Some pictures

 

I increased the length of the arms on my buck for cutting firewood. It made a big difference in my productivity. The extended length is 16".

I originally had them shorter because of my concern about my (in)ability to lift heavy logs high enough. That concern proved unfounded.

This guy has an interesting buck. He cuts a lot of "trash/brush" for burning. He has the play-back speed accelerated so you might want to slow down the playback to 50% or less.

Beans, beans, the musical fruit... 

I was struck by how the water that I soaked the beans in overnight developed a stable foam when I ran more water in. That is evidence that soaking leaches out oligosaccharides and saponins that might otherwise distress your digestion.

...several hours later...

Incidentally, this is a great time of year to buy hams and freeze them. Many stores run sales before Easter with hams as a loss-leader.

Cutting update

Willow cuttings.

 

Even the Crack Willows in the back are showing signs of life

Elderberry cuttings

Close-up of elderberry cuttings showing the buds pushing. They don't show up in the other picture because there is not a lot of color contrast between the new shoots and the wood shavings.

For future reference: 

Link1 Link2

A source of hard-to-find fruit varieties. Scion. "Adara" universal Prunus rootstock.

Skinny senior citizens, the woodpile and a conversation overheard

Skinny old people

While I was fishing around the internet I stumbled across a peer-reviewed paper that claimed that young and middle-aged people who are "underweight" have death-rates that are comparable to the population who are of "optimal weights". It also claimed that senior citizens who are underweight had higher death-rates than those populations with "optimal weight" (and possibly overweight). The paper's conclusion was that BMI targets for senior citizens should be revised. 

I am leery of that proposal. There are assumptions of about the direction of causality. There are many underlying health issues that can manifest as weight loss....oral health, acid reflux, ulcers, colitis, depression, osteoporosis caused by inactivity to name just a few. Weight is data and not necessarily a stand-alone pathology.

Woodpile

I am still reducing the 48" bolts into 16" piece and then splitting-and-stacking them. If my calcs are right then 12000 pounds of wood has the heating value of 570 gallons of heating oil. It looks like I picked good year to beef-up my backup heating plan.

TMI

I was in a situation where I had to spend time in a confined space with strangers. Unfortunately, one of them felt a need to over-share information.

She shared that her parents are idiots because "they don't know how to handle money". 

She does not like being married. Her mom and her children asked if she was going to divorce her husband but she doesn't have enough energy to pull the trigger on divorce. She is dating a guy "who is a lot of fun" but she has no intention of a long-term relationship him...but he is good enough for now. I got the impression that she was the kind of woman who rented containers of milk rather than buying them because she was not a "long term relationship kind of girl".

She "is triggered" by the people she is working with because they walk around behind her and fix her mistakes.

She moved into her dad's house and shortly thereafter banished him to a nursing home. She was fretting about how she could protect the equity of the $400k house she now thinks of as hers from Medicare claw-back*. 

I took an instinctive dislike of the guy she was talking with. He was a "hipster" and spewed psycho-babble in a pious, soothing voice and spoke with precise diction in the third person. 

 "Cultural normative scripting is how other people control you and how they prevent you from reaching your full potential" was a typical bit of pseudo-wisdom he shared with the 304. Now that I look back, everything he said was some variation of that theme. That phrase was probably his Master's Thesis.

His clothing was a cross between John Lennon and somebody cos-playing a wizard from Harry Potter.

The girl was merely stupid and self-centered. The guy was pretentious and slippery. 

"Unctuous" is the adjective that sprung to mind. 

I made an executive decision to put in earplugs, something I rarely do in public places. I was sitting with my back to the wall and I wrapped a strap of my luggage around one arm. I pretended to fall asleep.

* The typical plan for a low-IQ person scheming to "protect" the equity in their parent's house is to falsify documents that fraudulently claims that they bought it from said parent(s). They back-date the document and forge the witness signatures. The attempt typically fails when the document is not notarized and there is no documentation of payments made or taxes paid on the $400k gift.

Like trees, most of us increase in girth as we age

 

Source (UK data)

The main strength of the paper is the thorough (longitudinal) analysis of 273,843 BMI observations on 56,632 participants in studies spanning births between 1946–2001 and ages from 2–64 years. No other study has such extensive serial data covering such a wide range of ages and birth years. 

In terms of weaknesses, 

(1) it was not possible to model separate trajectories for overweight and obesity; 

(2) the trajectories were smoothed over age periods in which no sweep took place and thus did not capture local traits, such as a peak during puberty, for some studies; 

(3) we assume our findings are due to changes in adiposity more so than fat-free mass, but this might not always be the case [51,52]; and 

(4) by excluding non-white participants, we were not able to consider the extent to which secular trends in obesity might be driven by the changing ethnic composition of the UK...

The measurement protocols for weight and height were not consistent within and between-studies, which could have introduced bias if, for example, self-reported measurements were systemically under or over-reported. The tendency of people with greater BMIs to under-report weight suggests that our results are conservative

For a man of average stature, he becomes "overweight" at 169 pounds. For the average woman, she becomes "overweight" after she passes 143 pounds.

Those same individuals have to gain 34 and 29 pounds respectively to graduate from "overweight" to "obese".

In the 1946 (immediately after 10 years of economic depression and 6 years of World War, 1958 and 1970 Body Mass Indexes were virtually identical for 10 year-old children.

From age 10 and after, the boys/men gain weight decade-by-decade for the duration of the study.

In the 1946 study, women's BMI remains virtually unchanged until 1960 when those women are approximately 30 years old and then their weight slowly climbs.

The 1958 study shows women's BMI starting to creep upward starting at an age that is eight years sooner than the 1946 cohort.

The 1970 study shows women's weights starting their upward creep even sooner.

The 1991 and 2001 data show both boys and girls with approximately 10% more individuals in the overweight or obese categories. That is 2X the "floor" from the earlier studies.

The tabular data for the 1970 cohort shows 7% of 10 year-old boys, 18% of 20 year-old men, 52% of 30 year-old men and 67% of the 40 year-old men being overweight or obese. It also shows 12% of the 10 year-old girls, 16% of the 20 year-olds, 34% of the 30 year-olds and 49% of the 40 year-old women being overweight or obese.

One more reason to flee Deep Blue Cities

 

A crab-bucket move.

"If we cannot rise to your level, we will put you out of business and force you down to ours."

Noted in passing

The wife of one of my former coworkers passed away earlier this month and I will be going to the "visitation" this afternoon.

While I wasn't exceptionally close to this particular coworker, the trajectories of our lives were parallel. His wife worked in the same field as Mrs ERJ. Our marriages were within a few months of each other and Mrs ERJ and my coworker's wife were born in the same year. They lived in a small, very inexpensive house in a dumpy, working-class neighborhood on the south side of Lansing for the first few years they were married. We lived in a dumpy, working-class neighborhood on Lansing's east side during those same years. When we moved out of Lansing, they relocated north of town and we relocated south of town.

I purchased that house in 1984 for a half-year's salary and sold it in 1991 for the same price. It was not an investment. It was a place to live. 

Fertilizer

Cruising the internet, I see TSC does not offer urea or ammonium sulfate on-line.

Family Farm and Home (a local chain) still has it but does not ship. A 50 pound bag of urea (46-0-0) costs $40.

Blue Ash

If you live in the green area you might have a Blue Ash on your property.

A high percentage of Blue Ash trees are resistant to the Emerald Ash Borer and Blue Ash seeds are selling for $20 an ounce, retail. (A tip of the hat to Lucas Machias)

Blue Ash twigs are very distinctive because the young twigs have four, corky ridges ruling along their length giving the twig a faintly "square" shape in cross-section.
 

I anticipate light-blogging until Saturday

I have places to be and things to do.

"Give it a drink, Danny"

I vaguely remember a writer sharing that his father had a unique way of telling him to step back and get some perspective.

"Give it a drink, Danny"

Even though the writer grew up in a city, I assume the saying had its origins in plough-men and their horses. When your team is flagging, 'tis not the time to bring out the whip but it is the time to find a bit of shade and a bucket of water.

So, "Danny", as a young man, had a habit of becoming consumed with whatever event was immediately in front of him. He hyper-focused and became difficult to live with.

Sometimes, wisdom resembles simply being too tired and having run out of other options. Danny's dad would trudge up the stairs to Danny's room and stand in the doorway leaning against the frame. The advise wasn't loud. It was weary. The voice of a man who worked too many hours a week at a job that was arduous and boring.

"Give it a drink, Danny."

Then his father would turn and trudge back down the stairs to (perhaps) drink his nightly allotment of Old Milwaukee or Carling long-necks. 

"Give it a drink, Danny" might be timely advice given the tensions and distractions of today 

Saint Patrick's Day

The Medieval Church sprinkled the year with "Feast Days" to the tune of about one every three weeks. Local custom added more. They were wedged in between the crush of planting and harvest. There were winter/early spring festivals and there were mid-summer festivals.

Saint Patrick's Day falls in the middle of Lent, perhaps as a respite for those whose abstinence/penance became too heavy to endure the entire 40 days. St Paddy's Day is a bit like the Seventh Inning Stretch in baseball.

This Lent, I gave up my liquid libation in the evening. Mrs ERJ noticed that I am much more fidgety and seem to need less sleep.

I notice that I am losing weight and may have to punch another hole in my belt!!! Not only am I forgoing the calories but that "fidgeting" means I am moving more. I do not plan to indulge tonight, but for those of you who do, please be safe!

Fine Art Tuesday

 

The Calling of Saint Matthew

Caravaggio was born in 1571 in what is now know as Milan, Italy and died in 1610, possibly from lead poisoning, syphilis, sepsis acquired during a brawl in a bar or perhaps he was assassinated.

The Inspiration of Saint Matthew (as he wrote his account of Jesus)

 

Close-up of his head showing the detail and lighting

The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew

Saint Paul's Conversion on the Road to Damascus

Weather, Blow-guns and Nukes

This has been quite the year for "weather".

We are lucky. All we are getting is wind. Other parts of the state are got hammered with ice and deep snow. The last report I saw estimated 80,000 customers in Michigan are without electricity. Other states have been hit worse.

Spring

After a very warm first half of March, the second half of March is predicted to be "normal".

March daily high-low temperatures. Values on the left are actual and values on the right are predicted.

The first week of April is predicted to be close to normal and the last 20 days to be five-to-ten degrees F below average.

Homeschooling with Grandpa

 

11mm diameter "spit-wad" low and right-of-center.

Today's lesson was improvised weapons with an emphasis on blow-guns.

 

We started with tissue-paper softened with tap-water and will progress to 2" long bits of MIG wire in foam sabots repurposed from hearing-protection. The high school band will definitely put her in the brass section due to her enhanced lung capacity.

 

Wednesday's lesson will be the extraction of phytoalkaloids and insect-derived compounds using low-pH solvents.

Exit strategy

 

A very old bit of advice is to not enter a war in Asia before you have a robust exit strategy.

 

I hope our leaders in D.C. have given that some consideration.

 

In fairness to them, even though Afghanistan was a Goat Festival, especially the withdrawal; nobody has flown any airplanes into US landmarks since September 11, 2001. So maybe that counts as some kind of victory.

 

The leftists are claiming that Iran will eventually get nukes, so what is the point of our military action? Frankly, I would consider delaying their getting that capability by fifty years to be much more desirable than them having enough material to cobble together a Fat Boy in November of 2026. 

Rotting Cuttings and Building "sister" a house

The Hot-box report

The first flight of cuttings from the hot-box on the left. They are willow cuttings and I have a 20 Watt heating pad beneath it. Most of the cuttings are pushing leaves although the Crack Willow are lagging. I can see weeds sprouting which is a minor problem.

The second flight of cuttings are on the right. They came out of the box yesterday a couple hours before I took this photo. The buds are swelling. The bottom ends showed little sign of root development. I added wood-shavings on top of the potting media to provide insulation and to reduce evaporation from the potting media. There is another 20 Watt pad beneath it.

Both of these are covered with clear plastic and are underneath 4000K LED lamps.

The third flight of cuttings are in the box.  I am callousing cv. "Steuben", "GR-7", "V. riparia L50-s". I expect to add a few cuttings of "St Paul" later today. I expect to leave the grape cuttings in the box for two weeks.

Unfortunately, it is difficult to get large quantities of potting soil this time of year and the mix is wetter than I want it to be for grapes. (The misspelling in the title "Rotting Cuttings" was a Freudian slip that I decided to leave) They are not as tolerant of "wet" as willow or elderberries. I will probably lay some rags in the bottom of the box and poke some holes in the bottoms of the bags I placed around the cuttings in. 

Insulating a ceiling

The video where the older brothers insulate the roof of their sister's "house".

She came back to Ukraine after studying the German language in Germany. I get the impression that her arrival was sudden and unexpected.

Her "house" is a lean-to that was slapped together out of OSB and salvaged windows. They use old clothing that look like Goodwill Industry rejects to insulate the 12" between the ceiling and the roof.

This snippet is where the older brother makes her wood-stove. 

It is a case of making do with what is readily available. Adelaide, his sister, seems delighted with the effort.

At the 19:56 mark, if you read the subtitles you will learn about "Oleg", the youngest brother (9 years-old) who is a compulsive builder. He is a kid who can look at a pile of scrap-wood and see a castle...and then nail it all together. He must be the kind of kid who is unable to NOT build.

View inside her house as she finishes up the interior. This video is much faster moving the the one linked above.

Nothing new under the sun

William Shakespeare: Sonnet  IV 

Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend
Upon thyself thy beauty’s legacy?
Nature’s bequest gives nothing but doth lend,
And being frank, she lends to those are free.
Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuse
The bounteous largess given thee to give?
Profitless usurer, why dost thou use
So great a sum of sums yet canst not live?
For, having traffic with thyself alone,
Thou of thyself thy sweet self dost deceive.
Then how, when nature calls thee to be gone,
What acceptable audit canst thou leave?
 Thy unused beauty must be tombed with thee,
 Which usèd lives th’ executor to be.

 If you spend much time on Youtube (Alas, raising hand. Guilty as charged) you might run across videos of women taking men to task for not "wife-ing up" the "virtual goddesses" that inhabit our cities.

In fact, those same women are outraged that men are hardly paying any attention to those "virtual goddesses".

Their choice of words tells more than they know.

It seems as if many of these Instagram influencers have turned themselves into graven images that they themselves worship. "For, having traffic with thyself alone, thou of thyself thy sweet self dost deceive." Men sense that. They quickly figure out that they are a disposable accessory, like a handbag or a set of false eyelashes to the "virtual goddess".

Those graven images aren't getting too many takers. 

Tab Clearing

Satire

My apologies to Phil B and others who commented on the Fake News Friday post. It was intended to be satire. Phil B does make a good point, though. In some jurisdictions prosecutors will use any detail to make their case; examples include the color of your gun, bumper stickers on your vehicle and your posts on social media. In other, saner jurisdictions (Polk County, Florida comes to mind), the prosecutor is more likely to stick with the demonstrable evidence immediately before and during the event.

Hate Crime in West Bloomfield, Michigan

It was reported that a truck "filled with explosives" rammed into a synagogue in West Bloomfield Township. The armed driver later died of a self-inflicted wound. Fortunately for his intended targets, the perp was unable to exit the vehicle due to the doors being wedged shut during the crash-entry.

The truck caught fire at some point which totally sucked for the driver...trapped in the cab with containers of liquid gasoline and explosives.

Kudos to the security team for keeping the perp too busy to figure out how to exit his vehicle through the side windows and continue his attack.

Kudos to the investigation team who traced back the purchase records on the explosives. 

A fragment of data on mutation rate of ancient, written texts

A reader who identified himself as Recent Lurker asked about drift in written text over time in the post about "Turn the other cheek".

This is one of those cases where looking at a work that is not the Bible is useful because it blanks-out the emotional energy in the question.

There has been peer-reviewed research on that very question on the works of Homer, The Iliad and The Odyssey. Like the Bible, it first propagated via oral tradition, then a combination of oral tradition supplemented by hand-transcribed written text and finally almost solely by written text.

The papyri reveal a transmissional watershed in the 2nd century B.C., a sort of textual standardization, delimiting the contours of the text inasmuch as it stabilized the number and sequence of verses and quite drastically cut down current variants. Just what kind of intervention this reflects is unclear. Thereafter the text continued to move in a constant state of flux, but a less volatile one; variants were multitudinous but minor, accretion was virtually confined to simple one-line additions, losses were strictly local and ephemeral. 

The text was much copied (the Iliad always more than the Odyssey) collation was fairly wide-spread (protecting against loss and disseminating accrual), and we have substantial pieces of manuscripts from every century down to the 7th: much activity, little change. Passage through the bottle-neck to the 9th and 10th centuries seems to have entailed overall relatively little loss of what had been current in the Roman period; the medieval tradition is a direct continuation of the ancient, inevitably attenuated but in its totality showing unusually good catchment of ancient readings (better for the Iliad than for the Odyssey),promiscuously distributed.

Before we proceed further with its shifting constitution, a few words are in order on the changing nature of its physical form. Modem readers, and even post-modern ones, read texts which present them with a succession of words and of sentences. Readers in the 3rd century B.C. faced merely a succession of letters, uninterrupted except by verse-termini   Source

For Leigh and her masonry stove

Source

I realize that people who post videos on Youtube "spin" the story to make it more entertaining or more "sticky".

However, this young lady in Ukraine appears to be very grateful for the "house" that her brothers built for her on the family compound and the wood-stove that one of them fabricated out of sheet metal and the masonry "mass" another one built to calm down the temperature swings.

In this video, the young lady is painting, free-hand, a design she saw on her phone (Pinterest?).  She is clearly looking at her phone for reference at the 2:35 mark. Nothing wrong with that.

If I had to guess, I would estimate that it has a footprint of about 12' wide by less than 15' long. 

Dire Straights (of Hormuz)

Overheard

I was at the Lenten Friday Fish  Fry yesterday and I overheard a woman insisting that Europe was going to weather the Straights of Hormuz situation better than the US because "They have so many more electric cars and have wisely invested in so much renewable energy." 

I clammed up. I was doubtful but until I see data my opinion is worth no more than anybody else's opinion.

A quick look around the world suggests that in decreasing order of impact the list of countries that will be injured by the stoppage of oil from the Persian Gulf are

1. Japan and Korea (about 70% of their oil is shipped through the Straights of Hormuz) 
2. India (between 50% and 90% of their oil imported from the Persian Gulf states). More critically, large numbers of Indians use bottled gas for cooking since electrification is sketchy in many areas.
3. China (40%-to-50% from the Persian Gulf) which is about 7% of their national energy use. Coal is going to save their bacon.
4. European Union (12%, less than I expected)
5. US (7%) 

Who benefits?

1. Russia
2. Kazakhstan  
3. Nigeria 
4. Norway
5. United Kingdom
6. Brazil 
7. United States
8. Egypt (fees associated with SUMED pipeline and increased Suez Canal shipping) 

Regarding the number of electric vehicles:

The EU has one electric vehicle for every 44 people while the US has approximately one electric vehicle for every 85. In neither case is that enough to sideline all of the IC vehicles and run the economy.

Kicking the can down the road

There is never an elegant time to stop kicking the can down the road. However, there are times when a confluence of events create an instant in time when it is less-worse to address a difficult issue than others.

Frankly, we have many issues we have been kicking-the-can on: Social Security, Demographic collapse, Erosion of educational standards, Ballooning screen-time and the attendant decline in physical health, Immigration, Election Integrity. Some are being addressed. Others are still in free-fall.

Fake News Friday

Discount shooting supplies outlet, MiddlewayUSA announced that they contracted with Starliner Brass for a run of custom-headstamped 9mm Luger brass.

The vanity headstamp, FAFO, sold out within the first 48 hours. Apparently, it has been very popular with various Law Enforcement Agencies (Fine Action lead to Fine Outcomes).

Please send MiddlewayUSA an email to get on their waiting list for the next run. The more orders they have, the sooner they will make the second run.

Home-schooling with Grandpa: Day 147

 

Practice with caps and det-cord. Her blouse reads "Made of Sparkle" which seems particularly appropriate.

Grandma thinks we will be making bird-nests with Play-Doh next week. Little does she know that it is actually a class in the fundamentals of shaped-charges with additional classes on the use of mass-tamping to enhance yield.

...turn the other cheek...

I dislike presenting half-baked blog-posts but I don't have anything better than this today. So bear with me. I might never get a full resolution on this issue.

Matthew 5:38,39 reads

“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, offer no resistance to one who is evil. When someone strikes you on [your] right cheek, turn the other one to him as well.

As a modern man reading this in 2026, it seems so very wrong. As a parent who has had to display "tough love" at times, it seems very wrong.

I read some commentaries. I read Chapter 5 several times for context and am still working to reconcile this quote with what I believe about humans.

Commentary

The most commentary by assorted preachers is that "slap" is to be interpreted as "an insult to our dignity or honor" similar to Black culture's "I have been disrespected". Their take on the verse is that Jesus is telling us to not escalate conflict but to ignore the insult.

Context, Part I 

That is very consistent with the vignettes that are immediately before this verse. All of them are some version of slippery-slope situations with the possibility where escalation is a natural and logical consequence. Jesus is telling us that are morally liable when we start down those paths.

That interpretation is also diametrically opposed to the interpretation of the radical pacifists who say this verse tells us that we must passively submit to evil and let God sort it all out on Judgement Day. We know from history that refusal to confront institutionalized evil allows it to flourish. That is the opposite of the meta-message about natural and logical outcomes.

Context, Part II

I think there is much value in thinking about the audience Jesus was speaking to. He was in Galilee which was a rural backwater.

Towns, such as there were, were tiny.

Archeological digs determined that the Nazareth of Jesus's day consisted of fifty foundations, not all of which were used for human habitation. Estimates in the 1800's was a population of 2000-to-2500. That has since been revised downward to 200-to-480.

Having seem images of the foundations of Roman era Capernum in Israel and measured them using Google Earth, it is hard to imaging 10 people living in a one-room house that measures 12'-by-8' so my gut-feel is that the number is closer to 200 than the 480 number.

Given the populations of those towns and the extreme lack of social mobility, i.e. they couldn't just let their lease lapse and move to L.A., the impact of people with Narcissistic and Borderline Personality Disorders would be enormous because it would be impossible to escape them. A typical town of 200 people would have three of these toxic people since the base-rate is about 1.5% of the population.

If you were to ask nearly any of the people in the audience listening to Jesus at the time "Can you name one person who is 'Evil'?" they would almost certainly name one of those three people in their village (maybe all three!). They would be unlikely to mention Harod the Great, Pontius Pilate, Tiberius Caesar or Donald J. Trump. Those people were as far removed from their daily lives as mythical creatures like mermaids.

Those people thrive on the energy they "create" through digs and insults. They crave it. They cannot live without it. If you feed the troll, the troll gets bigger and more powerful. If you ignore them they are diminished.

If you "feed" them, they will torment you. 

In today's society

It is my belief that the base-rate of Cluster B Personality Disorders is increasing rapidly. Our brains are very plastic and respond to our environments. The internet and social media rewards the trolls. It feeds them. They reproduced like mosquitoes after a hurricane.

Summary

My relationship with these Bible verses continues to evolve. My current stance on them is that Jesus is telling me to shun people who act in toxic ways when I am present. My interacting with them is harmful to me and it is harmful to them.

It does not mean that Jesus is telling me that I cannot exercise "tough love". It does not mean that I cannot respond with force to evil people who threaten life-and-limb. It does not mean that I must vote for judges and prosecutors who refuse to exercise legitimate, legal penalties against people who earned them.

Asking for a friend

So, do all of those women who took hormone therapy and had their plumbing rearranged have to sign up for Selective Service? They claim they are now "men".

Are they in arrears if they are over 18 and younger than 26 and their names aren't on the rolls? 

The spring-peepers are peeping away

The spring peepers are peeping. The violets are blooming. The filbert catkins are extending. The box-elder bugs are everywhere. The moths are flying by night.

That will all change tomorrow. We are expecting cold-front to push our warm air down into Indiana and generate some interesting weather in the process.

In a stunning stroke of good fortune, the rain we had this morning was a passing sprinkle. The sun broke through the clouds and I judge it to be dry enough to run the tiller over the potato patch where Kubota has flattened the weeds.

The weed stalks were crispy-dry and snapped into short pieces which mixed in with the dirt.

My goal in the first tilling is not to beat the dirt down to the molecular level but to mix the surface trash and the soil. Weed stalks rot very quickly when in contact with the soil and I am suddenly two full weeks ahead of my schedule for getting the potato patch ready for May 1 planting. 

Fine Art Tuesday

 

"The Old Pippin Tree". "Pippin" refers to an apple tree that was grown from a seed (or "pip"). This tree was likely planted by a horse with a goodly dollop of fertilizer.

Lemuel Maynard Wiles born 1826 in Wyoming County, New York. Died in 1905 in Manhattan.

Wiles was a member of the Hudson Valley School. Human figures were diminished and natural features like mountains, rivers and trees were oversized.

Wiles traveled widely, ranging from Panama to California.

Hat-tip to the tireless Lucas Machias. But don't pity Lucas. He seems to be doing "OK" in spite of his tire-free existence.