Tag Archives: personal

Opalized Petrified Wood

Posted on November 4, 2011 by | 15 comments

I mentioned a couple of days ago that Gale recently acquired some material of a sort I’d never seen previously.  One he was working on when I went up there was opalized petrified wood.

He’d never seen any before, either, so he polished up this piece just to get an idea what he was working with.

He’d just finished cutting this piece and it was a bit oily from the saw.  It’s going to be a beautiful chunk of rock when it’s polished.  Beneath it’s another recent acquisition, zebra agate, formed from river delta bottom mud.  The paisley’s caused by the shells of marine life.  He hasn’t slabbed and polished any of it yet.

This gives you an idea of the size of the chunk he got.  He doesn’t expect to ever see any again, so he’s trying to plan ahead carefully insofar as what he’ll make from it.

Meanwhile he’s keeping three saws working up there slabbing the jewelry quality stone he picked up at the San Antonio Rock and Mineral Show, hmm or maybe it was Austin, a few days back.

I’ve been friends with Gale since 1970.  At the time our circle of friends used to joke Gale was the busiest person any of us had ever met.  Most of them are dead, or faded into history, so I’m the only one left to testify.  He’s still the busiest man I’ve ever known.

Here’s one of the last several remaining of those Siberian Wolf Fang pendants he was working on a while back.

Here’s another of those recent acquisitions just off the saw.

Watching Gale work used to be a hair-raising experience back 30-35 years ago before he lost that finger.  He became a legend for a while by making a fairly detailed chess set out of exotic woods using a radial arm saw, holding each piece between two fingers while he made his cuts with the saw.

I occasionally remind him of this piece of history and he always replies, “That wasn’t what I cut the finger off doing.”

Miracles do happen.

Old Jules

 

15 Comments

Posted in 2011, Adventure, Music, Senior Citizens, Uncategorized

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Occupy Old Sol, or New Chinese Manufacturing Markets

Posted on November 3, 2011 by | 14 comments

As you can easily see, something’s going on across the surface of Old Sol.  Astrophysicists are not agreed on the issue of whether this represents further expansion of Chinese manufactured goods, or the spread of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

MAGNIFICENT SUNSPOT: One of the largest sunspots in years is rotating over the sun’s northeastern limb. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory took this picture of AR1339 during the early hours of Nov. 3rd:

Measuring some 40,000 km wide and at least twice that in length, the sprawling sunspot group is an easy target for backyard solar telescopes. Two or three of the sunspot’s dark cores are wider than Earth itself.

Naturally, such a large sunspot has potential for strong flares. NOAA forecasters estimate a 50% chance of M-class solar flares during the next 24 hours. One such eruption has already occured: An M4-flare at 2200 UT on Nov. 2nd produced a bright flash of extreme UV radiation (SDO movie) and hurled a coronal mass ejection (CME) into space. The CME is not heading our way. Future CMEs could have greater effect as AR1339 turns toward Earth in the days ahead.  http://spaceweather.com/

 

 The Chinese are split on the issue, one side claiming it’s another accomplishment of their space program, the other inscrutably denying its lousy steel products manufactured to help Sol hold himself together, but the steel-quality insufficient to do that job any better than it does any other.

Meanwhile, the Occupy movements in Europe and the US have announced the entire phenomenon is the result of an awakening awareness of the injustices inherent in the ways Old Sol maintains those bands of magnetic fields.

I’m personally leaning in the direction it’s something to do with something else I haven’t figured out yet.

——————————————–

Meanwhile, nearer home, glaciologists are puzzled over the huge crack discovered in one of Antarctica’s glaciers.

http://tinyurl.com/4xnf5gw

Although the glacier is rumored to have been reinforced by Chinese steel there’s no unanimity as to whether the usual inferiority of the product is responsible.  Some believe the rift is being caused by the growing economic disparity within the Antarctic ice fields and infiltration by Communists undermining the traditional values required to hold Antarctica together.  Wall Street hired hands have rushed to assert the crack will destroy Antarctica if the one percent who caused the crack are held accountable.

I personally haven’t yet arrived at an opinion.

Old Jules

 

 

 

14 Comments

Posted in Politics

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Rotting the bone marrow – Dependence on China for tool steel

Posted on November 2, 2011 by | 16 comments

I noticed several years ago a person can’t get good drill bits in the US anymore.  When you buy them they’ll barely cut into aluminum, afterward they’ll cut nothing and can’t be sharpened to hold an edge capable of cutting.

Today I walked up to Gale’s to look at some spectacular rocks he’s acquired [opalized petrified wood], and this drill bit thing was on my mind because I’d just attempted to drill through some aluminum.  I mentioned the Chinese steel drill bits and how we need to watch the thrift stores for US bits from a time when they’d hold an edge.

“I’m seeing the same thing in saw blades,” he mused.  Damned band saw blades won’t cut with any duration.

As we discussed it the light dawned.  Even Chinese screwdrivers bend instead of breaking.

“Do you suppose it’s the alloys they’re using, or the temper?”  Neither seemed to me to satisfy the symptoms.

“Might be a bit of both, but it doesn’t make sense.”  Gale’s done considerable tempering of steel, as I have.  “Tempering just isn’t that big a deal.”

But whether it’s intended or not, whether it’s the alloy, which it probably is [There’s a good possibility they’re sending us something nearer IRON than carbon steel] the fact is it creates a still greater dependence.  Nobody in the US is going to be able to operate any of a hundred metalworking businesses if they can’t get good tool steel bits, blades, tools.

I’ve got a pair of wire pincers out on the porch I thought about when I got back to the cabin.  I’d noticed just the gripping them enough to cut woven wire bends the handles to the center.  This was a more-or-less expensive pair of pliers.

If I believed in conspiracies, I’d be tempted by this.  But I’m at loss why we’re not getting high quality tool steel inadvertently.

How, I wonder, would it appear differently if it were a conspiracy?

Old Jules

16 Comments

Posted in Politics, Survival, Uncategorized

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Poking Around Canyon, Colorado for the Navajo Rug

Posted on November 2, 2011 by | 5 comments

Sometimes a song just happens to twang the heartstrings and worm its way into a lifetime, I suppose.  Navajo Rug’s been such a song for me.

I first heard the song in Austin, Texas, performed by Bill and Bonnie Hearne in some tiny, packed appearance of theirs in the mid-1980s.  I liked it so well I bought a tape.  Then, later I discovered the Tom Russell version and made a 90 minute tape with just that song on it, listening to it on road trips sometimes for several hours at a time until the tape wore out.

Almost a decade later I was headed through the Four Corners area toward Hovenweep and various ancient sites in southwestern Utah, but still in Colorado when a road-sign announced I was entering Canyon, Colorado.  I craned my neck watching for evidence of a burned down cafe in the weeds as I passed through.

But all the time I was in Utah over the next several days the Navajo Rug song and Canyon, Colorado were nagging at the back of my mind.  I didn’t even have the tape with me, so I sang it to myself and the truck.  Then, on the trip back I resolved to try to find out if the cafe ever existed, where it was, maybe even pick up some piece of broken melted glass or a spoon from the ruin.

I spent half a day in that village slowly driving back and forth along the grader ditch, getting out and trekking around possibilities, asking around among any residents I could approach without interrupting what they were doing.

I didn’t find it, didn’t find anyone in town who’d ever even heard the song.

But I did sit down in the only eating establishment open and order two eggs up on whiskey toast, home-fries on the side.

Sometimes that’s about the best a person can do. 

But it wasn’t the only time I’d found myself pursuing musical/lyrical craziness when location comspired with a song I remembered to distract me from a destination.  On more than one trip through Morenci and Clifton, AZ, I did a lot of asking trying to find someone who remembered who sang Open Pit Mine.

 

Not a soul even remembered ever hearing the song.

Old Jules

5 Comments

Posted in Adventure, Music

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Occupy Someplace Warm and Cogitate

Posted on November 2, 2011 by | 11 comments

I’m not just any old dumb-ass.  I’m a dumb-ass with a lot of hats, cats and a few chickens.  But I’m also a dumb-ass who’s lived long enough to recognize tripwires and the sound of impending silence tromping around in the nether regions.

I’m a dumb-ass with a pair of ears I can hear with and eyes I can see with.

What I see and hear are the forces of ‘the other side’ are dragging out the heavy artillery and the Magnificent Seven.  The propagandist litany of dirty sexual organs, dirty clothes, dirty underwear and dirty Communism is already coming through the loudspeakers of surround-sound. 

You’re being demonized, but they’re also planting pamphlets they claim are circulating among you about what circumstances it’s okay to kill cops.  Claiming your promiscuity’s worse than that of a politician or vice cop.  Claiming you’re getting your funding from any organization they think anyone hates.

These tactics have always worked for them in the past.  They’re not too different from those used by the USSR against Polish Solidarity to keep it down almost a decade.  They’re not, for that matter, too different from those used once in Germany to acclimatize the population to some reason behind a segment of the population vanishing.

Meanwhile it’s going to get cold nights and those who have somewhere warm to go are going to find all manner of important reasons to go there.

Generally it makes better PR to go voluntarily than to be driven out by having been discredited so badly as to seem a justifiable target for physical abuse.  And it’s better to go voluntarily than just to fade from something that can be labelled ‘lack of support’, or ‘lack of interest’.

I’ve never quite been dumb-ass enough to think this OWS business is likely to bring about any positive change, but I have been dumb-ass enough to hope it doesn’t get steamrollered.  Enough to allow a microscopic hope that what’s being done could get the attention of some piece of the power structure enough to get them thinking.

But now the clock is running.  There’s more than a hint that both political parties have realized allowing all these folks to quietly sink back into the population when a national election’s looming on the horizon might be worse then having them out where they can be discredited and infiltrated by provocateurs, inflamed and accused.

I’m a dumb-ass who thinks the smart ones are filling up the address books with email addresses and phone numbers, packing their dirty sex, dirty underwear, and dirty Communism as carry-on luggage for a trip below the horizon, off the radar.

But I’m not dumb-ass enough to think anyone’s going to do it.

Old Jules

 

 

11 Comments

Posted in 2011, Adventure, Music, Politics

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Black Plague and Plague Crosses

Posted on November 1, 2011 by | 1 comment

About the time the light you see when you look for Orion and see Rigel was beginning its 800 year journey to rendezvous with your eye, these small lead crosses were being poured and carried as a protection against Black Plague:

These are found all over Europe, probably many from mass grave sites.  But during modern times they’ve become available to collectors.  Gale’s accumulated these over several years.

He uses them to make molds in his silversmithing work, casts modern, Sterling Silver plague crosses from them:

I planned to say a lot more on the subject of Black Plague, plague crosses and Gale’s silversmithing but my eyesight’s been giving me fits for the last few days and this screen’s mostly a blur this morning.

Maybe some future post.

Old Jules

 

 

 

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Halloween in the Middle of Nowhere

Posted on October 31, 2011 by | 2 comments

I heard a helicopter out there somewhere and was slipping into my orange jump suit while I headed out the door.  The helicopter faded, but I encountered a gathering of cats and chickens as I hopped off the porch.

Hydrox:  “Is that how you’re going to dress for Halloween?”

Me:  “I haven’t given any thought to Halloween.  What are you guys going to do?  Is Halloween something you’re thinking about?  You used to hate it when we were in Placitas.”

Hydrox:  “I don’t know.  Coons driving us off the porch every night, you shooting them through the window screen.  Hauling their carcasses out to the meadow on a grain-shovel.  Something BIG carrying them off.  Life’s sort of scary around here.”

Great Speckled Bird:  “That ain’t the half of it.  Coons and skunks trying to dig into the chicken-house every night gives me and the hens a case of the willies.”

Guinea #1:  “You think that’s bad?  What about the possums climbing around up in the trees looking for US?  It’s gotten so we’re flying around blind all night long finding branches in other trees.”

Shiva:  “It’s whatever it is carrying those coon carcasses off that worries me.  If we run out of coons it’s liable to come up here looking for the only thing outside worth eating.  Cats.”

Guinea #2:  “I resent that.”

Me:  “Whoooooah!  What is it you guys want?  I’m doing everything I can think of to keep you safe.”

Long pause.

The Great Speckled Bird:  “How about we have a celebration of Life?  Of surviving this long?  That might be fun.”

Niaid:  “Yeahhh.  That sounds good.  We could pretend we’re coyotes and you could open some of those special treats for us.”

Guinea #1:  “No need for anything special.  You could just open a can of what you give THEM,” gesturing with her beak toward the cats, “We’d love to get some of that.”

Tabby, muttering:  “You guys STEAL enough of that already.  Running us cats off it when he’s not looking!”

Great Speckled Bird:  “Nevermind!  Nevermind.  No point fighting among ourselves.  Let’s keep on track here.  How about you give the cats the special treats, and open some canned cat food for the rest of us?”

Americauna Hen:  “Yeah! Cool.  And we’ll have a big celebration of LIFE before you lock us into the fortress tonight!  Then if a coon or skunk gets in we’ll die happy.”

Guinea #2:  “Or if a possum grabs one of us before we know it’s up there.”

Hydrox:  “Or if whatever-the-hell’s carrying off those coon carcasses comes up here and catches one of us cats.”

The Great Speckled Bird:  “We’ll come knocking before sunset.”

I started pulling off the orange jump suit and opened the door to go inside.  Behind me I heard Niaid, “If he doesn’t do it we’ll dress up as a SWAT team and go after him.”

Tabby:  “What would we get him for?”

Hydrox:  “For being HIM!”

Old Jules

 

 

2 Comments

Posted in 2011, Adventure, Chickens, Country Life, Current Issues, Free-ranging-chickens, Homesteading, Music, Solitude, Texas, Wildlife

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The Sweet Hitch-Hiker

Posted on October 30, 2011 by | 10 comments

Probably 1978-’79 I was going north on the Interstate somewhere between Waco and Waxahachie preparing to exit when I saw a woman past the ramp trying to thumb a ride.  Henry Lee Lucas and Otis Toole had been at work leaving a string of female corpses up and down the Interstate at the time.  When I saw her I split-second decided to take a route further north so’s to give her a ride and get her off the Interstate.

“I saw you swerve back onto the highway to pick me up.”  She settled the bag with her belongings onto the floorboard.  Attractive, dark skinned lady in her mid-20s with a coy smirk.  “You must like my looks.”

“Hi.  Where you headed?  I just decided to pick you up to tell you about something you might not know.  I’ll get off further north than I was going to.”  I was wearing a pair of cutoff jeans and she was making herself obvious staring at my lower legs.

“I’ve been on the road for a month.  I usually don’t take rides from four-wheelers, but I like your looks.”

I wasn’t in the market for having my looks liked by some female who’d been on the road a month hitching rides with truckers.  The whole concept gave me a shrinking sensation in my groin.  I explained to her about why I’d picked her up, about how someone was killing women on the Interstate and leaving their bodies cluttering up the landscape from hell to breakfast.

“Where are you from before you started hitching?  Can you go back there?”

She settled back and gave my legs a rest, frowning.  “I’m from the Kickapoo Reservation.”  She named a mid-western state. “My husband was drunk and mowing the grass.  Slipped and cut the front half of his foot off.”

That last sentence had a lot of visual impact for me.  It drew a cringe and a moment of silent recovery.  But after I’d digested it the next question was obvious.  “So what are you doing here, thumbing rides?”

“I left before he got out of the hospital.”  Her face twisted into a mask of indignation.  “I wasn’t going to hang around there carrying that SOB like a turd between two sticks for the rest of his life!  I’ve been on the road ever since.”

My exit wasn’t far up the road so I just left it at that.  Made a mental note to turn loose of the handle if I ever slipped and fell backward mowing the grass.

Old Jules

10 Comments

Posted in 1970's, hitch hiking, Human Behavior

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Remembering/Repeating the Past

Posted on October 28, 2011 by | 10 comments

There’s no danger of our remembering the past in the ways required to keep us from repeating it. However, if we could, we might be well advised to look at areas:

1. Spanish Inquisition – to keep religious zealots in their proper place,

2, The French Revolution – to remind us about the down-side of revolutionary fervor,

3. The Soviet Union – to further remind us,

4. Santa Fe Trail – The eroded, abraded gorges and arroyos along the length of it to remind us it’s worth looking at the ground we’re standing on occasionally, rather than devoting all our attention to the horizon and a future we influence, but don’t comprehend.

5. The Chacoan/Mogollon, the Inca, the Aztec, the Mayan, to get our feet back on the ground when we indulge our fantasies that someone, once, ‘had it right’.

6. Japan in the 1930s, to remind ourselves the most rabidly cruel torturers can be forgiven, rebuilt, and sell us television sets and automobiles with impunity.

7. Hiroshima, to remind us surprises can happen to the most devoted, arrogant and unwary.

8. The ruins of castles, fortifications, National Cemetaries to remind us these crises we’re submerged in this moment will pass, as well, and be forgotten.

9. The DDT consequences of the 1960s to remind us science doesn’t have all the answers, that sometimes it’s better to put up with an insect than using the most expedient means of exterminating it.

10. Any man-made catastrophe, debacle in human history to remind us of the law of unforseen consequences.

To remind us we aren’t as smart as we tend to see ourselves.

To remind us, no country ever attacked another thinking it would lose.

No religious zealot ever killed or tortured anyone of another belief system believing his behavior would eventually be pointed to as proof of the falsehood of his beliefs.

No scientist ever released an invention or development believing it might one day destroy his kids, or their kids.

 

10 Comments

Posted in 2011, Current Issues, Human Behavior, Politics

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Mocking Bird Trap

Posted on October 27, 2011 by | 11 comments

A mocking bird’s been terrorizing the cats and chickens for some while now.  It even swoops down on me and takes me by surprise sometimes.  I noticed Niaid lying upside down out there and thought she was dead.  Headed over there just as the mocking bird dived at her. 

When the mocker was pulling out of the dive she came alive and grabbed at it, got a paw full of feathers, but it got away.  Niaid resumed position and I ran for the camera.

Old Jules

11 Comments

Posted in 2011

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