off-the-shelf
vol XI no 6

Administrivia

Michael Lowrey, in his orphan Custodian role, reports that he will run the two gunboat games from Yellow Pajamas in his TAP subzine, Houdini Blues. The regular Diplomacy game will be re-housed in John Boardman's Graustark.

So, what's going on with me? I've been working till sundown just about every day. The big project has been a shed for firewood (we call it the wood shed). I timber framed the thing out of mostly round, un-milled logs, including the rafters, then slapped on a shed roof of seven sheets of half inch plywood and roll roofing. Then I put a corrugated fiberglass roof on the mill shed. I had only put a couple of tarps over it, which worked well enough for the light summer rains, but those started leaking in the early September rain. Next up were roof shelters on top of the new lumber pile and the pile of drying timbers. Plus removing assorted trees and running them through the mill.
By the end of the day, I'm usually too wasted to be able to do more than check my e-mail and crash. We finally recieved the "final" drawings from the architect. The engineering calculations and drawings arrived last month. Now, I have to go through the "final" drawings and compare them with the engineering package and the preliminary drawings and check that I understand any differences between the former and latter and ensure that everything is right. Then it all goes to the County for a Building Permit, whilst I go over to Chimacum to pay back Skip for his help with the milling early this summer. He wants my help building a shed for his water system.

I've been a dull boy, this summer precious little play...!

Enjoy the zine!

Variations on a Theme

The victors imposed upon the Germans all the long-sought ideals of the liberal nations of the West. They were relieved from the burden of compulsory military service and from the need of keeping up heavy armaments. ... A democratic constitution, in accordance with all the latest improvements, was established at Weimar. Emperors having been driven out, non- entities were elected. Beneath this flimsy fabric raged the passions of the mighty, defeated, but substantially uninjured German nation. The prejudice of the Americans against monarchy, which Mr. Lloyd George made no attempt to counteract, had made it clear to the beaten Empire that it would have better treatment from the Allies as a republic than as a monarchy. Wise policy would have crowned and fortified the Weimar Republic with a constitutional sovereign in the person of an infant grandson of the Kaiser, under a council of regency. Instead, a gaping void was opened in the national life of the German people. All the strong elements, military and feudal, which might have rallied to a constitutional monarchy and for its sake respected and sustained the new democratic and parliamentary processes, were for the time being unhinged. The Weimar Republic, with all its liberal trappings and blessings, was regarded as an imposition of the enemy. It could not hold the loyalties or the imagination of the German people.

from The Gathering Storm
by Winston S. Churchill

Now, where are we currently making the same mistakes?


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