Tuesday, September 30, 2025

Presented without comment

Source

 

Notes on Poison Ivy

Poison Ivy 3' from the sidewalk. Not on my client's property but on Leonard Street in Eaton Rapids.
The number of poison ivy plants seem to positively correlate with the number of feral asparagus plants, Virginia creeper and grape vines.

The poison ivy, VC and grapes fill a similar ecological niche so it is not surprising that they run together. They are vines that produce small, persistent (i.e. hang well into winter) berries so birds that eat PI berries are also feasting on VC and grapes and poop-them-out in the same places.

An implication of that is that if you only control the PI but give the Virginia Creeper and wild grapevines, then the birds who are attracted to the VC and grapes will replant the PI. Even though they are competing for the same niche, they are passively cooperative in terms of spreading seeds.

The asparagus is the flier and was likely present when the grounds were converted from agriculture. I believe the berries of the female asparagus plants were the food that originally attracted the berry-eating birds.

Another implication is that landscaping plants like Washington Hawthorn (small persistent haws) will likely have PI infestations beneath them.

The common practice of using glyphosate in the spring to control grass in the landscaping beds favors poison ivy because it leafs out much later than the grass greens up. Spraying glyphosate in May (in Michigan) gives PI a competitive advantage. One work-around is to spray herbicide in mid-June once every three years rather than always spraying in early-May.

Introverts in-the-wild

I was talking to a lady at church last week and she told me that her dad was an introvert who needed to stay busy for his sanity.

He found the perfect gig. He was the maintenance man at a monastery with the rule of silence. He did his thing. They did theirs. Days could go by and the only person who talked to him was his wife.

Win-win.

Bonus video


 

Fine Art Tuesday

 



One of the local gyms has a walking track (free!!!). They also post pictures painted by local artists. Some of the pictures are for sale.

This Fine Art Tuesday is of a few of those pictures. 


 


Monday, September 29, 2025

About that 10 hour gig...

By the numbers:

  • The property manager has four events scheduled in the near future in four separate areas of the venue.
  • In total, the four events cover five acres. 
  • I spent 3.5 hours inspecting those five acres for Poison Ivy today.
  • Approximately 70 plants were found and marked.
  • Average speed was 0.75 mph.
  • Walking was sporty due to ruts, walnuts and other hazards. It was impossible to walk and look for PI at the same time.
  • The property manager did NOT want me to mark Virginia Creeper or wild grape vines. 
  • Extended over the remaining 39 acres equals 27 more hours. The 10 hour estimate was WAY off.
  • I suspect the property manager will only have me inspect the high-traffic and high-use areas. 

No pictures because I am on the property manager's dime. 

Deep concealment holster

Link
Suitable for masculine, hirsute, mid-Western guys like myself. Pairs well with wife-beater shirts, flip-flops and mullet hair-styles.


Have a plan

I am praying for the people of the LDS church in Grand Blanc, Michigan that was attacked on Sunday.

This hits pretty close to home, both geographically and personally. I am one of our church's "greeters". That is, I stand by the door and welcome people.

For some people, it might be the only "happy" human contact they receive all week. There is one 82 year-old widow who I hug every time she comes to church.

I know that my readers have a vast range of experiences. So I have a question for you:

If I am standing at the door and I see the door being approached by a madman carrying a firearm...do I hit the fire-alarm?

Reasons to do it:

  • It will empty the building
  • The loud, audible alarm is likely to unnerve the gunman. He might abort the mission.
  • It will trigger 9-1-1 response and get EMS rolling toward the building
  • Anybody who is "carrying" will be heads-up. I don't expect anybody would be carrying because Lansing Diocese prohibits the carrying of firearms on their property.

Reasons not to do it: 

  • First responders are likely to be firefighters. They will be at-risk from the gunman
  • Hitting the fire-alarm might be flushing the quail and making the gunman's job easier. 

Mitigating factors

  • There will be a crowd of people fleeing the facility and might halt fire-response outside of the danger zone.
  • Police sometimes respond to "fire alarms" to provide crowd control. If they are available, they would likely be among the first to arrive when a crowded building like a church is on-fire. 
  • People will be calling 9-1-1 and adding detail to the unfolding crisis. 9-1-1 operator will tell the fire-crew that the site is NOT SECURE and they will stage about 200 yards away from the grounds. 

 Any thoughts?

Sunday, September 28, 2025

Range report and mower maintenance update

 

I upgraded the scope rings on one of the .350 Legends
Shots 1, 2 and 3 were made at 25 yards. 12 clicks left and 12 clicks down between shots 1 and 2. The scope was much more responsive to horizontal adjustments than vertical.

12 more clicks down and four to the right between 2 and 3.

Shot #3 was in-the-black so I moved out to 100 yards.

Shot 4 was about 4-1/2" high. I moved 8 clicks down between shot 4 and shot 5. Then another four clicks down between 5 and 6.


I would have been happy with any 100 yard hit between dead-on and 2.5" high. So, I am tickled pink with hitting 1-3/4" high at 100 and a half-inch to the left is chump-change that is not worth correcting when shooting at targets as big as Whitetail Deer.
 

 

Maintenance report

I changed the oil and oil-filter in the mower at the Upper Orchard.

I also changed the air-filter. I chased the threads with the wingnut and was able to run the wingnut down far enough to not need the spacer. Sometimes I get lucky that way.

I mowed the orchards and will be pulling the mower deck to do maintenance on that next.

Pretty girls*, olives, morons and maintenance

 

Written by a local kid. Her mom used to be my kid's bus driver. You can purchase a copy HERE

Picture of the author in a goof-around mood. Mrs ERJ and I ran into her at the Eaton Rapids Farmer's Market and she gave me permission to give her book a plug on my blog.

I didn't purchase the book but I can attest that I have never seen a woman lose weight after a pregnancy faster than I saw her lose weight. I suspect that meal planning and discipline had a lot to do with that.

Olives

Cutting into the olives promotes brine infiltrating and leaching out the bitter chemicals.

 
They are big rascals!

6.6 pounds for $36. Link

Green olives need to be fermented/leached before they are edible. Link 1, Link 2 (scroll down to Fermenting and Curing heading).

Antifa = White Morons

It is being reported that the rap artist who goes by the name Ice Cube had his tour bus fire-bombed by Antifa in Portland.

Presumably, the drug-addled, white morons who LARP as thugs were able to sound out I-C-E written on the side of the bus and (incorrectly) determined that it belonged to US Immigration Customs Enforcement.

In Dallas, a young, white liberal lit-up an ICE detention facility with gunfire and killed two immigrants (upon whose behalf he was supposedly advocating). Based on the ammo that was shown in the news, the young liberal used an 8mm Mauser, the primary small arms caliber used by Nazi Germany during WWII. More than a little bit of irony there.

On a sadder note: The use of the pronoun "they" for a person-singular informs us that the person who committed suicide on their class field trip was "Trans".

 

Equipment maintenance

As responsibilities for the amount of property I manage increased, I have gone from very-light in terms of equipment to fairly heavy. I now have two, yes TWO lawn tractors for mowing.

One has the original manual. One does not.

Not having the manual makes finding the proper air filter (and other parts) a bit of a scavenger hunt. I found something very close but it is either too short or the threaded screw that attaches it has balled up threads. Regardless, I cannot run the nut down far enough to secure the filter.

So I made the air filter 7/16" longer
Of course, I had to buy a scroll saw to cut the spacer out of the sheet of plywood. The "more equipment" is self-perpetuating.

Using the scroll saw brought back memories of my dad circa 1970. We didn't grow up poor but we didn't have a lot of money. A scroll saw was one of the very few power tools my dad owned. I don't even think he had an electric drill. 

Now to get on with the oil changes and investigate re-bushing the front wheels to get the wobble out of them.

Ration stamps

WWII gasoline ration stamps for agricultural-use.


Government shutdown

Yawn!

The Donks are playing chicken. Their constituents tend to get pinched more than the conservatives...and they are holding out because there is not enough pork in the budget.

Lots of theater going on. I propose that the conservatives slip in some language that Federal taxes cannot be collected when there is a government shutdown. That would get the attention of the politicians who want to spend my tax dollars. 

*OK, I lied in the title. There is only one picture of a pretty girl. Mrs ERJ does not let me post pictures of her on the blog. 

Saturday, September 27, 2025

ERJ gets a job!

It looks like I picked up a 10 hour gig walking a property and marking Poison Ivy vines for later treatment with herbicide.

The property manager intends to paint the lower part of the Poison Ivy trunks with a mixture of diesel oil and triclopyr. By using a trim roller and only painting a strip of the stem, he can avoid killing the tree the vine is growing on.

He intends to do this after leaf-fall when there are fewer visitors to the property.

This is a good gig for me because I have the ability to identify Poison Ivy by its growth form, so even if it lost its leaves early I will still see a bunch of them. 

The time estimate might go out the window because there is a LOT of P.I. on the property and I expect to tag one about every 90 seconds. I will need to be nimble and efficient. The plan is for me to tie fluorescent surveyor's tape to a stick near the vine. Pipe cleaners might be faster but are much less visible.

Canning lids

Sometimes I follow my own advice.

I laid in a supply of canning-lids yesterday and will probably add more today. Note that I label my boxes of lids with the year I purchase them and practice FIFO inventory.

Canning-lids are an item that would likely be in short supply when things get spicy. The baseline demand is low and steady. There is very limited production capacity in the United States. They use specialty sheet-steel and they use rubber, both of which were in scarce during WWII.

Properly canned foods are both safe and shelf-stable for multiple years. Being able to can is a multiplier because it makes perishable, seasonal foods available year-round. Even in well managed orchards, there will always be fruit that is too ripe to sell or that fell to the ground and is consequently not salable. As long as you have a way to lower the pH (which can be as simple as combining it with less-ripe fruit) it can be safely canned.

The jars and screw tops can be reused for dozens of times but the lids are generally considered a one-time-use item. Yes, some people open them carefully and reuse them, but it is not a common practice.

Tattler lids

There is a brand of canning lids that IS reusable. The only downside is the original cost of the lids.

A package of 12 regular-sized Ball brand canning lids costs $3 at Walmart. The price of 12 Tattler lids is $20.

Hard cider

One of the reasons our ancestors fermented products was to be able to store them as food under primitive conditions. The yeast (sludge) is rich in  riboflavin, niacin, vitamin B6, and vitamin B12.

Screw-top, PET pop-bottles are fine for storing hard cider and are strong enough to hold natural carbonation. I expect that screw-top PET pop-bottles to be available even during spicy times.

Friday, September 26, 2025

A quick tour of what was rationed during WWII

United Kingdom WWII

...petrol was the first commodity to be controlled. On 8 January 1940, bacon, butter, and sugar were rationed. Meat, tea, jam, biscuits, breakfast cereals, cheese, eggs, lard, milk, canned and dried fruit were rationed subsequently...

Game meat was not rationed.

For the most part, locally grown fruits and vegetables were not rationed. 

Germany

...bananas, chocolate, coffee, sugar were difficult to obtain early in the war.

NAZI occupation policies were brutal...NAZI occupation policies involved looting the conquered countries by shipping food and other products back to Germany...the NAZIs planned to colonize large areas of the East and reduce the Slavic population, food shortages and starvation was a matter of state policy. The result was terrible food shortages and actual starvation. The NAZI looting led to a famine in Greece.

Items rationed included bread, cheese, fats (butter, margarine and oil), eggs, jam, meat, and sugar as well as canned goods. Coffee and tobacco were in short supply.

For the most part, locally grown fruits and vegetables were not rationed. 

(as) the War progressed items were increasingly unavailable. Meat in particular became increasingly difficult to obtain, even with the necessary ration tokens. Many families depending on where they lived began keeping rabbits as a meat source. Commonly the children were assigned the job of caring for them.

US

Tires, cars, bicycles, gasoline, fuel oil and kerosene, solid fuels (mine worker strike), stoves, rubber footwear, shoes (leather shortage), sugar, coffee, processed foods, meat, canned fish, cheese, canned milk, fats, typewriters, antibiotics.

Fuel was originally rationed to curtail driving and to conserve RUBBER. Rubber was at the end of a thin and shaky supply-chain and the war effort ran on rubber tires.

All types of metal were in high demand as well as rubber and leather. Fats were in short supply because they added caloric density to meals on the battlefield and because they were used industrially for paint, grease and nitroglycerine used in propellants and construction explosives.

History rhymes. "War is an ugly thing. It is time we had one!"*

Europeans and IDs. What could go wrong?

EU to implement Biometric tracking

On one hand, it makes sense given their inability to keep track of the immigrants who commit crimes (like rape) at 8-times the rate of natives. On the other hand, given their track-record of NOT arresting immigrants it only looks like a way to crack-down on individuals who criticize the government.

The Soviets and the NAZI were very big on tracking the travel of citizens and visitors. 

Reparations

The Germans have this brilliant idea where they strip the Russians of all of their assets and give them to the Ukes.

"Reparations" and the damage it did to the German economy is probably the single biggest cause of WWII. They HAVE to know that. Are they goading Russia into WWIII?

Germany outlaws AfD mayoral candidates

A snip of the demograpics of one rich, northern European country. Blue indicates native born male population ages 18-to-50. Gray indicates foreign-born males.

The AfD party is labeled as "Right-wing" and as "Haters". They are also leading in the polls as native-born Germans are pushing back against the flood of immigrants and the loss of autonomy to the EU/Brussels.

Germany "ruled" that AfD candidates were not eligible to run in recent mayoral elections.

Recognition of the "Palestinian State"

The only rational reason for Macron and Starmer recognizing the "Palestinian State" is to avoid a destabilizing surge of 2 million Palestinians into London and Paris.

Starting WWIII solves more problems for them than growing a set of cajones

Gestalt

Taken together, it looks like the rich, northern countries in Europe are itching to start a war that will spin-up to WWIII.

* Source of quote, sort of

Thursday, September 25, 2025

Life is speeding up (temporarily, I hope)

Sandbags on the gondola of a hot-air balloon.

I had a conversation with a very nice lady who is in her late thirties today. We were talking about the challenges of getting older as she described how her relationship with her parents and in-laws changed over time.

We all need some stress in our lives, otherwise we become depressed. Likewise, we cannot have too much stress or it pounds us into the dirt.

It is a bit like surfing. There is a range of places on a wave where surfing is possible and life moves forward gracefully and with ease.

Consequently, we all need a brake and a throttle to modulate the amount of stress in our lives.

One of the struggles is that as we age our baseline tolerance for stress isn't as high as when we were younger, even though the variation of stress coming at us doesn't get smaller. In fact, the stresses get larger as we are on fixed incomes and the number of people who expect us to "help" with time or $$$ seems to increase.

Furthermore, the variation in our ability to resist stress has wider swings. We have periods of low energy, often for no knowable reason. 

That makes our ability to anticipate surges well in advance very important, so our application of the brake or throttle has time to take effect.

The next four weeks

My crystal ball tells me that claims on my time will multiply over the next four weeks. It isn't just one thing, the demands come from several different sources.

The quality and quantity of blog posts will be spotty. 

This too will pass.

Your patience will be appreciated.

 

Random BS

Eleven-year-old student disarms another student who brought a gun to school.

Lansing School District expelled the eleven-year-old student for violating school district policy.

Lansing is about 20 miles north of Eaton Rapids. Kudos to the kid who know how to drop the mag and rack the slide to clear the weapon.

Kimmel? Random thoughts on Autism

Is Trump's jihad against Kimmel a smoke-screen?

"Pay no attention to the yellow handkerchief I am holding with my left hand..." said the magician as he prestidigitated with his right.


Choking back Pharma advertising on the major networks would collapse network profits since almost 100% of Pharma advertising revenue falls straight to the bottom line.

Companies that are losing money have to cut costs. A substantial percentage of the cost of broadcasting is in the form of salaries. Shows that are losing money have to cut payroll. Contracts with stars probably don't have "hardship" clauses that allow the networks to reduce pay but they do have terms to terminate employment.

If networks are deprived of their cash-cow then they have to rationalize. They can no longer push unpopular agendas that are not organically supported.

Kimmel is the yellow handkerchief. 

Autism

Some of it has been linked to Vitamin D deficiency in kids.

Vitamin D is important for brain development.

Nearly all commercial "cow milk" is Vitamin D fortified. Trendy parenting removed cow milk from children's diets and now give them "oat milk" and "almond milk" and "kale smoothies" because "cow milk" is old-fashioned and everything new is better than anything old.

Feral kids don't drink any kind of milk. They drink grape and orange flavored sugar water.

Kids used to play outside in the sun. Now they stay indoors and play on electronic toys. If they DO go outside, their mothers trowel sun-screen over every exposed inch of skin.

Finally, children with pigmented skin absorb less UV light and make less Vitamin D per hour when outside. Another complication is that many ethnic groups with pigmented skin lose the ability to digest lactose at a very early age. "Cow milk" gives them diarrhea.

I was wrong

 

The "leaks" in the air-blast sprayer were due to the air bleed port between the fan and the reservoir.

The air bleed is on the high-pressure side of the fan and pressurizes the tank so when it is open one can point the sprayer upward and it will still feed solution to the turbo-bell even though it is above the tank. The lever with the black knob controls the opening and shutting of a valve on the air bleed.

The quality execution on the valve that opens and shuts the air bleed leaves something to be desired. It never fully closes so it is not wise to load spray solution into the sprayer with the motor not running or idling. That is an issue because the manual directs the user to idle the motor for several minutes before running full speed and to idle it several minutes before shutting off. It is also an issue because the unit drools spray solution over the person carrying the sprayer.

The part about idling several minutes before shutting it off suggests that there are plastic parts near the motor made from low-melting point plastics. A hot shut-down and soak would cause those parts to overheat and deform.

Thank-you for your attention in this matter. 

Wednesday, September 24, 2025

BOOM! Gillette's marketing fiasco

BOOM!

I took the liberty of scrolling ahead to avoid about six minutes of background information. 

Gillette Razor's brand implosion. Masculinity re-imagined by somebody who hates men.

Watch the soy-boy simping starting at the 6:31 mark. The man mirrors the alpha-woman's body-language a fraction of a second after she emotes. Her emoting is a hunched shrug.

An open shrug communicates "Cynical resignation" or the "Whatever!" message. A hunched shrug transmits "I am not responsible, don't hit me" even as it transmits in a sotto voice "I am responsible".

Seemingly motivated by the desire for approval or "likes" in social media.

Field trips

We will be caring for Quicksilver for a longer time than usual. Her body-clock is attuned to being here for ten hours and she gets cranky when it runs longer than that.

Consequently, I will be taking her on a field trip. We will visit a local playground and then hit a traditional diner and eat breakfast. 

Tuesday, September 23, 2025

"Were-wolves" are the original "furries". Change my mind.

Blood-thirsty. Crazed. Devoid of empathy. Totally self-centered. Bringers of chaos to anything that demonstrates order, especially trad-families.

Hormones

Over the course of history, more than one young man has observed that the moods of his beloved show a marked change for about three days in every 28 days, a time period that corresponds with the cycling of the moon.

Sudden changes in hormone levels are discombobulating and emotional responses vary. Some withdraw. Some push-back. Some lash out. Others detonate.

The ending of a pregnancy, whether by natural birth, Caesarian, still-birth or abortion is followed by estrogen levels falling-off-a-cliff. The number one cause of post-partum death in women is suicide. Suicide is only slightly different than homicide, the difference being the choice of victim. 

Hormones are nothing to scoff at, especially when all of the "socializing" that our culture evolved to deal with those swings is tossed into the ditch.

And it cuts both ways

Testosterone is the original anabolic steroid. Most people have heard the term " 'roid rage". It is real. Testosterone makes us testy. Those of us who are blessed with testosterone stand our ground and refuse to be pushed around. We are territorial and can take seemingly-exaggerated offense over slight infringements.

Fine Art Tuesday

Jael and Sisera

Artemisia Gentileschi born in either 1590 or 1593 in Rome. She was raised by her father who was an artist. She died in either 1652, 1653 or 1656.

She painted many Biblical themes. Her focus on women killing men may have been due to the fact that she was raped by Agostino Tassi, the man who her father hired to protect her.

Most of the women in those paintings are self-portraits. One presumes that the men were modeled after Tassi.

Four hundred years later we are still cheering as Artemisia extracts her revenge. For the record, "Artemisia" is the diminutive form of "Artemis" the Greek goddess of hunting.

Judith decapitating Holofernes


St Catherine with a self-portrait of the artist as the model

Madonna

Birth of John the Baptist. Zechariah in the background writing checks.

Monday, September 22, 2025

Suggested by a friend

 

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 if any 1873 Colt revolvers were found. 

Puffballs and tarps

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. 

Sunday, September 21, 2025

I was busy yesterday

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.

Good questions

Shamelessly borrowed from Midwestchick's blog.
 

Saturday, September 20, 2025

"The Look"

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? 

Joy is contagious


About 40 seconds long.

Friday, September 19, 2025

Applesauce

Today is an applesauce day.

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 reaction videos

 

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. 

Thursday, September 18, 2025

Human spirit

 

Human spirit knows no limits when it comes to age. Two minute run-time.

Those old ladies have spines of steel. I wonder who hope to gain financially by the sale of the convent. 

Wednesday, September 17, 2025

Dating as an information-gathering tool

 

My opinions obviously "date" me as old-fashioned.

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. 

 

From the comments

"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.


Tuesday, September 16, 2025

Deer stands and burning stumps

Deer stand update

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.

Fine Art Tuesday

 

The Frozen Thames painted 1677
Abraham Hondius born about 1631 in Rotterdam and died in 1691.

He was one of the painters during the Dutch Golden Age.

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. 

Frost Fair on the Frozen Thames painted in 1684