An observation on evangelizing

I drink coffee with a gentleman named Duane. For the last few weeks all he has been able to talk about is a fellow coffee drinker who he finally managed to drag to church.

The fellow coffee drinker was baptized last month.

According to Duane, he had been attempting to get the fellow to go to his church, heck, to any church, for years.

Duane said that the single event that "tipped" the fellow into going to church for the first time was when his minister happened into the restaurant where they were both drinking coffee and very cordially greeted the wayward fellow.

How does that fit into the scheme of things?
Imagine you were shopping for a new dentist. It has more in common with going back to church than you might think.

You can almost always go one more day, one more week without visiting a dentist.

When you go to the dentist you are going into his domain. That entails a loss of autonomy and is a voluntary submission or loss of power for the dental patient.

The dentist is surrounded by acolytes who dress funny.

The dentist wears a uniform.

You can expect criticism, either implied or overt about your dental hygiene.

There is a viable expectation of pain as shortcomings of the past are dealt with.

While you can get "recommendations" the un-dentisted knows that there is a huge asymmetry of knowledge...can a patient really give a critical review of somebody practicing an arcane art like dentistry?

Evangelizing
In retrospect, Duane made the tactical error of thinking that his testimony and witness would be enough to win-over the fellow coffee drinker.

While Christians like to think that the Holy Spirit is responsible for the conversion, it is wise to be mindful that the Holy Spirit is also responsible for the germination of seeds.  The farmer is responsible for preparing the seed bed. That includes studying the best, current science on how to kill weeds, fertilize and the best depth and time of year for planting those seeds.

If we are the farmers, then even the most cursory scientific examination of evangelization suggests that there is a progression of conversion.

The lost lamb looks at church-goers and thinks, "Hey, they look peaceful and happy. I want some of that."

The lost lamb asks some questions.

...

Trolling
At some point the lost lamb will want to meet the dentist on neutral ground...NOT IN HIS OFFICE. That gives up too much power.

Ministers can support evangelization, in my very humble opinion, by getting out of their fortress office and eating in a casual restaurant like Subway or McDonalds one night a week. The meal should not be  dash in, gobble and blast off. It should be a leisurely hour.

Then, church-goers who are evangelizing will have a venue where Duane's 'tipping event' is programmed to happen.

Maybe there will be bad chemistry. Maybe the the conversion will not happen. But as farmers, we will have done all we could to prepare the seed-bed.

Pencils in space, climate wobble and pollinating insect collapse

There is a story about NASA spending millions of dollars to develop a pen that would write in space. The Soviets, facing the same problems of weightlessness and the hard vacuum that the Americans faced sent their cosmonauts into space with 5 cent pencils.

The activists who worry about climate change want to spend trillions of dollars to remake the economy. Somehow they forget that India and China are not about to bow to their uneconomical ideas and Jevon's paradox will simply shift where the carbon dioxide is produced rather than reducing total production.

As a retired person of very modest means, my response to climate wobble is to plant a wide range of plants. I have apple, plum, gooseberry, current and grape varieties that can shrug off -40F. I have producing species that are at home in Evansville, Indiana and Tulsa, Oklahoma.

One of the things I did yesterday to make my "serious" orchard more resilient to climate wobble was to graft a second varieties into trees that are more than fifteen feet from another pollinator.

Apple trees that pollinate early in the spring. Open boxes show compatibility. Red boxes are unacceptable pollen donors. Source

It is a fact that many types of fruit trees, apples, pears and plums for instance, are self-sterile. It is nature's way of avoiding inbreeding. Planting large blocks of one type of apple, for instance, results in most flower-to-flower sorties spreading pollen that will not produce fruit.

In the absence of honeybees, the common bumblebee is usually a reliable pollinator. Unlike the honeybee, the bumblebee will fly and pollinate trees when the weather is cold, damp or windy.

The bumblebee is not without its Achille's Heel. They are ground nesting bees and continuous, rainy weather can flood their nests or afflict them with disease.

What is within my control is to shorten the distance between the pistils (the female parts) on one branch and the anthers (male parts) producing acceptable pollen on another branch.

One solution is to plant compatible varieties so close together that their branches interlace. This used to be common advice for Japanese and American plums. These plums flower very early in the season when adverse weather severely hampers pollinating insects.

For the phenology record, Asian pears and Japanese plums were at peak bloom yesterday and I got the potatoes planted the day before yesterday (May 5).

Additionally, the flowers of Japanese plums are not very appealing to bees. Perhaps they offer little nectar. I noted yesterday that there were easily ten times as many bees working the South Dakota Prunus americana as there were bees working the Japanese X myrobalan hybrid growing next to it.

Apple varieties that pollinate later in the spring. One advantage of crab apples is that they typically produce abundant blossoms every spring. An additional tip is that bees tend to prefer white flowered varieties over pink and red flowers.

I have a few places where I have three of the same variety in a block. Today I grafted a pollen donor into the middle tree of those blocks. My thinking is that if I do this right, then I can still get full crops even if the best I can manage for pollinating insects is one punch-drunk bumblebee per tree.

Stay tuned.

Unplugging a Labrador

I enjoyed the thread "Unplugging a Labrador" on 24hourcampfire.

The thread is exceptionally educational.

I learned the merits of canned pumpkin and hydrogen peroxide. I also learned that the right kind of Welcome mat can keep your dog from wandering.

Cricket's final resting place

For archival purposes

View to the east

View to the west

Clump of Maximilian Sunflower. Maximilian Sunflower is a perennial.

Clumps planted at the four cardinal points of the compass. South, west, north 6' out and east 8' out.

Image of what Maximilian Sunflower will look like in September. The flower spikes are about 6' tall.

Grilling season

"Hey, Earl! I think that charcoal done went out. Lemme show you how to do it."

Big automotive strike coming up?

The rumor on the street is that the automakers are preparing for an epic strike.

They are stuffing the distribution channels so there will have product to sell.

One of the issues that is coming to a head is the two-tier pay system as the younger employees will soon out-numbering the legacy employees.

In very round numbers, the base pay of the legacy employees is $30 an hour.

In very round numbers, the base pay rate for those hired after September 2007 is half that.

When the number "tips", look for the younger employees to make the consolidation of the two tiers a "demand" and that the new base pay rate be something like $23/hour for all employees regardless of hire date.

Look for the Big Three to try to stiff the demand. Why should they ratchet the pay of younger employees when they are quickly replacing the $30/hour group? That would defeat the purpose of the lower rate.

For the sake of reference, a typical "factory" job in a local non-Big Three factory runs about $12 an hour. The $15/hour represents a 25% premium over that $12/hour. Expect the companies to invite the workers to leave if they think they can do better elsewhere. Of course they won't.

Investing in people

Source of image

It is an article of faith among the Progressives that education is good and that graduating lots of 'really smart people' is the best way to jump-start an economy.

Can you explain to me, Governor Whitmer, why sinking money into Michigan's public Universities is a good investment for me as a Michigan taxpayer?

According to this source, the average Bachelor's degree costs the state $60,000.

Given the lower student-faculty ratio and intensive laboratory useage, one would expect the cost-per-year for a Masters to be double that.

Why should Michigan pump a hundred thousand dollars into a "really smart people" and educate them just so they can move to California, Texas or Sodom-on-the-Potomac?

As a point of interest, 18% of my graduating class (MSU, 1981 Engineering) accepted jobs in Texas while 17% accepted jobs in Michigan.

It makes far more sense to reduce taxes and deregulate to stimulate business and job formation. The problem is not a shortage of educated people. The problem is a lack of jobs and strangled new business formation.