Fiddly work and some garden pron

Thank-you to all of the readers who suggested ways I can deal with my joint pain. I have been on light-duty, stretching, taking additional Vitamin C and praying/meditating. I seem to be bouncing back.

I got three more hours time-on-task yesterday because the afternoon rains were a no-show.

The light-duty was to drive T-posts and to secure fruit trees to them. Unfortunately, the most productive rootstocks usually have brittle roots and are notorious for leaning over.

I used 1/2", polyester "pull tape" to tie the trees to the posts and was very happy with the material. The ends frayed rapidly, so I had a piezoelectric igniting, propane torch handy. I gently toasted the ends when I cut a piece from the spool.

It was slow, fiddly work. The good news is that it was not physically challenging.

I also moved some bags of cow poop from the truck to the Hill Orchard and I pruned a Northern Spy apple tree.

Bonus pictures

Planted in 2015. 

Stupice tomato seeds, planted Sunday afternoon. Picture taken early Wednesday morning

Crackerjack Marigold seeds planted Sunday afternoon

Happy Rich broccoli seeds planted Sunday afternoon

I was able to increase the soil temperatures by placing four layers of corrugated cardboard underneath the 20W heating mat. If insulation prevents most of the heat from going down, then it will go up.

We have lots of cardboard boxes.

Bonus video footage

 Allegedly recorded at a No Kings rally. One minute run-time.

Fat is a virtue...as long as I am fat...

 

Is it just me, or does it seem odd that all of these icons of "the equitable treatment of fat individuals" and "body positivity" and "fat acceptance" are now taking GLP-1 pharma shots/pills?

Suddenly, being morbidly obese is no longer a virtue. Oh, the miracles of chemistry and being able to afford high-end health insurance! 

Country-girls (sorry, no pictures)

Picture, if you will, your humble scribe driving west on M-50 to the grain elevator to purchase some asparagus crowns.

I was following a truck that had a fork-truck tucked into the rear. I was impressed that the turn signals on the fork-truck were slaved to the signals of the mother-truck. It was indicating that it was going to turn left off of M-50 and into Eaton Greens subdivision.

As it turned, four, 12' long, 6x6 timbers tumbled off of the deck of the mother-truck completely blocking the eastbound lane of M-50.

Well, that was an accident waiting to happen.

I pulled over, flipped on my hazard lights and parked.

I had the second one moved off the road when a truck pulled over and an itty-bitty woman hopped out. "Need help?" she asked. She was wearing a "MOO-ville" tee shirt, jeans and sneakers.

I suggested that she could move the stringers and strapping while I moved the last two big pieces.

I looked up after dumping the third piece on the grass and she was holding up one end of that last piece. "Let's go!" she encouraged me. "I see some traffic coming".

I hustled on over and grabbed the other end and we tossed that piece beside the other three. She dusted off her hands and hopped back into her truck, all 5'-0" of her. Then she drove off.

I, on the other hand, turned around and drove into the subdivision to find the driver of the truck who lost his load.

He was a big, young guy and pretty obviously from-the-city. I explained that he had lost his load and that I had seen a itty-bitty country-girl move the pieces from the center of M-50 and toss them into somebody's yard (which was absolutely true of the stringers and strapping and partially true for the big pieces).

I can only imagine his surprise when he latched a hold of one of the 6x6s to throw it back onto the deck of his truck. Those pieces weigh about 150 pounds each. Those itty-bitty country-girls are strong!

Worms

After learning that the asparagus crowns would not be ordered until mid-April, I drove over to Southern Belle's to dig a trench. The plan was to bury the corrugated drain tile that carried rain from her gutters away from the foundation.

Quicksilver supervised while I dug.

She also collected earthworms. She had quite a handful in short order.

I suggested that if she wanted to use both hands that she could hold the worms in her mouth. She thought that I was a very funny guy.

It turned out that she had a plan. After collecting a bunch of worms, she went over to the chickens and fed them treats. The chickens and Quicksilver were both delighted.

For my part, I was able to get 50' of tile buried in 69 minutes. I did not complete the back-filling but put enough on it so it wouldn't go floating off if we get rain today. Southern Belle and Handsome Hombre can finish filling.

It also looks like I have a fishing-buddy; a country-girl who likes worms. 

Fine Art Tuesday

 

Agony in the Garden I

Carl Bloch was a Danish artist who was born in 1834 and died in 1890.

He was commissioned to produce twenty-three paintings for the King's Chapel at Frederiksborg Castle which he painted between 1865 and 1879.

His wife died in 1886 leaving him with eight children to care for. He died four years later of cancer at the age of 55.

Suffer the Children come Unto Me

Agony in the Garden II

The Transfiguration

Peter's denials

The Crucifiction

The Burial of Jesus

Limping along

 

The weather is starting to look like "April"

It looks like today will be a good day to do some outdoor work but then the next week looks like inside jobs or maybe some fishing.

'Tis but a scratch. I am sure that if I pile on just a little more sail I can make it to shore...

I need a break. You guys tried to tell me but I was stubborn. My knees and elbows are complaining. Our kids were in athletics so I am familiar with R.I.C.E.

• Rest
• Ice/Ibuprofen
• Compression
• Elevate 

Cheating on the first element, rest, is counter-productive. The last three bullets control inflammation but our bodies need TIME to heal. But I am dancing in-and-out of small windows of time between weather and family responsibilities. Springtime waits for no man.

Right now, the discomfort on the inside of my left knee is the most debilitating. Torsional motion of my foot causes the most discomfort and it seems to flare up when I am dragging brush. I looked at the anatomy of the knee and it could be a lot of things complaining. The good news is that my body should be able to heal the problem if I give it time to heal. The bad news is that I am stubborn and don't want to rest, yet.

The middle ground is to hire Kubota to drag brush and to restrict myself to "light-duty" for a couple of weeks. 

Seeds started

Sweet peppers, Lovage, Broccoli and African Marigolds. The containers are repurposed empty gallon milk jugs. The caps are used to weight down the repurposed grocery bags until they get some condensate on their bottoms.

Three kinds of tomatoes 

A close-up of one of the tomato trays. The top of the soil measured 72 F this morning. I will check again after the sun rises.

Like every gardener in the history of the universe, I planted too many seeds. My plan is to germinate them in these smaller containers and then transplant to fifty-cell 10"-by-20" trays. Tomato plants make great indicators for the presence of walnut roots.

Today's tasks

Pot up the grape-cuttings that have been sitting in the hot-box for two weeks. The Vitis riparia cuttings are pushing their buds but don't show any sign of callousing or rooting on the bottom. The other cuttings show no signs of growth.

Dig a trench to bury corrugated drain-tile to carry water from a gutter down-spout away from the house. Rains are coming!

Make a trip to the grain elevator in Charlotte to buy more duck feed and to see if they have asparagus crowns in-stock. 

Children's books and Duck Eggs

Five "Children's Books" worth revisiting as adults. Ten minute run time.

• Charlotte's Web
• The Man who planted Trees
• The Wind in the Willows
• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
• Peter and Wendy

Honorable Mention

• Stuart Little
• The Giving Tree
• Something From Nothing
• Where the Wild Things Are 

Duck vs Chicken eggs

Alas, I am not well enough informed to have opinions worth sharing.

The fact that I have a few ducks is entirely by accident. I thought Southern Belle wanted some ducks for her homestead, but I was mistaken. She had been rapidly expanding and wisely decided that she needed some time to sort out what was working and what was not-working before adding more complexity.

So, there I was with some ducks.

The person selling them was allergic to chicken eggs*. They got that sorted out after consulting with a doctor who specialized in allergies and no longer needed them. They sold them to me at a VERY attractive price.

The ducks had started molting (losing their feathers) and were not laying eggs. I decided to give them a two month vacation. On March first, I started adding two hours of supplemental light in the morning and I increased it by a half hour every four days until I started seeing eggs.

I don't eat that many eggs BUT last year my garden was hammered by snails.

One of my readers (probably Michael) quoted Bill Mollison. "You don't have a snail problem. You have a duck deficiency."

In my mind, my duck enterprise is justified by their future in controlling pests in the garden and any eggs and down and meat and baby ducklings they produce is a bonus. Chickens can also control pests but they are more likely to peck tomatoes and dig up newly-planted transplants.

Their shelter is a free (thank-you Craigslist) truck cap and a 5'x8' run made from Tee posts and 2"-by-4" welded wire fencing.

*According to the internet, which sometimes tells the truth, most of the allergens in eggs are in the whites. Sometimes, egg allergies can be avoided by only eating the eggs' yolks. The internet cautions that this might only be a temporary fix.

The internet suggests that duck eggs tend to have a higher concentration of the kinds of proteins that are most likely to cause problems but some of them are different proteins than the ones found in chicken eggs. If a person is allergic to the proteins found only in chicken eggs then they will be able to eat duck eggs...for a while. If they are allergic to the proteins shared by both kinds of eggs then they will have violent reactions to duck eggs.

If you are subject to allergies and feel adventurous, then tippy-toe your way along. Try very small portions. Know exactly where your inhaler or epi-pen is and where the bottle of diphenhydramine is. 

So far, egg production has exceeded expectation. I am feeding "Broiler mash" with 90 grams of ground limestone (calcium carbonate) per kg of feed mixed in  per day. That is 15 grams per heaping teaspoon (i.e. six heaping teaspoons per kg). That is for two Khaki Campbell girls, one Rouen girl and one Rouen boy. I am getting three eggs a day.

One surprise has been that duck eggs are slippery! They are significantly smoother and heavier than chicken eggs. You have to be minding your Ps-and-Qs to avoid dropping them. 

Bonus Picture

Shared by a friend of mine in Jackson County, Michigan. Chicken eggs on the left, goose eggs on the right.

Geese make excellent alarms against intruders and have been used to control grass in strawberries and other crops.

March 28, 2026 work report

 

A peony starting to push buds. 

Three hours time-on-task

• Cutting brush
• Dragging brush
• Digging holes
• Planting six gooseberry bushes

• Looking at dead trees

24" diameter at the butt. 30' from roots to where it is hung up in two Wild Black Cherry trees

I think my only real option is to pack 20 pounds of tannerite around the trunk of the cherry tree in the foreground and to touch it off from 100 yards away.

• Appreciating the signs of spring

Vernal Witchhazel (maybe)

A branch on a gooseberry bush

Willow catkins in the light of the rising sun

Fantasy destroys marriages

"...As of 2024, the refined divorce rate is approximately 2.4 divorces per 1,000 married women per year.."    -according to "Search Assistant"

Apparently the standard metric for measuring "divorce rates" in the United States is "number of divorced WOMEN" per 1000. 

That makes sense from one perspective. Every divorce produces two newly divorced people. So, if you are only counting the number of unions that dissolved, then you need to divide the total number of newly divorced people by two.

The focus on women is probably driven by the fact that divorced women are much more likely to demand "services" from the state than divorced men. Money makes the world turn and it is important to anticipate future demand for financial resources.

Hypothesis testing

Suppose it were possible to test the hypothesis that divorces almost always due to men oppressing women. That is, women are always the passive victims and men are always the active oppressor. That seems to be the foundational assumption by the judges and social workers who guide the divorce process in most states*.

If that is the case then the only way to "fix" the divorce rate is to improve men. 

It also suggests that marriages between two victims would have much better success rates marriages between victims and oppressors.

If only it were possible for two women to get married to each other...Hmmm...

Hey, wait a minute...they can.

Does anybody want to hazard a guess for the divorce rate for lesbian marriages? Answer below the fold....

Grab-bag and Danish Art

One of the bonuses of watching Quicksilver and seeing Southern Belle twice a day is that I have an outlet for food when I get carried away in the kitchen.

As a working woman, Southern Belle is delighted to take 2/3 of a pan of lemon bars off our hands. Ditto for a pot of beans or a pan of cornbread. That saves Mrs ERJ and I from eating cornbread and beans for seven days straight and gives her a break.

Data

I am officially throwing up my hands in disgust over "data". Politics and the fog-of-war triumphed, at least temporarily, over data-integrity.

I "get" that public figures must deliberately obfuscate their intentions during times of war. Biden screwed up when he allowed the actual time-table for the withdrawal from Afghanistan to be made public. U.S. military suffered 13 KIA in August of 2021 due to that "honesty".

Russian demographic pyramid. "Excess" males in the circled area is likely over-stated. Data from 2025.

Russian and Chinese data is always suspect. Russian data even more-so since the Ukrainian war. For instance, their demographic pyramid (Christmas tree, if you prefer) shows no indication of any casualties of young men. That is highly suspect.

With regard to the interesting comments that appeared in an earlier post, it was reported circa 2022 (and might even be true) that something on the order of 150,000 "Russian prisoners" were "recruited" and sent to the front-lines in Ukraine. It is speculated that the recidivism rate for those prisoners who volunteered will be very, very low.

A conversation with a baker

I had a conversation with a person who runs a bakery. I brought up the possibility of a spike in the price of sugar and asked if he had ever considered "options" or buying ahead.

He said they had done that several years ago but it didn't work out. Sugar storage requires temperature and humidity (especially humidity) control or the bags of sugar turn in to rocks.

Many of his products require dusting with sugar or measuring out precise amounts. Lack of precision in measuring results in runny glazes or sugar crystalizing out of the frosting. He paid more in labor and still got poor results...so he is back to 2x a week deliveries at whatever the spot prices are. 

Danish Art

I had a request from a reader to feature some Danish Art on the blog. I am happy to oblige:

 Random photos

A large chicken egg, top-center, bracketed by duck eggs. Duck eggs weigh about 80 grams vs about 55 grams for chicken eggs.

 

Every day is an Easter Egg hunt in some places

Presented with little comment

 

Global distribution of Tuberculosis. TB is endemic in countries in bright green, yellow, orange and red 

It is a safe bet that nearly every outbreak of TB in schools and nursing homes is due to a recent immigrant from a country where TB is endemic. In the case of the nursing homes, it is likely a worker.

Many non-Western countries take pride in owning dogs that have not been spayed. Their dogs are projections of their machismo and virility.

It is also a point of pride that their dogs can fend for themselves and are not "in prison" all day long.

Just a reminder

"Some of you will die. But that is a sacrifice I am willing to make."

The politicians who are fighting against the SAVE Act are the same ones who think it is peachy-keen to expose your school-aged children and senior citizens to medieval diseases and think that having a certain percentage of little, old ladies torn to death by feral dogs is an acceptable price to pay for their getting reelected.

Time-on-Task

My dad introduced me to the concept of time-on-task.

He was the principal of a "Junior High School" as they were called back-in-the-day.

One of his jobs was to evaluate every instructor once a year. Many of them failed his evaluation and were put on improvement plans.

Two "high runners" for failure were "Failure to write a lesson-plan" (i.e. they were winging it) and "Low time-on-Task". 

As my dad explained it to me, the low time-on-task instructors dilly-dallied at the start of the session. They chit-chatted about what they had done on the weekend or their plans for the evening. Or they might let the kids horseplay or have conversations...waiting for them to calm down before starting instruction.

Kids adapt to the teachers' styles. My dad was very much in favor of giving them enough time to pull out a note-book and turn to a blank page before starting instruction. What is that? Maybe 30 seconds after the second bell rings.

Some instructors NEVER got to the required material before the end of the class session.

My dad deviated from the minimum requirements for the teachers who he judged to be inadequate. He demanded copies of daily lesson from those who did not use them. He was shocked to learn that some universities were teaching education majors that lesson plans were OPTIONAL. Many of the students who had attended those universities did not have a clue about how to organize and document an effective lesson plan. My dad had to teach those teachers what a functional plan looked like.

For the teachers who failed time-on-task, he typically moved them down a grade and "partnered" them with a good teacher who was in the grade they left. My dad coached the senior partner to remind the slacker that he was screwing the team if he did not deliver students who had mastered the skills and knowledge required to be successful the next year. Peer pressure can be a wonderful thing.

Later in life

Later in life I was given a lesson on time-on-task by a third-shift, alternate Committee Man (a Union Steward).

He was explaining why management was lucky to get five hours of work from a tradesman in an eight-hour work day. That is kind of a big deal on a Sunday when they are getting paid double-time, i.e. sixteen hours worth of wages. Five hours of work for sixteen hours of pay isn't a great investment.

"Look here, Joe. Right off the top you lose ten-percent for breaks. Contractually, you have to give them 0.8 hours of breaks. There is nothing you can do about that."

"Then you look at the goat festival (not his actual wording) in the mornings. You have them stand around waiting for their work-tickets. Doug (the planner) is still making changes to the tickets after the starting bell and the first electrician might get his work-ticket a half hour after he punches in. The last one waits an hour."

"Then the tradesmen have to go to the parts-crib to get any special parts they need. They stand-in-line until it is their turn."

"Then they go stand in line at the tool crib and pick up special tools."

"By then, it is time for first break. So they don't turn a wrench until 9:30 and two-and-a-half hours have gone by."

"Then, at the end of the work-day they have to return the special tools and any of the unused special parts, so they start standing-in-line right after last-break. You easily lose another hour there."

"It only gets worse from there. If they get into the middle of the job and they were given the wrong part or if they discover that then need a different special tool...the have to make another trip to the cribs."

"And it is MANAGEMENT failures that prevent you from getting 7.2 hours  of work out of your people." 

Things were much more organized by the time I left that company. They had a skilled tradesman with restrictions "kit" the jobs. The special parts and tools were put into snap-top bins and prepositioned those bins the job-site. The bins had a printed "manifest" taped to the lid listing what was included in them with boxes to check-off when the parts/tools went in and when they were returned. 

The tradesmen were informed of their weekend jobs late in the shift on Friday. That is something management had resisted because they were concerned that some tradesmen would be no-shows if they were assigned to unpopular jobs.

 

Presented without comment

 

Sexy voices

Recent research has documented a variety of ovulatory cues in humans, and in many nonhuman species, the vocal channel provides cues of reproductive state. We collected two sets of vocal samples from 69 normally ovulating women: one set during the follicular (high-fertility) phase of the cycle and one set during the luteal (low-fertility) phase, with ovulation confirmed by luteinizing hormone tests. In these samples we measured fundamental frequency (pitch), formant dispersion, jitter, shimmer, harmonics-to-noise ratio and speech rate. When speaking a simple introductory sentence, women's pitch increased during high- as compared with low-fertility, and this difference was the greatest for women whose voices were recorded on the two highest fertility days within the fertile window (the 2 days just before ovulation). This pattern did not occur when the same women produced vowels. The high- versus low-fertility difference in pitch was associated with the approach of ovulation and not menstrual onset, thus representing, to our knowledge, the first research to show a specific cyclic fertility cue in the human voice. We interpret this finding as evidence of a fertility-related enhancement of femininity consistent with other research documenting attractiveness-related changes associated with ovulation.   Source   (Note: small sample size)

So, from a biological, evolutionary standpoint, men would find women whose voices had the greatest pitch disparity between vowels and consonants the "most sexy".

I suppose the AI content creators are already aware of this and are exploiting it. 

Where does the time go?

I did a little bit of math yesterday.

Mrs ERJ got tired of my fretting around the house and suggested that I go out to the property and do some springtime chores.

It took me 0.5 hours to load the truck. Depending on the chores, it can take up to two hours to load the truck.

It takes 0.75 hours to drive to the property one-way. Of course, that takes longer if I need to stop at a store and pick up supplies.

I used a stop-watch and logged 3.25 hours of time-on-task work with another 0.5 hours of breaks between each hour. That is, work an hour then drink some water and have a bite to eat.

Adding up the time: 3.25 hours of work and 2.5 hours of overhead for a total of 5.75 hours clocked start-to-finish.

Add another 3.0 hours for the time I am responsible for Quicksilver and another hour or two for a nap which keeps my disposition sweet-and-happy and I don't have a lot of day left for recreational activities like writing deep and thoughtful blog posts.

That is why the recent content has been reading like a fifth-grader's "This is what I did on my summer vacation".

Yesterday's work-ticket

I start laying out beds for perennial plants at the property.

 If you squint a little bit, you can see two pieces of green surveyor's ribbon in the foreground. I used the small mulberry tree on the right side of the image as one of the corners.

The other end of the rows were also marked with green tape. The reason the spacing looks uneven is because the bottom row (on the right) is penciled in as blackberry bushes and the next two rows are penciled in as asparagus. There is 6' between the rows on the right and 4' between the two rows on the left.

 

I used a traditional compass, my smartphone and the distance from the center-line of the road to keep the rows running true-to-grid. Lucky for me, my part of Michigan has magnetic north currently aligning with true north. Magnetic north and smartphone north varied by about 4' in a 100' of row. The center-of-road north was the "flier" and farther away from smartphone north than magnetic north so I ignored it.

 

The plot that was brush-hogged has some naturalized crocus.

 

Another item on the work-ticket was to spray the nettles that are in the Upper Orchard.

 

The last two items on the work-ticket were to cut-and-drag brush. Since the brush was infringing on the field that is rented out to the farmer, it is imperative that I get it dragged off so it doesn't interfere with his field operations.

 

I dragged the brush to the linear brushpile (four minutes per round-trip) and stacked the thicker pieces on a property line where the neighbor could use them for firewood. It helps him and it made my job easier. 

 

Managing fertilizer shortages

There has been the sudden realization that the current storm of events will impact fertilizer availability and cause shocks in the food supply.

At a very fine granularity, as gardeners and food-growers, we need to pay meticulous attention to the most basic elements of gardening. We need to run a full-court press against weeds. We need to really pay attention to soil-moisture. We need to plant at optimal times and choose varieties that are productive. We need to harvest food so it is not wasted.

As gardeners we need to examine some of our biases. Will it hurt anything if we tinkle in the orchard when nobody is looking? Maybe we don't dump the chicken litter into a pile but look around and find some plants that look a little bit puny and give them a shovel-full at their drip-line.

At a very coarse granularity, vast numbers of people in Bangladesh, East Bengal, rural China, Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Nigeria and Mexico will depopulate and move to cities where "services" are offered. The good news is that many jet airplanes will be grounded and the mass migration will be restricted to trains, buses and hoofing-it.

At a granularity between the two extremes, meat will be come exceptionally expensive. Various political entities will come to the conclusion that it makes more sense to send grain to the countries mentioned above than to machine-gun refugees from those countries at their(our) borders in wholesale-lots. Grain that went to chickens, pigs and steers will be diverted to Bombay, Dhaka, Lagos, Mexico City and Cairo.

Seafood will increase in price by an even greater percentage. Seafood has a very high "embedded energy" cost that is masked by fuel subsidies by nation-states. If you like meat, buy a pellet-gun and learn how to shoot it. If you like fish, then learn how to tie an Improved Clinch Knot and thread a worm on a hook.

The good news is that food is about to become much more delicious without the benefit of exotic spices. There is no sauce that makes food more delicious than hunger. 

Bonus tip

Stock-pile enough sugar for a year's worth of canning.

Our biggest year for applesauce was 180 quarts. Given the amount of sweetening that I prefer, that requires 25 pounds of sugar. Even if I don't choose to can such a ridiculous amount of apple sauce, sugar will have trading value.

Characteristics of Money. Money is:

• Infinitely divisible
• Durable
• Universally accepted
• Compact 

Sugar isn't "compact" but it meets the other three criteria. And even if you don't use it for trading, in time you will consume it within your household. 

Presented without comment

 

Back in the saddle again

I am starting to feel like a human again. I was really tired Sunday and Monday. Yesterday Mrs ERJ broomed me out of the house and I was able to get about three hours of work done. 

 I dug and replanted about 15 persimmon seedlings. 

I moved some Rocambole Garlic plants  to the Upper Orchard where I want them to naturalize. 

I pruned two apple trees. 

I poured some concrete to seal off some holes that Red Squirrels were using to get into the pole barn. I also cleaned and rebaited a couple of dog-proof raccoon traps.

I moved 14 bags of composted cow manure from the back of the truck to the persimmon trees in the Hill Orchard. 

I "stuck" another 40 willow cuttings so there are now three rows of willows rimming the west edge of the depression.

Beautiful in every way

 

Win some, lose some

Topping the tray of elderberry cuttings with wood-shavings proved to be a mistake.

The temperature of the potting mix hit 123F which cooked the bottoms of the cuttings.

I unplugged the heating mat, trimmed the cuttings back to green cambium and re-stuck them.

BBB

Big Brown Bat. That is what we had flying laps in our living-room this morning before I took Quicksilver to her play-date. I opened one of the windows and then we departed. Maybe it left. Maybe it did not.

Quicksilver had asked me what was chirping over by our exterior door. Of course, I could not hear anything and thought it was a bird outside. I bet it was the bat.

Wins

Quackerberries

Nicotiana tabacum cv. "TN-90" seedlings

The big day for planting seeds will be April 1. That is when I will be planting the tomato seeds: Stupice, Federle, Rosa de Bern and Ace 55. I will also plant the sweet peppers, Stocky Red Roaster, Lovage and Crackerjack Marigolds.

Pressure on multiple fronts

One of the things Trump's team has done well has been to flood-the-zone.

Saturating an issue with multiple initiatives tangles up the opponent's ability to file law suites and halt implementation of those initiatives.

An example of this is a voter initiative that parallels the SAVE Act in many ways.

Hat-tip to Esox lucius lover. 

Presented without comment

 

Fine Art Tuesday

 

The Widow's Birthday

Walter Dendly Sadler was born in 1854 in Dorking, Surrey, England and died in 1923. He was a commercial success because his paintings elicited nostalgia and were often humorous. The image shown above shows three older gentlemen with gifts all showing up at the same time to court the wealthy widow. The widow was embroidering at the table on left side of image and presumably decamped as she saw them converging.

Sadler found a great deal of humor in how us humans court our mates. 

His images were also suitable for lithographic reproduction and he was able to capitalize on that.

Netting the catch (a potential groom?)

Thursday night

Friday feast

A love note

Courting a widow (notice the black clothing). Short life-spans during the Industrial Revolution meant many widows and widowers even in the wealthier classes.

The complete angler

Another fishing scene

Another courting scene