When the blogger's subconscious kicks him out of bed in the middle of the night

It pains me to write this, but I think the fitness-center/gym that Mrs ERJ and I frequent is a house-of-horrors from a fire evacuation standpoint.

Let me explain

I am the paranoid guy who likes to practice fire drills when he spends the night in a strange hotel room. Which way do I turn going out the door? Where is the stairwell? What visual and tactile clues identify the stairwell? Is it at the end of the hallway (preferred) or is the entrance a tiny alcove just like the room-doors? Where does the bottom of the stairwell kick me out of the building? Where am I parked relative to that point?

Where is my alternate stairwell?

I also worked in factories and we had fire drills. Sometimes the evacuation routes took us through high-hazard areas...places where extremely flammable or explosive materials were stored...places where material was precariously stacked or automated equipment wasn't necessarily stopped.

So, I admit to being paranoid and perhaps even overly vigilant. That is just the way I am wired and I deal with it.

Specifics on the facility

The fitness-center/gym complex is a warren of divided spaces with no discernible rhyme or reason. As far as I can tell, there is no master floor-plan posted anywhere and I cannot remember entering a space where the "Evacuation Route" was posted. Maybe they were there. Maybe they were small or not near the door.

Large portions of the building are off-limits to the general public. 

Obviously, men's and women's locker rooms are off limits if you are not of the correct gender.

Staff break-rooms and locker rooms are off-limits.

Physical, occupational and cardio therapy areas are off-limits.

Classrooms and conference rooms are off-limits.

Storage spaces are off-limits and my sense is that they are large and stuffed with flammables like mats, tables, mobile partitions, carpeting etc. Those items, when burned, often produce copious amounts of thick, toxic smoke.

Cooking areas are off-limits and are potential sources of ignition and flammable liquids. 

Material receiving areas (trucking docks) are off-limits. I have seen tires and high-pressure gas cylinders in these areas.

Custodial areas are off-limits. Those areas potentially hold toxic materials if heated. They are a choke-point for materials that are being disposed of.

All of those forbidden area makes it very hard to scout-out evacuation routes. The official evacuation plan might route people through those areas in the event that the "regular" exit is not accessible...but I have never walked through them.

General exercise spaces are confusing

They have multiple doors and are daisy-chained together.  You have to go through the locker rooms to get to some of them. Some lead to other exercise spaces and are used by staff. Others lead to storage areas. I have no clue where others lead to. There is the potential to walk around in circles inside the facility or hit a dead-end.

The rooms are covered with mirrors. In the event of smoke, the illuminated "EXIT" signage might not be clear due to reflected images.

Incidental notes

The clientele of the center might spend a few hours a month in the center so most of us will not be familiar with the layout.

Most of the clientele will use only a few of the services and will see only a fraction of the facility.

Many of the staff are "affiliates" or contracted help so there is no guarantee that they will be helpful in the event of a low-visibility evacuation. 

Policy is tolerant of people leaving locks on lockers. Lockers can be rented so regular clients can leave a change of clothes. There is no policing to ensure transients are not storing (potentially nefarious) items in a locked locker. 

In the event of a mutual-aid fire alarm, the supporting agencies are entirely volunteer firefighters. Sending them into a building with a maze-like layout is foolhardy especially when visibility is bad.

The facility leases out space for "events" like birthday parties and corporate training. 

 

The facility is large. It has about 70,000 square feet of interior space and over a quarter-mile of exterior wall. 

The clientele in the west and northwest parts of the building are often limited mobility (Physical Therapy), sensory handicapped (Occupational Therapy), unpredictable (Behavioral Therapy) or fragile/impaired respiration (Cardiac Therapy). Additionally, many of the clientele in that part of the building are ancient and their mental processing speed when confronted with novel challenges might be slower.

Tasks for me

Look for signage. It might be there but obscured due to visual clutter. If it is there and I didn't see it, shame on me.

But as I try to remember the "space", it is largely partitioned with half-walls, plants in urns, lattice and has a very open and airy feel to it. There isn't a lot of wall to hang things on. Additionally, the mirrors make the spaces seem semi-infinite and magnify the visual clutter.

Potential action items for the facility

Put tape on floor to direct clients out if visibility is impaired and first-responders in. Different colors can designate different areas.

Audit signage.

Store flammables with high toxicity when burning off-site.

Post a regular audit schedule for the "back rooms" like receiving and housekeeping to ensure hazardous materials don't accumulate. Have a sheet that must be initialed and dated that the site manager actually toured the area.

Review policies that might allow clients to be placed (staged) in treatment rooms before the therapist arrives. They are most at-risk in the event of an evacuation event.

Review locker policy on an annual basis to weigh risk-reward of allowing people to store private property in locked lockers in the facility. Traceability of locker "ownership" is a cluster-festival and the facility has some degree of litigation exposure to contents stored in lockers. Example: A malicious person stored peanut dust in his locker and another gym-goer goes into anaphylactic shock.

Supplemental materials

Triangle Shirtwaist Fire

Cocoanut Grove Fire

Hamlet Chicken Processing Plant 

Crans-Montana Bar Fire 

Overview of fire/smoke hazards on airplanes 

One of the recurring themes in these disasters is that the "safe way out" didn't work out. Victims were stacked up against the door that didn't open. Other ways out were available but the victim's were unable to process alternatives due to panic and the crowd-mentality.

There is probably a deeper message here. 

Daffodils and Actions-vs.-Words

I planted the first plants into the satellite or "Dacha" orchards. They weren't fruit trees. They weren't even food-producing plants. They were daffodils to serve as early pollen sources and as row markers. It was a battle driving the shovel through the roots of the goldenrod, grasses and vines.

Other perennials that I have penciled in for the ground-cover in the rows beneath the trees include horseradish, lovage, asparagus and rhubarb (and possibly Jerusalem Artichoke). None of them will be tall enough to compete with the trees and they compliment the trees from an ecological and production standpoint. An important consideration is that they are not attractive to deer in terms of browsing.

Fruiting bushes that I am considering include primocane fruiting raspberries/blackberries, gooseberries or currants.

Back when it was common practice to plant orchards on 30'-by-30' or 40'-by-40' grids, it was very common to plant strawberries or grain between the trees so the land was productive while the trees formed their canopies and before they reached peak-production.

A comparison between the economics of commercial orchards and homestead orchards

Commercial orchards hire their labor. They come in. They pick-pick-pick. Then they leave. 

A homestead orchard might have children who will happily go out and pick fruit any week of the summer or fall...because they are hungry. Not all of the fruit will fall into the basket but that is a feature, not a fault. So while a commercial orchard must be optimized for labor and markets, a home orchard is likely to be optimized for having some type of fruit ripening from mid-June until November (strawberries-to-persimmons) and even beyond in the root-cellar. And if you consider rhubarb a fruit, it could even be from early-May until November (rhubarb-to-persimmons).

Source

The challenge of most summer tree fruits is that they come-and-go in a heated rush. A tree full of Yellow Transparent, for instance, is a daunting amount of fruit to deal with due to its very short shelf-life. The fruits of late autumn, by comparison, are a "slow hand". A few bushes of raspberries, on the other hand, don't ripen their fruit all at once.

Winter pears and late apples are very forgiving in terms of harvest timing.

One of the shortest parables in the Bible

A father asked his first son to work in the vineyard. The son said "No." but changed his mind and went to work in the vineyard. The father asked his second son and he said "Yes!" but never went to work. Which son did the will of his father?

This is actually a parable-of-hope for those of us who have children who fell away from the faith. Secular culture will seem to pry many of them off of the rock-that-is-faith. In time, some of those children will see the promises of secular culture as hollow and will return.

We will not be judged by where we start. We will not be judged by where we are at this heart-beat. We will be judged by where we are when our life's breath leaves our body. 

This particular parable is a very nice "closer" for the parable of the Sower where some seed fell on the path, some among the rocks. Others fell in the thorns while some fell in fertile soil. That parable paints a bleak picture for those who are tantalized by the glamor of modern life with all of its glitter, lies and distractions. The parable of the two sons softens that picture.

Running notes

My discipline lapsed.

I dipped a toe back into running Sunday morning.

I ran a half-mile out and a half-mile back.

As I started chugging up the last grade on the way out, it occurred to me that my dismal times were largely due to my choosing comfort while running up hills. I was slowing WAY down.

I leaned into my discomfort. I changed my gait by taking shorter steps and increasing my step-rate. My half-mile time was a blistering 5:41 vs the typical 6:30.

I grabbed a minute of re-oxygenating before starting back. I consciously "worked" while running uphill. My half-mile time on the way back was 5:06.

Between that, planting, harvesting, unilateral farmer's-carries on Friday and Saturday...I was pretty much wiped out on Sunday. 

Since I will not be running a sanctioned 5k race in early-October, I will mimic the experience by running 5k on a suitably flat section of local, gravel road. What that means is finding about a 1/2 mile of flat road and running 3 out-and-backs.

Stay tuned for more adventures. 

Famine, Head-lice, Canning Jars and pictures

Dan commented on an earlier post about dire consequences if/when a technology failure triggered failed crops in the US.

The question that popped into my head involved HOW MUCH of a failure could we manage our way around and when must people start dying in the streets because there simply, mathematically, is not enough calories, fat and protein?

The short answer is that 50% of our current wheat harvest would have to fail .AND. 70% of our current soybean .AND. 90% of our corn harvest. A major caveat is that the transportation/distribution system would have to be able to efficiently allocate the much smaller amounts of food.

The first order analysis, aka back-of-envelop calculations) figured 2500 Calories per day per person, 33% from fat and 70 grams of protein per person per day. One egg per person and pregnant women and pre-teens getting 1/2 liter of milk a day.

The total ration would be famine bread that was 38% wheat flour and 38% corn flour with the remainder being de-fatted soy flour to bump the protein up to 19% (to meet the 70 grams/day target).

Meat, booze, imported fruits and vegetable consumption would be driven to almost zero under this draconian scenario although grass-fed beef and lamb would be available in small amounts and so would small game like rabbit.

Countries that depend on our food exports would be in a world of hurt.

My 40,000 fly-over conclusion is that famine in the United States is far more likely to be created by failures in the logistics-and-allocation sectors than failures in the production sectors. 

Highway pickup

I participated in a "Highway Pickup" event yesterday.

I was chatting with an older gentleman while we waited for the rest of the crew to show up. He told me about inheriting canning jars from his parents and from his wife's parents. He told me had quite a collection of them before that happened.

Recently, they gave 500 of the jars to some neighbors, an older, Amish couple.

The couple, in turn, washed every jar until is sparkled and gave them, boxes and boxes full of them, to a newly married Amish couple as a wedding gift. The bride was thrilled to the point of (happy) tears to receive the gift.

Same man, another story

Shortly before he mustered out of the Army, he worked in recruiting. He had been detailed to pick up a group of new recruits and transport them to the base for in-processing prior to boot-camp.

He was issued a Ford Econvan and departed at -3-o-dark-thirty for a city of approximately one million people.

Upon arriving at the pick-up point, he saw 14 men milling around. His fan held 8. With the motivational method he had learned in the military he was able to pack 12 of them into the van.

Driving was difficult with his elbows wedged in against his side, but orders were orders.

He had been driving for half an hour when the recruit leaning against him asked about the beds they would be sleeping on.

"You will get whatever Uncle Sam issues you" the driver replied.

"Geeze, it can't be worse than what we bunked in last night" the guy behind him said. "My gawd...I never seen so many bed-bug bites and I swear I got head-lice there..."

The driver hit the brakes and swerved to the side of the highway. "OUT!! OUT! OUT!!!!" he screamed at them.

After a multitude of WTFs, he finally got them all out of the van.

He assured them that there was a bus coming in ten minutes to pick them up (a bald-faced lie) and slammed the doors shut, leaving them standing beside the highway with their bags in the dark.

His Commanding Officer asked him "Where are the recruits? Didn't you pick them up?"

The driver said "They told me that they had head-lice. I dropped them off beside Mullet Highway near Snook Avenue." 

The CO cursed a blue streak and started making phone calls. The last time they had imported lice it had taken weeks to get rid of them and it reflected poorly on the CO's record.

Then the CO ordered the driver to get a haircut, pick up Rid shampoo at the Px and a clean uniform from the quartermaster and to get sanitized via the shower-room.

He said that he was scratching for a week after that, thinking about how close he had been to 12 men with head-lice and bed-bugs. 

Bonus pictures

See the squirrel?

Can you see him now?

Rose-hips. During WWII, boys in Britain were sent out to collect them to supply Vitamin C. That is because citrus imports had been driven to zero by the U-Boats sinking transport ships.

Pictures in lieu of actual content

 

This is the frame I fabricated from 2-by-4s and wood pillaged from an old pallet. The footprint matches that of the truck cap that will go on top of it, 5' wide by 7' long. It is 15" tall.

As yet, the openings for the door are closed except for the one that aligns to where the ducks are currently laying their eggs.

 

Amaranth (weeds)

Ralphie didn't get lucky the night before I mowed the lawn but he did get lucky when I saw him and stopped the mower.

We had a house-guest the other day and he removed the batteries from the window alarm. Fortunately, he also left the cover off so I could see that. Very weird and a little bit worrisome.

Fake News Friday: Mr Miyagi was almost cast as a character in The Sopranos

It is a true fake-fact that Pat Morita, the actor who was Mr Miyagi in the Karate Kid franchise was almost cast as a character in the TV show The Sopranos.

Other cast members objected to the choice saying that it was too confusing to have him in the cast.

"Whacks on"

"Whacks off"

"Whacks on"

"Whacks off"

"Can't he make up his mind. I dunno who to shoot. He drives me crazy." 

Back in the day...

Back in the early days of the Industrial Revolution and up into the 1950s, many manufacturing plants were a dreadful hodgepodge of equipment clumped in a semi-random way. As business grew, additional capacity would be added, often in a lean-to attached to the main facility. Sometimes shoehorned into space that had been used for something else.

Some captains of industry grouped equipment by type. All of the milling machines in one corner of a building. All of the lathes in another corner. Heat-treating in a different building. And so on and so forth.

There was rarely any over-arching plan about how things would be manufactured. Parts more-or-less percolated through the system as capacity opened up for the next operation. Because of the chaos and random routing, assembly lines were not feasible (and had not become mainstream until the 19-teens anyway).

The parts that were "in process" were moved from the pile of "finished goods" at one operation to the next process by employees classified as "shunters". They typically loaded parts on steel-wheeled carts and wheeled them to their next operation. Sometimes that that involved pushing the cart up a ramp to higher floors. Sometimes it involved pushing the cart along cratered pathways to different buildings.

They did that all day long. They were the human equivalent of a fork-truck: Lifting, moving, lowering.

If you look through an Industrial Engineering book written in the 1930s, you will notice that one of their primary metrics were the Calories consumed by workers in each classification. Shunters were among the very highest at 4500 to 5000 Calories per shift. 

Shunters are the Industrial Revolution's counterpart to the men pulling ships up the Volga river and pockets of them existed into the 1950s even in "civilized" countries like the US, England and Germany.

Back-in-the-day

Every farm boy who kept his ears open knew that if you were going to the newfangled "confinement" method of rearing livestock, you needed to ventilate the space to ensure a minimum of one complete air change-over every 15 minutes.

Chemical pneumonia from ammonia gas and stagnant air would kill far more adult animals than cold ever would.

I am keeping that rule-of-thumb in mind as I upgrade the duck-jail.

My primary motivation is to make it easier to collect the eggs. But as long as I am putting some effort into construction, I might as well be as smart as possible.

The current method of collecting eggs involves two chunks of firewood. One of them is put beneath the pick-ax so I can lift the side of the truck-cap high enough to wedge the second piece of firewood beneath it. Then I reach WAY IN to the space and feel around for new eggs. Sometimes I steal Quicksilver's toy rake to pull them to within my reach.

After collecting all that I can find, I double-check by looking from the back end of the truck cap to ensure I got them all. Then I lift up the edge, pull out the second chunk of firewood, lower the edge and then put all of the tools away.

The new method will be to have the cap sitting on 15" tall stud-frame walls with doors in the four corners. My fantasy is to look into the space from the back end and identify which corner the ducks decided to lay their eggs. Open the corresponding door. Remove eggs. Close door.

This part of the post fits with the first part because a lot of us newbie small-holders start with a hodgepodge of facilities and stop improving them as soon as they work almost-good-enough. 

Jonesing for some cattle

I am seriously wanting a couple of calves. I have about four acres of grass going to waste. Actually, worse than going to waste. It is festering with mice, ticks and other undesirables.

I could mow it, but that takes money out of my pocket and is hard on the local reptiles.

I found a neighbor with a livestock trailer. He will let me use it if I replace the rotted-out floorboards. Looks like a win-win to me.

The next task is to figure out what is wrong with the wiring harness on the truck and to fix it.

Their asking price is a little bit optimistic.

Then, I have to find a couple-three 400-to-600 pound calves that are less than $2k each. They are out there but I might have to drive 300 miles to get them and they might be beef-dairy breed crosses.

Subsistence peoples videos

Some folks like to jabber about "systemic racism" that is so pervasive that "we cannot see it".

I have my own thoughts on that, but the premise that our perspectives are flattened when our optics are within the same plane as what we are observing is a valid point.

I enjoy watching videos of "subsistence" cultures: People surviving on dacha in Ukraine, remote ethnic groups surviving in the Siberian wilderness, people in Alaska. However, I have to keep reminding myself that many of the things they do have "net-return-on-energy-invested".

Remember Oncle Horst who traded his water-soup for sawdust-bread to survive? That was a net-positive-net-return-on-energy-invested". The hot water had almost no energy (Calories) while the bread, crappy as it was, had significant energy.

Even though the videos are entertaining, riding two, 100 hp snow machines for hundreds of mile to bag a couple of caribou or to go ice-fishing or to collect a couple of pine marten for their fur is a black-hole for net-energy.

One prepper fantasy is that they will eat game to survive.

Suppose you live in a township like Eaton Rapids Township with 100 people per square mile. Suppose that we have a population density of 40 whitetail deer per mile. Furthermore, suppose that when brought-to-bag, each deer yields 30 pounds of lean meat at 500 Calories per pound. At an energy budget of 2500 Calories per person per day, how long could the population of Eaton Rapids Township live solely on the energy stored in the deer herd?

That is 600,000 Calories per square-mile on-the-hoof divided by a daily human Calorie burn-rate of 250,000 Calories per square-mile. The answer is: Less than three days.

A single milk cow in the summer can produce more than 6 gallons of milk a day. Between the fat (7,000 Calories), carbs and protein (another 7k Calories) a well-fed, lactating cow is producing almost as much food-energy as  dead deer EVERY DAY.

In seven weeks, one milk cow (which can be grazed on one acre of pretty-good, mid-western pasture) can produce more food energy than the meat from all of the deer on a square-mile (640 acres) of good deer range.

Fat is always a limiting factor in survival situations. If the milk is the only source of fat, then the milk provides enough fat to supply eight-and-a-half people with enough fat to supply 1/3 of their daily calorie needs.

I know one family that shares a cow with three other families. They have assigned days to milk the cow. If they cannot make-the-date, the family assigned the day has to make arrangments to get the cow milked. There are a lot of ways to skin that cat. 

Skid-steer Mike: Parley

I walked up to the oldest man, the one with the command voice and said “I am Mike Tardive. How can I help you?”

My announcement barely registered with the rabble.

The man I was addressing finally processed what I said, looked at me and said “Please repeat that”. 

I complied. “My name is Mike Tardive. How can I help you?” 

That caught everybody’s attention and they started babbling.

The leader made a motion with his hand to quiet the small crowd’s rising volume.

“We want to have words with you outside” the man said.

“I can agree to that as long it is ONE person representing you...and the rest of you stay in the building” I parried.

By God’s Grace, last Sunday’s readings at Mass had been about resolving conflicts with your brothers. Jesus told his disciples to directly confront one-on-one without a peanut gallery to amplify feelings ahead of facts.

The rabble disintegrated in to screeching. It was all about who was going to get a piece of me first and what they were going to do to me. Every person wanted to be the first one to take a whack at the piñata.

I kept my face as neutral as I could. The choice of their champion was not mine to make. Nothing was, literally, the only thing I could do to potentially defuse the situation.

Finally, the leader got impatient and told them to shut-up. “I will represent us” he said, with authority.

I stuck out my hand. “I already told you my name. What's yours?”

“Ricky. Ricky Adams” the man said.

He was probably 35. Clear manner of speaking. Great posture.  Understood how to work chain-of-command.  An inch shorter than 6', probably 185 pounds. His forearms had visible muscle-tone. He had almost certainly had been in the military.

“Let’s go” I suggested and started walking down the aisle toward the airlock that led to a feeder aisle that led to the waiting room and main doors. 

I purposely walked slowly. After a few steps, Ricky followed, and then caught up and walked beside me. The rest of the rabble fell in behind us, muttering dark threats.

When we reached the main lobby, Ricky turned to his little-ducklings and told them. “Sit here until I come back”.

We stepped into the sun of the early afternoon. Looking to the side, I saw the scruffy trees on the south side of the complex. I gave a half-nod with my head. “It will be more comfortable to talk in the shade”. Strategically, it was also out-of-sight of of the waiting room windows and closer to my truck.

Walking toward the Scots Pines and newly planted Red Maples, I scanned the perimeter. On the far side of the access drive that went around the facility, on the edge of the strip-mall’s parking lot, were two people recording us walking with their phones. If there had been any doubt in my mind about this being a spontaneous event, it was now gone. It was a set-up.

Once we were in the shade, I turned so my back was toward the building and I was facing outward. Interestingly, Ricky did the same. We were not directly facing each other. 

“What is your beef?” I asked, getting right down to business.

“You wrote that black people shouldn't get reparations because we are stupid” Ricky said. “You said that we would just waste the money”. 

That was not what I expected. I had expected him to say he was a Muslim and that my most recent post had offended him. My mind was churning furiously. I had never written anything like that.

“Did you read that on my blog or did somebody tell you that?” I asked. 

Ricky gave a little shrug and looked away.

I was holding my phone in my hand. “Let me show you what I wrote”.

The only thing I could remember that even came close to the ‘reparations’ for black people was a piece I had written on Universal Basic Income about six months ago. I pulled up that blog essay. It was about 400 words long and referenced how the Indian Tribes that distributed casino income to its members had markedly worse mental health markers than the same Tribes that did not have casinos.

Ricky scanned the essay. He was a relatively fast reader.

“This doesn’t say anything about Blacks or reparations” he commented when he was half-way through.

Then, right at the end, there was a paragraph generalizing the idea to include welfare and ‘reparations’.

He seemed to be processing what I had written and attempting to reconcile it with what he had been told I had said.

I interrupted his thoughts. “We have company” I said and I nodded toward the people recording with their phones.

“I think we were both set-up” I said. “I was set-up to get a beating and you were set-up to take the rap”.  

Ricky glanced over at the spectators recording us and a frown darkened his face.

That is when the cop cars started screaming down the road leading to the facility and turning into the access drive. 

“You and me, we were just standing here and shooting the shit, right?” I suggested to Ricky.

“Absolutely. Just two guys stepping outside for a smoke.” he said. He pulled out a white-and-green pack of cigarettes and shook one out. Then he lit it. He inhaled a deep pull of smoke and his face looked deep in thought.

“I don’t smoke...but it might be a good day to start.” I quipped. I looked down and saw some cigarette butts on the ground. We were not the first people to take a break in the shade of the trees.

I reached down and picked up a stubbed-out butt from the ground. I pinched it between my left thumb and index finger with the filter end out and the unlit end cupped by my other three fingers like I had seen a hundred other guys who didn't want the boss to see them smoking.

Something must have happened in the facility because the cops unassed in a hurry and most of them were hustling toward the main doors. A couple of them started our way. 

Then I commented "I am guessing that the crew you came with aren't your people, that somebody gave them to you".

Ricky didn't say anything. 

As two of the cops approached us, I raised the butt to my face and pretended to take one last draw and then flicked the unlit butt at one of the Red Maples that was off to the side. Then I said "Hello Officer. What brings you out this fine afternoon?"