Saturday, August 15, 2009 - Red Rock, East Chatham NY
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The Midnight Striper, August 15, 2009
I spent last night in the Walmart parking lot in Pittsfield MA. About midnight I awoke to the sound of a small engine accelerating and decelerating. Strange. I look out and here's a guy on a beat up old articulated garden tractor with a striping machine hanging out front with a couple headlights carefully aimed just ahead of it. He's out there striping the parking lot. Fast. He'd slow a bit - stripe a line - then accelerate across to the next line, brake sharply and stripe the next line. Back and forth across the lot. He was done in no time flat and put nary a stripe on my rig. Cool.
BTW, that's a Crane & Co papermill steaming in the background - I wonder if that's where Crane makes currency paper.
Night camp
On my property off Less Traveled Road - The Home Place, Red Rock, East Chatham NY
- I used to camp in a few locations on what little I had left of the family farm
- In the driveway by the house
- Across the road where the barn once stood
- On the 20 acre piece off Less Traveled Road
- Now, with the kind support of the friends who now own the place, I camp across the road where the barn once stood.
- Verizon cell phone service - Terrible, barely usable with an amplifier
- Verizon EVDO service - Terrible, barely usable with an amplifier
- Find other references to Home Place
- List the nights I've camped here
- Check the weather here
Proficiency in Knowledge of the World
There are all degrees of proficiency in knowledge of the world. It is sufficient, to our present purpose, to indicate three. One class lives to the utility of the symbol; esteeming health and wealth a final good. Another class live above this mark to the beauty of the symbol; as the poet, and artist, and the naturalist, and man of science. A third class live above the beauty of the symbol to the beauty of the thing signified; these are the wise men. The first class have common sense; the second, taste; and the third, spiritual perception. Once in a long time, a man traverses the whole scale, and sees and enjoys the symbol solidly; then also has a clear eye for its beauty, and lastly, while he pitches his tent on this sacred volcanic isle of nature, does not offer to build houses and barns thereon, reverencing the splendor of the God which he sees bursting through each chink and cranny.
Essay VII, Prudence Ralph Waldo Emerson