Down And Up Again: A Grand Canyon Holiday - Down

 We depart the hotel at 0500 in two vehicles, a van with most of the party and a truck, which will be left near where we come out of the Canyon so we can easily get the vehicle. My brother-in-law and I take the truck, putting us with Storyteller.

I ask him how he got to doing this – I am always interested in people who seem to be living their dream. In his case, he grew up hiking and came to Flagstaff to hike and work. He started leading tours and worked as an electrician until he realized that if he wanted to just be a guide, now was the time. And so he went full time into guiding – this was his 25^th trip into the Canyon in 2021, and he had just come out of the Canyon the day before.

I admire people that have the courage to live their dreams.

As we drive the 90 minutes to the Grand Canyon, the darkness which hides the pine forests gives way to the darkness of the desert as we enter the Navajo Nation. We start gaining elevation as we go up, past the semi-permanent tourist booths, until we catch sight of the edge of the Canyon.

After entering the park – there is no-one else behind us – we stop at the Desert View Watchtower for a bathroom break and a quick breakfast. This will be the last bathroom we see for four days. We drive on to the trail head, passing two small herds of doe Elk and their half-grown offspring. I had no idea there were elk here.

The trail head for the New Hance Trail is not a remarkable thing, a pullout to the side of road with no sign. It is done, the Commissioner tells us, to essentially keep away the unprepared. They go to drop off the van and the truck off, leaving us to patiently wait in the cool morning air.

They return. We shoulder up our packs, grab our hiking poles, and head out, the world – and the InterWeb – dropping off behind us as soon as we leave the rim.

From the top of the trail, the Canyon stretches out before us, looking all the world like it does from any of the view points. The Commissioner starts down, and we follow.

I quickly learn that the New Hance is not really a trail, but a route – the difference being that trails are maintained, while routes are not. The path itself is literally about two of my feet wide. One rapidly learns to spending most of one’s time looking down at the path and the place one’s neighbor has just been. The pack is an unconscious weight on my back.

The down becomes steeper as we step along paths that two days previous I would have said were fit only for mountain goats. We are (I come to learn) traversing the side of the Canyon, slowly moving along a side of it. The walls are not steep, but looking to my left all one sees is down. I learn to lean towards the cliff to avoid overbalancing.

The world becomes a haze of walking looking down, stepping over and down. We stop to take water breaks and look around – Storyteller encourages us to do so from time to time, to remember why we are actually here. The Canyon continues to open up as we go down farther, the formation called Coronado rising to our right.

We stop for lunch, an affair of jerky, almonds, dried apricots, and string cheese. This is food I love anyway, so finding an excuse to eat it is delightful. We eat there, in the shadow of the Canyon, packs off and taking photos of the grandeur around us.

The rocks that were just bands at the top have begun to resolve themselves into layers: red, yellow, orange, green, pink, even purple. Coming from lands of deeper soils, I am hard pressed to think of a time I have seen rocks in such an array of color. Rocks are to the Grand Canyon what loam is to the Great Plains: Ever present, underlying everything.

After lunch, we start the Red Wall Descent, so named as we are descending through a red layer of rock. This is another time of high attention, careful step and pole placement, and looking twice as one steps. At some point I suspect all of us go down on our butts. It is steep, but eventually it bottoms us out into Red Rock Canyon.

By the time we reach near the base of the Canyon, shadows are beginning to draw out. We have had an accident: one of the hikers has fallen and although there are no broken bones, it has definitely slowed them down. We will camp here in the Red Rock Canyon and make the Colorado River tomorrow morning.

The Commissioner and Storyteller have a routine in place: Storyteller goes down to the seep at the base of the campsite – the first water we have seen outside of our own supplies today – and begins the process of filling the filter bags, hanging them, and then filtering the water into recycled Arizona Iced Tea jugs. This will become a staple of our time making camp or resting anywhere there is water available. The Commissioner pulls out his cooking gear – a Jet Boil, a coffee pot, a small gas burner with a frying pan and pot and wrap around aluminum circle to retain the heat – and begins preparing dinner. These will be our sole cooking gear this trip.

As they cook and prepare, we set up our campsites. The tent they have lent me is quite east to assemble and within 10 minutes I am assembled, pad down, and sleeping bag in place. The ability to drive stakes into the ground is non-extant as we are essentially on solid rock. After set up, we wander about a bit, looking at the red rock which gives this campsite is name.

My feet have developed to blisters, one on each heel. This is an odd place for them to develop. I wonder if it has to do with how I was placing my feet as I came downhill.

Dinner tonight is pasta with pesto and tomatoes. After dinner is served, we go around in a circle giving our “roses and thorns” – those things that we liked or went well, and those things that did not. For me, my number one rose is that I did not die. Everyone laughs when I say this.

I laugh too. A bit.

After dinner, we sit out and watch the stars a bit – stars that are so many as I have not seen in many years. We are exhausted as well and as there is no light except for headlamps, we are all in bed by 7 PM.

It is not a restful night. The wind howls through repeatedly, blowing my tent up and almost halfway over – were it not for my own weight, it would have gone farther. It takes out my brother-in-law’s tent, and I see his red headlamp trying to reassemble it. The wind does not go away but insists on remaining with us throughout the night. I am bowled over more than once.

But looking up, the stars are glorious.

Down And Up Again: A Grand Canyon Holiday - Prologue

 In July, my brother-in-law and were talking when out of the blue, he asked if I would consider going on a hike in the Grand Canyon.

I had not seen the Grand Canyon in almost 40 years, when - as a newly minted teenager - we made the Grand Trek that many families do, stopping by as part of the long trip to or from family in other places.  I am sure that somewhere buried in a photo processing envelope somewhere in the house, there are my attempts to record it from the parking lot.

But that was about all the thought I had given it.  It was far away, and there were plenty of other things to see.

The company my brother in law was considering going with was one he had used for a previous hike and vouched for.  An attraction was that they could provide the equipment one would need:  backpack, sleeping bag, sleeping pad, tent. And, they would provide all food and cooking.  I just had to bring clothes and incidentals.

I had not really thought about hiking before in this light - and the Grand Canyon somehow sounded like a very long hike indeed:  4 days, 3 nights.

Somehow, I found myself saying "Yes".

Hiking sounds a lot like needing to train.  So I called my trainer, The Berserker, and told him what I was planning.

"Get a weight vest" he said.  I felt confident, as I had just purchased one.

"Use the Stairmaster at the training center" he said.  I again felt confident, as I had started doing that as well.

"I will put something extra in your program" he said.  That, I felt not so comfortable about.

I do not know that the "extra" ever occurred - perhaps his program was brutal enough already.  And so I Stairmastered and trained and walked with my weight vest, trying to average one or two miles a day with Poppy the Brave, undoubtedly looking like a potential threat to my neighbors striding around in what conceivably could appear as a bullet proof vest in low light.  

Perhaps surprisingly, no-one called the police.

Flagstaff airport - our departure point - is a small airport, perhaps the smallest one I have been to in my life.  The Waiting Area may be as big as my house; the luggage carousel is something from a 1950's airport - and, no paid parking at the airport.  But the ride sharing services are there and sure enough, my brother-in-law and I arrived - early - for the day.  It is hard, of course, when you are in town for a day preparing for something which is at the back of your mind and out of the main part of town.  We ate, watched a movie, pulled things out of our suitcases - he his backpack, I my stuff.  We waited.

Prior to the meet up with the group, the main guide came by our room with my backpack.  Nice fellow, younger than me ( more and more are, these days), we went through what I was proposing to bring.  I had overpacked (not surprisingly I suppose; I always do. My fear of being cold overrules everything) and 10 minutes had us down to a more "minimalistic" load.  I started packing as we waited to meet our team.

We met in the lobby of the hotel, that awkward sort of meeting that any group of strangers has prior to doing an activity that will effectively put them in close proximity for the next four days.  We were a mixed group: two older women in their sixties, hiking friends; a mother and her teenage son (he with a a broken wrist; they had decided on this trip during The Plague lockdown); a young woman in her late twenties who just liked the idea; a couple about my age on their first "empty nest" trip, our two guides (hereafter called by their trail names, The Coordinator and Storyteller), and my brother-in-law and I.  We had the basic introduction circle, followed by the plan of attack for the morning:  We would leave at 0500 and drive about 90 minutes to the trail head.

Dinner was in the hotel that night - a bit overpriced as it always is in such places, but the salad I had was good and the blueberry sour beer I had excellent and unexpected.  One last round of fiber before four days of who knew what kind of dietary experience.

If you were to ask me, that night, if I was concerned or scared, I would have told you no.  For better or worse, I had consciously not researched the trip.  I wanted to go into it with a clear mind and no preconceptions.

Other than it sounded like a lot of walking.

A Charmed Life

 Even though my time at The Ranch was brief this trip, I still saw a great deal of magic:

Not one but two coyotes marched passed:

I need to seal the back door off more: The little lizards were under the towel I put there to block the air, seeking warmth:

Not sure what this is:  A vole?  I have never seen one before.

The deer are becoming brazen:

These appear in Winter.  I have not idea what the are:  Frost bits?  Leaf Skeletons?  Magic?

When sharing all this with a friend, she commented "You lead a charmed life".

I really do.

Rain And Sun, November Edition

 It is amazing what rain and cooler temperatures will do here at The Ranch.  As a reminder, this was 1-2 months ago:

Now:

Do. It. Now.

Coming out of The Grand Canyon on Wednesday, one of the first things I did was turn on the cell service which had been off for the past four days (believe it or not, there are still places on the planet where there are no coverage).  One of the first things that popped up was The Ravishing Mrs. TB saying on a family chat the day before that one of her coworkers had what appeared to be a seizure and collapsed.  I texted her specifically.

He passed.

He was sitting in a meeting, talking with the pastoral staff, when suddenly he just collapsed.  They thought it was a seizure, but no breathing, no pulse.  Someone started CPR while they called the paramedics.  They worked on him for 30 minutes when they arrived.  His wife was able to make there while they were doing it (she drove 85 mph on streets I can assure you that is not legal on). 

She was there when they called it.

It was, apparently, a cardiac arrest, not a heart attack. Something goes wrong with the body's electrical system and the heart just stops and there is nothing to restart.  He was likely dead the moment he collapsed.

He was 39 years old, a writer and business man, athlete, father of two children under 12, happily married, doing good and meaningful work in the ministry. 

Gone, just like that.

I knew him tangentially, as he was my wife's coworker.  I had seen him at church of course, seen him in the office when I had visited my wife, heard him preach once or twice, chatted with him at a Christmas party.  

The Ravishing Mrs. TB was highly upset (she was not present directly in the room, but was across the hall, called 911, and helped to direct the paramedics) and I, of course, was not even anywhere that I could have been contacted, let alone could have done something.  As you can imagine, her work environment is not in great shape either - we often think death happens in the dark or at hidden hours.  When it happens in broad daylight and in a place where they will have to go back to, it becomes far more challenging and difficult.

If you could pray for his wife and children (or whatever your faith system is), that would be appreciated I am sure.  The unexpected death of a loved one is the hardest.

It does reinforce three things that I feel compelled even now more than ever to have express.

1)  Although I usually do not push my faith, it is time to settle such a thing if you have not done so already.  There are plenty of resources on line of course, and my e-mail is over on the right; happy to talk it through if at all helpful.  You literally never know when it is your time.

2)  The time to do things is now.  There is ever only really the now; it is all that is given to us.  The past is done and the future is not guaranteed.

3)  There are things that all of us think about doing, but never do.  We never want to take the risk, or convince ourselves that we can do it tomorrow.  Someday. Just not now, you know:  we need to think this through  or prepare more or research more or get more resources.

The reality is that there will never be enough thinking, enough preparation, enough research, or enough resources to start something without the decision and will to start it.

Go do it.  Whatever it is.  Go out make an impact, swinging for the fences, always moving forward even if you are crawling up a rock slide slowly and gingerly (this, I know a little about now). 

Do not wait for tomorrow.  It may never come. 

A Year Of Cryptocurrency

One year ago yesterday, I became "involved" in the world of Cryptocurrency.  I thought I should give  a report.

It was something I had been reading off and on about over the previous few months. I do not have the best head financially, and certainly not for anything that sounded so complex.  But then magically, I received an e-mail from Coinbase that offered me $5.00 in Bitcoin merely for setting up an account.

Free money. I will try that.

Over the intervening period, I have essentially taken short tutorials as new currencies were introduced.  I have no idea how a thing actually comes to "be" a currency (it seems to be as much willing it to be so as anything else), but they again offer you free currency for watching three minutes of videos.  

Again, free money.  I will try that.

Unfortunately, it is a bit difficult to combine everything into a single picture the way I want, so I will start by listing the statistics:

- Starting amount:  $5.06 as of 12 November 2020 at 1800.

- Additional currency "earned" through training:  $72.50 (or thereabouts).

- Additional money invested:  $41.00 (I put in money January through April and then stopped)

Results as of 12 November 2021 at 0615:

 

If you just do the simple raw numbers, that is a 90% return on my actual cash investment for a little time and just watching things happen.  After I did my initial investing, it went as low as $143 to as high as $469 for no discernable reason I can understand.

The one thing I did do with the money that I actually paid in was bought crypto that actually pay interest.  There are only a few of them.  As of this graph, I had earned $6.77 in interest (4.91% return).  That is not much, but I can almost guarantee you that is more than I earned in savings interest this year.

Crypto is funny.  Take Ampleforth, a crypto for which I "earned" $3.00.  The current value of my holding is $0.78.

On the other hand, take Maker, which I "earned" $6.00 and for which the current value is $33.49:

I feel like Dr. Seuss:  "Why do they do this?  I do not know."

Once I earn them, I typical do nothing with them (after that first cash influx early last year).  I just sit an watch them increase and decrease in value for no discernable reason.

I still find the concept of a currency outside of a controlling agency very attractive.  But after a year of just learning and watching, I do not think things are there yet.

I will continue to "earn" and watch of course:  one fire, many irons.  But I have pretty low expectations that this will do a great deal more in its current state.  The system needs to move beyond high stakes risk taking to stability to be widely adapted.

Still, free money.  I will always take free money.

Back From Adventuring

Thanks very much for your patience as I was away.

So what did I do?  Perhaps easiest to demonstrate in pictures.

We went from this (Note the small river view in the upper center):

to this (same section of river):

to this:  

to this:

to this:

Yes, I hiked in the Grand Canyon.

Not the whole thing, of course (one of our guides told us of a couple that did it, experienced hikers - it took them 70 days).  We descended 4600 feet or so to the Colorado River (1.25 days, 6.5 miles), tracked the Colorado river track (2.25 days, 12 miles), and then climbed 4650 feet back out (1 day, 9 miles) for a total of 25.5 miles or so, 4 days/3 nights.  We walked on tracks that seemed literally no bigger than two individual feet feet on the sides of canyons.  The colors were amazing:

Overall I held out well:  other than three blisters (one on each heel from the downward descent and an additional one from just walking), no torn muscles, broken bones, strained ligaments.  Still a little slow getting up (we flew back to The Ranch yesterday) but that will pass.

It was glorious. I did things I simply did not imagine I could do:  hike down heights, climb up heights, complete a two mile straight up climb on the last day.  I saw stars the way I have not seen them since I was young, with no ambient light at all.  I drank (filtered) water from the Colorado River and dipped my feet in it.

So.  Much.  Fun.

I have somewhere in the neighborhood of 250 pictures, so I will beg your pardon as I try to collate them and my thoughts to give you an actual account instead of a photo dump and rambling text.  It was meaningful for me, but I need to make sense of  what I learned.

I was specifically reminded of one thing though:  that thing you are thinking of doing, but are either scared to or are putting off until a more "convenient" time?  Go do it. Now.

It will change your life.

In Flanders Fields (Armistice Day 2021)

 I have posted this now for four years, and intend to post it on Armistice Day ever year until I no longer maintain this blog (and maybe even after that).

Of all the war poetry that I have read, this is the one that speaks most passionately and clearly to me.  These words are written still early in the War, when there still such things as idealism and hope for a quick end.

One wonders - in one's quiet moments - what Europe would have been like if Flanders Fields had never been, if Kaiser Wilhelm had sought other means than war to make Germany great, if the Romanov's could have accepted the changing times and changed with them to a real representative democracy, if Franz Josep and the Hapsburg bureaucracy could have created a more inclusive Central European sense of identity, not one that was merely Hapsburg.

If, if if.

One wonders if the millions of young men that had died were instead turned loose on agriculture and industry, if the millions of sweethearts and wives and children did not have their lives disrupted, if the lands of Belgium and France were not torn apart by shells and trenches - what would the world look like today?

The poppies, having lived and lived and lived again through their seeds and their withering and rebirth, may know.  But they will not confess their wisdom to men.

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place: and in the sky

The larks still bravely singing fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead: Short days ago,

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved: and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe

To you, from failing hands, we throw

The torch: be yours to hold it high

If ye break faith with us who die,

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

Lt. Colonel John McCrae 03 May 1915

Winners Are Not

 (Speaking as someone who has tried many things and does not really "succeed" at any of them, I completely believe this.  Or as they say in "Galaxy Quest":  "Never give up, never surrender".)

What You Can Do With An Altoids Tin

 Today's post is actually a link to a rather wonderful article at The Art of Manliness on 21 Ways to Reuse an Altoids Tin.  It piqued my fancy and demonstrates some great creativity.

Some of the more creative ones:

- Mini-Flashlight

- Survival Kit and its cousin, the Urban Survival Kit

- Alcohol Stove (for cooking)

- And perhaps my favorite, the Travel Cocktail Kit

Who knew such a small item had so many uses?

God's Gifts, Man's Reluctance

 

The Price Of A New Book

One of the great irritations of any bibliophile is the fact that at some point, one's authors stop writing books.

There are any number of reasons of course, death being the primary one.  Or they no longer are "in" the modern market, or they simply (for whatever reason) stopped writing.  But at some point there will no longer come another "new book" from author X.

This is more problematic of course if one's favorite authors have died years ago.  In this case, one is left to scrounging for additional writings that may be outside your original area of interest or simply settling for the fact of re-reading their works (as they are usually the ones that you enjoy the most).

However, there is another option.  Someone else writes another book "in the style of".

This has been in the back of my mind for years - but did not really impact any of the authors I read until, while on The Borg website of All Things Books (and everything else), that someone had written sequels to H. Beam Piper's Space Viking.

Initially I was very excited - Space Viking remains one of my favorite books (and Piper one of my favorite authors).  I clicked over to see the review and pricing.  The reviews were fine - the pricing, not so much:  $3.99 for the electronic version.  Paperback price:  $39.00.

To quote a Southern phrase which pleases me to no end, "Well, bless your heart".

I let the thing settle - after all, that is ridiculous - until earlier this year I saw that the Edgar Rice Burroughs estate - he the author John Carter and Carson of Venus and David Innes of Pellucidar, again another favorite - had begun authorizing additional follow on books of their most famous characters.  In this case, no electronic books, only hard copies.  The paperback is $21.95.  The hardback is $36.95.  Or one can get  a collector's edition for $56.95.

Well, bless your heart as well.

There are a great many things I do not know about, but I know a very little about book publication, having many years ago published something once or twice for fun (definitely not for the money, as subsequent events revealed).  The way it works, at least on The Borg of All Things Books is this:  you upload a test with a size of book and number of pages (this is all templated, of course) and any sorts of illustrations, color covers, etc. and the platform spits out a price to publish the book in terms of materials and labor.  This is covering their cost; any money that the author wants to make is always added on top of that.  This becomes a careful balance between making the book attractive through pricing and making the author money through sales.

I certainly understand that professional authors want to make a living.  And I suppose I concede that estates that control them have some level of interest in making money as well. But $20 to 30 dollars for a paperback seems a bit like highway robbery.  Especially if you are trying to build a market for an author who has not published since the early 1950's.  Nostalgia will only take one so far.

It is a little interesting to me as during the mid-80's and 90's the Robert E. Howard estate let any number of authors borrow the character of Conan.  Some of the books were good, some were rather stale and predictable.  Yet in all cases, the pricing was the same as any other book on the market (Ah, $2.95 Ballantine books.  How I miss you).

Apparently in the modern age, the consumer is not a market to be served but a fleece to be sheared.

I could buy it used, of course - except every used price is the same as the new price; individuals who bought the book and having read it, are trying to find a way to recoup their money.  Which seems to provide no benefit whatsoever (by contrast, I purchased by book by the Christian apologist Francis Schaeffer this week from 1970.  $8.00 with the book, shipping, and taxes).

In point of fact, this probably is for the best.  At $20 + a book, the likelihood that I will be disappointed seems to be fairly high (for that price, I expect the equivalent of The Peloponnesian War.  Which, again, would not cost me that much currently).  And given the current state of affairs, any book written in the current environment is more than likely to incorporate the thoughts of the age rather than the thoughts of the author (all authors reflect the age in which they write, which is one reason I suspect it is hard to "re-write" old characters; they must always reflect the currency of the age).

And so, it seems, the Space Viking Empire of Price Trask of Traskon will always remain poised on the brink of moving forward in Empire building and John Carter will have come back from Sassom (Jupiter) and disappeared into the Martian Wastes with Dejah Thoris at his side; David Innes will expand the Empire of Pellucidar into trackless timeless wastes not recorded and Carson of Venus will continue to fly in his anotar (airplane) above the raging oceans with his beloved Duare.  Perhaps it is better this way; they can continue to live in my imagination unabated and free instead of confined into times and spaces the original authors could have never imagined - and perhaps, never desired.

On Vacation

So my apologies for the posting over the next week or so:  I am going on vacation.

Not just any vacation:  a "I am going so far off the grid that I will (most likely) not have InterWeb access" sort of vacation. 

It is not something I like I have ever done before, which has me both a little excited and concerned.  

It will, hopefully, make for a wonderful series of posts and some wonderful pictures.

In the mean time, I have left you with a series of posts to pass the time.  In advance, I apologize for the fact that I will not be able to respond, but will certainly do so when I am back (or at least, when I am feeling like I can.  It is definitely going to be a physical trip.

I look forward to seeing you all next week!

Option And Choice

 We live in an age of options.

I can go to a restaurant and thanks to the wonders of technology can have one of 65 flavors of soft drink (vanilla being my favorite, of course).  I can watch any number of different media types streamed directly into my home via streaming services (and that does not count the endless variety of things on the InterWeb).  I can order literally anything from almost anywhere, and have it delivered in a week.

But in the course of our rush to optionality - which apparently has become our birthright - we have come to view people in the same sort of way.  It matters because how we treat people is ultimately how we form and manage society.

The reality is that organizations have come to the same conclusion and now view the individual in the same way:  something to be called upon if needed, and ignored if not.

If necessary, of course, organizations will make "allowances".  For example, every year many organizations through a fund raising campaign.  In my past history in churches (mostly mainline Protestant denominations), the older members are the vast majority of the givers.  To make sure that they stay engaged, churches will often try to hold a traditional service, while their time and energy (and new things) are funneled elsewhere.  "We have a traditional church option" they crow (as if the traditions of one's beliefs is a major accomplishment).  And having raised the money, they move that segment to the back burner of importance and move on.

Other organizations are not immune, of course.  Political parties create programs and want money and votes; charitable organizations declare "Founder's Day" to elicit tradition; distant acquaintances in need of a moving buddy or a resource suddenly "befriend" us on social media.  And once the money or votes or support comes in, they immediately revert to type and move on with their agendas, not those of the people that gave their time and money and effort.

In other words - and to the point of the picture - people and organizations often treat those from whom they need something but whom they do not really agree with as optional.

We, in turn, need to start treating them as a choice - and acting accordingly.

The reality - right or wrong - is that people and organizations always treat us exactly how they actually feel about us, whether they realize it or not.

So we get to make a choice - no, we have the power to make a choice.

To simply walk away.

To withdraw support.

To move on to more productive exploits.

Yes, I know this is not "vigorous" enough for some folks.  They demand great actions, Thunder and Lightning, calling down the wrath of the gods.  And perhaps there is a time and place for that.

But often the greatest  damage - or change - to a structure, edifice, organization, or relationship happens slowly over time, as the supports and binding things wear away unrealized, until the moment comes when the thing collapses or ends.  Everyone is usually surprised by this - "How could this happen?" when in point of fact it was happening as people made choices or wind and weather worked their slowly, steady magic.

It is only ever a surprise to those who treated such things optionally.

The Collapase LXXXVII: Of Shavings And Straw

 15 April 20XX +1

My Dear Lucilius:

Our temperatures have taken a bit of a plunge, dropping us back into what would be “typical” weather for this time of year: daily highs in the mid ‘50’s, lows at or just below freezing. It is one of the joys of living here, this constantly almost struggling to Spring which is made seemingly worse by the fact that our daylight continues to increase almost in leaps and bounds at this point. Over 13 hours of daylight, and I can hardly use it for growing anything – so into the green house I continue to go, to work over the seed starts and rake about the wood shavings on the floor to work in the quail droppings and make more compost for the garden.

The wood shavings on the floor have me a bit worried, as of course they are non-replaceable at this point: wood around here is not in abundant supply, and anything that is available is carefully managed for firewood and wood working – you may recall that my stove is effectively feed off of the deadwood I can find on my daily walks (which both gets me exercise and keeps me out of trouble). I like having something besides just dirt on the ground in the greenhouse though, both to absorb the various droppings and to provide a little bit of insulation off the cold ground for quail feet. In years past I would have caged the quail, raked and shoveled the past year’s shavings into compost or onto the garden, and then put down a new layer.

Alas, this has died along with so much else over the past year.

I have an idea in my mind I could use some level of old hay or straw for this instead. It is likely I can get that far more easily than any wood products at this point: there are still a fair number of cattle ranches around here that have to hay their own operations (as a side note, this became a thing several years ago as supply chains began to slow down and non-local feed became “less available”). Ruined hay can be seen in a number of places; perhaps I will ask around and see what can be done.

In other news, it appears that someone is moving back into the old Post Office, somewhat more full time – if the smoke from the stovepipe indicates anything. The notices, which were going up earlier in the year, have slowed down due to the weather of course – who wants to post a piece of paper no-one will read in 30 F weather? I shall ask Xerxes about it when I am see him next, although I am hopeful it is a sign of something positive happening here locally.

This is the way of it now, Lucilius: small situational resolutions and events which, in past times, might not have been anything of note now becoming matters of the greatest import.

How quickly we become provincial.

Your Obedient Servant, Seneca

Meet P

 So in the rush of the month of October, I forgot that we have added a new member to our household.  Meet P:

P is a 2 year old lop.  She is unusual in that she is deaf (a great liability if you are a rabbit).  Fortunately, we keep her safe and indoors so a lack of hearing is not a problem.

I am working to pair her with Joy.  Pairing a rabbit is not as easy as one might think; rabbits have personalities and are territorial.  It has been slow going but we are doing a little better every day.

 She is, of course, of great interest to her brother A.

We are glad she is here - although I have been strictly lectured that with Poppy the Dog, A the Cat, M and P the Guinea Pigs, and now I-Bun, Joy and P, we may be reaching carrying capacity.  I maybe believe it (almost).

2021 Winter Garden In

 So I was able to get my Fall Garden in this Weekend.

It was about two weeks late from when I should have gotten it in - not necessarily from temperature or amount of sunlight, but the placement of sunlight. In my case, by about the second week of October the path of the Sun has changed significantly enough to where the house blocks a great deal of it after 12 noon or so.

I always build up in my mind that planting my garden is this heroically difficult task that will take me hours.  I do not quite know why this is:  in point of fact the whole thing can be planted in one hour or possibly two if I am being quite deliberate about it.  In point of fact I am not that deliberate:  this year's planting took perhaps an hour, spread over two days.

The planting this years is similar to other years:  garlic (my one unfailing crop), spinach (three varieties), lettuce (two varieties), leeks (two varieties), beets (two varieties), Austrian Rye, Black Rye, and Winter Wheat.  Approximately 3/4's of the garden is planted and except for some overwintering onions, a basil plant and Black-Eyed Pea plant that have not perished yet, and the surviving sweet potatoes that survived the annual decimation of harvest, it is empty and quiet.

I never feel like I have done a sufficient job to actually match what should be a garden planting, but maybe that is because I follow many "real" gardeners who actually do a good job.  Myself, I seem to just get it in and see what takes.

On the bright side, it always makes for a surprise when something grows.

The Age of Causeless Effects

 One of the great mysteries of our now is the fact that we live in an age of Causeless Effects.

Once upon a time, of course, things were defined as Cause and Effect or, if you suffered through High School or College Physics, Action and Reaction.  In either case, if something happens, something else will happen.  

You all remember this thinking, of course.  If there is an effect - say if my car develops a flat tire - there is a cause, which most likely looks a nail or screw that had fallen into the roadway.  If there is an action - say I drop a match into a combination of fuel and oxygen - there is a reaction, which looks hopefully like me starting the fire I intended or not so hopefully me beating out something on fire (both have happened).  

In either event, of course, there a reason for the thing that occurred.  Things just do not "happen" out of the blue.

Except in the modern world, of course.

In the sermon yesterday, the title of recent article was quoted "Why Everyone Is So Rude Right Now" from September 2021 in Time Magazine. In it, the authors quoted a number of recent events at that time - a Southwest Airlines attendant getting attacked by a customer,  a customer pulling a gun on a waitress,  etc. (and that was then.  It has gotten much worse).  The reasons, are the sorts of things that given out at this point:  The Plague, long separations, instability, changing of power structures, etc.  They think.  

But we have had Plagues, long separations, instability, and power structures that have shifted before and scarcely resulted in the sorts of thing we are seeing now (in the perhaps worst incident of this to date, a woman was physically and sexually assaulted on a Philadelphia subway while people watched and filmed it.  No-one intervened).

Our cities burn, and we are confused.  Businesses and citizens move from one state to another, and the originating state is mystified as to why anyone would leave.  We having surging business needs, yet less workers than ever, even though our population is greater than before.  We are more spiritual, yet the churches continue to empty out in the midst of a growing "spirituality".  Our prices continue to rise due to reasons which seem unknown to the governments that set economic policy.

And so on.

We have entered the Age of Causeless Effects, where things  mysteriously just occur for no discernable reason except well, you know, "things happen".  

This is tripe, of course.  All effects have causes and reactions have actions leading to them.  The difficulty is that in order to actually see the causes and actions, one has to want to see them, ideally to understand how one got to the place one and so get back on course or repair the problem if not simply to find one's self on the map.  

But seeing causes and actions is the issue.

To be willing to see the causes and actions in one's life, let alone anywhere else, means that one has to have a dedicated degree of introspection to be able to see such things and take steps to correct or mitigate the problem.  It is to be humble enough to - perhaps - acknowledge that one's course has been the cause or action creating the effect or reaction.  To simply coast along, strangely confused by everything that is happening without the slightest degree of understanding why it is happening, is to be a child in the playing a sandbox, surprised that one's self is becoming wet and the sand is clumping yet not understanding that the rain is falling to make it so.

The great challenge to fixing any problem is understanding how the problem was created in the first place.  Our society as a whole has largely abrogated this responsibility, substituting its own perceived reasons for why things occur rather than actually looking at why they occur.  My measuring stick for this is simply the successful resolution of a problem: if the action taken create either more of the same or do not decrease the ongoing issue, then the cause or action that you have pinpointed is not the right one (this is often my complaint about the modern church:  they have taken all kinds of actions to makes themselves more palatable to the modern world, yet the modern world is much less reflective of Christianity.  Their root cause analysis is flawed).  

These things sort themselves out of course; they always do.  Run a car engine without maintenance and oil long enough, and eventually the engine will not run at all.  You will have the privilege of sitting at the side of the road, watching others fly by while you wait for a tow truck, only to be followed by either a new engine or a new car.

In the long run the future always belongs to the introspective, to those who understand the cause of their effects and the actions of their reactions. All others are just essentially living in a giant stream of consciousness drama on which the curtain will eventually descend.