Can we learn anything from Eastern Europe?

Humans are funny creatures. We see patterns everywhere, even when there is no pattern.

That human tendency gives rise to sayings like "Technical analysts predicted 23 of the last two recessions." Technical analysts are people who study stock and commodity prices and look for patterns.

"Village life" videos 

I have been watching "village life" videos. I find them informative and entertaining. If you want to learn an efficient way to do something, watch somebody who does it every day and who relies on what she does to put food on the table. "Hobby" farmers usually have a lot of hidden subsidies so their (my?) methods are suspect.

Many of those "village life" videos are recorded in Eastern Europe. There are several reasons for that.

Eastern European nations are poor

The economy left them behind. A typical per-capita GDP for an Eastern European country might be $25k while western countries are twice to four times that.

Eastern European countries are rural and low-tech

While under the Soviet umbrella, industry was not encouraged,M lest they challenge the might of the Soviet empire. The satellite countries supplied food, raw materials and soldiers for the empire. Industries were starved of capital improvements and cannot compete with Asian imports.

Eastern European countries are starved of manpower

Working-age men leave for western cities where there are good-paying jobs in factories. Many of the women follow them. The pensioners and some of the (very few) kids stay behind.

Many houses, even entire villages are abandoned and rapidly collapsing.

Making video content is one of the cash-generating "industries" that is within the capability of the people left behind.

Is this our future? 

While you can argue that places like Michigan, Indiana, Tennessee and New Hampshire are NOTHING like Bulgaria, Ukraine or Albania, there are similarities.

The laws of thermodynamics still hold. If you put too much into a process relative to what comes out, you will go broke (or starve).

Communism is being touted as the solution to every problem. Government kleptocrats are running amok at every level.

Younger people are attracted to cities and what they see as urban economic advantages. 

The US birthrate is below replacement and the Baby Boom pig-in-the-python is nearing the tail.

The water is back on!

The water is back on. The plumber showed up and we were good-to-go by 1:00 p.m. yesterday.

Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's

The 1/4-turn valve for the cold water on one of the basins in our new bathroom started leaking.

I put a square bucket under it to catch the drips. It needed to be emptied every 12 hours.

Yesterday, I prepared to fix it. I had the parts. I was ready to rock-and-roll.

I dropped the power to the well and bled off the water pressure.

I disconnected the braided hose to the faucet handle and then put a wrench on the hex feature where the valve was threaded on to the 1/2" nipple.

No-go. It would not budge with the amount of force I was willing to apply. Time to call the plumber.

I reconnected the braided hose and turned the well back on. I reinspected the valve...and now it was emitting a stream of water at 330 degrees from horizontal. No more drip....drip....drip....

I threw open all the taps in the bathroom and then hastened speedy-quick back to the breaker-box in the basement and dumped the power to the well.

After some consultation with a friend, I did some looking and determined that I can turn off the water at the water softener so we still have two taps of unsoftened, well-water that I can use to get water for flushing toilets. It means I will be humping water in buckets but that is OK.

The good news is that we have lots of potable water in the pantry and I LIKE the taste of our unsoftened water.

***

I could have kept fighting with the valve but there is a time to call in the professionals. I don't enjoy doing plumbing, especially OLD plumbing. I never know what collateral damages I will inflict while "fixing" something. 

Fish, Cormorants and the Danube Delta

My eyes are starved for green.

Various species of carp, pike, wels catfish and zander are the most common catches in this video.

The Danube Delta is approximately 2200 square-miles (580,000ha) and is one of the largest, contiguous wetlands in Europe. There are approximately 7 nesting-pairs (plus nestlings) per square mile of common cormorants and another two nesting-pairs of pygmy cormorants as well as hundreds of pelicans and herons.

In total, the birds eat an estimated 7 million kg of fish per year and have driven aqua-culture operations out of business. Romanians eat about 8kg of fish per capita per year. 7 million kg of fish is enough fish to supply a million Romanians and it is in their own backyard.

The photosynthesis rates and overall fertility of the Danube Delta has increased since the 1940s due to fertilizer and waste-water adding phosphorus and nitrogen to the water. Commercial fishing is hampered by low wholesale prices and issues with reliable transportation.

This video is notable for three generations of women living under one roof and they get along fabulously. The one man in the household spends a lot of his time fishing.

Also notable for the older people having exceptionally good teeth.
 

Bonus academic paper

FISHERY AND PISCIVOROUS BIRDS FORCED TO SUSTAIN TOGETHER IN DANUBE DELTA, ROMANIA  

Bonus waltz 

And, as long as we are talking about the Danube....a waltz by Strauss The Blue Danube
 

Slogging....

Slogging my way through a bit of a creative dry spell, doing the things that I know help...exercise, sunshine, decent food.

On yesterday's walk, it was cloudy when I started out. A half mile down the road was sunshine. Mike was bringing out his trash at the top of the hill and I had a chance to chat with him. Mike is in his mid-70s and was in Vietnam. He "walked point" and saw action. At the start of his deployment he was mocked for being short. Nobody mocked him after the first in-theater dust-up. After coming back home he had many health issues due to Agent Orange.

He is a cheerful fellow in spite of all that.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

Psychology is a "science" where information has a five-year half-life. By the time a researcher gets his Ph.D. and starts teaching students, 3/4 of what he "discovered" is considered B.S.

That rapid turnover means that even GOOD research gets ignored if it is old.

Here is some research from 2006 that is primarily about PTSD but it also applies to victims of Criminal Sexual Assault, Aggravated Assault and Child Abuse.

Structural and Functional Brain Changes in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

10% reduction in Hippocampal volume in women who experienced Criminal Sexual Assault as children

Relationship in verbal processing ability and hippocampal volume. Red regression line added by me, ERJ. 50% reduction in verbal processing ability is suggested.

The medial prefrontal cortex modulates cognitive con-
trol of the anxiety response and is probably essential
for habituation in normative stress reactions. ...as stress
or anxiety increase, this mechanism may become impaired,
resulting in unmodified limbic activity and thus exagger-
ated responses

Further dyscontrol may result from stress-induced brain
damage. Studies in animal models of stress suggest that
experimentally induced stressors result in structural and
functional damage to brain regions, including the hip-
pocampus. It has been postulated that hippocampal dam-
age disrupts the normal negative feedback of the HPA axis,
resulting in excessive exposure to cortisol and related cel-
lular toxicity. These hypotheses are as yet unproven (in humans as-of 2006)

Stress has permanent, negative impacts on the control and emotional regulation circuits in our brain.

Think about some kid 100,000 years ago hearing a rustling of the leaves, a snake striking out and killing members of his family. His brain rewires. The rustling of leaves bypasses slow, modulated, thoughtful responses and he simply levitates away from the sound.

Our brains are still running the same operating system that we evolved with.

High cortisol levels and extended periods of high emotional "jags" are not your brain's friend.

The repeated confrontations of agitators with ICE agents is turning some of the agent's control and emotional regulation circuits to rubble. Those auditory attacks are reducing the agents ability to hear and process verbal commands from their supervision. 

I believe that is intentional on the part of the agitators. Their handlers want dead bodies for the news and they don't care whose bodies they were.

Snow, smoke and sore muscles

 

A dusting of lake-effect snow while walking down the road

Smoke plume from a neighbor's outdoor boiler on a cold morning.

Snow squall, looking across my front yard.

Gym notes

I got to the gym today.

I successfully completed my maintenance routine: 135lb x 6 deadlifts, 185lb x 6 deadlifts, four sets of 205lb x 6 deadlifts.

The last lift was a grind but I made it.

Today, I kept the stop-watch running. I wear one to ensure that I take my entire five-minute recovery between each set. Without the stopwatch I get impatient and rush.

Five minutes between sets. Between 60 seconds and 75 seconds to grind out the six repetitions. Once I pick up the weight at the start of the set I do not release it until I lower it at the end of the set. 

I am going to be feeling some muscle soreness tomorrow and the day after, but it will be a good soreness.

Walking and "Weedy" and "Common" is good

I went for a three-mile walk today and a two-mile walk yesterday.

OK, maybe I am gilding the lily. I turned around 40 yards short of the stop-sign because the brush that was breaking the wind stopped.

14F actual. +1F if exposed to the wind (which I avoided).

I was wearing carpenter jeans (unlined), tee-shirt, Sherpa-lined and hooded overshirt, light work-coat, gloves. I also had a knit hat and was wearing socks and light hiking boots unlike savages in Alberta who stroll about Oddmanton in January wearing cargo-shorts, boonie-caps and crocs as they nibble on pickled eggs skewered upon their dirk.

God willing, I hope to lift tomorrow at the gym.

Neighbors

I ran across a neighbor while walking. I collected his phone number which could be handy in the future.

Weedy trees and trashy fish

I had a fellow kindly point out that Black Locust is considered a "weedy" tree in many locations.

The weedy trees to the left of the ditch are mulberry trees. China. Mulberry can be a very abuse tolerant species. Source of image

I am not going to disagree with him. Any species (plant or animal) that is described as "weedy" generally means that it thrives in the disturbances created by humans. I, for one, appreciate the over-achievers that increase in spite of our insults to the environment. Yes, orchids are beautiful but there is much to be said for mulberries, Black Locust, Box Elder, dandelions, blackberries, bullheads, Channel Cats, rabbits and starlings.

Even tomatoes can be weedy. I have seen a dense jungle of Yellow Pear tomatoes growing on a a sandbar in the Red Cedar River half a mile southwest of downtown East Lansing. Squash can be a weed in compost piles and grape vines along fences.

I sort of understand the mystique of exotics, but life is so, so very much easier if you invest the majority of your effort on boring, proven, robust crops and technologies:

• Potatoes
• Cabbage
• Corn
• Beans
• Squash 
• Tomatoes
• Peppers
• Garlic
• Cucumbers
• Turnips 
• 12 or 20 gauge shotguns
• .22LR rifles
• 9mm-to-.45 handguns
• .308 Winchester or 5.56 NATO rifles (or anything in between). Or if you have a source of ammo, 30-06, .303 Brit, 8mm Mauser, 7.62X39mm Ruskie.... 
• Lots of patches and ATF fluid or 0-20 synthetic motor oil for cleaning and lube
• Knives with full-tang, carbon-steel blades between 3" and 8" long
• Angus cross beef animals or Holstein or Jersey crossed with anything.
• Plymouth Rock or Rhode Island Red chickens 

Daniel Boone or Davey Crockett would have been thrilled to have any of those technologies available to them.

They are "common" to the point of forgettable for very good reasons. They work.