Category Archives: Communication

Got A Holiday Greeting From The Time Department

Posted on December 19, 2011 by | 10 comments

Hawaii Konate, the people who keep me posted on what time it wasn’t over the past while, what time they think it probably isn’t now, and what time they’re middling sure it won’t be in the future sent me a nice greeting by email.

The card arrived in my hotmail email box at 3:25 AM someone’s time, maybe mine, maybe theirs, maybe hotmail’s.   I’m not sure whether that picture is of something at the Hawaii site, or whether it’s wherever they speak the language at the top of the circular they send out:  BUREAU INTERNATIONAL DES POIDS ET MESURES, ORGANISATION INTERGOUVERNEMENTALE DE LA CONVENTION DU METRE. [Muddy muddy muddy etcetera]

But even if I knew what time it wasn’t in that city where the place on the card isn’t, I still wouldn’t know what that thing is they sent me a picture of wishing me a Merry Christmas.

I generally don’t like people telling me what kind of Christmas to have, but especially I don’t like them telling me how to have a whole year.    But in this instance, they did let themselves be nailed down on the thorny issue 0f 2012.  2012, unless they’re being cunningly sarcastic, isn’t a time that won’t happen.

The card didn’t come with one of the circulars they send out telling what time it hasn’t been all over the place, what time they don’t think it is now, and what time they don’t think it will be in the future.  That would be unsettling if they hadn’t gone ahead and mentioned 2012 in the card.

So maybe there was no authoritarian motive behind telling me what kinds of Christmas and 2012 to have.  Maybe they were being subtly reassuring.

I suppose it’s probably best not to try to second-guess them.

Old Jules

10 Comments

Posted in 2011, Communication, Current Issues, Science

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A Few Things Zuni – Part 1

Posted on December 18, 2011 by | 10 comments

During the early 1990s the Coincidence Coordinators conspired to make Zuni Pueblo and the geography surrounding it a major focus in my life.  I mentioned a bit about Zuni here:  This is Zuni Salt Lake, but over the next couple of whiles I’d like to tell you a bit more about them. 

At the time the overwhelming part of my salary was paid by FEMA and a part of my job involved mitigation of recurring natural disaster damage behind federal disaster expenditures.  In New Mexico a huge percentage of the recurring expense was located on Navajo lands, but flooding on the Zuni River reared its head as a concern during the same time period.

Meanwhile, the Coincidence Coordinators got into the act.  The search for the lost gold mine was being driven by documents from the US Archives, New Mexico State Archives, fragments of mention from 19th Century newspapers, later-in-life memories of men connected to the events and documented in books, topo maps and other researched sources.

Keith and I, examining and submerging ourselves together during that phase of my search, concluded the areas to the east of Zuni, and to the south were prime candidates for the location.  Candidates based on what we knew at the time.  Wilderness Threats.

By my own recollection that phase of the search lasted only three, maybe four years, maybe less.  But it led by numerous routes, into more than a decade of closer association with Zuni, both as a tribe, and as a geography.  I’ll be posting more about that, about Keith’s and my explorations, about the Zuni pueblo and the people living there, and about some aspects of the history and culture.

But I’ll begin by posting this piece of doggerel I wrote a long time ago about my first visit to the Zuni Rez and my first encounter with the Zuni and Ramah Navajo.  That meeting with the Zuni Tribal Council burned itself into my memory as few things I’ve experienced this lifetime have.

Flooding on the Zuni land
Tribal chairman calls
Upstream Ramah Din’e band
Over grazing galls.

Ancient ruins I travel past
Forgotten tribes of old
And finally arrive at last
On Zuni land as told:
Tribal council meets, he chants
A time warp history.

I Listen long the raves and rants
And river mystery:
Navajo must have his sheep
To have his wealth, it’s plain.
Too many kids, too many sheep
Too little grass and rain.
Forgotten white man wrongs and deeds
The raids of Navajo
Corn that didn’t sprout the seeds
And stumbled Shalako
More sheep grazed than in the past
Arroyos grew wide and deep
Siltation settled hard and fast
In riverbed to sleep.

Navajo siltation choked
An ancient channel bed
Water rose above the banks
200 cattle dead
Houses flooded, ruined cars
Fields of grain were lost
A playground field a channel mars
And who should bear the cost?

The tribal chairman Ramah band
Listened to my tale
Stony silence, steady hand
Informed me I would fail.

“If those Zunis don’t like floods
Tell them to reduce the chances;
We’ll hold back our streams of muds
If they’ll call off their damned rain
dances.”

(Doggerel to smile by)

Old Jules

10 Comments

Posted in 1990's, America, Communication, History, Human Behavior, Native Americans, NM, Poetry, Politics, Prospecting

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Sunday morning thoughts December 18, 2011

Posted on December 18, 2011 by | 40 comments

Good morning readers.  I’m obliged you came for a visit and read.

I’m going to start this morning by telling you something you ought to know already, but mightn’t:

Sometimes I take myself a lot more seriously than is justified by my history of being ‘right’ compared to my history of being ‘wrong’.  People who’ve known me forever are acutely aware of this.  The terms, ‘alarmist‘ and ‘melodramatic‘ have occasionally been used with brutal accuracy by people in a position to arrive at informed judgements.

Keep in mind I’m the guy who dumped a second career within a couple of years of being able to draw a hefty retirement check because I believed so thoroughly Y2K was going to happen, leading eventually to my current situation.  Keep in mind I also spent a lot of years climbing and unclimbing mountains searching for a lost gold mine I believed I’d find.

And keep in mind I don’t regret any of it.

So with all that in mind, I think those of you who read my ‘indefinite detention’ posts of the past few days would be well advised to examine other opinions, even though I still believe I’m generally right.  My believing it shouldn’t carry any weight for you.

Here’s another viewpoint offering up a mitigated set of possibilities regarding the same situation and the activities leading to it:

Addicting Info – The Knowledge You Crave http://tinyurl.com/cjs4xav

The NDAA Is A Horrible Bill, And Why Obama Is Going To Sign It
December 17, 2011 By Wendy Gittleson

If you’ve formed any opinions based on anything I’ve said here I think you owe it to yourself to read it.   Wendy Gittleson is certainly a lot more qualified to have an opinion than I am, most likely.  Even though I don’t necessarily agree.

Old Jules

40 Comments

Posted in 2011, America, Communication, Current Issues, Politics

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No Blog Awards Appeal and the So Far From Heaven Blog

Posted on December 10, 2011 by | 22 comments

Jeanne's work

Please help me control the egos of the hats, cats, chickens, deer, wild hogs, dead trees and the Communist Toyota 4-Runner.

I appreciate all you visitors who come here and the kind words many of you say about So Far From Heaven.  But I’m asking a favor of all of you.  Accept our gratitude, but don’t offer awards.

There are thousands of fantastic blogs on the web.  Many of those great blogs are getting blog awards.  I believe all of those receiving those awards deserve them, aside from the awards offered to this blog.  This blog is not yet worthy of any blog award.

Jeanne and I work hard on So Far From Heaven and we’re both determined to make it better, possibly good enough to receive an award someday.  But we both know we aren’t there yet.  So Far From Heaven has a long way to go..

Giving blog awards to So Far From Heaven detracts from the value of the awards.

But the blog awards offered to this blog have also bloated the community ego.  The cats, chickens, deer, dead trees and even the Communist Toyota have all become insufferable.

So until some time in the future when we consider the blog to have reached a better standard, please accept our thanks for the thought, but don’t nominate So Far From Heaven for blog awards.

Gracias,

Old Jules

22 Comments

Posted in 2011, Admin., Communication, Current Issues, Internet

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Blind Chickens, Talking Diamonds and Greedy Galaxies

Posted on December 4, 2011 by | 18 comments

I’m aware some of you readers keep chickens.  If you’re having problems with blindness among them you might be interested in joining http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Free_Ranging_Chickens/ where there’s an interesting discussion going on about the problem.  This was the beginning post for the thread:

Blind Rooster
Posted: Sat Dec 3, 2011 5:47 am (PST)
Just wondering if anyone has had any experience with this. Monday afternoon, I noticed two hens on the wrong side of the fence, so went to retrieve them, and find the rest of their little band. Found all but one rooster. Couldn’t find him in any of the “regular” places, but they do have lots of room to roam. Figured I’d check again before bedtime, as he’s usually the first one in. Didn’t show up. Put everyone else in, and went hunting, for feathers if nothing else:(. Well, I found him by the fence, but inside. Just sitting there. He let me pick him up without protest, but he’s always been laid-back. Still, I knew something was wrong. Put him in a different coop, with shelves instead of bar roosts. The next day he was down on the floor, walking around, but bumping into the screening for the duck section, and sitting in corners/nests. Realized his vision was at least partially gone. Blocked him in, and started antibiotics, since I had no idea what else to do. That night he was back up on the shelf, so he must have some vision, I guess. Wasn’t eating or drinking that I could see, just walked over everything. Brought him into the Hospital Unit (a carrier in my bathrooom :). He began to drink, and finally eat. He crows (oh, swell) but his cue seems to be noise rather than light. Put him outside yesterday (in a big crate) afternoon for some sun, but he just sat there. Some of the other chickens did come scratch around him, but he seemed oblivious.
His eyes look odd, not whiteish, but the center (behind the cornea and inside the iris, where it should be black) looks “solid”, if that makes any sense.

Any thoughts?

Free_Ranging_Chickens@yahoogroups.com

Meanwhile, you readers involved in clandestine, extra-marital relationships might be well-advised to remove your diamond jewelry before checking into some seedy motel. 

In the quantum world, diamonds can communicate with each other

December 2, 2011 By Joel N. Shurkin

The vibrational states of two spatially separated, millimeter-sized diamonds are entangled at room temperature by scattering a pair of strong pump pulses (green). The generated motional entanglement is verified by observing nonclassical correlations in the inelastically scattered light. Credit: Dr. Lee and colleagues, Image Copyright Science|AAAS  http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-12-quantum-world-diamonds.html

Elsewhere in the news, the 99% movement has suffered a disturbing setback with the discovery we live in a greedy galaxy, gobbling up smaller galaxies.  http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-11-beast-tails.html

Barred Spiral Milky Way. Illustration Credit: R. Hurt (SSC), JPL-Caltech, NASA

The Milky Way galaxy continues to devour its small neighbouring dwarf galaxies and the evidence is spread out across the sky.

Government and Wall Street Cray computers working on the problem tentatively estimate the 99 percenters are actually 0.000000000000001 percenters galaxy-wide.  Political and financial-industry hired-guns are working three shifts to prepare television documentaries and PR campaigns to assist in correcting the error.

In a related story, multi-national corporations and Wall Street banks have hired a team of astrophysicists and astronomers to study black holes in an effort to develop more thorough strategies and techniques to solidify and expand their holdings.  Additionally, the illustration on the right suggests black holes might also provide improved methods in the use of pepper-spray.

“An optical image of the sky showing the location of the black hole, Cygnus X-1. (Right) An artist’s conception of the black hole system, showing the black hole drawing material towards it from a massive, blue companion star. This material forms a disk and jets that emit radiation. Credit: Optical: DSS; Illustration: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss

“Black holes are among the most amazing and bizarre predictions of Einstein’s theory of gravity. A black hole is thought to be point-like in dimension, but it is surrounded by an imaginary surface, or “edge,” of finite size (its “event horizon”) within which anything that ventures becomes lost forever to the rest of the universe.”  http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-11-black-hole-unmasked.html

The overall optimism derived from these stories was something I wanted to share with you readers to lift whatever waning spirits you might experiencing his crisp, rainy morning.

Old Jules

18 Comments

Posted in 2011, Animals, Astronomy, Chickens, Communication, Country Life, Homesteading, Human Behavior, Politics, Poultry

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Feral Hog Plague

Posted on November 21, 2011 by | 19 comments

One thing that happens when you get a group of country people hanging around without a lot going on involves a mysterious sorting and filtering process.  Small groups of strangers with similar interests are drawn into intense exchanges of arcane esoterica.

Saturday a few old guys including me got talking about chickens, coons, skunks and feral hogs none of us would have ever learned if we hadn’t been to the auction.

The wild hogs seem to be concentrated, we found, in some locations and absent in others.  A guy from a few miles east of town seems to have the worst problem of any in the group, and despite the fact he’s killed a hundred hogs this year he says it hasn’t made a dent in the population. 

He’s devised an ingenious trap with several interior rooms the hogs can get into but can’t get out, allowing him to capture a dozen at a time.  He kills them in the traps and drags them down to a remote corner of the property with the previous hauls.

That guy knew some hog catching tricks I’ll probably use here next time they come in here or up and Gale’s tearing things up.  He uses boxes of Jello as bait.  Says they can’t resist it and they’ll choose going into a trap after Jello over breaking into a feed bin or tearing the walls off a storage shed for chicken feed.

But everyone agreed the hog population in Central Texas is out of control something awful.

Then, this morning, my old bud Rich sent me a link to this Yahoo News story:

Mexico to cull 50,000 wild boars from US invasion

http://tinyurl.com/7qrtwng

Mexican officials have unveiled plans to slaughter some 50,000 wild boars that have crossed the border from the United States and now threaten agriculture in Mexico.

The Ministry of Environment in Chihauha state said some 1,500 hectares (3,700 acres) of farmland in the border town of Ojinaga have been affected by the large number of feral pigs that have come from Presidio County, Texas.

“We must get rid of these European wild boars because they sleep overnight on US soil during the day and cross over to the Mexican side to feed,” Ignacio Legarreta, a state official, told local media.

The boars of European origin, which were imported to Texas as pets and then replicated in the wild, have caused serious damage to the flora and fauna of the area, officials said.

“They have reproduced to reach more than 50,000 animals that threaten the area,” said Legarreta.

The authorities intend to use cages with food inside to trap the animals.

But back at the auction.  I asked whether any of them had ever tried bringing the hogs in and selling them at auction.  None had, and at first everyone’s reaction was a guffaw.  Nobody likes getting close to a critter capable of ripping you in two and eating you.  Probably the auction folks wouldn’t take them despite the fact they handle a lot of dangerous animals.

But then someone mentioned there’s a place in Ingram always advertising they want to buy swine on the hoof.  Sausage place, one thought.  Which got us thinking how a person might build a trap on a trailer so’s to not have to deal with them more than dragging the trailer to Ingram, letting them inspect them and kill them in the trap, drag them out, weigh them, and pay up.

I allowed if I’d considered that and thought of it earlier this year I’d be a lot better off financially today than I am.  There was a lot of muttering and thinking going on among all of us before the conversation changed to coons.

Old Jules

19 Comments

Posted in 2011, America, Communication, Country Life, Mexico, Senior Citizens, Solitude, Survival

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The Joys of Already Knowing

Posted on October 17, 2011 by | 20 comments

Morning Blogsters:

Around 1969, I was in a freshman Geology course at the University of Texas, first week of classes. The instructor was a grad student teaching assistant who began the course with an overlay of how geologists determine the age of a particular layer of deposition.

Along about the third day a kid who’d been sitting next to me raised his hand. I’d noticed him squirming from the first day, and now he just had to get whatever was bothering him off his chest.

“I’ve been trying to understand what you’re saying, but it’s confusing. How can all this be true, all those depositions being so old when the world’s only (some specified low-range number of thousands) years old. It’s all been calculated when God created the earth.”

After the chaotic eruption of laughter from forty sophisticated freshmen who knew better subsided the instructor directed his response to the now-cringing questioner.

“You can’t have it both ways. This is a Geology course. Everything you hear in this room is based on the premise that the earth is ancient beyond imagination. That the world we see around us is the product of eons of tectonic activity. Of faulting, lifting, erosion, weathering followed by more of the same.

“I’m not going to try to convince you that what you’ve said is wrong. But I’ll tell you that if you can’t accept, for the sake of discussion, the possibility that the book in front of you describes reality, you’ll never get through this course.”

The kid joined me at a table in the Union coffee shop later. He was still upset and confused by the incident, the laughter. Turned out the kid truly couldn’t wrap his mind around the concepts being discussed. He KNEW it to be otherwise at such a fundamental level that he’d have had to relax all manner of other things he KNEW and held sacred to even consider it.

So he dropped the course and never let his mind out of the cage he’d built around it.

The experience that kid had in a geology classroom isn’t too different from what all of us encounter in life. It’s all a matter of where we place the boundaries of the cage.

Within a decade of the incident the geology world was turned upside down with emergence of tectonic plate theory, and much of what he’d have learned if he’d finished the course would have been out of date.

But Tectonic Plate Theory found similar boundaries among geologists’ minds during the difficult battle for acceptance. Old department heads wrestled against it in a war as bloody as a fundamentalist preacher would have fought against the concept of an earth more than a couple of thousand years old. They’d just placed the boundaries a bit further out than the kid and whatever school teacher told him the world was young. Those old geology profs KNEW there was no such animal as continental drift. No point in discussing evidence supporting it.

It’s a juggling act. In some pursuits the only doorway involves a body
of data we like to call ‘facts’. But frequently the doorway isn’t big
enough to allow a person through with his suitcase full of all his
life-accumulated facts he treasures. He has to pare them down to fit
into a briefcase, or a fanny-pack and leave the rest behind so’s to get
through the door and understand what he sees in the room he’s trying to
get into. If he tries tricking the system and dragging all the rest of
his facts through in a cotton-sack or some such thing he’ll be forever
tripping on them and stumbling.

A man’s got to be careful what he knows in this lifetime [maybe others,
also]. Traveling light can save a lot of trouble.

Old Jules

3.5* ’til Infinity   * = Billion years ago.

20 Comments

Posted in Communication, Education, Human Behavior, Reading, Relationships, Solitude, Uncategorized

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Food, Books and Other town stuff

Posted on October 13, 2011 by | 17 comments

FOOD:  There’s an all-you-can-eat pizza joint where you get all the salad you want, a drink and a selection of all kinds of pizza slices as many times as you go back for them and as many kinds as you want for $5.00.  You wouldn’t believe how much salad and pizza a person can eat in an hour-or-so.

Only trouble is I always feel sort of bloated and sometimes have stomach cramps after I eat there.  Maybe it’s something in the food.

Thrift Store 25 cent books acquired:

A Canticle for Leibowitz – Walter M. Miller:  Good SF I read every 10 years or so.

Rebel – Bernard Cornwell – I like Cornwell fairly well but I haven’t read this one.  Civil War historical fiction

Quick Silver – Clark Howard – Never heard of the author.  Taking potluck on this one.

Double Jeopardy – Colin Forbes –  Another potluck.  Never heard of the author.

The Heart of the Matter – Graham Greene – I might have read this one sometime.  But the only Graham Greene I’ve ever not liked was Brighton Rock, required reading in some English course.

The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco –  Time I read this one again. 

High Sorcery – Andre Norton – I might have read it 40 years ago.  Usually liked Andre Norton.

Fuzz – Ed McBain – Potluck.  Never heard of him.  Looks like an extortion, cops and robbers yarn.

The Third Man – Graham Greene – Once more before I die.

Hobbit and others – JRR Tolkien – Hell, for .25 why not one more time?

Foucault’s Pendulum – Umberto Eco – I dunno if I can do this one again.  I ain’t as young as I used to be.

The Blue Hammer – Ross Macdonald – I read all these 30 years ago, loved them but ran spang out.  Nice finding this one.

The Forge of God – Greg Bear – Never heard of him.  Appears to be SF.

Flashman at the Charge – George Mcdonald Frazer – Sheeze.  I love finding these.  I must have read the entire Flashman series a dozen times over the decades.  They never grow old.

Old Jules

—————————

17 Comments

Posted in 2011, Book Reviews, Books, Communication, Education, Reading, Thrift Stores

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Occupy Utopia

Posted on October 12, 2011 by | 43 comments

Chaos just isn't all that rare

I’ve been reading a lot of blogs about the ‘Occupy [fill in blank] phenomenon.  The hints of panic from the powerful, the ambiguous hopes of the demonstrators, the near-certainty what’s happening is both the beginnings of a time of public expression about dissatisfaction, and a manifestion of unsatisfied expectations.

Seeing all that brings insistently to mind how intrusive the illusions of a utopian ideal penetrate and embed themselves in the tiny fragment of humanity where chaos took a break long enough for non-chaos to become the expectation.  Mainly in Europe, Japan, the US, Australia and Canada post-WWII.

For the remainder of the world chaos never went to sleep and never expected it to slumber.  Africa, the Middle East, much of South America, Cambodia, Vietnam, the former USSR and other Eastern Block countries, Pakistan and Afghanistan have all experienced so much chaos within living memory there’s probably no danger of them occupying Wall Street.

It might be worth noting it’s an illusion being protested.  Copshops and politicians have never ceased being corrupt in the US, Europe, Japan, anywhere.  The super-wealthy were never not-greedy, never unwilling to sell their countries and their souls to become wealthier.  Religious zealots have never ceased being willing to slaughter disbelievers, rob them, enslave them, though they’ve briefly been restrained somewhat inside defined boundaries since WWII. 

The protests are against the entire history of human behavior.

It might also be worth shaking the head in horror and awe that this comes as a surprise to anyone.  Where have these people been for the past half-century while populations were slaughtering themselves and one another all over the planet except where  they lived?  How could they have come to live inside some bubble of belief that the venal aren’t venal, the greedy aren’t greedy and the corrupt aren’t corrupt?

The bubble is probably an artifact of improved communications, television, public education turning a blind eye to anything outside the sphere being brainwashed into the malleable brain tissue of those vulnerable to it.

Suddenly the bubble bursts.  Chaos yawns, stretches and begins to reawaken.

Old Jules

43 Comments

Posted in Adventure, America, Communication, Current Issues, History, Human Behavior, Relationships, Solitude, Survival

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Occupy Your Local Appliance Repair Shop [Limericks]

Posted on October 11, 2011 by | 3 comments

It’s the only job left.

Being on top was such fun!
The products were cheap, and the gun
Assured they’d keep coming
Velocities numbing
Til ammo we’d spang out of run.

Those multi-national boys
Didn’t make you buy all of those toys.
You bought them not thinking
From China, though shrinking
Your dollars without so much noise.

It’s jobs that you want, and you’re right
But you’ve got to be part of the fight.
Throw out all your plastic
incumbents and spastic
Buying and crying and spite.

The CEOs bankers and pols
Helped you do it but aren’t Commie moles
It’s true they’re just like you
Their coppers will strike you
While your coppers strike at the doles.

Stopping a train just ain’t easy
The methods are bloody and sleazy
But changing direction
Requires a correction
More solid than whiney and breezy.

Old Jules

3 Comments

Posted in 2011, America, Communication, Human Behavior, Poetry, Politics, Uncategorized

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