This old house …is gonna be the death of me

 

Two plumbing project going on – one somewhat urgent and  hitting lots of obstacles but I’m getting it done, the other less urgent but already is mild disaster stages. So I have thus turned a three bathroom house into , one functional shower/tub!

I miss my Reese house some days. Even though much older than my Olive Branch house, I had lived there so long that I knew it to the bones and how to repair /maintain.  Of course after making my first visit to my old Poplar-Highland Kroger a couple  weeks ago and seeing armed guards checking receipts of customers leaving…well, I think I’ll stay in Mississippi.

But back to plumbing. Spurred by the falling of the giant oak summer before last, I have having to re-route a drainage pipe which runs 85’ from the house to what was the middles of cow pasture 40 years ago and is now part of my yard. I had never been able to find the outlet of said drain pipe before the tree fell and the clearing crew removed a sizable portion as thicket as well as part of the tree (the rest remains as a large and  intriguing lawn ornament). Well, said exposed pipe has created a mini mudhole such  that my Kubota zero turn got tuck this summer and I had to pull it out with the pick up truck. Thus I am now adding 100’ more of pipe to get the water to an actual drainage ditch. It would be about 70” as the crow flies, but by needing to zig and zag around the big tree and some stumps , it is just over 100’.

I would have done this earlier in the year but wouldn’t you know I am working some sort of damn event just about every weekend; I need to get this done before winter so I spent this weekend on it and took a vacation day today.

I am running  100’ of 2” PVC. My experience hereto fore with PVC pip has been sink traps and about a 3’ run in the attic to fix a leak in the HVAC. This job probably should have gone to a contractor but here I am  - about half as handy as my dad but probably three-quarters as stubborn as my mom so naturally I am going to try it.

This weekend I marked off the course with the best slope for water drainage with stake and string. Because the variance on an angle can make a small mistake a big problem, I went further and laid out 100” of PVC to see exactly where to dig. Sounds simple and it is btu that took the better part of two days.

Today, I thought the implementation would be simple because I reserved a trenching machine from Home Depot. Had the machine worked, I would be done with the trenching in an hour. But the first machine was broken (noted before I left the parking lot) and the second had a start problem (noted after I hauled in home behind my car on small trailer hoping not to get run over). So I dug it by hand using a pick, an ax (after I broke my 20 year chain saw on roots) , and a shovel and that only took six hours. Well, the 80” I finished took six, I still have a bit more to go.

Someone is going to say did you call before you dig? One of the broken trenchers at HD was broken because someone hit a gas line and it caught fire. Ouch.  Well, no I did not because I didn’t have to. I know that this spot has been nothing but cow pasture since 1940 when my grandfather bought the land and the only thing I might find would be some old barbed wire (which I did) and, of course, fire ants (a couple of which crawled up by boot, socks and pantleg to bit my knee. I did use his ax to cut some tree roots, the same ax he always kept in his pickup truck bed behind the spare tire.

The weather was fairly temperate – but humid – and the ground reasonably soft, and while I am tired and sore , very sore, I got it done.

Plumbing project #2 however is very nearly at the point where I call a plumber. I am less worried about the price than the ridicule…but then again, this one is less time sensitive and I will probably try to fix it a time or tow or three more. Did I mention that I inherited mother’s stubborn streak?!

This is far more than you want to know about my day  but I thought it would be a distraction from the election. Anyone that wants to help di out that remaining 20’ tomorrow night and not watch TV is most welcome.

 

Emerging Leaders of a World in Flux: Mustafa Kemal Atatürk , Chiang Kai-shek, and Benito Mussolini

 

The post-World War I world saw major changes. The fall of the Ottoman Empire – once a great power and later the “sick man of Europe” – saw the partition of the Middle East , independence of other territories, and a redefinition of Turkey by Mustafa Kemel Ataturk (1881-1938).  China, ancient and formidable for centuries until later pillaged by colonial powers and plagued by warlords, emerged into nationhood first under Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925) and later Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975). The Italian peninsula united at a nation in 1861 from the post -Roman centuries of foreign rule and competing city-states. Italy scrambled to find its place among modern nations with among other things a disastrous attempt at colonial expansion into Africa. Political opportunist Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) rallied the Italian people.

It may be an oversimplification to say that each of these stepped into a vacuum, but it is fair to say that these countries were in a radical state of change with no clear path forward and great anxiety among the populations.

The Ottoman Empire existed from 1299 to 1922. The long and complex history was marked by conquest, often religion-fueled. Like erstwhile adversary Russia, it was an absolute monarchy (sultanate) and often anachronistic. Ataturk’s accomplishment was to create the secular Republic of Turkey and work toward modernization. Modern Turkey has been an ally of the West from the Korean War to the present as well as trading partner.

China was united as an imperial state in 221 BC and various dynasties continued until the establishment of the Republic of China in 1912. There was trade with the Roman empire and the creation of a rich cultural history.  Chinese fleets were involved in trade from East Africa to Japan and beyond during the Ming dynasty.  In the 19^th century western powers negatively  impacted China (Opium War 1840)  and unlike the Japanese, the Chinese did not modernize and did not fare well in opposing the West. The 1912 Republic was beset with problems including regional warlords. Chiang Kai-shek managed to contain these and bring Western style reforms to military and government. Fighting both the Japanese and Mao’s communists, Chiang was beleaguered for much of his time on the mainland before retreating to Taiwan in 1949.

A newspaperman Mussolini had leftist political leanings early on but managed nonetheless to become the father of Fascism. He led Italy from 1922 to 1943 and was executed by  Italian partisans in 1945. His chief objective was to unite the Italian people who for centuries self-identified by region, city, and ethnicity. He is famously said to have “made the trains run on time” but more impactful was his work on a spirit of nationalism by engaging in a series of small wars in the 1930s. He did not join the Axis in WWII hostilities until June of 1940 having originally stated a non-belligerent status in 1939.

Three very different personalities with one common denominator of establishing (or redefining) a national identity. In ordinary times the defining of national identity can be fairly nuanced by pop culture, elections, the emergence of technology, and less decisive events than world wars or radical changes in governmental structure but the 1920s were anything but ordinary.

More importantly national leaders must be judged in no small part by how well their people fared.  

The Italians suffered the strain of being nearly constantly at war - Libya, Ethiopia, Albania, and then the later world wide conflict. Accordingly Mussolini was viewed as hero, buffoon, and albatross at various times - finally the Italians themselves had enough and hanged him. 

Turkey under Ataturk by contrast brought emancipation to women, an organized government, trade & industry, a new education systems &  scores of new schools, and more. He is remembered 80 years later in the words of the current president with "eternal respect".

Chiang's China is a mixed bag.   His accomplishments include land reforms, reining in the warlords,  and some economic development. Beset by wars -   some foisted upon him, some chosen - he was "building the ship while sailing the ship" in setting up a more modernized country in the midst of that chaos. The retreat to Taiwan in 1949 ended the experiment on the mainland, but created a thriving economy on the island.  Mao's communist country is now the world's second largest economy due in large part to massive manufacturing & exporting... a kind of capitalism. I wonder would the Generalissimo would think about that?!