A Corking Good Time Crafting

4"x6" 'cork' trivet

cardboard and cork wreath

cork wreath hanging on door

Recently, I came across a box-load of wine corks that had been accumulating in my basement for years. I just don't like to throw things out but watching those Hoarder shows on TV has had an effect on me and I've become more serious about throwing things out. Or, in this case, getting a bit creative with some of the old rubbish lying around.  I sorted the corks by type, that is, whether they were real cork or that new plasticky-cork stuff that you find.  I used these plasticky ones to make a hot plate trivet. I arranged them in some semblance of order and just glued 'em together with some clear transparent super sticky type glue that I found in a tube in a drawer in the kitchen. Yes, I'm dehoarding kitchen drawers too!  Then I sorted all the real cork corks and found a lot of them had lovely little pictures or numbers or words or letters on them.  After finding a wreath-shaped piece of cardboard (yes, I'd saved that too and it was up for either the trash, re-cycling or crafting!) which I painted red with some, you guessed it, left-over craft paint I found in another drawer. I used red paint as it was the only little paint can that was still wet enough to use! Once the paint dried on the cardboard I started to arrange the corks around the wreath, first a lower level and then adding other ones on top, in a sort of higgledy-piggledy design.  I should say here that I went out on the Internet first and searched "What To Do With Old Corks?" and found numerous websites where people had pictures and descriptions of making stuff with old wine corks. So, suitably inspired by their ingenuity, I made a wreath and hot plate rest meself and feel quite satisfied with the final results.  I've already had some compliments from house guests about them, including questions. One asked about "how long it took to accumulate all those corks?" from my brother who is clearly checking up on me to see if I'm a wino or not.  The answer is "about 10 years of tippling," which seemed to disappoint him somewhat.  Another person asked "if the corks smelled?" which was an unexpected question.  The answer is "no as all the corks were quite old and dry when I used them." So, I will use these items for as long as I like and then I can either trash, re-cycle or upcycle them again whenever.  These items really didn't take long to make nor were they too complicated to put together as I had everything at hand somewhere ('hoarded'). And I do take pleasure in keeping things out of the landfill as much as possible though, don't you too?

Rolling Thunder Passes the Archives

It was scorching hot and noisy in front of the Archives building on the day before Memorial Day as hundreds of glossy motorcycles gladiated by us as we tried to cross Independence Avenue. It was "Rolling Thunder" riders blaring music and yelling some things at the crowd and stressed out policemen shouting at us not to cross the road. We gawped at these mostly large machines ridden by the mostly overweight out-of-towners who come to DC each year for their own special parade. We kind of wondered what exactly was going on and what it was all about. So I looked them up -- again thank God for the internet -- and discovered it is an event that started in 1988 as a call for the government to recognize prisoners of war (POWs) and people missing in action (MIAs), sort of a tribute thing but seems to have morphed into something else. It seems now to more honor veterans and fallen soldiers, a more generic tribute to military men. The first one had but 2,500 participants but now it has hundreds of thousands of participants. Well, I saw a few thousand of them that weekend and a whole bunch of them in front of the Archives building. I'm trying to connect Rolling Thunder's causes and issues with the Archives building which holds the Declaration of Independence so I read it to see how it might pertain. Hmm. Seems that the governed are exercising some life, liberty and pursuit of happiness in their own way.

 " ... We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..."

There Goes that Elusive Verizon FiOs Truck!

Sometime in the past month I actually for the first time ever saw a FiOs truck go by me here in DC. Big and white and shiny with a picture of a giant TV with blue ribbons tailing along the side of the van, it surely looked like something new in town as I sat at the bus stop watching the traffic go by.  You have to realize that in my neighborhood no-one has Verizon FiOs as they haven't laid the fiber cable yet here and I've heard it will be years before it will happen. While there's some diehard over-the-air free TV types, most either have cable or satellite TV and most get Internet either via DSL or a bundled cable TV package. Some spring for 4G wireless but that really adds to the bill.  As a DirecTV subscriber AND a Verizon DSL subscriber, we'd like to lower the costs of all our electronic communications so we keep hoping FiOs will come to our neighborhood soon.  We receive Comcast promotion cards in the mail all the time, trying to persuade us to switch back to cable TV in a bundled package with their phone and Internet. We also see Comcast trucks a lot.  And I have a neighbor who works for Comcast and he says it's a great company.  Somehow, though, we've come to really like our satellite TV service as the service people are extraordinarily nice when you talk to them about adding a TV channel or two or otherwise adjusting the bill. But, there I was at the bus stop and there went that elusive FiOs truck and I started to imagine having all my communications service on one bill, and a really fast and strong connection and maybe even a bit cheaper than all the different providers we have now.......hmm....

Neighbor Back from Iraq

My neighbor is back from Iraq and visiting her parents a couple of doors down from me. Of course, I have a hard time seeing her as a soldier for us all since she grew up with the other kids on my street, including with my son. I have pictures of them all splashing around running through water hoses and generally having a fine old time on the sidewalk. But here she is, back from a tour of duty for a few months and then I think she returns. Her son stays with her mother, so I get to see him all the time, probably a lot more than she does!  She told me the story of how this little boy, he's less than two years old, telephones her in Iraq on the Internet using Skype so he knows what she looks like. When they met at the airport he ran all the way up to her she said, then he put his little hands on her face, to experience her three dimensionally, because for him, his mother's face has been two-dimensional for far too long. [If that doesn't bring tears to your eyes, your heart may be a little bit stony.]  When we talked, she had no complaints about the job she's doing except to say she couldn't get to wear a bikini at the base swimming pool as there are some Muslim Iraqi soldiers also on the base in training with the U.S. and apparently the Command accedes to their value system. I got the impression she didn't really like this rule, but obeys because, well,  she is a fine and disciplined American soldier She's in her desert uniform here and looks totally amazing, fearless and strong.

Damn the Torpedos, Full Speed Ahead!

Not far from where I work is Farragut Square that I stumbled into today and snapped a shot of ole Admiral David Farragut, the guy who apparently said, "Damn the torpedoes, Full Speed ahead," during the Battle of Mobile Bay in the Civil War. I looked him up on the Internet of course -- as who has encyclopedias in their houses anymore? Sure enough, Wikipedia gave me all I needed. He was the first rear admiral, vice admiral, and full admiral of the Navy and is the guy who said this all-American type phrase. His statue had some pigeons napping on his feet and walking on the four cannons pointed in all four directions at the park visitors.  No-one who walked by appeared to notice him in the afternoon sun and he seems to stand there, at least thirty foot high, but invisible.. The statue faces towards the White House and I wonder what they think of him there, if they think of civil war at all. ..