Victoria Stopplello
Maybe a wake-up call
My pal Becky Hart-Palo asked me if I ever found
anything interesting inside of walls during house
remodels. That prompted this piece. Thanks Becky.
The Prof, is shy on material after, Io, these many years,
and welcomes a nudge from time to time.
The simple answer is "yes," the quirkiest stuff shows
up in the wall cavities and ceilings of old structures. In
fact, a venerable tradition of placing items and
scratching grafitti inside buildings has persisted down
through time.
I have been told that in castlev days, our dark-
spirited ancestors buried a virgin under the corner stone
during construction. In later years, a silver or gold coin
supplanted virgins. I'm not sure if virgins became more
scarce, or were simply esteemed of greater value.
Literature has numerous examples. Remember the
poor cat mortared up inside a wall in E. A. Poe's short
story "The Black Cat"? Or the lurid wall drawings in
the contemporary novel of South Africa Imaginings of
Sand by Andre Brink?
As a frequent remodeler. I've located a boodle of
sundries: vintage newspaper clippings, packs of
dessicated cigarettes, toy soldiers, Kewpie dolls,
underwear, old whiskey bottles, a Flash Gordon ring, a
mummified cat, 50- odd pounds of birdseed, diagonal
pliers, an Indian Head penny, Greek coins, tortoise shell
hair clips, a mortising chisel, a "Remember Pearl
Harbor" button, an old love letter. Most o f the items
were inadvertently sequestered, the chisel, pliers, and
Lucky Strikes for example. The birdseed got pack-
ratted into a bathroom partition wall by vermin. The
home owner kept replenishing her bird feeder for "those
starving songbirds." The rats snaked the seed into a
wall cavity and cached it for winter gnawing.
Peeling back some 70's panelling, we located a
"growth stick" on one remodel. To our amusement, we
were able to trace the maturation of the Sroufe Boys,
Mike, Gerry and Peter, from infancy to teenhood, in
one-inch gradations.
Several years ago, I was hired to remodel a fine old
bead-boarded bathroom in South Tolovana Park, Coach
Jack Ramsey's former beach house. Skinning back the
interior wall coverings, I discovered a finely sketched
bear torso on the interior of the south wall. The bear
hunched over, its stylized backside facing the viewer,
bare-naked and spread-eagled. "I can't bare this
carpentry anymore!" the cartoon caption read, signed
Joe something or other, Seaside Construction Co., 1939.
As a long-time carpenter, that graphic had a certain
charm, for me.
Often scrawlings and inclusions are purposive. Peter
Sroufe, veteran demo ace, allows as how he's found
numerous $500 Confederate bills inside of old wall
framing, signed by an early Cannon Beach carpenter,
Dave Firebaugh The bills were a trademark, a finishing
stroke left buried for the ages. We generally leave a
signature, a comment or two, on the last shingles at the
top of a gable. I remember placing a memorial shingle
on the top of the Tolovana Park Community Hall the
day after our good friend Louis Wilson died.
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If God dropped acid, would he see people?
Steven Wright
~ & Z * SFRESS0
O portuno
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« ORltfKS
I watched the first presidential debates and wasn't
very surprised by what I saw. My hunch is that no
one else was either. At the beginning of the program
it was announced that the Republican and
Democratic candidates were neck and neck in the
polls. Mentioned but not emphasized, however, was
that the polls reflected "most likely voters." I'm not
sure how that's defined, but it's probably people
who are, first, registered to vote, and, second, voted
in the last several national elections. In other words,
The problem is, the majority of potential voters
didn't vote last time. In fact, we have a trend: No
matter which party's candidate gets elected, he's
been elected by a distinct minority of registered
voters and an even smaller minority o f the America
people.
Unfortunately, the machinery of the major parties
doesn't seem to care that this is the case. Probably
as long as their control of business-as-usual in DC
continues, the very troubling dynamic of a
democracy with poor participation doesn't seem to
disturb them.
The lack of turn out is generally blamed on voter
apathy, and it's assumed that apathy is the voters'
problem, not the system's. It's also assumed that the
voters' silence implies consent, that we're all happy
with the way things are starting with Nixon's silent
majority.
But I don't think so. My sense is that a lot of
potential voters feel disgusted and alienated.
Working class people have experienced economic
policies that erode their value and rights in the
workplace. Many others feel helpless and angry
about deteriorating quality of life in their
communities' whether it's concerns about public
safety in large cities, declining quality of public
education in many school districts,
or high unemployment and lack of economic
alternatives in rural areas like ours.
Among non-voters are probably many people
referred to as "cultural creatives" by marketing
researchers. Estimated to be 25% of the population,
this group is interested in alternative methods,
whether it's organically grown food, a wind
generator for electricity, herbal supplements like
echinacea when fighting a cold, or cooperative
approaches to problem solving.
I also believe there are basically middle of the
road people among non-voters who worry about life
after retirement, the cost of a college education, and
the deterioration of US infrastructure, and are
disgusted that these major problems get superficial
treatment while the two major parties engage in
petty conflict. Finally, many non-voters are annoyed
by the way big money seems to buy the opinions of
members of Congress; they feel plain old unheard
by the current political process.
While I identify with almost all the
characteristics attributed to non-voters, I haven't
missed a presidential election since I obtained the
right to cast a ballot. However, an ad right after the
debates captured my situation exactly. It said, "Vote
for what you want. Otherwise you'll never get it."
The ad was for Ralph Nader. Indeed, I've often felt I
was voting for the lesser of two evils, that there was
always a major compromise of my values in voting
for one of the candidates.
Six months ago, I would have predicted I'd vote my
standard Democratic ticket, but I'm tired, after eight
presidential elections, of almost always voting with
misgivings. The only president I can honestly say
I'm proud to have voted for is Jimmy Carter, who
has turned out to be a very decent, intelligent,
compassionate man, both in and out of office. His
response to the energy crisis in the 70*s was decades
ahead of his time; if we'd followed his leadership
then, we could handle the current oil problem much
more easily now. His response to the hostage crisis
was seen as wimpy, but sword rattlers forget (or
don't care) that no one died in the process.
I'm not saying the work of recent administrations
is all bad it's just that a lot of it hasn't been good.
Both parties have felt confident about approving
NAFTA and GATT, shifting jobs out of the coiintrv
as well as lowering standards for both
environmental protection and working conditions.
I have to say Nader's views most closely match
my own, whether they have to do with reigning in
corporate power, subsidizing the poor instead of the
rich, or protecting consumers and the environment.
I think both parties need a wake-up call, and I think
a strong turn-out for Nader just might be the ticket.
500ZMPAA« 3 ^ - 7 ^ ,
I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.
Frank Lloyd Wright
UPPER LIFT EDGE N(WEI“l$ER 2000