Playing with ideas

I am just playing with ideas, here.

The Progressives are against requiring picture ID to vote. They claim that it will make it impossible for many voters to successfully cast their ballot.

The Progressives claim they want fair, high-integrity elections. They claim that they want to make it very easy to vote.

So...how about biometric identification as an optional, alternative method? That is used in the Plasma Donor industry to prevent donors from donating dangerously large amounts of plasma by visiting multiple collection sites and thereby endangering their health.

If Sum Dood doesn't have an ID, he can just have his biometric data taken and used for ID.

The only issue I can see is that if somebody accidentally voted twice in different precincts there would be actionable evidence of the crime. But that shouldn't be a problem for the Progressives, right? THey say they want high-integrity elections.

Acorns and daffodils

 

Acorns in the bottom of the bucket. Those roots complicate planting them.

These are blooming in some of the local roadside ditches.

Like many white flowers, they are fragrant in a heavy, sweet way. These flowers smell like Brassavola nodosa orchids

This flower matches Narcissus poeticus. It is reputed to be one of the few daffodils that tolerates wet locations. Like all daffodils, it is fairly deer resistant.

Today's work-ticket

Today's work-ticket is to go to the west side of the state and to clean-up the grave-sites of my paternal grandfather (who died in 1936) and my paternal grandmother (1996). Then we will visit a second, more rural cemetery where many other ancestors on that side of the family are buried.

We will eat lunch at a tavern that was started in 1933 and I will eat too much.

The venture (the trip, not just the visit at the tavern) will be an all-day affair. 

Quicksilver's musical moment

 

Fine Art Tuesday

 

Fishing

Nikolay Bogdanov in Smolenks, Russia (approximately 230 miles west of Moscow) in 1868 and died in 1945. His style of art was frowned upon by the Soviet dictators, so he moved to Latvia and continued to paint. He died in Berlin during a bombing raid that destroyed the clinic that he was a patient in.

 

Sometimes, "Bored to death" is not hyperbole

 

We over-prepare for the glamorous and the "sexy".

We under-prepare for the mundane and boring. Being under-prepared for the boring can kill you.

The video at the head of this essay plods along. In some places it is boring. Diarrhea is boring. Chemistry is boring. Institutional memory is boring. History is boring. Logistics are boring.

My readers

I suspect that most of my readers are in our 50s, 60s and 70s . We are more fragile than we care to admit. The issues discussed in the video killed tens of thousands men in their prime and it incapacitated millions of those men. Many of those men worked in fields or factories 60 hours a week. They were tough men. And they were absolutely hammered into the dirt by bad water and sanitation.

Shigella Dysenteriae, just one of the dozens of bacteria that can give you diarrhea

May I simply suggest that it would be a simple prep to carry a gallon (or more) of clean water in your vehicle and to have the means to filter/sanitize local water should the need arise? And don't just buy it and pitch it behind the seat of your truck. Buy TWO of them and try them out on some local water so you are not shocked by how it tastes.

Clostridioides difficile is notable for the foul stench of the "output"

And then...think about Oral Rehydration Solution for when you or a loved-one does get the Johnny-trots. Most "sports electrolyte" drinks don't have enough salt and have too much sugar.  You can get close if you take 3/4-scoop of powdered Gatorade and add 1/4 teaspoon of table salt per quart(liter) of water. You need the salt. Your body will not allow your body to retain water if it knocks your cation:anion:water equilibrium out of balance.

The case for having a response-plan for diarrhea is that there are situations when contact with raw sewage is unavoidable. Some of those situations, like flooding, can expose very large numbers of people, possibly enough to overwhelm local medical resources

I am not trying to play "doctor" here. My goal is to keep you out of the ditch long enough for you to get to the doctor. Even though dehydration and raging diarrhea is sufficient reason to call 911 and get an ambulance ride...how many of you are actually going to make that call? Right. I thought so. None of us.

You are going to try to finish what you are doing, take one final trip to the latrine, put three folded-up towels on the seat of your F-150/Silverado/RAM and then drive yourself to the E-Room.

Today's view from the office

 

Looking south. Uphill.

Looking east. Looking across a gully or small valley.

Looking north, downhill. The Autumn Olive are just starting to bloom.

Looking into a bucket. These are pecan seed-nuts, cv. "Goosepond".

Three hours time-on-task.

Shifting gears in the garden

Overflowing! I water them in our walk-in shower. I move each tray to the shower and use the hand-held shower-head.

Looking ahead at the calendar for this week I have obligations every day except today: Field trips, picking up fingerling fish, birthday parties and a trip to distant cemeteries. I might be able to wiggle out of the field trip and that will give me two days when I can work.

The heavy blue line at the bottom of the chart is 32F

I moved some of the seedling trays outside. I put them in the sun in the morning and then move under an over-hang at night where there is slight protection from the frost. We might be past the danger of frost but the ambient temperatures are not conducive to rapid plant growth. The air is cold. The soil is cold.

The Mexican Tarragon (Tagetes minuta) that I interplanted between the blackberry starts are very visible after transplanting most of the blackberries

In spite of those issues, I moved some perennials out of seedling trays into their permanent homes this weekend. I also watered various 2026 transplants (blackberries, gooseberries, asparagus, iris, lovage, rhubarb) since our total rainfall for May has been 0.0 inches. That has been great for the farmers racing to plant their fields. It isn't so good for tiny plants that have been transplanted. Tiny plants have tiny roots that can't reach deeply into the lower, wetter soil horizons.

Today, God willing, I will be planting acorns and pecan seed-nuts. I expect it to be slow going because I will be planting into unmown sod. 

Time marches onward

 

I used sand from Quicksilver's sandbox to cover the seeds. That is why many of the cells have a tan blotch in the middle of them.

Do you see that bit of bright-red slightly above the center of the frame? That is a beet seedling.

The "Merlin" beet seeds planted May 6 are starting to pop up. Five days elapsed time.

What an odd place for a woodchuck to take a nap.

We sometimes have mice in our attic. These professional mice models were compensated with peanut butter and raisins for this photo session.

Our house was built in the mid-1970s and has blown-in, cellulose (ground up newspapers) insulation. It is a pain to work around.

This is the best system I have used so far for trapping mice in the attic. The backbone is a stringer from a pallet. The traps are glued in place with yellow wood-glue.

If you ever fiddled with Designed for Assembly then you understand that rigid parts are much preferred to springy, flexible parts (like most wire harnesses).

One of the unexpected advantages of the slat that I used for the backbone is that it does not sink into the insulation.

Random factoid

The attendance at church today was about 40% higher than the norm. Today is Mother's Day and perhaps some of the mothers in the congregation suggested that accompanying them to Mass would bring them joy.

I don't think any arms were twisted and I saw no evidence that any frozen hearts were thawed. But at least 45 souls who do not regularly hear the words in the Bible attended church and heard readings from Acts, Psalms, 1 Peter and John in Charlotte, Michigan.

The words can fall like rain but if the hearts choose to remain frozen it will be to no avail. They will run off like rain on frozen soil. But the words DID fall like rain and their ears heard even if their hearts filtered it out.

I was told that Chimney Swifts (the bird) build their nests by taking a tiny gob of mud in their beaks and hurling at the place where they want their nest. Invariably, the first attempt fails. The pellet bounces off, but its impact removes some of the lichens, algae and tarnish from the brick (or wall of the cave). Perhaps fifty or a hundred or two-hundred attempts are tried and each fails. Each attempt prepares the site for eventual success, like successive passes of a plow prepares the field for the seed.

And then...a pellet of clay sticks. And then another...and another. Success builds upon success.

But is the 201st attempt any more noble or necessary than the first, the fifty-first, the hundred-and-first or the hundred-and-ninety-ninth?

No, it is not. And so the mothers and grandmothers tell the souls that have been entrusted to them "It will give me great joy if you go to church with me on Mother's Day this year." 

They do their part.

The Holy Spirit will do His part.

The lost lamb? Well, every story is different.