It has come to my attention once again that some of my readers are unclear on the purposes and intents for some of what I post here. If this is not you, then no need to read on, just skim and go to the next post. Daisycat, please do read on.
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Earworms "Earworm" is a colloquial term for a song stuck in your head on replay. It may be an old popular song or commercial jingle that got firmly lodged in your cranial folds, something has triggered it's recollection and there it is, playing away in your ear, whether you will it or not. There is often no particular meaning to the appearance of an earworm, other than some association that originally brought it back to mind.
In case you all haven't noticed, I listened to the radio a lot while growing up in the 1970's, and then not much at all past the early eighties. So my earworm has a vast repertoire of songs from that era to draw upon. Sometimes a word or a phrase runs through my head a few times while thinking on something, and them *wham!*, up comes a song that used that phrase or something similar. You may gain some insight into my current (or recent) frame from this, but often there's nothing specific that I wish to convey.
However one of the best ways to dispel an earworm is to share it with others. Enjoy!
"Morning Mood" My "Morning Mood" posts are similar to earworms, except that they usually express more fully in some way, some particular thought or feeling. Unlike an earworm, which can be triggered just by associations, my "morning mood" posts are usually about me saying "hey, here's how I feel right now". Sometimes I may specify what I'm on about. Sometimes not. For example, yesterday I put up an old disco song for Daisycat that expressed my feelings for her at the moment.
The bottom line is that this blog is about me--what I'm thinking, what I'm feeling, what I have a strong desire to share with others (news, analysis, etc.), and also very importantly an outlet for my creative expression. For much or most of this I welcome and solicit feedback. However in no case am I beholden to anyone to *explain* my posts to their satisfaction, particularly stuff that is primarily right-brain, free-association such as the origin of a particular earworm.
It is my explicit will that I shall not be cramped in my free expression here in a misguided effort to placate the sensitivities of those who would over-analyze, looking for excuses for anger or hurt. You make your own happiness. Or not. Choose wisely. If I want to give you grief about something, I'm almost always direct. Anyone who's caught the wrong end of my whack stick knows that. If I'm not calling you out specifically, it's probably not about you specifically.
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As one certain Acidman was wont to say: "If this blog does not meet your standards, then change your standards!"
As recovery starts to stall in the US and Europe with echoes of mid-1931, bond experts are once again dusting off a speech by Ben Bernanke given eight years ago as a freshman governor at the Federal Reserve. --- Andrew Roberts, credit chief at RBS, is advising clients to read the Bernanke text very closely because the Fed is soon going to have to the pull the lever on "monster" quantitative easing (QE).
"We cannot stress enough how strongly we believe that a cliff-edge may be around the corner, for the global banking system (particularly in Europe) and for the global economy. Think the unthinkable," he said in a note to investors.
Apparently I've been slacking in my doomsaying as some of you have become convinced, for lack of bad news, that the news must be good.
Think preps, think disaster mitigation, and don't let up lest you be caught flat-footed.
Verse I: Didn't I hear you cry this morning, didn't I feel you weep? Teardrops flowing down on me, like rivers in my sleep. And in my dream of laughter, you came creepin' with your fears. Telling me your sorrows, in the tracings of your tears.
Chorus: That's a strange way to tell me you love me When your sorrow is all I can see If you just want to cry to somebody, don't cry to me, no Don't cry to me, no
Verse II: Didn't I hear your voice this morning, didn't you call my name? I heard you whisper softly, but the words were never plain. And in your dream of darkness, I came shining like the sun. Waiting for the laughter, but the laughter never comes.
Chorus: That's a strange way to tell me you love me When your sorrow is all i can see If you just want to cry to somebody, don't cry to me, no Don't cry to me, no
Didn't you feel alone this morning, didn't you need a friend? And in your darkest hour, you came running back again
Moving On My "workshop" is not in a single place, and this has caused countless delays and unnecessary searching around for where the stuff I need for a particular task has gone to. Is it on the table next to my computer desk? How about the kitchen counter? No?
Okay, maybe it's in the pile of tools on the west bedroom floor, or perhaps in the big stack of stuff on the laundry machines?
All right then, it must be in the travel trailer/storage shed then! Not there either...
I assembled the last of the metal shelving and fabricated a frame for pegboard over the workbench, and now it is time to gather my stuff from the four winds to increase the efficiency of my work time.
Multiple cart loads later...
...and I have created what looks like a chaotic mess in the workshop. But in fact, everything is in the vicinity of where it belongs. I have yet to locate the pegs for my pegboard (somewhere in a box under the house), so stuff that goes on the pegboard is piled on the workbench for now.
There are still a couple more loads to go, but this is good progress toward having a single source and destination for tools and workshop supplies.
In the garden, the peanuts are doing okay. Some of them are showing chlorosis, but I'm not going to cater to them right now. Future years will see lower pH and more available iron, as I continue to improve the soil. They have competition in this bed, but not from weeds. The previous season's cover crop dropped enough seed so that some of it is coming up. This is okay as it just adds to the organic material that gets turned under later.
The blackeyed peas have come up thick in this bed. Also the watermelons that I planted in between.
In a couple other beds there are curious blank spots where nothing came up, even though the beans and wheat came up thick elsewhere in the bed. I will be replanting these areas to see what gives.
The tepary beans and Tohono O'Odham corn are looking good:
Whenever I sit down to rest in the garden, the cats come running from wherever they are to see if they can get another ration of loving:
Here is Information Central for raising chickens: BackYardChickens.com - Raise Chickens, Build a Chicken Coop, Hatch Eggs I mentioned this site in a comment thread below. This is where Momcat goes to get her chicken questions answered, and to help answer other people's chicken questions.
A little bit of moisture has moved in, turning our tolerable dry heat into a sauna today and yesterday. This evening there was a brief shower before I arrived in my valley, and the heat was cloying. I shut down my evap "cooler" as soon as I got home and switched to AC to make the place tolerable for sleeping.
This is too early! We're supposed to have another week or so before the humidity moves in. Or not. Such variability is par for the course, I suppose.
We did score a serious break in that May was well below average temperatures.
Progress Pics Wrong Priority Pics of Stuff That Is Not Palace Building
I have been curiously lacking in motivation this weekend. Somehow I can't seem to kick myself into high gear. It's almost as if the lack of appreciation for my efforts has sapped my will.
Or the heat is finally getting to me as the humidity gradually rises above bone-dry.
I managed to lay the rest (almost) of the workshop floor. Six blocks shy of a full load...
I pulled the evaporative cooler blower onto the new workshop floor, but did not get very far with it. I put wheels on one end to make it easier to move, and got the 12" duct adapter removed from the outlet.
The rest of the time I spent in the house on chaos taming and gathering paperwork to get the bank off our back, and this evening I did manage to get my main workbench out of storage under tarps and onto the workshop.
To deal with the wheat that is now in my way--that I got no help in tying into shocks--I decided to give it to Momcat to feed the chickens. I simply cannot have it where it is any longer and still be able to get anything else done. I will have to wait until another harvest to thresh, winnow and weigh it to determine the productivity of that area.
In other news, Momcat's clucky hen had her chicks hatch this weekend. Six peeps!
"Any idiot knows that you throw seed on the ground you get a crop!", she says. (O really? This is the voice of years of gardening experience speaking, I presume?)
"You should be spending more time turning this hovel into a palace", she says. "Worthless huzz bind. Can't you see what's important?!"
"You don't cherish me enough," she says. (Oh, I don't know. Building a bulwark against the chaos to come isn't an act of charity then. Making sure she has a place that is warm in winter, cool in summer, with running water and flush toilets, with food in the pantry and in the garden, and a way to cook it, with a basic stock of toiletries and first aid supplies, so she does not have to count herself amongst the desperate, scared masses in the city when the serious shit hits, yeah none of that is an act of love. No, it's just me dicking around with shit that is NOT NECESSARY!!)
"I wish God would give me a new husband," she says to herself.
"10 Now to the married I command, yet not I but the Lord: A wife is not to depart from her husband. 11 But even if she does depart, let her remain unmarried or be reconciled to her husband. And a husband is not to divorce his wife." 1 Corinthians 7:10
"39 A wife is bound by law as long as her husband lives; but if her husband dies, she is at liberty to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord." 1 Corinthians 7:39
For God to answer this prayer, He must do so according to His Word. It is not His will for Christian men and women to divorce. Therefore for this prayer to be answered as it is asked, it would be necessary for me to die.
"Dear God, please kill off my husband so that I am free to marry whomever else you might have for me, in thy mercy, O Lord."
("In Thy Mercy, O Lord...")
----------------------------- Update: Just for the record, I have no intention of dying any time soon. So you're stuck with the man God gave you, babe.
In conversation with one of my "online girlfriends", somehow the topic of peaches came up. I put together this image in response to her suggestion that peaches were much too risque for public exposure: -click-
Most of us have had the experience (prior to caller ID) of hearing the phone ring and knowing who was calling before answering. It used to be such a common occurrence in my household growing up, that when someone we did not know called unexpectedly, one or more of us would say something along the lines of "that's a funny ring. I wonder who that could be..."
Back in college and at other times in my life when I was awake into the wee hours of the morning, I noticed a phenomenon that after about 2 AM or so and persisting until about 5 AM, my ability to think clearly would increase. It felt almost exactly as if the constant chatter of a thousand million brains near mine would settle down to a hushed whisper during those hours and I would have more "psychic space" or "brain room" to work with.
Then there is the outright mental connection I have with certain people close to me. If I pay attention in a certain way (and sometimes when I'm not particularly paying attention) I will know things about their current mental and physical status. This is to me, of the same nature as my connection to my Lord Jesus.
I have always believed that something so observably real would eventually begin to reveal itself via scientific inquiry. The linked article goes a bit beyond current science into speculation, but it hits a resonant chord with me. I have intuited something along this lines from the time I first heard of quantum entanglement. The intimate connection of things at the quantum level, unbound by the space-time parameters that seem to affect macro level reality, goes a long way toward this explanation.
If "road" is what you want to call it. As I see it, the pavement ended a ways back there, we've been on an increasingly bad gravel road, and up ahead is a boulder-strewn landscape with no road, only wreckage and footpaths down to the hellish valley below...
"Extend and pretend" is not just what governments and banking institutions are doing. It is what most people are doing, including many of my readers, including at least one member of my immediate family, who believes what I am doing at the farm is "just for fun" and "not necessary".
I am quite certain that the grasshopper similarly scorned the ant during the halcyon days of Indian Summer--while the days were yet warm, and there were still "green shoots" to be found to munch on casually in the sunshine, the grasshopper snorted derisively at the ant as he scurried by with *yet another* grain of wheat on his back.
"Why are you so worried about gathering and storing *now* o Ant?," called the grasshopper. "The weather is still so beautiful, and there you are sweating away at your silly labors. Look at me! I'm having *fun fun fun* in the *sun sun sun*!! Gather and store LA-A-A-TER, if you're so sure the weather will turn bad. This sunshine is much too valuable to waste on such silliness!"
"Don't come knocking on my mound when the bitter winds blow then," said the Ant. "You'll be staring down the business end of my .00012 ga shotgun if you do."
------------------- More fun: 20 Road Signs Pointing To Hell Ahead ------------------- Other bits--I saw hitchhikers, both small groups and individuals, trudging along Oracle Highway both last night and this morning. Jobless? Foreclosed? Evicted? Heading to Tucson to join the homeless population there?
Not a good sign, if so...
I had a dream last night. I was in a field and a huge black cloud was looming near on the southern horizon--a massive cumulonimbus full of tornado potential. I and a couple other people scrambled to gather up and stuff into cars and small sheds a bunch of things that needed to be protected from the rain. The cloud was black, blacker than I've ever seen a storm cloud, and as it passed, it went mostly to the east of me. I thought I'd avoid the damage, but a funnel cloud blew apart a small travel trailer that I had been fixing up to live in. It was a sad little trailer anyway, with badly weathered exterior and just barely adequate interior improvements, but it was what I hoped to use for a home. I could hear Daisycat in my mind carping about how bad the exterior was. After the storm was past, the scene shifted and I was left looking at the interior of a small dirt floor wooden shed that I was contemplating how to finish into a shelter of some sort.
Pity those in the direct path of that storm...
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"The prudent see danger and take refuge, but the simple keep going and suffer for it." - Proverbs 27:12.
I have created a new blogroll section near the bottom, headlined "Rest In Peace". It saddens me that a third blogger that I followed closely has left us. Before Granny J goes the inimitable Acidman and Bane. Having not heard from K now for nearly two months I worry daily how soon I may have to add her name to that roll.
Consider it the memorial blogroll for those I've loved and lost.
These are those I knew, and knew their fate. Sometimes I wonder about those who simply disappear--stop blogging and no explanation is ever forthcoming. Of these, how many gave up in boredom or frustration, and how many expire without a family member giving notice?
And substantial progress was indeed made, partly credit due to Daisycat spending time here from Friday evening through this late afternoon actually helping out with stuff.
Friday evening I tilled three beds up and Daisycat sowed blackeyed peas and wheat in two of them (two middle beds of the south half), with just blackeyed peas in the third (west bed of the north half). The third one will also get some watermelons planted in it later. These are intended primarily as summer cover crop plantings again, although the blackeyed peas can also be harvested for eating.
Bed to the left is the west north bed:
The middle south beds: These two beds were the worst of the soil I have so far. They were previously tilled and planted to a mixture of seed early this spring, but because the soil is so poor, only the wheat really did anything. I added four bags of purchased compost to each of these beds to jump start the soil building process.
Saturday, Momcat, Daisycat and I painted the exterior of the workshop with a gray primer. The wood was beginning to weather and needed to be protected stat! I also laid another major section of the patio block floor inside while the painting was going on.
This morning Daisycat and I primed and painted two 4'x8' panels that will go on the north side of the solar thermal tower. No other work happened on the tower due to the season pressing upon us for certain garden tasks.
My scythe outfit arrived early this week from Scythe Supply. This afternoon I assembled it and went out to my wheat field, which was ripe for harvest.
O Ye Of Little Faith! Doubt Not! This is an absolutely elegant and fine piece of equipment. First of all, it is light as a feather! When I picked up the blade in its wrapper, I could hardly believe what I was holding was a scythe blade. It is thin and light and crafted to a very fine precision. The snath is also very light and strong, being made of white ash with rock maple handles. I paid the small fee to have it sharpened for me, so that it would be ready to go once it arrived.
And ready it was! I slipped it through the first bit of wheat with scarcely any effort, then proceeded down the length of the first row without a hitch. I stopped to whet the blade at the end of the row for good measure and just to try out the whetstone, although the blade probably did not require sharpening quite yet.
The remainder of the field went down just as easily, and although I did each bed one at a time and gathered the wheat in between, I could have sliced through the whole field in maybe fifteen minutes at the very most--more likely about ten minutes. What was shown in This Video (linked and discussed a couple weeks ago), is absolutely realistic. Remember people, this is not the clunky, absurd American-style scythe that you may have used in your younger days! This is a far superior tool!
I could see easily scything an acre or more in a day if I had someone behind me gathering the wheat up in sheaves. I would feel at the end of the day like I did a whole day's labor, but the scythe itself would not be the chief contributor to my fatigue.
And having someone behind me gathering up sheaves was the idea here at first. But the wheat was not laying quite as neatly in windrows as I was hoping, partly due to the thinness of the harvest in areas and the very short stalks that didn't bunch together and fall neatly as taller, thicker wheat would.
After listening to much shrieking and groaning, blatting and howling and moaning, together with her threats to run away back to the city without helping at all (!!!), I gave up on getting Daisycat to help with tying sheaves. Instead we scooped the cut wheat up with a fork into a wheelbarrow and heaped it up in the workshop to dry, unsheaved.
The heap fits on a 4'x8' sheet of siding, nearly three feet high. NOW what am I supposed to do?! What a mess! Instead of having the wheat neatly bundled so that I could tuck it away somewhere to dry for a few weeks while I ignore it to do other higher priority stuff, it is front and center right smack in the middle of my workshop!
What I will have to do is pull that old evaporative cooler blower into the shop and get to work converting it to the thresher that it is destined to become, that is what. In this case, "mother* is the necessity of invention". *(Daisycat)
Elsewhere in the garden, the peanuts planted two weeks ago are coming up pretty well, along with some cover crop from last time that has reseeded. I will need to poke in extra peanuts here and there where they didn't come up, but will wait another week to be sure all are up that are coming up.
The tepary beans (foreground) and Tohono corn (middle background) planted two weeks ago are all up very nicely.
The Baart wheat has maybe two or three weeks to go before it will be ready to scythe also. In the foreground are a row of cosmos that volunteered along the edge of the wheat bed.
These galliardias are volunteers that came up next to the fig tree. The fig tree itself has resprouted from the base after being blasted by last fall's sudden chill.
And I still have Monday this week to do stuff! I will probably finish laying block on the floor in the workshop, so that I have room to start working on the thresher next weekend.
-------------- Update: For the record, it was 16 weeks from planting back on February 20 to the wheat harvest today. -------------- Update 2: Six hills of watermelon were planted this afternoon (6/14) in the noted bed. I am thinking of giving these garden spaces an alphanumeric code for my own record keeping purposes. Perhaps this bed will be A-4 (4th bed of block A).
Here is a sketch of what this whole solar thermal tower and evaporative cooling system consists of: click to embiggen
The towers themselves are vent stacks. Glazed on three sides, they will cause air to convect when the sun shines on them, drawing air out of the house. To assist when there is a breeze, they will be topped with 24" wind turbine vents.
Air being drawn out of the house will be replaced by air drawn into the house through a "Master Cool" type evaporative cooling cell.
By itself I expect the tower to convect at a rate of about 600 cfm each. With the turbine in a 4 mph breeze, that should increase to 2200 cfm each.
A third convectively driven component would be the opposite of the solar thermal towers, with evaporative cells at the top of a third tower, allowing chilled air to sink down the shaft and into the house, helping drive the circulation from the inlet side. I am not sure at this point whether this will be required.
The goal is to obtain free cooling. One last component for truly free cooling would be to install a 12 volt circulating pump in place of the 120v pump in the evaporative cooler cell, and feeding this pump off the solar electric input.
I suspect some of you all are wearying of yet more economic articles, but this one presents a *very good* overview of where we are and what is happening, without the laborious technical charts and fundamentals analysis of some recent articles:
And the solution is to prepare like you life depends upon it.
Because it does.
Oh and a little postscript for those hoping this is the "end of the age"--you may be right and I hope you are, but in case you and I are wrong about the "times and seasons", and we're not about to be teleported out of here in God's Big Transporter Beam, we *must* be prepared to take care of ourselves with what we have the ability to do for the rest of our natural lives.
The stakes are much too high to hope for a quick departure.
I figure there are only so many pics of the tower in progress that I can post with minimal difference (apparent). I added more cross bars, slowly as usual since I am now working thirty feet up, and because the temperatures have now risen to the "blue blazes" range, I spend as much time indoors cooling down as I do outdoors working.
I also tilled up one more bed and mowed two more in preparation for tilling. The tepary beans and Tohono corn planted last week are both coming up. The peanuts not yet.
Finally, I installed an AC unit for Momcat's computer room so she doesn't have to use the larger AC's to cool the whole house.
Yes, summer has most assuredly arrived here. It got up to 103 degrees at the farm, while it was 106 in Tucson. This weather must be taken as seriously as below zero temperatures in the northland. In hot weather I have worn the hooded white t-shirts that Momcat sewed for me for some time now. But this weekend I added a kerchief band around my head, wrapped around the hood and tied in back, which allowed me to pour water on the both without it getting in my eyes or running down my back. It made me look like King Fahd, but it worked like a charm! I had my own portable evaporative cooler on my head! Which is exactly how the Arabs use their headgear. It's a survival outfit, not a fashion statement, much as the parka is to the Minnesota native.
I felt a little self-conscious wearing it into town, but maybe I'll get used to it.
It is with a profound sense of loss that I learned today that the beloved Granny J of Walking Prescott passed away last week. I did not learn until today because I often catch up on a couple weeks worth of her posts at one time.
She had a keen eye for finding scenes of beauty and interest in the everyday that most people pass over, and seemed to relish the ability that blogging gave her to continue her lifetime vocation and avocation of journalism.
She will be missed, by me and many of her regular readers.
You know how volcanologists take seismic recordings and measurements of small elevation changes on the slopes of a volcano to estimate when an explosion may occur?
In addition to the technical analysis I linked to yesterday, here is some fundamentals analysis pointing in the same direction. There are lots and lots of links within this article for those of you inclined to dig deeper into this author's conclusions:
Time to take a short position on America. Time to begin the transition to a post-collapse world, while the opportunity to pre-position oneself still exists. Before the year is out, yes, maybe much sooner, we will see something that dwarfs October 2008. I am still looking at at the possibility of something this month or next month, based upon Herb Peters' analysis, though his is looking increasingly less likely.
Do you know what will be most nauseatingly ironic? When it blows, the talking heads and the Responsible Parties will all together in unison sing: "We Had No Idea This Would Happen! Really! Who Could Predict?!"
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