Monthly Archives: July 2009

Aging, Dogs, GeekWorld, Woolly Mammoths

Watch the Video

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Summer                 Waxing Green Corn Moon’

Former Door County dairy farmer and Woolly Mammoth Bill Schmidt passes the Dairyland baton to northern Indiana’s Fair Oaks Farm.  Why?  They produce enough milk to provide for the dairy needs of an 8 million person city.  They have 25,000 acres and 32,000 cows, milked 3 times a day on a moving carousel.  Hard to believe?  Watch the video.

Kate and I spent the morning at the Minnesota Spine Center.  We met a confident and capable surgeon who gave Kate some possibilities she had not had before.  Whether any of them will relieve what has now been a 20 year 0rdeal that has caused a lot of pain and cost here 3 1/2 inches in height we do not know, but we will.

Vega the wonder dog continues.  Now she has found the netaphim running through the raised beds.  She has gnawed on some of it though she cut through none of them.  She’s an intelligent, active, inquisitive dog.

The Blackberry Storm I got at the Verizon store got terrible reviews when it first came out.  I have used it for a few days now and can say that the problems I’ve encountered so far fall the into the severely annoying class, frustrating but not crippling.  Example.  Like the I-Phone, the device it attempts to copy, it has an acclerometer that switches the orientation of the screen from portrait to landscape when you turn the phone.  Unlike the I-Phone the Storm does not always respond to the turn, at least not right away.  Likewise the internet link acts up sometimes, offering less than the full website for viewing.

On the other hand it has a full qwerty keyboard in landscape mode and two thumbed typing can  be accurate and fast.  It also has a smaller footprint than the I-Phone, something I appreciate.  It will work for my needs just fine.

I’m back to working out with the full routine:  flexibility, resistance, balance and aerobics.   Body and mind work better when exercised.

Dogs, Myth and Story

Quieter Dogs

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Summer                        Waxing Green Corn Moon

Kate’s plane is in the air, but 30 minutes or so late.  I’ll leave in a bit to pick her up.  It’s a long hike to the airport from here.

The dogs have not been noisy today.  Daddy was home.

Yesterday, via Netflix, I finished the first season of TrueBlood.  My fascination with horror, monsters and science fiction has been lifelong and I imagine it will be with me when I head out on my 49 day journey to the next adventure.  As an HBO program, TrueBlood takes full advantage of a sub-genre of horror, the vampire romance.   There is sex, betrayal, monsters and demons of the night and a lot of Cajun country atomspherics.  The one  true Cajun speaker in the first year turned out to be a fake, however, and a murderer.  There was an audio tape, Cajun dialect for Actors, in his affects.

Garden

Weeds. Less.

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Summer                             Waxing Green Corn Moon

The majority of the weeds that were in the clover now lie baking in the afternoon sun.  This hand pulling of weeds is a chore, but it has its satisfactions.   Not having to do it again for a while is the chief one.  When it comes to the garden, I try to think of ways that I will only have to do certain tasks once or not at all.  Weeding is among those and the close planting in the vegetable and perennial gardens, plus mulch have been my best tools in that regard so far.

Family, Great Work, Politics

Barking Dogs

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Summer                     Waxing Green Corn Moon

Oh, oh.  The neighbor called and said our dogs barked constantly from 3pm to 7pm.  He’s home all the time now with his m.s.  I empathize with him about barking dogs, even my own, because they drive me nuts, too.  I doubt they barked the whole time, but it did probably seem like it.  Have to manage them for noise again.  That means keeping the two mouthy whippets, Hilo and Emma, inside more.  They won’t mind that a bit.

On a sad note tonight was Max’s last night.  Tom said today that he and Roxanne had an appointment with the vet tonight.  Max was a sweet dog, a wounded soul from his previous owner, but with more depth of character because of it.  I’ll miss him.

Worked out and then went into the meeting of the Clean Energy and Renewable Energy Committee.  The first hour of the meeting was a presentation by Steve Taff, an ag economist/environmental economist, on low carbon fuel standards.  He advocates keeping the focus on reducing carbon build up rather than on the policy tool.

Another important part of his presentation involved the complexity of the various policy areas:  low carbon fuel standards, CAFE standards and cap and trade.  The tendency, he says, is to consider only one policy area at a time and to ignore the total field of policy initiatives.  Keeping the whole field in mind is key to the eventual development of effective green house gas reductions.

Over the upcoming weeks I’ll unpack some of this jargon.

The committee understood the need for taking the initiative with developing legislative priorities.  Makes my work easier.

Politics

My Congressional Representative Working For the 6th District

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Summer                    Waxing Green Corn Moon

“We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.” – Jonathan Swift

OK.  I suffered through Jesse Ventura as my governor and Rod Grams as my Senator, but what did I do oh Lord to deserve this congresswoman?

Bachman blocks resolution declaring Hawaii to be Obama’s birthplace

“Today, Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-HI) introduced a resolution commemorating the 50th anniversary of Hawaii’s statehood. The resolution also proclaims the state as President Obama’s birthplace, a point the Plum Line’s Greg Sargent noted may “put House GOPers who are flirting with birtherism in a jam.” This afternoon on the House floor, Abercrombie spoke of his measure and specifically noted that Obama had been born in Hawaii. “It’s also going to be the birthday in a week or so of President Obama, born in Kapiolani hospital just down the road from where I lived,” he said. Just as the presiding chair of the House, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), was about to declare the resolution passed by voice vote, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) stood and objected:

BACHMANN: Mr. Speaker? I object to the vote on the grounds that a quorum is not present and make a point of order that a quorum is not present. […]”

My favorite comment on this report:

noseeum says:

I want to see Bachman and Palin in a cage match for the Re-nut-ican nomination.
July 27th, 2009 at 5:53 pm

Aging, Bees, Faith and Spirituality, Garden, Great Wheel, Great Work, permaculture, Woolly Mammoths

Becoming Native To This Place

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Summer                        Waxing Green Corn Moon

westorchard709

The next meeting of the Woolly Mammoths will be here in Andover.  That means it’s theme and subject matter time.  The theme will be, Becoming Native to this Place, the title of a book by Wes Jackson of the Land Institute.  The subject matter will focus on the gardens, permaculture and the local food (slow food) movement.

At the Seed Savers Exchange conference held two weekends ago in Decorah, Iowa a commercial grower told of his change to the local foods idea.  A grower of greenhouse foods for various distributors who took his foods far from northern Iowa, he recounted attending a meeting sponsored by folks whose agenda was local foods.  They showed that, due to commodity based agriculture, northern Iowa was a net importer of food.  That astounded him.  He switched his focus then to growing vegetables for local consumers, working on niche markets like institutions, restaurants and grocery stores in the northern Iowa area.

He didn’t mention Michael Pollan by name but the subject matter was similar to Pollan’s recent work, In Defense of Food.  The Woollys have read the Omnivore’s Dilemma and the Botany of Desire.  We’ve also looked at the notion of Homecoming and the Great Work by Thomas Berry.  This August meeting, only 17 days after Lughnasa, the first fruits festival of the Celtic calendar, will celebrate the Woolly’s interests in home, food and continuity.    southgarden709400

Continuity?  Yes.  The Woollys have a 20+ year record of perseverance with each other and, by implication, an interest in this place we have  chosen to call home for those same number of years.

To the Woollys who read this:

Please choose one of the books or websites indicated and take a look.  While looking pick out two things:  what surprised you?  what would you like to know more about?   If you want, also look for something that seems off or misguided to you.

Family, Garden, Great Work, Health, permaculture

Dinner Straight From the Plant

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Summer                        Waxing Green Corn Moon

Dinner with vegetables straight from the garden is a treat and can be a surprise.  It was tonight.  We had potatoes, new potatoes-709042potatoes, dug just before cooking.  They had a distinct flavor, a nutty earthy  tone unfamiliar from the long since harvested potatoes typical of both home and restaurant cooking.  This meal included our garlic, our kale and chard, the potatoes garnished with our flat parsley and a bowl of sugar snap peas as an appetizer.

Digging potatoes involved a spading fork to loosen the soil, then searching around under the earth for these lumpy  treasures.  They grow well in the sandy soil here in Andover.

(pic:  potatoes before harvest)

Kate takes off for the Grand Teton’s tomorrow, a CME conference.  BJ is also out there, playing in the Grand Teton music festival as she has for the last several years.  The Tetons have an incredible beauty, the American Alps, a very young mountain range.  She’s back on Wednesday, then we go to see a micro-surgeon who has perfected the technique for cervical vertebrae.  He’ll evaluate Kate’s candidacy for that surgery.

Lots of weeding today and more tomorrow.  A normal task in late July, early August.

Garden, GeekWorld

We’re Baaaack!

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Summer                                Waxing Green Corn Moon

Some new html code somehow turned all the type on some computers black.  Why this happened is not clear, since it never showed up on this computer or friend Bill Schmidt’s.  A long time back it became clear that the last thing done before a problem occurs probably screwed things up.  Yup.

A.T. will go to sleep for now, but the blog will be, as much as possible, in the third person, with no I.  This is an exercise in discipline for a writer.

The netaphim, shredded by Vega, now connects from one end to the other.  The reason for the fence, to allow it to stay that way, now comes into play.

The irrigation clock received new instructions based on something heard at Seed Saver’s over last weekend.  Water once a week, a lot.  Stop.  This encourages plants to grow deeper roots, following the water down.  This is an experiment, we’ll see how it works.  This new setup will eliminate, too, a frustrating situation in which two zones ran at the same time, reducing the flow to both.  At least clearing the computer of all its programming and starting over should fix that.

It’s surprising how many everyday items now rely on computer code.  The irrigation clock.  The weather station.  The blackberry.  Microwave.  TV.  Automobile.  Some experience with computers and with code, even if limited, can make navigating this electronic minefield easier.