT my hand...

And now coming to you live from the campus of Roberts Wesleyan...

JOSH TATE (PART THREE)

The third and final installment in the Josh Tate introduction story! Read part one and part two!

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Couture’s face was inscrutable. The radio crackled some traffic over the State Police channel. Green Day was playing.

“You pooped your pants?”
“Yeah, I did.”

He stared at me for a second or two — inscrutable. Then he popped the trunk and got out of the cruiser. He walked around to the trunk, pulled out some evidence bags, and handed them to me. “Put ‘em down on the seat. I’ll drive you home,” he said.

We drove back to my place in silence. It was below zero outside, but we had the windows down as we drove through the quiet city. As I got out of the cruiser, he said, “Tate, what are you gonna tell the dry cleaner?”

“I don’t know…but listen, you better take this to the grave or I’ll put you there, man,” I said unconvincingly. “Don’t worry, I won’t say anything,” he responded, equally unconvincingly.

He drove away and I walked inside, stripped and took a shower. I couldn’t sleep that night. I paced back and forth in my little apartment. That had been the lowest moment in my life. How could that have happened? How could I ever show my face at the police department again, or have a normal conversation with Cpl. Couture? I would forever be the guy who pooped his pants.

But surprisingly, Couture was a man of his word, and to my knowledge, he never told a soul about “the incident.” We actually became good friends and used to go fishing a lot together. We never once talked about the time I pooped my pants.

Why do I tell you this story? Because I want you to know me, and I believe that by exposing my soft underbelly you can learn more about me than any list of facts could provide.

I am a Christian, a poet, a husband and father, but I am also a man who once pooped his pants.

Coming to you live from the campus of Houghton College...

WHAT I DID LAST NIGHT

JOSH TATE (PART TWO)

Part two of Josh Tate's autobiographical introduction. Read part one here.

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I slipped into the passenger seat and we began a normal night of stopping cars, processing drunks, and responding to various crises and crimes. At approximately 3 am, as we came back through the city after a trip to the correctional facility, I suddenly felt the need to pee.

I asked Couture to pull over in a vacant lot so I could use a convenient snow bank. I never saw it coming, and I’ve never experienced anything like this before or since, but as I began to pee, my bowels evacuated themselves into my crisp, dry-cleaned police uniform.

Of course it was the raisins, eaten by that kitten, ripped too early from its mother’s care.

I stood there in front of the snow bank, raisin poop oozing out of my underpants and sliding down my legs, into my boots. My mind was blank. Panic is a sudden and/or overwhelming terror that destroys a person’s capacity for self-help, and that described me perfectly. There was no way to extricate myself from the situation without considerable damage to my reputation and standing in the law enforcement community. How would this read in Cpl. Couture’s written report, I wondered? “At approximately 0300 hours patrolman Tate advised this officer that he needed to pee… A short time later he returned to the cruiser and advised that he had defecated in his uniform.”

Never had I uttered such fervent prayers to my God. I prayed for some miracle, some diversion. It would have been preferable for aliens to suddenly land and begin their war against mankind than for me to walk back to that cruiser and try to explain what had happened… to explain the poop in my pants.

But after a few moments, I decided there was no way to avoid the inevitable embarrassment. I waddled back to the cruiser and told Cpl. Couture, “Uh…I don’t know how to say this but I…uh…well, you see…I pooped my pants.”

I had never wanted to swear so badly in my life. Somehow, it seemed worse that I had to say “poop” instead of “s***.”

--TO BE CONTINUED--

WHAT THE.....

So at first I was just confused because I saw a "Palin 2012" sign in someone's lawn. On October 15, 2009. It's never too early for us Republicans to get tribal and divisive!

But then my brother pointed out the SNAKE coiled around the L in Palin (sorry it's not clearer), and the whole proceeding got even more confusing! Is this a pro-Palin sign, perhaps implying she is the divine panacea for our current reptilian plague? Or is it an anti-Palin sign, repeating the silly libel about her backwoods snake handling?