Tag Archives: culture

Freecycle Groups

Posted on December 28, 2011 by | 16 comments

If you’re interested in giving things you were otherwise going to toss to someone who can use them, or if you’re interested in finding something you’d have otherwise bought as one more Chinese imported product to help destroy our economy and improve theirs, you might have a look at what sort of Freecycle group activity is going on where you are.

For example, someone just gave away 28 chickens on Kerrville Freecycle and the traffic’s picking up with people giving away appliances, exercize equipment, all manner of things still working but now redundant because of Christmas gifting.

There are 10609 Freecycle groups on Yahoo, so there’s probably one in your area.

http://groups.yahoo.com/search?query=Freecycle

Here’s an example of the first page of that search:

  • freecyclenewyorkcity

    Welcome to Freecycle™ New York City! BE AWARE: this group … Every item posted must be free. Freecycle New York City is open to all …

    • Members: 50990
    • Latest Activity: 9 hours ago
    • Created: 8 years ago
    • Archive: Membership required
    • Moderated: No

  • freecycleportland

    Freecycle instructional Video Click here to enlarge. Changing the world one gift at a … . If you are outside of Portland, please join and support your local Freecycle group. All Freecycle groups, worldwide, can be found at Freecycle.org …

    • Members: 45922
    • Latest Activity: 10 hours ago
    • Created: 8 years ago
    • Archive: Membership required
    • Moderated: No

  • SheffieldCity-Freecycle

    Sheffield City Freecycle is open to all who want to recycle … link below: This group is part of The Freecycle Network, an international and UK charity …

    • Members: 26339
    • Latest Activity: 8 hours ago
    • Created: 2 years ago
    • Archive: Membership required
    • Moderated: No

  • FreecycleBristol

    Welcome to Bristol Freecycle (UK) Please note – a message will be … this in order to join the group The worldwide Freecycle Network is made up of individual …

    • Members: 40409
    • Latest Activity: 8 hours ago
    • Created: 7 years ago
    • Archive: Membership required
    • Moderated: No

  • OxfordFreecycle

    … somewhere else! The Oxford, England Freecycle (R) group is open to all in the … one of the busiest FreeCycle groups in the country, with up …

    • Members: 40765
    • Latest Activity: 8 hours ago
    • Created: 7 years ago
    • Archive: Membership required
    • Moderated: No

  • hackney_freecycle

    Welcome to Hackney Freecycle. You are welcome to join, if like us … in the correct format. Click the link:- Hackney_Freecycle MessageMaker Need a van? Use the Common Resource …

    • Members: 24257
    • Latest Activity: 4 hours ago
    • Created: 5 years ago
    • Archive: Membership required
    • Moderated: Yes

  • freecycle-exeter

    Welcome to Exeter Freecycle. This group is for people in and around … for more info Any queries? Email freecycle-exeter-owner@yahoogroups.com or …

    • Members: 23775
    • Latest Activity: 11 hours ago
    • Created: 7 years ago
    • Archive: Membership required
    • Moderated: No

  • haringey-freecycle

    The Haringey Freecycle™ group is open to all who want … This group is part of The Freecycle Network, a nonprofit organization and a …

    • Members: 17376
    • Latest Activity: 8 hours ago
    • Created: 5 years ago
    • Archive: Membership required
    • Moderated: No

  • FreecycleTO

    The Freecycle Network (R) is open to all who want to … constraint: everything posted must be free. The Freecycle Network is a nonprofit organization and a …

    • Members: 23832
    • Latest Activity: 12 hours ago
    • Created: 6 years ago
    • Archive: Membership required
    • Moderated: No

  • freecyclelambeth

     

In Texas  http://groups.yahoo.com/search?query=Texas+Freecycle&sort=relevance  there are 210 groups:

 

AustinFreecycle

 

… Freecycle Network (AFN), the first Freecycle group in Texas. WINNER 2005 Keep Austin Beautiful … please join the Austin Freecycle Café group. Copyright …

  • Members: 20831
  • Latest Activity: 6 hours ago
  • Created: 8 years ago
  • Archive: Membership required
  • Moderated: No

 

 

  • HoustonFreeShare

    We are NOT a member of the “Freecycle” movement. If you are … . The reason for the breakoff from Freecycle, is because Freecycle wants …

    • Members: 16126
    • Latest Activity: 2 months ago
    • Created: 8 years ago
    • Archive: Membership required
    • Moderated: Yes

  • clearlakefreecycle

    Hi! Welcome to the Clear Lake Texas Area Freecycle (TM) Network (http://groups … , etc on the Clear Lake Freecycle site. DO NOT send inappropriate …

    • Members: 5353
    • Latest Activity: 8 hours ago
    • Created: 7 years ago
    • Archive: Membership required
    • Moderated: No

  • Humble-KingwoodTXFreecycle

    … or improvement ideas about the Humble – Kingwood Freecycle Group! Freecycle Group Information Group Name: Humble – Kingwood Location: US – Texas More info: Freecycle.org

    • Members: 5724
    • Latest Activity: 13 hours ago
    • Created: 6 years ago
    • Archive: Membership required
    • Moderated: No

  • ShermanTXFreecycle

    … Freecycle Group! Freecycle Group Information Group Name: Sherman Location: US Southwest: Texas More info: freecycle.org Copyright © 2003-2006 The Freecycle Network (http://www.Freecycle.org). All …

    • Members: 4234
    • Latest Activity: 11 hours ago
    • Created: 6 years ago
    • Archive: Membership required
    • Moderated: No

  • FriscoTX_Freecycle

    … exchange or communication. Freecycle Group Information Group Name: FriscoTX_Freecycle Location: Texas, United States More info: freecycle.org Copyright © 2003-2008 …

    • Members: 3284
    • Latest Activity: 10 hours ago
    • Created: 4 years ago
    • Archive: Membership required
    • Moderated: No

  • lakejacksonfreecycle

    Welcome To Lake Jackson Freecycle (TM) OUR PURPOSE: The goal of Freecycle(TM … READ IT.) We encourage you to go to www.freecycle.org to read the history of freecycle and …

    • Members: 3284
    • Latest Activity: 9 hours ago
    • Created: 7 years ago
    • Archive: Membership required
    • Moderated: No

  • beaumont_tx_freecycle

    … The Beaumont,Texas Freecycle™ group is open to all … about our area ! © 2003 The Freecycle Network ( http://www.Freecycle …

    • Members: 2391
    • Latest Activity: 11 hours ago
    • Created: 3 years ago
    • Archive: Membership required
    • Moderated: No

  • HOTFreecycle

    Welcome to Heart of Texas Freecycle ™!!! Cooler than a garage … for profit. Since this is FREEcycle, items must be FREE! Items …

    • Members: 2938
    • Latest Activity: 17 hours ago
    • Created: 7 years ago
    • Archive: Membership required
    • Moderated: No

  • SanMarcosTXFreecycle

    … Freecycle Group Information Group Name: San Marcos Location: US Southwest: Texas More info: Freecycle.org Copyright © 2003-2011 The Freecycle Network ( http://www.Freecycle.org ). All …

    • Members: 2018
    • Latest Activity: 2 months ago
    • Created: 6 years ago

Not to suggest you shouldn’t run down to WalMart to buy a new toaster from Asia, or put that old XP computer out by the garbage barrel to go to the landfill.   Just depends on what sort of person you are, I suppose.  And what sort of person you want to be.

Just saying.

Old Jules

16 Comments

Posted in 2011, Current Issues, Human Behavior, Redneck Repairs, RedneckRepairs, Survival, Texas, Thrift Stores

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Cultivating a Taste for a Lousy Attitude

Posted on December 27, 2011 by | 20 comments

One blog I subscribe to and don’t dare delete until I’ve allowed the several minutes it takes to download the images on this dialup is There, I fixed it – Close Enough – Redneck Repairs .   

The folks who run it are insufferably smug, downtalking, and annoying smarty-pantses.  But they evidently have a cadre of followers scouting the planet for good ideas, which they post as ‘fails’, or bad, or quaintly bad taste compared to the tastes of the higher-minded posters and readers there.

So several times every day I open an email of the latest good ideas they’ve posted, allow them time to load and study them carefully.  Ignoring the source.   And every few posts another lightbulb goes off in my head as a result.  Someone, somewhere had a problem similar to one I share, and figured out a way to solve it in a way I might also solve mine.

I suppose the people running the place are just out after hit-counts and making as much money as they can any way they can, and the downtalking smugness, they’ve found in their statistics, appeals to more people than the alternative approaches.

But whatever the reasons, I’m grateful they do what they do, and I sincerely hope they continue doing it.

Old Jules

20 Comments

Posted in 2011, Redneck Repairs, RedneckRepairs, White Trash Repairs

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Wheat Flour for Pie Crust

Posted on December 26, 2011 by | 11 comments

About 55-60 years ago I had an experience with cherry pie I thought had ruined it for me for life.  The rodeo in my town was a community affair, had events such as greased pigs for the kids to chase around the arena with a prize for the one caught it, a calf with a bull durham bag containing a dollar tied to its tail, and a pie eating contest.

Might have been the year I was twelve we kids chased the pig, and were covered with grease and manure, then topped it off with the calf and more manure before we lined up either side of a table full of cherry pies.  We were to feed that pie to the kid across the table who concurrently fed us pie.

Across from me was a kid named Jerry Haynes, who’d been out front with the pig and calf, so his hands weren’t a pleasure to look at holding a piece of pie intended to be consumed.  But I gave it my old junior-high try.

And from that day until yesterday I’ve never since enjoyed the sight of, the taste of a cherry pie.

But yesterday Gale and Kay invited me up to share Christmas dinner with them.  Kay had made a pie, but had discovered she was out of white flour.  She’d never heard of anyone using wheat flour, but it was all she had, so she tried it, expecting it to be less-than-hoped for.  A cherry pie.

My heart sank a little when I saw that pie, not because of the crust.  But I took a piece of it prepared to do my best to enjoy it.   But instead of it being forced I was surprised with a crust with a nutty flavor and among the most enjoyable pie experiences of my entire life.  Absolutely delicious.

I’m thinking now it might have broken the cherry pie curse Jerry Haynes handed me all those decades ago.

So if you’re scared of wheat flour for pie crust you might be glad afterward if you take a shot at it.

Old Jules

 

11 Comments

Posted in 2011, Country Life, Senior Citizens, Solitude

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Old Sol Rejects A Christmas Gift

Posted on December 25, 2011 by | 5 comments

http://spaceweather.com/

I don’t know what Old Sol got for Chrismas, but he was pretty hot about it.

Or maybe it was something he ate.

CHRISTMAS EVE ERUPTION: A filament of magnetism connected to sunspot AR1386 erupted during the early hours of Dec. 24th. Extreme UV-wavelength cameras onboard the Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded the picturesque blast:  http://spaceweather.com/images2011/24dec11/christmaseve_strip2.jpg

The C5-class eruption hurled a billion-ton coronal mass ejection (CME) into space, but not toward Earth. With the cloud sailing wide-left of our planet, Christmas geomagnetic storms are unlikely. Nevertheless, this active region merits watching as it turns toward Earth in the days ahead, possibly positioning itself for the first storms of 2012.

On the other hand, a minority of physicists and astrophysicists theorize Old Sol’s just hurling back all those marching orders he got from Alpha Centauri and other nearby stars telling him what kind of Christmas to have.  They support their premise on the evidence hasn’t eaten anything lately and the instruments haven’t recorded him getting anything for Christmas worth getting upset about.   Unless he objects to Chinese manufactured products.

I’d suggest we all try to stay calm until we have a clearer idea what’s on his mind.

Old Jules

5 Comments

Posted in 2011, Astronomy

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Old Sol’s Christmas Tortilla -Second Harvest – 4th Movement

Posted on December 24, 2011 by | 8 comments

http://spaceweather.com/

Amusing himself as only he can do.  Strutting his stuff for Alpha Centauri, most likely.

I saw something that rhymed with this on a tortilla in New Mexico once, but they charged money to see it.  This one’s gratis.

Off to the right there’s this, for the eclectic tastes in the audience.

Perspective.

Old Jules

 

8 Comments

Posted in 2011, Astronomy, Nature, Science

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Christmas Eve for a Hermit and Cats in a Mountain Village

Posted on December 24, 2011 by | 20 comments

I wrote this several years ago in a previous lifetime before Social Security kicked in when I was trying to make a living playing blackjack.

Casino’s Shut Down for Christmas!

Went back down there for some more blackjack and didn’t get in more than a few hands before a pit boss announced they were shutting down the tables, the casino, and sending everyone home to spend time with their families.

Surprised me, but a worthy cause I wouldn’t have expected of them.

Fact is, all those gamblers who aren’t aware that blackjack’s a spiritual experience needed to be off somewhere else, anyway.  Which is to say, pretty much all of them except me.

So, I smiled to meself with a warm red glow that a casino would let the employees go home to be with their kinfolks instead of staying there making a lot of money for the mafia.  Swung over by Taco Bell on the way back out of Bernalillo and picked up three bean burritos and three crispy tacos to celebrate a victory for those employees over casino management.

Brung those tacos and burritos back up to the village and capped the hill looking down into Placitas…. looked as though something awful had happened here….. flashing emergency lights copcar style all down on the main road.  Sheriff with a flashlight was waving me to take a back road.  I rolled down my window, “Accident?”

“No.  Most of the roads are shut down.  People in groups in the middle of the roads singing carols.  You’ll have to take this road.  Be careful.”

Happened ‘this road’ was the very selfsame road I needed to take to trip my young arse home as fast as safety allowed to lock the front gates and turn off the outside lights before any carol singers could catch me unawares and make me listen to Christmas carols.

I don’t so much mind people singing carols.  I think it’s kind of cool, actually, especially if they were to go a step further and listen to the words they’re singing.

On the other hand, I honestly don’t want to listen to the words, the music, nuthun do do with Christmas carols.

I figure if I can go through an entire presidential term without knowing who’s president, and go through Thanksgiving to New Year without hearing a single Christmas carol (most especially ones involving Santy and reindeers), it will be okay to die.  I’ll know I’ve lived right, at least one period of my life.

Anyway readers, if you’re reading this blog you need to get your young arse off the computer and go spend some time with the family.

But if you don’t have somewhere else to be, don’t have someone else, why heck, amigos, rejoice.  Luxuriate in the beauty of being alone with yourself and any cats you might have.

If you don’t have any cats, nor any particular self you can bring yourself to rejoice about, heck.  As Sonny and Cher used to say back when everything was supposed to be pretty well straightened out by now,

You got me, babe.

Old Jules

20 Comments

Posted in 2000's, America, Country Life, Gambling, Human Behavior, New Mexico, NM

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When Pigs Fly – US Drone or Chinese Space Launch?

Posted on December 23, 2011 by | 20 comments

“Space ball” drops on Namibia

http://tinyurl.com/7s3ovud

A large metallic ball fell out of the sky on a remote grassland in Namibia, prompting baffled authorities to contact NASA and the European space agency.

The hollow ball with a circumference of 1.1 metres (43 inches) was found near a village in the north of the country some 750 kilometres (480 miles) from the capital Windhoek, according to police forensics director Paul Ludik.

Unnamed Pentagon sources were adamant this is not a US drone.  “We’ve made a list of all our drones and checked it twice.  We are not missing any drones.”  He went on to observe, “The workmanship and metal quality appear to be Chinese in origin.  Unless we discover we’ve miscounted our drones we’ll continue to operate on the premise this object is a Chinese Space Program launch intended for Harbor Freight.”

Some skeptics are less certain.  A news release from a popular UFO debunking site offered the following analysis:  “It’s obviously the planet Venus or a weather balloon.  People who aren’t trained to carefully observe and think clearly are always making these kinds of mistakes.”

Old Jules 

 

20 Comments

Posted in 2011, Adventure, Astronomy, Science, UFOs

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Wobblehead Extensions, Crowfoots and Mayan Ruins in Georgia

Posted on December 23, 2011 by | 22 comments

Good morning readers. I’m grateful you’re here reading this cold morning.

Every time we think we’ve got things figured out and can make pronouncements to one another without fear of someone making a counter-pronouncement back at us with any danger of validity this seems to happen.  Some smarty-pants academian digs around where he’s got no business being and spang finds something to cut us off at the knees.

In this instance it’s fairly solid physical evidence a Mayan city once thrived in the otherwise non-Mayan and feet-implanted-in-the-ground US state of Georgia.  The offending pointee-headed guy with the cheek to find it doesn’t even have the courtesy to be a US academian who can be bludgeoned by grant money and sneers from his peers to shut the hell up about it and not go around shaking and rattling previous pronouncements.

1,100-year-old Mayan ruins found in North Georgia http://tinyurl.com/d5gwjpq

When evidence began to turn up of Mayan connections to the Georgia site, South African archeologist Johannes Loubser brought teams to the site who took soil samples and analyzed pottery shards which dated the site and indicated that it had been inhabited for many decades approximately 1000 years ago. The people who settled there were known as Itza Maya, a word that carried over into the Cherokee language of the region.

The city that is being uncovered there is believed to have been called Yupaha, which Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto searched for unsuccessfully in 1540. So far, archeologists have unearthed “at least 154 stone masonry walls for agricultural terraces, plus evidence of a sophisticated irrigation system and ruins of several other stone structures.” Much more may still be hidden underground.

A good level-headed other good US scholar took a more level-headed approach to the finds:

UPDATE: Raw Story contacted another UGA Scientist, Dr. B. T. Thomas of the Department of Environmental Science, who indicated that, while it is unlikely that the Mayan people migrated en masse from Central America to settle in what is now the United States, he refused to characterize Thornton’s conclusions as “wrong,” stating that it is entirely possible that some Mayans and their descendants migrated north, bringing Mayan building and agricultural techniques to the Southeastern U.S. as they integrated with the existing indigenous people there.

He didn’t go on to say what needs saying.  Namely that the South African guy needs to go home and  tend his own affairs.  There’s plenty of digging to be done in Africa and plenty of good US academians capable of handling any digging needs doing here.  And most especially the South African guy needs to be kept away from the copper artifacts found in Florida and Georgia in other mounds that bear a strong similarity to Aztec artifacts in Mexico.

We don’t need any guys running around in pickup trucks drinking beer and talking about Mayan calendars.  Things are already complicated enough.

Which brings me to crowfoots and wobblehead extensions.  I borrowed Little Red yesterday and went into Kerrville.  I spent a goodly while hanging around in the AutoZone store picking the brains of guys in bib overalls with grease under their fingernails.

Those wobblehead extensions offer a new lease on life for the hope of getting the starter off the Communist Toyota.  The crowfoots might be helpful getting the new one back on.  Not pictured here, but also new to  the anti-Japanese engineering arsenal is a mirror that swivels at the end of a telescoping handle for looking into places nobody ever intended them to be looked into.

Old Jules

22 Comments

Posted in 2011, America, Country Life, Current Issues, History, Kerrville, Native American, Native Americans, Solitude, Survival, Texas

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You’re Métis? So which of your parents is an Indian?

Posted on December 22, 2011 by | 11 comments

âpihtawikosisân

In a previous post, I described what it is like as an Alberta Métis to come to Quebec and realise that ‘Métis’ does not mean the same thing here.  I’m not a shut-in…I realised that there were different definitions out there, I simply hadn’t lived where I was defined by them before.

In another post, I talked about Pan-Indianism, and also Pan-Métisism.  What this post and those previous two have in common, is that they are about identity.

The topic of Status was a much easier discussion, because I avoided delving into identity issues in order to give you the bare bones legislative context.  Trust me, there are much larger identity discussions yet to be had on ‘who is an Indian’.  More important, I’d argue, than just knowing the state of the categories right now…but you have to start from somewhere!

However, there is no real legislative context…

View original post 2,528 more words

11 Comments

Posted in 2011, America, Human Behavior, Native American, Native Americans, Relationships

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Got Status? Indian Status in Canada, sort of explained.

Posted on December 22, 2011 by | 14 comments

âpihtawikosisân

It has been my experience that many Canadians do not understand the difference between Status and membership, or why so many different terms are used to refer to native peoples.  The confusion is understandable; this is a complex issue and the terms used in any given context can vary greatly. Many people agree that the term ‘Indian’ is a somewhat outdated and inappropriate descriptor and have adopted the presently more common ‘First Nations’.  It can seem strange then when the term ‘Indian’ continues to be used, in particular by the government, or in media publications.  The fact that ‘Indian’ is a legislative term is not often explained.

As a Métis, I find myself often answering questions about whether or not I have Status, which invariably turns into an explanation about what Status means in the Canadian context. The nice thing is, as time passes, fewer people ask me this because…

View original post 2,181 more words

14 Comments

Posted in 2011, America, Current Issues, Native American, Native Americans

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