Five Seeds

So here is another challenge, mostly brought to you Kymber (who actually took me up on my Five Books challenge):  If you could only grow five things and take the seeds for future planting, what would they be?

A couple of rules:  for me, I am basing this on my experience in my climate and the success rate that I have had.  It may very well be different for other climates and areas (and frankly, other skill levels - mine seems rather poor).  And it is not intended as a total replacement for other dietary inputs, but very much as a subsistence option:  if I had too, I could get by on these (with a large enough plot).

1)  Garlic:  Garlic has been a perennial success story for me.  I have been able to grow it successfully in two different climates and in four different locations.  I may have never successfully grown anything else, but I have always been able to grow garlic.  And it is super good for you as well - from Wikipedia:

"When expressed per 100 grams, garlic contains several nutrients in rich amounts (more than 20% DV), including vitamins B6 and C, and the dietary minerals, manganese and phosphorus. Per 100 gram serving, garlic is also a moderate source (10–19% DV) of certain B vitamins, including thiamin and pantothenic acid, as well as the dietary minerals, calcium, iron, and zinc (right table).

You can fry it, pickle it, can it, and cook it with other things.  It is amazing.

2)  Black-Eyed Peas/Cow Peas:  This has come to me only in the last three years but has been a prolific and reliable producer in that time, often continuing to produce well into the winter.  Nutritionally, it has all the benefits of a legume and an alternate protein source:

"Black-eyed peas contain calcium (41 mg) folate (356 mcg), protein (13.22 g), fiber (11.1 g) and vitamin A (26 IU), among other nutrients, all for less than 200 Calories, in a 171-g, one-cup serving." (Wikipedia)

As a legume, it also adds nitrogen to the soil - so it is a contributor to continuing fertility.

3) Wheat/Barley:  I know many people exclude these from their diets because of gluten or digestion related issues.  I get that - but we (thankfully) had not had to deal with this issue and these grains are among my most successful gardening examples every year.  I have grown a number of different varies of wheat, some more successfully and less successfully.  My barley has always been Jet Barley, a black variety.  From Wikipedia:

Wheat:  In 100 grams, wheat provides 327 calories and is a rich source (20% or more of the Daily Value, DV) of multiple essential nutrients, such as protein, dietary fiber, manganese, phosphorus and niacin. Several B vitamins and other dietary minerals are in significant content. Wheat is 13% water, 71% carbohydrates, and 1.5% fat. Its 13% protein content is comprised mostly of gluten as 75-80% of total wheat protein,[51] which upon digestion, contributes amino acids for human nutrition.[9]"

Barley:  In a 100 gram serving, raw barley provides 352 calories and is a rich source (20% or more of the Daily Value, DV) of essential nutrients, including protein, dietary fiber, the B vitamins, niacin (31% DV) and vitamin B6 (20% DV), and several dietary minerals (table). Highest nutrient contents are for manganese (63% DV) and phosphorus (32% DV) (table). Raw barley is 78% carbohydrates, 1% fat, 10% protein and 10% water.

4) Pumpkins:  This is kind of a surprise, I am sure, and I would not have thought it before this exercise - but I have been able to grow pumpkins everywhere I have lived.  And of all the plants I have dealt with, they are the most prolific coming up from my compost - I have not "planted" pumpkins for 3 years but them come up every year based on the compost I put into my garden!  From Wikipedia:

"In a 100-gram amount, raw pumpkin provides 26 Calories and is an excellent source (20% or more the Daily Value, DV) of provitamin A beta-carotene and vitamin A (53% DV) (table). Vitamin C is present in moderate content (11% DV), but no other nutrients are in significant amounts (less than 10% DV, table). Pumpkin is 92% water, 6.5% carbohydrate, 0.1% fat and 1% protein (table)."

(The vitamin C is interesting - who knew?  And something we cannot produce ourselves).

5)  Okra:  Okra is my one item from living in a hot, humid climate as we do now.  If I can keep the pests off of it, it produces prolifically.  Okra is one of those things that is a bit of an acquired taste (most people have it pickled or fried) but per Wikipedia it too has nutritional benefits:

"Raw okra is 90% water, 2% protein, 7% carbohydrates and negligible in fat (table). In a 100 gram amount, raw okra is rich (20% or more of the Daily Value, DV) in dietary fiber, vitamin C and vitamin K, with moderate contents of thiamin, folate and magnesium ."

You will notice that a lot of garden traditionals - tomatoes, onions, peppers, corn, cucumbers - are not on my list.  It is not that I have not tried to grow them - I have, in some cases with moderate success.  But the exercise is for known producers, things that if I had to I could tear up my back yard and do a mass planting of.  And, if I look at the nutritional value, I am some moderately surprised to find out there is a fair amount of balance there.

What is on your list?

Five Books

Between two house fires and the ongoing movement of millions across the globe, a thought exercise came into my head:  If I could take only five books with me, what would I take?

I am a bibliophile:  I have (literally) hundreds of books, all of which I have read at least one time.  But in a clinch - if I could, for some reason, only take five, what would they be?  The one qualifier is that they have to be books that I own now:

1)  The Bible:  Front and center for any Christian.  My version in the NKJV, MacArthur study Bible - so it is almost cheating by getting a book and a commentary in one.

2)  A Book of Five Rings (Miyamoto Musashi):  The classic work on strategy (and from my point of view, the most approachable).  I have been reading Musashi for over 25 years and continue to discover new things in the text.

3)  Loeb Classical Library 283:  Marcus Porcius Cato and Marcus Terrntius Varro, On Agriculture:  Marcus Porcius Cato Censorius (Cato the Censor) was by all accounts a fine writer but very few of his works survive.  This work is an instruction manual on the ideal agricultural set up in Republican era Rome.  It is paired with Varro's work (slightly later in time but still within Republican/Augustan times) on ideal agriculture.  Not only is is well written, it gives insight into how things were accomplished when technology was limited (as an added bonus, it is in Latin and English so one could practice two languages!).

4) Pilgrim's Progress (John Bunyan):  The quintessential inspirational work on the Christian journey.  More enjoyable in the original 17th Century English.

5)  The Contrary Farmer's Invitation to Farming (Gene Logsdon):Gene Logsdon is my inspirational agricultural hero, a man who practiced what he preached about agriculture.  This was the first work of his I read and while I have enjoyed his others, this is my favorite.  Logsdon's book oozes not only with practical advice written in such a way to make the agricultural life seem desirable but permeated throughout his work is the underlying confidence that this is something that anyone can do.  It is as much an inspirational work as an instructional one.

Bonus Round:

6-8)  The Fellowship of the Ring/The Two Towers/The Return of The King (J.R.R. Tolkien):  What can one say about the trilogy from which virtually all other fantasies written since them find their root?  The story is grand but Tolkien's use of word and descriptions and the drawing in of a fully imagined past make one wish he had written books on all the rest as well.

9)  Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand):  It is rare that an economist and philosopher can write excellent fiction.  Rand's work (clocking in at about 1200 pages) is a well written and exciting mystery submerged in simple philosophical question: What would happen if the engine of the world - the economy, the producers - where turned off?  Her almost uncanny description which reflects the actual slow devolution of the West is almost eerie.

10)   The Last Days of Socrates (Plato, Penguin edition): This version contains four Socratic dialogues:  Euthyphro, The Apology, Crito, Phaedo - which are meant to cover the last days of Socrates' life from his way to trial to trial and sentencing to prison to his death.  Not only an excellent introduction to Plato but a moving consideration of man who knows himself to be in the right yet ultimately submits to the wrong to prove his philosophy.

What would be on your list?

Rainy Garlic

Spring Rain scattering

over the Winter Garlic

falling to the ground

People of Veneer

We have become a people of veneer.

We like veneer; one company (IKEA) has developed an entire industry around the use of it.  You can have bookshelves or dressers or cabinets in a plethora of woods styles - but that only go a 2 millimeters thick, laying over an inner core of composite pressed wood which is ugly, flaky, and heavy.

We have become the same.  

We are people of appearances and opinions.  Our appearances and our opinions run only as deep as our fragile emotions:   give us a perceived insult or express an opinion which we do not agree with and you will have  revealed a dross core of raw emotion that oozes out with a horrid stench, a sort of seething hatred of everything that infects all that we do until we have become so used to the smell that we scarcely notice it in our daily lives.

Oh, we see ourselves differently of course:  individuals of great learning and independence which come by how we are after great thought and carefully construed constructs.  It is those who scratch us that are the real enemy of human-ness and humanity, not ourselves in our lashing back and completely laying waste in a scorched earth policy.  

Somehow we become surprised in all of this, that the only language that anyone speaks anymore is that of anger and hatred, of the raised fist and the hostile word.  We have become not by what we are for or even what we are against but rather by maintaining the appearance of our veneer, by the volume of words and the fierceness of the rage against damage to it.

We become shocked when we meet people who are solid, who hold to their conviction in storms like cattle in a blizzard, who do not react with scorn and rage when their veneer is scratched. We are surprised because it turns out that the veneer is not just at the surface but runs right down to their core.  They can no more lose themselves in the opposition and trying times than a tree can shed the grain of its wood.

Where is the call to become a people of depth?  Where is the call to drain the swamps of our souls, to let the curing process produce in us a hardness and structural integrity that can weather the great challenges of our age.

The reality is that veneer seldom survives unscathed - but solid wood often does.

Finding The Graduate Student Within

One of the thing I have been struggling with is my ability to focus and learn.

Oh, I can do it in a diffuse, sort of non-demanding way.  I can do a little, read a little, think a little - but true progress always seems to elude me.  Part of it, to be fair, is my apparent lack of dedication to what I am trying to accomplish (to quote a wise guy - myself - "You make time for what you want to do).  But to be fair, part of it also feels like I am always fighting to find a little time to set apart to do these things - and not just the things I like to do:  even at my current employment, I find myself struggling to accomplish strategic things in the midst of trying to get the day to day things done.

So I have been thinking:  What could I change?  Is there ever a time that I was continuing to make progress in my life by learning and doing while still existing?

And then the thought came:  Ping!  Graduate School.

I was always rather good at school and studying.  I like the concept of study, test, measure your progress, get recognition (grade, GPA, etc.) and then to apply the knowledge.  Life tends not to work like that after schooling of course:  Learning is mostly OJT (On The Job) where you can fit it in, and the milestones (tests, grades) are almost never present.

And graduate school (for me) was all that and more, in spades.  I worked full time, studied full time, and had classes every MWF (for Japanese) and every evening 11800-2130 for coursework (which, I might add, is not the most conducive to learning when your workday starts at 0600).  But I did it.  And I learned.

Why?  True, there was those milestones - grades and ultimately a degree - that I could shoot for.  But there was also a certain hunger to succeed, to prove to myself that I could do it as well as (for me) the ever present hunger for more knowledge.

The reality is this:  those skills may be atrophied but they are still there.  And the person that did all that - me - is still around as well.  Yes, I may have lost some of that passion and fire but I have made for it (in theory) with wisdom and experience.

I need to find that hungry for knowledge graduate student again.  He is still here, hiding perhaps under  sedimentary layers of defeat and side turns that were not to be expected. I simply need to knock off the dirt and muck, clean him up a bit, and release him in the direction we need to be going.

Avoiding The News

So today in a fit of anguish and not caring, I completely avoided the news yesterday.

It is a little harder than you might think - especially if, like me, you are someone who almost religiously follows it.  But I had just reached the point of complete overload, between my own readings and listenings and the ongoing low chatter of everyone else reacting in the background.  So I consciously avoided looking at or listening to anything.

And here is what happened.

The sun continued to shine.  I still had a job.  The rabbits were glad to see me and Poppy was ready for her walk.  My garden continued to grow, with new seedlings pushing their heads out into the sun. I even learned something I did not know about how the Ancient Greeks and Romans regarded excellence.  My small projects that I like to work on all go done.

And what did not happen?  The world, so far as I know, has not ended.  The economy has not crashed (Or if it did, I will find out tomorrow when I cannot get into work).  And the events of the day, the great and the small, somehow failed to impact my corner of the universe.

An interesting exercise.  I wonder what happens if I try it again today?

The World Has No Place For Us

The World has no place for us:
The Dreamers,
The Gardeners,
The Listeners of the Unseen.

Oh, the World says they have a place, of course:
We use the same words, but speak a different language.
We see the same pictures, but see different things within them.
We conform to no side - and so we are neither.

We are the Invisible.

We have sunk within the cracks of sidewalk,
hidden away in the sunlit bits of soil amidst the grey landscape,
returned to the hills and forests:
sometimes only the wind knows where to find us.

Perhaps we will never come again into the light of the World,
into its entertainment and economy,
its vain pleasures and whitewashed matters of importance
that fade with every social trend.

The World has no place for us,
and yet we live on the fringes,
far more alive than the World.

A Slight Lurch In The Right Direction

So the relocation plunge may be accelerating slightly faster than I had anticipated.

I spoke with The Ravishing Mrs. TB two nights ago about it.  To be perfectly honest with you, I think she may be more fed up with the whole thing than I am at this point (which is saying something).  Yes, traffic is appalling and yes, in two years our traffic patterns should reduce once again when Nighean Dhonn is finished with her current school and we only have one school to drive to - but that does not fix the underlying problems that exist here.

What does that mean?  It means a minimum of 6 years suddenly shifted to 2 years.

That includes a number of assumptions of course, like college will continued to be covered and I can find a job somewhere else if needed (and in all fairness, in two years I should have a much clearer picture of how my current job is going) - or I figured out something else that can support us somewhere else (unlikely, but possible).  It also assumes that the economy here will stay at or above what it is now such that our home value will give us something when we sell.

But it is important because it can help to frame discussions, about what we have and what we do.  Certain things - like continuing to reduce debt and become more frugal - take precedence as a required item (that ship is turning - slowly, but it is turning).  Actually setting aside and saving money specifically for the purpose of (ultimately) not having to work becomes an item of discussion.  And a discussion about what we have and what we need also becomes an increasingly relevant discussion (one I have struggled with for years but now am finally having some clarity about).

It is still potentially a long way hence and fraught with possibles and maybe-nots.  But just the hint of change has a surprising power, a hint of energy I had not anticipated.  Perhaps after feeling being in a rut for so long has left you with few options, the whiff of a different future is enough to waken long slumbering dreams, like the sun on February's daffodils.

Of Chillers and Boilers

One of the things I inherited as a job responsibility when my company moved in November ("other duties as assigned") was the care and feeding of a boiler/chiller system and accompanying hardware and air handling units.  This is not the sort of thing I have had any experience with prior to this moment, but welcome to the world of "Congratulations on your promotion".  So I have been slowly learning, mostly by trial and error and observation of people that actually know what they are doing.

Among other things I learned (besides how to restart a boiler and where the reset switch is for a chiller) is that your hot and cold water loops need some level of care and attention, including draining and refilling and treating the water so they do not rust out your system.  And so, over the course of the last two days, I have been watching a system drain and refill and learn from our consultant about the ins and outs of water testing.

Today, as we were coiling the drain hose he said "You know what?  Most people have no idea what is over their heads and around them in these buildings.  We have a commercial customer (A large tech firm) in a 31 story building that have no knowledge of what is beyond the walls they see.  They ordered special air diffusers in a particular shape. Very difficult to service.  And none of the office types have any idea."

The more I thought about it, the more I thought how true it was.  I may not know a lot about such things, but I know more than some. Probably than many.  But there are many more that know nothing at all - oddly enough, I would argue that it is many of those that are on the forefront of the technological economy.  They can write a piece of code, design a rocket, create a new drug or medical device - but do so within the confines of facilities that they no idea how they operate to keep them cool in the summer and warm in the winter and the toilets and sinks working.  At best for many, I suspect the response would be "We have someone to take care of that".

These are not original thoughts, I realize.  Mike Rowe has probably done more than any other individual in my life time to draw attention to such trades and remind people that they exist and that they, too, are honorable work courses.

The part I find somewhat amusing, in a dark fashion, is that I continue to hear about advances in technology - Artificial Intelligence  or AI - that will possibly design other robots or rockets or create and eliminate thousands of compounds to identify the promising ones.  So many of the things that are replicated in offices.  I have yet to hear of such developments in these humbler trades.

On The Slow Tailing Off Of Involvement With Civilization

I am becoming increasingly mindful of the fact that by and large, I can get by without the bulk of civilization.

No, not materially really - not at this point anyway, and perhaps not at all to level I would wish.  But the longer I am here, the less and less reasons I find for wandering far from my home or going out on a regular basis.

Part of it, of course, is financial.  The less I leave the home the less I find I spend.  And part of it is simply that going anywhere (at least where we are now) involves a great deal of traffic, something I have never really been fond of (and find myself, in a curmudgeonly way, less so every year).  

But I think a great deal of it is simply that I find that civilization is rolling over me and passing me by.

There is a certain comfort in being a relic, a fossil, a thing which has suddenly lost most of the relevance of the civilized powers that be (and are trying to make the world in an image).  One can sink beneath the chatter of the ongoing events, ignore the breathless articles about how society is changing (always, seemingly, for the better) and the future is inevitably bright (although it never really actually seems to work out that way), and simply go about living one's life.  Good heavens, as I sit and think about it the very real possibility exists that one could, with a little it of effort, be completely oblivious to the world and its happenings.

But this is somewhat hard to do in the midst of civilization.  The world presses in on you in almost every way and at almost every level.  One can consciously concentrate on being invisible  (what would the modern version of The Invisible Man be? Someone who is completely off the Interweb?  Would they, too, eventually go mad in the world of the connected?) but the amount of time and energy spent on maintaining this level of invisibility is draining, like a Romulan cloaking device that draws some much energy you cannot use it all the time.

There are other things, I am sure, to be out away from it all.  Perhaps the press of needing to interact with someone can become overwhelming.  Maybe the disconnectedness of the world as it continues on would drive one to distraction.  

But how much more "terrible"  can it really be?   In the age of connectedness and control, the true rebel is the one who rejects both of these as the requirement of existence in the modern age.  The true counterculture, as always, is to not be part of the culture at all.

I am, for the moment, far away from this place and state of mind.  But even I am finding more and more reasons not to go out, not to tune in, not to plug in.  And perhaps, given my current life situation, that is what has to be at this point in time and space:  a certain level of involvement but with increasing levels of withdrawal.

As my hero Herrick Kimball would say, it is as much a place of mind as it is a place that is.

Fireflies

Earth bound meteors
shed their erratic warm light
beneath star's cold light

Spring Garden 2017

So most of Spring 2017 Garden planting is done.

(I'd post pictures, but you would pretty much see flattened mulch, so I will spare you the photo op.)

What did I plant?  Beans.  Lots of beans.  And Black Eyed Peas and okra.  And two kinds of peppers, criollo and Korean (I am getting peppers this year, even if I have to plant and keep them indoors). Some Sweet Sorghum as it did well last year and I would like to try my hand at possibly using it for beer (there is such a thing) or at least trying to see if I can do something with the stems - sorghum, if you did not know, can be pressed and the resulting juice boiled down for sweetener.  Add to this a rather healthy crop of volunteer pumpkins and we are on our way.

What am I still lacking?  A tomato plant or two and some cucumbers.  And that will probably be it for this first time re-imagined garden.  I will need to set up an actual watering jig for when we are gone (not going to make that mistake again).  I have no sign of our local rabbit population so assuming the garden survives a precocious puppy, we should be in good shape.

The onions are still doing their thing and the garlic seems to want start to fall (I am going to try to mulch it up a bit and see if I cannot convince it to stay for a bit longer).  The wheat (two varieties) have headed up and are starting to turn.  I finally transplanted some leeks in hopes of saving them; a number of them have taken nicely.  The spinach and lettuce are flowering (seed saving, here we come) and the lemon and lime trees continue to put on leaves and hopefully fruit.

It is not the best position I have been in to roll into the summer gardening season, but far from the worst I am have ever been.

An Unexpected Detour

I had not intended to be here.

This morning I woke up, fully intending and prepared to attend church this morning.  But we had an alarm - a power failure at my work facility.  Someone always has to go check those when they happen.  Someone named TB.

That is fine, I thought.  I will go there, check it out, come home, and still be on my way to church in plenty of time. 

So I went and sure enough, the power had kicked back on by the time I got there.  I walked around and made sure all the units were on and the generator was in cool down mode.  Feeling accomplished, I sent out the results of my find, returned home, and started getting ready for church.

Just as I was turning into the driveway for church, another alert.  One of the units had lost communication.  Sigh.

I waffled - for a moment - about what to do.  Surely an hour would not affect anything.  And waffled some more.  And realized that it was part of my job to check such things - so I made a long loop and came back out to work. 

Sure enough, a breaker was tripped when the second power event occurred.  A - 80 C Freezer, which typically has pretty valuable and hard to replace samples in it.  Found the breaker, restarted the unit, and am now watching it to make sure it comes back on line.

Now, I am somewhat glad that I came in.  The unit lost approximately 5 C over the 30 minutes it was down.  Add another 1.5 hours to that for church, and that is a loss of 20 C - not completely a loss, but certainly a lot more difficult to return from and a lot less time to figure out other options.

But I am bothered.  I intended to go to church - in fact, I probably needed very much (for my soul's sake) to be here.  But instead I was confronted with this situation that needed to be resolved, which is my responsibility.

Understand, I do not in any way think my salvation hinges on a single missed attendance from church.  What bothers me is that I intended to do something spiritual and instead find myself doing something practical.

There is a lesson here - I believe that there are no coincidences and that this event was surely allowed to occur.  My concern is that there was or is something I am supposed to be taking away from this, something important - much more than simply watching a unit come back into line.

On Turning 50

So yesterday I turned 50.

Rather a significant sounding accomplishment, for something that really only constitutes simply being alive:  I have lived in two millennia, two centuries, and six decades.  Yeah, that makes me sound old.

For some reason this one has bothered me more than the others.  I am not sure why - I do not feel particularly less physically fit than usual and my health is good.  It was just a mental thing, but it was burden on my mind.

Then I realized it has nothing to do with me at all. It had more to do with my oldest daughter graduating from high school.  That single event makes me feel old - not because of anything I have done but because 18 is the great dividing a line in our society between children and adulthood.  The starting of someone's life - especially someone that you have known literally their whole life - makes the passage of time seem all the more daunting.

But my maundering about it will not change anything at all. 50 is here, whether I wish it or not.  And is some ways it is not very bad at all.

Happy birthday to me.

Looking Ahead

So one of the more interesting things, now that we have a daughter bound for college, is that we are entering a new life phase.  Not just watching them all fly off - which will happen (one way or the other) over the next decade.  It is also the realization that with that and other situations, our life will change somewhat dramatically.

The question is, how do we manage that change?

If you are wondering what the plan is (so glad you asked), I am working on a number of assumptions which may or may not be true (but frankly, I cannot plan for the End of Civilization War that may or may not start tomorrow or next week or never):

1) The locale in which we are currently living will rapidly price us out of the market to live here.  Just on the property tax assessment alone will mean at 45% increase (if the average holds true).  Add to that all the other costs of living in an urban area and suddenly "long term" becomes a meaningless phrase

(The Ravishing Mrs. TB and I were talking about this the other night.  We are both ready to move:  She because of the traffic and crowdedness, I because of the traffic and cost and people. Frankly, I am not 24 anymore:  paying for the privilege of living in "A Cool City" is not really attractive).

2)  This leaves us with two choices: either to relocate to another large urban area (because that is where the jobs in my industry are) or figure out a way to make do on a vastly reduced income.

That is a hard truth, but it is truth.  Or it could happen a third way:  laid off again with no job to be found.  I am starting to reach the point where, due to my oncoming age, this is a real possibility.

(It has happened to The Ravishing Mrs. TB's manager's husband:  20 years with a company, laid off, and now cannot find a job in the high tech industry.  He is battling an age barrier (mine or almost there) and the fact that he does not have a college degree in IT because he started before there was such a thing.  His only job offer was a job paying half of what he previously earned.  Sobering stuff.)

So hard and true - but this can be planned for and managed.

3)  The world will be very different.  I am not sure how (even I cannot pierce that veil) but sincerely doubt it will not be for the better.  If the trends I wrote of yesterday are any indication, even just getting by could be infinitely harder.

4)  Interests and desires will change - for example, it is more than likely that Na Clann will all live somewhere than where we currently reside.  I am sure someone (The Ravishing Mrs. TB) would like to go travel to see them.

4)  All of that said, what skills, attributes and (frankly) assets does 10 year older TB have to have to be ready for that moment?

That, of course, is something that I am working through and on.  But I have a couple of thoughts:

- He is not going to want a house payment - or really debt of any kind.
- He is likely to do some of the things he does now but perhaps not all of them.
- There is going to need to be a higher level of self reliance.
- He will have to plan for a life without the current career of his choice (which may not be all bad).

Still a work in progress, of course.  But there is a transition occurring as I write. I have missed some of the ones that happened before.  I cannot afford to miss this one.

Much Longer?

I do not know how long we have - 4 years?  8?  Maybe not that.  But fundamentally every current running through this nation is hurdling towards a tyranny.

You remember tyrannies, of course.  The ones where beliefs that are not officially are ruthlessly shut out, opinions which do not match that of the tyrant are silenced (by word or otherwise), where the rule of law is subverted and violence becomes merely an extension of political well?

You will recall the might of Imperial Rome, of Dynastic China and Feudal Japan and the Aztec Empire, of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany and Cambodia and Communist China and even more recently, Venezuela.  The sorts of places where thousands or millions die.

And we are heading there as fast as we can.

Oh, it is for the best of reasons, of course.  We need to be tolerant, to protect our feelings, to practice the "societal good" that is defined not by a set of principles but by how people "feel".   And so certain things cannot be said, certainly beliefs cannot be mentioned or practiced in public, certain freedoms must be set aside for some in the call of the good of all.

The people that are driving this, of course, have no idea what they are really calling down on themselves.  They believe they are doing the right thing; unfortunately in these circumstances, the right thing only works as long as your beliefs are in power.  Sooner or later those who are in power become all about their power and any beliefs or actions that do not comport with that - even if they did once upon a time - will be dealt with harshly.

Will everywhere be hit at the same time?  Of course not.  The urban centers, easiest to control, will be the ones most controlled - and most at risk of turning into a disaster.  The hinterlands, the outer places, often have ways of slipping underneath the scrutinizing forces so concerned with uniformity of belief and action.  At least until the inevitable end comes, when the government which was originally hailed as "of the people" is torn apart in civil strife.  Starvation, civil war, death, disease, destruction of civil life, a destruction of the things that make life pleasant:  these are the outcome of the tyranny so many seem to wish to hasten.

Oddly enough, it is never those that have lived under a tyranny that are eager to bring them to pass.  It is only those that, naive in their understanding of human nature and unappreciative of the nature of what freedom is, that rub the lamp and make the wish - only to hear the genie laugh with evil glee as he begins his incantation.

On Viewers

So once upon a time I had another website.

It was my "professional" website - the one that was going to propel me to writing greatness (after this one failed to work out quite as I had planned, of course).  Originally I had started writing career related items, hoping to spark an interest by publishing views on my industry - hard hitting insightful ways to do things.  Then, when that failed, I went with publishing items on success and achievement - turns out there are far more relevant voices on that subject as well.

Finally, as a last ditch effort, I started publishing short pithy parables.  It was something that I enjoyed writing, and I thought they were different, fresh, and unique (arguably, they still are all that).  But they, too, got lost in the Interweb chatter - and finally after 3 years of writing them, I finished in November.  Nothing new since then.

Last night, on a lark I checked how the site was doing:

You will notice that according the website, I periodically get over 500 hits a day.  But looking at unique visitors, you see a different story:

A high of 54.

I post this, not from a sense of sadness (I have made my peace with the fact that writing will only ever be a hobby) but rather from a snapshot of the Interweb and how it works.  My website, essentially, has become a stop off point for spammers, a place to hit on a semi-regular bases in hopes of getting to post a listing for something or other.

It will stand as a monument, mostly to myself and a fine reminder of the fact that numbers really never are what they appear.

Difficult versus Impossible

Irrationally Unmotivated

I realized this morning, getting ready for work, that I am unmotivated.

Oh, I have lots of things to do of course.  It is just that there is the increasing sense of moving from one required task to another instead of a purpose and action to them.  Marking time, one might almost call it.

I worry that this stems from a sense of "doing what you have to, blooming where you are planted." Yes, I get the application of that in real life - at the same time, I am wondering if it also can lead to the development of a essentially a programmed life instead of a life lived (The two outcomes are not mutually exclusive).

Every time I get in this state of mind, I have flashes of "initiative", where (mostly out of frustration)  I get aggravated enough to take action.  I say "aggravated" because there is a certain sense that it stems from an emotional area I usually do not find myself dwelling in. Then I suddenly feel guilty that I was this emotional and completely fall back into my previous passive state of mind.

Which gets me nowhere, of course.

In one sense this strikes me as completely ridiculous, this back and forth of passivity interrupted by brief moments of frenzied acivity.  It does not make for a lot of forward progress - but neither do I necessarily feel good about things when I make progress in that state.  To be frank, it feels like I am angry all the time (or perhaps frustrated - but angry is how I feel).

And thus, irrational motivation.  I get motivated, but it is scarcely the sort of thing that seems sustained or even productive in the long term.  Precisely what I do not need, of course: I need the sort of motivation that will be sustainable and will not leave me in a state of constantly feeling guilty or relapse into periods of "maintenance" that will eventually push me back the other way.

It seems a loop as I write this, an endless loop that prevents me from actually making any progress while feeling as if I am either doing "the right thing" or am pushing limits.

If a loop, how do I break it?

If a behavior, how do I modify it?

And if I am guilty when I try to make progress, why is that and where is it coming from?

Picking Up The Sword

April Sunset

Sometimes there are benefits to cold fronts:

A Dwindling Need for Things

Sometime between last year and this year, we seem to have passed the great divide of Needing More Things.

I am not sure when it happened.  I wish that I could point to a day, a moment, some even that would make the demarcation tangible.  But that simply did not seem to happen.

I can see the evidence of it, of course.  Actual, practical discussions about spending and money.  Edging around the discussion of how we will pay for a retirement and help support college (3 of them, mind you).  Which wonderfully focuses the mind, as it turns out.

Practically speaking, every expense now gets questioned.   Even previously simple tasks like shopping for food becomes a contest in "Why did we buy that?" and "Do we need it?"

It has turned out to be a good personal exercise for me as well.  In a way, refreshing:  I can almost the material desires peeling away from my soul.  The need for money is there, but not the need for things to buy with the money.

My own personal list has dwindled significantly.  The remaining things I want are expensive (mostly iai related) or long term development related (such as bees and a beehive and the land to go with it).  Beyond those types of things and a simple desire for books, there really is not much else.

Well, one thing I suppose: Financial Freedom.  The power to not have to go day after day and do that which matters little to me, and certainly the desire to be free of wagery.

Hmm.  Perhaps then this development is the first step to bigger and better things...

Unsettled

On the whole I avoid talking about or considering current events.  I find that in general it tends to make for either breathless blogging (where every next event is "the great plunge") or blogging that is irrelevant in years to come (for example, read any blog in the last eight years that repeatedly predicted martial law).  And ultimately that is hardly what I am hoping to accomplish here.

That said, something feels afoot in the world. 

We have not been this close to an actual outbreak of hostilities with North Korea in all the years I can remember.  Whether you are for or against, we have re-entered the Syrian Civil War.  Turkey has essentially voted itself willingly into a dictatorship.  And acts of violence seem to have become almost common place in the daily news, to the point of not even causing the slightest stir when we read about them.

Or, as that great philosophy collective Aerosmith once said.  "Something's wrong with the world today, I don't know what it is".

In the back of my mind it feels like a threshold has been crossed, the sort of thing that one only realizes has occurred looking back.  The great events of one's lifetime are almost never started in such a way that one looks and says "Ah, this is it".  For the most part they start as small events, perhaps far away, that only resolve into a the great changing event after time has passed.  Like small rills that turn into large rivers, the source is often only guessed and and intuited, not seen fully.

I have honestly started to look at individual events and say "What if this is the last time I ___?  What if this is the last time I speak to _____?"  I would say that I am working to get my house in order - and it is true - but is some ways getting it in order simply means making do with what we have (for better or worse, we finally seem to have turned the corner on the acquisition of things and are starting to move the other way).

There is a rather unreal peace about this entire thing, oddly enough.  In one very real sense I have been confronted (rather visibly, as it were) that He is ultimately in control of everything in my life; in the other, there is an acknowledgement that all of these events are far beyond any ability of mine to influence.  What will come will come; my job is to face it head-on.

All civilizations crumble and die of course, but up to this point we have only had these happen regionally.  For the first time ever, we have the opportunity to observer (perhaps unfortunately firsthand) the decline and fall of a global civilization.  An unsettling thought indeed.

Rejoice!

Now Mark 16:1–8; Luke 24:1–10; John 20:1–8after the Sabbath, as the first day of the week began to dawn, Mary Magdalene Matt. 27:56, 61and the other Mary came to see the tomb. And behold, there was a great earthquake; for Mark 16:5; Luke 24:4; John 20:12an angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat on it. Dan. 7:9; 10:6; Mark 9:3; John 20:12; Acts 1:10His countenance was like lightning, and his clothing as white as snow. And the guards shook for fear of him, and became like Rev. 1:17dead men.

But the angel answered and said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for He is risen, Hos. 6:2; Ps. 16:10; 49:15; Matt. 12:40; 16:21; 17:23; 20:19as He said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay. And go quickly and tell His disciples that He is risen from the dead, and indeed Matt. 26:32; 28:10, 16; Mark 16:7He is going before you into Galilee; there you will see Him. Behold, I have told you.”

So they went out quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy, and ran to bring His disciples word. 

And as they went to tell His disciples, behold, Mark 16:9; John 20:14Jesus met them, saying, “Rejoice!” So they came and held Him by the feet and worshiped Him. Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid. Go and tell Ps. 22:22; John 20:17; Rom. 8:29; (Heb. 2:11)My brethren to go to Galilee, and there they will see Me.”

- Matthew 28:  1-10, NKJV

_________ Saturday

It struck me yesterday that we do not have a name for the Saturday of Easter.

That is a bit odd to me, because we have names for the rest of that week: Palm Sunday, Maunday Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Sunday. But not Saturday.

It is true that of the days of Holy Week, it is the one we know the least about. “They rested according to the Sabbath” is what is written. But we can theorize from what we know, of course: His followers, being observant Jews, would have stayed wherever they were, perhaps not eating or at least not cooking one. They were most likely numb and filled with grief: their Master, the one whom they had thought to be the Messiah, was dead and in the tomb. Three years of following, the triumphal entry of Palm Sunday – all blown away on the winds of mob rule and Temple and Roman politics. And perhaps more than a hint of fear as well – the Temple guards that came for Jesus might come for them after the Sabbath and they knew all too well how that had ended.

We should also be less than honest to think that the Devil was also not hammering the disciples at this point (Should we be surprised? Does Satan not hammer us at our weak and low points as well?): All the feelings of human grief and sorrow and failure, compounded with the powers of Hell bearing down on them, mocking their faith and their decisions and hopes, showing them only a future of helplessness and hopelessness. “Strike the shepherd and the sheep will scatter” - and the Devil would chase Christ's followers to ground.

They did not know the ending at that point as we do of course: the stone rolling away, the empty tomb, the Angels, and the Resurrection of Christ. That was all invisible to them in the darkness of that Sabbath, a Sabbath (for tall intents and purposes) without any promise. And perhaps that is why ultimately the Church has never mentioned it beyond one of the three days of the tomb: it ill comports with the message of Easter.

But it seems to me that we do ourselves a disservice in failing to recognize it as part of the Easter experience itself.

We are quick to note the horror and seeming end at the Resurrection but without recalling that Saturday (the only twenty-four hour period of the three days) we minimize the lost condition of ourselves and all humanity. Because for that one full day, with the hours slowly sliding by in the silence of Sabbath, the disciples found themselves completely and utterly without hope.

Which makes the following day all the more remarkable.

Slow and Focused

I do the best work when I work in a slow focused manner.

This is a bit of a consciousness awareness thing - you would think after all these years I would have gotten that - but it has been borne out time and time again in the recent past.  If I can focus on one thing to the exclusion of all else and work on it in a manner that is methodical (read "slow") I can do it without any errors.

Great. Self awareness. You think it would be more useful, correct?

It is, but it has two major issues confronting it.

The first is, of course, that we live in a driven age.  Speed is the nature of the work world - first to market and that sort of thing.  The luxury of having the time and focus to work on one thing at a time would simply seem to be that: a  luxury.  And in an age of "multi-tasking" (which all the writing and research say is terrible but all employment world continues to love) the concept of presenting "attention to detail given sufficient time" is not going to win a lot of applause.

The second issue is much more personal.  I can take the time and do things right - but time is the commodity we never have enough of.  Accepting this about myself - and it really seems to be true - there are certain implications - like the amount of work I can accomplish well will drop by a factor of 10.  The amount of things I can do will also drop accordingly.

But is that such a bad thing?  I have written how I feel the circle of my world contracting; if it contracted into lesser things but much better done would that be so awful?

It is a matter of pride:  of admitting that I have this limitation and then working on it as a strength not as an impediment.  Hard to swallow, perhaps.  But perhaps far more stress reducing in the long run.

Most of My Friends Are Invisible

Over the last few months one of the things I have noticed about my life with its change into a new position is that my circle of friends has drastically lessened.

It is a bit odd, this thing called work.  Spend enough time at a position and the people you work with end up becoming your friends, simply because of the amount of time you spend with them:  year after year, brick after brick slabbed on until you have a wall you have built with others.  But then one or the other leaves, and suddenly the proximity is completely gone.

I suppose it is no-one's fault, of course:  we live in a busy age and for the most part there is always something that is there to take up the space.  But it is an odd feeling, after so many years of a daily routine and daily interactions, to find one's self isolated.  Alone, as it were.

My circle has shrunk more drastically than I had anticipated.  Beyond the immediate circle of my family and a much reduced group of coworkers (small company), I physically see a handful of people.  My iai dojo.  The regulars at the rabbit shelter.  My church group.  Even my throwing friends.  But all of these are for short periods of time only.

Isolation sometimes feel like being put on a shelf - and forgotten.  And while I do not fancy myself a people sort of person, it is surprising how the lack of meaningful emotional interaction makes one feel reduced.

And then I realized - most of my friends are invisible.

Well, not quite invisible - but certainly not present.  I talk to them almost every day.  It is just that they are not in my physical line of sight.

You all, of course - those who read and those who comment.  The folk on whose blogs I comment.  Even the friends I have made - some surprisingly good ones - on something as trendy as Facebook.

We talk about important things,  We laugh.  Sometimes we mock in a kind way.  And we support where necessary and coach where needed.

I realized my life is full of people.  Just people that I for the most part do not and may never actually see.

Perhaps the concept of "imaginary friends" was more trend setting than we realized.

Depression Again

Occasionally I still find myself in the throes of depression.

I am not really sure what starts the episodes – not so much something weather or some other environmental factor, that I can tell. Sometimes it does not even seem to be related to anything that is currently going on in my life. It can be a thing as random as a thought or a song, a turn of phrase that sets my mind running.

My depression also seems to have changed in how it manifests itself as well. Before it seemed to be this overwhelming sense of grief and hopelessness. Now, it seems to just to be this quiet little sense of despair that hangs with me throughout the day.

It is not crippling, at least not like it used to be. I can go for hours or days with it hardly interfering with my life. I have learned to (or at least it feels like I have learned) to manage it in a way that most people would not recognize that it is going on. Soldiering through, or some such phrase to cover such events, the expected course for something that is hardly visible to most.

It seems much more poignant that it used to be as well, as if it were hitting on the touch points of my soul, an old enemy that knows how to maximize the sadness and pain. Little things, forgotten things – the way the wheat comes up in the pots, a song from the long ago (always the music), a writing exercise that suddenly explodes in flashes of emotional ruin, leaving a stark trail of painful words on a page and me reeling.

I do not know really what to do about it. It does not cripple me to the point of not being able function, it is just more of low grade problem: the knee the hurts when you walk on it or the speck in your eye that will not seem to flush out.

It mutes the color of living – but then again, even in the muted season of winter, one can still find beauty.

Storm

The darkening clouds

and wind acts as heralds to

thunder and lightning.

Garden 2017: Compost Up

So here is the stretch of ground called my garden:

Just beyond the farther patch of green (my wheat) is where the Spring/Summer Garden will be:

My compost bin is a pretty simplistic affair:  a plastic trash can out in the sun.  I have loading it for about three years.  Let us see what is inside!

The Supervisor is not impressed:

I needed to shovel off the upper level, which has the more recent materials:

Underneath?  Black Gold!

It is much less liquid and most than last time - which is better.

My method is fairly simplistic.  Pull back the layer of wood litter and rabbit droppings and hay

And put the compost on and recover:

Sometimes odd things find their way in:

I still ended up with about half of the compost bin full - which I will use when I start on the current garden:

My side cracked a little bit when I removed some compost:

Being thrifty, I sealed it with glue:

The non-rotted material was reloaded.

And here is the finished garden:

We are supposed to have thunderstorms and downpours Monday and Tuesday, so hopefully we will be able to plant this weekend.

Wandering Attention

Two days ago the random thought came to me in the midst of my job “Is what you are doing critical to the task at hand?”

I have the rather dubious pleasure of becoming easily bored, and thus easily distracted. It never helps, of course, when things I am working on are not the most exciting in the world (like, for example, record review). I can sustain the effort for a while, and then my mind starts looking for other things to keep its interest.

But there was the question: “Is what you are doing critical to the task at hand?”

“Well of course not” I responded (to myself). “Following up on something more interesting has little to do with what I am actually doing.”

“Then why are you doing it?” came the response.

All of a sudden my mind started working in high gear, looking at my tendency to let myself get distracted from what I was currently doing. If I was honest, what I always distracted myself with was of lesser value than the item I was originally doing. Why is that, I wonder? And more importantly, how do I stop it?

So yesterday I took one step forward. I worked on what I was working on. If a thought wandered into my mind, boredom trying to get me to turn my head, I either politely ignored it or wrote it down on a piece of paper.

I do not know that I made a fantastic amount of progress. What I do know is that I got the task done more quickly than in my usual fashion. Which then caused me to have the thought of looking around at my life and realizing that I am often too distracted by what I should be doing with lesser things.

Call it focus. Call it attention to the task at hand. Call it not giving your lesser side quarter. Whatever it is, it made a difference.

Focus on the critical. First things first.

A Certain Degree of Specialization

I realized this weekend that my areas of generalization are starting to contract a bit.

Part of it is really just simply the factors of time and money.  I find that my time, although differently distributed since I changed jobs, has not experienced a net increase in terms of availability.  As a result, when to do certain activities has become a bit circumscribed (after all, throwing heavy things above your head after dark is not a recommended activity).

Money.  Suffice it to say with the continued increase in taxes and upcoming college phase (we could have college expenses for the next 10+ years), budgeting matters more than ever.  And thus, the likelihood that a new activity will be "invested in" at some level based on a passing interest becomes less and less.

But there is another factor that I am coming to appreciate:  the power of expertise and specialization.

Being a beginner at everything gets to be discouraging at some point.  One begins to desire some level of expertise at a thing, from the practical sense of accomplishing something and the emotional sense of being able to accomplish it.  This requires a level of focus on a particular set of activities - and thus by default, a degree of specialization in them.

I have been considering this over the past weekend as I was about my business, taking stock of what is going on in my life.  Simply put, I could just work on the interests I have going on currently in my life for the rest of my life and not reach the outer limits of any of them.  I could probably also scale back my energy and time on some and still have enough to keep me interested and engaged.

Do not get me wrong: I will probably always be a generalist at some level, if for no other reason than being able to do a great many things turns out to useful.  But I also need to make peace with the fact that in order to advance meaningfully in some things, there must be focus and specialization - and a corresponding change in focus and energy.

2017 Assessment

So today I got my assessment from the county for this year's property taxes.  According to the county, in approximately 4 years the value of my home has increase a whopping 44%.

What?

I know what you are thinking when you see that number: surely you must have improvements to your home!  Or your neighborhood is just blossoming with others who are making improvements!

Sadly, no.  The only "improvements" we have made are to fix the garage door that destroyed itself and the two fences that collapsed this year.  Beyond that, not a darn thing.  And our neighborhood pretty much remains the mid 1990's neighborhood that it was when we moved here.

I am not sure what this will do to our property taxes other than hike them. which means we will be in arrears (again) for the escrow fund where such money is stored and means our house payment on the whole will go up (again).  Our payment has increased 12.5% since we moved in.

Oh there is a good side, I suppose.  My theoretical equity has gone up from 6% to 37% in the same period of time.  Not that I feel it, of course:  it is all lost money until such a time as it is cashed out and even then buying and selling in the same market means that any such equity is essentially lost - it would taking relocating to a new, cheaper market to recapture it.

But it lays open a ticking time bomb for our finances:  at 12.5% over four years our payment is increasing by 3.125% a year.  Another 10 years at that rate - the outside amount we would have to stay here - and our payment is up another 31.25%, or possibly 42.5% all together.

That, my friends, is simply unsustainable.  Even with a crazy increase in value.

Choosing A College

So it is college choosing season.

Nighean Gheal is going to go away to college - does not seem real, does it?  When I officially started this blog she was 6 years old, if you can believe it.  Time, it seems, has a way of getting away from us.

The process of applying to college has changed drastically since the days that I applied.  Everything is on-line, of course.  And all the application fees have kept track with inflation.  And the competition (I am sure) is far more difficult - she has applied to 9 colleges, I only applied to three.

The end of March is the last date of the notifications, at which time one has approximately a month to select the college of choice.  It is a two fold decision, as you might suspect:  on the one hand is the question of where one wants to go, on the other the question of what it costs.  

Oddly enough, the decision is not as clear cut as it might seem: for example, the out of pocket cost of our local State University is almost the same as the cost of going to a fairly well known Private University.  Which is somewhat silly to me, if I stopped and thought about it for a moment.

(Yes, I know, you are asking about Community College.  Her concern - legitimate, I think - is that to go to a community college is to completely wipe away all the work she put in to get to where she is now.  Which is actually true, if you think about it - the record is expunged the day you walk across the high school stage).

Where does this end up?  I am not really sure.  We still have to find out about potential financial arrangements from one school (alas, I am not overly hopeful).  But I think the decision will be rather clear cut after that for purely practical reasons. 

On the one hand, this feels like a huge decision to ride on the outcome of such simple things.  On the other, at least more thought seems to be going into this than when I decided to choose a school.

Patient Progress

100,000

So sometime in the wee hours of the morning I surpassed 100,000 recorded views (since May 2010, I gather):

A milestone sorts, I suppose - although to be clear, I do not get paid or otherwise rewarded for the views.

Interestingly, my next biggest group of hits after the US is from Russia.  Perhaps I am an underground hit?

What was truly interesting was the distribution of browsers.  Firefox was number one.  I really have no idea why that is (I am an Opera man myself at this point):

None of this matters in the long run - for the most part, none of us are doing this for money.  Still, a milestone of sort  - and milestones should be recognized, if nothing else.