Tag Archives: country life

What’s with the pointy nightcaps? Sensible Sleep Headgear

Posted on December 12, 2011 by | 25 comments

Every year I wonder about these pictures of Scrooge and others wearing pointee nightcaps.  It’s a subject dear to my heart because I became an aficionado of sleeping hats when I used to do my slumbering outdoors a lot.

The function of a nightcap is to keep a person from losing his body heat through his exposed scalp and hair.  Besides doing that it needs to stay on the head while you toss and turn.  Those pointed hats do none of that.

I’ve tried a lot of different types of sleeping caps through the years and found it’s not easy to find one that satisfies all the minimum criteria:

This one’s sheepskin and I’ve used it for 30 years when the weather’s cold enough.  But it’s stiff and doesn’t stay on all that well because one of the straps for tying under the chin broke off sometime way back there and I haven’t gotten around to fixing it.  The temperature has to be not-too-warm or it becomes a cranial sweat lodge and not-too-cold because it doesn’t provide any protection to the exposed part of the neck.

A balaclava solves some of that, but it’s only one layer thick, somewhat expensive, and tends to wear out at the chin.  When the ambient temperature gets down around freezing it needs some help.

They make those fleece caps for women and I find them in thrift stores for a buck frequently.  When I find them, I buy them and wear them a lot, outdoors, indoors and as sleeping caps when the weather’s cold, but not cold enough for something more extreme.

During this last cold snap when the water froze inside the house I came up with this, and I like it a lot.  It’s a fleece blanket folded four times lengthwise, wrapped around the head and tucked into/zipped in to the fleece vest.  It stays in place and is warmer than anything I’ve ever found.  It’s tempting to drag out the scissors, needle and thread and cut it down to a four-layer balaclava, but I hate to mess up that fleece blanket.  The “don’t fix it if it ain’t broke” school of winter headgear might apply here.

When the weather’s cool but not cold, the stocking cap is a seductive option, even though they don’t ride out the night well.  I keep a stack of a dozen of them on the bookshelf above the bed so I can reach up and find one for a quick reload without turning on the light.  Same concept as a fresh clip of ammo for a rifle near at hand.

Pointee hats are talk.  As Tuco observed in The Good, Bad and Ugly, “When you’re going to shoot, shoot.  Don’t talk.”

Old Jules

 

25 Comments

Posted in 2011, America, Country Life, Music, Outdoors, Senior Citizens, Survival, Thrift Stores

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Weird Thrift Store Haul

Posted on December 11, 2011 by | 18 comments

I don’t have a clue what this thing was originally intended to do.

Neither did the people running the Salvation Army Thrift Store.

I watched the value reflected in the price tag for about six weeks falling from the original $50 to $14.95. 

Every time I went in there I folded it, unfolded it, stood it up this way and that way, squinted at it trying to figure out what it was for, but seeing other possible uses the people who designed it never thought of.

This thing is a tough, expensive piece of work. 

It was evidently intended to lock something in, or out.

And clamp to something along one side.

Whatever it might have been, it’s about to become a part of something else.  I pointed out to the manager that it’s been there at least six weeks.

He picked it up and examined it every which way, same as I’d been doing.

“What do you suppose it is?”

“I figure it’s a way to block off the wind going through the chainlink door into my chicken house.  They just added a lot of extra parts.”

“Five bucks?”

“I’ll take it.”

“Bring me some eggs next time you come to town.”

Old Jules

18 Comments

Posted in 2011, Free-ranging-chickens, Redneck Repairs, RedneckRepairs, Thrift Stores, White Trash Repairs

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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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New Careers for Retirees and the Unemployed

Posted on December 10, 2011 by | 18 comments

I know some of you readers are out of work and having difficulties finding jobs.  With this post I’d like to twist your mind around in a way that might give you a different way of approaching the affair of starting to make money to live on.

I don’t know whether there’s any hope or not, but I can tell you it ain’t easy. From the time I gave myself a Y2K until I moved back to Texas I tried a number of desperate ideas that might have worked if I’d been smarter.

But I think there still might be something here in the way of thinking about it to give you a fresh perspective.  Trying to find jobs flipping hamburgers at minimum wage or clerking in a motel graveyard shift, or stocking shelves and unloading trucks for a Dollar General didn’t prove out for me.  I suspect it won’t for you.  A lot of the reason is that young people don’t like working around older people.  At least, they din’t in my case.

But the world’s still got niches a person might fill, things that people need doing and might pay to get done that the Chinese can’t get over here to do yet.

Polishing long-haul truck rims, bumpers, gas tanks:

I don’t know whether they’re still doing it, but truckers within the past few years [some of them] had an overweening pride in their wheels, bumpers and grilles.

Frequently they’ll pay up to $100 for the tractor wheels, gas tank, bumper and grille while they catch a snooze at a roadside park or overnight truck stop. An angle grinder/polisher, portable generator and a CB radio are the main costs of going into business.

Didn’t work out for me because my angle polishing head flew off, the knurled stem that held the head walked across the gas tank, cut through a fuel line [the truck was idling] and started squirting diesel all over the place before it caught fire [after he’d shut the rig down].

Might work out better for you. A person could make $500 – $1000 per day if he was fast and good.

Bodyguard:

Bodyguard didn’t work out well for me, either, though it paid well. Anyone who needs a bodyguard usually has a reason for needing one.

Respectable people doing legal things hire bodyguards from companies who do that for a living.  But there’s a type of activity going on out there in the world that needs a different kind of bodyguard.  If you’re a person who’s generally law-abiding, but desperate or open-minded enough to look into it, you might find a place there. 

You’ve got to be a non-drug user, absolutely and unwaveringly, uncompromisingly honest, and you’ve got to be willing to be around some of the sleaziest human beings on the face of the earth all your waking hours.  And you’ve got to be convincing that you’re uglier, colder and crazier than all those lowlifes around you.

Then there’s the danger of going to prison, which isn’t likely, but could happen.  The things that go sour  in that line of work tend to be of a different variety.

Tool handles:

It used to be a person could do well trading with the tribes if he was willing to go deep into the rez. Might still be so. They always have tools with broken handles, so buying a load of handles somewhere for all manner of tools, replacing the handles on the broken tools you’ve bought, then taking them by the truckload onto the rez, buying their heads with broken handles and selling them a used one you’ve repaired can be middling lucrative. But you’ve got to be relatively near a big rez or a lot of small ones.

Those mightn’t fit you and probably don’t, but they might give you an idea or two about some crack you can shine a flashlight into and find a way to make a living.  Even in this brave new 21st Century.

Old Jules

 

18 Comments

Posted in 2011, America, Senior Citizens, Survival, Trucks

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Two Big Events in One Day!

Posted on December 9, 2011 by | 8 comments

Wow.  I must be living right.

First, at the Hospice Thrift Store in Kerrville I found these gloves with no fingertips for $1.50.  When it’s cold in this cabin I go to 18 layers of longjohns and sweatsuits, Sorel snowboots and innovative headgear.  But my fingers stiffen until I can only use the computer with a lot of mistakes.

I’m thinking those gloves are going to fix that one.

But on arriving back home and tuning the computer to this frequency I found to my delight that Michael had explained the solution to another one I’ve been scratching my head over longer than I care to admit.

Thank you Michael.

Old Jules

8 Comments

Posted in 2011, Education, Kerrville, Thrift Stores

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I can’t forget but I can’t remember what – December 7, 2011

Posted on December 7, 2011 by | 13 comments

Middling cold here and I’m trying to thaw some water for the cats and chickens, along with thawing my fingers enough to type.

There was something I was supposed to remember this morning but I can’t recall what it was even though I started the post and put that pic on it to remind me.  That, and a pic of the Toyota sitting out across the meadow.

Tora tora tora!

 

Maybe it will come to me later in the day.

Old Jules

13 Comments

Posted in 1940's, 2011, America, History, Human Behavior

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The Devil Take the Hindmost Religion of Human Progress

Posted on December 6, 2011 by | 10 comments
 

The Lone Psychiatrist Rides Again

 

“So,” says I to Mr. Hydrox, my second-in-command.  “Just what-the-hell do we think we’re doing?”

“Who?” Hydrox explains.

“Us.  You.  Me.  Niaid, Shiva, Tabby.  The Great Speckled Bird and the hens.  It’s coming on Christmas.  Why aren’t we gearing up?  Going on buying sprees?  Getting into the spirit of things?”

Christmas where the desert went and why

 

“Hmmm,” Hydrox frowns, scratching behind his ear.  “You’re thinking of what?  Maybe buying a few miles of lights and stringing them up?   Finding some ways of burning up some more kilowatt hours without warming the cabin, pumping water, creating anything, putting food on the table or adding anything necessary to things around here at all?”

I pulls at the suspenders to my insulated coveralls, stalling for time.  “Well, yeah.  Everyone else does it.  Remember when we lived in Placitas and the whole town got drunk and walked around the village singing?  Don’t you miss that?”

“I hated it,” Scrooge McHydrox mutters.  “So did the other cats.  Christmas.  Halloween.  Easter.  But especially Christmas.  Kids buzzing around the roads on new motorcycles trying to run one another over.  Garbage piled up around the pickup containers.  You humans are a mystery to me.  Can’t think of enough things to buy and throw away. 

“But all the while yapyap yapping about how hard times are.  Yap yapping about the cost of just staying alive.  You humans don’t even know how to eat a pound of meat that didn’t come in half-pound of plastic.”

This raised my hackles a bit.  “We’re smart.  We’re on top of things.  Every one of those empty cat food cans in that barrel over there are a sign of human progress and intelligence.  Someone somewhere dug that ore out of the ground.  Someone else smelted it and rolled it down into sheets to make into cans to hold meat someone else grew and killed and butchered so you can have a full belly.

“You eat better than the people who did all that work.  You cats eat better than the progeny of the people of the people I buy it from are likely to.”

Hydrox glared at me in a way I like to think of as put-in-his-place.  “Yeah.  And who’s responsible for all that?”

“Human progress,” I replied proudly.  “The religion of I-Got-Mine.”

Old Jules

  

 

 
 
 

10 Comments

Posted in 2011, America, Animals, Country Life, Current Issues, History, Human Behavior, Outdoors, Politics, Solitude, Survival, The Lone Psychiatrist

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This is Zuni Salt Lake

Posted on December 6, 2011 by | 24 comments


It’s about forty miles south of the Zuni Rez, almost in AZ.

There’s a ghost town you can barely see in the pic…. used to be a considerable community down in there when it was private land, from the mid-1800s until the 1950s, evaporating salt from the huge concrete beds.  Most of the buildings are still intact, though they’re going away rapidly.

Today it belongs to the Zuni tribe, one section of land, but it’s not in the national trust as part of the Rez.  Tribes have been acquiring a lot of land from casino monies and other ways during the past decades, making the lands acquired ‘tribal’, but not Rez, which puts them into an interestingly ambiguous position insofar as road maintenance and county taxes.

Salt Lake was acquired as a piece of a lawsuit against the US government involving an airplane with a hydrogen bomb aboard that crashed on the Rez, with first responders being Zunis, but which the feds didn’t bother telling them about the bomb, leaving emergency workers exposed to hazardous materials without knowing it.  The tribe got a few million out of that, which they used to purchase 60k acres of land to the south of the Rez, but Salt Lake was thrown in as a bonus.

Salt Lake’s a sacred place for the Zunis, home of Salt Mother.  If you are willing to risk hopping the fence and wandering around down there ….. it’s a volcano crater with a hollow secondary plug you can climb, then a spiral trail leading back down inside … that’s where most of the rituals for Salt Mother are held… but all over that section you’ll pass over various religious items from recent times you’d be well advised to leave untouched.

Salt Lake used to be the place all the warring tribes got their salt throughout history.  A place where a constant truce between enemy tribes existed.

It’s also part of what the power companies would love to strip mine.   The great percentage of the desert surrounding it, from north of Springerville, and Saint Johns, Arizona is government land with shallow coal deposits comparatively inexpensive to ‘recover’.  They’ve already converted the desert on the Arizona side to a wasteland.  Still desert, but more in the moonscape vein than the usual, regular arid country mode.

The people in El Paso and Phoenix need electricity so they can fire up their hair dryers every morning, and keep their homes refrigerated.   Those places have climates uncomfortable to the human skin most of the time and they’d rather savage a few million acres of country they’ve never visited and never will than suffer a few degrees of discomfort and use a towel to dry their hair.

Which the Zuni believe would thoroughly piss off Salt Mother, with considerable resulting pain for the Zunis, and all the rest of us.

They might be right.

The Zuni and a few commie-pinko-obstructionist greenie environmentalists are the only people who give a damn, and the other desert-dwellers in the area would welcome the jobs helping ravage the country around them would bring to the area.  The last time I looked the Zuni tribe was burning up a lot of tribal money trying to stop the mine expansion into New Mexico.  The prospects didn’t appear promising because the New Mexico government, the feds, and the mining interests were stacked up singing songs of human progress and greater good.

Heck, it’s been a few years now.  Maybe they’re already mining it.  Probably easier to ask someone in Phoenix or El Paso whether the hair dryer worked this morning and if it did, assume that desert has gone to the moon.

Old Jules

 

24 Comments

Posted in 1990's, 2011, America, Human Behavior, Music, Native Americans, NM, Outdoors, Politics, Solitude, Wildlife

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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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Old Sol’s Party-Animal Mood Swings Bring Mixed-Reactions

Posted on December 4, 2011 by | 8 comments

Old Sol was practicing his quickdraw:

http://spaceweather.com/submissions/pics/a/Alexandra-Hart-2011-12-03-11-22-20–

Alexandra Hart 
Image taken: Dec. 3, 2011
Location: Cheshire, UK 
 
Details: This prominence lifted off within 10 minutes, very spectacular! Taken with a Coronado PST and DMK41

 http://spaceweather.com/

ERUPTING FILAMENT: Today, with little warning, a magnetic filament rapidly erupted on the sun. Between 10:30 and 11:30 UT, observers in Europe watched tendrils of hot plasma rocket away from the sun’s NW limb. Debris from the explosion is not expected to hit Earth. Images: #1, #2, #3.

Astrophysicists aren’t certain what he was shooting at, but several noted deer season recently opened.  Others speculate Alpha Centauri was throwing bottles or tin-cans in the air for him.

With no flares of significance in days, the sun is strangely quiet. Nevertheless, the view remains dynamic. Rogerio Marcon of Campinas, Brasil, took this picture of the local starscape on Dec. 2nd.   Using a telescope tuned to the red glow of solar hydrogen, Marco captured 20 billion sq. km of seething plasma and magnetic filaments; also included in the field is the dark core of sunspot 1364 (lower right). It doesn’t look very quiet. NOAA forecasters estimate a 30% chance of M-class solar flares in the next 24 hours.  http://spaceweather.com/

Some astrophysicists noted 20 billion sq. km of seething plasma and magnetic filaments could be considered a middling lot, everything else being equal.

PHD candidates from UC Berkeley and MIT have gone on record with a theory there’s some kind of celebration going on up there.  NASA space cadets believe otherwise, but refuse to elaborate except to darkly hint Old Sol’s expressing his displeasure about agency budget cuts.

Israel and the CIA aren’t saying what’s causing it, but are planning airstrikes on unnamed Central Asian targets in retaliation.

Old Jules

 

8 Comments

Posted in 2011, Astronomy

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