Thursday, March 28, 2024

Boosting the signal

 ...flexibility and responsiveness (to pervasive, secular trends) are largely conspicuous by their absence. (in formerly trusted organizations like government and corporations)

This, of course, makes it all the more urgent for us, as individuals and like-mined "tribes" or self-selected small communities, to prepare ourselves for these disruptive factors.  That's not just in terms of stockpiling food and basic essentials, either:  it's educating ourselves to provide as many as possible of the services we need from within our own ranks, rather than relying on our local, state and national authorities to provide them.

I read this over at Bayou Renaissance Man. Text with white background was added by me. I also added the underline.

"Preps" buy us time but should not mistaken as the overarching objective. A limb with a tourniquet on it is not a healthy, functioning limb even though the tourniquet may be a necessary step to returning that limb to a state of health.

Start living life as if there were no institutional safety-nets

Treat your friends well and your family even better

Take care of your body. Feed it right. Keep moving.

When you injure somebody (and it will happen), apologize. Ask for forgiveness. Make amends. If they are not available (i.e. far away or dead), then pour out your grief on a surrogate for that person.

Savor the good. Celebrate joy no matter how small or humble.


Wednesday, March 27, 2024

This and that

Woodchucks

I threw some "books" of damp straw over the woodchuck holes that are closest to my garden.

I saw the freshly dug earth first and then verified that the straw had been pushed aside.

Appropriate measures have been put into place.

Where did March go?

I lifted weights yesterday. The last rep of the last set was a struggle.

I looked at our wall calendar when I got home and didn't see any notes on it about lifting weights any day during March. Did I really miss more than three weeks of lifting? If so, it is no wonder that I lost strength.

I am dragging today due to delayed onset muscle soreness.

Pepper seeds

25 Stocky Red Roaster are potted, 10 Aji Mango, 6 Golden Cayenne.

Thanks to the readers who suggested Guajillo peppers. I have them on the heat mat. I also purchased some Kashmiri peppers and harvested the seeds from ten, selected peppers. I will see if any of those seeds germinate.

Marinating chicken in yogurt-based marinade

Search "Kashmiri mirch tandoori chicken" This came out of an air-fryer

I am giving it a whirl. We have lots of garlic greens and chives. I have Key Lime juice in the fridge.


A burden shared (Cumberland Saga)


The women baked bread in shifts. Craving conversation, they came early and stayed late so the kitchen and parlor were well populated with chattering women.

Amira, while not forgotten, faded into the background as the women caught up on the latest news. Stories of new nieces and nephews who were born far away from Copperhead Cove. Distant daughters and sisters with new boyfriends and husbands. Sons who were deployed and when they were expected back. Husbands who were between jobs. Recipes. Local news.

Sarah was leery of Amira when she came to Alice's at mid-morning. But Amira was not the bossy Blue-jay-at-the-bird-feeder at Alice's. Caught up in the ever-shifting conversation, Amira's presence soon drifted from Sarah's mind.

Amira mixed a bit of the sponge with soft, unleavened dough and then folded and pressed it down with the knuckles of her fists...and folded-and-pressed the dough again-and-again. Ten folds was a thousand. Twenty folds was a million. Fold-press. Fold-press. Fold-press until the dough was smooth, elastic and not sticky. Then she divided it, shaped it and popped into pans to rise.

Lather, rinse, repeat. Three loaves worth of bread at a time. It was a great way to channel anger and anxiety into something productive.

One item was foremost on all of the women’s minds: They all talked about the arrival of the hay and the old, cull cows from the dairy. The transition to growing pasture was going to be a neat trick. Would there be enough grass, soon enough? Then the questions were “How much milk will the old bossies give them? Will the calves be heifer calves or bulls? How will the ownership of the milking rights be allocated?” 

Amira realized that they would have to move the rock if they were going to truck the hay up to the plateau. She didn't need to badger Sig. She just needed to pay attention and jump on the opportunity when it happened.

The other issue that had the women buzzing was somebody named Constanze. Apparently, she was being “shunned” and contrary to every expectation she had not abandoned her house and garden plots.

That was extremely puzzling to the women. The charter required that whoever was assigned to the garden plots had to till them and at least keep the weeds down. They didn’t know how Constanze was going to do that without help or equipment or how Sig was going to deal with it if Constanze refused to move.

Amira’s ears perked up when she heard “house”. She had given the van-body in the hoop-house a quick peek and it wasn’t going to work. Nope. Not even close. That left her in a pickle.

The women’s conversation was rife with speculation. Because Constanze was being shunned by the religious group, it was forbidden that anybody simply ask her what her plans were. Hence the outlandish and whimsical speculation.

After the last few women left Alice’s kitchen, Alice asked Amira “Do you want to make some loaves?”

“I didn’t bring any flour” Amira said.

“That is OK. I can spare some” Alice assured her.

“If it is OK with you, I would like to make some leavened flat-bread using 100% whole-wheat” Amira informed her.

“Hmmm” Alice pondered. “They will be very heavy. Are you sure you don’t want to go 50:50 with white, bread-flour?”

“No. It has to be 100% whole-wheat. Walter is on a very restricted diet” Amira said.

And then Alice did something that caused Amira to totally lose her composure. She came over and stood in front of her. She reached out and picked up both of Amira's flour-covered hand in her own and said “Walter is a very sick man, isn’t he? Just let me know if there is ANYTHING I can do to help you.”

And Amira totally lost it. Her face crumpled and tears streamed out of her eyes. Tough Amira. Amira with the steel-backbone. Amira the warrior woman. Undone by a simple, kind gesture and a few words of empathy.

Alice let her cry.

After a few minutes, Amira was able to collect herself.

“Walter is very sick. The doctors give him five-years to live without treatment and maybe as many as fifteen years if they treat him aggressively” Amira said.

“If I may ask, what is wrong with him?” Alice asked. Amira could hear in her voice that she meant his illness, not his personality.

“There is something about his immune system. It randomly attacks his organs. It used to be his bowels but it has been attacking the walls of his blood vessels for the last five years” Amira told her.

Alice blinked her eyes. Congenital diseases were not unknown in small, isolated religious groups. Some members lived a very long time. Others seemed to die young. Only God knew who would be which.

“Why did you choose to not seek treatment?” Alice asked, carefully choosing her words so it didn’t seem like she was blaming anybody.

“Because there is a high risk of the treatment destroying his immune system, and then the only thing that would keep him alive would be a constant stream of antibiotics and antivirals” Amira said. “Been there. Done that. The side-effects suck.”

That is when Alice realized that Amira had brought Walter home to die. That put a totally different complexion on their situation.

Amira’s heart was much lighter as she walked back to Sarah’s house. She had one person she could trust. She had shared her burden. Oddly, in spite of the dire situation and the threadbare state of Copperhead Cove, things were looking up.

Tuesday, March 26, 2024

Fine Art Tuesday

 

Theft of house and farmstead
Adolf Reich born in Vienna in 1887. Died in 1963. He had the misfortune of being on the "wrong" side leading up to, and during WWII.

Consequently, many of his paintings were dismissed as "propaganda" or evil.




It has been suggested that all of the "humor" God would normally bestow on a per-capita basis was exported from Germany and given to the Austrians.

You be the judge.

Titled "In the Artist's Studio"

The Cellarmaster

Hat-tip to Lucas

What is black-white-black-white-black and can make grown men run?

At 2:10 AM local time a skunk decided to unload his ordnance just upwind of my bedroom window. At 2:10:15 AM local time, I woke up.

By 2:15 AM I was asleep in the recliner in our living room.

I had been under the mistaken impression that my house was relatively free of air leaks.

I wonder what surprised the skunk. Maybe a Great Horned Owl?

Monday, March 25, 2024

It not what you need, its what you knead (Cumberland Saga)


Sleep was elusive for Amira.

The floor was hard and the threadbare blanket beneath her did little to soften it. She worried about her two boys sleeping in the car. She didn’t even have the solace of sharing a bed with Walter, denied the comfort of his cuddling “spoons” and draping his arm over her. "Spoons" and hard floors don't go together.
 
She replayed the mad dash from St Louis to Copperhead Cove over in her head. The National Guard at the bridge in Cape Girardeau and Paducah. Checkpoints where ID was demanded. Crazy, crazy, crazy prices for gasoline.

She stuck to secondary roads and avoided Nashville and other, large cities. The trip took longer than expected.

The boys were oblivious to everything except for their stomachs and their hand-held devices, the strength of the signal and the games they were playing.

The trip took ten hours instead of the predicted six.

Doubts troubled her, but only briefly.

The riots had become more violent and more frenzied. Police were no longer attempting to apprehend looters, arsonists or thugs who were assaulting others based on their race.

Something had broken inside of her that morning. She had stepped out the door of their condominium in University City, a genteel and artsy enclave in St Louis and and smelled water-on-ashes, the distinctive smell of a fire that had burned long-and-hot and then had been subdued with water. She also smelled burned flesh.

That was it. All of her buttons were pushed simultaneously. It went from academic “maybe” to “Load the car, I am pulling out of the parking space in 30 minutes.”

The boys thought they were going on a vacation. They were so OBLIVIOUS.

Walter had been shocked. But he remembered her vivid nightmares from when they were first together.

They had talked when the riots started...again. Walter agreed that Copperhead Cove might be a safer place “in principle”. He never expected Amira to pull the trigger.

Pull the trigger? Hell, Amira had dropped the anvil.

***

The dogs started baying at dawn. Roger and Sig were taking no chances. They saw the two boys emerge into the frosty clearing. They were wearing shorts, tee-shirts and shower-slides and were arguing ferociously with each other.

Sig grinned. Mostly they were muttering threats of what they were going to do to their mother for bringing them to the wilderness.

Roger stepped out of the shadows. “What can I do for you young men?” he asked. He was still holding his Remington 1100.

“OMG” the taller boy said through chattering teeth. “Can you tell us where our mom went?”

“I’ll walk you there” Roger said as Sig slipped back into his house through the back door.

Breakfast was a tense affair.

Amira offered to help with the breakfast but Sarah declined. “You can wash the dishes.”

Sarah was afraid that Amira would burn the food and burnt-on food is a fair devil to scrub off.

Blain noticed the boys had pulled out their smart-phones and started playing their games again. “We don’t allow phones at the ‘Cove. You need to give your phones to me.”

Horrified, the boys looked over at Amira. They expected her to tear Blain a new asshole. To their surprise, their mother pulled out her phone, turned it off and handed it to Blain.

“Turn them off, boys. It might be a while before you get them back and the batteries will be dead if you don't power them down” she told them.

Walter pulled out his phone and wordlessly turned it off and handed it to Blain.

The boys were much more resistant to the request. Amira had to resort to her death-glare, but in the end they complied. Little did they know that it would be months before the phones were returned.

The boys complained about the cornmeal mush and butter. Blain had advised Sarah to hide their meager supply of sugar.

The boys complained that there were no little packets of flavor to dump into the water. The boys complained about the water “It tastes funny.” They complained about washing in a basin with cold water. They complained about everything. Amira was mortified. Sarah’s graciousness was severely strained.

Sarah, Blain, Lliam and Mary fled the small house. Any place would be better than being cooped up with Amira’s whining, sniveling brats. That, and it was springtime. There was SO MUCH work to do.

Amira got water on the wood-stove. She had been watching Sarah like a hawk. Sarah’s stove had draft controls that screwed in-and-out to adjust the heat. Amira added four sticks of kindling from the bucket beside the stove. Looking at Walter, she asked “Can you and the boys handle this?”

Walter nodded that he thought he could manage. He had grown up here. He knew how to wash dishes by hand.

Then Amira looked at her boys. “After you help your father, I need to have you carry our bags up here. They need to be here by noon. Don't drop them outside. Put them somewhere in the house. Your father will tell you where.”

She didn’t ask them if they could do that. It was an order. It was a trivial task. There is only so much you can fit into a Subaru, even with a roof-rack pod.

Amira needed information.

Her sons’ behaviors had torched the possibility of getting useful information from Sarah.

Ellie was Sig’s wife and Amira was no fool. She was not welcome in that house.

That left Alice.

Knocking on the back door of Alice and Roger’s house, she was bid “Come in”

Stepping into the house, Amira could see that it was baking day. The sounds and smells and warm womb of feminine camaraderie instantly transported her back to her aunt’s house in Kamensko where she and her mother had fled after escaping Sarajevo.

They, too, had baked bread as a family group. Because of their sojourn in Kamensko, Amira knew her way around a wood-stove. Amira also knew that kneading the bread was the most arduous and least desirable job in the kitchen on baking day until the clean-up at the end of the day.

Finding Alice, Amira said “I will knead. Where can I wash?”
 
Alice pointed to a basin by the sink.
 
Amira took her time washing and used the brush to meticulously scrub the cuticles and beneath her short fingernails. One thing about having worked in a medical lab was that she really knew how to wash her hands!

Alice had an apron ready for her when she was done.

Walking over to the counter which was already covered with flour, Amira started kneading bread-dough.

There is no therapy better for dealing with anger and fear, tension and uncertainty than kneading bread-dough. Amira kneaded bread well into the afternoon. She knew she was going to sleep well that night.

Sunday, March 24, 2024

Who is laughing now?

Men, Be the Wolf


This image shows GPS traces of collars that were put on wolves in six, separate wolf packs in Yellowstone National Park Minnesota (Hit-tip to Robert for the correction).

The usual commentary is that there is very little overlap in the territories. The wolves are territorial and enforce their ranges and, for the most part, other wolf packs respect that because they know they will be torn to pieces if they infringe, especially if they are running as a single wolf.

I suppose the occasional infringement might happen when a game animal the pack is pursuing stumbles onto another pack's territory but that seems to be rare.

Another comment is that the wolf-pack tracked in white looks like a cat with a couple of eyes. The total lack of travel in the "eyes" might be due to some quirk of geography like a steep, barren mountain but it could also be the location of where a wolf was killed by another predator like a puma or perhaps a bear.

Men, the predators who would make our wives and our children their prey respect other wolves' territories. They respect apex predators.

Especially if you do not think of yourself as an apex predator, prepare to gird thy loins and slay those that would stalk your family. Wolves have good noses. They will choose easier victims.

I looked at the pepper seeds again (and again and again...)

Stocky Red Roaster seeds

Time to get them into potting soil!

Other seeds

Expected cadence of seed planting:

Tomatoes (in pots) April 1

Sugar Snap Peas  (in ground) April 15

Onion sets IG April 15

Potatoes IG May 1

Most tree seeds IG May 1

Okra IP May 1

Corn IG May 15

Late cabbage IP May 15

Tomato plants moved IG May 25

Beans IG May 25

Squash, melons, cucumbers IG June 5

Zinnia IG June 5

One reason why I think gardeners make good project managers is that we habitually think backwards. If we want a harvest of sweet corn by mid-August then were count backwards to when we need to put the seeds in the ground. And from our planting date we need to think backwards to determine when we need to prepare the ground and to add in some Kentucky Windage for weather events.

How many times can "brass" be reloaded?

One of the guys over at 24hourcampfire did an experiment to see how many times he could reload new brass. I think it was the fellow known as Seafire.

The loads were not maximum-pressure loads but were adequate for killing coyotes.

He started with five randomly selected pieces of new brass. I may be mistaken but I think he chose .223 Remington. He used the same rifle for the entire experiment so he only needed to resize the necks.

Every five shots he annealed the necks with a candle-flame. He held the base of the fired case in his bare fingers and put the neck into the candle's flame. He spun the brass until he felt the brass get warm where he was holding it. Then he put it to the side while he annealed then next piece.

If memory serves, the neck of the first case cracked in the high-teens but the other four made it to twenty-five reloadings which is when he got bored and went on to do other things.

Exotic chamberings with rare (read "expensive") brass

The experiment is a curiosity for .223 Rem which is very available but it could be useful if you have a functional firearm in an uncommon chambering like 6.5mm Arisaka, 6.5mm Carcano, 8mm Lebel, any of the bottleneck "Express" cartridges or other "obsolete" cartridges.

Gym notes

I went to the gym yesterday. My plan was to lift weights.

That fell through. For the first time the weight room was full. One guy was already dead-lifting and there were two other guys lined up to be next.

It pays to be flexible.

I saw a treadmill with an exceptionally pretty girl on it and there was a treadmill next to her that was not being used.

"Do you mind if I use this?" I asked. It always pays to be polite.

"Sure. No problem" Mrs ERJ replied.

So yesterday was a treadmill day. Four minutes of running and then I walked until my pulse-rate was back down to 140...then another four minutes of running. I knocked it off at 40 minutes.

I tell myself that I am "building a base" which is 99.9% true. There are a lot of stability muscles that have to work together when you are running.