Modern Monetary Theory explained (simply enough so Sandy, the bartender from Yorktown Heights, can understand)

 

The picture shown above is a bottle of 80 proof (40% alcohol by volume) vodka.

Joe decided to sneak into his dad's liquor cupboard and have a toot. Then he added water to bring the level back up to where it was.

This is what the bottle looks like after Joe took a snort.

After waiting a week, to see if he had been caught, Joe decided to have couple of snorts. He mixed it with orange juice and milk-of-magnesia to make a Philip's Screwdriver.

To cover the evidence of his depredations on the bottle of vodka, Joe added more water.

A week later, Joe invited his friend Mike over. They both had three mixed drinks. Mike had a fondness for root beer, vanilla ice cream and vodka. Joe, being simple in many ways, stuck with Philip's Screwdrivers.

After Mike wobbled his way home, Joe topped the bottle off with water and put it back in his father's liquor cabinet.

The next week, Joe's parents went to work a concession stand at the church picnic. Mike brought over Lisa and Diane, a couple of VERY friendly girls. Half-way through the party, Joe had to add water to the bottle that was more than half empty. Joe herded Mike and the two middle-school girls out the back door when his parents came home early. He barely had enough time to add enough water to bring the bottle from the half-empty mark to full and put it back into the cabinet.

Three days later...

Three days later, Joe was trying to frighten a raccoon away from the family pet's food dish.

The raccoon sunk its needle-sharp teeth into the web of Joe's left hand.

Joe's dad, not being the kind of man to waste money on frivolous wants, took care of cleaning out the wound. He used the bottle of cheap vodka he kept for exactly that purpose. Joe's dad was very impressed that Joe did not even wince as he sluiced out the puncture wounds with the 40% alcohol.

Joe died six months later. Doctors were astounded. Death by rabies is extraordinarily rare in developed countries where everybody knows the risks. 

Presented without comment

 

A few thoughts on "Wealth Inequality"

YouTube is rife with progressives railing about "Wealth Inequity". The most strident say "There will be no peace without justice", which is a not-so-veiled threat. They are very clear: If you have more than they have, they want it and are not afraid to use violence to get it!

Wealth vs Income

People who are economically illiterate use the terms "Wealth" and "Income" interchangeably but there are some key differences.

Income is the amount of money you realize within a given time-period. It is typically in units of dollars-per-hour or dollars-per-month or dollars-per-year.

Wealth, in the financial sense, is the amount of dollars that could be realized if all of your assets were liquidated and turned into dollars.

Elon Musk's wealth might be valued at $346 billion dollars but he might only realize $20 million dollars a year for pocket money. That is 0.006% of his estimated wealth.

Another complication is that if Elon Musk sold off his stock portfolio it would probably torpedo the value of the stocks he owned. If he was forced to liquidate quickly, a lack of buyers (anticipating that Musk would no longer participate as an executive in those companies) might cause the value of the stocks to drop to 10% or even lower of their present value.

So, to keep things simple, let's just talk about income.

"Justice starts with a single step"

If Mr Musk were to level-up his income with the typical household income of Austin, Texas then then each household in Austin would receive a check for about $65 every year.

Then, the Social Justice Warrior (who likely lives in an eastern, legacy city like Philadelphia or Baltimore) pipes up "No, no, NO! Musk must pay EVERY person who are members of the groups that his identity-group damaged. That includes people in places like Philadelphia, Baltimore and Jackson Mississippi. AND, it can't be just Elon Musk. It has to be EVERYBODY who has income that is more than the average for the group!!!"

Point taken

Every person in the United States who has more, realized, per-capita income than the average income of the United States and Africa must write a check to level that up.

And since a single mother in Baltimore with two children is realizing the income-equivalent of $60k, that means that she is going to have to write a check for approximately $53k to level-up with the 1.5 Billion people in Africa making the PPP GDP/capita/year of $6k with her $60k.

OK, I get that I probably lost many of you with that last paragraph. Let me put the bread-crumbs closer together.

Africa was damaged when slave-traders took their best-and-brightest over to the Western Hemisphere. That means they are in the pool that was damaged and in-line for "reparations". They are just as much of a "victim" as that mom in Jackson, Mississippi.

There are 4.5 people in Africa for every person in the United States. The average "income" in Africa is the equivalent of about $6k/year vs roughly +$60k (if you include transfers and entitlements to "low income" US citizens) in the US. So even the poorest, inner-city mother of two children who receiving over $60k in services, grants and other benefits has 10X more income than the typical Nigerian.

On another axis, in Africa there are approximately 60 motor vehicles per thousand people while in the United States there are 850 motor vehicles per thousand. You might say "Well, I don't own a vehicle so that would not impact me" but consider that motor vehicles deliver food to your grocery store and the Uber or Lyft driver you summons when you need a ride DOES own a vehicle. Imagine how hard it would be to get a ride if you wanted to go more than ten miles if there were fewer than 10% as many cars per person. Leveling-up would entail shipping the majority of our automobiles over to Africa.

While the Social Justice Warriors are ginning up outrage over the inequities between the billionaires and their peer-group, they never consider that on a global scale that they are incredibly wealthy. Or maybe it did occur to them but because drawing the lines around the 'control volume' in that fashion would result in a HUGE loss in income to them, they wish the fact into oblivion.

HEAT!

 

Paducah, Kentucky which is just across the Ohio River from Illinois. Predictions of Peak heat indexes between 103 and 106 Fahrenheit EVERY DAY for the next ten days.

Bonus link

The grid is going to be heavily loaded. Have a plan to beat the heat; curtains pulled, ceiling fans, damp tee-shirts, hydration, hanging out in the basement, floating in a pool or running through the sprinkler. A strategy we use at Casa ERJ is to have a hot-plate/crock-pot/rice cooker outside for cooking. I also have an LP hot-plate as a back-up in case the grid falters.

It might also be worth your while to double-check your power-outage plans. If you are going to run a generator, make sure you will not be breathing carbon-monoxide.

We will be fine in southern Michigan. It isn't going to get nearly as hot here as it is predicted to get in the corn-belt and through the south. 

Eradicating Invasive Plants

I appreciate the comments about the perils of planting Pandora's Box Bamboo.

One of the plants is going into a stand of Reed Canarygrass, itself an invasive plant.

Discussion on eradicating invasive plants

Many plants have a period of time when they are vulnerable to control methods. For instance, Poison Ivy is most vulnerable to mowing and chemical control when it is flowering.

The reason, as best as I can discern, is because individual Poison Ivy plants store up carbohydrates through late summer and fall. Poison Ivy is one of the late-to-leaf-out pests so it is unphased by common control efforts* before June 1 (in Eaton County). Poison Ivy has Jack-in-the-Box growth rates using those stored carbohydrates once it does leaf out. As the first big flush of growth starts to peter out, it flowers.

So if you cut the plant near the ground you starve the roots. The battery is nearly drained. Regrowth will be feeble and more easily beaten back.

The timing is similar for chemical control methods that are applied to leaves. Auxin mimic chemicals (like triclopyr or dicamba) work best when that first flush is extending at its maximum rate (usually after a good rain) and there are lots of full-sized leaves to target with the spray. Glyphosate is best applied to the Poison Ivy canopy in the same time period up until the blossoms drop off. Both types of chemicals will kill Poison Ivy after those periods, but the "kill" will not be as thorough. 

*For Poison Ivy that is climbing trees or walls, the preferred method is to cut the trunk in two places and to pry off the 'stick' between the two cuts. Six inches is plenty of distance. And then to paint the lower, exposed "wood" of the Poison Ivy plant's trunk with undiluted glyphosate or triclopyr concentrate. An alternative is to use a paint brush or trim paint roller to apply the ester formulation of triclopyr concentrate diluted 1:3 with kerosene or diesel fuel directly to the trunk. 18" of trunk is often suggested. For trunks climbing up walls, where you cannot paint the entire circumference then paint 36" of 180 degrees of circumference.

Timing for cut-trunk and trunk painting should be after the leaves fall off.

Bamboo

 

This guy talks about how to smack bamboo. Let it invest the energy into stem growth but as soon as it starts to unfurl leaves...whack it hard!

Phyllostachys heteroclada and parvifolia

Phyllostachys is a genus of bamboo. Several species in that genus are considered "cold-hardy". Two of the species are considered both cold-hardy AND very tolerant of wet soils. Those two species are Phyllostachys heteroclada (horizontal branches) and P. parvifolia (small leaves).

Many people, especially those who favor native plant species HATE bamboo because it is invasive and its height and vigor steamroller native plants.

On the other hand, bamboo is very efficient at turning sunshine into structural materials and it sinks a lot of organic matter into the soil. It also provides prime cover for sheltering wildlife in the winter. A small-holder could do worse than to have a patch of bamboo that they harvest aggressively to keep its footprint in-check.

Southern Belle requested some bamboo plants to provide a visual screen between the busy road and their house. Consequently, she is about to receive a gift of three different species and we are going to have a horse-race. The third species is probably Phyllostachys aureosulcata which is what is growing in my yard.

The plan is to plant P. parvifolia in the most eastern position, the P. heteroclada in the middle position and the P. aureosulcata in the western position. The tops will probably get killed every five years due to "test winters" but will still screen the yard even when dead.

Fake News Friday: Modern Treatment Option for Chronic Venous Insufficiency Syndrome

 

Bananas and Dance Therapy?

Installing a gate

 

The Hinge side of the opening

The Latch side of the opening

The first piece added to the Latch side to build up the newel post

The second piece added to the latch post

As it looks from the side

The third piece added to the latch post to bring it into line with the hinge post

"Floating" the gate in the opening

Adding the latch after installing the hinges (apologies for not taking any pictures of installing hinges)

Adding a "Stop" to prevent over-travel when slammed.

The view from the bottom of the stairs.

The gate was added to prevent the dog and Quicksilver from going on a walk-about together.

Not my best work, but far better than my worst.

One hour, twenty minutes "clock time" to frame the opening and install the gate. 

Unexpected

 

Source quoted as coming from "A study by our World in Data in 2019"

 

22% of former NFL players died from Heart Disease while 19% died from Suicide and Homicide.

St Luke N.E.W. Life Center (Speaking of missions)

What do "poor people" really need?  <Link to Youtube>

Sunday was the Annual Mission Appeal at our parish. This year we had a missionary who worked in one of the poorer parts of Flint, Michigan. Not glamorous. She spoke about the evolution of their ministry.

Employment Skills Program <Link to Youtube>

I took the liberty of skipping ahead to where Sister Carol talked about their Employment Skills Program. Many of the people they serve have no employed people in their family...including parents, aunts and uncles or grandparents. There are many gaps between the expectations of potential employers and the untrained people's expectations. 

Those expectations are information that most of us painlessly absorbed while we were very young because we were immersed in a culture of working-people. 

One of the biggest gaps involves how job performance feedback is received. The boss's job is to give the employee guidance on how to properly do the job. The unskilled/naive employee perceives that as "getting fired" and walks off the job. Other reactions include over-correction/malicious compliance (like grinding through the paint all the way to the primer after being told that they needed to put more effort on polishing the paint) or simply going catatonic (locking-up). 

The program was originally first offered to women and it was packaged as on-the-job training. The women work in an enterprise that sews clothing and the necessary employment skills are cultivated in that time. Then they graduate to better paying jobs which opens up a slot for another woman.

After the program was piloted and successful, men told the mission "We need those skills, too!" After muddling around a little bit, landscaping-and-lawncare was chosen as the test bed for training.

They recently added a third enterprise, a hoop house to grow vegetables.

The missionary's requests were:

1. Pray for us. Being a missionary is not an easy job and we need God's help, so pray for us.
2. If you have some money that you can spare, we would appreciate some financial support
3. If you are in the area and are curious about our work, we invite you to visit us. See for yourself what your prayers and dollars are doing. 

St Luke N.E.W. Life Center contact info

Personal experience

If you ever hired somebody to mow your lawn you might have had an experience like this...

"Hey, Dalton. What did you do to my mower?"

"Oh, hey Joe. The mower kept clogging up so I took all of the safety chutes and flaps off of it. Runs like a champ, now."

"Dalton, why is it still running. Your hands aren't on the dead-man's switch."

"Oh, you like that? Yeah, I took some rope and tied it down. That way I don't have to restart it every time I have to pick up a piece of trash."

Joe, controlling his temper "So Dalton, what did you do with all of the plastic pieces-parts?"

"I threw them into the weeds. Don't worry. I chucked them way back where nobody will ever see them." 

Looking toward the tall weeds Dalton pointed at..."Some of a biscuit!!! You mowed down my daylilies and iris!"

So I have a glimmer of what Sister Carol was talking about when she was talking about all of those expectations that employers expect but are not obvious to people who grew up in multi-generational, welfare families.

And if all you do is hire somebody and work with them so they can see feedback for what it is, then you will be "teaching somebody to fish".  

Bonus Link

A recent essay over at Bayou Renaissance Man regarding "aid".

In spite of the Epstein kerfuffle, this is me...

A man wearing an MSU Spartans tee shirt and camo cargo shorts presented himself at the Whitehouse at the gate where tourists registered for tours.

"I am very excited to tour the Whitehouse and I was wondering if you could tell me the chances of meeting President Kamala Harris or Vice President Tim Walz?" the man enthused toward the clerk recording names.

The clerk was visibly uncomfortable. "I regret to inform you that you will meet neither. Donald Trump won the last election."

The tourist turned and walked away.

The next morning, the same tourist presented himself again. This time he was wearing a ball-cap promoting a heavy-equipment firm in Reed City. Again he said "I want to sign up for the Whitehouse tour and I was wondering if you could tell me the chances of meeting President Harris or Vice President Walz?".

And once again the clerk responded "I regret to inform you that you will meet neither. Donald Trump won the last election".

Day-after-day the slightly overweight, sunburned tourist presented himself at the gate and every day he received the same response. Each time he turned away wordlessly and walked away.

On Friday, the clerk was overcome with curiosity and her professional demeanor broke. "I keep telling you that Donald Trump is President and not Kamala Harris. So why do you keep coming back?"

The man responded. "It was a miracle. I keep pinching myself to make sure it is not a dream. I could hear you say it a thousand times and it would not be enough." 

Rigging notes

This "X" diagonal rigging from the middle, top-rail of the box to the top of the opposite side of the feedlot panels worked really well. The vertical strap was "extra" length that was hanging downward.

 

The straps are double-wrapped around wires on the OUTERMOST panels. If they don't go flying off of the truck, the ones beneath them won't either.  I used a taut-line hitch to make it easy to tension the X straps. Ratchet straps would have worked even better.

 

Twine, rope, chains and cables are tension elements. They only act in tension. A horizontal tension element cannot exert a vertical, downward force. Consequently, the steeper the angle upward, the more effective the tie-down will be.

The blue, baling twine hold-downs are for back-up.

The only time I had arched feedlot panels walk out-of-position was due to "roll" accelerations (like hitting a pot-hole with one set of wheels). If you can keep the top of the arch from whipping cross-car and walking their ends upward, the panels will stay-put!

Too many hours

It was a long day. It started at 7:30 and ended at 8:30. I can do that every once in a while but I don't want to make a steady diet of it. I am supposed to be retired.

How would the Apostles have heard the first line of The Our Father?

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.

Those of us who are Christians have undoubtedly heard and prayed this line hundreds, even thousands of times.

Trapped in our modern time, it is easy to glide over the words without considering how the Apostles processed this the first time they heard it.

Jesus and the Apostles were devout, practicing Jews who were intimately familiar with what we call The Old Testament.

In earlier posts, I discussed how "name" meant more than our verbal handle. It also mean "family" and "tribe" and a reciprocal relationship of duties and privileges.

The word "hallowed" is a form of the word "holy" which can be translated as "to be set apart for a special purpose".

So it is likely that the line pushed a lot of buttons for the Apostles because they would have heard "hallowed be thy name" as "...a people set apart" which sounds much like Leviticus 20:26 and Deut 14:2

“You are to be holy to me because I, the Lord, am holy, and I have set you apart from the nations to be my own.” 

and

“For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. Out of all the peoples on the face of the earth, the Lord has chosen you to be his treasured possession.” 

That is a reminder to us Christians that the first line in The Our Father is, in part, a reminder that God calls us to a special purpose, or to use modern language, a unique and special mission. Our job is to figure out what that mission is. 

Not everybody is called to stand on the street corner and hand out Bibles. Nor is everybody young enough to perform strenuous, physical activity. For many of us, our primary mission for the remainder of our lives will be to provide care-and-comfort to our spouse and to set a good example for young people.

Blogging may be light today

I have a busy day planned for today:

Feedlot panels 

A 60 mile drive to pick up 9 feedlot panels that Southern Belle found for half the cost of new. We will be leaving a little after seven this morning and hope to be back by 10:30. We will NOT be using freeways for the return trip.

My plan for loading them is to put a 2-by-4 across the back end of the pick-up bed and then to lay the 16' panels across it one-at-a-time. Then to bind the middle wire through the sandwich to tie them together. I should have a little bit of bowing at that point.

Then the plan is to hook up my manual winch to each end and use that to get the bundle to form an arch that is less than 8' across at the base.

A dentist appointment.

Two-clock hours 

Sec of State office in background. A baby Praying Mantis on my outside, rearview mirror in the foreground.

Driving somebody to the Secretary of State office

And waiting for them.

This time slot has Mrs ERJ and I triple booked with Mrs ERJ doing the double-duty.

Weeds to pull and grass to mow.

Sleep. 

AI generated answers

Q: How much can the average man deadlift?
A:  A very low percentage of men lift weights but experts usually guestimate that the average, totally untrained man can deadlift half of his body-weight.

Q: How much can the average woman deadlift?
A: The average woman does not deadlift. Ever. But she looks great in yoga pants while not doing it. 

Books, Gooseberries and Guineafowl

Link

Thank-you to everybody who commented on the Collapse Library post. Thank-you for the thought you put into your selections and thank-you for adding a short bit of explanation of why it was important to you.

Gooseberry Pie

Southern Belle found the recipe that she used for our gooseberry pie at a site called BlackberryBabe.com 

Guineafowl

One of the thinking-tools I use as I consider tough times is to study how people in extreme climates, or in places where they are exposed to other, dire stresses, survive. Another tool is to study cultures that thrive in a wide range of climates.

Hooded Guineafowl range. Blue is native, orange is introduced.

The tireless Lucas Machias sent me an article about Africa's Guineafowl that was interesting for those very reasons.

Roughly 5.5 million square-miles

 While Africa is not know for extreme cold, it is notable for extreme heat, dryness, predators and poor soil fertility. It is also deceptively large since Mercator Projection makes Greenland (836,000 square-miles) seem larger than Africa (8,300,000 square miles).

Some key findings

The evidence we gathered shows that the guineafowl did not form bigger groups when temperatures dropped. There was no evidence they huddled together to stay warm. Even at night, when they roosted in trees, they perched in small family units – just two or three birds per branch.

During the dry winter months, when seeds and vegetation are scarce, the birds form large foraging flocks to help find food and stay safe from predators. More eyes mean better chances of spotting danger. This supports the widely recognised “many eyes” hypothesis, which shows that individuals in larger groups benefit from improved predator detection. But once the rains return and food becomes more plentiful and spread out, the guineafowl split into pairs or small groups to focus on breeding.

While group size wasn’t tied to temperature, the birds used clever body postures to handle both heat and cold. On chilly mornings below 17°C, they puffed out their collar feathers and tucked their bare necks deep into their bodies, creating a rounded, fluffy ball that trapped heat... 

Another surprise was how rarely the birds drank water. Despite living in a dry environment, only about 2% of observed guineafowl visits were to the waterhole. In wet seasons, they likely get most of their moisture from eating green plants and insects. In the cold, dry season, when food is drier, drinking increased slightly, but still far less than expected.

They drank even less when it was both hot and windy, possibly because the noise of the wind makes it harder to detect predators when standing out in the open. Avoiding water during hot periods is usual among helmeted guineafowl, which typically avoid exposing themselves during peak heat due to increased predation risk and the physiological stress of extreme temperatures.

I found the article to be delightful. I also appreciate the language "...this supports the hypothesis" rather than the more common "...this happened because of fill-in-blank"

There are lessons to be gleaned from this article. 

Taking full advantage of vertical support in a garden

Southern Belle's garden is fenced in with 6' tall, welded wire fence with 2" by 4" openings. The north side of her garden has nothing growing up the fence. That offended me as it is a clear waste of an opportunity.

After consulting with SB, we decided to plant some un-rooted suckers from my tomato plants on 3-1/2' centers along that fence. The suckers needed to be removed so they were free for the cost of cutting and planting. If they fail then we are only out my time.

Looking west along the north side of her garden.

 

The shank of the sucker. If you look closely you can see enlarged, whitish bumps where the shaded stem was thinking about throwing roots.

I stripped the leaves from the portion I sank into the mud. Half of the sucker was buried. Half was above ground.

Knowing that there was almost no way the unrooted cuttings could draw enough moisture from the ground for the next couple of days, I used clothes pins to fasten a sheet of newspaper above the cutting and give it some shade.

 

A peek at the cutting beneath the sheet of newspaper.

I expect the cuttings to look really rough for the next couple of days. Wilting is a response to moisture stress. Curling of leaves reduces exposure to sun and wind.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Note to self, take pictures in a week and report on survival rate. 

Suggestions for a "Collapse Library"

From the comments, written by Sometimes Anonymous Michael: A bit off topic but could we discuss a library from the group's experiences worth owning for an economic collapse scenario?

In the spirit of a Canticle for Leibowitz, what books would you wish your family to have as not to drop into dirt farming serfs.

The Bully Pulpit

As owner of this blog, I am going to get the ball rolling by starting with some 40,000 foot, fly-over type books.

1. A translation of the Bible that you will read. Preferably one of the more literal translations (rather than dynamic) with good footnotes. That is, a study Bible.

Reasons: You may have to bury somebody. You may have to kill people or see people starve to death. You will be The Captain of the Ship as well as Spiritual Leader of your Ship. If you are of some different faith, then purchase whatever Spiritual Book is most foundational to your faith. Suicide and death-by-addictions are likely to be a frequent cause-of-death and you don't want to lose any of your people. Strong spiritual guidance will armor them against those ends.

Also consider the Anglican Book of Common Prayer as a supplement to the Bible.

2. Shit hit the Fan Survival Stories by Selco Bergovic. One of the two "Been there, done that" books.

Reasons: We are going to have to harden-up in nearly every way to survive the first few months. This book will help burn-through the denial of the attrocities fellow humans are capable of. It will pull the wool away of what social breakdown looks like.

3. Chronology of Argentina's Economic Collapse by Fer FAL. The other BTDT book. Sadly, I was not able to find a link to a print version.

Reasons: Same as above.

4. The 900 Days: The Siege Of Leningrad. 

Reasons: Another book to help recalibrate people trapped in denial. "How bad could it get?" Another lesson is that the mayor lied to Stalin about the amount of grain he had stored in the city. Stalin told him to ship it to the factories in the east. The inability for the mayor to tell the truth and his supporting "the narrative" cost thousands of people their lives. 

5. Crisis Preparedness Handbook by Spigarelli.

Reasons: The book doesn't hyperfocus on any particular area but gives a balanced first-look at the challenges a family will face. There are a multitude of books that are much better if you are deep-diving into specific challenges, but Spigarelli does the best job of skimming the tops of the waves.

At the 20,000 foot level

Collections of old, Boy Scout Merit badge books and/or Military Field Manuals. Recommendation from my readers will be appreciated.

Reasons: Those manuals are simple instruction manuals with minimal filler. We are not going to have much time as we transition from inactive office workers who are forty-pounds overweight to hard-bodied men and women who can work on our feet for 14 hours a day. We will not have the time to absorb Master's Degree level instruction on field medicine (Blisters, anybody? Dysentery? Sunburn?) or nutrition or any one of a dozen other topics.

Making the Best of Basics by James Talmage Stevens.

Reasons: Food that will be available will likely be in the form of grain/flour, beans, vegetable oils and cheese. That may sound like a lethal diet to some, but get over it. That is where +80% of your calories will be coming from for an undetermined amount of time.

Jane Brody's Nutrition Book (or her cookbook The Good Food Book)

Reasons: Very readable. Very broad in the range of foods covered (including things like "greens" and fermented products). Lists calorie contents of huge numbers of foods which will be useful when we NEED more calories.

Living more with Less by Doris Janzen Longacre.

Reasons: It was first published in 1980 and it is just as "fresh" and appropriate today as the day it was published.

Ball Canning Book Spiral bound edition 

Putting Food By  (Mrs ERJ suggestion)

Root Cellaring by Bubel

Rich on Any Income by James Chistensen and Clint Combs (Mrs ERJ suggestion)

Reasons: Money isn't going to disappear. It is too handy and functional. 

Fanny Farmer Cookbook or Joy of Cooking. (Mrs ERJ suggestion)

Reasons: Comprehensive. Basic. 

Mend & Patch: a handbook to repair clothes and textiles 

Reasons: Short at 128 pages. Focuses on functional repairs rather than ornamentation. Unread by me.

Gardening when it Counts by Solomon

Reasons: These concepts were trialed for five years as Solomon started his seed-catalog business. He ruthlessly jettisoned methods that did not work or required the purchase of outside inputs. If it did not work, Steven Solomon did not get to eat.

Introduction to Permaculture by Mollison

Reasons: Short and presents concepts with an economy of words without diving down any rabbit holes. Putting the chicken/duck coop in the middle of your gardens and orchard saves YOU a lot of steps. So does putting a food-prep table in the same general area, leave the dirt in the garden. Many observations similar to that in the book.

The Prince by Machiavelli

Reasons: Scammers, schemers, grifters, tax-men, politicians and warlords.

*****

I need to tie this blog post off. I am losing the ability to type.

What books do you recommend? I didn't list any animal husbandry books. One glaring omission is the lack of a dog-training book. There is no reason the family pooch can't pull his own weight...and then some.

"Tuna" Plants

I used to have a reader who owned a nursery that specialized in cactus. I think that he used the handle "Arc" in comments.

If you are still following the blog, I would love to give your nursery a plug. My readers are most interested in Opuntia with the easiest pads to turn into nopales and the ones with the most flavorful fruit and are hardy to Zone 7.

The thing about cacti is that most people underestimate their tolerance for cold. They are locally common in Michigan if you look in the blow-sand regions where Lake Michigan left sand-dunes stranded inland. I have also seen very healthy cacti growing in crumbly red-rock in the hills above Wapiti, Wyoming a bit west of Cody, Wyoming. Wapiti recorded -39F in 1990. 

Out of the moving busines...for now

The great news is that I am out of the moving business. The good news is that the rent of the kid's new apartment is $400 a month less than the rent of the old apartment which saw the rents go up 20% over 2024.

The kid was not the only tenant moving out. Six of the 48 tenants in the building were also moving out this weekend. 

The not-such-great-news is that the kid lost about 300 square-feet of usable floor space and now has too much stuff. He also lost the in-apartment laundry. We also had one "unsecured load" incident which can happen when you have three people loading cargo.

The cost of hiring professional movers would have been $250/hour. 

I had 10 hours on-task moving. Two hours on two separate days and six hours today. The kid twisted some arms of other kids and they (probably) contribute another ten...plus the twenty hours he contributed.

I annoy kids

While moving cargo into the kid's new apartment, I happened to glance at a tub of a family that was moving out. I saw the words "Lee Auto Primer" and knew what exactly what that was.

So the next time I saw the gentleman of the family that was moving out I asked "Do you reload?".

He replied "Why yes I do! I reload for .357 Magnum and .44 Magnum" with a huge smile on his face. Then he said "I love shooting, and I grew up in Illinois and...well...you know...Michigan is a lot more firearm friendly than where I came from."

Metropolitan Tower "The Bee-hive Building"

He was stunned to learn that I actually knew where DeKalb, Illinois is (Go Northern Illinois!!!) and said he got his degree from there and that his first job had been near Chicago's Metropolitan Tower.

The kid I was helping to move was rolling his eyes. He thinks being able to start conversations with random strangers is A: A super-power not available to mere mortals and B: Borderline rude to do so. 

Okemos, Michigan isn't my cup of tea, but if vanity license plates are any guide, there are people who love fishing for steelhead and are fans of Vortex scopes in the town. It is a trendy, "desirable" place to live with lots of amenities and eye-candy...but $1600/month rent for a two-bedroom apartment is the highest in the area.

What I don't understand is that the pressure on the housing market is deflating and prices will stagnate or collapse. I think the management running the old apartments is looking in the rear-view mirror if they are raising rates. 

Gooseberries and the Legendary Lucile Whitman

Lucy Whitman runs a specialty nursery in Oregon and sells a very wide selection of gooseberries and currants.

I called her phone and she answered it (!!!) and was more than happy to answer questions about gooseberries and currants.

The GREAT news is that she agrees that Crandall Currant is very resistant to heat AND she has one-gallon containers of Crandall in stock and she can ship them NOW.

Also called clove currant, this is not a black currant except in color. It ripens much later, is bigger and sweeter without the black currant muskiness. The yellow flowers in spring are spicy sweet and the bush is large (5′-6′) and open and has lovely fall color. see pic. I just got this additional info from one of my customers: The Crandall selection was from a wild stand of ribes odoratum found by a farmer west of Newton, KS in 1888.  He developed the strain, which had extra sweetness and larger berry size. The original stand is gone now and I don’t remember who sent me my original plant thirty years ago, but I got a better strain from Colorado about 20 years ago.  Some Crandalls bear better than others and because they are hard to root, I suspect that some nurseries are selling seedlings   Description from Lucile's catalog

Black Velvet gooseberry, photo credit Lucile Whitman

The good-but-not-great news is that she thinks Pixwell, Glendale and Black Velvet are good gooseberry choices for areas with high heat. The fly in the ointment is that she sells them bare-root and only ships during the dormant season. She also thinks Glendale is mildew prone so DRY heat is better than high humidity and heat for that variety.

She is almost always too busy to respond to emails but will usually respond to texts. Her texting number is Fife-oh-tree  fife-tenn OH-foh-ate-s3x Please excuse the funny spelling, I am trying to protect her from spammers.

Random entertainment

 

Gooseberry pie

 

A gift from Southern  Belle. She dropped off a gooseberry pie last night

A gift from a previous owner of the house Southern Belle move into

Southern Belle likes to run a tight ship with all of the brass shining. She was going to wipe out the sprawling, thorny bushes near the edge of the patio but I recognized them as gooseberries.

I asked her to give them another year before she decided to nuke them.

Notes on the pie (which I texted to SB)

Awesome pie

Intense flavor. Perfect ratio of crust to filling. Every bite just seemed to get better.

Business Formation: "Teach a person to fish"

One of the topics that recently attracted my attention involves Business Formation. 

By the numbers (data from FRED):

• New Retail Businesses started per month: 80k (I bet that doesn't include unlicensed distributors of undocumented pharmaceuticals)
• Professional Services 60k/month (Lawyers and typists and accountants and dog-groomer and so on)
• Construction 42k/month
• Transportation and warehousing 30k/month (includes ride-share)
• Health and Social Services 28k/month
• Accommodations and Food Services 24k/month
• Wholesale trading 9.2k/month 
• Manufacturing 6.3k/month
• Agriculture 3.6k/month
• Arts and Entertainment 0.9k per month 

The number of new businesses formed increased markedly after the first shock of Covid. 

It is my perception that some of these "businesses" formalized undocumented businesses. Maybe Darlene provided in-home, adult care as a sideline and got fired from her regular job. She formed an LLC to protect her assets against litigation.

Top reasons businesses fail

Running out of cash. Issues with cash flow, inadequate funding and/or inability to properly price products or services.

Market does not demonstrate enough demand for the products or services offered and fixed costs "eat" the business.

Competition.

Flawed business model that might predict unsustainable "fantasy" market growth or below prevailing costs for inputs.

Legal challenges.

Unwillingness to invest the hours required to make a new business succeed. Turning down customers because it would "stress" the owner/operator.

Unwillingness to seek professional support for niche, specialty skills like bookkeeping/accounting, legal, maintenance, insurance, advertising.

Buying when renting would conserve cash.

Take-away

Running a business requires a diverse skill-set. Starting a business requires that same skill-set plus a few more.

People who successfully started a business in the past are much more likely to successfully start another business in the future than the general population.

People who failed in all of their previous business start-ups tend to believe it is "luck" and seldom make the changes required to be successful in the future.

A few questions for my readers

The number of retail businesses surprised me. Are there economically sound reasons why people selling on Etsy and eBay might form "businesses"?

Is it your perception that the corporate model is falling apart and people are being pushed into the gig-economy? Is that one reason why "business formation" is growing even though the economy (outside of the Biden rain-shadow of spending) seems to be slowing down? 

Rainmap calibration data

 

I was working at the Upper Orchard when it started raining.

Looking at the bottom of the red disk, 3.7" minus 2.1" equals 1.6" of rain. The Raindrop app said we had 1.8" of rain which is close enough for me.

The ditch beside the road overflowed, telling me that the culvert beneath the drive was plugged. Sigh, another task to add to the to-do list.

I am not complaining about the rain. The only runoff I saw was stained with road-mud so I think nearly all of it is soaking in, even with 3.7" over the last 72 hours. 

Fake News Friday: Kylie Jenner video, un-cut

Raw video of Kylie Jenner recovering from anesthesia on the ride home from her lip augmentation procedure.

Proceed at your own risk: 

Summer time, when the living is easy...

 

A little more than 2" of rain in the Upper Orchard. I think one more storm cell tracked across the area after I saw 1.8" on the rainmap. I am VERY happy with that amount of rain.

A persimmon graft that finally decided to grow. It is going like gang-busters now. Note the deer exclusion cage.

My success rate on persimmons was pretty dismal until July hit and the buds started pushing. I am now 7-of-11 for grafted persimmons this year.

I even found time to catch a fish. 20-1/2" bowfin (dogfish).

Moving the mattress

The twenty-foot tow-strap worked like a charm. We had to fiddle with it but we ended up tying a loop with about 17' of it and putting four twists in the middle. That left us with the strap going diagonally across the corner with "legs" of about 36" on both ends.

I am not all that familiar with mattress sizes, but this one was a "California King", whatever that means. 

An intelligent person can learn something useful from almost anybody

 

 

One minute run-time

This "Short" showed up after the Youtube algorithms must have decided that I needed to see lots of videos on prison-culture. Maybe those fine people at Alphabet have plans for me.

For those who dislike giving Youtube any clicks: The man in the video tells us that he thought inmates were stupid in how they did their exercises. They were not even performing proper, full push-ups (for instance). But his eyes were opened when scrawny, weedy new inmates who adapted the prison methods showed much better gains than he was getting doing things "properly".

Then he breaks down how a single push-up activates a succession of muscles as it goes through the sequence from full-down to locked-at-top. By repeatedly performing a small portion of the push-up in isolation, each muscle-group can be exercised to exhaustion and not be held back by the least developed muscle (in any group) required to perform the full exercise.

He explains it from the perspective of the amount of time a muscle is under tension. Doing a full-range pushup gives the slightly stronger muscles a slight break every cycle and they are not nearly as challenged as they are when you simply move up-and-down through, say, the bottom six inches or the middle six inches of the exercise.

Primers

Primers are in-stock in most on-line stores that sell reloading supplies.

Some of the prices are pretty darned good: Rem 7-1/2 primers at $50/thousand and Fiocchi 209 shotgun primers for $61/thousand at Powder Valley.

Flake-type shotgun powders are in tight supply but spherical shotgun powders like Win 572, High Gun and Longshot seem to have much better availability.

There will always be supply shocks. If you reload and have a few extra dollars, you might take an inventory and fill any holes. 

Aches and pains

I helped somebody move from their third-floor apartment yesterday. He has tomorrow off, so we will hit it hard again. After that I lugged water for trees in the Hill Orchard and then went to the Eaton County Fair.

The day before that I was filling pot-holes in a 1/4 mile long driveway with a yard of crushed concrete and will probably another yard to finish the job.

For some reason I am tired and my muscles ache today.

It must be old-age.

Has anybody had any luck with making a Figure-8 out of straps and cradling them underneath the mattress like this? At least we could have something to grip an wrap around our forearms.

Does anybody have any tips for moving oversized box springs and huge, floppy mattresses. And before you ask, I know to empty the water out of water-bed mattresses....and this isn't a water-bed.

Worth repeating

 New guy shows up and is handed a stick of dynamite with a lighted fuse.

 New guy totally rocks, he exceeds all expectations.