Living in the Pacific Northwest

Up on the rooooooof

5 Comments

Who would have thought it would be so fun? Getting a new roof, I mean.

I’ve been embarrassed by our roof for years. It never leaked, but it was surely the ugliest roof in Seattle. The brick red clashed with our purple door, and the top layer of shingles was curled and disintegrating. The north side was speckled with green moss.

If we were going to sell the house, a new roof was in order. We got bids, then made our decision half on cost, and half on gut feel. Instead of the huge corporation with many crews, we chose a sole-proprietor. The owner of Marmot Roofing, Darrell Bednark, seemed reliable and trustworthy. He’d originally been in business with his father, so I figured he had roofing in his blood.

Our next task was picking out a color. Since shingles don’t come in colors we think are cool (like plum, goldenrod, or teal), we narrowed our choices to three shades of gray and one of blue. We took photographs of houses with those colors, then used Photoshop to put them on a photo of our house. It was like watching an old lady try on different hats!
Our house with a silly roof
A few days before the job started, stacks of materials started appearing in our driveway. Rolls of black felt, trashcans, buckets, and … shovels? Were they planning on landscaping the yard when they were finished?

On Monday morning, I was too excited to sleep in. Barry and I were cooking breakfast when the roofers arrived and started unloading a 4-foot high stack of plywood. At first, I was mortified that this army of workers — all men — could see right in our kitchen windows, and I toyed with eating breakfast in the living room. Then I decided, what the heck, we were paying almost ten thousand dollars for this work. We deserved to watch!

We climbed onto tall stools at the breakfast bar, our noses against the window, eagerly watching the activity in the yard. Since the first part of the job was tearing off the old roof, the roofers were laying tarps over the grass and landscaping. Then they leaned huge sheets of plywood against the house to protect the siding from the falling bits of old roof. Just as I lifted the first forkful to my mouth, enjoying the breakfast entertainment, someone leaned a sheet of plywood over the outside of our window. Poof! Instant darkness, and no more show.

For the next half hour, we listened to the various noises, trying to figure them out. First there was the activity in the yard, punctuated by thumping noises against the walls. Next, the characteristic twang of an aluminum ladder, right next to the breakfast bar window. Then, booted feet climbing the ladder. This was followed by herds of elephants on the roof.

There were four guys, but one of them just did cleanup on the ground. So all that noise was coming from three guys! At first, they just walked around, distributing tools and evaluating the job. Suddenly, right over my head, a cacophony of scraping and banging started. I couldn’t stand it, I had to go out and see what they were doing to my poor house.

Aha! That’s what the shovels were for! They used them to scrape off the three old layers of roof. In a short time, they’d exposed the rafters and layers of old lath that covered them. I took a few photos of our naked roof and went back inside. (that plywood on the bottom right is covering my breakfast bar window!)
Tearing off the old roof
After a while, it was possible to ignore the hideous noises coming from the roof-shovelers. Eventually, though, they stopped shoveling, and the noise got even worse. Bang! BANG! BANGITY BANGITY BANG!

Back out I went, camera in hand. The shoveling had removed all the old shingles, but it hadn’t removed the nails holding those shingles on. Rather than remove the old nails, they hammered them into the lath. Every single nail on our roof was represented by one of those maddening “bangs.”

Once the nails were all hammered flush, they began to cut plywood to cover the roof. Brian and Brad, on the roof, took measurements and called them down the Darrell. He cut rectangles and triangles with a Skilsaw, handing up the pieces to be nailed into place. They covered half the roof in just a few hours.
Sheathing the roof in plywood
Each time the rhythm changed, I went outside with the camera to capture the beginning of the next phase. There was the shoveling rhythm, the nail-pounding rhythm, the plywood sheathing rhythm, and then the fairly quiet process of stapling down the felt. Then it got almost quiet as they cleaned up the yard.
Stapling down the tarpaper
Heading outside for another photo opportunity, I chatted briefly with Darrell. “When they bring the shingles, where will they put them?” I wondered how the pile of shingles would compare to the pile of plywood. “They have a boom truck,” he replied. “They’ll put them right on the roof.”

The second day, the process continued on the other half of the roof. Barry and I ducked out for some errands, and when we returned, the amazing boom truck was parked in the street.

An enormous crane hung over our house, and the roofers were unloading a pallet of shingles up there. There was no one in the cab of the truck, and no sign of a control panel on the truck. Barry and I walked around the truck, trying to figure out how they were maneuvering the crane with its thousands of pounds of payload.
The boomtruck dropping shingles on the house
The answer was a young fellow wearing a complex remote slung over his shoulder. He looked to be in his early 20’s. I was certain his qualifications for the job included a lifetime of video games. How else would you develop that kind of manual dexterity?

The installation of the new roof was anticlimactic. The tear-off had gone so quickly that the roofers had already driven to the store and picked up a couple packages of shingles, and several rows of them were down when the boom truck arrived.

Up on the roof, the guys were having a good time, joking around with each other while they worked. Sometime on the second day, when I headed out to take a photo of the progress, they started hamming it up. After that, I couldn’t get a photo of Brian and Brad actually working, because every time they saw me come out with the camera, they would stop work and strike a pose.
Brian and Brad hamming it up
It was one of the most cheerful, efficient work crews I’ve ever witnessed. There wasn’t any complaining or swearing, not even any frowning! They just worked swiftly and competently, each one contributing to the team effort. No sidewalk supervisors, either — Darrell did as much of the work and the cleanup as anyone else.

The whole job took three short days, practically no time at all after what Barry and I had gone through to get bids, compare them, and pick a color. And when Darrell came by the following week, invoice in hand, we were glad to see him. As I wrote the check, we chatted like old friends about all kinds of things, not just roofing. The experience was such a positive one, I found myself revising my thoughts about work. If it’s as much fun as the Marmot roofing crew indicated, one of these days I’ll have to try it again!

Family Tales

The end of Prussia’s grand adventure

1 Comment

Prussia passed away this morning, at 5:45. She was resting on our bed when the end came, so the three of us were together.

The loss of our dear feline friend leaves an enormous void in our lives.

She loved walking in the woods, especially on Barry’s parents’ property on Camano Island. There’s where her final resting place will be.

Family Tales, Philosophy

Wonderful Excess

2 Comments

At its bare minimum, life really doesn’t require much. You breathe, you eat, you drink, you go to the bathroom, you sleep. Being able to walk between the bedroom and the bathroom helps, but is optional. Shopping for food and cooking it, cleaning the bathroom, or even working to earn money is another level up..

But that minimum isn’t what life is really about. Life is about having the exuberance to go out and run and dance or play, or the passion to make a difference in the world, or the drive to have a successful and interesting career, or just a wild and crazy dream to follow wherever it takes you.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately because I’m watching how much energy and life is left inside Prussia. When she was younger, she was the picture of that delightful excess, and would run around and play, and jump and try to catch birds or attack any other cats she saw. In the last few years she became an old cat: She wasn’t really into playing and very seldom ran anywhere. We had trained her not to get on kitchen counters, eventually she couldn’t jump there from the floor even if she wanted to. She slept a lot, but cats always do that. Just the same, I thought she was sleeping more. She still wandered all over the house, still hated other cats and let them know it. Recently, we start placing “steps” for her, so she could climb up to places she used to be able to jump easily.

Prussia has been hanging in there at the bare minimum level for about three weeks now. We can clearly see that there is hardly any flesh between the bones and the fluff. But the harder thing is to watch is how little life is left in her. She manages the bare minimum pretty well. She breathes. (And we check to make sure that she continues) She sleeps. (Probably twenty-two hours a day of sleeping, napping, and resting.) She still drinks, but not much, and is pretty dehydrated. She eats, now mostly a little gravy around the catfood. She goes to the bathroom. (with difficulty, and I won’t gross anybody out with details!) She can walk, but she isn’t very steady and doesn’t try very often. Sometimes it looks like she didn’t find the energy to put her tail where it belongs but just sat on it in a un-cat-like way. Her world is getting smaller.

Whenever we see a sign of energy above that bare minimum, we celebrate. Even if it is just her tail twitching in annoyance at us, her mother hens. This morning we woke with her at our feet and heard her purring. And when we offered her food, she ate it. Two or three times in the last week, she found the energy to climb the stairs and check out the upstairs of the house. Once she even walked out the front door and wandered through the yard.(Margaret had to convince her not to crawl under the fence into the neighbor’s yard for fear that she would get in a cat fight that would finish her.) Other times she is just very alert and bright-eyed, looking around at us. I wonder if she remembers jumping to the top of the fridge or the fireplace mantel.

Some people I know aren’t able to live life with all this wonderful excess; they are just able to manage the basics of survival, plus (perhaps) a job of some sort. I know some people are sick, or depressed, or very old and infirm, or just somehow lost, but it saddens me to see life a reduced when it doesn’t need to be. I hope to live with as much of this wonderful excess as I can for as long as I can — maybe even equivalent to Prussia’s ninety-and-counting cat years.

Family Tales

Food for thought

Leave a comment

Every morning, I wake up with the cat on my feet. That’s normal, for people who sleep with cats. But it’s become a source of terror for me, and I spend my first few moments contemplating my fear. What happens if I move my foot and the cat doesn’t? Finally, I get up my nerve and slowly slide my foot out from under her inert body. She twitches in response, and I breathe a sigh of relief. We have both lived another day.

Trying to get her to eat is my daily challenge. After a week without food, she finally consented to sip some of that magical elixir, tuna water. We even snuck some tuna into the water, and she ate that. But then she stopped, and we got desperate.

Perhaps the tuna water wasn’t fresh enough. We abandoned the open can in the fridge and opened another. And another. And … We talked with a good friend about the problem. “Try Fancy Feast. I don’t know what they put in there, but any cat will eat that stuff.” It worked for a couple of days. Now the half-full cans of Fancy Feast sit on top of the half-full tuna cans in the fridge. “Have you tried baby food?” asked the checker in the grocery store. Now there’s a half jar of baby food in there, too. Barry remembered a cat that lived to the ripe old age of 25 on cottage cheese. Prussia ate a teaspoon of the stuff. Now she has two shelves of half-eaten food in the fridge.

In the middle of respiratory bug that had me flat on my back for three days, I dragged myself into the kitchen, got out the saucepan, and set to work. I used tuna oil, butter, and flour to make a particularly odiferous (even with a stuffed-up nose) roux. I thinned it with fish and chicken stock and seasoned it with nutritional yeast, Prussia’s favorite. Then I spooned out a small dish of this “kitty gravy,” cooled it slightly, and presented it to the patient. She sighed, stood up on wobbly legs, and turned around, her backside facing the dish. “Suit yourself!” I harrumphed.

Barry and I are like anxious mother hens, using every excuse to go into the bedroom and check on her. She spends most of her days at the foot of our mattress on the floor, sleeping or sitting quietly. I try not to pester her, watching from the door until a twitching tail or ear lets me know that it is still “business as usual.” Occasionally, she gets annoyed with the attention and retreats under another bed. Then I have to get all the way down on the floor to see her tiny dark form. She glances up at me, serene, making me feel like a total fool, groveling on my hands and knees after the cat.

She has always been a proud cat, strutting gracefully with both head and awe-inspiring tail held high. I’m sure that’s the way she’ll want to be remembered. Me, I’m not proud. Maybe I can get her to eat by crawling around on the carpet on my hands and knees with this jar of baby food in one hand and a spoon in the other. The poor cat will probably die laughing. And I’m sure she’ll remember me that way.

Family Tales

Eleven Cents in the Bank

1 Comment

Yesterday, we took Prussia to the vet. We’d called ahead, letting him know that we wanted to set up a hospice plan for her.

He was kind, gentle, and nice, and Margaret was coping well at the time; I was almost able to keep my voice modulated normally, and my eyes were just a little moist. He explained that cats are very good at conserving their last energies, and that Prussia had used up most of her reserves by now. “It’s like you’re used to living on a dollar a day, but then you have no income, so you figure out how to live on a penny a day. Now you only have eleven cents in the bank, so you figure out how to live on a quarter of a cent a day.”

On the way home, we stopped at our friend Margaret’s house. We’d lived there for a year with Prussia, and she and Margaret’s cat, Clingon, were mortal enemies. When the van door was opened, Prussia started walking toward it like she was ready for a walk. So I put her harness and leash on. She walked me up the front steps, around the house to the back door. She knew the house, and wanted to be let in. When she saw her nemesis through the glass door, suddenly she showed her old aggressive streak, growling and hissing and almost lunging at him. I said to Prussia “Those eleven cents are yours to spend — do whatever you want with them!” We kept them separated, because this time, he might win the fight.

I don’t like the price I’m paying for all this, but I am amazed at how I have a much better understanding of what really is important. I remember saying a few years ago that I would be really sad someday because Prussia would eventually die, and I’ve been failing to groom her well enough to keep her coat clean and free of mats. (She did the job very well when she was much younger.) I was afraid she would die with her fur all a mess. It would have been easier if Prussia liked being groomed, but she doesn’t. Now I regret that just a week ago, I groomed her until she got mad at me.

Margaret has often told me the story of how this little tiny ball of fluff with a huge voice and every parasite known to feline-kind appeared outside her apartment. Since she had no cat food, Margaret gave her tuna, which figured prominently in her own menu at the time. Prussia has loved it ever since; she always got the water drained off, while Margaret got the fish (sometimes, Prussia got a little of the fish too). Menus have changed, and I never really liked canned tuna, so it’s become a rare treat for her. It took us five days after Prussia stopped eating cat food to realize that it was time to feed her anything she would eat. At first, we tried ice cream, milk, and cheese. People recommended Fancy Feast and baby food. But you should have seen her perk up when we brought a can of tuna to the bedroom and opened it in front of her. She slurped down the water and started eating again. She came into our world with canned tuna. She’s probably going to leave our world on canned tuna, too.

Cats, Family Tales

Speaking the Unspeakable

Leave a comment

Today, I said it. “Prussia may be dying.” Margaret said, “I was OK until you said it.” An hour or so later, I said, “I was OK until I said it too.”

We have been watching our cat slowly grow older and weaker for three or four years. She can barely jump anymore, she sleeps a lot, she’s getting bad mats in her fur; She has become a finicky eater and is losing weight. Margaret admits she has been preparing herself for a while now, even though she doesn’t exactly say for what. For the last year or two, Margaret gets upset when the cat “sleeps” or “naps” without quite closing her eyes. It would freak Margaret out, so she has taken to watching for Prussia’s side raising and lowering as she breathes.

We have often talked about how inconvenient it is to have such a long-lived cat — we have been planning to sail around the world, and we hear that kitty passports can be a real pain. It also means we can’t go away for long without either taking her with us or finding someone to take care of her. She is eighteen now, and would be nineteen sometime in July; We never really expected her to live this long anyhow. I guess we really expected her to live forever, like you always do.

But five days ago she pretty much stopped eating. I never worry at first when she does that, because she would often go a day or two hardly eating, and then get hungry the next day, and eat a lot of food. Today I said the unspeakable. However hard you try to prepare yourself, there is no preparation, and today I know that.

I am again remembering two things: First, nothing is permanent in this world; in other words, death is a unavoidable part of life. I’m sure I’ll spend the rest of my life learning this in the true and visceral way, not just intellectually. Second, nothing in life is certain. I have always expected to outlive Prussia, but I have no way of being sure that will happen.

Of course I’m still hoping she will recover her spark and fight her way back to heath…for a few months or years. But I can’t stop my brain from racing around through the other possibility and its consequences for us.

Friends Along the Way

New Haggis Traditions

2 Comments

A couple of years ago, Barry came home from work and asked me, “Are we doing anything January 25th?” I was in charge of our social calendar.

“There’s a PSCC raft-up at Port Madison that weekend,” I replied.

“Oh well,” he shrugged. “My coworker, Dave, just invited us to something called a Burns Night party.”

I lit up like a Christmas tree and started jumping around. “Wow! Cool! Cancel the sailing! I have always wanted to go to a Burns Night!” Barry, understandably, was taken aback.

Somewhere back in the dim recesses of my brain, I knew about Burns Night, when Robert Burns, the Scottish poet, is celebrated. I’d read about it in my childhood, and had been fascinated by the poetry, pageantry, and haggis. I could go sailing any time, but a real Burns Night celebration was not to be missed.

When we responded to Dave with a positive RSVP, he provided additional instructions. Each of us was to bring a poem to read out loud and a chair. Dinner would be served in courses. The dress code was formal.

When we arrived and took our places, the only thing on the table was the Scotch. There was quite a lot of it, with different kinds to sample. Our host was busy behind closed doors in the kitchen, so we all entertained ourselves with the Scotch. It was destined to be a boisterous event.

The first course consisted of cock-a-leekie soup, a simple chicken and leek soup. Of course, the guests were less than sophisticated. “Hey! What’s that?” someone commented. Admittedly, in the dim light, it looked a bit bug-like. But it was a prune, a standard item found in cock-a-leekie soup. Meekly, we ate our soup. More Scotch followed.

Our host’s attire was the subject of much conversation. Instead of his traditional tartan kilt, Dave was nicely attired in Seattle’s hottest new thing, a Utilikilt. Made of denim or khaki, Utilikilts are targeted at manly men, with big sturdy pockets and loops for hammers and tools. They’re a little controversial.

Dave had experienced the controversy first hand when he wore his outside one day. He was standing on a street corner when someone in a passing car shouted a rude comment, along the lines of “Kilts are for Scottish people!” Perhaps for an American, a Utilikilt is an affectation. But if they’d stuck around long enough for Dave to respond, with his musical Scottish burr, they might have been embarrassed to realize that this guy knew his way around kilts.

After the soup, it was time to pipe in the haggis. Since we didn’t have a live piper, someone hit “play” on the stereo and the room filled with bagpipe music. Dave ceremoniously carried the haggis out and placed it on the table, and we all drank to it (more Scotch) and stared at it. It didn’t look too appetizing, but then again, that might have been the dim light. The more Scotch we drank, the better it looked.

When I was a kid and I first heard about haggis, I thought it sounded like the grossest thing on the planet. But over the years, I’ve mellowed, and things that seemed horrible now just seem kind of …. tasty. Like raw oysters. Yum. What grosses me out these days is the way food is processed. Like Lutefisk. Now that’s gross.

A traditional haggis is kind of a stuffing, made from the parts of a sheep we don’t normally eat, chopped up with onions and oatmeal and packed into the sheep’s stomach, yet another part we don’t usually eat. It’s then tied shut and boiled for a long, long time.

Think of it as a kind of sausage, stuffed into a very, very large casing.

Dave had been on the phone for weeks, trying to order an authentic haggis. The deal fell through at the last minute, and he decided to make one. However, the parts of a sheep that we don’t normally eat are impossible to buy. He had to substitute lamb for the offal. And instead of a stomach, he steamed it in cheesecloth. Not the most beautiful haggis, not the most authentic haggis — but it was tasty, and we had plenty of Scotch.

The other dish served was neeps and taties, meaning turnips and potatoes. At the time, even the Scotch didn’t improve the neeps. But I’ve changed my tune on turnips since then. I was forced to change by my month in Newfoundland, where your only choice of vegetable is peas and carrots (canned, mushy) and turnips (fresh, buttery). Bring on the neeps, I say.

At the end of the dinner, we turned to the entertainment. Dave read us something by Burns, which none of us understood. Then he read us a poem he had written, which none of us understood. Then the rest of the group began to read poems they’d brought, which, fortunately, were in English. Some were serious, some were funny. With the amount of Scotch we were drinking, some of the serious ones were funnier than the funny ones.

The following year, Dave had refined the dishes and the ceremony. He’d also wisely bought one less bottle of Scotch. One of his friends got into the spirit of the event and wore Dave’s extra kilt. Barry wore a nice shirt and tie, but deliberately wore slippers instead of shoes. The poetry was even better, with some people writing original pieces for the occasion. Barry and I did a dramatic reading of e.e. cummings sizzling poem, “may i feel said he.”

This year, we didn’t get an invitation to the main event, so Barry and I had to come up with our own tribute to the Bard.

I made cock-a-leekie soup, complete with bug-like prunes. Before we ate it, I said Selkirk grace:

Some hae meat and canna eat,
And some wad eat that want it;
But we hae meat and we can eat,
And sae the Lord be thankit.

And for the main course, I minced up some lamb and onion and oatmeal, put it in a greased bowl, and cooked it in the pressure cooker. It came out as a rounded gray blob, surprisingly tasty. Barry thinks I should call it “lamb loaf.” But considering that we piped it in and drank a toast to it, I think I’ll call it haggis.

Photograph below: The haggis is piped in. Now the chef gets to have a drink!
Meps and the haggis

Websites describing Burns night often list a sequence of events similar to the following.

BURNS SUPPER – Official Sequence of Events
1. Chairman’s speech to welcome company, normally a few short sentences.
2. Then the Grace follows. Traditionally, Burns’s Selkirk Grace is used:
Some hae meat and canna eat,
And some wad eat that want it;
But we hae meat and we can eat,
And sae the Lord be thankit.
3. First course of dinner now served, eaten and cleared away.
4. Chairman rises and invites company to rise to welcome haggis being piped in.
5. Once haggis is placed on table, chef and piper have drink then leave.
6. Address to haggis now given and company stand to toast haggis and it is cut open.
7. Company sit and meal continues.
8. Coffee served and Chairman announces an interval (usually 10 to 15 minutes), when company can relax before speeches etc.
9. Immortal Memory by speaker (average time 25 minutes approx).
10. Toast to the Lassies speech (no longer than 10 minutes).
11. Response to the toast (10 minutes).
12. Then usually an Appreciation of the Immortal Memory is given, (10 minutes). Some other toasts or speeches may now be given, depending on Chairman.
13. Now entertainment begins (songs and poems etc), after which the Chairman calls on company to sing “Auld Lang Syne”.

Here is the sequence of events that Barry and I used!

BURNS SUPPER – Amended Sequence of Events
1. Call to supper (“Hey! It’s getting cold!”)
2. Reading of grace, with inappropriate accent
3. First course, cock-a-leekie soup
4. All rise while haggis is piped in
5. Toast to haggis (“Here’s to you, Mr. Haggis!”)
6. Eating of the haggis
7. Clearing of the dishes and loading of the dishwasher
8. Putting away of the leftovers (do we have to pipe in the leftover haggis tomorrow?)

For more fun reading, here’s someone with a whole site describing their Burns Night celebration. It sounds like the Scotch is pretty important.
http://www.auldlangsyne.org/

Or this one, which is full of haggis recipes, sorted “in order of increasing use of animal parts that would normally be thrown away.” In other words, from lesser to greater grossness!
http://www.smart.net/~tak/haggis.html

A slightly easier mock haggis recipe.

Awfully Funny, Cats

Something to tickle your funny bone

1 Comment

If you are like me, you get lots of jokes in your e-mail box. Some are funny, some are not so funny. Sometimes, people just try too hard to be funny.

For me, the best humor comes from things that aren’t supposed to be that funny. I’ve found a couple of them on the Internet lately.

Searching for a photograph of a dog wearing a sweater for a practical joke, I found a site with over two dozen photos of dogs in sweaters. My favorite is “Killer.” After picking myself up off the floor laughing, I noticed a link at the bottom to cats wearing sweaters. “Wow,” I thought. “Did they really find a similar number of cats that wear sweaters? What unusual cats!”

Take a look at the dog page, and then click on the Scratching Post link at the bottom. As you’ll see, crocheted sweaters aren’t quite so popular with cats:
www.crochetnmore.com/thedoghouse.htm

On another day, I was looking at websites for real estate agents. I don’t know anything about this Seattle real estate agent, but her Elvis sightings sure tickled my funny bone. The best part is, she didn’t just take photos of Elvis. She had photos taken of herself, with Elvis. There she is, is in every single photo!
Seattle Dream homes — “Elvis ‘n’ Me”

Philosophy, Politics and World Affairs

The sky really IS falling

1 Comment

Looking back at the essays I’ve written for this site, I see a lack of controversial topics. It’s time to change that.

I am angry, I am sad, I am frustrated. My dream of early retirement, living on a boat and sailing around the world, is threatened. I thought all we had to do was work hard and save our money, and we could then enjoy it. Sure, there is turmoil in the world, but it shouldn’t affect us personally. I was wrong. It will affect us personally, and sooner rather than later.

Joseph Conrad described my awakening in his 1900 novel, Lord Jim:

“It’s extraordinary how we go through life with eyes half shut, with dull ears, with dormant thoughts. Perhaps it’s just as well; and it may be that it is this very dullness that makes life to the incalculable majority so supportable and so welcome. Nevertbeless, there can be but few of us who had never known one of these rare moments of awakening when we see, hear, understand ever so much — everything — in a flash — before we fall back again into our agreeable somnolence.”

My awakening came about a week ago, on Monday. Barry and I had enjoyed a delightful retired day, visiting with friends. In the evening, we sat talking with Dave over a bowl of red beans and rice. From his pocket, he pulled a folded piece of paper, a printout from a laser printer. “Have you seen this?” he asked.

It was a page from somebody’s website, as evidenced by the lengthy URL printed at the bottom of the page. A technical-looking graph was centered under the unwieldy title of: “Uppsala Hydrocarbon Depletion Study Group — Oil and Gas Liquids 2004 Scenario.” Barry and I shook our heads, puzzled, but curious.

Back in the 1950’s, a fellow by the name of Hubbert figured out a way to model the production of an oil well. It looks like a classic bell curve. Each well starts out slowly, then produces more and more oil. Eventually, it reaches a peak and begins to decline. Interestingly, the model also works for a group of oil wells. So you can model the production of all the oil wells in a county. Or a state. Or a country.

The Hubbert model was applied to the whole U.S. oil and gas industry, and predicted that 20 years later, the top of the curve would be reached, and from then on, there would always be less and less oil and gas available in the U.S. In the 70’s, it happened, just as they said it would. I remember the lines at gas stations, schools closing to conserve heating oil, and Jimmy Carter lowering the thermostat and putting on a sweater.

But in the 1980’s, the U.S. became users of global oil, relying less and less on our own supply. We had no choice — here in the U.S., there was less and less available.

It’s been a long time since the 70’s energy crisis. Like many people, I became complacent. As long as there is plenty of oil in other parts of the world, and as long as the U.S. has the money to buy it, there should be no problem. Right?

Dead wrong.

You can use the Hubbert curve to model any group of oil wells, including all the oil wells in the whole world. That’s what Dave’s printout showed, the model for the whole world.

Dave took out a pen and marked a little “you are here” arrow. The year 2005 is right at the top. Like a roller coaster ride, we’re poised to tip over and start going down. Supplies will go down, while demand will continue to grow.

We sat around the table, talking about the implications, until late into the night. “Transportation’s going to be the first thing affected,” one of us commented, thinking of personal transportation. “What about transporting goods around the world?” I added. The discussion turned to the impending implosion of the airline industry. From there, one word came up: “Plastic.” We tried to imagine a world where the gas in your car has to compete with the fossil fuel used to make your plastic grocery bags. “Even food,” Dave pointed out, saying that much of it is fertilized with fossil fuels. Eventually we came around to the economic implications: No more fuel for growth in the stock market. Imagine a stock market that will shrink by five to ten percent every year.

I went about my business for the next few days, but the impending change was always on my mind. Why isn’t anybody talking about it? This is the end of an era, a paradigm shift beyond imagining. Does anybody know this is happening? Where are the news stories, the government statements?

The government knows. As Dave commented, “Why do you think Cheney’s energy commission is keeping their proceedings secret?” They know, but they’re afraid the public will panic. A blinding light bulb went on in my head. You mean to say the Iraq war really IS all about oil? Asked why the topic is getting so little press, James, a friend who is a journalist, says, “It’s not an exciting story. There’s no who, what, when, where, why.”

I was frustrated by this, and then I started getting angry. I’m angry because our culture is so wasteful, and I can’t do anything to stop the impending train wreck.

When I drive on the freeway and I see all the people commuting, one person per car, I want to shout the truth at them. “Ride the bus! Carpool! Get a bike!”

I’ve always hated stores that shrink-wrap the fruits and vegetables, so you can’t smell or feel them. Now, thinking of the wasted styrofoam and plastic wrap, I detest them. But I can’t stop people from shopping at Publix or Wal-Mart. I thought about standing in front of Wal-Mart with leaflets. I don’t think they’d let me do that for very long.

At the height of the dot-com boom, a friend of ours took a trip to Japan for the weekend. It was a total lark. He came back with a bunch of pictures of himself standing on Tokyo street corners, and a funny story to tell over beers.

But at what cost? His 747 burned gallons of jet fuel per mile. What if everybody on the plane was flying for a lark? Maybe I could accost people at the security gate and say, “Are you sure this is a necessary trip? Can’t you just do your business by phone or e-mail?”

I know everyone would accuse me of being Chicken Little. The sky is falling! The sky is falling! But it really is. According to www.peakoil.net: “A volatile epoch of recurring price shocks and consequential recessions dampening demand and price is now regarded as more likely, with terminal decline setting in and becoming self-evident by about 2010.” Buckle up, folks. We’re headed down on the roller coaster, and it’s going to be an interesting ride.