A thaw is coming, Muscovy ducks

 

It looks like I have until noon tomorrow to make use of the easy sledding.

Blogging might be light.

Muscovy ducks

Muscovy ducks, contrary to what you would assume from their name, are not from Moscow. 

The species is originally from Latin America.

So I am surprised to see this kind of duck show up on almost all of the "Village Life" type videos that originate in eastern Europe. They are easily identified by the fleshy, pink growths around their eyes and on the sides of their heads.

Have any of you readers raised them? Do you have any opinions on why homesteaders and other, lower-technology enterprises value them? 

 

Yes. Old guys (and mature gals) can make an incredible difference.

So I have been thinking about what advice I would give Tad Retz, the young artist featured in Fine Art Tuesday.

Steven Hanks

I had decided to tell him (if he asked) that no image is more evocative to me than to see a mother in a garden with two or three of her children. It really doesn't matter what they are doing. They could be pulling weeds or thinning the carrots or picking green beans or berries. Likely the youngest isn't really helping, he is eating whatever the other three are picking.

Hans Dahl

To me, everything is "right" about that kind of picture. It is the circle of life. It shows humans and the environment engaging in a dance-of-peers and each treating the other gently. It is how humans passed on culture and technology before paper and ink existed.

Images like that resonate in primal, atavistic ways that are deeper and truer and more compelling than our intellects. 

So imagine my surprise when one of my internet friends sent me a treasure-trove of pictures of that very thing today.

In the text he told me that he had been approached by a long-time business associate and friend. The friend said "Things are getting crazy. I want my kids and grandkids and great-grandkids to know how to grow food here in southern Nova Ruritania. Just in case.

My internet friend has been doing exactly that for fifty years. He has grown vegetables and many species of farm animals in Nova Ruritania and done it as a business. He, too, has felt the temperature rise and the pulse-rate speed up. He agreed to give the entire, extended family a crash course on growing food in their unique climate and soils as long as they agreed to participate in his HANDS-ON methods.

Alas, it did not occur to my internet friend to take pictures until the end of the class, i.e. harvest.

I asked him if he could reach out to the patriarch and ask if I could post the pictures he sent me. To my surprise, the patriarch whose family received the hands-on crash course agreed to let me post them as long as I didn't use any names or mention any location more specific than "east of Scottsbluff, Nebraska and north of Huntsville, Alabama".

With no further ado and in no particular order....

Kids caring for younger siblings is a time-honored tradition in the garden.

Harvesting tomatoes ahead of the frost...and a sugar beet?

One of these guys is my internet buddy and the other is the patriarch who had the foresight to inoculate his clan against future chaos, tumult, tempest and storm.

I cannot imagine a more perfect picture. Tad Retz...are you reading this?

End of season means harvest. Obviously, my internet buddy is a good teacher and the students put in an A+ effort!

That kid now knows where carrots come from and he probably thinks they taste pretty good. They taste like "Victory!"

Another million-dollar image

And another million dollar image. Who said you shouldn't beet your kids?

Getting ready to spike it in the end-zone.

Another perfect picture of a "Mom" and "Kids". These are real people living life to the fullest.

It is like every player who stepped up to the plate hit a home run, one after the other.

Look at the grins on their faces. This is food that is even better than what they see at Piggly Wiggly...and THEY grew it.

This picture is "OK"

This one is fabulous! All you see are elbows and pony-tails.

And this one too!

Good photo, getting down to the kid's level

Busting with pride...good pride...earned pride.

Toiling away in the background. Not showy. Not forgotten.

 

Lots of moving parts. This family is going to do "OK" and it gives me hope for the future.

We can do this.

...but can she bake a cherry-pie, darling Billy?

As a nod to the Canadian Voyageurs and lumberjacks, I have been drinking tea with a couple gently rounded teaspoons of sugar for my "energy drink" while cutting wood.

 I recall reading about a "Rendezvous" in Canada where one of the contests was to build a fire and heat up a "tea billy" of water to boiling. The people running the contest provided the wood, typically an 8" long piece of 1X8 lumber and the contestant had to provide all of his own tools.

The "grey-hairs" had to use a flint-and-steel to start the fire while the tenderfeet were allowed to use one match.

If I recall, the best times were in the four-to-five minute range and the winners used only a razor-sharp hatchet because putting down and picking up tools takes time.

Pro-tip: Split three pieces off to use as pegs driven into the ground to support the billy above the fire. 

Flawed natality data

Number of births in 2023 and 2024 siloed by highest educational attainment of the mother

Annual birthrate per 100 mothers based on US Census data for number of women in each educational silo. The birthrate for women with Ph.D.s appears to be a flier.

Birth numbers from CDC Natality site. You need to drill through several layers to get to the request form. Only number of births available for Educational Attainment silo.

Number of women by highest educational attainment from US Census Bureau.

Flawed number. "...for women 25 years old and older..." so the denominator is too low (except for the Ph.Ds and maybe the Master's). The discrepancy is in the denominator so I would expect the "some college" denominator of "Bachelors to decrease for births to 20 and 21 year-olds and for Master's to decrease for births to 20-to-24 year-olds thereby shortening the "some college" column and raising the Bachelor's and Master's columns slightly.

Number of births siloed by age of mothers. The blue columns are 2016 data and the red columns are 2024 data.

 

In 2016 the population was estimated to be 329million and in 2024 the population was estimated to be 345 million.

The graph appears to show women choosing to delay their child-bearing until "later". 

A delivery of pewter for my manufacturing hobby

 

"Holy macaroni! What is in this package?" the lady at the post office asked.

"Gold Krugerrands" I replied.

With cities yanking out lead service pipes, this is a good time to stock up on heavy metals. In ten years it might be hard to find castable pewter-like metals on the open market. 

Super Bowl Halftime Shows

Marketing missteps create opportunities for competitors

I don't see the latest Super Bowl Halftime Show as a political play. I see it as a gross misread of "the market" by marketers.

Marketing is tricky business. Most customers are not able to use words to describe what they desire. In many cases, we don't have a firm picture of what we desire. Rather, we have experiences with products and services that left us dissatisfied, so we can tell you what we DON'T want.

Another major issue that marketing teams have to deal with is that prospective customers unconsciously tell marketers what the customer thinks the marketer wants to hear. That is why marketing clinics are run by third parties and have an equal number of samples from the proposed entry's main rivals in the market segment.

The Ford Edsel is a prime example of poorly designed market-surveys  telling the marketing team what they wanted to hear.

This gets tricky because marketing teams have to guess what the customers will want in two-to-five years due to tooling and regulatory lead-times. The "really smart people" look at various bleeding-edge pundits and trend-setters and place their bets. They see the growth rates in numbers of transgenders (Bud Light) and Hispanics (Super Bowl) and throw the dice.

The Fly in the Ointment

The cost of this strategy is that loyal users of your "product" might feel abandoned while the target of the marketing campaign might totally dismiss your offering.

One place I think this is happening is when the Church Elders (often in their 70s) hire a trendy, "young", forty-year-old, with tie-died hair and wears Wiccan charm bracelets "to attract younger people to the congregation".

That fails spectacularly. Nobody under the age of 35 thinks a 40 year-old is young. They look at a 40 year-old preacher trying to look "trendy" the same way 50 year-old me looked at 60 year-olds with mullets and tie-died, "Give Peace a Chance" tee-shirts. My first reaction is "Grow up!". My second reaction is "Let go of your childhood".

Fashion trends age like un-refrigerated milk. The value of Christianity is that it is changeless. Chasing "trends" is wasted effort and results in people taking their eye off the ball. Man's nature and the war between good-and-evil does not change. God's message has not changed.

Opportunities for competitors

I think the NFL and the broadcasters screwed-the-pooch because there is now a precedent for "alternative halftime shows". How much will advertisers be willing to pay when the first, shambolic alternative halftime show siphoned off 10% of the TV viewers and pulled in 20% more via on-line viewers?

The major broadcasters (CBS, NBC, ABC, ESPN and FOX) who are in rotation to broadcast the Super Bowl collude to NOT compete with the official halftime show because they have a piece of the action.

The dike has been breached. Viewers will be able to click-over to their favorite Country Music or Polka Music or Gospel Music cable channel and watch their alternative with 1/4 the advertising and then click-back to the game when it restarts.

Fine Art Tuesday

 

Tad Retz was born in 1996 and currently resides in Syracuse, New York.

He started his professional career immediately after graduating from high school in 2015.

I reached out to him and asked permission to post his art. He agreed.

When I told him that many of my readers are apt to be curious about his (obviously) intense love of the outdoors, he responded:

I think just being raised with some property and the ability to go do things out on the property like hike, bike, ski. Growing up doing these things then making friends that do the same things has made me really feel enjoyment, peace, excitement when I'm out in nature. I think this is why I like painting it. I am pretty much either painting in the outdoors, exploring in some way the outdoors, or painting from inspiration of my experiences outdoors while in my studio. 

Retz also noted that the act of painting and creating energizes him.

Then I asked him a question about his technical expertise, "Have you spent more than 10,000 hours painting? And if yes, when did you hit that number?" As many of you may realize, 10k hours is frequently mentioned as a benchmark required to attain mastery of a skill like playing a musical instrument and, I assume, painting.

I think it takes a very specific kind of personality and work ethic to work through the ups and downs to become a good artist in reasonable time. You also need the right home/work environment with people on your side but also pushing you to get better fast. I was/am fortunate to have an older brother in the art industry who pointed me in the right direction after high school and have since had great mentors who have done the same. I must have hit the 10,000 hr mark around 2020.  

I must second his comments about work ethic and personality. When I go to the gym I see that most people are working pretty hard on the cardio machine but only about 20% are really "working" on the weights. Most of the people are taking selfies with the equipment as background and flirting with patrons of the other sex.  Very few people are hitting the free-weights...maybe because they are not photogenic.

The best way to keep an eye on what Mr Retz has for sale is to frequent his website. He is exceptionally productive and new art shows up on a regular basis. Also, his prices are very reasonable.