Ecce Signum

[Garlic plants showing signs of life.]

The new work project kicked off this week and so far, so good. I am rebuilding my ServiceNow skills which fell by the wayside since the end of my previous project using the platform. It’s good to be back in this particular saddle.

It is good that I am still gainfully employed, because this is shaping up to be quite an expensive year. The most recent money sink is part two of waterproofing the basement. Last September a crew came in and wrapped the uphill side of the house foundation in something a lot like swimming pool liner. In past years, and with increasing frequency, the basement walls on the uphill side of the house would show dampness, and sometimes actually leak water into the basement. Our neighborhood is built on an old brickyard, and the ground is basically a gigantic pile of sand.

The effects were immediately noticeable in the basement as a significant drop in the pervasive moist and humid feel. Since then we had not had any days with heavy precipitation by which we could put the waterproofing to the test.

That all came to an end a week ago, with a hard, drenching downpour which covered my basement floor with several gallons of sandy water. I found a place where the water seemed to be bubbling up through a crack in the floor, so I called the crew who had waterproofed the exterior wall and said that the thing that they had predicted – water finding its way in UNDER the house – had come to pass, and it was time to implement part 2 of the project: Dig a drainage trench around the interior perimeter of the foundation, and install a sump pump which would tie in with the previously-installed exterior drainage.

Then last weekend we had another deluge and I again had water in my basement. This time I found the exact place where it was coming in through the intersection of floor and basement wall. It was a small spot, barely an inch across. And water was coming in like the house was built on a natural spring.

When the company representative came over to assess the situation, I pointed out places where the basement floor had been heaving (upward buckling and occasional cracks) over the past five or so years. I was worried that this might crack the foundation, but the rep calmly pointed out that (1) in old houses, the basement floor sits INSIDE the foundation; the foundation doesn’t sit ON the basement floor. And (2) the floor, which I thought was at least six to eight inches of concrete, was actually somewhere between one and three inches thick. Old Michigan houses like mine (built in 1905) originally had dirt floors, and the current basement floor was simply a layer of concrete poured on the dirt and left to harden. Thus the floor cracking and heaving, while inconvenient, was far from catastrophic. And also reasonably easy to repair, should the need arise.

The other new money sink is a new stove. The old one, a thirty-year-old Magic Chef, finally gave up the ghost. The stovetop burners still worked, but the oven portion no longer heated anything.

I suppose it is a sign of my age that I am excited to have a new stove, and now I want to cook ALL THE THINGS! But I am also excited that a crew is going to jackhammer a big trench in my basement floor. Age ain’t nothing but a number.

Reading

Continuing on from last week, I have three books open – The Wretched of the Earth by Franz Fanon, Trout Fishing in America by Richard Brautigan, and The City and The City by China Mieville. They should keep me occupied for the first couple of weeks of the month.

Writing

April is National Poetry Month, and so far I have managed to pump out a rough draft of a poem each day this week. I am also plugging away at the short story from last week. I expected to complete the draft this past weekend, but the mundane world intruded. I can’t complain – I am writing again.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Spiritual Beings, Music
Setting: Urban
Genre: Literary Fiction

Listening

Dave Van Ronk singing “Luang Prabang”. Given the rise in imperialistic fervor instigated by Elon Musk, Musk’s catamite Donald Trump, and Trump’s MAGA brownshirts and bootlicks, now is a good time for some old protest songs. Empire is always bad, in all places, in all contexts, and there is nothing heroic about dying for oligarchs.

Interesting Links

• “Private-sector Trumpism” (Cory Doctorow, Pluralistic)
• “Bracing for the Fallout from Trump Tariff Delusions” (Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism)
• “Being Non-Transactional: Beyond ‘What’s in it for me?’” (Aurelien) – This is a very good essay on individual vs. collective ethics, and how the gap between the two, or an absence of the latter, makes collective action difficult.