New Kanji for "lack of situational awareness" proposed

"Oblivious" or "Completely lacking in situational awareness"

Robert commented that the Kanji for "noisy" is archaic and obsolete.

Always wanting to help a brother, I updated the Kanji for modern times. 

Brush, pallets, turkeys and an inspiring email

Brush control

Asian bittersweet climbing up a fishing pole.

Yesterday was another day of cutting brush followed with cut-stem application of herbicide. Much of what I am cutting has been cut before and is multi-stemmed.

I don't inherently dislike multi-stemmed trees that sucker. They have a place and a function. When they are outside of their place, then they are a weed.

Today will be more of the same. 

Breaking down pallets

It takes time. My biggest concern is being mindful of nails.

One of the newer pallets must have come from Asia. One of the stringers that the slats were nailed to was extremely heavy and figured. It would make good knife handles or, maybe, cutting boards. I will get a mass density and some pictures today, God willing.

The days are getting shorter

I am noticing. I cannot get as much done.

The leaves are falling. I can see the squirrels in the walnut trees.

I saw five deer yesterday.

Heritage turkey breeds

I am contemplating adding a small number of turkeys to our operation.

My preference is toward the more natural colored breeds like Bourbon Reds, Narragansett, Bronze or Black Spanish primarily to not attract attention from predators. Much of what I end up with will be heavily influenced by what will be available in May of 2027.

Do any of you raise or know of people raising heritage turkeys? All thoughts will be appreciated.  

I got an email yesterday

One of my readers stepped up and volunteered to lead "a Project" at the local high school. The team of students planted three apple trees on the school property.

He sent me an email with some pictures.

One of the (many) things that I think he did spectacularly well is that he gave the students ownership.

A cynical thought

The mainstream media is reporting that the chances of the Republican candidates has evaporated and that they have zero chance of retaining control of the Senate and House of Representatives.

My first thought questions their basis. Polls are totally trash. Many people who plan on voting refuse to answer random phone calls.

My more cynical thought is that if the Democrats don't crush the Republicans in the midterms, they have a "set-up" for rioting just like we see in France. They can claim "The Republicans stole the elections".

Regardless of which party wins, pray for America. 

Bonus link  When somebody promises violence, take them seriously.

A thought from Seth Capehart

"You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with" 

If you want to improve your life, be more selective in who you spend time with on-line as well as in meat-space and watch on TV. 

Brush control, putting Quicksilver to work, gym notes and a future road-trip

Yesterday's outside work was mostly cutting Box Elder and treating the cut stumps with herbicide. I was also cutting and pulling Asian Bittersweet vines out of trees. That was heavy work.

I acquired an impressive collection of stick-tight seeds while working outside. 

Inside, Quicksilver helped me make tree-tubes to slide over young trees to protect them from the rabbits. I cut old newspapers, rolled them on a mandrel and ran a bead of glue along the edge of the paper before I finished rolling them. Quicksilver then applied the tape to hold the assembly together while the glue dried. Then she pulled the fragile tube off of the mandrel and put them on the pile to dry.

It should be obvious that these can only be used for unbranched whips, but it is much, much faster than wrapping them in-the-field.

One of the pages had the picture and obituary of Susan N., one of our family friends. She will be pleased that even after she left this valley-of-toil-and-tears that she can still do good work. 

I also went to the gym and lifted.

There was a class going on. It had women. It had LOTS of women. The instructor, who was also a woman, was introducing them one-by-one to all of the types of equipment in the gym. The group assembled around the piece of equipment in question. The instructor demonstrated how to use it. Then each woman, in turn, used the equipment while the instructor coached them. Each woman did three "sets", each in their own turn, before the group moved on.

The equipment for arm curls is right next to the deadlift platform and the Japanese symbol or "Woman" looks a lot like a woman doing a curl.

I bought an anvil yesterday

I have to pick it up tomorrow.  I bought it at an on-line auction and picking it up involves a modest road-trip.

Bonus image

Probably an AI image. Who buys gold-plated battery cable terminals?

 

Fine Art Tuesday

 

Iceskating

Maximillien Clarenbach was born in 1880 in Germany and died in 1952.

He is notable for painting the same landscape hundreds of times from slightly different perspectives. He didn't make copies. He set up his easel and slapped out another painting.

The detail is coarse. The colors are muddy or nearly extinct. But a discriminating viewer can get a sense of the area that a single, highly detailed image cannot tell.

Fish net in the foreground. The shallow, sloping banks are clearly "flood-plains" likely the Erft River. The last image in this post is not a painting but an actual photo of the Erft River near Bergheim.

The trees  look like willows. The visual density of the tree canopies suggest the buds are swelling so the snow is likely a surprise, spring dusting of snow.

The trees are planted in rows. The branching of the trees in the foreground are not the usual willow-or-poplar. Perhaps elm or even Honey Locust.

This ground-level perspective accentuates the flatness. My best guess is that this is actually in the floodplains of the Rhine near Neuss.

I bet this area has a lot of insects during the warmer months.

A rare upland image

Another boat. More fishnets.

 

Actual photo. The brush along the river means that grazing animals are not pastured there any more, nor is it "bent to the plow".

Another actual photo of the Erft River. I have to admit that "Erft River" rates right up there with Ontario's "Nith River" for intriguing names.

The Golden-mean

There is a story that seemed to pop up in many places in the American west at approximately the same time. Whether it was the Texas panhandle or the dry side of the Alberta Rocky mountains, it involves settlers sending for "mail-order brides".

A typical version of the story goes something like this:

The three women showed up at the train station and the three grooms showed up to greet them. Since none of the men had bothered to write letters to them there was confusion as to which bride was to go to which groom.

The oldest settler suggested that each bride peel a potato as the men watched, and then, after drawing lots, the settlers would choose whichever bride most suited him.

The three brides were each given a gnarly, lumpy potato and a paring knife.

The girl from Germany painstakingly peeled her potato and it was as smooth as a hen's egg with virtually zero waste. 

The girl from Ireland had her potato peeled in 15 seconds flat but it was not as finely peeled as the German girl's potato.

The three grooms and the two prospective brides turned to watch the girl from the large, eastern city struggle with her potato. Even though the German girl had taken two full minutes to peel her potato, the city girl was not even half done. After another two minutes the oldest settler said "I think we have seen enough. Time to draw lots."

The oldest settler got the longest straw. The youngest settler got the next longest and the settler who had been born in Norway drew the shortest straw.

The oldest settler didn't waste a second. He grabbed the Irish girl by the wrist and marched her to the church to get married. His figuring was that a farm-wife needed to be able to do more than just cook so a girl who could cook "Good enough, speedy-quick and plenty of it" was what he was looking for.

The youngest settler chose the German girl. He assumed that she would get faster with practice. Those two were married two minutes after the first couple got hitched.

The Norwegian settler looked at the city girl for a few minutes and said "I think I would rather stay single" and put her back on the train back to Chicago.

Being a pragmatic person, the girl went back to Chicago and the story of her humiliation became a part of the family's folk-lore. It doesn't take much to be famous in Chicago, so it should come as no surprise that visitors to Chicago can visit a large sculpture that memorializes the girl's unfortunate potato.

Brass, hurricane responses and other stuff

I sorted some .223 Rem/5.56 NATO brass

Headstamp of the heavy outlier

I sorted some mixed .223 Rem/5.56 NATO brass after tumbling, resizing and trimming. The lightest piece was 87 grains. The heaviest piece was 108 grains. The the ratio of mass density of yellow brass and a dense, spherical powder like H-335 is 8.5:1, so the difference in internal volumes between the two extremes is the equivalent of 2.5 grains of powder.

The vast majority of the pieces ranged between 90.5 grains and 102.9 grains (a difference of 1.3 grains of H-335). I sorted them into < 93 grains, 93-to-95 grains and over 95 grains and the bags were nearly equivalent in weight. The over 95 grains population was evenly distributed between 95.1 grains-to 102.9 grains with a node at 102 grains.

So, the <93gr and 93-95gr group are suitable for what passes as "precision shooting" at Casa ERJ while the 95gr+ group will be downloaded by 1.0 grains of powder and used for "make noise" shooting.

Useful Links:

Volume Mass Density table of common powders

Thread on brass weights by headstamp at Sniper's Hide

Hurricane response

Quite a comparison between the Federal Government's responses to Hurricane Isaias in October 2026 and the response to Hurricane Helene in September 2024. Only 25 months difference. What changed?

It is telling that the mainstream media isn't pointing out the differences.

The leftists like to gaslight the public and claim that "the media has a right-wing bias" because they are owned by large conglomerates. 

You cannot hate these people enough.

What Sixty Million People Learned About Water, Warmth and Medicine During Spain’s Ten-Hour Blackout

 A LONG (5500 words long!) essay on substack about historical grid-down situations. 

A sample of the content:

Survival advice has a poor reputation, partly because it is usually sold rather than explained and partly because it is framed around wilderness scenarios most people never encounter. A grid-down event is a municipal scenario. The environment does not change; the systems do. What a household needs is the ability to substitute, for a fortnight, functions that municipalities and markets normally perform invisibly.

Water. A person can go roughly three weeks without eating and about three days without drinking, and in heat the second figure falls. The planning number is one gallon per person per day for drinking and basic hygiene — twenty-eight gallons for a fortnight — but the figure misleads in both directions, because a domestic hot-water cylinder holds thirty to fifty gallons of drinkable water, a toilet cistern holds another three, and municipal pressure usually persists for a day or two, which is time to fill containers. Water from a hot-water cylinder should be drawn from the drain tap, allowed to cool, and disinfected if there is any doubt. Water in a toilet cistern is usually drinkable provided no chemical cleaner has been added; water in the bowl is not.

Disinfection needs more care than most guides give it. The standard field dose is two drops of plain, unscented household bleach per litre of clear water, or eight drops per gallon, using bleach of about five to six per cent sodium hypochlorite. Double the dose if the water is cloudy, and allow thirty minutes of contact before drinking...

Exercise notes

Yesterday was supposed to be a running day. I pushed a lawn mower for an hour instead. Old puffballs make a big cloud when you hit them with a lawn mower.

Today is supposed to be a lifting day.

Ducks

We are up to three eggs a day from five hens. They are eating more than they were during the summer but I did not increase the calcium. Yesterday, I had my first egg with a dented egg-shell. Therefore, it is time to add FOUR teaspoons of calcium carbonate per feeding rather than three spoons.

Random note

Mrs ERJ likes Melrose apples better than Galarina for eating. Both apples are grower-friendly and the Melrose, being a larger apple, require less labor to pick.

Everybody, remain calm...

 

Bonus video clip

Woman harvesting some green alfalfa to feed to her pig.

According to the internet, which sometimes tells the truth, alfalfa can be fed to pigs to supplement protein, minerals and fiber but there are parameters that must be respected. 

Yesterday was a great day to work .and. unproductive people in positions of authority

Yesterday was a beautiful day to work outside.

I went to The Property and worked on the two (future) Dacha orchards.

I made a 16' "measuring chain" from bailing twine for spacing the T-posts within the row and a 24' "measuring chain" to space the row.

I added one more row of five trees to both future orchards. I cut the weeds that were within 6' of the T-post with a billhook and sprayed the vegetation with herbicide. Now we wait. The herbicide will not act very quickly due to the lower temperatures.

Unproductive people in positions of authority

One conundrum with public, make-work jobs is that they are difficult to eliminate. Since they are hard to eliminate, there is no incentive to streamline processes or consolidate positions. The thinking inside of Dot-gov is "If we lay them off then they will go on welfare and Medicaid and the state will not save a dime." So every employee is given a fraction of a full work-load and everybody is happy.

Except that the under-worked employees make work to signal their importance, often by demanding attention from productive people in the private sector. That is, they deny permits to people until they submit "one more report" or "rewrite their application to explain how they are going to dispose of the sawdust from treated lumber" or some other bit of minutia.

This is not a new phenomena. It is documented in Matthew chapter 23 where Jesus says of the scribes and Pharisees (the clerks and people who interpret the Law)

The scribes and the Pharisees have taken their seat on the chair of Moses.(that is, place of high honor) Therefore, do and observe all things whatsoever they tell you, but do not follow their example. For they preach but they do not practice. They tie up heavy burdens [hard to carry] and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they will not lift a finger to move them. All their works are performed to be seen . They widen their phylacteries and lengthen their tassels (virtue signaling in today's language). They love places of honor at banquets, seats of honor in synagogues, greetings in marketplaces, and the salutation ‘Rabbi.’