Tag Archives: animals

Toyota leaf spring enigma

Posted on August 27, 2012 by | 9 comments

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

I spent an unanticipated lot of time yesterday learning about leaf springs on 1983 Toyota Motor Homes.  I knew I’d have to do something about those sagging springs and began the day knowing pretty much what it would be.  Namely buying some helper springs or spring supports from JC Whitney, installing them, then going on about my business.

Except JC Whitney doesn’t have them.

So I visited the Toyota RV Discussion group with the intention of finding out what others who don’t know as much as I do have handled these problems I’ve never handled.  Got a lot of knowledgeable, helpful suggestions gradually indicating the problem isn’t so inexpensively solved, the solution so patently obvious as I’d originally believed.

But before any solution a person’s got to know what’s under there now.  Airbag spring supports?  Retrofitted helper springs?

None of the above, turns out.

But new springs, helper springs, or airbags are clearly the way to resolve the issue.  On the forum there’s disagreement as to which.  As time allows, today I’ll spend more time at non-JC Whitney sources for the options, learn as much as I can with a head full of already knowing so much at dawn yesterday I thought it unlikely I’d be learning much else between now and dying.

But sometime soon I’m going to have to lift that house up and get under there with a tape measure and find out how long, how thick, how something else I can’t recall at the moment, those springs are.  Then spend some time on long distance phone calls with [probably] people in China or India who answer technical questions for suppliers in the US.

Meanwhile, it’s quiet outside these batwing doors.  Too quiet.

Poor old silky rooster outsmarted himself yesterday, missed an adventure a lot of chickens would pay the poultry equivalent of good money to experience.

Old Jules

9 Comments

Posted in 2012, Adventure, Country Life, Education, Senior Citizens, Texas, Transportation, Trucks

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Teetering on the Brink of a New Era – May My Flock Decrease

Posted on August 26, 2012 by | 21 comments

A friend of Linda’s [the lady who runs the Habitat for Humanity Thrift Store in Kerrville] has agreed to take my flock of free-ranging chickens.  As well as Kay’s smaller flock.  He’s been taking care of Linda’s free-rangers when she isn’t home, lives adjacent to her, and Linda vouches for him being a responsible person.

So it’s one more bug on the windshield of this old life, thinks I.

Sometime today he should be coming out to pick them up.   I’ve kept them caged so I’ll be able to catch them.

One small step for a man, one giant step for mankind, I figures. 

I’ll miss them, but you can’t take them with you, as the saying goes.  Once the Great Speckled Bird joined the Great Rooster Fight In The Sky things haven’t been the same around here anyway.  A lot of the joy that came with having the flock around went away, and the hens quit behaving themselves without him to keep them in line.

Old Jules

11:00 am addendum:  The birds are history, except for the silky rooster commie pictured above.  He got loose and I’ll never catch him today.  But a silky of his stature oughtn’t be too difficult to find a home for.  Everyone wants a chicken with his kind of class, thinks I.

21 Comments

Posted in 2012, Animals, Chickens, Country Life, Free-ranging-chickens, Homesteading

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The TimeWarpVille Saga – Other Local Attractions – Food – Corn – Rain and Wireless Phoneless

Posted on August 22, 2012 by | 2 comments

As good as Barbeque’s likely to get

The locals I talked to all seemed to agree Lum’s is either the best barbeque in town, or tasty enough to balance the high cost of Cooper’s, down the road.  I’ve eaten there three times now, found them to be clean, friendly, and surrounded by an ambiance unusual enough to be almost distracting.  Good food, Lum’s. 

As I finished my meal an older guy with a cane walked past my table.  He sported a hip-holster with a Glock, ready for action.  If I’d finished earlier, and if I’d arrived in town heeled, I’d have waited for him outside and shouted, “Fill your hand you SOB!”

Then he could have shot me down, gazed sadly at my bullet-riddled corpse and muttered, “Just another young tough trying to build a reputation.”

It would have provided a great denouement.

This could be a lot more important than you imagine

There’s corn here to be had.

A worthy cause that gives no offense except to those [such as myself] who don’t even like to be told what kind of day to have.

Too small for Clark Kent

A futuristic wireless, cordless, phoneless booth.

We middle-of-the-roaders try to be there for one another

And a bull trotting along the centerline blocking the highway for a mile or more.  I took him to be another, spiritual kinfolk to myself, called to serve on the Big Jury, and headed home unrequited.

Old Jules

2 Comments

Posted in 2012, Adventure, Communication, Country Life, Texas

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Stick’em Up

Posted on August 16, 2012 by | 42 comments

My favorite manip of one of Jeanne’s art pieces

Hi readers.

The email forwards are telling me you fine, upstanding citizens are giving serious thought to electing a vice-king who’s committed to robbing me of the only financial resource I’ve got:  my Social Security pension check.  Paid in by me longer than most of you’ve been alive, by me and matched by those paying me.

Hokay.  For myself, I honestly don’t give much of a damn.  I’ve lived long enough and hard enough to be confident I can survive as long as I need to.  It ain’t a big deal in that regard.

But I’ve got four cats here depending on me to buy food for them.  Cats I value higher than I value the lives of the multitudes of folks who are venal enough, stingy enough, or indifferent enough to tacitly or actively select candidates who don’t give a damn about my cats.

All over this country there are people in similar circumstances, probably placing a higher value on the continuation of their own lives than I do, depending on those SS checks monthly to pay the rent, the mortgage, buy food for themselves.  People who paid in, and their employers paid in on the promise there’d be an eventual return when the cows all came home.

Those people grew up in a different time with an entirely different set of values than exist today.  They aren’t as accustomed being pushed around and bullied as the folks who’d help rob them might wish.

I don’t know how they’ll react if you rob them.  I don’t even know how I’ll personally react.  But I will tell you this:

Back me into a corner and take away my livelihood, force me to kill my cats as an alternative to having them starve, and a different man will come out the other end.  A man who has not a damned thing to lose other than his life, which there probably ain’t a lot left of anyway.

So do whatever you damned well please, vote in whatever greedy animal you wish to do your robbing chores.  But keep in mind there’s a piece of the population out there you’re deliberately and calculatedly choosing to back into corners without gaining a damned thing for yourselves except smug satisfaction.

And the folks you plan on doing it to are tougher than you, smarter than you, potentially one-hell-of-a-lot meaner than you, and almost certainly won’t take kindly to being mugged.

You don’t have the imagination to care, but life has a way of providing what the imagination doesn’t supply.

Old Jules

42 Comments

Posted in 2012, Communication, Government, Human Behavior, Senior Citizens, Social Security, Survival

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Philosophy by Limerick – Amber Waves of Grain

Posted on August 4, 2012 by | 4 comments

Michael R. Taylor, former Monsanto Lobbiest, is the Deputy Commissioner for Foods at the United States Food and Drug Administration(FDA).

Genetically engineered fodder?
Put trust in your bottled water,
While FDA lures you
Monsanto assures you
You won’t get blind staggers and totter.

Old Jules

4 Comments

Posted in 2012, Animals, Current Issues, Education, Government, limericks, Politics

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The Fervent Hope of Climate Change Enthusiasts

Posted on August 2, 2012 by | 9 comments

Extent of surface melt over Greenland’s ice sheet on July 8 (left) and July 12 (right). Measurements from three satellites showed that on July 8, about 40 percent of the ice sheet had undergone thawing at or near the surface. In just a few days, the melting had dramatically accelerated and an estimated 97 percent of the ice sheet surface had thawed by July 12. In the image, the areas classified as “probable melt” (light pink) correspond to those sites where at least one satellite detected surface melting. The areas classified as “melt” (dark pink) correspond to sites where two or three satellites detected surface melting. The satellites are measuring different physical properties at different scales and are passing over Greenland at different times. As a whole, they provide a picture of an extreme melt event about which scientists are very confident. Credit: Nicolo E. DiGirolamo, SSAI/NASA GSFC, and Jesse Allen, NASA Earth Observatory
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/greenland-melt.html

Good morning readers. Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

The people for whom climate change is central to their countless grant and research applications, and the people for whom NO climate change is central to their business models are probably both grinding their teeth in frustration.

Sooooo. All the academians, school kids being trained to believe they can do something to ‘save the planet’, other people who just enjoy the feel of shrill proclamations, jeremiads and threats of doom briefly danced in the streets.  Whoopteedoo!  Everybody’s going to die!

And the people with business models demanding they fervently deny climate change looked around for buildings high enough to jump from.

However, core sampling of the Greenland ice soon revealed this happens occasionally, last time maybe 150 years ago at a time when nobody claims human beings were causing climate change.

Damn Damn Damn Damn Damn.  Cry the people desparately wanting the ice caps to melt, sea levels to rise and all the coastal cities of the world to drown.

Ohboyohboyohboy! Applaud the folks with the business models requiring a continuation of the kinds of behaviors the other folks think cause man made climate change.

Changing horses in mid-stream isn’t easy, but sometimes it’s necessary.  Fact is, whether climate change is happening, is man made, is going to result in a disaster is just too large an object of comprehension to convincingly argue.  Suggesting academians and school kids can do anything to influence it one way or another is too patently absurd to convince anyone besides a grant review committee from the US Department of Environment.

Besides, there’s Genetic Engineered corn out there growing hair inside the mouths of test hamsters.  The same corn those school kids and academians are having for lunch.  http://aaemonline.org/gmopost.html

There’s a middling potential for glow-in-the-dark halibut, salmon and whales swimming up out of the north Pacific with butcher knives clinched in their teeth doing a mutant invasion of Alaska to California coastlines.  Time will argue a lot more convincingly and rapidly whether those happen, and if they do they’ll render questions about man made climate change more-or-less moot.

As for business models, there’s a lot of new potential for speculation and investment in new inventions.  An inside-the-mouth electric shaver, for instance, might represent the wave of the future.  Live flashlights made from mullets caught off the Oregon coast, not requiring batteries.  No need to stamp them, MADE IN JAPAN.  That will be obvious enough.

[Insert, “It’s an ill wind that blows no good”, “It’s time to look on the bright side of things,” and other appropriate quotes here.]

Old Jules

9 Comments

Posted in 2012, Creative Writing, Current Issues, Education, Government, Grants, Human Behavior, Outdoors, Survival

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The Illusion of Urgency

Posted on July 25, 2012 by | 16 comments

Lying in bed last night distracted from sleep by gallons of sweat pouring off my body I found myself wondering just why the hell the Coincidence Coordinators seem to be throwing so many obstacles in front of me and the cats getting the hell out of here, one way or another.  It just oughtn’t be this difficult if I’m not chasing a wrong path, or am avoiding one I ought to be chasing.

I take this stuff seriously [and honestly don’t give a damn whether anyone else believes it’s insane for me to do so].  Seems clear to me in moments of insight the function the cats serve in my life is that of an anchor.  The weight of my contracts with them keep me from taking the easy way out and living in a tent, a cave, somewhere I’d rather be.  Somewhere the humidity’s not so high and the heat’s more bearable.

On the other hand, I’m not certain I’d find life worth living at all without these damned cats.  That’s another feature of my life a lot of people might find insane, and another feature of it I don’t need to explain, even to myself.  It’s good enough just riding the satisfaction I get sharing my life with them without demanding sanity out of it.

I think I’d do just fine without them if they exited my life without my having violated my contracts with them.  But violating the contracts as a means to drive my life somewhere I’d rather be would cut just about everything I value in myself off at the knees.

Of course, there’s this damned project over there dancing around in the wings waving its arms around demanding a particular uncertainty principle be dismantled, provided the Coincidence Coordinators continue providing the means to pursue it.  Which, thus far, they’ve continued to do.

So where’s the urgency in it all, thinks I?  Where’s the source of the fire I’m building under myself to provide a driving ‘need’ to be in a tent or under a bridge?

Physical discomfort, thinks I, must be a big piece of it.  Cripes, I think of myself as immune to allowing that to influence my life, but there it is. 

And of course, I allowed a number of expectations to creep into my mind, demands on a future I’ve no reason at all to believe will come to pass.  Things involving smelling pinon burning beside a stream, looking at rocks through a magnifier.

Enough of all that was still lingering in my mind this morning to get me asking the I Ching about it.  He ain’t always all that helpful, but “any port in a storm,” eh?

Consultation on Wednesday, July 25, 2012 at 8:04 AM.

Present: Hexagram 61 Centering in Truth

Question:  What about just blowing it off and going to live in a cave or under a bridge somewhere?

Truth involves establishing an aware relationship between your inner core and the circumstances in your life.  Centering in truth involves the ability to perceive a fundamental wisdom, reflected within yourself – and also in others.

Truth is transformed into power when you disperse all prejudice and make yourself receptive to the world as it really is.  This power can be a remarkable force indeed – yet is rarer than generally imagined.  It can be maintained only by cultivating a genuine openness to things as they are – a willingness to see, rather than merely look.

Whenever your inner life is clouded, your influence in the world is under a shadow.  If you are fearful, you will be attacked; if you cloak genuine mysteries in dogma, opportunities for new insight will be lost.  If you vacillate in upholding your principles, you will be tested.  Yet, when you are firm and strong, the power of truth can break through even the most stubborn minds.

In any debate, the power to perceive the truth in the other side’s argument is essential to achieving success.  It is possible to influence even the most difficult people, or improve the most difficult circumstance, through the power of universal truth – for truth is something to which all things naturally respond.  Get in touch with that part of yourself that is aware of this universal force of truth.  Cultivate this inner resource, and you will become adept at using it to bind others to a common purpose.

The condition of things in the present is fairly stable. There are no specific changes indicated right now.

———————-

Guess I’d better dig out John Richard Lynn and read the judgements on Hexagram 61.  Otherwise I might get thinking it matters whether I’m crazy.

Old Jules

16 Comments

Posted in 2012, Adventure, Animals, Country Life, Free, Human Behavior, New Mexico, NM, Outdoors, Survival, Texas

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Striped Pangasius, Calcium Pills, and Taurine

Posted on July 14, 2012 by | 9 comments

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

Just playing catchup here.  Posting a few items I’ve intended to mention for a while, but kept forgetting.

First, a while back I mentioned a kind of farm-fed Vietnamese frozen fish filets I got on one of those drama sales at HEB.  Told you it was great fish, cheap, none of that on-the-brink fishy taste a person is liable to get buying fish.

Bought several packages since and what I said remains true.  Striped Pangasius.

Secondly, if you’re troubled with awakening nights because of hand-grenades going off in your joints you might give this a try.  I usually have to be troubled with it a dozen or so times before I remember to do it, but it might be months before it starts again.  Usually when this Texas humidity goes ballistic.

I discovered sometime a long while back that when I eventually remember to do it, two grams of calcium pills per day for a week or two will cause it to stop.  Mightn’t work for you, but it does for me.  I just wish I could remember it sooner when the joints catch fire nights.

Thirdly, that taurine I told you about a while back I was taking to try to get off blood pressure medications didn’t succeed getting free of it.  But the stuff’s so good in other ways I’m going to keep taking it when I can afford it.

Not much else going on here besides the sky full of humidity and hazy sunlight.  I’m wondering whether there’s enough hot weather left to take the sheep shears to the long haired cats again.  Wondering whether they’ll have time to grow a good coat back before the weather cools enough to make them wish they’d kept the fur.

Old Jules

9 Comments

Posted in 2012, America, Animals, Outdoors, Senior Citizens

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Trot-lining for Skunks

Posted on July 12, 2012 by | 4 comments

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.  I appreciate you.

We’ve been blessed with some moisture the past couple of days and the ground’s soft enough I might be obliged to cancel my trip to Kerrville for groceries and cat food.  Not at all sure that car will make it up the hill until things dry enough to give the tires some purchase.

When I went out to turn the chickens loose this morning I found I’d offended a skunk who’d been trying to take advantage of things by digging under the wall of the chicken-house several places.  Because it happens occasionally, and a skunk, or coon will kill every chicken it can corner, I’d laid out chains along the bottoms of the walls with treble-hooks attached.  Evidently this was a new skunk, or [if an old one] it had forgotten the last time it tried this.

Underneath that wall is limestone, most places, but there are a few places were a determined predator could get underneath if it got past the treble-hooks.  This one didn’t.  Left a tuft of hair, a bit of paw-hide and a stink enough to have the chickens overly anxious to get the hell out of Dodge in a hurry. 

Maybe some things are worse than having your life saved.

Incidently, all that erosion control stuff I was doing for a while’s performing a lot better than I expected.  Lots of that cedar’s now buried in silt.  This place must have been losing tons of soil every time it rained for longer than anyone alive has any business remembering.

Damned cattle were eating their seed corn without a thought.  Same as the rest of us.

Old Jules

4 Comments

Posted in 2012, Animals, Country Life, Free-ranging-chickens, Solitude, Transportation

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Suppression of Public Discussion of How Damned Hot It Is

Posted on June 28, 2012 by | 12 comments

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

I went to town a few days ago to get the stolen car covered by liability insurance, and when I returned the Great Speckled Bird was defunct.  Evidently decided it was better to take his chances on ending up in a factory farm for chickens next lifetime than put up with more of Old Sol’s blessings during this one.

Naturally his passing stirred things up considerably here.  The bachelor roosters were promoted to full-fledged hen-chasers and released to free range daily, sleep with the flock, nights.  But it’s also caused an undercurrent of rumors.  Whisperings and quiet cluckings nights when the doers can’t be identified and prosecuted.  Claims that it wasn’t just the heat offed TGSB, but radioactive fallout. 

It’s partly my own fault.  One of the felines was probably sneaking a look when I was reading trivia such as the article below:

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2012/5/prweb9498292.htm

Gen. Stubblebine’s prognosis is dire: “When the highly radioactive Spent Fuel Rods are exposed to air, there will be massive explosions releasing many times the amount or radiation released thus far. Bizarrely, they are stored three stories above ground in open concrete storage pools. Whether through evaporation of the water in the pools, or due to the inevitable further collapse of the structure, there is a severe risk. United States public health authorities agree that tens of thousands of North Americans have already died from the Fukushima calamity. When the final cataclysm occurs, sooner rather than later, the whole Northern Hemisphere is at risk of becoming largely uninhabitable.

“. . . The US Government’s statistics document an excess death rate of 20,000 US residents, mostly healthy infants, in the first 9 months following the multiple nuclear events at Fukushima. . As a humanitarian, strategist, intelligence analyst, father and grandfather, General Bert understands that doing nothing is, quite simply, not an option.

“. . . The lack of information is, however, a matter of State policy in Japan where it is now a felony offense to discuss negative aspects of either nuclear power or the Fukushima situation in particular.”

Old General Bert’s correct, the cats, chickens and I all agree.  Doing nothing is not an option.  But as Commander in Chief around here, I’m not aware of a damned thing I can do, nor of anything the cats and chickens can do to influence whether the Northern Hemisphere becomes largely uninhabitable.

Any more than we can do anything about this heat wave, except hunker down and try to think of ways to not follow TGSB into the next incarnation.  And maybe try to find something useful to occupy ourselves despite the standing 8-count we’re all trying to function in.

For starters, I’m declaring martial law within the hearing-radius of the cabin and henhouse.  Japan, at least, can be accused of doing something, even though not a damned thing can be done.  I’m taking a page from Japan’s book and making it a criminal offence for any item of poultry, feline, or human being here to say, “Damn it’s hot.”  Or, “Reckon how radioactive it is today?”

Old Jules

12 Comments

Posted in 2012, America, Animals, Chickens, Country Life, Current Issues, Free-ranging-chickens, Government, Human Behavior, Politics, Science, Survival, Texas

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