Author: Brian J. Noggle

Wherein the Spanish Inscription Makes Brian J. Speculate

Brian J. Noggle

You’re not mistaken; the Good Book Hunting posts have dropped off here recently. I only hit three or four book fairs a year these days, since they’re not as prevalent in Springfield as they are in St. Louis, and we’re reaching an epoch where an average garage sale these days doesn’t feature many books, and if they do, it’s not books that I need to read. Garage sales, if you find them, are heavy on the relating to God, What To Expect When You’re Expecting, and public school teaching books. Even if you’re going to a large church garage sale. Plus, I mean, I do think at a certain point you’ve bought enough books. So until I get to reading them by the cartfull, I’m going to slow down the purchases.

Saturday, for example, I went to a garage sale at St. Agnes, and I only bought one book.

I’m more on the lookout for interesting record albums. In addition to the normal big band, jazz, or classical LPs I’m on the prowl for, I’ll pick up something on the cover looks interesting or for other slender pretexts.

For example, Saturday I picked up The Songs of Terry Ber because she covers a Leonard Cohen song on it (and I mistakenly thought it was an album of spoken poetry anyway).

I also picked up a copy of Rocio Jurado’s 1979 album Señora because the album cover and everything are completely in Spanish, and I want my musical collection to be multilingual (we already have an album in Hebrew, a collection of Israeli brass music):

Rocio Jurado's Senora

How Spanish is it? There’s an inscription in the corner:

Senora inscription

I can’t quite make out the pivotal word in it; with the something of forever/always. It’s hard to read handwriting in the best of cases, but in Spanish, the pattern-matching skill necessary is lacking. But it’s a love inscription, probably, from 1980. I can’t help but wonder if they’re still together 33 years later. Probably not, or I wouldn’t have the album now.

The music itself is light pop from the era, kinda with the vibe of Debbie Boone, but in Spanish. Did I mention I bought a record in another language? It would only make me more of a hipster if it could somehow throw up some subtitles.

At any rate, I’ll listen to it again, and every time I do, I’ll wonder about the people from the inscription. Starting with their names. What is that, nuts? nita? I have no idea.

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What Have You Done For Me Philately?

Brian J. Noggle

Another hobby on its way out: Stamp collecting.

Every now and again, you get some article in the newspaper (probably from a news bureau, which has a Mad Libs style template for the story, where the journalist can just drop in some proper nouns) that decries the death of collecting hobbies, especially as Boomers downsize and discover that their beer can collections aren’t going to supplement their Social Security very well. Hey, I’m a hoarder; I know the urge to collect things, but I’m not going into it with the idea that my collection of old handheld video games from the 1970s and 1980s is ever going to be worth anything. My generation is that pivotal generation that remembers the old artifacts, but also embraces the digital content that used to be stored on those artifacts, so it doesn’t want those bulky old things in the loft.

But I digress.

Stamp collecting. I had a kit for it when I was a boy, with the little hinges, lined mounting paper, and envelopes of old stamps. I didn’t really get into it, though, but back then, the allure must have been much more. It was a way of interfacing with history through historical stamps and with exotic foreign lands through stamps from other countries. Back then, people still had international pen pals, for crying out loud. There was a community. Clubs for collecting stamps, even.

Now, stamp collecting is running into some serious head winds.

First, people aren’t collecting as they used to. See above.

Secondly, the exotic nature of foreign stamps has no doubt fallen since you can learn all you want and talk to people all over the world, instantly, through the Internet. For example, my QA Hates You Twitter feed has followers from Russia, Britain, Canada, India, Pakistan, Australia, Egypt, Brazil, and a bunch of other countries. My mother had a Japanese pen pal who would send her letters a couple times a year. I’m exchanging quips worldwide daily.

Thirdly, the volume of mail has diminished, and the stamp is on its way out. It’s not something that connects the exotic and the historical to present day experience. I think one tends to collect the normal things of life and extend it to artifacts outside one’s existence. Maybe I’m off afield or generalizing from my own experience, but that’s what writers do.

Finally, the stamps themselves, if they exist, are becoming less interesting. We still get commemorative stamps and whatnot, but most of the time here in the US, we get bland Forever stamps which don’t have the price on the front. That removes them a bit from their particular moment in history. Increasingly, people are turning to postage they print on their computers. Who wants to collect that?

Here’s an example: Although I’m not a philatelist, I keep my eyes open for stamps because one of the organizations at church collects them to sell to philatelists to raise funds. I get a British periodical that’s shipped in a plain envelope and stamped. Or so I thought. Is this a postmarked stamp or something printed at home?

A British stamp, I think

I dunno. I’ll take it in and let the experts decide to throw it out as worthless.

As a fundraising strategy, I think this one will be on the way out.

And although I’m not a philatelist, that’s not saying I don’t have some stamps I’ve purchased to keep as keepsakes.

Ayn Rand stamps

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Wherein Brian J. Admits He’s A Sissy Because Sometimes He Makes Household Fixes With Something Other Than Duct Tape

Brian J. Noggle

I know, I know, you’re seeing all the blog posts about crafting books and are thinking, “What kind of man is this Brian J.?” The answer is, “Not much of a man at all.” For further proof, note how he does not make all improvised household repairs with duct tape. Continue reading “Wherein Brian J. Admits He’s A Sissy Because Sometimes He Makes Household Fixes With Something Other Than Duct Tape” →

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In Lake Woebegovernment, All Salaries Are Above Average

Brian J. Noggle

In Springfield, the head of the city’s HR department has told the city council that city salaries are too low:

Springfield is at best average — and more often significantly worse — when it comes to the pay offered to most city employees, according to a salary survey City Council discussed Tuesday.

The survey, completed earlier this year, compared the maximum pay for 61 city positions to the salaries offered for the same work in 11 of Springfield’s benchmark cities.

“All in all, 64 percent of our salary survey positions are in the lower third,” said Sheila Maerz, the city’s director of human resources. “Our goal is to be in the middle third.”

You know what citizens should call this? A bargain.

The article does mention that Springfield has the lowest cost of living among the cities sampled for this information. The city also says that its cost of attaining new workers, which would seem to indicate that they’re not having trouble filling the jobs they post. So, what’s the problem?

It’s hard for me to imagine an HR director at a private company going to the corporate management and saying “We need to boost salaries just because.” If Springfield’s city salaries go up, its benefits costs go up, and its ability to meet its future obligations go up drastically. Let’s take a look at the cities Springfield compared itself to:

  • Abilene, Texas (Dyess Air Force Base)
  • Amarillo, Texas
  • Chattanooga, Tenn.
  • Columbia, S.C. (Fort Jackson)
  • Fort Wayne, Ind.
  • Grand Rapids, Mich.
  • Huntsville, Ala. (U.S. Army Redstone Center, NASA)
  • Knoxville, Tenn. (U.S. Department of Energy Oak Ridge)
  • Salt Lake City, Utah (State Capital)
  • Savannah, Ga. (Hunter Army Air Field)
  • Wichita Falls, Texas (Sheppard Air Force Base)

Look at all the government jobs available in those positions. Of the other eleven benchmark cities, at least six of them have military bases or other federal installations in them and one of them is the state capital. As such, they are automatically going to have competition for government workers and would have to pay better to keep the city workers from becoming state or Federal employees or contractors.

I wonder if the presentation covered the possibility that the job competition might have had an impact.

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Welcome to the Lexicon, Pal

Brian J. Noggle

I shall coin a term:

Galinize: To clean something in one’s household that nobody will see.

Example: I just galinized my kitchen by dusting the tops of my kitchen wall cabinets.

So named after my aunt who was very particular in this regard and who managed to keep a tidy house when the poor relations, including nine-year-old and eleven-year-old boys, came to visit for a year and a half.

Also, we would be remiss to not cover an additional term:

Regalinize: To draw attention to something that one cleaned in one’s household that the audience would not have otherwise seen. Typically, the person who hears or reads about the newly cleaned invisible object should compliment the person telling the story.

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Book Report: Plexi Class by Tonia Davenport (2007)

Brian J. Noggle

Book coverTo keep with the recent theme of crafting books on the blog here and to have something to page through for a couple minutes while my children button mashed on the educational computers at the library, I picked up this book. It contains a number of ideas, projects, techniques, and whatnot for working with plexiglass and Lucite.

More than half of the book deals with making different kinds of jewelry and jewelry elements, using techniques like embossing and decoupage to add some texture to create beads, pendants, and the like. The other projects in the book include a tote bag, keepsake box, and whatnot.

Because it’s such a radical departure from the mainline books I’ve read which deal with more straightforward crafting with beads, woodburning, or whatnot, I think I got more out of the book than I do out of those. The material looks to be pretty easy to work with, and it’s not something I might have thought on my own to try manipulating. Whether I actually get to manipulating it on my own or not is another story. But it’s something cool to think about.

As far as material, here’s my thought: Given my recent work with glass and similar projects in mind for the future, it’s far cheaper to acquire glass and plexiglass from yard sales than the hardware or craft store. Simply buy up cheap frames and artwork with the glass or plexi, remove the glass or plexi, and then you can either donate the glassless art and frame to another garage sale. The glass or plexi is your viggorish.

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Not Quite A Full Deck

Brian J. Noggle

As you can guess, gentle reader, I am not one who easily gives up old photographs, even when I don’t know who is in the photograph. As I have inherited my mother’s old photographs, which includes photographs she inherited from her mother and from her sister, I have boxes of them and also have discolored old photo albums full of them. Not only do I have loose ones with or without captions or information on the back (which does not necessarily help me, seventy years and two lost generations later), but I also have them collected and grouped in magnetic magic pages where there are a large number of photographs, some trimmed, have the same people in them, but I don’t know exactly who those people are.

But a lot of people have those. A lot of people of my generation or older, I mean. Many in my generation have gone to an all-digital format, where the collections of random images are far larger and far easier to ignore.

Worse than that, though, is this collection of the same image that I have and absolutely cannot get rid of. And, unfortunately, I do not have enough of them to make a deck of cards. Continue reading “Not Quite A Full Deck” →

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Book Report: Command Strike by Don Pendleton (1977)

Brian J. Noggle

Book coverThis book is far less topical and dated than Dixie Convoy, which was definitely stuck in the 1970s with its CB focus. This book has a more typical Executioner excursion into the heart of Mafia territory: Manhattan.

The bosses in New York are scrambling for power after the recent death of the Boss of all Bosses at the hands of Mack Bolan. A confidante of the BoAB has been working to secure his own place as the old man was slipping, but his quiet push for consolidation encounters some scepticism from some of the other leaders of the mob. The power behind the Aces, an autonomous group of mob super-hitters, looks into the mess, and Bolan steps in to make sure that mess keeps boiling and the mob men keep dying.

Does that sound like a blurb for the back of the book?

As I said, this is a better book than #27 (I missed 28). Not only does the book avoid dated technologies, but it also has a climax (two, sort of) that rather smoothly fits into it.

At this time, I’m closing in on the end of the Pendleton books of the series, and I’m pretty sure I’m going to miss them. I’m not sure who the publisher used immediately after Pendleton, but I know the far later books lack some of the depth and philosophical musings that lift these books above the other period pulp. And I’m not just saying that for you, Ms. Pendleton, although I hope you take some pride that your husband’s work continues to be enjoyed 35 years later.

Books mentioned in this review:

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Book Report: Over the Hill and Past Our Place by Harold Warp (1958, 1976?)

Brian J. Noggle

Book coverThis book tells some of the early life of Harold Warp. Who is Harold Warp? He was a farm boy who grew up on a farm in Nebraska in the very early 20th century (no electricity, no internal combustion engines). After he his father died when he was three, his mother ran the farm until she passed away when the boy was eleven. The book collects memories from that era, an era that saw radical changes to the farm. In those eight years, the house got a telephone, animals were replaced with gas engines, and his brother got a car. It’s a fascinating read.

In his 20s, Warp patented Flex-O-Glass and started a company to manufacture it. That went very well. The company, Warp Brothers, is still in business. Warp did so well with it that he donated the land and materials to start Pioneer Village, which is still in operation, near his old homestead.

Warp’s story, included as a couple of photocopied things in the back, is as fascinating as the book. Especially when you think in the sheer number of technological changes wrought in the fifty years between Warp’s birth and the book’s initial publication. I mean, he started out in an environment where his mother spent all night repairing clothing by the light of a coal oil lamp and where he and his slightly older brother were allowed to get their own rifle when they were about 10 as long as they would hunt jackrabbits to eat. When I think about the changes I’ve seen since my early days in the 1970s, we’ve got, what? Oh, the “Internet,” which is an extension of computer networks I was using when I was twelve. So we’ve got all the LOLcats we want, but on the 1970s, men were walking on the moon. It doesn’t seem fair, does it?

At any rate, the writing and presentation of the book are a bit slapdash in spots. Sometimes, the chapters collect unconnected incidents and musings where stray sentences of unrelated memories just sort of drop in and then go, almost as though this was dictated while his mind wandered and no one edited it. But overall, it’s a cool book, and at 73 pages, it’s an easy read in one sitting. The book was published and kept in print in association with the Pioneer Village, so you can probably pick one up if you’re in Minden, Nebraska, on vacation. Which I have considered, briefly, on the weight of the book.

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A Penny Saved Is A Penny Earned; A Federal Dollar Saved Is A Fiscal Disaster For Someone

Brian J. Noggle

The Government Services Agency, recently in the news for its expensive and lavish conferences which sometimes mocked the thought of fiscal restraint, has cut a conference from its docket. St. Louis businesses who would have benefited from the largesse this time around are unhappy:

That was the case this week, when a scandal-plagued federal agency, still reeling from revelations about a lavish conference in Sin City, pulled the plug on an upcoming gathering here in the Gateway City.

Now 10 downtown hotels are left with a bunch of empty rooms and wondering if they will ever get paid.

The General Services Agency, which manages nuts-and-bolts federal purchasing, told St. Louis convention officials this week that they are canceling a big energy trade show scheduled for America’s Center next month. It would have filled nearly 2,500 hotel rooms downtown for four nights, generating an estimated $6 million in hotel and convention spending, plus cab rides, meals and more. Now? Nothing.

“It’s impossible to fill almost 2,500 hotel rooms for four or five nights in a month,” said Kathleen “Kitty” Ratcliffe, president of the St. Louis Convention and Visitors Commission. “Those hotels are going to sit empty. Cab drivers won’t be working. Restaurants won’t be as busy.”

As we have seen in Missouri, we get an article from this template when the legislature performs any sort of spending restraint that caps spending increases, reallocates fiscal resources according to some sense of priorities, or even eliminates some programs. Open your local paper today, and I’ll bet you’ll find a story about people who won’t receive money from the state or nonprofits who will not receive some sort of state funding. I even had a full schtick going during the Blunt governorship pointing out all the people Matt Blunt hated by cutting their funding.

It’s easy to report on the people who lose the federal dollars because that impact is focused, and journalists can find people to quote and photograph. It’s easy to mobilize these people to call their legislators to get that funding restored.

The savings impact, though, is diffused throughout the budget. That $6,000,000, not all of it government funds, will get spent on something else. But, still, savings are savings. Cancel a couple of these conferences, and you can buy an Apache. Which is more important to the country? Ask the GSA or some energy company, and they’ll say the conference. Ask any number of soldiers, if they think about it, and they’ll say air support. That’s optimistic, of course; the six million dollars will remain in the GSA budget for something like a fleet of Chevy Volts or something, but still, that’s at least not quite as ephemeral as a conference.

It’s unfortunate that the city of St. Louis’s publicly funded convention facilities have lost publicly funded conferences to trickle some money into the hands of actual citizens and torrents of amenities into the pockets, maws, and alcohol-fueled sleep of government employees and government hangers on. But it’s a step in the right direction, and further steps, if they’re taken, will lead to news stories much like this one, rending garments and wailing.

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The Two Commercial Interests, Hey?

Brian J. Noggle

Normally, David Nicklaus is pretty reasonable in his columns for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. But in his latest, In heavyweight fight over card fees, consumers are the likely losers, he underemphasizes an important point:

When two big commercial interests start a fight, consumers would be wise to watch their wallets.

So it is with the dispute between banks and retailers over swipe fees, which the store incurs every time you pay with plastic. The fees average about 2 percent of each transaction and have risen over time.

Congress capped the swipe fee on debit card transactions, costing banks an estimated $8 billion a year.

So whose fault is it that you’re going to have to pay a premium, maybe, at certain shops to use a credit card?

Congress. Or, more to the point, the former Democrat-controlled national legislature that gave us Dodd-Frank.

I’ve given a stray thought to the impact of this settlement. Will retail establishments start charging a 5% premium (or giving a 5% discount) to people who pay with cash? Maybe.

If Amazon doesn’t do it, small businesses (or larger businesses) that charge 5% extra will lose business to Amazon and larger businesses that don’t charge the premium. That business decision will cause more smaller businesses to leave the field. Thanks, Congress! Of course, this will get blamed on large banks and credit card companies who need to maintain their product margin and additional costs of compliance with Dodd-Frank and its Frankenagency’s whims (what, doesn’t the Secretary of Health and Human Services get to arbitrarily impose anything with this legislation? How did she get left out of something passed between 2009 and 2011?).

Hey, let’s travel on a tangent: Why, this very week, I ate at a small business that had a sign offering a 5% discount for cash. When I paid for the bill with cash, the discount was not applied. I didn’t quibble with it. That 5% just came out of the tip. But whenever I see all those twee signs, pictures-with-words that pass for insight on Facebook, and whatnot that says “Buy from a small business” as though a small business is inherently more moral than a large business, I can’t help but think of the times when I’ve been rooked, overcharged, or otherwise immorally treated by a small business. Caveat emptor, I know, but still, the sentiment is twee. I buy from whomever is convenient, least expensive, best quality, and whatnot. Sometimes I like to buy from a small business because I like to support small business. But there’s no moral compulsion to do so, and some small business people are only limited in their immorality by the fact that Bank of America or Unilever have not bought them out and brought them into the executive ranks of a large business.

Where was I? Oh, yes. To sum up: Dodd-Frank sucks, and Congressional action has made things more expensive for consumers, but again in a fashion where they can frame capitalism for it.

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Book Report: The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman (1995)

Brian J. Noggle

Book coverThis book offers a template through which you can view the relationship with your significant other, typically a spouse as this is a lightly Christian-flavored book (although it’s lighter than something like So What’s The Difference, so non-Christians can get something from this book if Christianity does not offend them). Chapman identifies five distinct silos of behavior types to which classify interactions with one’s significant other (or others–more on that later). He uses the metaphor of a “love tank,” a vessel that holds positive feelings towards one’s SO, which is constantly draining but that you can fill up with one or more actions in the template.

The five love languages (sorry, apparently this is a registered trademark, more appropriately The 5 Love Languages®) are:

  • Words of Affirmation, which is saying something nice.
  • Quality Time, doing something together.
  • Receiving Gifts, which relies on physical tokens.
  • Acts of Service, which is doing something for someone.
  • Physical Touch, which is pats, hugs, holding hands, and sex.

So finding your partner’s primary love language and showing love for your partner will help to “top off” that love tank and keep the relationship strong and healthy. Okay.

Well, it is a new framework in which to view one’s relationship, and by thinking of the relationship and the trappings/interactions of the relationship qua relationship, I can see where this is helpful. However, the book focuses a lot on primary love language, where I can see how using more than one of them as expressions of love in daily interactions can be more beneficial still than only focusing on one (although one might have primacy over the others, yes, I get that).

Chapman explains or wonders whether the source of the primary love languages stems from youth, what the child lacked at home or how the child saw his parents interact and chose to emulate or reject those patterns of behavior. That can be a little forensic, really, and what matter most is in the present application of the framework.

The book is told as a series of composite sketches, where Chapman talks to people or couples and they have epiphanies every chapter. I guess I can live with that fictionalized dramatic recreations of complete conversations. But after he gets through with his thesis, Chapman tacks on a couple chapters of further examples that were a bit superfluous and includes a chapter of using the framework with your children, which I didn’t find consistent with the premise that the source of the primary love language came from childhood. I can see it being something on the nature side of the ledger, but in the first chapters, the source of the primary love language comes from the nurture side. I dunno. Didn’t work for me.

So it’s an interesting read and might be a new framework, a template for considering your interactions with others, but it’s just a template, ultimately, and if or how you choose to apply it should remain up to you.

Books mentioned in this review:

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John Brunner Discovers Sarah Steelman, Todd Akin Were Legislators

Brian J. Noggle

John Brunner has funded a pair of Web sites, Sarah Steelman Facts and Todd Akin Facts that illustrate that both served in legislators and voted. Thus, the fact that they voted on some things that conservative bloggers don’t like is evidence that they’re RINOs or something.

Unfortunately, Mr. Brunner has no voting record to attack. Unfortunately, he does have a record as a businessman, so he’s made some decisions that were good business decisions that might conflict with conservative principles.

Jeez, Louise, kids. The Claire McCaskill ads that say, “Even members of his/her own party say….” start here. So how about you focus more on what you believe and what you’ll do rather than cast aspersions on your fellow party members?

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Visiting Smallin Civil War Cave near Ozark, Missouri

Brian J. Noggle

The Smallin Civil War Cave is a commercial cave located just north of Branson just off of County Highway NN. It’s sort of accessible from US 60 between Springfield and Branson, but you do have to wind down a county highway and through some other streets to get there. I headed down there one Friday morning to beat the crowds, and I found the little complex easily enough–at every turn, there’s a sign indicating which way to go to the cave (but you’d better remember where you turned, since there are no signs on the way out to guide you back to NN–but it’s not that hard).

The complex has ample parking for cars, buses, and RVs. Most of them weren’t in use at a little after 10am on a Friday morning. I spoke to Mrs. Bright, the owner of the complex, and she said the caves are the most busy on Friday afternoons and Monday mornings, when visitors to and from Branson visit on the way to Branson or on the way home.

Smallin Cave Entrance

The Visitor Center is the staging point for the cave tours. Outside, it offers a free crawl box for children who’ve been cooped up in automobiles for a couple of hours and who will not have the chance to go off-roading during the guided tour of the caves:

Smallin Cave crawl box

The crawl box is relatively new construction and is very sturdy, which doesn’t diminish the excitement for the children but comforts the minds of the parents. My boys went through the box several times and could have probably spent the whole morning there.

A mining sluice also stands outside the Visitor Center; you can buy bags of sand and gems inside to recreate the experience of panning for treasures, although the Smallin Cave itself does not have panning or mining history (except for the native Americans who mined chirt in the cave).

Listen to me talking about Smallin Cave authoritatively based on one guided tour. Why, I’m almost as good as a tour guide already.

The Visitor Center offers a wide variety of geological and Civil War themed items, and as I mentioned, it’s the staging area for the guided tours. The guided tours last about an hour and cost $15.95 for adults and $8.95 for children, so the cost of visiting definitely runs to Tourist on the scale. They also offer a “wild” tour which means you go off the concrete path for two hours, climbing through the cave like a real spelunker. Additionally, they offer other events that involve sitting around a campfire, eating, and hearing Civil War stories. We went with the guided tour.

Just outside, an Indian marker tree points to the cave location:

Smallin Cave Indian Marker tree

Native Americans used to bend saplings to make them grow in this fashion to point toward trails or important land features. Like the cave entrance.

The tour actually includes three caves. The first cave, which I believe the guide called Fielding Cave, is a smaller cave on the property:

Smallin Cave Fielding Cave

This cave was the home* to a couple of large bears throughout the ages as well as serving as a camp site for prehistoric people who might have mined chirt there and cooked dinner there. They probably did not live there as the same time as the bears. The tour guide also pointed out that they are working with Missouri State University to archeologicate some artifacts from the cave.

Fielding Cave is just a quick stop to whet your appetite. An opening act, if you will.

Disappointment Cave is just a quick point-out:

Smallin Cave Disappointment Cave

They call it Disappointment Cave because it’s only twelve feet deep and it takes as long to climb to it as it does to explore it.

Smallin Cave has a varied history*. In the 1960s, the first commercial owner ran it as a tourist destination and installed some of the amenities enjoyed by visitors today, including the concrete walkway that ensures that visitors won’t get their feet wet on the tour. This proprietor apparently liked to play up the tenuous connection to the Civil War by loading the property down with memorabilia. After he passed away, his heirs did not claim the property, and it was sold for taxes. A church organization bought it and used it as a camp site for some youth ministry. Its dedication plaque remains on the wall:

Smallin Cave Camp Sonrise plaque

The church eventually stopped using the cave as a campsite, and it remained fallow until the new owners took it over a couple years back. But as we approached the cave and the entrance chamber, I could understand why this served as a gathering place in many centuries. Aside from the fact that the cave was comfortably cool on a hot summer day (startlingly so, I noticed as we emerged), the end of the canyon and cave mouth make a natural amphitheatre.

At any rate, the tour includes a quick stop on a platform designed for a good picture (available at the gift shop after your tour) that frames you against the cave entrance:

Smallin Cave entrance from inside the cave

As you can see, the concrete path has good railings on it, so you don’t have to fear falling into the nameless depths of some cave pool that’s really only a couple of feet deep.

The tour guide will point out the normal features of caves, including soda straws, stalagmites, stalactites, and other features such as curtains:

Smallin Cave curtains

If you’re into serious spelunking, of course this isn’t the tour for you. But if you’ve never been in a cave before or if you’re way amateur into visiting caves, it’s a good introduction and very interesting. And safe.

Along the way, you might see some of the animals that live in the cave, including bats:

Smallin Cave bat

If you’re lucky, you might spot any number of salamanders, crayfish, frogs, and whatnot that call the cave home. We did.

The main entrance to the cave is large (claimed to be the largest in the world, and it’s certainly the largest in this particular canyon), but there does come a point where the path narrows and curves and you cannot see the outside. This, my friends, is the Claustrophobia Point:

Smallin Cave Claustrophobia Point

I got over it, though.

The tour ends a couple hundred yards into the cave, past Claustrophobia Point, but the cave goes on beyond that:

Smallin Cave end of walkway

A wild tour takes you further. The guide says that the cave system has yet to be completely explored, as the deepest parts yet explored take about five hours to reach*.

The return trip is much quicker along the walkway, but the guide pointed out a number of fossils in the ceiling of the cave, including the newly discovered shark tooth, and a new stalagmite forming on the walkway (slowly).

When we emerged, as I mentioned, it was a bright and hot day outside.

Smallin Cave entrance from inside

Because of the drought this year, the cave was dry. Much of the time, the cave has running water and that emerges into the canyon. Water runs over the rimstone dams and from the ceiling in some places, as I judge from pictures on the cave’s Web site. I’m interested in returning when I can see these features, but I’m glad to have gone when the water was down so I could hear the guide better without the roaring of the water.

Overall, I enjoyed the visit and learned a lot. I won’t say it awakened a great love of actual spelunking in me, since I still prefer to have an emergency exit I can elbow and claw my way to in the event of an emergency, but the experience is akin to visiting a museum: it encapsulates a field of study into something I can access and determine what knowledge, if any, to pursue.

That said, I do have to reiterate this is a commercial operation. The owners were recently profiled in the Springfield Business Journal. The existence of this company and others of its ilk rather flies in the modern governmental wisdom that only government entities or nonprofits can steward these natural resources effectively or educate people to their beauty, structure, and history. It’s untrue.

Also, a note if you’re thinking of going: You can find coupons for 10% off the admission on the Web site and in various tourist brochures and information packets. Don’t forget to use one, like I did.

* Many of the facts related here were originally related by the tour guide, and they might be based on rumor or have been presented for entertainment. Ask a tour guide, and he or she will admit it. Kevin Bright has written a book about caves in the Ozarks, and in a chapter on commercial operations, he explains that this is so and that it’s an entertainment business more than an academic endeavor. So view the tour guide, any tour guide actually, more as a storyteller than as an authoritative and definitive source of anything.

Also note that this whole account is based on my memory of what a tour guide said. That’s a double whammy. It’s what a tour guide said that’s posted on the Internet. That’s a double negative of sorts.

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Book Report: Painting on Glass and Ceramic by Karen Embry (2008)

Brian J. Noggle

Book coverThis book is the second of the two books on glass and ceramic painting that I borrowed from the library. It, too, talks about the techniques of painting on glass and includes a section on painting on clay that you’re going to fire in a kiln. Only the first part is relevant to me, if any is at all. The designs, projects, and templates within are a little too cutesy for me, with little frogs and lots of words in script that doesn’t match the kind of things I have in mind. So I guess this is worth a read if you’re into those sorts of things, but I’m not sure if the techniques alone make it worth buying. But if you want to, notice the handy links throughout the post here.

Books mentioned in this review:

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Jay Nixon Vetoes Bad Legislation Missouri Republicans Passed

Brian J. Noggle

Last week, Jay Nixon vetoed a law introduced and passed by the Missouri legislature.

The Missouri legislature, dominated by Republicans, passed an inexorable, inexplicable bill that would have transmogrified a business relationship to favor one powerful party in the relationship:

Distributors, including St. Louis-based Major Brands, had pushed for the change in Missouri law that would once again make their relationships fall under franchise protections – limiting producers from dumping distributors for competitors.

The bill would have tied distributors to alcohol producers in much the same way that national conglomerates such as McDonald’s are tied to their local franchise restaurant owners under Missouri law.

It’s unclear to this poor little Tea Party Republican what’s so special about the distributors of liquor as opposed to the middle men who resell other retail goods from producers to consumers. What is clear is that the powerful, monied interests who own the distributorships wanted to use their influence in Jefferson City to get the Missouri Legislature to alter the rules to make it so that producers could not do business with other distributors who offered better terms to the producers.

A free market like that would lead to more efficient delivery methods and lower prices to consumers through competition, but less money in the pockets of the established distributors. Of course, they cannot abide by that.

It’s less clear why Republicans in the legislature wanted to indenture wineries, distilleries, and small brewers to those established distributorships.

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