Quest: A bolt out of the blue

Dinner at the big-house had the pomp and ceremony of a meal with heads-of-state.

All of Michael, Sr’s children were there as were their spouses.

Steve and Sally Straeder were there.

Walt Shaw was there and somehow he found himself with Dona Binakowski as his date. He did not recall talking to anybody about it.

Had he been paying attention to anybody besides Dona, he would have seen the knowing glances from the slightly older women. What he saw as an act-of-God was the nudge from a few women who knew that younger people sometimes need a bit of help in seeing what is as obvious as the nose on their face.

Dinner fare was simple. It was a boiled dinner. Ham, potatoes, carrots, rutabagas, onions, dinner-rolls and butter. Simple and filling.

As the main courses were eaten and folks started thinking about dessert, Michael, Sr stood and the murmur of conversations died.

“I want to recognize our special guests” Michael started. “Steve, Sally and Walt left here on a trip to Iowa. The chances of their success were what? 10%, maybe 25%?” Michael Bazylewicz asked.

“As they forged their way west, little tidbits came back to us. We followed their progress with avid interest.” Michael said.

“We cannot, with certainty, connect every dot. But there are stories of somebody known as ‘The Preacher’ bringing the wrath of God to evil-doers not fifty miles from here. From the timing and the descriptions of the actors suggest it could have been one of our guests” Michael said.

“As Jesus said, ‘He who lives by the sword shall die by it.’ and better it should be at the hand of a righteous man and sooner is better than later” Michael said.

At this the men started banging their mugs of ale...until the women-folk placed a gentle hand upon their thigh or forearm.

The compound was unabashedly Christian. But it was not the Christianity of Hallmark cards and milque-sops. It was the Christianity of gristle and backbone and sharpened steel. It was in-your-face Christianity of the Christ who flipped over the tables of money-changers in the Temple.

“Which brings me to what happens next” Michael said.

“As you know, we have a shortwave that keeps us in contact with the outside world” Michael continued.

“By general consensus, I have been given the task of offering the three of you jobs. We...the people of Iowa, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio, want you to continue restarting the railroad.”

“What do you think?” Bazylewicz asked.

The three members of the expedition were blind-sided.

The idea of resurrecting the rail-line had started out as a glib reason for the expedition’s mid-winter travels.

But then it took a life of its own. It verbalized the hopes for a better future that everybody harbored. It was not a shapeless and random wish. It was ordered and showed a clear path to that future.

Sally’s improvisation accidentally capture the heartbeat of four states. Or perhaps it wasn’t an accident. Perhaps it was Sally’s innate sensitivity to the harmonics thrumming just below the threshold of perception. Regardless, the story took on a life of its own, a life that carried Steve, Sally and Walt eastward like a surfboard riding a wave.

Steve looked at Sally. Sally gave him a tiny, negative shake of her head.

“We have to get home. We were given a mission and we have not seen it through” Steve said, somewhat regretfully.

Michael, Senior looked over at Walt.

Dona gave Walt’s arm an intimate, supportive squeeze.

Walt’s inherent modesty kicked in. “I don’t know how to start a railroad.”

Michael, Sr’s brows furrowed. “Just do what you have been doing. Keep traveling east. Let the towns know the railroad is coming.”

“Yeah, I could do that, but what authority do I have?” Walt said, truly baffled.

“I would be hazarding a guess” Michael said “but I don’t think you would be out-of-line if you claimed to be the railroad’s Head-of-Security and the Postmaster.”

“Maybe I could help with security, but I would be a disaster as Postmaster” Walt said.

“Hmmm” Michael Bazylewicz said. “I can see how that might be a challenge.”

“Dona” Michael said “can you think of anybody who is organized, is very good with detail and follow-up, somebody who would make a competent Postmaster….or Postmistress?”

“Me!” Dona blurted out. “I can do that!”

“Problem solved.” Bazylewicz pronounced.

The rest of the evening was a blur for Walt.

In the morning, Steve and Sally left with the three horses and Dog, the older of the two dogs. Walt kept the puppy. Steve and Sally had six more days before they made Eaton Rapids.

The Bazylewicz clan pulled together a “rig” for Walt to continue his eastward mission. While they could have whipped it up in less than two days, they sand-bagged a bit. It took them a week.

Father Casmir performed the wedding ceremony before they left.

Walt’s breath was taken away by the speed of events. In a moment of introspection, he asked Father Casmir “Shouldn’t this take longer?”

Father Casmir gave it honest consideration. “Some people date for five years before they marry. Some of them live-together for a decade before they marry.”

“Incidentally, the church frowns on people living together before they are married” Father Casmir intoned. “And they still get divorced. Time is no guarantee.”

“Only God can be totally sure” Father Casmir said. “You are a God-fearing man, honorable and humble. She is a God-fearing woman who is not contentious nor is she a gossip.”

“A blind man can see that there is a spark between the two of you” Casmir said. “Judging by how you look at her, you don’t find her hideous or ugly, nor she, you.”

“If you put God first in your relationship and if you treat each other with the courtesy you show everybody else, I don’t see how you can fail” Casmir said.

Walt found the Catholic Mass to be long and arcane. He certainly felt married after it was over. The marriage part was short and simple.

The girls of the Bazylewicz compound re-enacted the wedding for the next six months. The boys hid when they were doing it.

Next

Memes are powerful

Somebody mailed me a basket-load of memes. Normally I would not address them but these are unique times.

ONE
Strawman: Riots and violence never solved anything
Response: Riots and violence got you every right and privilege you now enjoy.

My take: The framers of the Bill of Rights did not compose and pen the document in the midst of a riot. Rights and privileges are defended by the threat of escalating violence upon those who would infringe upon them.

Some people use the analogy of a bicycle where the driving force (the back wheel) is raw emotion but the direction and final destination are determined by intellect and rationality (the front wheel). Unicycles are hard to ride because it attempts to accomplish everything with the equivalent of the back wheel. Personally, if I want to get somewhere in a hurry, I favor a bicycle.

TWO
Strawman: Why can't they be peaceful
Response: Being peaceful gets demonstrators nothing but targeting, ridicule, and memes.

My take: If "effectiveness" is the only metric that matters, then the KKK is an organization you will love. When you choose a set of rules, you must consider how it will feel when you are on the other end of the equation. The pendulum swings.

THREE
Strawman: If people are peaceful then cops will not shoot/murder/mace them
Response: Videos show cops killing peaceful people, including kids

My take: There are bad cops. No argument. There are also young cops and scared cops and cops who sometimes make really stupid decisions. And there are people who edit videos to tell their story. The best way to avoid falling backwards while protesting (and wearing flip-flops) after being pushed by a cop is to not be there. Remember Remus's cardinal rule: Stay away from crowds.

FOUR
Strawman: but looters!
Response: Agent provacateurs, white supremacist and cops.

My take: Your proof?

FIVE
Strawman: but businesses!
Response: They have insurance

My take: Insurance policies typically have riders buried on page 23 that do not insure in the case of riots and civil unrest. For those businesses, the losses will be totally borne by the business owners.

This meme was written by professionals and is finely-honed. First, get the reader to agree with every statement they made and then they bury the hand-grenade in the last point after the readers are conditioned to agreeing with the diatribe. Very clever. Very, very professional.

Suppose you and your boyfriend rode his classic Fat-boy Harley-Davidson with the custom paint job down to the "demonstrations". Further, suppose somebody immolated the bike while you were striking blows for justice.

You just tell your boy-friend "No problem. Its insured." and it is all good. Let me know how that works out.

A small business owner (who is likely from Jordan or Uzbekistan or Korea) has a hundred times more sweat and life-energy invested in his or her own business than your boyfriend has in his "bike".

Oh, and about insurance: Even if the policy does not have a rider, the insurance companies do not lose money in the long run. They adjust rates based on new data. Premiums go up. IF the business owners decide to rebuild and restart, those bananas that cost 29 cents a pound at Walmart in the suburbs will cost $2 or $3 a pound at the Food Cubby on the corner of MLK and Caesar Chavez Ave....if they have them.

Half of the sweet corn is planted

In my lifetime, sweet corn has gotten ten times better.

The standard when I was in my teens was Iochief hybrid sweet corn. The ears were large, the kernels deep, the plants robust and the flavor if you rushed it from the garden to the kettle was pretty good.  You can still buy Iochief hybrid sweet corn seed.

Since then, several mutations have been introduced to the trade. Specifically, SH and SE mutations.

The SH mutation is responsible for super-sweet sweet corn. It comes at a price. The seed is shriveled and shrunken (hence the SH). It is a puny germinating seed and it punishes the gardener who plants it too deeply or too soon or too shallow. It is an unforgiving seed.

The SE mutation is a bit friendlier. It is Sweetness Enhanced. The seeds are not quite as shriveled and mean.

I weighed a few kernels from an ear of ornamental corn I had sitting around. The kernels averaged about 360 milligrams or about 75 to the ounce. The SE corn seed I planted today averaged about 150 milligrams or 185 to the ounce. It should be obvious that the larger the seed the more energy it has to punch through a deep layer of soil or through a dried crust.

Corn is a heat loving plant. Even field corn refuses to germinate at soil temperatures below 50F. Sweet corn is darned tempermental at soil temperatures below 60F. It might germinate, or it might not.

The dirt in the garden was warm enough to be comfortable walking around barefoot upon it. So I judge it to be approaching 70F. Accu-guesser predicts that our daytime highs will be over 80 for the next four days. Warmth + moisture + Corn seeds is good.

I tied knots every 15" in this twine. That is the spacing I used for the potatoes. I had some help from Kubota today (applause). The plan was to make mud at every knot and between each knot. The rows are 42 inches apart.

I like to cheat.

I used one of my dad's tricks. I poured some water where I wanted to plant a seed and then I pressed the seed into the mud. Corn seed likes to be in firm contact with the soil so it can wick up moisture and start to germinate.

One advantage to this method is that by making the mud spot small, you don't germinate as many weed seeds within the row. That means your corn plants will have a head start and can shade out many of the weeds.

Then, to hide the seeds from the birds and to protect the mud from drying out, we covered the seeds with a tiny bit of potting soil. I am sure sawdust or sand would have worked just as well. Potting soil, sawdust and sand do not crust over. The seed does not have to work very hard to punch through it.

In very round numbers, we planted seven rows with about forty seeds in each row. Mrs ERJ's plan is to have me plant another 280 seeds in a week.

The variety is an 80 day hybrid so that puts us into the last few weeks of August.

As Voltaire observed at the conclusion of his book Candide "the violence and plunder of kings cannot not compare with the productive and peaceful life of those who minded their own business and 'cultivated their own garden,'."

This is a good time to cultivate our gardens.

Quest: As pretty as a Jersey heifer

Steve, Sally and Walt ran into a surprise in the middle of the sixth day east of Iowa.

Even though the temperatures were colder than on the way west, the wind was at their back, broken by the cover on the wagon. At nights they were inside.

They heard a steam whistle just east of Gridley, Illinois.

There was a locomotive, tender car and two box-cars waiting on the track beside the highway.

The merchant from Monticello, Indiana greeted the expedition. He was a hundred miles from home.

“Its not a Cadillac, but it moves” the storekeep said. His smile stretched from ear-to-ear.

It took an hour to load the horses and wagon.

Then the train started moving east at a sedate ten miles per hour. The train coasted to a stop at each mail drop, but then started back up.

It was 10 PM, local time when the train rolled into Monticello.

Three more days travel brought them to Huntington, Indiana and the Bazelwitz compound.

They planned a 36 hour lay-over and then a six day dash to Eaton Rapids.

*

The patron of the Bazylewicz family put Walt up with his second son, James, this time.

The expedition had spent a lay-over day with Bazylewicz on the way west and Walt had been paired with Michael, Jr. It had not been an uplifting experience.

Where Mike, Jr had been negative and defeatist, James was energetic and brimming with optimism and energy.

James projected a gravitational field that collected interesting people. One of those people was an old, retired priest, Father Casmir. Father Casmir was “forming” three young men for the priesthood. “I cannot ordain them. That takes a Bishop. But I can have them ready.”

In spite of Father Casmir’s advanced age (he was 77) he saw life through eyes that twinkled with understanding and empathy. He also seemed to be privy to every back-story in the compound.

Walt was puzzled. MichaelSenior seemed to have a purpose to everything he did, so why had he been stuck with Michael, Junior?

The story spilled out of Walt. Father Casmir gave the slightest of eyebrow raises and grunts of encouragement, just enough to assure Walt that Father Casmir was engaged by the story.

After Walt wound down, Father Casmir asked a few questions. “Would you say that Mike Jr. feels overshadowed by his father?”

“Well of course” Walt said. “Who wouldn’t?”

Father Casmir then asked, “But you said that Mike Jr. has done marvelous things.”

“Well, yeah. But look at this compound. It would be like...” Walt said, trying to think of an analogy “...like me being forty and living in a trailer behind my dad’s barn.”

Then Father Casmir drilled in. “You know, you and Steve and Sally have been topics of interest and discussion for the last month and a half. I feel like I know a little bit about you, even though this is the first time we talked.”

Walt nodded. He knew about quarantine and isolation. He knew about folks craving information and treasuring new human contacts.

“The scuttlebutt is that you have a very successful, younger brother” Father Casmir said.

Walt nodded. “He owns a limestone business. He also buys and sells oil and dyes and just started a small tannery.”

“You are what...19, maybe 20. And if he is your younger brother, how old is he?” Father Casmir asked.

“He is almost 16” Walt said, proudly.

“I think that Michael, Senior is concerned that you might let envy and bitterness poison your soul, like it poisoned his son's. You cannot see it, but he grieves for his son’s pain. I think he fears that you might feel overshadowed by your younger brother, that you might let resentment poison you and prevent you from becoming the man that God wants you to be” Father Casmir said.

The thought had never crossed Walt’s mind.

Walt, by nature, was a thoughtful man who was unflinchingly honest with himself. He could see how the risk Michael Senior feared was a possibility. He could see that at some time in the future, he might look back and see opportunities that he had not taken and blame his larger-than-life younger brother.

Truth-be-told, Walt’s part in the expedition had been arranged by Shad. The 180 pounds of black clay...that was a Shad project. Ten years from now, it might be easy to resent Shad as the puppet master who had directed Walt’s life.

*

There was another interesting person in the orbit of James Bazylewicz. Her name was Dona Binakowski.

Walt knew a little bit about women but it took him a couple of hours to figure out that she was flirting with HIM. It was immensely flattering. Walt had never considered himself a "lady's man. Girls tended to describe his as "plain, but steady".

He found her cupid-bow smiling extremely enticing and she flashed it his way every time he said anything. And she had dimples.

He tested it. He said something inane. She smiled at him. It was a bit disconcerting.

While he had been with the Amish, he had discovered that many of them had exceptionally droll senses of humor.

One of the Amish had a small herd of Jersey cows. “They are from Yates’ herd out of Chrisney, Indiana.” the bearded farmer said.

They were the sleekest dairy cows Walt had ever seen. Dairy cows tend to look like shower-curtains draped over a jumble of 2-by-4s with an udder hanging down. The Amish farmer's Jerseys looked like healthy animals. Yes, they had pronounced udders but they were broad of beam and carried a respectable amount of flesh on their backs and ribs.

“They are easy keepers” the Amish farmer said, coming as close to bragging as his faith allowed. “They are aggressive grazers and breed back quick. They are easy calvers and they put money in your pocket rather than show animals that take money out of it.”

"Why do you reckon they keep on weight when others can't?" Walt had asked.

"I am not really sure. Maybe they have some genetic resistance to parasites. One thing I noticed is that they are fastidious eaters. They won't eat anywhere near a cow-flop and they won't eat where the ground is wet" the Amish man admitted.

Then the zinger “You would do well to marry a girl like any of these heifers.”

The advice of the Amish farmer popped into Walt’s head, unbidden, but there it was.

Dona carried a few extra pounds and she carried it very, very well. Many girls in post-Ebola America had hip-bones so sharp they could cut you. Dona who would have been considered “slender” in pre-Ebola America carried a comfortable amount of padding compared to the new normal. Nothing gross. Comfortable.

Watching her eat lunch, he noticed that she inspected the food as she ladled it onto her plate and took a discrete sniff of the meat in the stew before starting to eat.

Dona looked up and noticed Walt watching her. She gave him a smile and batted her big. brown, doe-like eyes and then started eating.

Next

Why do public employees in Progressive strong-holds need unions?

If Progressive control is a sure path to utopia, then why are virtually all employees of Progressive cities and states unionized?

Who would know better about the universal benevolence and wisdom of Progressives then the people who live in and work for municipalities that have been under Progressive's benign rule for multiple decades?

If the tools of the Progressives, the employees of the State, find union protections mandatory, then how can we believe the claims of the Progressives that we can trust them to do our thinking, our choosing, our educating and our defense?

One more time and Minneapolis will be walking

Protesters closed a freeway.

They pulled the driver from a tanker-truck and beat the crap out of him. I am not justifying the driver's lack of situational awareness. I am just setting the stage.

One more time and the truckers will refuse to drive into Minneapolis. The National Guard will not be available to backstop the Minne police, they will be driving all the trucks in-and-out of Minneapolis. And there won't be any gas for private vehicles because those tanker trucks filled with flammable liquids will be a prime target for some hot-blood.

Quest: Mice and Decoys

Quinn still spent most nights out in the field, but now it was in a tent.

He got up in the morning and ran PT with the troops.

Dysen helped with morning chow.

Quinn had major heartburn over Dysen accompanying him. She put her foot down. They were married. If he was in the field and there were no shots being fired, she was going to be sleeping beside him.

Quinn attempted the “I cannot take special privilege” argument. It did not fly.

“When those men start complaining, I will stay home.

Having a girl dishing out your morning oatmeal, spreading peanut butter on your toast and pouring coffee is something few men will complain about. Especially when she gives each man a smile or a quick touch to their hand. Dysen had not been born yesterday.

One of the lessons that burned deep was the need to keep information in watertight silos. Quinn had been thinking at the squad level. Every member had to be proficient in every position so battle-field losses would not cripple the entire unit.

Things were different at the theater level. The deserters had walked off with critical information and materials. The enemy would soon have crystal clear information regarding the limitations of the weapons that were deployed and the basic battlefield tactics and discipline.

Quinn still made after-sunset inspections. He went “across the river” with Tomanica and they inspected the ground invaders would have to traverse before becoming a threat to the defenders of the buffer zone.

Tomanica’s help was clinical. He told Quinn he needed to ditch the radios they were using. They were compromised. He also told Quinn to expect communication protocols to change. Orders would be sent by text and in code. The specific codes would activate pre-written scripts. The codes would change on a daily basis. A royal pain, but required.

Sammie was working with Dmitri to set up a repeater tower ten miles west of the buffer zone. The new radios Quinn would use would have directional antennas and signals would be bounced off the repeater, amplified and sent back to the buffer-zone. To the invaders, it would appear as if every radio transmission emanated from fifteen miles west of the West Branch of the Red Cedar.

Tomanica and Quinn roamed the east/west road leading up to the buffer zone. In any avenue of approach, there are always limited number of places where transport for men and material can be staged. Tomanica and Quinn knew, in their hearts, that one of the attacks would be along I-96 and the other was almost certainly would be along Howell Road, the road that David Greene had been tasked with defending.

Tomanica was a big fan of Buckey Walbridge. Buckey and Tomanica had served several tours together and spent months in remote, forward operating bases. Walbridge had a genius for passing time. He trapped mice.

His record was twenty-four mice on a single, half-peanut.

The peanut had been rescued from an M&M that had fallen to the floor and been stepped on. Walbridge’s secret was that he had super-glued the half-peanut to the dog of the trap.

Walbridge had a system. He moved his traps around until he found the best places for them. Buckey pointed out that mice like certain things. They like runways along baseboards. They like overhead cover. They like clutter.

Once he found the optimal locations, he made sure the traps were always set and baited and did not move them from those optimal locations. “Some people will leave the dead mouse in the trap overnight. Me, I hear the snap. I jump up, pull the dead mouse and rebait it.” Buckey said. “That trap can’t catch mice when there is a dead mouse in it.”

There were direct applications in the field. There are very few places where hostiles can efficiently stage twenty trucks or set-up artillery bases. The ground must be firm, flat and close to the road.

Humans are more intelligent than mice. The trick, in Tomanica’s mind, was to make the booby traps different and to exercise patience in activating them. That way, the hostiles can delude themselves into thinking the explosion was a onsie or a lucky hit with a mortar.

“You have to think strategically” Tomanica said to Quinn. “What can they replace? Cannon fodder is easy to come by. We are doing them a favor if we whittle down the numbers of unskilled men.”

“Trucks can be had by the thousands. Weapons...especially belt-fed machine guns and heavy weapons, and the ammo to feed them...those are worth destroying.”

“Leadership? That is the top priority. Killing leadership destroys their chain of command-and-control. Their mortars won’t fire if there is no leadership to select targets.” Tomanica said.

“It cuts both ways, though” Tomanica continued. “We gotta make sure our leadership doesn’t get wiped out.”

Quinn was looking at the intersection of Howell road and Nicholson. “How would that work?” he asked as he pointed to the intersection.

Nicholson "T-eed" into Howell Road from the north.

Tomanica walked north on Nicholson for a couple of hundred yards and then walked back. Nicholson Road was 1.0 miles east of the West Branch and safely out of range from buffer-zone mortars.

“Think it through from the standpoint of the Logistics Officer” Tomanica said. “He is going to park them on the west side of Nicholson, pointing south. If it were me, I would have them park with a two-truck gap between each truck.”

“The drivers are on the left side of the truck, right behind the steering wheel” Tomanica continued. “The officer is going to be in front of them and standing along the east side of the road so all of his drivers can see him. He won’t be standing on Howell Road because he doesn't want to have to move for westbound traffic, but will be damned close to it.”

Looking around, Tomanica pointed at a large maple tree. “A Claymore mine on that tree will take out the officer and probably four or five drivers."

Thinking a bit, Tomanica added, "It would probably make sense to leave a couple of half-assed decoys for them to find but to have them facing Howell Road. That way they will think Howell Road was our primary target."

“The next time they stage trucks, they will do it a hundred yards back from the corner and they will probably bunch up. That would be the place to put a string of IEDs in a paint-buckets and other trash, again, on the east side of the road” Tomanica said. Then we can take out the second tier of leadership and some more trucks and drivers."

Somebody less thoughtful than Tomanica would have put them on the west side of Nicholson in order to damage the trucks.

Tomanica, to give him his due, was a sneaky, old bastard. “They will be looking for our mortar installations. Drones work to their advantage. They will use them for targeting”

“So rather than abandon the mortar nests that Greene knows about, we will turn them into enhanced decoys.”

If it had snowed during the night, the troops first task was to fill the paths into, and around the mortar nests with footprints.

Next