Metal detectors were an effective way to cover a lot of area.
Blurb
In
August, 1983, a grassfire raged up Deep Ravine and across the dry,
grass-covered battlefield where, in 1876, men of the Seventh U.S.
Cavalry under George Armstrong Custer had fought and died at the hands
of a Sioux and Cheyenne force led by Sitting Bull. The removal of the
normally dense ground cover revealed enough evidence to suggest that an
archaeological survey would be fruitful and perhaps could address some
unanswered questions about the battle.
Describing
archaeological investigations during the first year (1984) of a two-year
survey, this book offers a detailed analysis of the physical evidence
remaining after the battle. Precise information regarding the locations
of artifacts and painstaking analyses of the artifacts themselves have
uncovered much new information about the guns used in the battle by the
victorious Indian warriors. Not only have the types of guns been
identified, but through the use of archaeological and
criminal-investigative techniques the actual numbers of firearms can now
be estimated. This analysis of the battlefield, which represents a
significant advance in methodology, shows that the two forces left
artifacts in what can be defined as "combatant patterns."
What
did happen after Custer’s trumpeter, John Martin-dispatched with an
order for Captain Benteen to "be quick"-turned and saw the doomed
battalion for the last time? Written to satisfy both professional and
layman, this book is a vital complement to the historical record.
Per my friend's comments, the findings of the archeologists were probably biased as the highest value, most sought-after weapons were carried off by the winners. For instance, few of any 1873 Colt revolvers were found.
Driving home from Mass at 12:45 yesterday, I noticed puffballs (Calvatia gigantea) that had popped up in various yards.
I usually only notice them when they are full-sized and overly mature for eating.
I was surprised given how dry it has been. It started raining at about 8:00 a.m. yesterday but I don't think we got more than a 1/4". Maybe those yards got more rain than we did.
Handsome Hombre LOVES mushrooms. He would be totally geeked if he found out that he had them growing on his property. Unfortunately, both HH and Southern Belle are pinned to the wall due to work commitments.
As with all mushrooms, make sure you have a rock-solid identification and test with a small (very small) initial test and then give it 24 hours before eating any more. Remember, pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered.
Applesauce notes
We canned 35 more quarts yesterday so we are over our target of 52 quarts. We also had 3 orphans that we did not run through the canner. Those will be gifts to assorted families.
Tarps
While doing a causal inventory I noticed that most of our tarps have seen heavy usage and I need to replace some of them.
Do any of you have strong opinions about the most versatile size(s) for tarps? Yeah, I know the standard answer is "One that is just a little bit bigger than the one you got."
A tarp is like a girl who lives next-door and is everybody's second-most-favorite girl. She wins the Homecoming Queen voting because she is somebody everybody can agree on.
There is almost always a "better" solution for any problem than a tarp but that "better solution" is almost always much more expensive and isn't sitting on a shelf in your garage or barn.
I participate in a crew that does highway pick-up three times a year: Spring, Summer and Fall.
The straw-boss divided up the two mile stretch of M-50 into four sections and assigned men to teams for each section.
Yesterday I worked with Dan and Mark. Mark was exceptionally chatty, which is fine because somebody talking makes the work less boring.
Mark listens to a podcast put out by a VERY young priest somewhere down in Texas. The last podcast he listened to was on Luke 8:4-15 which is the parable of the sower who sowed seed on a field and some of the seed fell on the path, some fell on rocky ground, some fell among the thorny and some fell on fertile soil.
The only seed that produced a harvest fell on the good soil and it produced "...a hundredfold...".
The priest's homily took an unexpected turn when he asked his listeners to considered hearing "hundredfold" as "one-hundred percent loving God".
Then Mark shared that he was born on December 30...and of course he had to look up Mark 12:30 out of curiosity. It reads "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength."
Orchard reports
Saturday, I picked about a hundred pounds of Empire and Melrose apples to finish out the yearly canning of applesauce. I almost missed the Empire. The fell into my hand when I touched them. There were a lot more apples on the trees a week ago.
I got another piece of sheet metal hung on the deer blind.
I dragged brush out of the tall grass where I had been unable to mow.
I got the mower-blade reinstalled. The "adaptor" I needed was a single 3/4" ID USS washer.
I set the mower deck to the highest setting and started mowing.
Dry and crispy
Image from NASA SPoRT-LiS
Close-up. I live somewhere within that white circle.
My door-to-door time was 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. with a 20 minute break to buy and gobble down a piece of gas-station pizza.
Our normal routine around here is for me to watch Quicksilver early in the morning and then hand her off to Mrs ERJ sometime between 9:00 and 10:00.
Yesterday, as soon as Mrs ERJ tagged in, Quicksilver REALLY wanted to go outside. I heard her jabbering at Mrs ERJ a mile-a-minute as the door closed.
A few minutes later, they came back in. Mrs ERJ approached me and and said, "Quicksilver told me you gave her "the look"."
I admitted as much. "When we started the applesauce I told her that she needed to move when I told her to move because the kettles could be filled with boiling water...and tripping over her wouldn't do either one of us any good."
"Then, when I told her to move...she didn't. So I gave her the look."
Mrs ERJ nodded. "That is what she said."
"She also demonstrated the look" Mrs ERJ said. "Quicksilver, come over here and show Grandpa "the look"."
Quicksilver stood in front of me, tipped her head forward and tilted it just a little bit. Her lips compressed into a thin line and she slightly flared her eyelids into a glare and locked me in a frozen eye-roll tipped just a little bit left-of-center. Her eyebrows came together in a thunderous frown.
It was the look of a school marm whose last strand of patience had vaporized and she was about to introduce naughty Johnny to The Corporal and The Board of Education.
"Is that the look I gave you?" I asked.
Vigorous nodding followed.
How do three-year-olds do that?
It is a mystery to me how three-year-olds can reproduce those "looks" with such fidelity. It isn't like they practice in front of mirrors. It is something they just know. For example, I have a beard. There is no way she could have seen my lips. How did she know?
My goal is to make and can 14 quart. My stretch goal is 28 quarts.
It comes down to BTU/hours and how many hours can I stick with it. I started washing the first batch of apples at 8:45. It is now 11:45 and the first jars have been in the canning kettle for about 20 minutes and are not up to a boil, yet.
From the standpoint of conserving hot-water and clean-up, it makes sense to run the set-up as long as possible. Cleaning up after 28 quarts is no more work than cleaning up after 7.
That means that I won't be working on deer blinds or fixing mowers or verifying the optics on any equipment today.
28 quarts would get me a little over half-way to our goal of having 52 quarts in the pantry.
Update: The last load "Dinged" at 4:40. We netted 30 quarts which was two more than the stretch-target. I gave one to Quicksilver for helping with the project and we put the other orphan in our refrigerator.
Anton Daniels is a long-time Detroit native and he is a content creator. He has been doing many "reaction videos" to the Black community's response to Charlie Kirk's death.
If you want an even shorter example (different video), start HERE and listen to the 2:50 mark
Clearly, not EVERY Black person responds in the same way, but some of them are feeling dissonance between what the echo-chamber and mainstream media tells them happened and what they see with their own eyes and hear with their own ears.
Dating is what I did to find a mate. It wasn't supposed to be a lifetime occupation or just a pleasant way to pass the time.
If a lady proposed that I buy her groceries for our second date, I would find that perfectly acceptable if she also offered to prepare and serve me a home-cooked meal in her apartment in lieu dropping $100 on two dinners and drinks. I would bring the wine.
How much can you learn about somebody going to a movie (where you cannot converse) and then to a restaurant? She could have kids or a live-in boyfriend and there is no guarantee you would learn that in the artificial, contrived scripts of traditional dating. She could be a slob or be OCD. She could raise reptiles for a hobby or maybe she collects books. Maybe she decorates with empty vodka bottles or maybe she paints watercolors. Perhaps she plays the accordion or bag-pipes.
What does she consider an honest, home-cooked meal: A frozen pizza and Little Debbies nutty bars or salad, roast beef, mashed potatoes, green beans and home-made apple pie? Or, perhaps she is too "liberated" to cook?
If you look at the cost of a date as the cost of acquiring actionable information, dropping $100 on groceries could be the wisest $100 you will ever spend. You might learn that she is a keeper or might see a bunch of red-flags that tells you that she is somebody to drop like a hot potato. Most likely, you would find that she has promise and is willing to be flexible, excellent qualities that are often under-rated.
There is probably a plot for a good Rom-Com movie in that scenario.
"Swedish Candle". Three axial chainsaw cuts. Build a small fire on top of the log. Embers drop down. Length of cuts is enough to pull a draft.
Alternate method: Split log into quarters or sixths. Re-assemble the wedges but in a different order so they don't fit line-to-line. Bind them with a couple wraps of wire. Light small fire on top.
Work-from-home
Healthcare jobs have the lowest rates of unemployment world-wide. Delivering babies and changing bandages is hands-on work. You cannot phone-in your performance.
"So, you wanna work-from-home? No problem!"
I heard a lot of griping from people who were working "essential services" jobs during Covid and had to keep working their minimum wage + $5/hr jobs. They were griping because people who made three times their wages could sit at home and get government checks or they could work-from-home via the internet.
So, guess which jobs are difficult for AI to replace? Pharmacy techs, nurses, dudes stocking Kroger's shelves, truck drivers, plumbers and factory workers.
All of those non-essential workers and people who gleefully agreed to work-from-home volunteered to be in the first tier of employees displaced by AI.
But fear not. They can always work in the organic farm fields pulling weeds.
Leverage
There was a thread in a previous post exploring "How can regular people be effective in these tumultuous times?"
Arguing endlessly with the "tools" and "ratchets" on the internet isn't effective. It doesn't change anybody's minds and the t&r enjoy the feeling of power.
To be effective, the people who need to be converted or replaced are elements in the Command-and-Control structure.
A short (and incomplete) list:
Judges
Clerks who assign cases (The odds of Boasberg randomly getting four Trump EO challenges in-a-row is approximately 1-in-38,000)
County and Township clerks who run elections (the clerk of Ingham County is a proud, hard-left activist)
School boards
HR departments
Credentialing organizations (States threatened to remove doctor's credentials if they didn't toe-the-line during Covid)
People corrupting Wikipedia entries by larding articles with language that changes their meaning
With regard to the last category on the list, the Left immediately pivoted to "Both sides are guilty of political violence" and then hold up the murder of Melissa Hortman, a Minnesota State Senator as their (only) example.
The article was modified/written to front-load information where "experts" and "a neighbor" speculated that the perp was a hard-right, MAGA extremist. It also noted that he was registered as a Republican in 2004. Parenthetically, Donald J. Trump was a registered Democrat in 2004.
The evidence that the perp had switched sides and was attempting to curry favor with Governor Walz (failed US VP candidate, by the way) was buried deeply (744 words deep) in the text and each piece of evidence was immediately "qualified" or diluted by low-quality commentary.
Since the perp fully expected to be killed in his assassination attempts, his "manifesto" is basically a suicide note which are generally considered to be very honest and are considered "admissible evidence" in criminal court cases.
That editing, that is, the ordering of the text and the one-sided "poisoning" of the evidence with partisan commentary gives talking heads like Jessica Tarlov air-cover to make statements like "The violence is from both sides".
The NPCs, tools and ratchets then take Tarlov's comments and use them to fill their echo-chamber.
Looking out of the deer stand that I am re-siding. Looking northeast and downhill. There is a path between the goldenrod and the trees at 115 yards.
Looking north. You can see that the rail on the side I am working on is lower than the one that faces northwest because the shots will be downhill.
Looking northwest
Looking west
The goldenrod was buzzing with honeybees.
Burning stumps
I tried something a little bit different.
This pear stump was hollow. I cut a tall, narrow wedge of "cake" out to provide a draft and then started a fire inside of the stump. The stump is about 20 inches in diameter and this is what it looked like after three hours of burning.
No wood was added after I got it started although I did put a hollow section of log on top of the stump to act like a chimney.
This is what the bottom of the "chimney" log looked like when I tipped it over.
Notable for providing graphic evidence that southeastern Britain was cold enough, for long enough of a period to ice over heavily enough on the Thames to support traffic and that it happened on a yearly basis. Doubly amazing when you consider this region of the Thames was far enough downstream to still experience tides.
This was during the Maunder Minimum (sun activity) during the Little Ice Age.
I actually read an article a while back about a guy who was buying up
derelict houses in Detroit. The city was selling them for $1.00 apiece.
He bought up several blocks of them. The he had them torn down. Then
he returned the land to agricultural use.
Can it work?
Four minute video. To live in this planned community, you must commit to growing food on 1/2 of your "lot".
From the same channel. About five minutes long.
Can it work? Maybe. Historically, gardening in medium-to-low density urban areas was the norm. It was promoted as recently as WWII, particularly in Europe. It is still common in parts of China and Latin America.
Stumbling blocks
Theft and vandalism
The ethic of private property is not respected in many places. Gardens are difficult and expensive to armor against those threats. If/when people get hungry, they will steal the food or destroy it out of anger and spite. Theft and vandalism totally guts the incentive to cultivate a garden.
The places that are most likely to be food-deserts are also likely to have the poorest regard for the sanctity of private property.
Property ownership
Much of the housing in food-deserts is rental. Length of tenure is uncertain. There is little incentive to make property improvements (fences, soil amendments). There are likely to be clauses in leases that prohibit "eyesores" like compost piles.
Poor soil
Most cities started on fertile sites with geographic advantages like harbors or navigable rivers. Decades of excavation and earth-moving destroyed the topsoil. Much of what is left is polluted with heavy metals and long-lasting contaminates.
In older parts of cities, the drainage is compromised since the oldest, most-in-need of repair parts are where the urban expansion drains through. Detroit, specifically, was built on a flat, clay-pan that used to be the bottom of a prehistoric lake. "Flat" and "clay" do not drain well.
Some land was created by filling in tidal-flats. The fill rubble, foundry sand and other waste.
People choosing to use your garden as a toilet or to shoot-up drugs turns your garden into a biohazard.
The places that are most likely to be food-deserts are likely to have the worst soil for growing food.
Shade
Small lots means that a neighbor's tree or the apartment block next door will shade your garden. And there is nothing you can legally do about it.
Unrealistic expectations
Because the urban dweller who shops at Kroger sees fresh plums and cherries and strawberries in the produce department year-round, they expect their two trees and the bale of straw with five strawberries on it to do the same. They have a hard time comprehending that a tree full of sweet cherries has ripe cherries for about a week and if you want cherries for longer than that, you need to refrigerate the fifty pounds you might harvest.
They want to grow crops that have specialized requirements. They expect the produce to be cosmetically perfect. They cannot comprehend that the perfect carrot they buy in a bag was grown in deep, "muck" soils that only occur in very localized areas. Basically, muck is a drained peat bog.
Labor requirements
It is difficult for people who lived an urban existence their entire lives to comprehend the labor requirements involved in gardening on a large scale.
The needs of the plants determines what you do, not your To Do list.
Your hands will get dirty.
You will be bending over or on your knees. You are likely to get blisters on your hands. Slivers are a real possibility. Weeds and bugs can and will sting you.
Weeds. Watering. Harvesting. Storing dirty food somewhere. Cleaning. All that has to happen before you can start preparing a meal from-scratch, which in itself is seen as an accomplishment on-par with climbing Mount Everest by a portion of the population.
Restrictive rules
Unfortunately, "consensus" usually devolves to capitulation to the most unreasonable person in an effort to avoid conflict.
Even though pesticides and fertilizers are used liberally on lawns and public spaces everywhere, urban Karens go ballistic if they see anybody using "chemicals" near a vegetable garden. They insist that everybody be "organic".
They also throw a hissy-fit when you live-trap raccoons, possum, squirrels and other vermin and relocate them (after dispatching them in a private place).
They complain about bees.
They blame marigolds and zinnias for their hay-fever.
They complain about fences and sheds and other structures.
They complain about the untidy appearance of raspberry bushes and okra.
Pumpkins
For some reason, every new gardener wants to grow a crop of (ornamental) pumpkins. They are the bane of people managing community gardens.
The gardener thinks they throw some seeds into the ground in June and come back the week before October and that there will be 20 pumpkins to pick.
It NEVER works out that way. Their allotment becomes a weed-choked jungle. The weeds go to seed and make all of the surrounding allotments much more difficult to care for.
If the vines survive, they sprawl out into other allotments and cause strife. Attempts to reach the absent gardener are never answered. The other gardeners curse the pumpkin-farmer and keep chopping back the vines.
About August 15, after the vines set a crop of baby pumpkins, the vines are killed by squash borers. The absent pumpkin-farmer visits and accuses the other gardeners of killing his vines and he threatens legal action.
Summary
It is NOT impossible to grow food in cities but there are many road-blocks.
One of the prime-enablers would be to carve out something like an Enterprise Zone or the special treatment of railways* but for agriculture. I think it needs to include language that operations inside the zone be results-oriented rather than getting all tangled up in "process".
*Railroads are allowed to have their own police force just like Indian Reservations. Trespassing laws are actually were enforced with great vigor even by local enforcement.
I am going through a steep learning curve with the sprayer. The manual is...crude.
The controls were shipped with the "sprayer" and "duster" modes both in the half open position. That meant that the reservoir was sending highly corrosive liquid to both the turbo spray-head (good) and the vacuum side of the fan (bad).
I justified the purchase of the sprayer solely on its ability to spray calcium solution (a nutrient) on an acre of orchard. I really don't need it for any other purpose although I might spray micronutrients on some chlorotic oak trees in the neighborhood.
I was feeling bad about spending the money but then I saw a truck pulling a trailer with a new dirt-bike on it. A $2000 trailer with a $5000 motorcycle for a high school kid. From that frame-of-reference, dropping $150 for something with a gas motor that provides entertainment (but does not break bones) is dirt-cheap.
The motor started and ran fine although the gas:oil ratio of 28:1 was unexpected. I had to add oil to my usual 40:1 mix.
The liquid feed to the turbo-head is by gravity. Lifting the snorkle to spray up, into the tree starves the turbo-head. Consequently, I need to find an elbow to insert into the system so I can get enough liquid to the head while still spraying upward.
We are not the same
We were on a family camping trip circa 2000. We took bicycles for local transportation.
Pelee had a melt-down because his bicycle did not shift EXACTLY when the pointer on the grip pointed at the "speed" he wanted.
I tried to explain that the numbers on the display are meaningless. If the pedaling is too hard, downshift. If the RPM are too high, up-shift.
That was a hard NOGO for Pelee. He threw the bike into the weeds beside the road and stomped off.
I was baffled.
In retrospect, Pelee was slightly ahead of the curve. In a digital world, the Command-and-Control display is slaved to actual state. In an analog world (the world I grew up in), the display is a general guideline.
Very, very different.
For example, when turning down a piece on a lathe, there is lash (slop) in the adjustments. You backed off and then dialed back in to minimize lash. You took off less than you could to avoid over-shoot. You measured frequently. Those were all ways of compensating or coping with the inherent limitations of the analog world.
Most of the time, the digital world is better. What you see is what you get.
However, being able to operate in the analog mode can be a life saver when systems operate in "degrade" mode.
I used a lot of words to set the stage to say, I can deal with things like this Chinesium sprayer because I grew up in a time when low-end-of-market US-made goods needed tweaking to make them usable.
I have lunch with my high school buddies about four times a year. A slightly different group of guys shows up each time and that influences the course of conversations.
The last time I went, one of the conversations turned to the City of Detroit. One of the guys used to work in the Renaissance Center in downtown Detroit and this was his take.
"People almost always look at current conditions and trends and then extrapolate.
Detroit's financial problems exist because people in 1960 assumed that Detroit was going to have 10 million residents in the foreseeable future and built infrastructure to support that population."
Detroit population over the last 200 years. Extrapolating from 1930 data, Detroit was on-track to hit 10,000,000 in 1960
Cherished beliefs die slow, hard deaths.
Detroit didn't grow much during the Great Depression.
Population growth was relatively stagnant during the 1940s as the young men, the nucleus of family formation, were off fighting the war. Regardless, population peaked in 1950 at 1.8 million people.
Since 1960, Detroit's population has been dropping by double-digit percentages every decade and now sits at about 600,000.
Adjusted for inflation, the tax-base eroded even more.
Some neighborhoods survived almost entirely intact.
Other neighborhoods were not so lucky.
Regardless, there is a tremendous amount of fixed-cost overhang and not a lot of of grassroots generated revenue to support it.
Some residents blame racist whites for fleeing, even though most blacks move out as soon as they can afford to.
Some blame corruption in Lansing (the state capital).
Some respond with anger and rage.
Some respond with hopelessness.
Some respond with resignation. All in alignment with the stages of grieving.
The Progressives are encountering some head-winds
I think many of those same things are happening to the Progressive movement.
They became accustomed to effortless, exponential growth and their paradigm assumed it would always continue. That effortless growth was one of their baseline assumptions like "gravity" and "the sun rising".
They are in the anger-and-rage stage of grieving. They are exactly like the two-year-old whose mom told him "No!" for the first time. Their universe just up-ended and they don't like it.
Detroit, August 1967
I think that the state of Progressive America is analogous to Detroit in the year 1955 or 1965.
Charlie Kirk was murdered because he was supernaturally gifted at selling traditional, Conservative values at the retail level. Charlie Kirk was effective. That was very, very threatening to the people whose rice-bowl is chained to the legacy narrative. That is why he was murdered and why the Left celebrated his death.
Some pair-wise comparisons of comparable items in the retail space
Not responsive to "customers"...................Responds to customer needs
Wealth pumps.........................................Offers value in exchange
Charlie Kirk's "selling" technique
Invite the potential customer to tell him what is important to the customer
LISTEN to the potential customer.
Rephrase any potentially ambiguous language
Validate or recognize the potential customer's feelings
Agree with what he can agree with. This step and the prior step establish an empathy bond.
Articulate his own views on the topic without denigrating the potential customer
Focus on one or two points where the views are diametrically opposed
Reference pertinent data. For instance, talk about outcomes of Native American tribes that receive casino money vs. ones that don't when talking about Universal Basic Income or Reparations
Observe that the data suggests that his viewpoint produces the most compassionate outcomes for the majority of the people.
Admit ignorance when the potential customer brings an event that he had no knowledge of.
Most people with a brain appreciated the respect Mr Kirk extended to them. They could FEEL the difference between Mr Kirk's engaging with them on their home-turf and the Legacy narrative's "We will kick in your teeth if you disagree with us" approach.
The functional definition of "Mental Illness" is "Do your issues interfere with the activities of normal life?"
We all have "symptoms" of mental illness. We all have quirks.
Normal, developmental stages of life also resemble the symptoms of mental illness. Most teenagers go through a phase where they compulsively argue. But that is a normal phase that nearly all of them grow out of. It is not an illness as long as they don't get stuck there.
Those behaviors do not rise to the level of diagnosable "illness" if we, as adults, can function smoothly in modern life.
For example: Consider somebody who is stressed by crowds. It is not considered a mental illness if they can work and shop and do all of the other things considered parts of ordinary life.
That person might have several coping mechanisms. They might work third-shift stocking shelves or they might be a cobbler who very rarely has more than two customers in his shop at a time. Maybe they work from home as a seamstress. At that point, it is not considered a mental illness.
But if the company eliminated third-shift and the person locks-up and cannot find another job, then it becomes diagnosable because the demands of everyday tasks changed and suddenly exceeded that person's capability to execute them.
ADA and Mental Illness
The Americans with Disabilities Act (1990) was interpreted as covering mental illness and employers are expected to make "reasonable accommodations" to employ people who are diagnosed with mental illnesses. That is problematic because there are no objective tests to diagnose mental illness. There is no blood test nor imaging technology like there are for diabetes or brain tumors.
Catch 22
If a delusional behavior like transgenderism is very pointedly written out of the Mental Illness Diagnostic Manual, then why are "reasonable accommodations" still being made for it?
And many of those accommodations ended up being far more than "reasonable". There is a 125,000 square-feet factory in southern-Michigan where the single "transgender" employee is allowed to use the Plant Manager's personal restroom and shower (only accessible through a door in his private office) because they filed a complaint stating that they "didn't feel safe" using the one for their pretend gender. Having worked in a factory and knowing the near-godlike powers and the number of confidential issues (often involving personnel) that are handled in the office of the Plant Manager, that access to his office is inconceivable to me.
The barroom lawyer cannot stand on Title XI (against sexual discrimination). Sex is in your chromosomes. Transgender is gender which we are repeatedly told is totally different than XX, XY and YY.
Which brings us back to "Transgenderism is a delusional mental illness where the patient is incapacitated when others don't play along with their delusion".
Bonus argument
Many mental illnesses are cursed with accompanying comorbidities. There is a cascading effect of suboptimal "maladjustments" as the brain tries to cope while still cherishing the original bad decisions.
Even proponent of the transgender movement admit that transgenders are a bundle of mental illnesses although they attribute those mental illnesses to society "not accepting them".
It is interesting that kids are diagnosed with autism before they decide they are transgender. How can society's discrimination work backward in time?
Short, interesting video showing mechanical retting (not hemp).
Retting is actually two processes. The first part of the process is to separate the fiber bundles from the core. That part can be very fast. The second process is to delaminate the fiber bundle into its individual fibers by breaking down the gel that glues the fibers together. The second part is similar to making paper from wood.
The tree in the picture is an apple tree that was originally grafted to a very early apple. Then two water-sprouts were grafted to Melrose. The grafts are about 8' above the ground. Then the tree was given zero attention for more than a decade.
A couple of years ago the orchard came under my care and I mentally marked this tree for culling. The reason that I dislike very early apples is that it seems like there
is a three-day picking window. If you miss that window, they fall to the
ground and make a mess. They are also magnets for stinging insects.
Finally, they just don't taste all that good.
While reviewing it mid-fall 2024 I noted the branches of Melrose apples in the dense thicket of branches. I picked the apples and marked the two branches by tying face-masks to them. Hey, I was working with what was in the truck and it seemed like a good use for them.
Pruning out the branches of the early apple left two, gangly whips that were much too tall. I made the executive decision to leave them as they were because I needed to leave some wood to leaf-out to support the metabolic needs of the trunk and roots. My hope was that more shoots would sprout lower on the gangly whips and I could start taking some height out of the tree.
The branch on the east side of the tree surprised me with a bumper crop of apples. Maybe it is saying "Thanks!"
Hunting blind update
The sheet-metal went up without a hitch. Potential issues were identified ahead of time and I put plans into place to remediate them. Working alone can be a challenge when you have to handle sharp and awkward items like 8'-by-3' sheet steel panels.
One of the features I added is that I capped the header with a 6", 5/4" decking plank with rounded edges and I tilted the outer edge of the header a quarter inch downward so any rain that falls on it will run OUT of the blind. It is also closer to parallel with how the firearms or crossbows will be tipped when shooting.
Now I have two more sides to complete.
Palmer amaranth and water-hemp
PA and WH are similar species of amaranth that are weedy. I imported them when I purchased bags of "composted" cow manure.
Many species of amaranth have edible greens. These two species are nominally edible but the tips become fiberous quickly. In the wild, they are often contaminated with pesticides and during dry-spells can have issues with nitrate accumulation (the cause of Blue Baby syndrome) and possibly hydrogen cyanide.
I spent part of yesterday walking the orchard and grubbing out the PA and WH plants I saw.
Shift in orchard priorities
The priorities shift with the season.
Obviously, harvesting fruit is the major priority but there are also other tasks.
One task is to identify the varieties of the trees. The two trees in the west row immediately north of the newly grafted Enterprise might be Spigold or Sweet Sixteen. They are late, large, crunchy and already sweet. They also appear to have corky-spot. Corky-spot is a fruit quality issue where the tree cannot deliver enough calcium to the fruit. The fix is to spray the trees with multiple sprays of calcium-rich solution.
"Why not just add calcium (limestone) to the soil?" you ask. Because Corky-spot is often a transport issue. For some reason, the stems cannot or will not ship the calcium to the developing fruit.
In the third row, counting from the west, the two northernmost mature trees appear to be Jonafree.
Another task involves armoring the baby trees against mice/voles eating the bark. That involves removing all of the deer and rabbit guard fencing and wrapping several wraps of paper or metal window-screen around the trunks before re-installing the rabbit and deer protection. I expect that to take 15 minutes a tree so that will absorb a lot of time.
Branches and brush still need to be cleared out to facilitate mowing.
Mowing
I removed one of the blades from the mower at the Upper Orchard site and sharpened it. When I returned to reinstall it, the adaptor that is supposed to be on the end of the spindle was gone. That is baffling because I immediately replaced the bolt and washer after pulling the blade.
While searching the internet for a replacement I learned that the blade is supposed to be 20" instead of 18", so the mower has the wrong blade, too. Used equipment is full of surprises. The right answer is to get the proper adaptor and blade which will work if the spindle is still original.
Ground blinds
I also put up a ground-blind on the edge of a grassy, goldenrod filled field. I was disappointed with the size of the stakes that came with the product so I need to purchase some real tent-stakes.
You can see the traces of the deer trails in the upper, right corner of the image.
The distance between the blind (the green diamond) and the extreme, upper-left corner of the image is about 40 yards.
Charlie Kirk
A brave man. He knew there were grave risks and he answered the call of what he saw as his mission anyway.
The 72 hour rule is in effect.
I find that the best way for me to deal with stress is to throw myself into something productive. Fight, flight or work. And of the three, I prefer work.
Protesters set fires as they blocked highways and gas stations across France
early Wednesday as part of a new nationwide movement. Authorities
deployed 80,000 police, who made hundreds of arrests and fired tear gas
to disperse crowds.
The
"Block Everything" movement was born online over the summer in far-right
circles, but spread on social media and was co-opted by left-wing,
antifascist and anarchist groups. It now includes France’s far-left
parties and the country’s powerful labor unions.
It seems suicidal to cut off the flow of food, fuel and medicine between cities. Do they WANT the cities to burn? "Three days from anarchy" and all that.
There is pent-up energy in every country right now. The unwinding of that energy is likely to play out in different ways in every country, perhaps varying at the state and county levels as well.
What will not change is your need for oxygen, clean drinking water, protection from the elements, food, for most of us at least 5 hours of sleep a night. We need some certainty that we and those closest to us are safe from harm.
For my readers in Michigan who are in dire need of a shotgun, this auction of property confiscated by the police has a large number of shotguns. Most of them are on the bottom of page 3 and and the top of page 4 of the catalog. The auction closes on September 24 and the property dispersal is in Battle Creek.
One of my younger brothers originally fabricated this hunting blind. He had a friend whose girlfriend's father sold garage doors. Being a charming fellow, my brother had a limitless supply of garage door "tear-offs" and he frequently made use of them in his projects using batten-and-screw methods to attach them to framing.
Bugs, woodpeckers, squirrels and time have had their way with those panels and it is time to replace them.
I am using dimension lumber and sheet steel siding. Another thing I am doing is lowering the sill to approximately 38". It is kind of stupid to have to get out of the chair because you cannot depress the elevation enough. Elevation is easier to add than to subtract.
I don't think I will be hunting from a 10' high, elevated blind in twenty years, but who knows.
So, doctor, how do I feel?
I was dragging the last three or four days. I was tired. I had aches and pains. I could hardly pry my behind out of my recliner.
I wondered if it was low blood-sugar, so I ate more. Nope, that wasn't it.
I mentally reviewed my caffeine consumption wondering if I had somehow missed drinking the required amount of coffee. Nope, that wasn't it, either.
Maybe I got cold while sleeping. I wore a hooded sweatshirt to bed but was still dog-tired the next morning. Nope, that wasn't it.
Finally, I put the pieces together. "Mrs ERJ! I think I figured out why I haven't had any energy" I exclaimed.
She raised an eyebrow bidding me to continue.
"I think I caught Quicksilver's cold" I said.
"I knew that" she said, eyes darting to the depleted box of tissues next to my chair.
Of course she knew. It had been obvious to her for days. She pays more attention to my health than I do.
The good news is that about noon, yesterday, I got my energy back. It was almost like a switch getting flipped.
I might not have gotten more work done but it didn't feel like I was walking through wet concrete while I was doing it.
Note to my core audience: This post is intended for the sprinkling University students who accidentally find this web-site every month.
"Nihilism" is a philosophy whose name has the same root as the word "Annihilate".
Nihilism claims that "all facts are relative" and it rejects all moral creeds as hopelessly corrupt since they presume to be based on absolute truths. Furthermore, it holds that "values and morals" are fictions and do not exist except as ploys used by powerful people to manipulate others.
Various social commenters point to "Nihilism" for such diverse phenomena as motivating school shooters, the decline in the birth-rate and the increase number of "deaths of despair": Suicide, Drug overdoses and Alcohol related deaths..
The total rejection of "old" moral traditions appeals to some young people. So does the contention that every decision and action is "morally equal" since Nihilism claims morality does not exist. It is also a cheap-and-easy way to look sophisticated because nobody is more cynical and decadent than a Nihilist.
In some circles, embracing nihilist is the cost of being accepted into the tribe.
The costs
Nihilists seem to be very unhappy and unfulfilled. Their motto is "Nothing is real. Nothing matters".
They believe that nobody hears their screams of pain and anger, fatigue and despair. They cannot even hear themselves scream.
They are very, very lonely.
Opportunity costs
Anybody who chooses Nihilism rejects the Judeo-Christian moral code because the two are mutually exclusive.
Without writing a book, "What are Nihilists walking away from?"
Psalm 139 (abridged)
Lord, you have tested me and you know me: you know when I sit and stand; you understand my thoughts from afar. You have been with me through my travels and my rest; with all my ways you are familiar. Even before a word is on my tongue, Lord, you know it all. Behind and before you encircle me and rest your hand upon me. Where can I flee from your spirit? From your presence, where can I hide?
If I ascend to the heavens, you are there; if I lie down in Death, there you are. If I take the wings of dawn and dwell beyond the sea, Even there your hand guides me, your right hand holds me fast. If I say, “Surely darkness shall hide me, and night shall be my light”— Darkness is not dark for you, and night shines as the day. Darkness and light are but one.
You formed my inmost being; you knit me in my mother’s womb. I praise you, because I am wonderfully made; wonderful are your works! My very self you know. My bones are not hidden from you, When I was being made in secret, fashioned in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw me unformed; in your book all are written down;f my days were shaped, before one came to be. How precious to me are your designs, O God; how vast the sum of them
<snip>
Test me, God, know my heart; try me, know my thoughts. See if there is a wicked path in me; lead me along an ancient path.
Psalm 139 is a love-song. It is an eruption of joy that articulates God's real and intimate love for you.
Nihilism says you are nothing. Your birth meant nothing. Your death will mean nothing. Your current existence is less than an already fading pixel in a frame on a screen playing Grand Theft Auto.
Psalm 139 claims that the infinite God personally knitted you, as an individual, together one cell at a time. It claims that He shaped you and your character as you navigated through your life. He is with you in your darkest hours. It says that He cares about even the minutest details of your life.
And since the Judeo-Christian ethos claims that God is infinite, He has enough bandwidth to do that with every human. Every human is "His favorite" because He is not limited by CPU or RAM or Graphics Processing.
"Empty words! Psalm 139 is nothing more that words" the Nihilist scoffs
So the 28 year-old grad student who was teaching Freshman Humanities used words to sell the wonders of Nihilism and the horrid corruption of all other moral codes (with Christianity being the most stained). Were her words any "better" than the words of Psalm 139? Did they give you comfort? Were you energized by a sense of purpose or mission? Were you uplifted?
And by what authority did the grad student speak? Had she ever REALLY studied Christianity from original sources? Most likely she was using her "personal, lived experiences" as her authority. She had looked at the bleak job market for Humanities Ph.D.s and was crab-bucketing you down.
Finally, was she smart enough to realize that "Nihilism" is a self-canceling script? If everything is empty of meaning then words have no meaning. And if words have no meaning, then how is it possible to articulate and communicate the tenants of "Nihilism" ?
A.I. Summary
This posts contends that choosing Nihilism as your life's guiding philosophy will make you profoundly depressed and unhappy.
Conversely, it contends that if you choose to follow the Judeo-Christian ethos that you will feel uplifted and will likely find yourself surrounded by like-minded people.
The cell-block for the rabbit jail was assembled and installed on the platform yesterday.
What you don't see are the two dividers that went in the middle and the sheathing that went on the side closest and farthest from us.
I made an effort to keep the treated wood away from where the inmates were likely to chew. That is why you see two colors of wood: White, untreated wood and darker, treated wood. The "floor" is at 36" and the top of the header is 19" above that.
Table saws
I purchased a used table saw at an auction for $82 this summer. It is my first real experience with a table saw.
My dad had one and it weighed a ton. The one I bought is a Craftsman and it is on roller-casters.
What a work-horse!
I am unreasonably proud of the fact that I used it to cut dadoes (wide slots) in the middle studs to slide the dividers into. There is a special blade you can buy to cut dadoes but I used the expedient of cutting shallow kerfs down the length of the 2-by-4 that were 1/8" apart and scraping out the feathers.
I actually had the presence of mind to set the fence, make one cut and then swap the board end-for-end and cut the mirror-image kerf without resetting the fence. That "cracking" sound is from the bones in my arm cracking as I pat myself on the back.
Summary
Table saws take up a lot of floor space but can do a tremendous amount of precision work if the user pays attention.
They can also cause bloodshed and mayhem in less than a blink of the eye. Consequently, the user can't be in a hurry or be distracted.
Young Baby Boomers would call-in sick from a payphone in Omaha, Nebraska on Thursday morning. Then they would drive the rest of the way to Idaho and filled the van with "ditch-weed" tops. Then they drove straight back to the mid-West and hung the tops in a barn before punching into work on Monday morning.
All that for weed that was 1.5% THC, half seeds and bird-shit and contaminated with paraquat.
Zoomers melt down into a puddle of quivering protoplasm when the boutique cannabis store runs out of their favorite brand of Blueberry Cheesecake pre-roll (23% THC).
Clabonjones wrote at 7:55 AM: "The killer is a career criminal that was let out of jail by a liberal
judge. He had 14 prior arrests and should have never been walking free.
There should be consequences for judges that let criminals go to commit
more crimes"
I am willing to use this blog to publish the timeline with the names of the judges and Prosecuting Attorneys who had the opportunity to address this criminal's trajectory.
I don't have the skills or time to dig this information out so I will be grateful if any of my readers will point to where that information resides.
Of particular interest to me are plea-bargains that were made and bail-amounts.
The toughest part of prosecuting is A: Finding witnesses who are willing to testify and B: Preventing perps from intimidating those witnesses. A stiff bail keeps the perp away from the witness. A high probability of conviction and incarceration also protects the witnesses.
One case that I have personal knowledge of involved an Aggravated Assault (felony) case. The case was rescheduled three times. The perp's attorney filed for a no-reason reschedule as soon as the prime witness checked into the courthouse. The judge always granted the reschedule and the witness lost a day of work and pissed off their boss (essentially punishing the witness). On the fourth date, the perp copped a plea for a misdemeanor as soon as the witness showed up AGAIN.
Obviously, the defense attorney was playing games hoping the prime witness would be a no-show and he could motion to have the trial called off and his client could walk. Equally obvious, the judge winked-and-nodded at the game for allowing the pattern of last-second reschedules.
Sixty-six quarts of stewed tomatoes and tomato-based soup-stock are in the pantry. There are enough tomatoes still on the vine for another 14-to-21 quarts if we needed them.
I decided that I like vinegar better than citric acid for lowering the pH. To my taste buds, the acetic acid in the vinegar is not as harsh as the citric acid. 2 ounces of 5% vinegar per quart adds 0.3% acid to the tomatoes.
No frost is predicted for tonight even though they predict a low of 36F, clear skies and no wind. That is usually enough to frost low lying areas with no tree cover. Maybe they figure the day was warm enough to provide some protection. It is not a big deal to me if our tomatoes get killed.
Provided for entertainment purposes since I did not verify the information.
This blogger contends that USDA Technical Bulletin 930 supports the idea that low-acid foods can be home-canned in the common water-bath (as opposed to pressure canned) if the person performing the canning meticulously increases the time-at-temperature by a very significant amount.
Key Point: Temperatures of 212F kill Clostridium botulinum spores but it kills them slowly. Key Point: The die-off is an exponential decay curve. Key Point: The temperature in the center of the food being canned lags the temperature of the bath. Key Point: The temperature of boiling tap water drops with increasing elevation. It boils at 210F at 900 feet of elevation and that makes a difference.
The risk in canning low-acid foods is that while the bacteria Clostridium botulinum and its toxins are destroy are destroyed at common canning time/temperatures, the spores are very resistant to heat and many of them remain viable. They germinate and grow in the oxygen-free, low-pH environment of the jar's content. Then the bacteria for spoors internally and release toxins when they rupture to free the spoors.
The current recommendations from the USDA are to pressure can low-acid foods, like meat, in a pressure-canner at a minimum temperature of 240F for an at-heat time of 90 minutes (for a quart) and to let the pressure-canner cool down below 200F by natural convection before removing the jars from the canner.
How much longer at 212F?
This is good information to have in your hip-pocket with the proviso that you pitch any jars that show signs of lids bulging .AND. that you cook the devil out of low-acid foods canned at 212F and the MUCH longer times. Boiling that food for at least fifteen minutes (soups, stew, chili) destroys any Clostridium botulinum toxins generated by stray spores that remained viable.
Why would you want to?
Austere conditions and a huge windfall like a horse with a broken leg in the middle of the summer.
Nearly all of the meat would go to waste if you only had one pressure-canner but it would be possible to get a gang of people cutting-and-stuffing meat into jars and canning hundreds of pounds of meat in canning-kettles improvised out of steel barrels heated over wood-fires.
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