Replacement windows

Yesterday we finally had three replacement windows installed – two in my office, one in our living room. Polo and Guillermo from ProWindows did a great job, taking the time to get everything right.

We ordered the Anderson Woodwright windows from Home Depot several months ago, thinking that we had someone to install them. Then the windows sat on our front porch for the entire spring. When we realized we had to make other arrangements, ProWindows graciously agreed to take our small labor-only job and fit us in rather rapidly. Arte came to look at the situation on the same day, checked the measurements, and made sure he understood what we saw as the complicating factors (since nothing on an old house is simple). They found a space in their schedule a few weeks later, arrived exactly when they said they would, and did exactly what they were supposed to. Now the old storms and sashes are gone, the weight pockets are insulated, the exterior wood frame is wrapped in aluminum, and we have three new windows! All that’s left is for us to polyurethane the insides, add a couple of aftermarket handles, and appreciate the noise reduction and the reduced air and water infiltration. Well, and look askance at the 20 other windows on the first and second floors that would clearly like to be replaced. We’re already making our priority list for the next round, and ProWindows will definitely get the job.

The upgraded screen that we got on one window definitely makes a difference in appearance, with the finer mesh being much less visible. The maple interiors are much more even in color than pine, and match the new office floor. We’ll have to stain the maple on the living room window, but the maple will take a stain more easily than pine. I’m surprised that Anderson doesn’t offer a factory finish on the wood interiors – none of the window manufacturers do, but the first one that does will have a definite marketplace advantage over the others. Nobody would spend thousands of dollars on unfinished kitchen cabinets, but somehow that’s the status quo for wood replacement windows.

It’s still not easy to fit in a window air conditioner and seal the gaps, which is a failure of engineering. The only improvement I’ve seen in window air conditioners (aside from baby steps towards energy efficiency) has been the slide-in chassis, where you install the relatively lightweight chassis into the window and then slide the core of the unit into the chassis. I’d love to see flexible and insulated side panels that can properly seal to the window frame, rubber on the top and bottom of the chassis to reduce vibration and seal the gaps to the sash and sill, and ports on the side panels that can be opened to chase away nest-building birds. And would it really be that hard to design a quieter air conditioner? Manufacturers advertise their units as quiet, knowing that people care about that. But they don’t list the noise level in sones or decibels, since they also know that their units are not actually quiet at all. And with the exterior noise reduction from our new windows, interior noises become more noticeable.

New rules for mortgages

Under the Fed’s new rules for mortgages, I would currently not own a home. The Fed is banning no-doc loans, also known in various forms as stated income loans or no income verification loans. I used such a loan to buy my house, and as the owner of a small business I had no other easy option. While these loans have frequently been lumped into the subprime mess, I did not actually pay a higher rate on my no income verification loan.

Perhaps new rules will allow business owners to prove cash flow through bank statements, or allow banks to consider the indirect evidence of always being timely with state and federal tax payments, payroll obligations, and other serious fiduciary obligations. Perhaps down payments and equity levels and debt ratios will be a considered factor. But I suspect that the dream of home ownership just moved out of reach for another segment of our society.

Rockport harbor

Photo by Michael

The New Yorker

I’m appalled at the July 21 cover of The New Yorker, which rather straightforwardly illustrates many of the recent smears against the Obamas. Is this somehow different from Fox News asking whether the Obamas touching fists is a “terrorist fist jab”? In what way is it satire, as opposed to reinforcement, to draw a picture of exactly the garbage that right-wing radio hosts and callers are constantly spewing?



The editors of The New Yorker should be ashamed of themselves.

Added later:

I, and many others, condemn the Obama cover of The New Yorker. I think it was mean and stupid for them to publish that cover. I have told them that I am considering canceling my long-time subscription because of it, and I would encourage other readers to do likewise. Free speech is meant to protect the public discourse, and condemnation is sometimes an important part of that public discourse. I would be happy to see readers cancel their subscriptions, advertisers pull their ads, and newsstands return that issue; a serious marketplace failure would be an appropriate consequence of a spectacular failure in judgment.

None of that is censorship. I am not advocating interfering with their means of publication or wishing for any governmental sanctions. I just don’t think people should listen to them or give them money. It is important to differentiate between respect for the right to speak and respect for what is said.

Humpbacks

Photo by Michael

We went on a whale watch out of Gloucester on Friday for Lisa’s birthday, and the sightings were really amazing. The first humpback we found did a spinning full breach; it’s unbelievable to see a whale in mid-air. Over the afternoon we saw about 15 humpbacks close to the boat, including two humpback calves, as well as several fin whales and several minke whales further away. We saw the humpbacks swimming in formation in groups of 2, 3, and 4. A group of 4 surfaced close to our boat and swam directly under our boat from one side to the other. One of the whales rolled over in the water to show us his flippers, and another came straight up with his whole head out of the water. We got very used to the pattern of seeing (and hearing) the whale’s blowhole spouting water into the air, then seeing their back with dorsal fin curving out of the water for ages, and finally the elegant tail on best view before a long dive.


Photo by Michael

Individual humpbacks were first named in 1976 when a fisherman noticed that the whales around his boat two days in a row appeared to be the same. He told a naturalist he knew, who went out with him and realized that the tail coloration could uniquely identify individual humpbacks. Those first two were named Salt and Pepper, and one of the whales we saw on Friday was Pepper, still summering at Stellwagen Bank 32 years later.


Photo by Michael

The calves look large when you see them on their own, and then you see an adult and realize how small the calves are comparatively. The adult whales are up to 60 or 70 feet long, and move incredibly gracefully. We also saw hundreds of seabirds, mostly gulls and shearwaters, in far higher concentrations near the whales than you see them on the shore. Combined with perfect weather and a very smooth ocean, we could not ask for a better way to spend the afternoon.

Humpback with gulls and shearwaters

Photo by Michael

Bug identification?

Photo by Michael

Lisa’s birthday salad

Salad: Equal parts chopped cucumber (I used an Armenian cucumber, seeds removed), avocado, and feta cheese. Drizzle on a little lemon oil. Add small amount of chopped tomato (I used yellow cherry tomatoes that we’re growing) and a little mint. Stir all together, bring close to room temperature (assuming the feta was refrigerated).

Dressing: Squeeze garlic scape in a garlic press to extract a flavored green liquid, add olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Presentation of dressing is best unmixed in a clear glass bowl, separate from the salad.

Office supplies of the future

1. CD-shaped post-it notes. Round, slightly smaller than a CD, with no hole in the middle (because you wouldn’t want to put the CD in a drive with the note still attached). Allows you to label a CD temporarily without writing on it or depending on a case.

2. Clear post-it notes. Variety of sizes. Allows you to mark up a document in a layered way, where you can also remove individual notes.

Production notes

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing

Give Macbeth something to do during this soliloquy. Macbeth as serial killer in his clippings room, destroying his trophies as the police close in. Macbeth as Nixon, removing recording devices and shredding tapes. Macbeth discovering his enemies’ listening devices. Macbeth discovering that he’s actually been an unwitting participant on Scotland’s new hit reality show Thane Wars!

Patrick Stewart described Ian McKellen’s advice, which was that the key word to emphasize in the first line is “and,” not “tomorrow.” That’s fine, but let’s use a page-a-day for the tomorrows. Then we just need a reason why he’s using a page-a-day.

Today we declare

We declare that all people are created equal. We declare that we should, and shall, govern ourselves. We declare that we shall embrace opportunities, pursue our dreams, and always strive for greater purpose. We declare that we can live together, one nation, under no one but God.

This we declare because we want the world to hear it. This we declare because we want the world to hold us to it. This we declare because we believe it, because we will live up to it, because we can live up to it. Yes, we can.

Today we celebrate a great declaration signed on this date 232 years ago. The founders of this nation signed a declaration of independence, and a declaration of so much more. They set out for us a vision of a nation that would act as a beacon of hope and freedom, a nation that would come to lead the world, a nation that would come to change the world. Of those to whom much is given, much is expected. My friends, we have much to live up to, because this nation has given us so much.

We must continue to lead the world, and that means regaining the world’s trust in us and our trust in the world. So today we declare that we still hold our Constitution dear. Today we declare that we place our rights above our fears, our values above our differences, and with head held high we shall meet the world’s challenges without ever abandoning our principles or our allies. We declare that we will rebuild at home and help to rebuild abroad, because we do not have to choose one over the other. We declare that we are one nation, and that we live in one world, under no one but God.

The power of ideals lived up to will always prevail. Let us live up to the promise of America, and if we do that, we can change the world. That is what we celebrate today.

Here comes the sun

Yesterday was full of good news for solar power. The federal Bureau of Land Management decided to reverse its insane moratorium on applications to build solar plants on public lands, and our governor signed an energy bill which will make it easier to sell solar power (and other power) back to the grid and also allow power companies to lease solar panels to homeowners. That last point should make it possible for homeowners to add solar panels without the large up-front investment being an obstacle.

Hammocks

Pottery Barn has a very appealing 4-pole 2-person hammock:



I like the idea that the hammock is stabilized at all four corners, so you can’t fall out of it. But it’s not really a hammock if it can’t swing, is it? It might be able to rock if you remove the small braces on the ground, but that just makes it an enormous rocking chair.

Public input

The arts council that I’m on is required to collect public input every three years to determine in what ways we should adjust our funding priorities. It’s a good requirement in theory, like the requirement that our meetings be open to the public. In practice, nobody ever comes to our meetings.

We had been planning to hold a big public meeting at City Hall where we would, um, well, ok, planning may be too strong a word. We had been vaguely contemplating a meeting of some sort where people would provide us with clear and thoughtful input. Or at least advocate for their own interests. Or at least show up. We didn’t have very high hopes, really.

Then someone from another arts council mentioned that they had recently tried doing a public survey instead of a public meeting, and had received far more input that way. So this time around, we’re trying a survey instead. It’s not the most exciting survey, but we’ve received about 20 responses already and we can look over those responses in a calm and collected way. It makes a lot of sense. We’re even planning to include a version of the survey in the 14,000 water bills that will be mailed out next month, and if we can get even a 0.5% response rate, we’ll be drowning in public input. And we can probably increase our response rate if we add a question about the water rates, though we run the risk of getting blamed for the water rates. Nobody really knows what the arts council does; maybe we set the water rates. It wouldn’t surprise me, and I’m on the arts council.

Being on the collecting side of a survey has given me a different perspective on surveys. When we went to an art exhibit on Sunday and they were trying to get people to fill out their survey, I felt obligated to hold up my end. And a little bad that I didn’t have a copy of our survey to hand them in return.

Budgets

Our city is now going through the sort of budget crunch that neighboring cities went through several years ago. I’m not sure how we avoided it for so long, but the consequences are starting to become clear. Increased class sizes and much less foreign language instruction, dozens of layoffs in the school system, no new trees planted by a city that used to be proud to be a National Arbor Day Foundation’s Tree City USA, no replacements for retired cops and firefighters, and a 91% cut to the budget for part-time help in the library.

City Hall is feeling the pinch, too. Not a single layoff, of course. The mayor sets the budget, and the mayor runs City Hall. But no shifting from answering machines to new-fangled voicemail. That would be about communication, and the city is resolutely opposed to communication. They’re actually slashing the IT budget as well, and removing a number of high-speed Internet lines serving City Hall. You’d think Comcast would be willing to donate a little broadband to City Hall in thanks for the egregious monopoly that the city enforces (No FIOS for YOU!), but the budget is really just an excuse for City Hall to become even more remote.

Daily life in the city won’t change much. Parents will be rightly concerned about the school system, and there will be pockets of public discussion about property tax overrides and debt exclusions, but most people care about their personal economic situation much more than the city’s. And that’s ok, or it would be if families weren’t all making those same choices that the city is making.