Notes from a preservation journal;;Greetings from Yale
The following is long and I expect no one to read it except those who put up
with my trash and will give it a minuet of their time.
"winters Tale
Greetings from Yale
When I stoped by rocco's room to pick him up ;he was already on his second
cup of instant from the hotel room free bar..He was hunched under a goose
neck lamp stroking the fine edge of his knife on a wet stone and smoking a
yellow paper Gitane whose brown tobbacco smoke curled from his lip to his
roman nose making his eyes squint so he sneers when addressing you . Ahh
Michell; Bonjour mon grand; beaucoup nej ecsoir ( alot of snow last
night)occi pal mal por da femme occi!( and not bad for the woman either )
 I agree and we silently look out on York street where our  work site is
blanketed with snow while he works the last of his edgeto perfection in
rythymatic swirls
Rocco likes knives; he carys a large gravitational in an open case that
would scare the bejesus out of any street roller. In his room he has set up a
throwing target of a  human in shilowete on the back of the door and passes
his carefree hours in throwing contests with himself and naive company of an
occaisonal date he has suckered from the up from the bar below us. Passing
his room you can hear the steady whack of the throwing knife and the tither
of a female voice over glasses of  calvados( a firey apple digestive from the
french farm)
Except for the knife thing I like Rocco.The problem is is that Rocco is not
french he is Portuguese from Angola who
 fled with his family from the capital of  Luanda when it fell. He has
drifted ever since then crossing from Spain into the pyranese before ending
up in Paris then  shipping out with me. He has a has a curious work history
.Besides masonry work Rocco can hot wire cars and take apart heavy russian
made weaponry. not exactly a office temp catergory.Rocco has stoped working
the edge and now takes a second to admire his handy work..The edged tool
gleams in the lamp light  and the smoke curls his nose and he scews his young
face and focus. but that fell on deaf ears so we will struggle it out here at
Yale...
.Rocco  gets his heavy coat and hard hat
and we head out into the falling snow.
 There has been a fine snow falling for the last few hours and it has all but
muffled the sounds of all the restoration work going around the cloistered
stone walls of Yale Branford Saybrook colleges.
In the swirl of a fine driven snow we  trundle past young co-eds wraped  in
stylish woolens with rosy cheeks and newly curled hair; all hurrrying to
early morning class . Even in the morning darkness their eyes are bright with
future and the adventure of learning .
Rocco is always thinking of sex and drops one liners in french about some
organic aspect of love making I  however reminence about when I was
20...actually I was at Yale when I was 20;  ...It was the 60's and it will
cost you a few Glen Morangies to joggle the memory but I was here with the
SDS riots and the shut down. Long ago and far away.

Old Yale is a traditional stone masons paradise as it is a setting of early
20th cent stone work set to mimic if not rival Oxford England . With mansard
slate(tile) roof and tracery windows with glazingings of diamond leaded glass
.These  gothic marvels were laid out in the old stone cloister quadrangle
architecture  of eccleasical Cambridge.
 The central quadrangles are dominated by a tower.
 Harkness tower being  the most prominent with its  clock dwarfs all the
others..
It has also the most impressive collection of carrillion bells that are truly
delightfull  to hear.They play bach and beetoven and Bhrams at days end and
they are easy to cut stone to...
Yale is escentially a collection of colleges constructed in the 20's by
Italian Masons  cut  primarily of  warm sand stones and pastel roman brick
laid flush with the walls enscounced by decorative  limestone moldings and
trim work.. There are also carved limestone  balconys and stone mullions for
the tracery windows. The portals have carved memorials to historic allumni...

 Rocco and I cut through the green to meet with our other crew.Only it isn't
green today; the  furry of the evenings storm has left a blanket of snow over
all the buildings leaving them picturesque in timeless antiquity.
Mantles of fresh snow cover limb and bough as we make our silent approach  to
the entrance arch. There is reverence here;you can sence it.... the men and(
now women),living and dead...who made history ...and saw us through times of
great conflict  resided and gained knowledge here.My own father with his new
bride did his officer training here in WW II
If there are spirits here (and there are) they are good ones reflecting happy
times of achievment.
.At 7 am we reach the massive vaulted arch of Saybrook and the historic
Harkness Gothic  Tower where on countless June mornings Yale graduates would
march through to graduation and future. This morning however is a little less
festive as we pass the hallowed gate today there is only  the beady eyes of
the teamster and the union stewart who glean over  our shapeless forms in
hardhats and check who is who into the  have and have nots of labor.No ivy
league here; just rank and file no primadamas or self proclaimed craftsmen..
Keep your head down and watch what you say. To much inteligence is a
dangerous thing in this crowd.
The quadrangle we enter into is a masterpiece in Gothic stone work,the size
of two football fields.As mentioned before  there are  carved limestones for
portals and balconys; dripping in simplistic  detail of Rosettes; and gothic
mullions with academic portals  and large oaken doors with medevil
hardware.These portals lead into smaller-quandrangles planted with historic
elms and laid walking paths in  labyrinth  pattern for contemplation and
reflection..
I am at home here; stonemasons sidle up to Gothic work like white on rice .
Its a natural... its what we were trained for ;its what we should be doing
all the time.I wish it were all choir singing and cutting stone. The presence
of some of the more aggressive gentlemen  assures me its not.
We shuffle on tru the snow to meet up with our crew at the make shift shanty
for the exterior masons from New Bedford.
It is still dark;and there isn't much light at this hour; so the electrician
has strung up a line of naked lights on plastic stringers;guiding the way to
the work shanty which has a single bulb of its own..The shanty  light beckons
us out of the wind and to greet our crew who idle there swaping lies about
their ribald behavior at a gentlemens club last night..
These men are great big bruisers of  New England celtic stock;older guys with
wizened faces weather beaten from harsh long winters and too many children at
home.
They are quick to smile however and laugh over accounts of miss spent youth
and cuckoled romance..The masons here are not part of our crew but we share
the same dust so in the half light of their shanty we exchange pleasantries
of the dismal morning and move on into the gloom.
I hate winter.   A year ago this time I was fly fishing in the keys just off
the gulf stream catching grouper and bone fish and dreaming under the billion
stars of the milky way  now with a new baby in the house this Papa" gots to
bring home da bacon" so the baby can have new shoes.....amazing what the
little squirt can do to grown men.
The snow that  is now swirling is of a fine hard crystal ; so when the wind
gushes it  bites at your  your nose before it  drifts   down the nape of your
neck ...instantly melting into ice cold rivlets that journey down your back
before resting "where the sun don't shine"e . We make our way along the walls
of once fine manicured yards;that now hold huge iventorys of slate and stone
all covered in snow. In this lunar landscape of snow and ice spotlighted
little bobcats dart and spin tru the inventory as if in some wild solo
dance.We  find our door and enter stamping our feet with the cold only to be
greeted with the intese heat directed at your face bt industrial gas heater
blowers.The effect is numbing to the sences; the thermatic change to your
facial skin is devastating  and your feet are still freezing
 Inside is a sureal world of fast track insanity.  All arounnd there is a din
of activity under naked light bulbs.. People shouting and even screaming at
each other as men and material move about in a frenzy of  early  morning
start up.Our first challange is to get past the  Italian plasters who do most
of the shouting  and gesticulating lewdly with their hands.;At the best of
times they are a wily bunch either agreeing or disagreeing  with animated
insincerity at any and all who will listen;..once past them its   the floor
guys who have vbeen listening to floor sanders for so many years they  never
hear a word you say and understand nothing;even when they nod their heads
yes..
Going upstairs we must past  all the duct men electricians and plumbers who
think every space is theirs after they swore yesterday they would be finished
and out  and it would be yours.
finally on the third floor its past the mayhem of painters and carpenters
who hog every room and block every hall; and blame you for their mess; and
just when you think its going ok here comes the  rasta demo guys breaking tru
walls with the distict flavor of ganja; followed by an army of laborers with
brooms and shovels who appear and disapear with the wind.
All this is orchrestrated by  chain smoking assistant supers  who  you can
hear bellowing a half a building away, where every situation is a kin to
abandoning ship. Finally there is  the curious conservators and assistant
architects who always look sleepless and dumbfounded as they anaylize and
play cards close to the vest as the whole world runs amok about them..
 Finally we find our rooms  of employment and shut this world behind us .
The rooms  are spartan yet elegant.The walls are  of heavy waist high pannels
in jacobian stain after  which continues a heavy guage plaster in off
white(Yale white).
Every common room has a fireplace and a built in  window bench; some have
built in librarys and desks. The outside light comes through  long leaded
glass tracery windows with stone mullions and diamond glazing.Some windows
have trifoils and quartafoils in stone and glass
.. Here we can close the door and listen to classical music and restore the
mullions and peer out the leaded glass windows down  on our brethern masons
struggling in the snow. . Here we can be far from the maddening crowd of fast
track restoration ;where we have a room of ones own to loose ourselves in our
work ; perhaps to contemplate our own future....Here we are free... that is
...untill  nature calls..... then its hurridly back out into the hall of the
malcontents of mud men with wheel barrows,down the stairs past women
carpenters putting up molding and wisecracking with the core drillers who are
always taking coffee and down back out the oak doors into the snow to the
porta johns.
Upon reaching the porta johns there are ten of them,I interupted two women
laborers having a fight "Asshole said one  and stomped off leaving the other
mumbling "I can't do it I can't do it" ..Do what I asked in passing ?
.."call her a ..CS... ( expletive) something akin to a rooster sucker.
The conditions at the porta john are well below freezing and the very thought
of sitting on an iced plastic ring of dubious cleanlyness at 730 am is beyond
me but not mother nature; Now I have been in a few pissoirs from Ireland to
the north of Africa and well endowed American porta johns rank right up there
with turkish toilets( one hole affairs that you squat in )^This is what I
call" big science". Im not sure but this may be where the concept of Global
warming  came from.
Once the door of the porta john is closed; abandon all hope , not really but
make sure there is T.P or you will  abandon quite a few things. While
meditating you can evaluate human progress   by interpeting the graffitti
sribbled there.Well at least you can get caught up on the popularity of the
labor foreman
Im not sure which is better; porta johns in the deep south when its 100 deg
and full humidity or zero degrees with freezer burn. Then its back to the
insanity for the rest of the day.
And so this ends my winters tale (or  is it tail?) and from within all this
insanity I did manage to  scribble of few miserable lines of verse befitting
my experience here ; you see the other day on my way to a hard hat lunch I
jaywalked through some stalled vehicles in the snow; ...only  while stepping
past one stalled vechicle... I steped into an unseen inner lane path of a
speeding car...I never saw it... that tore my pant leg but not the skin and
spun me where I fell down.and thought I was gone.....It took me awhile after
to refocus and calm down.
.. its not everyday we walk into eternity..so..a little light verse from my
ivory tower and to cheer myself up
 . Best Michael .

A winters tale  at Yale

 I always cosidered going to Yale
and my father thought more likely.. jail;
but this is a tale  that will proably fail
the  barmaids grin of  chastisment

However I am happy to say
that upon this cold cold  day
 I have endured both Yale
and Jail with some advisement

By taking your time
and living life kind
  a litttle more wisely than last time
you can  be with thine and drink of the vine,
 and make life fine
and never consider confinement

So stay on my line and never to bind
with near do wells as I did
But in my own  way; if I had my say
 I would leave  this old world one better

Make a stand  and take command
to face all woes and sorrows;
and leave them right there without any care
and let Love ..tie  life together

So with kindness and grace
I have made my case
 to open ones heart for your brother.
and let love in without any sin
and follow Gods plan for each other

MDD/2000

Life inside
I prefer  Ivy covered walls to   four walls
and college bars to iron ones.
  but the  memory is funny;as  when spring  is sunny
and all your thoughts are outside
its not fun to be inside
as when I was inside
I wanted to be outside
and now that Im outside( It was zero today}, I want to
be inside
 but all aside the food is better  inside than outside
so you decide; and I'll confide
the rest will bide; and nobody cried
oops I Lied.

MDD/A'2000


all