Good morning readers. Thanks for coming by for a read.
That adobe was built sometime in the 1930s as a turkey barn, then later converted to a dairy barn until the 1950s. The walls were 18 inches thick, the floor a couple of inches of poured concrete, flat roof that held several thousand gallons of water when snow accumulated on the roof and the canales intended to drain the melt became solid ice.
No heat, rotten iron pipes for plumbing, and a back wall ready to collapse next snowfall. The vigas holding up the roof, cracked timbers sagging with the weight of 75 winters. Roof leaking into the adobe walls, eroding them beneath the vigas enough to cause me to arrange the couch I slept on in such a way there’d be something between me and it if the whole thing collapsed.
The rent was so high I couldn’t afford to pay it, eat, feed the cats and pay the utilities, even with the intermittent jobs I could pick up. So they’d cut off the utilities every few months until I could raise the money to have them turned back on.
Maybe the best place I’ve ever lived. Certainly the hardest.
That last winter living there I was shovelling snow off the roof, slipped and fell into the snow on the ground below and lay there unconscious some undetermined time before I awakened and struggled indoors. Stove up something awful the rest of the winter.
But the cats loved the place and so did I, even as I watched the walls dissolve and the crack between the back room wall and ceiling widen. The near-certainty the house wouldn’t last another winter gradually had me wondering whether I could find a bridge to live under without giving up the felines.
Gale had been suggesting for several years that I move here and live in this cabin on his place. Another winter in Placitas, the cat necessities, and the vice grips of no-obvious-alternatives gradually persuaded me.
Gale and his brother drove up from Texas with a trailer, packed me up and hauled me, the cats, and all my worldly goods down here in one fell swoop. A person can count himself lucky if he can have one friend in a lifetime like Gale’s been to me.
For several years here it’s been easy to not think about what comes next, to just savor being here and the absolute luxury of not being in the joy of Placitas, the adobe, the proximity of some bridge to live underneath. We seemed a lot younger, that short time ago, Gale and me. The cats, too, for that matter.
But aging comes more quickly these days and it’s creeped into the picture until it fills it. The Coincidence Coordinators are nagging at me with increasing urgency and insistence to look for the next bridge not to live under.
So far I believe I’ve been the luckiest man ever to walk the face of this planet, possibly among the happiest. I’ve discovered I’m nowhere near as tough as I once thought myself to be and Placitas taught me I’m also not the pioneer my ancestors were. I wouldn’t change a minute of those years after I gave myself a Y2K, but I sincerely won’t regret not doing it again if I don’t have to.
But maybe now I’ve toughened up enough to make the next step as much a blessing as this one’s been.
I probably should post this on Ask Old Jules, but nobody much reads that blog. Not that it matters whether anyone reads it, I suppose. But if I’m going to compose words something in me likes it better thinking it will be read by someone else, than to just fade into oblivion.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this solitude addiction of mine lately, attempting to be candid with myself about it and what it means. The tripwire involved several emails I’ve received asking what makes me do it, want it, whatever. It’s plain enough the emails were sincere and genuinely interested, at least on some level. But it’s also patently obvious the concept is foreign enough to those asking to leave them without a foundation for thinking about it.
One of the emailers was a cautious man carefully lo0king for someone to keep an eye on a property he owns in a remote area. He’s somewhat caught between conflicting realities, I suppose. There’s a need for someone ‘responsible, someone he can trust. But anyone who’d stay there and do what needs doing is going to be a person he can’t understand, can’t identify with.
His concern’s legitimate. If he allows someone to occupy the place and they happen to be the sort to cook meth on the side, or grow illegal herb, he’s in danger of having the property confiscated. But he also runs that risk even if the grower or cook enter the unattended property without his knowing it. Absentee ownership isn’t as seductive a proposition as it once was.
But the email exchange did get me asking myself to form some candid understanding of exactly what motivates me and why I’m a lot happier not being around people much. And the eventual answer startled me a bit, seemed internally inconsistent.
I generally like people okay as individuals, I concluded, but dislike them in the composite. I don’t have much in common with groups, but I can almost always find something in common with individuals. So when I meet strangers in town I find I’m able to have friendly, enjoyable exchanges, though brief.
But I’m always acutely aware that each of those strangers is a part of some larger we, identifying with it, considering himself and it inseparable at some fundamental level. And almost every ‘we’ I’ve ever examined closely has led me to want nothing to do with it.
However, another piece of being around ‘we’ identifications scattered around all over urban landscapes is the forced realization of isolation and exclusion of a different sort than that of a hermit, deliberately self-imposing solitude.
The simple fact is, I get lonely and hell when I’m around people. And I’m not lonely at all when I’m not.
At least I think I might if I tried it. I actually don’t recall ever feeling lonely under those circumstances, though I do recall not caring for it.
Even the dispicable can’t always dodge the steamroller. Kaufman was rewarded, Greenglass spent a few years in prison, punctuated by testimonies before Congressional Committees to help forge a US package of ideas about a war on International Communism. Appropriate enough, liar lying to other liars to create a consistent set of lies. Not to suggest C0mmunists weren’t also lying. They mostly just weren’t elected and appointed officials sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States.
Federal Judge Irving Kaufman, who subverted the legal processes in his own courtroom to predjudice the jury in favor of conviction of both Rosenbergs, then sentence them to death in the electric chair:
In 1953, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were sent to the electric chair for stealing the secret of the atom bomb for the Soviet Union.
They were called the “Atom Spies,” and 50 years ago this summer, they were executed for giving the secret of the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union. They are the only Americans ever executed for espionage in peacetime. Greenglass was the star witness for the prosecution against the Rosenbergs – and he also happened to be Ethel Rosenberg’s brother. He served 10 years in prison for his actions as a traitor, and then changed his name and dropped out of sight. As he neared 80, Greenglass decided to break his silence. He talked only after 60 Minutes II agreed to disguise his face and voice.
His story begins in the summer of 1950 when the FBI took Greenglass in for questioning. He confessed almost immediately for spying, and quickly implicated Julius, Ethel and his own wife, Ruth. David and the Rosenbergs were arrested. Ruth Greenglass never was charged.
“That’s what I told the FBI,” says Greenglass. “I said, ‘If you indict my wife, you can forget it. I’ll never say a word about anybody.'”
It was quite simply his choice, he says today. So Greenglass says he turned on his sister to save his wife. “I would not sacrifice my wife and my children for my sister. How do you like that?”
Greenglass made his choice when America was at war with communists in Korea, and in fear of the Soviet Union, which had recently tested its own atomic bomb.
The four spies were unlikely actors in a Cold War drama: Julius was an unsuccessful engineer; Ethel spent most of her time raising their two young sons; Greenglass was a draftsman and a tinkerer; and his wife Ruth was a wife and mother. All had been ardent communists.
During World War II, Greenglass, then a sergeant, was posted to Los Alamos, the secret army base in New Mexico, where thousands of scientists and soldiers were building the atom bomb. Although he had a low-level job, Greenglass says he knew what was going on.
He says Julius Rosenberg recruited him to spy with a simple sales pitch: “He said, ‘We have to help our ally.'” By ally, he meant Russia. “Russia was an ally at the time, and that we have to help them with all the information we get.”
Greenglass told the FBI that he gave the Russians sketches and details on the device used to trigger a nuclear blast. But he says he didn’t enjoy being a spy.
“I was continually conscious of what’s behind me. I didn’t enjoy it. I just did it because I said I would,” says Greenglass.
Did he realize how dangerous it was? “I didn’t really think it was, because I didn’t think the Russians were an enemy,” he says.
His career in espionage came to an end soon after the war ended. Back in civilian life, Greenglass and Julius opened a machine shop together. They argued over the business, and over Greenglass’ growing disenchantment with Communism.
Four years later, Julius warned Greenglass that the FBI was on to them, and urged him to flee the country. Greenglass had a family passport picture taken, but he had no intention of using it.
“I didn’t want to leave the United States to go to some hellhole like Russia or China, or wherever the hell he wanted to send me,” says Greenglass. Instead, he took a bus to the Catskill Mountains. “I figured I’d find an obscure place. And I see that the FBI is following me. And they lose me.”
But he never made it to the Catskills. He went into custody instead. And within hours, he began cooperating with the FBI, sealing the Rosenberg’s fate.
He was the star witness for the prosecution at their trial, and he told the jury about his espionage, and described the activities of Julius, Ethel and his wife, Ruth.
He testified that one evening, he and Ruth brought sketches and handwritten notes about the atom bomb to the Rosenberg’s New York apartment. After dinner, Greenglass said they set up a typewriter on a folding bridge table in the living room, and turned his hand-written notes into a neatly-typed document for the Soviets.
Prosecutors asked Greenglass who did the typing. He said under oath that Ethel did the typing. His wife, who also took the stand, told virtually the same story.
That story was virtually the only evidence the government had against Ethel Rosenberg. But prosecutors argued that Ethel’s typing proved she was an active participant in the spy ring. After the trial, they admitted that without the typing testimony, they could never have convinced the jury that Ethel was anything more than the wife of a spy – and that’s not a crime.
Why did Greenglass lie on the stand? He now says Roy Cohn, an assistant prosecutor in the Rosenberg case, made him do it. Cohn went on to become Joseph McCarthy’s right-hand man.
Greenglass says that Cohn encouraged him to testify that he saw Ethel type up the notes. And he says he didn’t realize at the time the importance of that testimony.
But the jury knew how important it was, and found both Julius and Ethel Rosenberg guilty of conspiring to commit espionage. Judge Irving Kaufman imposed the death penalty.
Fifty years later, we know a lot more than anyone could have known in 1951. For example, we know that much of what David Greenglass said about Julius Rosenberg is true. It has been verified by other, independent, sources, all of which confirm that Julius Rosenberg was a Soviet spy. We also know that there is very little, if any, evidence that implicates his wife, Ethel, in any illegal activity.
But in the days before the execution, there were protests and vigils in New York, Washington and Europe. The Rosenbergs both claimed they were innocent, and many believed in them. There were a flurry of last-minute attempts to get a stay of execution. And there was no shortage of Americans who felt that justice was being done.
Up until the last minute, the authorities were willing to commute the death sentences if the Rosenbergs cooperated and named names. But they refused and were executed on June 19, 1953 – without ever breaking their silence.
Why did Greenglass think Julius and Ethel maintained their silence to the end? “One word: stupidity,” says Greenglass, who holds his own sister responsible for her own death.
—————————————-
But I promised a Denouement:
Of course, it makes no difference now. Any more than it matters who killed JFK, Robert Kennedy, MLK, and President Diem of Vietnam.
Doesn’t matter, really, any more than it matters that the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, the incident used to justify the US involvement Vietnam War, was a manufactured incident. A cynical lie to dupe the US public and arouse patriotic fervor. Same as the Rosenberg trial.
A pyramid of lies, once the foundation’s in place, builds on itself. Only the names of the liars and the names of the victims change. It’s only incidental that sometimes the victims are also liars.
If any lessons can be learned from it all it’s probably only that the romantic patriots can always be trusted. Trusted to believe the lies. The liars can’t trust one another, but they know they can always trust the romantic patriots.
The liars couldn’t succeed without them.
Old Jules
Today on Ask Old Jules on Facebook:
Old Jules, what’s your definition of an idealist?
An idealist is a person who locks his teeth into the ankle of an abstraction and doesn’t let go, doesn’t look for another ankle, doesn’t look closely at whatever’s above and below the ankle.
When Louis Nizer penned The Implosion Conspiracyit might be said enough time had passed to provide perspective. Two decades had passed since the trial and execution of the Rosenbergs rocked the nation. Nizer disliked Communists, asserted he’d refuse to defend one in his profession as a defense attorney. However, he wrote a lengthy analysis of the trial, the transcripts, testimonies, the individuals involved in an even-handed manner that wouldn’t have been possible during the Commie craze days of the events.
Basic events leading to the trial: The US was developing the atomic bomb at Los Alamos, New Mexico during the late stages of WWII. The information was being shared with the US Ally, Britain, but kept secret from the US Ally, the USSR. Elaborate security measures were in place to assure the developments remained the exclusive property of the US and British governments. Elaborate almost beyond description, devised by the US military and the FBI.
But the British liaison to the project was physicist Klaus Fuchs, a spy for the Soviet Union. The Germans knew Fuchs to be a Soviet spy, but the British and Americans didn’t, until they gained access to records captured as they advanced into Germany.
Aside from Fuchs, the other USSR source for information about developments at Los Alamos was David Greenglass, a US Army machinist and brother to Ethyl Rosenberg. Greenglass had been a Communist his entire adult life and had been separated from an earlier military job because of questions about his loyalty and honesty.
David Greenglass stole the crucial secrets of the lens molds used to detonate the bomb, the implosion device. By hindsight, it’s clear he did it for money, for the same reasons he stole automobile parts, uranium, anything he could lay hands on to sell on the black market.
Greenglass passed the secrets to his wife, Ruth, who passed them to Harry Gold. Gold was the direct connection to the Soviet spymaster, Yakovlev, in the Soviet Embassy. It’s clear enough from everything provided in evidence and testimony that Gold was a man without loyalty to any nation, ideal, idea, or human being other than himself. He did it for the money and for no other reason.
The testimony of Greenglass, awaiting trial for treason, and his wife, Ruth, who was never charged, provided the testimony connecting Julius and Ethyl Rosenberg to the plot. The witness stand accusations by Greenglass against his sister and brother-in-law, and the corroborating testimony from his wife, who didn’t yet know whether she’d be charged, constituted almost the only evidence of the prosecution. The other witnesses directly involved in the plot mostly did not know the Rosenbergs, or barely knew them and knew little of their activities.
Because of the weakness of the government case insofar as testimony and physical evidence of the Rosenberg involvement in actual spy activities, the focus of the prosecution became a trial of Communist ideology. Witnesses who knew nothing about the plot, the bomb secrets, the Rosenbergs were called to testify about how they’d switched their own loyalties from Fascism to Communism, then become loyal US citizen-experts making a living selling books and giving lectures on the insidiousness of Communism.
The trial transcripts excerpts Nizer provides make it clear the Defense had two opponents: the US Attorney prosecutor, and the judge, who constantly intervened, interrupted, interjected in ways clearly intended to prejudice the jury against the defendants.
The key players who gave, or sold the atomic bomb to the USSR in 1945 went free, or were given relatively light sentences.
The Rosenbergs, clearly Communist idealists, possibly part of the plot, died in the electric chair.
When Allied forces found documents in Germany revealing Fuchs as a Soviet spy the chain of resulting indictments followed a path to almost all the conspirators except the Rosenbergs. Before spymaster Yakovlev fled the US, during his last meeting with Gold, he made the following observations:
Yakovlev: Don’t you remember anything I tell you? You’ve been a sitting duck all this time. We probably are being watched right now. How we pick such morons I’ll never understand! We’ve been living in a goldfish bowl because of you. Idiot! Idiot!
I am leaving the country immediately. I’ll never see you again. Just go away. Don’t follow me.
He went.
But the answer to Yakoviev’s question is worth an answer. They recruited from the US Government, the US military, from US universities, from US businessmen.
From the same pool of applicants who later sold their industries, their industrial tools, secrets, capabilities, economies, and debts to the Peoples Republic of China and other foreign nations.
They weren’t Communists, like the Rosenbergs. They were opportunists, entrepreneurs, devil-take-the-hindmost politicians, like their descendants a few generations later.
Old Jules, does an animal’s life mean as much or nearly as much to you as a human’s, or do you feel animals are insignificant/worthless in comparison? Also, do you believe it is ever morally right to harm/kill animals? What about humans?
It must have been an Eve, Christmas or New Year, 1996 or 1997. Keith and I, or Mel and I were partnered that trip and the cold, or the mud drove us into town. We got a room in the motel you see just beyond the cafe with the chuckwagon on the roof. Quemado was dead, every business in town shut down except the bar underneath the yellow sign on the right side of the picture.
Sometime after dark we wandered across the highway to the bar. A couple of pickups were parked in front and we hoped there’d be a hamburger and beer to be had. At least we figured it would be warmer than the motel room.
We stepped up to the bar and examined the half-dozen other customers through the smoke as we pulled off our coats. Behind the bar a guy probably named Bad Teeth was grinning, looking us over. Same as everyone else in there, all of whom appeared to be ten-generations of first cousins inter-married to Bad Teeth’s ancestors.
“Any chance of getting something to eat?” The faint odor of hamburgers lingered in the background.
Bad Teeth just grinned and looked past me at the badasses huddled over one of the tables. “You won’t be here that long.”
“Long enough for a beer, anyway.” My partner was showing signs of irritation.
“Only certain kinds of people come in here.” My eyes followed where Bad Teeth was pointing at the cluster of bullet holes in the ceiling. “Nobody else stays long.”
But my partner, Mister Wiseass, wasn’t looking at the ceiling. He was letting his gaze size up all the drinkers, them doing the same to us. “Gay bar in Quemado?” He poked me in the ribs with his elbow, laughing. “He’s right. If anyplace else was open we ought to go there.”
The door was only a few steps away. I grabbed his arm and headed for it. “Let’s go there anyway. The smoke’s stuffing up my sinuses.” I suppose we’d have just been too much trouble. Nobody followed us out to the street.
Or maybe it really was a gay bar. I’m happy enough not knowing.
Bad judgement was driving to Quemado instead of another 80 miles to Springerville, AZ, if we wanted something as complicated as a hamburger. Just saying.
When Ned Sublette used to sing the song linked below at a honkytonk out on the West Mesa in Albuquerque he always got out alive. Maybe all those cowboys were just glad someone finally said it.
Old Jules
Ned Sublette: Cowboys are Frequently, Secretly Fond of Each Other:
A legendary man in the Quemado/Reserve area nicknamed ‘Squirrelly’ Armijo had a good working claim down near Queen’s Head in the Gallos near Apache Creek in the 1940s through the 1960s. Maybe that’s where he came across a skeleton, and probably just figured he might as well take it home, so he put it in his truck.
Driving up those winding mountain roads he lost control of the truck and rolled it. Squirrelly was thrown clear and the truck caught fire. He must have been out of his head, maybe with a concussion, because he evidently wandered into the mountains in a daze.
The police arrived and found the burned out truck with a skeleton inside and assumed because the truck belonged to him the remains were Squirrelly’s. He was pronounced dead, an expensive funeral held, and he was buried.
Twelve days later Squirrelly wandered out of the woods several miles away, which was a source of, first joy and awe, then suspicion. Initially it was thought he’d killed the person the skeleton belonged to. Then the lawsuits began, the Armijo family and the Funeral home arguing heatedly about who owed money to whom for burying some anonymous skeleton.
The story is so well-known it was used in a book about forensic pathology in New Mexico during the 1990s, the forensic pathologist explaining such a thing could never happen these more enlightened times. Journey in Forensic Anthropology, Stanley Rhine, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1998. Author Rhine elected to change Squirrelly’s surname to Aramando to avoid any sort of civil action. The Armijo family’s been herding sheep in that country since the time there was nobody out there but them and Mimbres Apaches. A lot of them are still there.
“A Premature Funeral
“Bones and Fire “On June 4, 1959, Forest Service lookouts reported smoke rising from what was assumed to be a small forest fire just east of the Arizona state line, among the 8,000-feet peaks of the San Francisco Mountains of southwestern New Mexico. A firefighting crew dispatched to the scene discovered no forest fire, but an automobile burning furiously on the side of a gravel forest road. Dousing the flames, they found a mass of burned flesh, a skull, some other bones, and some teeth resting inside the burned-out hulk.
“The car was found to belong to a Mr. Armando, well known in the lightly populated region. His fiery demise prompted the organization of a six-person coroner’s inquest in Catron County. According to former Catron County Sheriff and now Washoe County ( Nevada) Coroner Vernon McCarty, the “six responsible citizens” required by 1950s New Mexico law were most easily found by the justices of the peace at a local bar.
“McCarty observed that an insufficiency of able-bodied citizens could be remedied either by visiting several such spots or by prolonging the official quest at one of them for as long as it took to empanel the necessary six people.
“The resulting coroner’s jury in this case was made up of ranchers, Forest Service firefighters, two bartenders, and a service station attendant. It concluded that the remains were “badly burned and charred beyond positive identification,” according to the Albuquerque Journal for June 17, 1960. Nonetheless, an identification was made by Armando’s two brothers-in-law and the district attorney, apparently functioning in his multiple roles of death investigator and skeletal “expert.” That it was Armando was attested to the by the fact that the human skull was accompanied by some impressively large upper incisors. These prominent choppers had . . .”
Probably Squirrelly never paused to wonder about any moral or ethical issues when he put that skeleton into his truck. He just did it absent-mindedly the way any of us might. Probably somewhat as Mel did on Gobblers Knob:
I suppose the Squirrelly story came to mind because it’s a synopsis of the possibilities carried to the ultimate extreme, accompanied by the fact I recently had an email from his great-nephew wanting to ask some questions about my mention of his Queenshead claim in my lost gold mine book.
Old Jules, if someone had a mirror from 40+ years ago, could something be gathered from its backing?
Old Jules replies: The pastametric pressure of all that stored history would almost certainly explode backward opening a hole into a parallel universe carrying with it the identities and souls of everyone who ever looked into the mirror. Read more …..
Hi readers. Thanks for the visit. I’ve got the side-panel back onto the comp and the dust is settling, so I suppose I’ve cheated computer-death once more.
I’ve neglected the redneck repairs side of blog entries for a while, so I’m offering this up for the poor, the hungry, the huddled masses without air conditioning or filtered air in their homes.
Texas is determined to find its way into my computer. I read blogs and websites offering reminders to “spring clean that comp!” and I just shake my head in wonder. Every computer I’ve owned during the past 20 years I’ve been living without air conditioning would have needed a jackhammer and backhoe to get the dirt out if I cleaned it once a year.
Probably the never, never, neverschool of 21st Century certainties will find the following inadvisable. I suggest you believe them if it resonates with you.
But if you’re a person who’s not confident buying cans of compressed air at $7 US per whack to blow dirt out of your computer presents an unacceptable level of risk, you might try this.
These are air pumps. They’re designed to take air out of the sky and blow it in a fine stream under pressure at a target of opportunity. Maybe an air mattress. Maybe a bicycle tire. Or perhaps, the inside of a computer.
Each of these was purchased from a thrift store at a cost of less than $3 US.
They have the disadvantage of allowing themselves to be used for years, repeatedly doing the same thing without going empty. They have a second disadvantage of not providing the user with a stack of empty cans to dispose of. And they have a third disadvantage of not costing $7 anytime during their lifetimes.
The people who sell compressed air for $7 per can will tell you the reason a person shouldn’t do this involves the risk of humidity, compressed in the pump, condensing on the computer parts when it decompresses, venturi-like. You should be able to test the premise by directing the nozzle of your pump onto the surface of a mirror and observing whether any moisture condenses there.
The other risk they’ve thought up involves static electricity being created by the friction of the pump damaging something inside the computer.
The people who believe them will verify for you that the reasons the the expensive canned-air bidness folks have dreamed up to justify the need for their product are valid.
If you prefer to believe them you’d be well advised to just buy air at the going price. And if you have some extra money lying around, invest in air futures. It’s already a lot higher than gasoline at the pump, and the air-manufacturing brothers-in-spirit of the folks selling you gas are learning from them.
I suppose I’m just old fashioned. I drink water out of a well, mostly, instead of buying bottled water.
Good morning readers. Thanks for stopping by for a read this morning.
Those of you who haven’t been getting enough magnetism in your areas will be glad to know we’ll be having a nice little geomagnetic storm today.
CME TARGETS EARTH, MARS: A coronal mass ejection (CME) launched from the sun on Feb. 24th appears set to hit both Earth and Mars. According to analysts at the Goddard Space Weather Lab, the cloud should reach Earth today, Feb. 26th around 1330 UT, followed by Mars two days later.
The CME was hurled into space by a filament of magnetism, which rose up from the sun’s northestern limb and erupted on Feb. 24th: SDO movie. Although much of the cloud headed north, out of the plane of the planets, the cloud’s lower edge will dip down low enough to intersect Earth, Curiosity, and Mars.
It couldn’t have come at a better time here. The ranchers have been complaining something awful about the magnetic drought.
Meanwhile, it’s mostly business as usual here. When I went out onto the porch to say my hellos to the felines it was all present and accounted for except the invader cat. It was out there last night, but I figure it’s commuting to whatever place it has real people somewhere, keeping them on edge, then hurrying back here where things are really happening. But that leaves it open to the possibility of missing something both places.
I’m thinking it will carry on this game as long as it thinks it can get by with it at both ends.
Those of you who believe radio waves are messing with your heads will be gratified to know there’s a place in the US where you can get away from it.
There’s a 13,000-square-mile section of West Virginia known as the Quiet Zone where there’s no WiFi, no cell service, and strict regulations placed on any device that could pollute the airwaves. Those unique conditions are enforced (and aided by the surrounding mountains) to protect the radio telescopes in the area from interference, and it’s hardly anything new — as The Huffington Post notes, Wired did an extensive profile of the zone back in 2004 (the area itself was established in 1958). But as the BBC recently reported, the Quiet Zone is also now serving as something of a refuge for people who believe that wireless technology makes them sick — a condition sometimes called Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity (or EHS). Those claims are, of course, in dispute by most medical professionals, but that apparently hasn’t stopped folks from calling the local real estate agent “every other week or so” to inquire about a place in the zone.
For those who don’t want to migrate to West Virginia, however, experts suggest a person might just hit the switch at the power pole and see whether it results in any improvement.
One body of opinion leans to the thought that radio waves have a lot more influence on the human mind when they’re allowed to enter an antenna, swoop down through some receiver to an amplifier, then out to a speaker. Then back through the air where they encounter a human ear.
Making sure those radio waves don’t get passage through and convert themselves to something the human mind can interpret into pictures and words, those experts say, interrupts the damage they can do, or at least reduces it.
The comment responses to the post about MSG [Culinary Risk Taking – MSG – Root Hog or Die ] surprised me, mainly by the fact a relatively small pool of readers included so many who’ve with MSG reactions. Curiosity led me to do a few web searches for statistics on MSG related ailments.
Surprising results.
http://www.msgtruth.org/avoid.htm is so disheartening as to make it a lousy place to begin unless you want to ruin your next meal, while naming just about everything you might eat in the future as targeted for more MSG by the food industry.
Blowing The Whistle On MSG Is Our Responsibility, Get The Word Outhttp://tinyurl.com/29j8mk also provides a lot of potentially helpful information without raising the spirits about it all:
With special thanks to: Wayne Erickson MSG Information Center
I wondered if there could be an actual chemical causing the massive obesity epidemic, so did a friend of mine, John Erb. He was a research assistant at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, and spent years working for the government. He made an amazing discovery while going through scientific journals for a book he was writing called “The Slow Poisoning of America”. In hundreds of studies around the world, scientists were creating obese mice and rats to use in diet or diabetes test studies. No strain of rat or mice is naturally obese, so the scientists have to create them. They make these morbidly obese creatures by injecting them with MSG when they are first born. The MSG triples the amount of insulin the pancreas creates; causing rats (and humans?) to become obese. They even have a title for the fat rodents they create: “MSG-Treated Rats”.
I was shocked too. I went to my kitchen, checking the cupboards and the fridge. MSG was in everything! The Campbell’s soups, the Hostess Doritos, the Lays flavoured potato chips, Betty Crocker Hamburger Helper, Heinz canned gravy, Swanson frozen prepared meals, Kraft salad dressings, especially the ‘healthy low fat’ ones. The items that didn’t have MSG marked on the product label had something called ”Hydrolyzed Vegetable Protein”, which is just another name for Monosodium Glutamate. It was shocking to see just how many of the foods we feed our children everyday are filled with this stuff. They hide MSG under many different names in order to fool those who carefully read the ingredient list, so they don’t catch on. (Other names for MSG: ‘Accent’ – ‘Aginomoto’ – ‘Natural Meet Tenderiser’ etc.) But it didn’t stop there.
When our family went out to eat, we started asking at the restaurants what menu items had MSG. Employees, even the managers, swore they didn’t use MSG. But when we asked for the ingredient list which they provided, sure enough MSG and Hydrolyzed Vegetable Protein were everywhere. Burger King, Mcdonalds, Wendy’s, Taco Bell, every restaurant, even the sit down ones like TGIF, Chilis’, Applebees and Denny’s use MSG in abundance. Kentucky Fried Chicken seemed to be the WORST offender: MSG was in every chicken dish, salad dressing and gravy. No wonder I loved to eat that coating on the skin, their secret spice was MSG!
So why is MSG in so many of the foods we eat?.. Is it a preservative or a vitamin? Not according to my friend John. In the book he wrote, an expose of the food additive industry called “The Slow Poisoning of America” he said that MSG is added to food for the addictive effect it has on the humanbody.
Even the propaganda website sponsored by the food manufacturers lobby group supporting MSG explains that the reason they add it to food is to make people eat more. A study of the elderly showed that people eat more of the foods to which it is added. The Glutamate Association lobby group says eating more benefits the elderly, but what does it do to the rest of us? ‘Betcha can’t eat just one’, takes on a whole new meaning where MSG is concerned! And we wonder why the nation is overweight? The MSG manufacturers themselves admit that it addicts people to their products. It makes people choose their product over others, and makes people eat more of it than they would if MSG wasn’t added.
Not only is MSG scientifically proven to cause obesity, it is an addictive substance! Since its introduction into the American food supply fifty years ago, MSG has been added in larger and larger doses to the pre-packaged meals, soups, snacks and fast foods we are tempted to eat everyday.The FDA has set no limits on how much of it can be added to food. They claim it’s safe to eat in any amount. How can they claim it safe when there are hundreds of scientific studies with titles like these?:
‘The monosodium glutamate (MSG) obese rat as a model for the study of exercise in obesity’. Gobatto CA, Mello MA, Souza CT, Ribeiro A.Res Commun Mol Pathol Pharmacol. 2002.
‘Adrenalectomy abolishes the food-induced hypothalamic serotonin release in both normal and monosodium glutamate-obese rats’. Guimaraes RB, Telles MM, Coelho VB, Mori C, Nascimento CM, Ribeiro Brain Res Bull. 2002 Aug.
‘Obesity induced by neonatal monosodium glutamate treatment in spontaneously hypertensive rats: an animal model of multiple risk factors’. Iwase M, Yamamoto M, Iino K, Ichikawa K, Shinohara N, Yoshinari Fujishima Hypertens Res. 1998 Mar.
‘Hypothalamic lesion induced by injection of monosodium glutamate in suckling period and subsequent development of obesity’. Tanaka K, Shimada M, Nakao K, Kusunoki Exp Neurol. 1978 Oct.
Yes, that last study was not a typo, it WAS written in 1978. Both the “medical research community” and “food manufacturers” have known about MSG’s side effects for decades! Many more studies mentioned in John Erb’s book link MSG to Diabetes, Migraines and headaches, Autism, ADHD and even Alzheimer’s. But what can we do to stop the food manufactures from dumping fattening and addictive MSG into our food supply and causing the obesity epidemic we now see?
Some MSG sensitive individuals report relief from some MSG symptoms by taking taurine. The rationale behind this approach is that glutamate competes with the amino acid cysteine for uptake in the body. An excess of glutamate will interfere with the body’s ability to convert cysteine into taurine, the other free form amino acid which acts as the body’s heartbeat regulator. Taurine is the body’s water soluble anti-oxidant, and inhibitory neurotransmitter. The body also uses taurine to make bile, which aids in the digestion of fats.
The idea of taking taurine for accidental MSG ingestion is that since MSG may inhibit taurine formation, those with irregular heartbeat, digestive problems, epilepsy, vision disturbance, and panic attacks from MSG, may benefit from ingesting taurine instead of waiting for the body to make it.
Unfortunately, most food scientists are not taught about taurine because adults are assumed to be able to make it and shouldn’t need to eat it. It isn’t even listed in most tables of the amino acids. However, taurine is so important in the body, that since 1986 it has been added to baby formula because it is essential for proper growth and development in humans. Also, studies of people with epilepsy have shown that taurine levels in the brain after a seizure are unusually low. Taurine is now being considered as treatment for diabetes as well as epilepsy.
Foods high in taurine include fresh fish and meat. It is not found in significant amounts in foods of non-meat origin. Heat for long periods of time destroys it. It is interesting that the Japanese use much MSG, but also eat diets high in fish, and raw fish at that. A Japanese meal of sushi contains much taurine, as well as MSG. Chinese food, which often is cooked at high heat and also contains mushrooms, another source of free glutamate, and often mostly vegetables, would contain less protective taurine.
I’ve been puzzled about this high blood pressure condition of mine almost 20 years. I was at a clinic for some regular testing the medicos insisted on doing every six months to find out whether I was dying yet of a type of cancer they can’t do anything about, but I’m high-risk for. But when they took my blood pressure it was off the charts. They had me lie down and scurried around frantically trying to find a way of lowering it, without success.
I’ve been on blood pressure medication since that day and never even considered the possibility the cause for the original incident might have been something I’d recently eaten containing a lot of MSG. When I quit going to doctors I had to buy the blood pressure meds from Mexico, now India, because it’s been 15 years since I had a prescription.
I’m thinking I’ll get some of this Taurine and carefully monitor my blood pressure to see if it does any good. Prinivil for high blood pressure is cheap enough coming from India without having to pay for a doctor to write it on a slip of paper in exchange for me slipping him a $50 bill. But I’ve never been satisfied there wasn’t some other way of getting rid of high blood pressure.
Good morning readers. Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.
I had the vague, but mistaken notion I wouldn’t post on the blog today. I awakened fresh and full of energy, went out onto the porch to chat with the cats and none were available for comment. So I went back indoors, put coffee on, did my usual getting started routines and bounced around as though I’d become a young man of, say, 60 or 55 during the night.
By the time the coffee was prime, Hydrox spoke outside the front door. But him being an old guy, when I let him in he promptly headed for the bed and crashed. Caused me a moment of concern, because the cats here always demand a few moments of quality time, each, me talking to them, scratching them behind the ears, holding them upside down, then finally pulling their tails while they pretend anger and trying to get away.
But there he was, curled up on the bed without so much as a sidle-against-the-leg.
So I plunked down at the comp to begin the daily download ritual and glanced at the time. 3:35 AM. Sheeze! 3:36 by the time I pulled my eyes away. The damned computer clock must have gone wokkyjawed! So I pulled up the sleeve of my sweatshirt far enough to show my watch, which promptly sided with the computer, despite the fact I’ve tried to treat it well. All I demand of a watch is loyalty when it comes to a crunch, aside from occasionally telling me what time it is.
5:00 AM is when I get up. Not sometime after 3:00. I sometimes awaken at 4:30 and lie there a while savoring being alive, but I don’t hop out of bed like some fool and start making coffee.
So I’ve somehow hornswoggled myself. Might just as well see what’s blogworthy, thinks I.
The NASA site reports Spitzer’s still out there dragging surprises out of the Universe:
Astronomers using NASA‘s Spitzer Space Telescope have discovered carbon molecules, known as “buckyballs,” in space for the first time. Buckyballs are soccer-ball-shaped molecules that were first observed in a laboratory 25 years ago. They are named for their resemblance to architect Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic domes, which have interlocking circles on the surface of a partial sphere. Buckyballs were thought to float around in space, but had escaped detection until now.
“We found what are now the largest molecules known to exist in space,” said astronomer Jan Cami of the University of Western Ontario, Canada, and the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif. “We are particularly excited because they have unique properties that make them important players for all sorts of physical and chemical processes going on in space.” Cami has authored a paper about the discovery that will appear online Thursday in the journal Science.
But I see by the date that was 2010. Nothing there worth blogging. Out-of-date old news. Sheeze.
Old Sol’s UV pics on spaceweather.com don’t get updated weekends, normally, so a person’s left looking at how it was October 25, 2005 compared to yesterday, instead freshly dressed and spiffed up for a Saturday in February, 2012.
Any port in a storm, I reckons.
As you can observe for yourself, the drama continues.
Anyway, I see time’s moved right along and it’s 4:59 AM. Won’t be long before the data’s posted on the various sites so I can download it. Probably just time for another cup of coffee, another moseying around outdoors to see if any felines have discovered the world made it through the night.
5:04 AM, Yeah, Niaid’s up and around, came in and had her morning hissing/swatting match with Hydrox, rousted him off the bed and stole his place. Now he’s wanting back outdoors to see what’s in the news.
The Invader-cat doesn’t know how things work around here yet, so it’s out there under the window meowing to itself in puzzlement, hoping I’ll be putting out some viddles. And the various roosters must have picked up on the house activity noise enough to get them crowing, wondering what-the-hell’s going on.
About all I can tell you about what’s in store for today is a nap. I don’t care what the Mayan calendar says.
Old Jules, are we de-evolving? The rules of natural selection and competition don’t really exist now. Everything is pretty much given to you as long as you have money. Could this mean that humans could be different in the next hundred years?
74 years old, a resident of Leavenworth, KS, in an apartment located on the VA campus. Partnered with a black shorthaired cat named Mister Midnight. (1943-2020)
Since April, 2020, this blog is maintained by Jeanne Kasten (See "About" page for further information).
https://sofarfromheaven.com/2020/04/21/au-revoir-old-jules-jack-purcell/
I’m sharing it with you because there’s almost no likelihood you’ll believe it. This lunatic asylum I call my life has so many unexpected twists and turns I won’t even try to guess where it’s going. I’d suggest you try to find some laughs here. You won’t find wisdom. Good luck.
So Far From Heaven 
