reverse threading

the path back is the path forward

Tag Archives: get the lead out


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another get-the-lead-out chapter. [kerri’s blog on merely-a-thought monday]

and ever so quietly the cones arrived. and then the “no parking” signs. we didn’t hear the trucks until a couple days later. and, though i’ve lost track of what chapter this is, another chapter begins.

they dug up the street. in front of our house and our neighbors to the east and the west. i instantly started to get nervous. it’s been kind of a long haul, this get-the-lead-out thing. i mean, yes, i want to get the lead out, but seriously, this has been a really long process. our first water pipe lead eradication chapter was in november 2021. we are rapidly approaching two years. i’m frankly not sure if the lead is out – i believe it is – we have shiny new copper pipes and shiny new sidewalks and – at long last – a level front yard with green-green grass – but what about the water utility company being back…again?

whatever the reason, we have determined (read: succumbed to) it is part of the process and are trying to trust that.

for many, many years, we participated in the water utility company’s lead-test. they’d drop off a plastic container which we had to fill first thing in the morning after not using the water lines overnight. each time i’d wait anxiously for the results and any recommendations. with children growing up in the house, i didn’t want either of them to have to seek long-term therapy to deal with their emotional i-drank-leadwater-my-whole-life issues. life is hard enough without leadwater.

i’m guessing we were getting perilously close to the leadwater danger-edge because, when water started leaking into our front yard, we were offered the chance to replace the service line within the guidelines of the new program, assistance with a cap of several thousand dollars that was granted for the work. we were grateful. in our case it was a pretty intense operation – see many blogposts circa late 2021, 2022, likely several in 2023 as well. without exaggeration, our front yard was a disaster area.

in recent whitehouse press release news: “the biden-harris Get the Lead Out Partnership is a coalition of federal government, states, tribes, local communities, water utilities, labor unions, and nongovernmental organizations that has committed to advance a shared set of principles to accelerate lead service line replacement. the inaugural 123 members of the partnership include”…drumroll, please, the city of kenosha, wisconsin!

and so, as we drive around the city, darting inbetween cones and torn-up roads, i am thankful that our city has decided to care about our water. they are taking steps to help people, offer financial assistance, dedicate worker crews to this effort to remove lead water service lines, to have clean water. bravo!

in the meanwhile, we’ll wonder what’s going on in the street and cross our fingers that we don’t wake up one morning to once again see an excavator in our front yard. but we’ll know that – no matter how little we run the water in the morning or how long – we will pass the lead-test with flying colors.

in other undeniably exciting news – a part of this waterstory – we were heartened by a new award certificate we were given by the grassking: most-improved lawn!!

so…no more leadwater for us AND most improved lawn. it’s a win-win!

*****

read DAVID’S thoughts this MERELY-A-THOUGHT MONDAY

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a coffee tip jar


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the same old tool with a whole buncha history. [merely-a-thought monday]

it charmed me to think that the tool that was used on our sidewalk when the latest iteration of it was poured – decades ago – probably in the 1960s – was the same tool that they used last week.

he said, “i think i still have the tool my dad used. i was a little kid, but i remember this house. i remember the sidewalk and how he scribed in the concrete. i think i know exactly where it is!” a full circle story.

there was one sidewalk square left after the world’s longest water line get-the-lead-out replacement project, which literally started in november 2021. nevertheless, it is now completed, merely a year later. these things take time, i have learned. and nothing moves fast when the city is involved. and no one wanted to pour this last square. until them.

we loved the sidewalk-square-concrete-contractors. full of stories and some parallel experiences, david shared how his dad was also a concrete guy – in colorado – and g, one of the two gentlemen pouring and shaping and scribing and finessing our front walk, knew his company. d and fb, the owner of the company and just the nicest guy dedicated to good work, chatted together about – well – cement and stuff and fb clearly was eager to scribe the lines his dad had scribed way back when. the torch had passed and it was easy to see that his dad would be proud.

now, these guys clearly live by my own sweet poppo’s rule: don’t get rid of anything; you might need it later. my poppo always wanted a big ole barn to be out back so that he could put everything in it till it came ’round again.

maybe the concrete guys have one. a big ole barn or workshop. someplace where this tool sat on a shelf or in a toolbox – unused for decades – until one day when it made all the difference on our front walk. a piece of history coming back to be used for our home – again. something about that is truly heartwarming.

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this MERELY-A-THOUGHT MONDAY


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wait! what?!? [merely-a-thought monday]

elephant or bear. i’m trying to decide which i’d rather be called. both momma elephants and momma bears defend their young, protect their clans. i’ve decided to go with elephant (obviously, sans political statement), for it is said, “female elephants continuously protect each other from predators in the wild, providing one another a sense of security.” and i’m less grizzly-bear-growly than wrap-my-tail-around-them-draw-them-close. hmm. well, maybe i’m a little of both. either way, i’m not going to forget if you are mean to my children. i’m not going to forget if you are mean to my family. and, in this case, i’m not going to forget if you are mean to my spouse.

people can pretty much think anything they want. we artists are pretty much used to that. questions like “what do you reeeeeally do for a living?” have peppered us our whole lives. people stare and furrow their brows when we answer. and i’m guessing that it’s not just what we say. we must … look … and act … a little artsy… or something.

sidewalks are generally pretty black and white. concrete. stamped or not stamped. seamed between squares. jointer-tool-etched or not. dyed or not. though my sweet father-in-law would have happily described all the varieties of concrete possibilities to me, i am having trouble getting through on the heaven-line so i will have to linger in my narrower spectrum of understanding.

we have concrete. in our front walk by the street, in our driveway and in our walk to the front door. all of that concrete is permanent now – post-lead-water-line-replacement-the-story-that-would-never-end – except for one square (which i hasten to point out is actually a rectangle, though far be it from me to get stuck on a detail.)

this one square, er, rectangle, is up by our front door. temporary concrete lays cracked in the spot waiting for the real concrete, contraction line between it and the old sidewalk that has welcomed visitors for about, well, 94 years, i guess.

and it continues to wait.

because it’s a “weird little job” – not worthy of attention – uh, hello? every size audience counts. just sayin’. – and because the sub-sub-contractor is “afraid the guy won’t be happy because the color and curve won’t match the sidewalk that’s already there.” uh, hello? we are intelligent beings who can grok that different ages look different. letmetellyou, we can grok that. even in sidewalks. – and because he also said, “and he seems a little different.”

wait! what?!?

“he seems a little different.”???

i’m a-wonderin’ “whatintheheck?!” while i am reading this email that was forwarded to me from the sub-contractor-to-the-city, one step above the sub-sub in the project ladder.

“he seems a little different.”

funny. david had walked in from visiting with the sub-sub when he came to take-a-gander at our “small, weird project” and had said – about the sub-sub, “wow. he seems like a really nice guy. really knowledgeable and pleasant.”

i guess the sub-sub was a good actor.

because really nice guys don’t report – even sub-sub to sub – that the client, the customer, the resident – seems “different”. that’s just kind of mean.

i don’t know what i am supposed to glean from the forwarded-email-with-no-additional-message, but the elephant in me (or was it the grizzly bear?) did write back that, though tempted to ask for clarification on what precisely was meant by “he seems a little different”, i was not going to belabor the rudeness of such a statement. what does that have to do with anything here?

it begs the question: does this mean that the sidewalk won’t be done because “he seems a little different”??

the point is the sidewalk. finishing the job. the one that started last november. really nothing else. not david’s artistic look or his intelligent conversation. not how he seems. the point is the sidewalk. not his “seeming different”.

besides, dude. newsflash: now, so do you.

*****

read DAVID’S thoughts this MERELY-A-THOUGHT MONDAY


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hairnets. [two artists tuesday]

though a red and white striped jumper, accompanied by white tights and saddle shoes, was not my favorite outfit, i really loved being a candystriper when i was in high school. the local hospital – huntington hospital – had a training program and then you could choose as many days as you wished to volunteer. there were many options – to help in the coffeeshop, to deliver meals, to offer magazines or books on a cart, to visit with patients. my favorites were the coffeeshop and visiting with patients, but i loved all of the work i was assigned. i learned about origami from one of the patients and spent hours with him making cranes and lightening his spirit. i don’t know what his diagnosis was, but i do know it was very serious and he was only a little older than we were. he needed light and we all tried hard to bring it to him whenever we could.

the coffeeshop was a blast, always filled with patrons. i have this unusually tactile memory of making toasted onion bagels with butter – giant new york bagels – i can even still catch a whiff, mixed with coffee wafting from large pots we continually refilled.

the worst part of the job – as a candystriper – was wearing a hairnet. clearly it was for sanitary reasons, but no sixteen-year-old-girl really wants to scoop all her hair into a net and plaster it against her head. especially not if she has a nordic high forehead – which i did – well, and still do. yup. at the end of our shifts, we would go out into the sunlight and yank off our hairnets, leaving our long hair to blow wild and free.

our front lawn is wearing a hairnet. it kind of made me giggle a little as they laid down the haynet and rolled it out. the dirt and seed under it likely groaned – confined! – but the hay will keep the birds from snacking on the new seed and dan said that the hay will dry and then you can rake up the netting. easy-peasy.

mostly, it is astonishing to look out the front window or drive up to the house and see a flat yard. for the last seven months or so we have had a giant lump in the front yard, a debris pile with cement and rocks and asphalt and chunks of hard rubber and copper fittings and some cast iron – and, i’m guessing, lead – since that is what they were removing – bolts. when grass-trying-to-be-a-yard-again grew on the lump (which was all the way from the house to the street and at least twenty feet across) there was no way to cut it. we quickly became “those people” on the block, with the messiest (and ugliest) yard. david went out with the mower, but that was impossible, so he took trimmers and diligently trimmed the top of the mess. a lower mess is better than a higher mess. but – a mess nonetheless. i’m quite sure that people drove by and pointed. i can’t say i blame them.

they came and excavated the debris lump. it was a big job and they had big scraping machinery and a big dumptruck. it was quite the process. the guy in charge was particular and, thus, particularly annoying to the other workers. but they were a hardworking crew and, a few hours later, drove off with our water line replacement leftovers.

and so now we are primed for new grass. we are watering appropriately and we are conferring with dan, who has the best grass ever. he will guide us into better grasshood. we will tend our new yard carefully as it comes back from its turmoil and wreckage.

and one of these days we will be able to remove its hairnet and verdant grass will blow wild and free.

*****

read DAVID’S thoughts this TWO ARTISTS TUESDAY


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the old brick wall. [d.r. thursday]

they saved the old brick wall.

the sign we have in our yard out in front of that brick wall is a proclamation of things we hold to be true. a few phrases down is: water is life.

yes. water is life. and for the last few days, we have been dealing with yet another water issue…this one seemingly the culminating water issue, though just writing that makes me want to knock wood. suddenly, the underground water line from the curb to our house was leaking, gurgling up through the muddy grass, puddling and icing on the sidewalk and down the neighbor’s driveway and into the street. we blocked the walk with our old rickety adirondack chairs that featured signs that read “sidewalk closed”. and we called the utility department, which labeled it “an emergency”.

the water utility folks came out monday morning and the week’s upheaval started. the engineer who came and gave us all the information about having the service line replaced was kind and patient and reassuring. i have spoken to this man at least thirteen times over the past couple days and we are considering him (and his wife who we haven’t yet met) – and all the participants of what seemed like grand central station in these last days – members of our new friend group.

though there are less invasive options to replacing the get-out-the-lead old service line, it would seem that the universe was having a good ole time and made those options impossible for our situation. when the boss came inside to tell me they had to trench the yard, i could tell by the look on his face what was coming. already working for about four hours, they were unable to “pull” the pipe through our old line and so it was back to ground zero.

they left about six hours after that. back hoes and dump trucks, pickups and extra scoops and other large equipment lined the street, the front yard was dug up, big slabs of sidewalk by the road and by the front door removed, bushes gone, our big old tree limbed to accommodate the equipment, the basement floor jackhammered, the closet wall along the front of the house removed and a new hole installed in the foundation for accessible water line placement. shiny copper was laid in the five foot deep trench from curb to our home. and the number of very hardworking people through our house or out front during a very long day was at least a dozen.

dogdog was in the bedroom having a hairy snit all day, eliminated from the fun. we were in the midst of it all, alternately working on stuff and pacing. it was a lot.

i’ve seen the yard ravaged before; when we first moved in, decades ago, we had an undisclosed underground oil tank removed. the oil tank surprisingly rotated on the front-loader and sludge spilled out, which they rapidly covered with kitty litter and then excavated it all out, digging inches below the surface, removing everything that resembled landscaping.

and so i know that there is a next day to what the yard looks like today. it will take a good long time for the trench-fill to settle and the city-guy recommended not sodding until next fall to avoid disappointment with the very large dimple that would invariably form in the yard. so…patience through the winter and the spring and the summer. i told him we’d have our neighbors call him if they wanted to complain about the aesthetics of our yard.

jen wrote, “it’s so hard to see bits of our life story destroyed.” pretty emotional in the middle of all the chaos, i agreed.

the guys in and out of the house were aware. we knew they didn’t want to dig up the yard and wreak any more havoc than we felt. we are grateful for their careful demolition, their problem-solving expertise and for the obvious camaraderie they all have, working together to a common goal. every spoke in the wheel counted yesterday, counts every single day. together is something for which we should all express thanks. none of us do this – life – alone.

before they left, most of these excavating, plumbing, mechanical, engineering specialists wished us a happy thanksgiving. thinking of everyone and everything we hold close and for which we have enormous gratitude, we wished them the same.

we’ll rebuild the yard and put in new flowers and bushes, new ornamental grasses, new landscaping. we’ll hope that the old tree will withstand the jostling and limbing and its root system backhoed into pieces. we have water again. in this world where so many do not, we are lucky enough, lottery-lucky if we really think about our globe, to have fresh, clean water … and now through shiny copper pipes.

and the old brick wall is still standing.

happy thanksgiving.

*****

read DAVID’S thoughts this D.R. THANKSGIVING THURSDAY