The Flood

God said to Noah, “Build me a boat. Something big’s about to go down.”

Noah said, “But God, what do I know about boats? I’m just a simple man, with simple needs. What do I need a boat for?”

God paused for a moment. Should I tell him? What if he spills the beans? Then he remembered why he’d gone to Noah in the first place. A righteous man. You could trust him not to spill the beans. And even if he did spill the beans, who’d believe him? So he spelled it out, in plain English.

“You’ll have to gather the animals, two of each, a male and a female, just to keep things going after The Flood. “Think you can handle it?”

Noah scratched his head. “I don’t know, God. I get that the world hasn’t been around all that long, and that we don’t have nearly as many animals as we’ll have when flying cars hit the scene, but that’s gotta be one helluva a big boat, don’t you think?” Noah tried to wrap his head around it. Not easy. “Mind if I get back to you on this?”

God said “sure, but no more than a couple days.” He didn’t want Noah to get busy and forget.

You’d think Noah would have felt honored to be tasked with such an important mission. But people are funny. When God asks us to do things, most of us respond in one of two ways. We either pay a visit to the shrink to find out if it’s all in our head, or we say “what the heck, let’s do this.” Noah’s a “what the heck, let’s do this” kind of guy, so the next day, he called God and said “I’m in.”

Noah wasn’t kidding when he said “what do I know about boats?” Fortunately for him, back in those days, God didn’t just throw you out there expecting you to sink or swim. It wasn’t like it is now. So he pointed Noah to the best ship builders he could find. “Newport News is to boats what I am to everything else,” he said.

Noah packed a bag and hopped a freighter for Newport News, where the best and biggest boats are built. He went down to the docks or the shipworks or wherever you go to buy a boat, found the biggest and best of all the builders, and he asked for the manager, one Jonas Grumby. Grumby was a shipbuilder’s shipbuilder. Tall, wide, and handsome. He built a lot of big boats for the US Navy, but his all time favorite was a small one he built after retiring. “To hell with big boats,” as far as he was concerned. And off he sailed into the sunset, never to be heard from again.

Noah explained to Grumby what he needed, but he didn’t tell him why. Grumby said, “sure, we can build that.” He didn’t question. A job’s a job, no matter how weird it might seem. Stables on a boat? Who does that? And then he gave Noah the quote.

“Holy Toledo! I’ll have to think about that,” said Noah, and he trotted out back to call God.

“Jesus Christ, that’s a lot of money,” God said. “How much you got?”

Noah dug into his pockets. Nothing but a handful of shekels and some pointy rocks for digging in the dirt. God said, “never mind, have him make it out of wood, instead. And don’t worry about the money, I’ll take care of it.” And he did.

Several months and numerous cost overruns later, Noah had his boat. Now, to gather all the creatures.

Logistically speaking, gathering animals is a lot like herding cats, which are also animals. Nobody knows how he did it, except God, of course, but he did it. He loaded all the critters onto the boat, locked the doors, and raised the sails. Before you could shake your fist at an angry sky, they were out in the middle of the Atlantic. “This isn’t so bad,” Noah thought.

But then the clouds started piling up, and it began to rain. Not just any rain. Big rain. Not a drizzle or a sprinkle. And not just for an hour or two. It rained for forty days. And forty nights. Thunder and lightning. Wind. Waves taller than the Empire State Building, crashing into the hull. Seasick doesn’t even begin to describe what they went through.

Don’t imagine, not even for a minute, that the animals were happy about bouncing along on the deep blue sea. They were just there for the ride. And there was nothing they could do except make whatever animal noises an animal makes in terrifying situations, and continue to eat whatever it is they eat.

You’re probably wondering, what did they eat? We all know they eat each other, especially when confined to tight quarters, like a boat bobbing up and down in a perfect storm. But there were only two of each. Which meant that some of the animals must have been sacrificed, not only the lambs. Yet the fact we still have lambs after that ordeal tells me that some of the animals must have gone hungry or become vegetarians. Maybe this is where the concept of the lion lying down with the lamb comes from. God only knows. I consider this to be one of the weak links in the story, so let’s not dwell on dietary matters.

Time flies when you’re having fun, but forty days and forty nights can go on forever when the earth is covered in water. Without a map or the concept of star navigation, you have no idea where you are or what’s going to happen next. Whoever and whatever was left after the deluge wouldn’t have bothered to wonder how you can head east from Newport News and wind up out west in the Owyhees. That’s how it goes when you set sail without a compass. Me hearties of Noah’s ark would have just been glad the storm was over and marveled at that colorful rainbow in the sky. There wasn’t even such a thing as a rainbow before The Flood, so of course they marveled.

Noah dropped anchor between a rock and a Maverik’s, yanked down the sails, and unlocked the doors. “Land ho!” he cried, for no particular reason. It was obvious land was ho. Off the boat he went, in search of God and further instructions.

Fire, Water, Earth, and Air

We’re taught from an early age not to play with fire, and then we go on and do it anyway. My friend Ted died in a fire, just a couple of years after I finally graduated from UC Santa Barbara. He was a talented percussionist, and everybody loved him. There was talk of faulty wiring, a bedroom that wasn’t up to code, an illegal drug lab. I never found out for sure. Ted hung on for weeks, it seemed, in a hospital in LA. His funeral was huge, but it was a long time ago. I don’t recall if there were dozens or hundreds of family and friends. I remember his mom, vaguely, strong and heartbroken like countless moms who’ve senselessly lost their children.

I respect and fear fire. My wild imagination creates scenarios that feel real and scary. Yet I play with it, out in the backyard, in my Webers, in a controlled environment where it’s fire, that’s all. Any of the elements can kill us, but fire seems worst, the most painful way to go. That or a wood chipper.

I’m excited about a job opportunity at the fireplace store. When it first popped up on Indeed, I was intrigued, but not any more than any of the other jobs. They all sound alike, thanks to the algorithm. I applied and did what I usually do, which is visit the company website and poke around LinkedIn to read bios. “The Most Interesting Boss in the World.” That one stopped me in my tracks. Now I’m hooked on fireplaces and fire. How is it that an obsessive BBQ guy like me hadn’t pondered fireplaces before? We have one in our house, never used. I don’t even know if it’s wood burning or gas. The hearth is cluttered with what civilized people call objets d’art. I’m not saying we’re not civilized, but we certainly don’t have an all-encompassing word for Penny’s fireside art collection.

I wonder how many people use their fireplaces, and whether they’re more likely to use them if they’re gas rather than wood burning. I love the idea of a fireplace. I want to get over my fear of monoxide poisoning and laziness. Let’s bring the fire inside AND outside.

The bags of charcoal at Home Depot make it abundantly clear that you should not burn charcoal inside your home. It can painlessly kill you without warning. Most people know that, but on the off chance you don’t, consider yourself warned.

I read somewhere that drivers in Korea and/or Japan are committing suicide by lighting charcoal in their cars. You shouldn’t do that, either.

Do architects consciously consider the four elements when designing homes and workplaces? How might that look different than what we’re used to? Fire and water are most easily separated from and integrated with their surroundings. Earth and air strike me as more difficult and perhaps subtle. The structure itself is composed of earth elements, with air filling in the gaps. Rather than get hung up on the details, what if we were to create a design brief that said, “build a home based on fire, water, earth, and air?” Let the architect blow our minds, without interference.

If I were an architect, which I’m not, I’d focus on fire and water, both inside and outside the house. I’d have multiple locations in the backyard with grills and fire pits of different sizes and function. Open pits, covered grills, with pulleys, chains, and gears. Pools of varying temperatures. Comfortable year-round access to all of them. Safety features galore. Vesuvius.

I would never leave the house. Or maybe I’d leave the house too much, and kick myself for not appreciating home as much as I should.

Perhaps the combination of fire, water, earth, and air is what makes me such a restless spirit. Or maybe it’s just something in the ether.

In the Right Kind of Light, Glass Really Does Look A Lot Like Candy

My wife’s been watching Blown Away on Netflix. Current season, past season, who knows? The work these glass blowers do is breathtakingly gorgeous, even the ones who get kicked off the show for not being good enough. I could never do that, not that I’m the benchmark. One of the episodes, the contestants were making candy out of glass. Having visited an actual glass blowing studio on the Oregon coast, where Penny and I blew glass, it got me thinking. What if you were to combine a glass studio with a candy store? Wouldn’t that be amazing? Or would the customers eat the glass by accident? Only one way to find out.

Some ideas aren’t meant to be tried out loud. A glass store/candy store combo seems like one of those ideas. But what if I’m wrong? What if people are smart enough to know the difference between candy and glass? You could go in and buy a bag of glass candy to go along with your matching bag of hard candy. The glass candy could have a caution label on it, and a disclaimer so nobody gets sued. Or you could just make a game of it, and whoever eats the real candy wins.

You could do the same thing with real money and funny money at the bank.

If you were to locate the glass studio candy shop next to a hospital and a dental office, that could go a long way towards mitigating the risk. Accidents do happen, regardless. The only way to prevent this kind of accident is to prohibit glass blowers from blowing candy in the first place. Nobody wants to do that, and who can blame them? It’s up to parents to teach their kids not to eat glass candy, and it’s up to grownups to know the difference between the two.

In which case, maybe combining a glass blowing studio with a candy shop isn’t such a bad idea, after all.