Fine Art Tuesday

 

Many details to point out. Two fresh graves. The boy is wearing a torn jacket and boots that are both much too large for him. The cap in front of him appears to be a military cap. The bleak landscape and the two dandelion blossoms suggest late October/early November. Poverty, civil unrest, poor nutrition, disease... The four horses ride together

Nikolai Kasatkin born 1859 in Russia and died in 1930 in the USSR.

His work was very popular with the Bolsheviks because he did not shy away from depicting the poverty of ordinary Russians....of course they were all painted from memory and were pre-Revolution images. There was nothing like that after the Glorious Revolution, of course.

Beggars in front of a church

Girl leading blind clergy

In the Anteroom of the District Court. Given the armed guards, the young man will likely be executed.

Women and children grubbing coal. Today it would be cobalt and nickel in Africa for EV batteries.

Hat-tip to the tireless Lucas Machias.

What next for V.P. Harris?

Rumors abound about Kamala Harris's future positions.

Some people believe that she will be nominated for the US Supreme Court.

Another rumor is that ABC will offer her $10M a year to add her incisive commentary, sparkling wit and infectious good-humor to The View.

Other pundits expect Harvard, Princeton and Stanford to have a vigorous bidding war to entice her to join the faculty of their Law school.

Still others expect her to start her own Instagram channel and sell a curated selection of luxury goods.

However, the most likely outcome will be that she fades into obscurity like Dan Quayle, Dick Chaney, Al Gore and Mike Pence and will pull in small stipends giving commencement speeches at places like Deep Springs College and Crystal Meff School of Brake Repair and Dent Removal.

Veterans, bucks and Horseradish

A heartfelt "Thank-you" to those of you who are veterans. I salute you.

Deer that I saw at The Property

He stood while I pulled out my phone, tapped in the password, zoomed and snapped three pictures. He isn't very smart...but that would be true of all of us when we are thinking about pretty girls.

He is about 70 yards out which is a chip-shot, even shooting off-hand. Quite a fine rack on that fellow!

 

A couple more pictures of the big guy from a local who has trail-cams out

I was planting Horseradish roots in the orchards at the time. Horseradish, turnips, raspberries and Rugosa Rose are prime nectar plants for parasitoid wasps that kill orchard pests. Planting Horseradish in the orchard is one way I can increase the population of "good bugs" exactly where I need them. And Horseradish will persist for year-after-year-after-year.

Nectar is mostly water and sugar. Sugar emits a very distinctive type of infrared that bees and wasps can see. Early nectar sources include apricots and some species of willow. The sources listed above bloom over a long period which is important as not every day is "prime" for foraging wasps (prime being warm, sunny and not too windy). They also overlap in terms of time. Horseradish first which overlaps turnips (which will self-seed) which overlaps the raspberries (perennial) and Rugosa Rose (perennial).

Rhubarb is incredible in terms of the numbers of pollinators and pest-controlling species it brings in but its bloom only seems to attract them for a few days.

Training

As a supervisor in a factory that made automobiles I was responsible for the training of my workers. I wasn't directly responsible for training each person, but it was one of the things I did when nobody else was available and I needed the new guy on the line so I could go back to being a supervisor rather than an absentee-replacement.

The goal of "training" is to develop muscle memory. The standard spiel I gave new people was to tell them that one of the very toughest tasks they ever mastered was tying their shoes and most of them were able to master that by the age of six.

Now they can tie their shoes in the dark. They can tie them when they are half asleep or hung-over or drunk or when somebody is yammering in their ear. They can tie them when there is thunder-and-lightning outside or when they get a muscle cramp. The executive function of the brain "subcontracts" the work to muscle-memory and muscle-memory gets the job done.

The key is repetitions...thoughtful repetitions that are done correctly. The number 10,000 repetitions is frequently mentioned but some gifted athletes can nail it in as few as 500.

As a mental exercise, consider your right and your left arms. They have the same bone structure. They have the same muscles and nerves and joints. Now throw a baseball with your "strong" side and then throw it with your "weak" side. Almost all of the difference is lack of repetitions, lack of training with your "weak" side.

If you threw a baseball with your weak side 1000 times over the course of a week, you would close 2/3rds of the gap between the performance between the two sides. It is that simple!

Because you can compare your strong side (good example) to your weak side (untrained), you will have good, well informed training.

Handgun training

Frankly, handguns are much more difficult to shoot than a .22LR long-gun.

It is my opinion that a new shooter who gets two full hours of competent training in handgun shooting is a full year ahead of most shooters who casually train themselves by shooting tin cans off of fence posts.

While the self-taught shooter will have a better mechanical skills with the handgun than the newly trained shooter he will have bad habits burned into his muscle-memory. Once in muscle-memory, it is very difficult to weed those bad habits out. Doubly damming, they will pop out at the worst time. They will conspire to make the shooter fail when they are under the most stress.

In general, most trainers like to work with women who are more likely than men to come into training with no bad habits and are humble enough to listen and try to understand what the trainer is imparting.

The trained shooter is also likely to have a more balanced understanding of using a handgun. For example, the self-taught shooter is less likely to train as much on swiftly and safely unholstering his weapon as the trained shooter will...he just doesn't think about it.

As the trained shooter gets repetitions, each repetition will be more thoughtful and deliberate. They will learn more with each repetition. He will get more GOOD muscle-memory with each repetition.

OK, I know some of you are chomping at the bit and about to dash down to comments and kick my butt. "Two hours is NOWHERE near enough...."

No arguments from me. But I am comparing NO formal training to the first two hours. Hopefully, the new shooter will recognize that their skills are plateauing and seek more training. Maybe they will get into something like International Defensive Pistol Association competitions which is chock-full of "practical" shooters.

Those are my perceptions. I know I have at least one certified trainer as a reader. Please kick-my-ass in the comments for the benefit of any newbie or wannabe shooters who stumble across this blog.

Hostile Take-over by the Amygdala

Laurence Gonzales's book "Deep Survival" should be required reading in college for many reasons.

One reason is that he talks about why some very smart people make really stupid decisions and he dissects it from the standpoint of how our brain functions.

In the first two chapters of the book, he talks about how emotions can hijack our brain and lead us into very poor choices. He also touches on how extremely intense emotions are addictive. Drugs like amphetamines make colors brighter, sounds more intense and make time stand still. So do super-intense emotions. Amphetamines are very addictive. So are intense emotions. That is why people ride roller-coasters and watch horror movies. It makes them high.

We are in a period where the internet supplies outrage. There is a huge market for outrage just like there is a huge market for meth.

Carving an elephant

A sculptor was asked how he was able to carve such life-like elephants.

He responded "Start which a huge block of rock and then remove every bit of rock that does not look like an elephant."

That appears to be the essence of modern journalism and "influencing". Start with a messy, real-life story and then remove all of the ambiguity that might dilute outrage.

Somebody went to the Emergency Room for a medical issue and died four days later? It HAD to be because the ER screwed up. Leave out inconvenient facts like the woman did not speak English and left the hospital against medical advise. Ignore the fact that she had a child and nobody to watch the child when the problem got worse, so she didn't return to the ER. Ignore the fact that Covid protocols were in place and every process became insanely more convoluted.

Even without those complications, people regularly die of sepsis. Even rich, powerful white people who speak excellent English and have access to the best care in the world. People like Jim Henson.

When does a fetish become a disorder

The acid test of when a habit becomes a problem is when it starts interfering with your life. Does it interfere with your ability to work with others and do your job? Does it cause friction with family members? Does it cause needless stress with your neighbors?

I think if we take several steps back to get a little bit of perspective, we would have to admit that Stimulated Outrage Disorder* is widespread and expensive.

Button available HERE

We struggle to deal with issues we do not have words for or cannot define. Those kinds of issues are fog: Shapeless, shifting and have no "handles". You cannot control the fog.

Once you have named the problem and can chart out causes and enablers and fire-extinguishers...then the problem can be recognized, identified in the wild and managed.

*I made that term up.

One size does not fit all: Resonance

I was having a conversation with a friend about how gun owners seemed to gravitate into one of several different "camps".

Guns are tools, just like hammers and wrenches and screwdrivers. There is no "one right gun" just like there is no tool that you can put in a toolbox that will allow you to throw away all of your other tools. (No, Cindy. Not even credit cards).

That said, the best gateway into shooting sports is to identify the task(s) that resonate with the person who is seriously considering making the leap.

Some gun owners are extremely energized by training and competing with a handgun in realistic, defensive scenarios. Basically, playing Hawaii-Five-O in real life with a stop-watch running. International Defensive Pistol Association events, for example. After learning the basic blocking-and-tackling of safe shooting with a 22 handgun, they will probably graduate to a mid-sized 9mm.

Some gun owners ask much less of their firearm. They visualize walking through the fields and woods and occasionally shooting a bunny or squirrel and then preparing it for food. 

A 12 or 20 gauge, pump shotgun is the equivalent of the 12", adjustable, Amish hammer. It does everything equally poorly.

 Or they keep a firearm to shoot the raccoon in the sweet corn to blast the red squirrel out of the shade tree. They will probably start with something like a Stevens 320 or Maverick 88.

Some gun owners are enchanted by the purity of precision rifle shooting where you are exploding eggs at 100 yards and are able to hit a cup-of-coffee at 300 yards. Depending on their budget, they might start with a Savage bolt action and move on from there.

Some gun owners just want something to stop the things that go bump-in-the-night. Pretty much anything that goes bang is their huckleberry...even the lowly Hi-Point .380

Some gun owners are into the history of guns. Perhaps they feel affiliation with a certain country or are drawn to the drama of a particular war. Some are reenactors and particular kinds of weapons are part of the regalia. I suppose somebody who wants the same kind of gun Grandpappy had falls into this camp. It is a nostalgia thing. It could be a Winchester Model 1895 or a Browning A5 Shotgun.

The risk of a newbie approaching us and asking our opinion is that we might not take the time to ask-and-listen. We might vomit our opinions on the newbie without considering their motivations and their unique needs.

What do you guys think? Not so much about the specific firearms but about the groupings? What am I missing?

Does not play well with others

I dug up 18 MM-106 rootstock. I wore work boots to support my ankle. 13 of the root-stocks were replanted in their permanent locations. Watered in. Pruned. A paper sleeve placed over the trunk to protect them from rabbits until it is time to graft.

I planted kale, turnips and Daikan radishes in the rows to build organic matter. This Daikan looks like a dancer.

My plan is to graft Liberty over all of them. Liberty is an honest Zone 4 winter-hardy apple and is fire-blight resistant. It also ripens mid-September. MM-106 has several flaws, lack of winter-hardiness is one of them. Its lack of winter-hardiness is exacerbated when very-late ripening apples are grafted on top of it. Maybe if I can keep the root-stock beneath the snow line....

MM-106 used to be the most widely planted size-controlling apple root-stock in the world but fashions changed. It now costs about $25,000 per acre to plant a commercial apple orchard. The carrying cost of the debt is crushing and the emphasis shifted to smaller, more precocious root-stocks. They, in turn, drove even more fixed costs-per-acre as the smaller root-stock are not drought tolerant (making irrigation mandatory) and are often not free-standing (making a trellis mandatory).

The point was that I HAVE MM-106 in inventory and that it is a decent choice for a low-input orchard. A little "excess" vigor is not necessarily a flaw in soils with low fertility.

Black Walnuts

Black Walnut roots, we have them...

After planting the 13 apple root-stock I cut down three Black Walnut trees.

Ordinarily, this would not be a complicated evolution but there were power lines involved. Ropes were run. I used the truck to put a little bit of tension on them...a mechanical wind if you wish. 

One tree had a diameter of about 12". One had three stems that in aggregate were about the same size as the 12" diameter tree. The smallest tree I dropped was the one that was closest to the line. I sprayed the cut stumps with herbicide to discourage resprouting and to stomp on the "root-grafting phenomena".

I was heartened to see a Shagbark Hickory (to be confirmed) seedling in the grove of Black Walnuts. I am leaning toward grafting it with a Shellbark Hickory. Size-wise, if a Shagbark Hickory nut is a chicken, the Shellbark is a turkey.

Some people have a conniption when I tell the I am cutting walnut trees. Trust me, these trees are tortured an twisted. The heartwood is only about 6" in diameter which is not economically viable. I need the apples and pears more than I need the walnuts.

Biological oddity

Trees have the ability to "root-graft". That is where a root from one tree crosses over a root from a different tree. As the roots increase in diameter, they can grow together and join the two trees.

That is a problem when a disease like Oak Wilt hits a grove. Oak from the Red Oak clade are more likely to root-graft than oaks from the White Oak clade. Oak Wilt can spread like wildfire through a grove of Red Oaks while it will smolder and sometimes self-extinguish in a grove of White Oaks.

Among the weirdness is that a stump can remain alive because it will receive resources from neighboring trees via root-grafts. Another weirdness is that you can find living roots quite distant from living trees if a grove was cut down and planted to apples. The network of roots stays alive and continues to feed the remaining trees even though their parent tree is dead. The living trees trade carbohydrates in return for water and nutrients. It is a good deal for both. The living trees have a huge network gathering resources with the only cost being maintenance without the cost of capital expenditures. The roots get to stay alive.

So, it is conceivable that one could find Black Walnut roots hundreds of feet away from the closest living Black Walnut. That is one of the reasons why I am making sure to hit the cut stumps with herbicide. I don't need Vampire tree roots killing my apples and pears. As much as it pains me to cut down nut trees, Black Walnut does not play well with others and I need to beat them back, away from the orchard(s).

Reloading 20 gauge shotgun slugs

Reloading 20 gauge slugs

Finished goods

 

Equipment, I used the pipe-wrench as my "hull vise" while spinning the roll crimps. Who said you would never use that Algebra book again?

Equipment not pictured was the powder dispenser and the Lee Load-All 2 that I used to stuff the slugs into the hulls.

Selected data from Ballistic Products.

Notes: Longshot powder and the DGS slugs do not compress. There is no need to smash them down with a press. Seat the DGS and then roll-crimp. The tool will stop when it encounters the slug. Let it run about one more second and then call it a wrap.

The powder measure was set to drop 23.5 grains of Longshot which BPI's Slug Loading and Field Applications handbook considers safe for DGS slugs in both Cheddite and Federal (paper base) hulls and a roll-crimp.

The extended variable cost for five rounds (which is the quantity that slugs are usually sold in) is about $4.75 (Fifty cents for the primers, $3.60 for the projectiles and sixty-seven cents for the powder. I assumed once-fired Federal hulls). The going freight, if you can find them, for Foster rifled slugs is between $8 and $10.

The biggest factor is "...if you can find them...". Availability for 20 gauge slugs has been spotty in Michigan the last few years.

Light duty, Chestnut trees, Stoves, Kraft paper and Tee-shirts

You would think I would know how to count. I had room for five trees and only planted four

I am on light-duty. The doc diagnosed "tendonitis" in my right foot and I am on the ice, ibuprofen, elevation and rest regimen.

The early part of my day was spent annoying the gentleman who came to install the gas stove. He changed the orifices, adjusted the regulator, installed the anti-tip bracket, adjust the flame height and all that other stuff. I told him jokes to pass the time.

I asked if he was OK with multi-tasking. He said he was, except when he was writing up the invoice/bill.

The hot fishing tip from the gas-heated appliance expert was that Cotton Cordell Big O crankbaits will catch anything that swims, including water snakes and softshell turtles.

Seeing how I am on light-duty, I only got four chestnut trees into the ground today. Somehow I missed the fifth spot. I am going to pretend that I PLANNED to let the roots of the apple tree I cut down rot for a year before planting that spot at the top of the hill.

I also got the last two persimmon trees into the ground, completing that row. So the tally as-of 11/7 is a row of two pecans (as seed nuts), a row of 4-of-5 chestnut trees, two rows skipped until spring, and then a row of 12 persimmons.

After planting the persimmons, I took a break and I was visited by a cute, red dragonfly. It wouldn't leave me alone. I don't recall dragonflies in November.

My niece, who died when she was 23, was very fond of dragonflies. They were her totem animal. I may share that "I got a visit from Sarah" with my sister. She gets comfort when I share oddities like that with her.

Charcoal

Different kinds of materials produce charcoal with varying amounts of "ash". 

Most of the elements that turn into "ash" in wood are in the lignin, the glue that holds the cellulose fibers together. Most of the elements that turn into "ash" in paper are added to make it smoother and brighter and to accept ink better. Some kinds of paper (glossy, magazine stock for instance) are 50% "mineral".

Two sources of inexpensive, very high-quality (low ash) material to turn into charcoal for making black powder are kraft paper and stained tee-shirts.

Kraft paper is the kind of paper that is used to make grocery bags. It has no fillers or brighteners. It is just cellulose. It can be purchased in rolls that can be cut with a band-saw into lengths that fit into a steel paint-can and baked into char. Given the density of rolled kraft paper, one can expect much higher yields of charcoal compared to sawdust and it will have much much lower ash content.

Tee-shirts: I worked with a guy who went to the local thrift/second-hand shops. He explained to the management that he worked in a welding shop and got sealer on his clothes and the welding sparks burned them full of holes. He asked them to save the tee-shirts that were stained and that they would not be able to sell to other customers. He would typically pay twenty-five cents for a garbage-bag filled with fifteen or twenty pounds of stained tee-shirts. He wore them once and pitched them. It was a win all the way around. I suspect that management would also be thrilled if they knew you were going to use the grungy tee-shirts for mulch and bio-char and other food producing products and sell them darned cheap.

Party time is over

Is there a more patriotic dessert than a piece of Red cherry pie with a scoop of White vanilla ice-cream and a slice of Blueberry pie next to it?

Mrs ERJ says it isn't patriotism but gluttony.

But she doesn't know what a sneaky fellow I am. This week I purchased the cherry pie. Then I will buy the half-gallon of ice cream. The week after I will buy a blueberry pie. I'll show her!

A couple of videos that I found informative

The men that don't fit in by Dry Creek Wrangler. Wirecutter at Knuckledraggin posted this. Dewayne is an observant and thoughtful man. His delivery is measured and comfortable in pace. He speaking to those of us who live by "I will be me and you do you and it can be good"...and must resist those who try to mold and bend us to their conception of what reality should be.

How to make the absolute best black powder (for firearms) by Everything Black Powder. Like Dewayne, the presenter speaks very clearly and anticipates questions that are popping up in your head. Near the end he stresses that you cannot cherry-pick the refinements he generously shares and still expect to get the same results they get. Yet, he understands that their process evolved and many stubfarts might not want to be quite THAT fussy...so he does share the two details that made the biggest difference (switching from lead balls to brass balls in the mill .and. greatly increasing milling time). "Why not steel ball-bearings or nuts in the ball mill?" you ask? SPARKS!

Worth rereading

Survival (or thriving) isn't about heading for the hills, hiding from world. Instead, survival is about developing resilience and self-reliance as individuals, families & communities, so that we don't need government or the Elites. Not needing government takes away most of the power and influence of both elected politicians and unelected bureaucrats, as well as the lobbyists of the corporate world. Dystopian Survival

If you look at what is spent on educating a child, you would see that it has grown much faster than the rate of inflation and most of the growth has been in administration and compliance (to regulations). That is in spite of all the presumed efficiencies brought by technology. At the risk of insulting recent graduates, the quality of the education declined during that period so we spent more and got less.

If you look at the cost of health care, you would see that it has grown much faster than the rate of inflation. Much of that is due to the cost of increased administration and the cost of compliance to regulation. That is in spite of all of the presumed efficiencies brought by technology. At the risk of insulting people in the medical profession, the general health of the American public declined during this period. We spent more and got less.

Covid pushed technology and self-service into the economy. Before Covid, most people went to the Secretary of State to get their license plate tabs and for other mundane business. Now, nearly everybody gets their license plate tabs at the kiosks in supermarkets. But did the S-o-S cut a single employee? Doubtful. Did they use all that extra, unallocated manpower to comb through lists of registered voters and purify them. No.

Look at the hurricane response in Appalachia. All that money poured into FEMA and they actively resisted people trying to help each other.

Government agencies want us to register our gardens and report how many potatoes and tomatoes and cabbages we planted. They want us to "chip" our animals and track how many cows, goats, chickens and ducks we have on our property. Isn't food expensive enough? Isn't the state of the supply chain precarious enough?

"Government" has finished it transformation from a functioning organ (like the liver or the adrenal gland) into carcinoma with no function other than to grow.

The pendulum swings. Trump has four more years in office. Likely, some of that will be a shit-storm as the carcinoma fights back. There is a flip-of-the-coin chance that a clone of Kamala Harris will get "elected" next cycle.

We have been blessed with (maybe) three more years to prepare. We have time to build our own skills and to share them with young people. We have time to strengthen connections with like-minded family and to connect with our neighbors.

Just for fun

 1 minute run-time

Hornady announces ANOTHER new cartridge!

Hornady made a shock announcement early on November 6, 2024 that they are releasing their first BLACKPOWDER cartridge, the 45-47 MAG. Thinking ahead, they specified that the web of the cartridge extend far enough into the chamber to accommodate pressures of 60ksi.

Details are sketchy but dies and brass are already sold-out, perhaps boosted by the free red hat that will be included in every shipment.

So, do Sotomayor and Kagan get the bums' rush?

It looks like the Democrats will lose both the Senate and the White House.

Will they make Sotomayor and Kagan the same offer they made Biden (a deal they couldn't refuse) so they can stuff "seasoned", hyper-progressive, 40-year-old jurists into the highest court in the land?

It would be quite a show if they did. "Yes, you are our champions...until it becomes inconvenient. And then you are fungible and can be replaced in a matter of weeks."

Yes-sir. Nothing shows respect for the individual like flushing them down the toilet like so many turds.

A win for work-ethic?

Everybody is going to walk away from the election with a different "message".

There were lots of moving parts and both sides, at times, made sub-optimal decisions.

One enabler for Trump was his incredible work-ethic. I think that energized everybody in his campaign.

On the other hand, first Biden and then Harris never really set that tone. Short days. Not mixing with the public. Cutting off appearances before the tough questions were asked. They acted like "the fix was in" and that all they had to do was go through the motions.

In a way, it was like the wide-receiver who celebrates before punching through the plane that defines the end-zone, only to be overtaken by a defender and having the ball stripped from his arms.

If there is one message worth taking from the election in this cynical, toxic age...it is that prayers and work-ethic still matter.

Presented without comment

 

Tally

Big surprise! Kubota voted.

That makes me, Mrs ERJ, Southern Belle, 99.9% chance Belladonna voted, and now Kubota. That leaves Pelé who plays his cards close to his vest and I will not pry.

Mrs ERJ and I coordinate so I have a pretty good idea who she voted for but the others...not so much. And that is "OK". We are at different places in our lives and have different priorities.

The main thing is that they voted and they earned the right to bitch-and-moan if/when "their guy/gal" doesn't win and things go south.

5-out-of-6 is an .833 batting average which isn't too shabby!

Planting trees, Voting and Shingles vaccinations

I transplanted eight fruit trees yesterday. Part of the mystery of why nothing has done well there was partially explained by my running into Black Walnut roots 8" under the ground. I wasn't expecting that. The trunk of the closest Black Walnut was 65' away and the drip-line was 40' away.

In a perfect world, I would get a Ditch-Witch and rip a trench to cut the roots and then let them rot in place. While I was at it, I could add drain-tile to make the two-track running at the base of the slope firmer during wet periods.

The good news is that I was planting persimmons which some people say have some tolerance to Black Walnut toxicity.

It felt good to get some points on the board in terms of filling blank spots in the orchard.

Civic duty done

I voted straight-ticket except for the Sheriff. He was running as a Democrat and he has done a fine job balancing "protecting the public" and "respecting the Constitutional rights of the accused".

The State Supreme Court candidates are "non-partisan" and I voted for the two, non-woke candidates.

Shingles vaccine

I plan to get the second shingles vaccination later today. The word-on-the-street is that the second shot can be very painful with fever, muscle pain and a very sore injection site.

I had two coworkers get shingles. I think both of them missed four weeks of work due to the pain.

Given the side-effects of the shot, I will get that after I finish tagging along on the house inspection at the house SB and HH are thinking of buying. One of the things that I think SB does very well is to ask intelligent questions. She intends to be there for the entire inspection and will ask the inspector "What should I do to get the most value out of your work?" and "I need a list of major system that you think might have a 1-in-3 chance, or greater, of needing replacement in the next five years".

Fine Art Tuesday

William Frederick Ritschel born in Bavaria in 1864 and died in 1949. Many of his paintings were painted in California.

There is a school-of-thought that believes that attraction to certain kinds of landscapes are hardwired into the human DNA. The thinking is that some landscapes (like open savannas) are more favorable to child survival and fertility and we are drawn to those places. Other landscapes (like flat, short-grass prairies) are less favorable to child survival and fertility and we are repelled by them.

If this is true, then most humans would find images of the sea, tidal pools and flats, sunny bays fed by river with cobbled banks with alternating rapids and pools, a mix of upland-meadows lined with berry-bushes and forests to be attractive. Those features should be scaled so that each resource can be accessed within an hours walk...say a radius of 3 miles.

And, in general, I find those kinds of images (plus cozy, European "small-holdings") to be attractive. I don't have to know if it is hard-wired into my DNA or if it is a cultural thing that I absorbed.

Kelp gatherer

Matthew Chapter Six

A few events happened this past week that put Matthew Chapter 6 in front of me.

The chapter has a mash-up of five different topics.

The chapter starts out with two vignettes where Jesus is dismissive of people who do the right thing for the applause of the crowd. 6:1-8

Then a prayer sometimes called "The Our Father" is shared. That is the second topic. 6:9-15

Then there is another vignette where Jesus again is critical of those who do the right thing for attention or to elevate their social standing. (Another repetition of the first topic. I cannot help but thinking he could be talking about influencers and celebrities) 6:16-18

The third topic is that our hearts are where our treasures are and that we cannot serve two masters. 6:19-21, 24

The fourth topic is about "discernment" and wisdom using the eyes and vision as a metaphor. 6:22-23

The last major topic is from 6:25-34 where Jesus speaks to our anxieties and the futility of worrying.

The last verse reads:

Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself. Sufficient for a day is its own evil.

Somehow, that seems like a fine quote for November 4, 2024

Bloggers, readers and comments

Jordan Peterson on how hunters in primitive societies self-organize. 60 second run-time.

I think that good blogs have this trait. Thanks for being such great readers. Thanks for keeping me (mostly) honest. Thanks for resisting the temptation to bicker over chicken-shit details.

-Joe

Grab-bag

Rain

The rain that was predicted for Monday and Tuesday slid from 1.2" to less than a quarter inch.

Looking forward to Wednesday

The ads for the politicians are getting crazy. I wanted to watch something on Youtube and a "mom" was trashing one of the candidates. She was holding a 1-year-old baby and she was shaking the baby for emphasis as she danced around and recited her opinions.

Shaking. A. Baby. I betcha the baby was not her own. The "mom" didn't look very comfortable or natural holding the child.

Safe-words

If you are an unmarried girl and dating a red-neck, the way to win his heart is to tell him that your "safe-word" is Stack-On or maybe Canon.

I helped somebody install a 14-gun, Stack-On safe yesterday. Yes, I know they are not the most secure safe and don't have much of a fire rating. Never-the-less, that is what the friend could afford. It is a case of "Something" being much, much better than "Nothing".

Shade trees

Southern Belle and Handsome Hombre made an offer on the house they looked at the other day.

Now they go through the wringer on inspections, counter-counter-offers, property insurance.

The house is a full two-stories in addition to a walk-out basement and is of a vintage where it cannot be easily upgraded with central air-conditioning. In other words, the roof on the south side of the house is an honest 25'-to-30' above grade.

It is also completely exposed to the sun (i.e. no shade-trees) and has virtually no windows on the east side which minimizes the use of the prevailing west-wind to get air flow through the building.

SB asked me about fast growing shade trees. There are a lot of fast growing trees. Some of them are evergreens so you don't get the benefit of passive solar heating in the winter so the trees on the list all drop their leaves in the fall. Some trees are short-lived and/or easily damaged by ice and wind storms.

The "short-list" with the native Sycamore and Tuliptree being 1-and-2 at this point. The only downside of Dawn Redwood is the shape of the tree. The house needs a tree that isn't pyramidal because the roof is so high

Fastest

Platanus occidentalis (Sycamore)

Liriodendron tulipifera (Tuliptree)

Metasequoia glyptostroboides (Dawn Redwood)

Fast

Quercus pagoda or nuttallii or rubra (Red Oaks)

Carya illinoinensis (Pecan .or. Bitternut Hickory)

Taxodium distichum (Bald Cypress)

Rejected (no particular order)

Weeping Willow (storm risk)

Red and Silver Maple (storm risk and over-planted)

American Elm (Dutch Elm disease...disease might evolve around American elm resistance)

Hybrid Poplar (short life)

Hackberry (leaf color is light green, looks chlorotic)

Sweet Cherry (borers and canker)

Ginkgo (Stiff, formal shape)

Sweetgum (burs, poor fall color this far north)

Catalpa (leaf color is light green, looks chlorotic)

Quercus robur and accutissima (can have short life)

Honey Locust (SB does not like them)

Black Locust (thorns and suckers)

Class

I met with my high-school buddies for lunch today. We started doing this about once every three months a couple of years ago. I am not a loud-party kind of guy and I find this venue to be infinitely preferable to the standard-issue high school reunions.

As one of my friends observed "There used to be four weddings for every funeral and that is where we would see each other. Now the ratio flip-flopped and it isn't as much fun even though the line at the bar is much shorter."

One of the notable events that happened since the last lunch is that one of the cheerleaders (the first one) from our class of 1977 passed away.

J.B. attended her "Celebration of Life" ceremony. He said 14 members of our high school class showed up including the majority of the Cheer Team.

J.B. shared that he had a fond memories of this particular cheer-leader. He would go to dances and even though he was nowhere near her social strata and he had two left feet, she never refused him a single slow-dance. Never.

In fact, he clearly recalled her thanking HIM for asking her to dance.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is called "Class".

Bump!

Aesop, the blogger who is the keeper of the Raconteur Report blog has an exceptional post on "drop wallets".

It is easily worth the five minutes it takes to read it.

Violent Crime Rates in the LGBT population

It isn't all unicorns and rainbows

There is a perception among some people that "alternative lifestyles" and choices of sexuality have no downside and anybody who suggests otherwise is a bigot. Many of the people who scream "BIGOT!" are feelz people and not numbers people.

Here are some numbers

Rate of victims by self-identified gender for selected crimes using "Straight" as the basis (Source). Raw numbers available at the source.

One puzzling thing about this data is the significantly higher rates of violent crimes perpetrated against Bisexuals (sometimes seen as Gay-Lite) than for either Straight or L/Gs. Those higher rates are across-the-board and relatively stable with L/Gs typically being victimized at roughly 2X the rate of Straight people while Bisexuals are victimized at 8X rates. Looking at Rape-Sexual Assault, a person who identifies as Bisexual is 18 times more likely to be a victim of this crime than a straight person and 9 times more likely than a Lesbian/Gay.

One explanation that was proposed for this disparity was that Lesbian/Gay populations might be less likely to report certain crimes, particularly those crimes that might be sexual in nature. If that were a major factor then the rates for Rape/Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence for L/G would be at the bottom of the data rather sort of in the middle.

Another explanation that was proposed was that Bisexuals are less discriminating in their partners (i.e. desperate). As Woody Allen once noted, "Becoming Bisexual automatic doubles your chances of getting a date for Saturday night."

A couple of incidental factors that inflate the numbers for Bisexuals is that 90% of Bisexuals are women and women are more typically chosen as victims than men (less homicides which are often driven by the drug trade). Another factor is that a disproportionate share of women Bisexuals are Black and the Black population is more likely to be victims of violent crime. (Source of claims about demographics of Bisexuals).

Rank Speculation

People on the Autistic spectrum are grossly over-represented in the population of Transgenders. While it is speculative to assume that people who have impediments to "reading" emotions in other people and decoding social-situation are over-represented across the entire range of LGBT it is not out-of-the-question. 

For example, a person who is adverse to "decoding" would find the stereotype of "All gay men are kind, gentle, sensitive and empathic" (for instance) to be very attractive because it would absolve them of needing to decode individuals. That "permission" to turn off their discernment is very attractive to opportunistic predators. "I am Gay" or "I am Bi" becomes the equivalent of "Open Sesame" to penetrating the layered defenses that protect us.

Uber Progressive label people like me "homophobics" when we try to warn flamboyants that rainbow-hair and nail polish and foppish attire is the equivalent of chumming for sharks at the local beach.

Nerdy humor

 

Ironically, the vehicle is chained to a London Plane Tree.

Seems Legit

 

Mrs ERJ and I planted some seed-nuts this afternoon

Burning the galvanizing off of 1/2" square hardware cloth

Making sure I get as much zinc burned off as possible.

Stretched over, and stapled to frames made from wood salvaged from pallets with 2-by-2 corner braces.

Protecting 12 pecans that were planted about 2" deep.

Squirrels are not just destructive to nut crops, they can be devastating to seed-nuts that are planted in-the-wild.

Most people who plant seed nuts have some system to protect them.

Sometimes called a "Droste can".

One important part of the process is to take steps to ensure that the can or hardware cloth rusts away before it strangles the roots/new shoot. Hence burning the galvanizing.

Seeds are cheap. It is pretty easy to plant 10 or 12 seed-nuts and select for the most vigorously growing stems that do not show any winter die-back. Cull the weak sisters. Move the "extra" plants that are in excess of one-or-two most promising ones you want at that site.

Some nut species seem to do best as seedlings planted where you want them. They do not appreciated being transplanted and will sulk for a few years before showing good annual growth.

Another reason to plant nuts on-site is that some states (Michigan is one of them) prohibits the moving of non-inspected nursery materials from one parcel to another. The stated intention is to limit the spread of plant diseases and pests. By planting seed-nuts and grafting over them (if so desired) those prohibitions are avoided. This is not exploiting a loophole. Many of the disease/pest issues are carried in the soil/roots of the nursery material. If you are not transporting dirt then you are probably not transporting pests/diseases.

Visualize Whirled Peas

Observed at a local Subway franchise

The Princess and the Pea

I think we are all familiar with the Hans Christian Andersen fairy-tale titled "The Princess and the Pea". In the story, a prince is seeking a true-princess for a bride and is besieged by pretenders. Struggling to separate the rare, true-pricesses from the commoners, his mother, the Queen, tells him to place a single pea beneath the mattress in the guest-room where the princess will sleep.

Women who slept soundly were rejected and the family rejoiced when one woman complained that she had tossed-and-turned all night on the lumpy mattress.

The darker side of the story

Hemophilia is a clotting disorder that is carried by a gene on the X chromosome. Females carry two X chromosomes, one from their mother and one from their father. The chances of both chromosomes being defective is remote.

Males carry only one X chromosome which they receive from their mother. If that X chromosome carries the defect, then they have the clotting disorder. The odds of boy having a defective X chromosome if their mother is a carrier is 50%. The odds of his sister carrying the defective X chromosome is also 50% while the odds of her exhibiting symptoms is almost zero.

Hemophilia entered general awareness with European royalty, most notably the offspring of England's Queen Victoria. There is evidence that the mutation existed in European royalty before Queen Victoria based on the early death of her mother's half-brother due to internal bleeding...but we really have no solid information about HOW long it had been lingering in the blood-lines.

Hemophilia is not the only congenital clotting disorder, just the most famous. Von Willebrant disease is the most common disorder and it can affect both males and females.

Death due to hemorrhaging (via infectious diarrhea, wounds, nasal and dental infections and so on) was common before modern medicine. Somebody bleeding to death was not particularly news-worthy or memorable.

One symptom of any clotting disorder is easy and extensive bruising

If a royal with a clotting disorder traveled any distance in a carriage or stage-coach over rutted roads, it is likely that their upper arms would be covered by bruises the next morning.

That kind of bruising might have been the tickle that initiated the story in Hans Christian Andersen's creative genius. Combine easy bruising with the foppish aspects of pre-Revolution, French courts and Viola! The true test of "Royalty" became easy bruising, fragility and insatiable demands for luxury and accommodations.

And to this very day, some people equate displays of insufferable behavior with being a special little princess.

It wasn't always like that.

Early kings were war-chieftans with names like William the Bastard and Richard the Lionhearted and some of them died in battle.