Sunday, May 1st, 2022. Week number 17
Well, kind of a good morning here today. It’s 5:00 a.m. and I have been up for many hours already. Last night was not a sleeping night. Last night was a not sleeping night. I’ve had a few of these so it’s not really news. Do I need to discuss the details? No, I don’t.
As to why I had a sleepless night, there are plenty of logical guesses. The issues with the ex partner come to mind. Potentially, I have some new neighbors across the street. The hunchback decided to use a rototiller to plow up his land. He was coughing the entire time from constant cigarette smoking. He never does any work that I can see that is not connected to gasoline. And the chicken people started the day by driving their car, pulling backwards out of their driveway and poisoning my kitchen while I was sitting here trying to eat a meal. Does this sound familiar?
I’m not going to talk a long time right now because there’s a really good fight that I want to watch that’s starting about right now. Oscar Valdez VS Shakur Stevenson. Both are undefeated and both are really tremendous boxers. I’m into this fight so I will be heading over there in just a second.
But the real issue for not sleeping is that today is supposed to be planting day. My ex partner has a house full of cabbages and we are not getting along. She can’t stand me and I can’t stand her. It happens but what never happens is some rational compromise because that’s not in the local vocabulary. She can’t understand why she can’t do whatever she wants whenever she wants. She doesn’t understand why she has to show any respect to me or my situation. She just wants to move and get her frustrations off and I don’t want her making any messes in my garden.
I do not wish to be made to work by her anymore. I do not wish for her to push me anymore. I do not wish for her having any power over me anymore. I do not wish to sit and watch her bully me anymore. I don’t want her presents, I don’t want her advice and I don’t want her negativity. I also don’t want to drink and I don’t want alcoholic conversation.
About the new found alcoholism, I really did want to go to the store out of frustration on Friday to buy more vodka but I didn’t. When I woke up on Saturday morning, I noticed I felt very good. I had eaten a very tasty dinner and had a nice night’s rest and I noticed that I felt really good in the morning.
I’d like to make a small suggestion. You are under no obligation to listen to me but if you are foolish enough to be reading me right now, let me give you one thing to think about.
I am a writer.
You can argue about my level of success or my talent and you can go blah blah blah and make opinions about that statement but the fact that I am a writer definitely means something.
Because I am a writer, I articulate my thoughts. I not only articulate them, I delve into them deeply and open them up into all of their beautiful complexity. Because I am a writer, I am not a simpleton. Because I am a writer, logic has a higher place in my mind than my sex organs. Or my stomach or my liver for that matter.
Because I am a writer, I also have a memory. Because I have taken the trouble to note things, what happened in these situations has resonance. I’ve already thought of it and my own Park of these things and my own actions. If an unexamined life is not worth living, perhaps my examined life is slightly more worth living than it would be otherwise. And regardless of this high School popularity contest my neighbors seem to think life is about, I find their games dull.
Because I am a writer, because I am an ecology writer and because I am a vegan writer, paying attention to my health is right there up front where you can see it everyday. If doing something makes me sick, I remember that I did it and I can make the logical choice not to repeat it. If I do something and it seems to be leading to Great unhappiness, I have the ability to say no.
I mean, you can play Nazi fascist games all day if it really makes you happy. To me, it’s just a bunch of dull-witted idiots trying to scapegoat me. What’s in that for me?
Did drinking help? I managed to get through putting away the wood because I got brutal enough to do it. But what I did used up energy that I didn’t have for the next several days. True, I allowed myself to get numb and senseless and drove forward relentlessly and ruthlessly. But after, I had nothing left and the next days were just about being a drunk.
I got to the end of the third bottle and then put all three bottles away in a corner where they are not bothering anybody. I didn’t feel like going to the store last night and I don’t feel like going to the store today. I mean, I actually need some things so I might be going to the store but I will not be coming back with more alcohol. I don’t drink. If you’d like to know the severity of that statement, copy those three words and then paste them about 100 times. Let It be 300 words stating the truth. I don’t drink and I don’t want to drink and I don’t want to be drunk and I don’t want to be with drunks.
That is not the lifestyle I wish to live, this is not the feeling I want to feel.
So I’m going to go watch that fight now. Boxing is a crazy sport to watch. Don’t get me thinking about where boxers come from. Don’t get me thinking about the exploitation of the lower classes or the creation of the lower classes or how many Hispanics and blacks end up in the ranks of boxing. Don’t get me thinking about the viciousness of it because it is very much a sport about doing something horrible to the brain of another person.
But if you have ever actually been in a fight, it’s something you understand. I am not a particularly great boxer. I’m certainly no kind of a boxer now. But I know what a knockout feels like. I know what a punch feels like. I also know what that adrenaline Rush feels like after a battle.
Just please tell the local women to stop trading on adrenaline rushes as a means to enslave me. I’m not interested in being pussy whipped or bullied and I’m not interested in working for anyone or for anyone’s pleasure. I’m not looking for a boss, thank you very much. I am the boss and if you don’t want to work for me, you don’t work here. And if you don’t work here, get off my property.
Cheers and I’ve got a ton of stuff to try and talk about after the fight.
http://markkystreams.com/video/boxing-1/
***
Well, that was faster than I thought. Nico Ali Walsh was on the undercard against someone named Valdez who is probably going to spend the night in the hospital after a first round KO. The announcers were just getting started talking about how Muhammad Ali’s grandson was becoming a true gym rat and a workaholic. His name had gotten him attention at the beginning but now he was into the game with great seriousness. And then boom, a swift combination and a left hand and Valdez was done for the night about a minute and a half after the introductions.
Ba-boom.
Okay, I’ve got a few links to talk about and a few thoughts that go along with them. I’ve been trying to get most of this straight in my head since I ran into the stuff but I think it’s worthy of presentation. I’m going to put these up in the order that I found them or came up with the thought.
Zelinski on American help
In this message, the president of Ukraine delves very deeply into his gratitude to the United States for their Lend-Lease program. The US has come up with 33 billion dollars of aid for Ukraine. Unfortunately, 20 billion of this goes right back to the military contractors, 10 billion of it goes back to the bankers and then 3 billion goes to humanitarian aid. Probably most of that paying for the humanitarian help and travel expenses. That makes all of this profitable for the oil business.
But Zelinsky is thrilled to have all of this money coming into his country. It seems that the Russians are not being very successful in their belligerence. Ukrainians are holding their own and with an influx of weaponry, most probably they will be able to do enough damage to the Russians to make them go home.
It is hard for me to look at this situation optimistically. It’s hard for me to look at this situation without feeling a little dirty. Having two family members attached to the Ukrainian oil Business seems to have a lot to do with this decision. The war starting during Joe Biden’s presidency seems to be connected to the entire Russian integration into the conservative party, the Christian Media and everything that is the oil-based American economy.
In my book Found in Translation, one of the last stories I translated was about reparations paid by the Norilsk Nikel company, paid to the factory town and the region after the closing of their smelting plant. There was massive ecological damage, a genuine health crisis concerning lung disorders and a ridiculous rise in cancer amongst people in the region and of course the economics of the area fell to pieces without the factory to give out jobs.
What became apparent though is that the Russian government controlled the prices of building material which suddenly went up causing several potential contractors to lose their investments and when investors regrouped, they ended up paying money to themselves and not very much aid went to the people. There was great talk about reparations. There were many promises how the town would be saved and rebuilt. The money didn’t go there. The money went right back to the people who had the money in the first place.
I’m just saying that this is an MO, modus operandi, the way things are done. And it is especially true around the oil business and it is unbelievably true around the Russian oil Business. I would not be thinking this had not Joe’s family been so deeply integrated in Ukraine over the last 10 years.
I’m just saying that no one should plan to be getting rich over this. I would not count on there being too much stuff falling off the trucks that will actually make a difference in human lives or quality of life anytime soon.
Zelinski making deals with the European Union
In this second Instagram video, Zelinski is very happy that his country is now on The fast track towards joining the European Union. He is of course waiting for a great investment in the rebuilding process from Europe.
What do I see from this?
I have been to Ukraine several times. I’ve spent time in Kiev. I’m not very well traveled and though I had some plans to go to several places last year, I’m pretty broke and unless something is absolutely a necessity, money does not get spent. Joy riding is not in my plans.
When I did go down there though, I saw what life was like in Kiev and I saw something that stuck in my memory.
At the time, the Belarusian president was riding a wave of perhaps genuine popularity. The propaganda at the time had him as the great brave leader of a tiny country fighting the big bad Russians and fighting the big bad Americans and telling Europe to kiss his ass etc. This was just after the “economic miracle“.
To say it basically, from the turn of the century until a year or so before the president intended to stick around for a third term and make a constitutional referendum allowing him to do so, Belarus was as sick of a place economically as any place you could possibly go in the world. It was not just poverty, it was hopeless drunken poverty. Salaries were below $50 a month, services were minimal at best, they did not even have money to turn the street lights on and the population was sick with nostalgia.
Suddenly, there was enough money for a coat of paint. Suddenly, things came to life and building started to take place. Suddenly salaries Rose and promises were made – it was a miracle, or so they said.
What was causing this was the first barrels of crude being pumped from Russia through Belarusian refineries. This was the beginning of the rise of Vladimir Putin and right on his coattails, though not admitting this publicly, was the president of the Republic of Belarus. No, the Belarusian people had not become workaholics. No, there was no massive sense of national pride at the workplace or a rise in intellectual or artisan skills. We just had some money flowing in from the oil business for a change and whether it was real or not, we suddenly had a three-term president. That number is now five by the way.
It was at this time that I was in Ukraine. At that time, Ukraine was much more integrated with Europe. They had a much different business policy, they were more open to European investment and therefore there were a lot more modern corporate businesses going on in Kiev. From the outside, it looked at a glance as if they had a lot more going on than the Belarusians who seemed lost in the Soviet Union.
But if you scratch the surface, you noticed something very clearly. The faces of all of the wage workers were dismal. Belarus now has its own legion of uniformed wage workers. At the time, it was interesting to note how many attractive young girls and boys were wearing tight fitting business suits. The problem was that they weren’t making any money. This is also true in modern Belarus but at the time, it was really noticeable. Sure, there was a lot of business but none of this business was going to the people who were working the business. And not only that but the profits were leaving the country and heading back to Europe.
The slowness of the Belarusian economy only delayed this effect here. Over the last 5 or 10 years, the economic climate has changed and Belarus has happily given away its people as slave labor and made sure that a steady stream of money leaves our country back to Russia or to Europe. Mostly to Russia.
Again, I learned about this back in the 1980s in the United States. This was the time that Walmart and Kmart became massive industries and in the process wiped out the American dream. This would be the dream that anybody could, with the sweat of their brow and a good solid pull on the bootstraps, open and manage their own business and contribute to their communities. But with the death of local ownership came the death of vested interest and the beginning of wage slavery and with it, all of the problems that are now well known especially in that Christian Midwest and deep south. The opium addictions, the racial violence, the teenage pregnancies on the endless alcoholism, economic malfeasance and of course the media Monopoly from our friends at Sinclair.
The oil business at work.
When the scandal surrounding Hunter Biden hit, this is how I put two and two together. When he was caught getting $150,000 a month as salary for being some kind of advisor, what else would it look like other than political graft?
So if you’d like to be happy to be joining the European Union, I say that the ukrainians are going from the fireplace into the fire. I say that by the time they go deeply into debt for building materials and the oil necessary for all of the transportation, they are going to be completely enslaved for the foreseeable future. And with it, I can only imagine an endless chain of kfcs, McDonald’s and Pizza Hut making sure that Joe Biden’s 33 billion gets spent on a lot of cars to take people through the drive-thru.
Enjoy your diabetes. Enjoy the cancer. Welcome to the oil business.
***
Damn. Keyshawn Davis just dismantled Esteban Sanchez in the last undercard fight. They should have stopped that way earlier. Sanchez was defenseless and Davis was just hammering him. Check that man for brain damage. Seriously, why didn’t the corner stop the fight? Why didn’t the referee stop the fight? I mean, give credit for heart and stamina because he didn’t go down. But he was just getting pounded by rifle shots.
You know, with a sport as violent as boxing, why do we actually need the weapons business? I would think that there is enough violence in boxing to justify abandoning shooting wars and simply holding athletic events for property issues and fights for natural resources.
Okay, I’m not suggesting this as the best way to solve problems. The best way to solve problems is by getting together and being reasonable with each other and making sure that human needs are met while at the same time making sure that we do not overstep our boundaries ecologically. That’s Utopia.
But if we cannot speak with each other because we are truly savages, I think they could have set up boxing matches instead of throwing missiles in Ukraine. And hey, Ukraine has some serious boxers.
Wouldn’t the world be kind of a cool place if negotiations broke down, fascism and violence was the only possible way to solve issues but instead of killing each other, we set up an Olympic type tournament and allow our sportsmen to play for something important.
Personally, I think we’d be better off on bicycles, buying our food locally if we can’t help grow it ourselves and keeping transportation to purely electrical movement. But if there needs to be some kind of an issue about resources, set up a tournament.
One interesting side effect of this would be if you had some Michael Jordan guy appear somewhere in your country, this might be your play for world domination. “We cannot allow the West to have access to the Black Sea oil fields. Russia cannot survive without selling off all the oil under our territory. Ukrainians are Nazis, we’re going to play basketball. We have this guy Mikhail Jordonovich and we are going to pillage…”
This sort of thing.
I want to get into some thoughts related to some trolling I had over the weekend. Just the usual thing but I had a thought about trolling that sort of gives me an interesting perspective on the entire affair. This also kind of connects with my neighbors and my ex partner. But I’m going to have to get to that after the fight.
Valdez versus Stevenson coming up.
***
I’m seeing the fight as being basically even through the first four rounds. In round five, I have to say that Stevenson took charge and in the beginning of round 6 scored a knockdown. That knocked down might have been a slip. But Valdez’s face is red and Stevenson is starting to get aggressive. Stevenson is a taller boxer and has a reach advantage and right now, he is pounding on Valdez.
***
Valdez is a champion. He came back hard in round 7. But Stevenson is the better boxer. Valdez has his hands up high protecting his face. It’s a bit like Mike Tyson but he doesn’t have that ability to get inside and punch with any authority. Stevenson has his hands low and keeps his right out as a guard, probing the distance before firing with his left. He’s been hammering Valdez all night and obviously he’s up on the cards. If Valdez can’t find his way inside for something serious, this fight is going to Stevenson.
By the way, that knockdown was a knockdown. In the replay, it became clear. Valdez held his arms out afterwards asking why it was not a slip. But that was just bravado. He came off the ropes and got hammered when he was off balance. It is right now Stevenson’s fight going into the final rounds.
***
Well, that was a unanimous decision. In the last couple of rounds, Valdez fought like a wild man trying with all his might to find Stevenson’s chin. He resorted to low blows and wild punches but in the end, his face beaten to hamburger, Stevenson just ran away from him and had his belt in his hand.
Valdez has made a big deal about being connected to Alvarez Coello, who is basically considered pound for pound the greatest boxer in the world. Coello is famous for being almost unhittable. His style is defensive and movement oriented while also possessing unbelievable reflexes and powerful hands. But in this fight, it was Stevenson who was unhittable. He was still smiling and lively by the end of the fight and after the awards ceremony, got down on his knee and proposed marriage to his rather glamorous girlfriend. They made it quite well-known that she was the mother of his child.
During the 9th round, my ex partner sent a message. She of course has dramatic timing. She said some things that were generally incomprehensible so I sent her one that was very understandable.
She should gather up all of her cabbage and all of the plants she has been growing, call a taxi and bring everything up here. We are going to work together planting but we are going to work at my pace and I am going to direct the day. We’re not going to fight or get in each other’s way and at the end of the day, we will discuss whether she comes up here anymore.
If any feminists are reading this, she said okay. If any females are laughing, don’t laugh too long or too hard because it’s going to be this way.
Basically, we have some materials that need to be brought into play. The plan is to make use of the boxes I have made but we are going to plant the individual plants in a hole filled with planting soil. I believe in the soil composition I have put together, but we’re going to mix in what we have to try and guarantee some decent growth. My boxes will mature with age and I’m okay with our mulching plan of using Forest leaves but this is how we start.
Other than this, we’re going to work together on dealing with the water situation unless we get some rain. It’s a bit overcast today and actually kind of cold. I don’t see the weather stopping us and if it does rain, it makes planting easier.
After this, there are just a couple of nuances such as bringing some of my old roofing panels out to give some extra water to some of the trees. Some of them get quite a bit of water off of my neighbor’s roof but some of them are going to need some help. The original plan was to construct a giant roof but now I understand that I can probably do well with roofing panels and a tiny bit of carpentry to keep them at an angle. Cheaper, equally as effective and easier to maintain.
The last thing we need to do is chop out some holes near the fence to plant ivy. I’m probably going to put a barrier in front just to make it understood what is there. But this is our work today and if we don’t get in each other’s way (if she takes the trouble to let me direct our movements), we will be fine.
And if she does her job and doesn’t break my brain or any other of my body parts, I’ll send her to the store for the bottle of wine for herself and I will watch her drink it.
Or maybe she’ll just go for the chocolate that I have on hand with some tea or coffee.
***
Yeah, sometimes I think I’m actually getting through to people. Or maybe it’s that people are starting to take me seriously. I’m talking about my writing here. I’m saying this because I just got two very positive messages agreeing with my opinion about the economic situation around this war.
During communism, we spent all of our money on stupid wars.
I couldn’t agree with this one more. It is almost like an acceptance. It is like my thinking comes from some place in the historical consciousness of the region. A place in their minds that has been beaten down and suppressed. Pragmatism. Realism.
There was a time when all Russian artists practiced realism. Though perhaps the most beautiful art in my opinion comes from the French impressionists, this at the very beginning of the Industrial Revolution or at the end of the natural world, depending on how you look at it, the Russians liked realism. Perhaps it was attached to a refusal to allow religion to cloud their minds. Or perhaps it was because communism was based on reality rather than the words of con men carpet bagging their way through your country.
But it’s nice to get something other than trolling for a change. Thank you for the agreement.
And this about practicing non-lethal warfare:
So many of our boys are not coming home and so many people have lost their homes.
I couldn’t agree more about the tragedy. It’s an unbelievable waste of resources and money but even worse, it is such a waste of humanity. To torture us for money. To steal the lives of so many people just so some industrialist can buy a new yacht. Reprehensible. Disgusting. Indigestible.
But these are today. At the end of last week, I got a couple of antagonistic thoughts.
This is just vegetarianism.
Yes we are capitalists.
Both of these two are not quotes, they are the entire message. I guess both of them mean that they are dismissing everything I’m saying because they can boil everything down to a name. This is directly from the arsenal of dumb Donald Trump who could throw away people simply by putting an adjective next to their name. Vladimir Putin is doing this right now by putting the word Nazi next to ukrainians. It’s funny how easily non-thinking people can react negatively.
The problem with both of these negative trolls comes from two directions. The first is that they don’t bother to understand that “vegetarianism” is a good thing. It is a positive way of life, a healthy way of life and a way of life that solves an incredible amount of ecological problems. It also solves quite a bit of the stupidity problem and I’ll get to more of that in a minute.
The second one also assumes that capitalism is good and correct but is also made without any genuine study as to the absolute effects of capitalism. I don’t mean to send someone to the University of Google who is not prepared to go there. But what I can ask is exactly who is making the money? I understand that a person who feels free to go into business feels that they are free and unrestricted. The problem is not that people are allowed to follow their dreams, it is the manner in which money is made and the means of actually making money that causes the problems. In this I am talking about both The credibility of the business ethics and the pollution caused.
One can imagine a utopian society in which energetic and creative people find wonderful ways to contribute to their local communities. We would be grateful for such far thinkers and energetic workaholics making life better for everyone. Agreeing to be a selfish cunt who doesn’t care who suffers so you can afford better drugs and your wife can afford to redecorate her house doesn’t make anybody happy but you. And believe me, living in the village next to money people is depressing as hell.
This however is not my main thought. What touched me about these two trolls was simply that they were single sentences.
I’ve been teaching English for 20 years and one of the first things that I noticed as a teacher was that my first problem was to get people thinking about more than one sentence.
At the absolute worst of this, I had a man come to me for English lessons and as a test, this was pretty usual at the time, I asked him simply to write 100 words in Russian about why he wanted to study English. It wasn’t important what the guy said, it was just important to put together at least 7 to 10 sentences to make his point.
The guy wrote 23 words and put down his pen.
“The task is to write 100 words. Keep going.”
“That’s all. I’ve said what I want to say.”
“I understand that but the task is to write 100 words. If you didn’t understand that before, let me make it clear now. You are supposed to keep going. Explain yourself please.”
He grew a bit hostile and threatening and repeated that he had already said what he wanted to say. Needless to say, I did not accept the contract.
The issue here is that you can’t really understand what someone is thinking with one sentence. You cannot truly define a human being simply by putting an adjective next to their name and you can’t truly get the feel of an idea unless it’s fleshed out just a little bit.
As to why this is, maybe it’s natural for a human being to require at least a second glance. We have two eyes to create binocular vision and depth perception. We have two ears that allow us to not only hear the information but its distance and direction. We even have two holes in our nose which, if we actually used it, would tell us exactly how bad the level of pollution is in our environment and the direction the poisonous stuff is coming from.
In all four of these messages that I have translated, the entire message consisted of just one sentence. Sure, I did understand the last two to be generally positive and the first two to be generally trolling. But this was only because I understood the context. At the end of last week, I was a complete jerk for not participating in the local party. Today, I’m a writer again and someone who is reading me was waiting for me to arrive and see what I had to say.
What is the answer to this problem? Well, for the last 3 years I have been saying that literacy is something of a dying art. I have quit taking pictures of myself or publishing pictures of what I’m talking about for the most part because I do not want to be reduced to a photograph. If people have a hard time taking me, it might not be a sign of my talent as much as it is a sign of the limited imagination of people who know me. I would prefer to use the word readers but we will just stick with social network friends on this.
But even this has a deeper connection.
Early this morning, I saw a rather remarkable video from veritasium, a science-based YouTuber, that talked about the amount of lead that was put up in our atmosphere because of the automobile business and the effect that lead has on amongst other things, human intelligence.
A few years ago, I had one of my finest journalistic moments when a friend of mine got me into thinking about lead poisoning. He worked at the local lead acid battery factory, we had been friends for several years but as a student, there was something definitely wrong with him. He seemed to have no memory or recollection of anything we were doing in our lessons, he seemed unable to concentrate and was generally lost most of the time.
His ineffectiveness as a student had me extremely angry and my inclination was to start yelling at him. The irritation was too great to contain.
But then I noticed that when I spoke to him on the phone or over the internet live when he was at work, I could hear his fellow workers screaming at him as well. It seemed that everyone around him was screaming most of the time and this got me thinking.
I went online and asked a simple question:
What are the symptoms of lead poisoning?
If you take the trouble to watch the veritasium video, you already know. You get irritable, sick and stupid. Literally, lead poisoning lowers your IQ.
I have heard lately that people are angry at me for saying that people are stupid here. But perhaps this is a more practical observation than people think. First of all, if you quit eating meat, you take a lot of saturated fat out of your diet and suddenly the blood flow in your body becomes better. I am not claiming to be a sexual God but I do have better sexual function than I did a few years ago when I was eating a more traditional cancer based diet and drinking. Removing animals from my body does not automatically make me a super athlete, but the added blood flow and the lack of carcinogenic properties in my bloodstream simply allow my body’s natural function to be. You get stronger and smarter when you go vegan, get it?
Moving out of the city also took a lot of noise out of my ear and lead out of my air. I generally do not like my neighbors but it would be pretty wise of them to go and get their blood tested. This would be true for the chicken people and it would be true for the hunchback who cannot think of any other way to work except by using gasoline. I’ve mentioned that he coughs all the time and I’ve also mentioned that the chicken woman never talks without screaming. I can also say that she seems to have a grandson with either great emotional problems or developmental disabilities. All of which are classic signs of lead poisoning.
So we live on economy and not ecology. We follow the money rather than following quality of life. We enjoy making people fight for their bread because it is amusing to the people who make profit from the bread and especially the truck drivers who deliver the factory bread. But we pay a price for all of this gasoline fueled economy. We are paying with our lives. And when I talk about a 40% diabetes rate and a 30% cancer rate, where do you think these gifts come from?
And really, what do you think is so delicious about practicing abuse on other people? It seems to me to be a rather thoughtless endeavor. I mean, if you actually gave it a thought (or if you were still capable of actually having a thought), why would anybody actually practice War on their own property? If you actually gave it a thought, why would you bring this level of pollution into your own home?
So again, you have to ask what the solution to this problem is. I’m sure the first thing that comes to mind is to pray. This would not be praying to God unfortunately, but it would be praying to the economic gods to come up with some new technology to take this all the way. Perhaps build a giant fan and just blow the pollution into space.
One of my favorite stories from the time of the Soviet Union, the time when there was all of this pragmatic practical thinking, about the space program. The engineers working for NASA realized that while in zero gravity, there would be no way to take important notes and do engineering calculations. These were the days before calculators.
So the Americans spent 1.5 billion 1969 dollars to invent a pen that could write in zero gravity. At the same time, Russian cosmonauts decided to use pencils.
Perhaps the Practical solution is simply to stop making pollution and let the world take care of itself. I am going to try and figure out how to make some biochar over the course of the next while. It has to do with burning something but depriving it of oxygen and putting out the fire before the burnt material turns to Ash. Apparently biochar better sequesters carbon then almost anything else that you can add to the land. It also amazingly increases productivity.
I’m also not going to cut my weeds so that they have an opportunity to not only sequester carbon from the atmosphere but also to keep water on the land.
If you’d like to know how to get healthier, it might not be about adding in drugs or special machines, it might be enough to simply stop poisoning yourself. Perhaps letting yourself be healthy for a change, mentally and physically, might be all that’s needed.
***
So, my ex partner has arrived and we are starting to do what we need to do to put some things in the ground. We are being perfectly respectful to each other and this is a good start.
Before she got here, I moved most of the water from the barrel in front of my house to another barrel which is very close to where our garden is. I can see the eventual water system now rather clearly. I definitely think I need a better hose and a longer length of it to make things easy but, the math so far is correct and the distance of hose and electrical cable that I have is enough to get the whole job done.
And also, I’m removing a bit of gutter off of one roof so that water falls a little closer to the house. The extension was there to protect the foundation but now I have at least one 260 L water barrel ready to catch whatever falls off the roof. And eventually, I think I would like one or two more barrels right there to take water from the well. I don’t need this if I buy a serious length of hose. But still, two or three tanks exactly right there is a great place for storing well water.
Truthfully, 1,000 L cubes would be much easier to deal with but these barrels are painted black so they have the best possible UV protection. They will last a while. We found a good deal. And they smell like pickles which means the water probably has a few stray nutrients in it.
All right now, my ex partner is putting a little water on our first group of cabbages to help them get out of their little plastic homes. We are a few minutes away from getting started. No one has killed anybody yet. She’s three times at that statement which is sort of Russian for knock on wood or thank God for small favors. And I guess we’re ready to go.
I only have two comments to make. First of all, I am grateful for the help and secondly, this is the most dignified this relationship has been since I know the woman. Let me spit three times for that.
***
Seriously, this is the best day I have ever had since I started working in this Garden. I am sitting on a chair doing nothing and my ex partner is doing everything and she’s not yelling at me at all. I don’t know how to explain this except that I offer thanks to God for a long holiday for the local corporations.
Also, with the man standing out in the middle of the street, my ex partner asked me why I refer to him as the hunchback. I told her and she smiled. She got it.
Well, back to work.
***
9:00 p.m. and I’m in the war room and I am done. I’m not doing anymore. You can’t make me. I’m finished.
The ex-partner went home about an hour and a half ago. She was wonderful. And we got along very well. We did a lot of planting and solved a lot of problems or at least spent some time working on our list of problems. But honestly, she did in one day but it probably would have taken me two or three weeks to do. And we have made a huge dent in the boxes. There is a lot planted now.
At the very end of the day the subject came up about why we got along so well. Probably the answer is just simply that everybody got what they wanted and there was no fighting between us. She was a remarkable worker today and I was so pleased to have her. Like I said, it would have been weeks of work if I tried to do all this planting by myself.
The thing is though that she agreed to work with some of my ideas regarding how to get the most out of what we have. I took quite a bit of pride in what kind of soil went into the boxes but the planting itself also had nuances. The dirt that I have is pretty good but we augmented everything with our own planting mix. Every time we planted something in one of the boxes, it started out with its own planting soil and additives to make sure there was some nutrition right away. It was very technical planting and she was okay with it. She was okay with the nuances and we worked out quite a few of the problems together. In
I don’t know what to say except that at least today, we seemed to find that happy medium. We found The Sweet spot and probably, we can get along just fine in the future.
Basically, she really wants to Garden too so I get some help on Sundays.
The only other item of note about today is I learned exactly how much work this water system is going to be. It’s going to take a lot of water to grow vegetables and manipulating water from tank to tank or from the well into a tank is really long and very loud work. The pump itself is horrifically loud. It’s the kind of loud that takes all the joy out of your day and truthfully, one of my neighbors was using an apparatus this loud, I would start writing essays about their brutality to the environment. This is not gasoline. It’s just a submersible pump. But my god, it is a deafening instrument.
The noise though is not the problem. It’s how much water we will need to keep the plants going. When thinking of the environment, I always go with the worst possible situation. Now, this probably includes the war spilling into Belarus but on a practical level, the worst thing is that we are environmentally damaged like everyone else and we’ve had a drought for the last 12 or 14 years. Every year has been the hottest in the history of everything.
So we have some water tanks which can catch rainwater. But we still need to take water from the well to fill up the tanks when we need it to water trees or the garden. And that means physically placing the pump in the well or in one of the barrels just to move it over to another barrel or perhaps to use it to directly water the plants. It’s loud and heavy and it’s an uncomfortable movement switching it from one barrel to another or from a barrel to the well. It’s just a lot of work and a lot of Tangled cables. It’s a lot.
Other than this, I’m really not worried. I’m glad I had a good day with my ex partner. I myself did quite a bit but in the end, my legs gave out. Thank God hers didn’t.
The schedule is for us to go out again and do some more planting tomorrow. She has a 4-day holiday from work and on Tuesday, it is the day of remembrance. She plans to take the day completely off. I can’t blame her.
Maybe we got along so well because she’s just not going to work for a while. Maybe the bright cheeriness has a lot to do with not having to go to the office again. Maybe she’s more allergic to it than she thinks. Or maybe all of the discipline that she uses to keep this thing going just has her mono focused most of the time. I don’t know what the reason is but we had a very nice day today. Very pleasant and very nice.
As for me, I’m falling asleep. I am really exhausted and it is remarkably nice to be out of pain for at least a few minutes. I need to go to sleep.
But if I have to say something, if it’s important to scribble my name on this before I let it go, let’s just say that nature is wonderful and we all can do more to help global warming by simply staying at home and trying to enjoy what you have. Not driving your car around, not wasting your money on foreign programs or department stores. Not screwing people for money would be pretty helpful as well.
I guess what I’m saying is, god/nature is good and the day outside helping plants to grow feels good. It’s physically taxing but it’s physically satisfying. It’s a workout you can eat. It’s some problem solving to keep your mind Sharp. It is a whole mess of tasks to make things work out just so you can feel some pride. And of course, life can be extremely beautiful sometimes. If you’re available and don’t mind spending some time under the sun, give it a try
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