Bent twig (Cumberland Saga)

Deputy Rosa Canina slowed her cruiser down as she approached the stranger dragging a piece of luggage. Its not like she had much choice. The twisting road through the hills had no shoulder and the stranger was resolutely plodding up the middle of the lane reserved for westbound traffic. Deputy Canina followed him for almost one-hundred feet and the stranger did not so much as turn around to look at her vehicle. Seeing no oncoming traffic, Canina shifted to the eastbound lane and passed him.

She did not gun the engine but passed him slowly so she could give him a good eyeballing before stopping two-hundred feet in front of him and turning on her flashers. She was out of her unit before he trudged up to her.

The kid was wearing three, skin-tight Tee-shirts, each with sleeves one inch shorter than the one beneath it. Fluorescent green - black - pink on top. They were intended to display his physique but only served to highlight his soft belly. Baggy shorts that he had to keep hitching up so they wouldn't slide down. Wearing shower-slides with bare feet. Not exactly what Deputy Canina would expect a long distance walker to be wearing in early-April.

The walker made as if to pass the squad car when Deputy Canina used her command voice “I need to ask you a few questions.”

The kid’s head jerked. “Are you putting me under arrest?”

“Don’t get sassy with me. I am authorized to stop and interview citizens in public places as long as I am “reasonable” “ Deputy Canina barked.

The kid pouted “WHAT EVER!”

Deputy Canina didn’t have to ask if he was from around here. He stood out like a 1000 Watt beacon in the night and everything about him screamed “CITY”.

“Do you know anybody in Lusk?” Canina asked.

“What is Lusk?” the teen-ager wanted to know.

“It is the next town up the road” Canina informed him. “It is about 20 miles away or about ten more hours of walking.”

She had deliberately doubled the distance. Sometimes you gotta fire-for-effect.

The kid’s head sagged.

Looking more closely at his face, she saw a split lip and the promise of a magnificent shiner. “Your parents do that to you?” she asked.

“Naw. They wouldn’t dare” the boy sneered. “I got jumped by a hillbilly.”

Well, that ruled out domestic abuse although Canina might have turned a blind-eye in this case. The kid radiated insolence.

Looking over the kid’s pale, spindly legs and knobby knees with the gooseflesh showing, she figured he couldn’t have walked more than a couple of miles. All told, there were about six driveways he could have come down in that distance.

“Somebody drop you off in a car?” Canina asked.

“Nope. I walked from South Carolina” the kid declared.

Canina couldn’t tell if it was sarcasm or if he was so stupid that he expected her to believe the lie. She was leaning toward the second.

“Where are you going?” Canina asked.

“I don’t have to tell you” the kid said.

“Nope. You don’t. But that means that I have to take you in because you are a traffic hazard. Not only that, but you are not dressed for the weather” Canina said.

“You can’t do that without my permission” the boy said.

“I am a sworn law enforcement official and a public safety officer. If I decide you are a risk to yourself or others, I have a duty that I WILL perform whether you give me ‘permission’ or not” Canina bristled.

“So, are we going to do this the easy way or the hard way?” Canina put it back on the kid.

The kid didn’t say anything.

“What is your name?” Canina asked.

“Evan” the kid said.

“What is your last name?”

“I don’t need to tell you that” the kid said.

His story about getting “...jumped by a hillbilly…” was looking pretty shaky. Most rural people would have avoided this kid the same way they would avoid a rabid skunk or a yellow-jackets' nest.

“Tell me about the hillbilly that jumped you” Canina switched topics.

“Outa nowhere and for no reason he just started punching me in the face” the kid said angrily.

“Uh-huh” Canina intoned with very little expression. It was a trick her training officer had trained her in. Sound bored and just the slightest bit interested.

Eyes suddenly blazing, Evan added “And he said it was because I called him a muther-fucker!!!”

“Did you?” Canina asked. “That is, did you call him a muther-fucker?”

“So what if I did. Everybody says that word” Evan retorted, defensively.

“Maybe in the city. But did you call him a muther-fucker?” Canina pressed.
 

Evan looked away, unable to look Canina in the face.

“Where are you heading?” Canina asked.

“St Louis” the kid responded.

“Missouri?” Canina asked, surprised.

“Yeah. Is there another St Louis?” the kid asked.

“That has to be five-hundred miles away” Canina informed him. Looking down at his slides and then back up at his face she said “It would take you 250 hours to walk there, not counting time for sleepin’ and eatin’. You ain’t gonna make it.”

“Tell my your parent’s phone number and I will call them so they can pick you up” Canina said.

The kid smirked. “Won’t do you any good. They locked up their phones and don’t use them.”

Bingo!!! His parents had to be at the Amish place, just a mile east of where Canina passed Evan. She suspected that he would have been more reasonable if she had caught up with him after he had walked a couple of hours. Blisters have a way of taking the wind out of the sails of run-aways but she couldn't afford the risk of his causing traffic accidents.

“Throw your suitcase in the back seat. I am taking you back to your parents.”
 

Evan seemed to waver and then decided to comply. He could run away any time he wanted to.

Canina had him sit in the front seat, in direct violation of department policy.

He was surprised when she pulled into the drive for Copperhead Cove. How did she know?

Seeing the boulder in the drive, Canina called in and told dispatch that she would be away from her unit for a bit and gave her location. Then she opened the door and said, “Looks like you and me are gonna do a little walkin’”
 

Evan pitched his suitcase into the brush. “I ain’t pulling it up that hill.”

Looking around the turn-around area, she saw Amira’s Subaru. She also noticed a long line of fresh scratches along the driver’s side from the headlight to the taillights. Looking at the back of the vehicle, she saw a fist-sized triangular rock with paint shavings on the jagged edges.

She would put that in her report and let the parents deal with the boy. She would also include that the boy clearly stated that his parents had not hit him and would include what he had done to provoke the damage done to his face. Stories had a way of changing over time.

On cue, the dogs started barking and there were four women standing outside of the first house. The oldest woman was holding a shotgun, which she pointed toward the sky after she identified Officer Canina and Evan.

Amira immediately started fussing at the boy and hectored him as they walked back to Constanze’s old cabin.

Canina looked at Alice and offered her professional opinion “That boy is going to be nothing but trouble.”

“I am very afraid that might be so” Alice responded.

***

This was NOT a fun chapter to write but one that needed to be written.

Kids who run-away are usually very naive but think they are sophisticated. They do not have any grasp of "reality". They engage in magical thinking. Usually, they are scooped up after they make it to a big city and have been in-processed by human traffickers or drug dealers. They are damaged goods at that point.

Evan was lucky Canina found him long before that happened.

Evan is only a slight exaggeration of the entitled, responsibility shirking children our society is creating in very large numbers. He is fourteen. Can he be saved? 

What would you do if you were Alice or Sig?

Children of workers killed in FSK bridge collapse offered post-high school tuition aid

Six workers were (likely) killed when the Francis Scott Key bridge in Baltimore Maryland collapsed.

They were not wealthy men. They were working men. They hailed from Central America. The fact that they died trying to feed their families could easily get lost in the shuffle.

I was curious to learn if there was a go-fund-me set up for their families.  This is what I found:

BALTIMORE (TND) — The children of construction workers who presumably died in the collapse of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge will be offered college scholarships, a Maryland nonprofit announced Tuesday.

Eight workers who were filling potholes at the time fell into the Patapsco River last week after a cargo ship struck the bridge, causing it to collapse. Two of these individuals were rescued, while the bodies of two others were later recovered in a submerged pickup truck. The remaining four are presumed dead.

The workers hailed from Guatemala, Mexico, Honduras and El Salvador, officials said.

Kids' Chance of Maryland, Inc., (KCMD) a branch of the national Kids' Chance of America, provides support to Maryland children whose parents are “catastrophically injured” or killed on the job.

“We recognize these men were doing the very important job of ensuring a safe roadway on the bridge when they perished,” KCMD President Thomas Phelan said in a statement. “KCMD will inform them of the financial assistance available for qualifying college or trade school enrollment when the time comes. KCMD and I want to express our sincere condolences, thoughts, and prayers to their loved ones during this difficult time.”

At least 12 children will receive scholarships from KCMD, with ages ranging from 5 to 18 years old. KCMD will provide these individuals $6,000 of assistance per semester at a college or trade school of their choice and will consider additional support should they elect to attend further schooling.

 Source

What would a "Nuclear Winter" look like?

I am starting to see articles with titles similar to "What would Nuclear Winter look like" popping up on my news feeds.

The idea of catastrophic cooling of the weather fell out of fashion and all of the cool kids have been modeling Global Cooling for the last 12 years. So there is not a lot of recent research in the area.

One peer reviewed article circa 2007 suggests the following:

Depending on the amount of soot blown into the upper atmosphere, measurable cooling will last for well over a decade. Yeah, I know. You don't trust computer models.

The region between 30 degrees and 60 degrees (basically, the temperate regions of both northern and southern hemispheres) will be most impacted.

The growing season will be drastically shortened. For example, in the US mid-West, a growing season of 90 days and temperatures of 50F could be expected the second summer after warheads are exchanged. That is for one of the mid-range events.

Black trace is baseline temperature without Nuclear Winter. Horizontal lines are 10 degrees C or about 18F apart. Vertical lines are three months apart. Purple line is mid-range scenario of 50 Tg of carbon injected into the stratosphere.

 

It might be possible to grow and harvest barley, rye, canola, dried peas, short-season wheat and very short-season potato varieties, turnips and maybe buckwheat as well as forage crops like grass and red clover in the US mid-West by the second summer after a mid-level nuclear exchange. Russia and northern Europe will not be so lucky.

Soot injected into the upper atmosphere will stay suspended in the atmosphere much longer than volcanic ash/aerosols stay suspended due to their much smaller diameters and the fact that the solar energy they absorb will drive "lift" that will mix and suspend them.

Even in regions not heavily impacted by cooler temperatures/shorter growing seasons will experience severe agricultural challenges. The model predicts that the monsoons will fail for five-years-in-a-row in sub-Saharan Africa, the Indian sub-continent and mainland China.

Fine Art Tuesday

 

Anton Mauve born 1838 in the Netherlands. Died 1888.

Famous for painting the back-ends of sheep.

Historically, sheep were one of the ways of controlling tall grass and weeds in fence-rows, orchards, road right-of-ways and along water-ways and ditches.

Open-loop vs Closed-loop as it applies to tick-borne diseases

There is currently a very strong bias in favor of "closed-loop" feedback system and a strong bias against "open-loop" systems.

The case in favor of closed-loop feedback control systems is seductive. Computational power is so cheap it is almost free. Sensors are inexpensive and robust. A closed-loop system can be very economical to run because corrective actions are only activated when needed.

But there are some situations where an open-loop system is the proper tool and I will try to give an example and explain why.

Ticks

Ticks are vectors for many diseases.

Ticks can make you allergic to red-meat. Can you imagine life without steak???

Ticks are not very efficient at injecting disease organisms into human bloodstreams compared to mosquitoes, for instance. According to "experts" a tick must be embedded for 36 hours for transfer to be likely.

A fully engorged, adult, female tick is approximately three times the size of a raisin. People tend to notice them and deal with them before a day-and-a-half has gone by.

The nymphs, or the juvenile stages are a much greater concern and the nymphs are approximately the size of a particle of ground, black pepper or a tiny flake of dandruff. They are tiny!!!

Attempts to use smart-phone photos and QR codes to track tick-related risk has not worked very well. The nymphs are so very tiny that even phones with super-macro modes have a difficult time finding the proper plane-of-focus and creating a photo with enough detail to be useful.

The entire premise of a closed-loop control system is that the "state" and "change-in-state" can be quickly and accurately ascertained and appropriate countermeasures activated in a timely way. Having a half-dozen nymphs embedded in the skin around your ankle is not something that grabs your attention nor are you likely to notice an increase from three-to-six-to-fifteen.

That leaves "open-loop" control as the only viable option.

What might that look like?

Tick egg masses tend to be in low vegetation like grass and ground-cover.

Mice like tall grass as it provides them with cover from raptors (hawks and owls), fox, cats and other predators.

One simple strategy would be to BURN the tall grass in fence rows, ditches and around your yard in late-winter/early-spring to kill tick egg-masses, ticks waiting to latch and to destroy prime mouse habitat.

Burning used to be very common but ecological thinking is a bit like "fashion", it is subject to change. Tick-borne diseases used to not be nearly the problem they are now. I wonder why.

So, you might ask "Why can't I just mow?"

The answer would be that mowing is just hell on snake populations. And guess what most large snakes eat? Yep; rodents. Burning off the dead grass at the end of winter when the snakes are hibernating in stone-piles is reptile-neutral.

Another open-loop strategy is to be aggressive in treating your pets with tick-killing pesticides. Zeus, our German Shepherd is going to get his three-month Bravecto tablet tomorrow. That will take him through the highest risk portion of tick season and will eliminate him as a link in the ticks' life-cycle.

If the material of the gaiter is not absorbent, a headband or "scrunchie" can be added and sprayed with suitable insecticides.

Since humans are also potential food sources, a simple, open-loop action would be to wear insecticide-treated gaiters during peak tick season. The good news is that nymphs have a very high surface to volume ratio so they absorb lethal doses of insecticides very quickly.

While gaiters might look very nerdish, you will be ahead of the curve. According to Professor Jean Tsao of the Michigan State University Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, it is very common to see bird-watchers at prime sites wearing gaiters. Bird-watchers tend to be WAY ahead of the curve. They are very observant and tend to have fairly high discretionary incomes.

Professor Tsao was tasked with spearheading outreach to Michigan's outdoors people and making us more aware of the risk of tick-borne diseases.

Finally, we have too many deer in Michigan. If you are a hunter, please do not hesitate to harvest a mature doe.

Fake News Friday: Shaquilla O'Neal being recruited by USC Women's Basketball team

 

Shaquilla, left side of photo in team-building exercise with point-guard from USC's women's basketball team

According to Shaquilla, her one regret is that she never won a national championship in college basketball.

The USC Women's Basketball program is offering her a full scholarship and special tutoring if she will commit to play for the program.

Shaquilla, who currently identifies as a man, is strongly considering the offer even though she will be twice the age of the other freshwomen recruits.

"I gonna give it a shot. Maybe I can get my best sista, LaBron'a to join me at USC, too."

April-Foolz!!!

Mondays are like that (Cumberland Saga)

Bread was baked on Mondays and Thursdays.

Amira showed up early on Monday. The weekend had been rainy and Walter and the boys had gotten on her nerves. And vice-versa.

It was a relief to have a place to go.

Every woman who streamed through Alice’s kitchen seemed to know all of the details about her role in “helping” Constanze gracefully exit Copperhead Cove. In fact, they seemed to know some details that she, herself, was unaware of.

The third woman who graciously thanked her remarked “We did not see you at Sunday services. You are more than welcome to bring your family.”

Amira demurred. “I am not of your faith.”

“But Walter is” the woman noted. “Families who attend services together are made stronger by God.”

And then she added the hook “It is a great place to catch up with what is happening in the community.”

Suddenly it made sense to Amira. THAT is how everybody knew about her and Constanze. The women attended services and socialized. They talked about what was new and what was important.

From that perspective, she almost had to attend.

For the rest of the baking day, the women who drifted through Alice’s kitchen offered bits and pieces of wisdom. Some offered gardening advice, seeds or cuttings from their geraniums. Others offered herbs and spices for the kitchen. Others offered trades; work-boots for a chance to cherry-pick through Constanze’s closets. One woman volunteered that their dog was due to whelp soon and if it was a big litter, there would be unclaimed pups. Everybody had noticed that Evan and Abe’s footwear was unsuited for life at Copperhead Cove.

***

Amira had given Walter the task of retrieving his cellphone from Sig and finding a high point off-the-property. There, he was to start collecting information on gardening on the Cumberland Plateau and making notes. Constanze had 8 garden plots of approximately 25 paces on a side. While it was a huge amount for one, middle-aged woman, it hardly seemed like it would be enough for a family of four. Especially since two of them were teen-aged boys. Walter and Amira would have to farm it well if they were going to be able to eat.

Amira detailed Abe and Evan to help Sig and the other men with whatever they were doing.

Sig, not expecting the extra help decided to assign them to Lliam. “Just do whatever he tells you to do.”

Abe was two years older than Lliam. Evan was just a couple of months older. Neither one of them were too keen on taking orders from somebody who was not only younger than they were but who they saw as their social inferior.

The basic cadence of clearing the land was that Sig, Gregor or Blain took one-hour shifts running the chainsaw. That was about how long a tank of gas lasted. When the tank ran out, Sig “blessed” the cutting teeth of the chain with a file. The gas and the oil reservoirs were refilled and then the saw was handed off to the next cutter.

Lliam and the two young men dragged brush. The two older men who were not on the chainsaw helped shift and position logs so the person with the saw could buck them into lengths slightly longer than 8 feet. When not doing that, the older men helped dragged brush away from the cutting site and stacked it in drifts where the slope “broke” and where gullies were likely to initiate.

Lliam, at the age of fourteen, had been doing this kind of work for almost four years. He was trying to impart the basics to the new “men” they way he had been taught. Mixing “doing” with “telling”. Even work as basic as dragging brush has many details and without the context of “doing” the “telling” bounces off the wall and does not stick.

His two pupils had a lot of attitude and that left Lliam at a loss.

Things came to a head when Evan...who being the younger felt more threatened by Lliam...told Lliam “...get away from me, mother-fucker…”

Approximately 75 milliseconds later Evan was sitting on the ground and blood was gushing from his nose.

Scrambling to his feet and kicking wildly at Lliam, he found himself back on the ground.

Gregor grabbed Abe around the waist as he dashed to join the fray. “Iffen you want a piece of him, you can wait your turn” Gregor said as Abe thrashed and flailed as he attempted to dog-pile Lliam.

In the inexplicable calculus of resentment, Abe and Evan had converged on Lliam as the epicenter of their problems. Perhaps it was because they knew that they could not whip the adults...but another teen-ager, one who they handily out-massed individually was a different story. It would be a salve for their egos.

But it was not to be.

Unlike the school yard in St Louis, the adults did not intervene. It was not one-or-two swings and then the fight being broken up and both parties being able to declare victory.

The adults let the teenagers settle the matter.

Llaim was not a brawler but he was an accomplished scrapper. It was a rare month when he wasn't in a tussle with another lad. The rules were simple: Inflict no damage that wouldn't heal in a week and no damage that prevented the other from doing his daily chores.

 

Lliam'is Uncle Sig had taught him the fundamentals. Hit through your target. Keep hitting. Aim for soft targets...noses, stomachs and chins. Keep your forearms up and vertical to block. Move. Step into your punch. Keep your fist firmly clenched. Keep your wrist straight. Focus the force through your index and middle finger to avoid breaking your pinkie or ring fingers. And when the fight goes to grappling abandon the boxing and wrestle.

Evan’s coaching came from playing video games where the fighters defied physics with highly stylized Mixed Martial Arts moves.

Evan out-massed Lliam by twenty pounds and he had an inch more reach. Lliam, on the other hand, had an advantage of 15 more pounds of muscle.

Evan’s additional fine-motor skills in his thumbs and fingers from playing video-games did not translate into a competitive advantage in an actual, physical altercation.

The second big surprise was after Evan “tapped-out”.

Gregor did not let go of Abe but pushed him toward Lliam. “Your turn” is all he said.

“But I don’t want to fight him any more” Abe weaseled.

“Don’t matter” Sig said. “We ain’t girls. We gotta beef, we settle it. We settle it here. We settle it now. We don't hold grudges...but if you think you can do better next week you can give it a whirl then.”

“Issues that ain’t settled are like splinters that fester and poison the blood” Sig added. “I seen you gotta issue. Now is your chance to settle it.”

And then Lliam kicked Abe's ass, too.