Have you ever noticed that you can read bit of text and think that it has no grammatical or spelling errors, only to have someone point out to you that it does? Then you read it again and it still looks fine? But it still does have errors — that have to be pointed out to you?

This is not an unusual phenomenon.

A NYU study, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, reveals that the human brain can detect the basic linguistic structure of a sentence in just 150 milliseconds – nearly the blink of an eye. The brain’s left temporal cortex distinguishes complete sentences from random words in as few as 130 milliseconds. Slight errors in spelling or structure slightly delays this response time, but around 400 milliseconds later it “corrects” the mistakes, interpreting them as valid.

So we finally have a valid excuse. It’s our brain’s fault. It “corrected” the error before we recognized that it was an error.

Now that science has proved that it was not my fault, I can confess to one such “brain-burp” in which I was a major participant.

In addition to sculpture casting at the Desert Crucible, we were at times contracted as well to cast an accompanying bronze plaque that would be mounted near the sculpture and would convey basic information about the sculpture.

In the case in point, we were to cast just a plaque itself, containing in addition to the plaque verbiage a bas-relief of the face and shoulders of the man to whom the plaque was dedicated. We were not naïve about avoiding the dangers of spelling errors and grammatical errors. We had a review system established that included two people reviewing the printed script, the customer signing and dating a copy of the script indicating his/her approval, and two people reviewing the zinc plate used to make the mold.

This was a fairly large plaque for us, as I recall about 26 x30 inches, and it had a lot of verbiage. The lettering was as small as we could use and still expect a good casting result. We took our time and did it right.

The resulting bronze plaque was a work of art and we were all quite pleased with it. The bas-relief translated well, and the verbiage communicated the myriad of public services the man had rendered in his lifetime. It was a fitting memorial.

As we were wrapping it for delivery, I did a double-take at one phrase: “…. Dedicated to his many years of pubic service.”

CRAP!

Tom managed what we considered to be another “win” a few months after the turquoise incident. In those early days the Pima County Department of Environmental Quality was well-funded and focused.

One day we were in the “burn out” process, where we put the wax replica of the sculpture’s pieces that are covered with a hard ceramic shell, into a furnace to melt out the wax. Sometimes the wax would catch fire as it exited the furnace, resulting in a brief but dense cloud of smoke.

On this particular day an inspector from the PCDEQ had arrived at our door, requesting to be allowed to observe our process. We did not have to admit him unless he had a warrant, which he did not, but we knew that if we forced him to get one, when he came back he would apply the very strictest standards. So we let him in.

He had been trained, he said, to grade the “opacity” of smoke by looking at it. And there was a numerical standard by which he could award a “pass” or a “fail” grade. A “fail” meant the smoke being emitted was too opaque and was fouling the air of Pima County.

And the offending party was subject to fine.

Our foundry was located across the street from the very end of the runway of Davis Monthan Air Force Base, and about a half mile away from a mainline track of the Southern Pacific Railroad.

Of course this was one of the rare times the wax caught fire and belched a plume of black smoke. The inspector raised an eyebrow as he looked at Tom.

At that very time, Providence arrived, in the form of a bomber landing at DMAFB, and of a Southern Pacific freight train beginning its hard pull out of Tucson.

Without a moment’s hesitation, Tom asked, “What would you say is the opacity of that smoke layer the aircraft just laid on us, and by the way, what do you think is the opacity of the smoke pouring out of that railroad engine over there? Oh, and  have you ever observed the huge plume of ultra-black smoke that the airbase leaves behind after one of its crash firefighting training exercises?”

The inspector smiled and chuckled. “Unfortunately, none of those fall under the purview of the PCDEQ. The airbase has federal rules, and the railroads have their own rules. But don’t sweat it. I’ll give you guys a pass.”

The arrival of this month’s issue of Arizona Highways magazine brought back a memory chuckle from the late 1970’s. It seems like the “wins” in those days were too far apart, and even a small one always felt good.

We had a good customer who was particularly demanding that any sculpture we cast for him turn out to look exactly as he had envisioned, and we strived to accomplish exactly that. We had just completed one of his pieces and phoned him that it was ready to pick up.

The patina (coloration) he had specifically ordered for this piece was “turquoise.” I was pleased with the result we had achieved, and was looking forward to his response.

His reaction, however, was initially disheartening. “TURQUOISE!” he exclaimed. “John, I told you TURQUOISE!”

I quickly moved past the shock of his rejection as I remembered the source of our choice of coloration. Retrieving our copy of  the January 1974 edition of Arizona Highways, headlined “Focus on Turquoise,” I opened it to a page that featured a turquoise stone that was a drop-dead match to the color of his sculpture.

What could he do? He smiled and mumbled as he flipped through the magazine and selected a different colored turquoise stone that he would like his next patina to resemble.

Remember a previous blog, titled “Much Ado,”  where I described a situation where the Fire Department descended on the foundry with a full-blown Hazmat response?

Well, this is a follow-up to that story.

About a week after the hazmat incident – look out – here they come again. Officials. Guys in suits and ties. Two inspectors with the county Department of Environmental Quality. Seems it was not OK with them for us to pour out onto the ground the water from the 5 gallon bucket from the shell room in which we had rinsed our hands.

“What? Why not?” 

“Because it is industrial waste. And there is a prohibition against dumping industrial waste on the ground.”

“Industrial waste? Gimme a break. That is nothing but powdered silica sand in a distilled water solution, with a very small amount of a totally inert dye!”

I proudly produced from the files a document that was the gold standard of proof approved by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration – the Material Safety Data Sheet provided by the manufacturer of the product.

Didn’t matter! “It’s industrial waste and you can’t dump it on the ground.”

“Wait! The worst the water can do is seep into the water table and it’s distilled water at that. And that leaves nothing but silica sand behind on the ground. Prohibition against sand in the Sonoran Desert environment of Tucson?”

“If you continue to do it we will fine you.” And they departed, saying the would be back to re-inspect.

So what to do? Briefly considered letting our attorney handle it. “Naw, we know what to do with this stuff. But let’s jack these guys around a bit.”

We went to the hardware store and bought an aluminum garden hose bubbler, a 5-foot length of rubber hose, a fitting to attach the other end of the hose to our shop compressed air line, and a valve to turn the airflow to the bubbler on and off.

We set up a station outside where we dropped the bubbler end of the hose into an empty 55 gallon drum and poured about 15 gallons of the “industrial waste” into the drum. Next to the drum we put a half-drum into which we mixed a little sand, a little powder, and just enough water to make a semi-dry paste.

When the suits returned a few weeks later, one of us ducked outside to turn on the air valve. We assured them we now had the problem under control. We had an apparatus that evaporated the water and just left the pasty sand, which we put in the dumpster, which was periodically emptied at the county approved landfill.

They inspected the bubbling evaporation apparatus, and the nearly dry “result” next to it, congratulated us on our innovative solution, and departed.

Upon which we turned off the air valve until the next unscheduled inspection.

That Rube Goldberg apparatus would probably have worked – but at a speed that would have taken us into the tricentennial.

What did we really do with our “industrial waste”?

Well, if you read my previous blog “Dudes in 3-Piece Suits,” you will recall that we had a large advertising billboard removed from the back yard that was held up by a 36 inch diameter steel column. That extraction left a deep hole.