Grab bag

I bit the bullet and bought a new laser copier/scanner/fax machine today. The move to Windows 11 computers meant that the computers with the drivers for that model of printer were on the mothballed Windows 10 computers. It still functions as a "dumb" copier but we lost the scan/fax functionality and the "drivers" for that model of printer are no longer available.

Bummer!

Little trees vs big trees

Southern Belle wants some evergreens planted for a windbreak. I provided samples of species that have done well in our climate and SB and Handsome Hombre chose Eastern White Pine and Concolor Fir. Norway Spruce and Douglass Fir did not make the cut.

They have about 300 feet perimeter where they want to wrap the windbreak around the yard. At 6' between trees, that is fifty trees.

Young seedlings cost in the neighborhood of $1.25-to-$4.00 a stem for bare-root stock.

4' tall seedlings in containers run closer to $40 per stem. 

The total cost of the plants for the project will be somewhere between $60 and $2000.

Time or money. That is the trade-off. I am not even sure that they will lose that much time but the larger trees will definitely create a greater visual barrier early on even if the smaller ones catch up with them on year 10 or 15.

Ear infections

I haven't had one in more than twenty years. Then I got one around Christmas and went to the Doc-n-a-Box on December 26. I was prescribed an antibiotic.

The infection went away.

Two weeks later, I had a relapse in the same ear. I went to my family doctor and was prescribed a different antibiotic and ear drops with steroids in them.

So, if I seem to be a little bit scattered and slow to respond, it is because I am not operating at 100%. 

Pledge of Allegiance 

"I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

Those of us who grew up reciting this every day at the start of the school day knew that the United States was not a democracy. We knew it was a Republic and we knew what that meant.

We also believed that there was not a separate set of expectations for city kids vs country kids. It was one nation under one Constitution and while the wording of the laws might vary from state-to-state they still had to comply with the Constitution.

We also believed, naively in retrospect, that every citizen had God-given freedoms and liberty and that we were afforded due-process when accused and that criminals would be duly convicted and be sentenced to a proportional consequence.

What was not made clear to me when I was in second grade was the significance of flags.

Flags were the command-and-control technology on the battlefield before there were radios. Various units on the battlefield rallied beneath the flag of their leader. Atop a nearby hill, the overall commander had a signal corp with flags that corresponded to the units on the field. The commander coordinated the units on the field through the signal corps.

Pledging allegiance to the flag meant that you promised to play your part by following the flag even if we didn't understand the global significance of every command to march this way or that or dig breastworks there. The Pledge of Allegiance was a promise to trust our leaders and in turn demand that they be worthy of our trust.

There are some people who HATE the Pledge of Allegiance. Many of them have real problems submitting to any kind of external authority. They are virtually unemployable because they fight with the boss and they stir up conflict with other employees. They are agents of chaos.