I paid too much.

  I'm kinda afraid to say "I'm back!" - but; I may be back.  We'll see.  I am back from my trip, and it was a tremendously productive and useful one, the kind that leaves your head spinning with new possibilities, and solutions to old problems, and lots of energy...

  After which, you arrive home to reality, and while it's wonderful; that damned pot hole in the driveway still needs to be fixed...

  And so it goes.  As St. Vonnegut put it repeatedly.  Anyway; an actual post:

  Two days ago, I paid too much for an antique.  On purpose.

  The "antique" is a hand-cranked feed grinder; for turning whole corn etc. into chicken feed.  It's small scale agriculture; but from the day when people bought such things expecting them to work without breaking, for a lifetime; to serve their own needs fully, and well.

  I've needed one for a year, and have been suffering mentally from the fact that before I had any poultry I saw one, languishing in an antique mall, asking to be taken home for a very measly $35; a great 40 lb chunk of cast iron from another era.  Nobody was buying, obviously; it's a heavy working machine, and doesn't transform well into a tchotchke.  I'd admired the beautiful design and utility of it, and passed on; and kicked myself constantly for not buying it, all the days after.

  Once I needed one, they vanished from the antique malls of course.  I looked, asked, drove to see the other dealer across town, etc, for several years, with no luck.  Most dealers knew what it was I was talking about, and had seen them; but were also aware that the market for them was nearly non-existent.

  On my way driving home, I stopped for a break in the small town where I went to high school; a place to which I retain very few ties.  Walked past our old house, noticed that the tuck pointing I'd done on the front stairs was holding up fine, but that whatever I hadn't repaired then was now in desperate need.  And finding a couple of antique stores, looked in mostly out of community curiosity, not real hope.  They always ask; "Looking for anything special?"  And I always answer, as a way to open communication, and ease the situation dynamics.  "Yeah, I'm looking for a... "  and the hands start flailing about to express dimensions and actions.

  "Nope.  But the other store back up town might- they've got a basement."  Ok.  Trudge.  "Oh, I really don't know.  I have two dealers who might; let's see - "  and hailing one who happened to be in, relayed my request.  "Well.  Maybe."

  Let's look.  And there, behold, is my feed grinder.  Cleaned up to an insane degree, and painted fire engine red in hopes of achieving tchotchke-hood, but there it is; massive cast iron, with enough wear on the iron teeth to prove a long and useful career already achieved; with another hundred years left in it.

  There's the tag.  Flip it over.  $145.00.

  Now- the lady, who inadvertently had blurted "you know, we thought that's what it was!" and thus revealed her position of inferior knowledge, was looking at me very hopefully, as I looked up from the tag.  There wasn't any doubt in my mind that if I'd played the game, she'd have cheerfully taken $100; or maybe a lot less- ("man, the last one I saw was a lot better, and they were only asking $35!") but instead, I gave her a full-smile, put out my hand, and said "Done!"

  And I was actually aware of what I was doing.  I was willing to pay the exorbitant price for two reasons.  One; pure celebratory joy that I'd succeeded in this long search, and I can now grind my own stuff to feed the guineas and chickens; and Two -

  Two is more complicated.  This was a piece of pretty important machinery to me; and similar bits of old technology exist in many corners of antique stores, attics, basements and barns.  Most of these old tools wind up thrown away.  "Nobody wants that junk anymore; it's just scrap."

  A bunch of the tools I used to build this house came out of antique stores; and the need for these simpler machines is increasing, not decreasing.

  I paid the price cheerfully - to encourage, forcefully, this lady and her antique dealer friends to preserve the old tools when they find them; and make them available to those of us who recognize and want them.  I didn't tell her that.

  I doubt that extra $45 will ever find its way back to me, in karmic payoff.  But.  It was my contribution, for the day, to the direction of human enterprise.  Hopefully, it will help a few others find what they need, down the road.

  A little shove on the iceberg.

Good news.

Everybody needs a little these days, right?

I (me) finally found the cause of my illness; which has kept me >50% bedridden for many months.

Good ol' overmedication.

I really don't blame the docs (exactly).  But shortly after my bellyache posts here, and right after one of my docs prescribed a new drug to add to my list; I decided I really needed to go back to square one, and find out what my unmedicated symptoms might be.

So I took what the docs call a "drug holiday", which they chuckle about when they mention it.  A holiday from drugs, not on them.

I quit.  Not cold turkey, but tapering off; and I told the docs after I'd done it.

After 2 months of letting them all clear out of my systems- holy fecal material - I'm well.

Or at least back to my old complaints, not the new ones that were so debilitating.

So those thousands of you who have been losing sleep worrying about me- all the worry vibes seem to have worked, and I'm back to my quasi-normal self.

:-)

The rebound effect, though is fierce.  There's a shipload of work that's been waiting for me, so I'm like, um, really busy.  On the road, at the moment, visiting, talking, looking.

But smiling.

A bit more humor.

In the "how to speak to Normons" area...

STILL not dead yet.

:-)

hi folks.  We're just plodding through lots of energy sucking stuff here.  I'm hoping to have a tad more energy available for the blog now.  Sure want to.

Meanwhile.  This just hit me and cracked me up today; and I wanted to share it with you.

The times, they are a changing, it seems.  :-)

The handbasket is getting cramped.

Still wrassling with the cruddy tummy; plus, we're one of those places where it's been raining constantly.  Last night I was up until midnight, watching the weather radar; waiting to see if I needed to head for the root cellar.  We lucked out; the storms lost a fair amount of intensity just before passing over; an inch of rain and a couple near lightning strikes was all we got.

As many of you know, I frequently comment over on The Automatic Earth.  (There are a lot of days when I can manage to read and react; but don't really have the energy needed for a coherent and worthwhile post of my own.)

One of the readers there took some of Stoneleigh's words, and some of the pictures Ilargi uses to introduce each post there; and edited it all into this video.

   For some reason, the embed process wasn't working for me today.   Watch it; it's not long, nice music.  And pretty pessimistic.  But if you're not feeling pessimistic these days, I'd have to think you're not paying attention.  The rate at which really bad news hits us seems to have doubled from only 6 months ago.  One million people in the US have lost all unemployment benefits recently; and many more will be in the same handbasket to hell shortly.  They will have nothing to pay any of their bills with.  Which means some of the people they've managed to keep paying will now be unable to pay their bills.  Even Joe Biden admitted last week that many of the jobs lost so far will never come back.

  One good thing.  Listen to the tone of Stoneleigh's voice.  She knows how bad things look, in an astonishingly lucid way.  But you will not hear despair in her voice.

Whole Planet Picnic! Again!

  Time zooms past.  Monday is the Summer Solstice- the absolute middle of the year.  Half the year is gone.

  I'm still fighting the tummy thing; so am seriously short on time; most I can do today is link here to past posts.   There are actually a number of them; if you have the interest, you can do a search the blog thingy for those.

  We're doing it!

  Wolfmamma had asked for some specific games we do; mostly after dusk the kids are either catching fireflies, then letting them go; or playing some jungle version of hide and seek.  Before that, there's a fox and goose course mowed in tall grass, and a steep very grassy hill for grass sledding.  One of the best bets; if you've got some elders in the group- ask them to teach the kids something.  That's usually pretty cool.

How to fix the Gulf oil leak. Seriously.

  I wasn't going to do this.  Because it seems such a waste of time; first, tons of good people thinking hard, and second; the thousands of idiots yelling moronic ideas about how to fix it make any sensible suggestions impossible to hear.

  But.  It occurred to me today that I have US, Chinese, and Canadian patents on a metallurgy process.  Which is based on the work of brilliant engineers.  Who totally failed to see; or even look; outside their narrow focus.

 They can do that.  And watching them today, carefully grinding down the cut off pipe so it will be nice and neat- I'm thinking  WTF!!!!!!??????

  The focus on precision is a disaster; it's why they keep failing; and it's utterly unnecessary.  If you just think in a different direction.

  Now.  For any serious engineer readers.  This is not a technical spec sheet.  It's a broad concept.  Don't let me catch you knee-jerking "that won't work because...".  When you spot a problem, ask instead, "ok, how do we get around that??"  Because I assure you- I've thought of it- and there are ways around.  Enumerating them would make this incomprehensible.

  For technical critics:  keep in mind: US Patent Office certified thinking here; on a very technical process where very bright people failed to understand their own work.

  In a nutshell:

  DO NOT try to fit a pipe onto that sawed off riser.

  Instead- think of the riser as the nozzle on a tank full of helium.  And put the equivalent of a balloon onto it.

  Loosely.

  The crude is coming out at something like 9,000 psi, yes?  And what is the pressure of the oil about 30' away from the pipe; after exit?  Why- zero, relatively speaking, and velocity is reduced to the speed of oil rising due to differing density.

  Seriously.  Go get a big hot-air balloon, today; the big ones have a capacity of over 200,000 cubic feet; around 1.28 million US gallons; about 30,000 barrels.

  The point to the balloon is to create a large reservoir, with lots of buffering capacity.  You hook your FLEXIBLE and OVERSIZED pipes up to it, and then hook up to suction pipe, and take it to the surface.

  You could easily have a capture envelope big enough to allow gases and liquids to separate; so you could suck gas out of the top of the envelope, say, and liquids out of the middle regions.


  Ok.  Really?  A hot air balloon is not big enough; or strong enough; but it gives you the idea.  And you could practice with one today.

You make the envelope out of industrial neoprene; with a mouth about 60 feet wide.  I'd make mine about 300 feet tall, and 200 feet wide, to start.  Bigger is better, but manipulating it and mooring it are better learned smaller.  You move the mouth over the plume at a distance of 20 feet or so, and then move it down; and moor it to the floor in 5 places. The envelope will  inflate; just like your helium balloon.  You, of course, have 8 different flexible suction hose ports already attached to the envelope in different places.

  Hook up, and suck.

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  Could this be done so it doesn't work?  Hell yes.

  Could it be done so it DOES work?  HELL YES.

  You'll probably have to try a couple times to figure it out.

  Beats the bloody hell out of what's going on now.

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Folks; if you think this has merit; pass it on.  Who knows; eventually the right person might see it.

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  Oh, yeah.   An expected reaction to this is "Why, that's obvious.  I'm sure they've already thought about THAT.  Must not work for some reason."

  You may want to check on that.  Totally obvious ideas have gone unthought of for millennia; in fact, that's the usual path of progress.