Earl's Stuff

Making things with wood.

2012-02-10T17:15:00.005-06:00

I love making things with wood. It is challenging and sometimes frustrating, but I still love it. I enjoy solving problems, and that is often what makes challenging projects fun. But what makes me happiest is when I put the finish on.

This photo shows two identical boards - the two sides of a box. They were made from the same piece of wood, but one has a coat of boiled linseed oil on it, while the other is still raw, sanded smooth, but unfinished. It is a wonder to see how the oil brings out the color of the wood and transforms it into a thing of beauty.

Spring

2012-02-03T16:34:00.007-06:00

Spring comes sooner down here in the flatlands than it does for most of you mountainous readers. Still, it is a nice thing to see it coming, even if you live a mile high in the rockies. I try to keep an eye out for signs of spring, but I hadn't even started looking this year. Imagine my surprise when I had to run to the corner store for a bag of flour and saw this tree on the way home? This tulip tree is always the first tree in our neighborhood to bloom. It is on the south side of its house, with a street to the south of that, so it gets lots of sun, and reflected sun.

After I passed it I saw signs of another tree budding out, with little boys happily playing on the dead grass underneath its spreading, barren bows.

As I neared home, I saw with wonderment that dandelions were blooming in a neighbor's yard! And even more, when I got home I saw that dandelions are blooming in my own yard, in the midst of those little spreading weeds with the tiny purple flowers, which are quite beautiful if you get down on your hands and knees in the mud, put your nose right to the ground, and peer closely at them.

Yes, spring is just around the corner.

It is a good thing spring is coming. We had drought conditions last fall, so my honeybees didn't get very much nectar to store up for the winter. I had 6 colonies of bees last fall, but 2 of them died out during the winter, so now I only have 4. I had to feed my bees this year to get them through the winter, for the first time in about 6 or 7 years. But now, it looks like the surviving colonies will be OK to go. Yippee!
And the loss of 2 colonies is not such a big deal, because 2 of the survivors are bursting with bees and they will want to swarm pretty soon - maybe the end of the month. So I'll just split them, and I'll be back to 6 hives. Perfect.

Skin Cancer

2011-11-06T08:50:00.003-06:00

I knew it was likely to happen some day, and yesterday I got the news. I have a melanoma - the kind of skin cancer can get to be aggressive and can kill you. Fortunately, mine is not yet in the aggressive state. I will get it surgically removed Tuesday and be OK. My dermatologist says that this means I need to warn all my kinfolk to get regular dermatology checkups because it often runs in families.

The attached photo shows the actual bugger on my upper arm, but I need to explain. First, the depressed area in the center is from where they biopsied it - before that, it was just a red patch of skin - not dark like they often are, didn't stand up at all and didn't seem to have any depth. Second, the red square around it is irritation from the bandaids I've been wearing to keep the antibiotic ointment on it so it could heal from the biopsy.
The thing is that it didn't really look like melanomas usually do. You use ABCDE to identify melanomas (before you biopsy).

A - Asymmetrical Shape. Mine is pretty much circular.
B - Border. They usually have an irregular border, but mine has a smooth border.
C -Color. "The presence of more than one color (blue, black, brown, tan, etc.) or the uneven distribution of color can sometimes be a warning sign of melanoma." Mine is just a uniform pink.
D - Diameter. Usually 6mm or larger, about the size of a pencil eraser. I don't know why they use the eraser for this, the other end is the same size. Anyway, mine fit this one. It's about 8mm.
E - Evolution. "The evolution of your moles(s) has become the most important factor to consider when it comes to melanoma. Knowing what is normal for YOU could save your life. If a mole has gone through recent changes in color and or size, get it checked out by a dermatologist immediately." This thing appeared very suddenly on my arm where there had been nothing before. No mole.

So my melanoma only fit 1 of the 5 signs. I already knew about ABCDE, but this one didn't alarm me much, because it isn't typical. When Dr. Poliak saw it, she gave a little gasp and said, "Oh! What's this?" Like I would know. All I knew was that it was an odd little thing. It appeared very suddenly. It wasn't there and then it was. It stayed unchanged for quite a while - several months - maybe a year. She didn't say anything, but after the biopsy results came back, she told me she thought it was a melanoma all along. That's why we have dermatologists, to not be fooled by little red circles. She also said that when melanoma runs in a family, then they see ones like mine that aren't so typical.

So, all my children: Go see a dermatologist to get a baseline, and then go back periodically for checkups.

New Year

2011-10-28T17:49:00.003-05:00

Well, it's not exactly New Year, but it's reminiscent of New year, so close enough.
Actually, it was about 1 year ago that I started the kitchen remodeling project, which I was putting paint on when people started arriving for Liz's Mom's funeral, which launched us into the master bedroom remodel, and moving into our restored master bedroom launched an upstairs bedrooms re-arrangingl, and then I finally put up the last piece of crown molding on the kitchen remodel that started it all. So it has been a busy year in that respect.

But, what really has me thinking is all the personal changes I've made this last year. Most of them are good, but they are really just life moving along. So here they are:

I had a seriously Africanized beehive out at the Hubers, which scared me enough that I moved the bees I've kept at our house for the past 10 year or so out to a remote part of the Texas hinterland, along with all my other bees. Now I have all of them out there - 8 hives. I re-queened the Africanized one and hopefully that will settle them down for a year or so.
About that same time I finally put too much strain on my achilles tendon and it partially ruptured. I spent 3 months in a boot for it to heal. It did heal, mostly, but then in a careless moment I re-injured it and it was worse than the first time. So, in the next couple of weeks, I will have a procedure down to break apart all the scar tissue in it, after which I will be on crutches for a month to 6 weeks, and then I should get better. Meanwhile, the other achilles tendon is taking a beating from the extra strain on it. "Oh, the humanity!"
I have always loved candy, and I have had the habit of having some almost every night while watching TV or whatnot. Late last year I decided it wasn't good for me, so I gave it up. Cold Turkey! I just quit. It wasn't a big decision, I still have a bag of lifesavers I bought last year. I still have jaw breakers I bought last year when we went to Branson.
Recently, I gave up Pepsi. I know, I've done that before and slid back into it. I didn't really decide to give up Pepsi this time, but I didn't drink it one day and after the headache started I thought I might as well quit. The difference this time is that I was less determined to do it, but now I don't seem to crave it like I've done before. I've been drinking lots of water, and that seems to help, too. By the way, quitting a caffeine habit gives you a few days of headaches. This time it was about 4 days, and it wasn't very fun. I think I'm not going to do that again.
I stopped overeating so much. Again, no big decision, I just decided I didn't have to clean everything off my plate - it's OK to stop eating when I've had enough. I've lost some weight over this, but not much yet. But I feel better.
I have stopped staying up late every night. I go to bed with my dear one at about 10:30 and I get up when she does. It has been nice and we both enjoy being on the same schedule. Side note: I still watch movies.
We decided that cable TV was just too expensive, so we discontinued it. The hard part of it was that giving it up also meant giving up football, and that was HARD! I love watching football. But I haven't actually found it to be all that difficult, after all. The real driving point on this whole thing was that one day WOOT.com had Roku devices on sale for about $40. Roku is a little black box that receives wireless internet and streams movies and stuff to your TV. Once you have the box and wireless internet, you can watch movies and live streaming TV. So we can get BYU TV for conference and religious stuff, and we signed up for Netflix for movies. And that's it. By the way, I still watch movies.
I have been buying flowers for Liz every once in awhile. I don't know why it took me 40 years to figure this out, but Liz really seems to think it's neat to have flowers show up occasionally. Go figure!

So, I feel like my life has changed quite a bit this year, and mostly it has been positive. I'd like to say that I've had some big revelation or life-changing experience, but it has just been a year of little changes and it occurred to me the other day that there have been quite a few of them.
It scares me a little bit, because sometimes you feel like if you get everything going just right, something has to break or God will call you home, or something. I hope not, because I am enjoying life right now and I'd like it to stay this way.

Now if I could just get us moved to Utah where I can plant an orchard and harvest fruit in my old age.

Stake Conference talk - Sept. 11, 2011

2011-09-11T14:12:00.001-05:00

My topic today is Lifelong Education.

You young people are fully involved with your education, so my topic necessarily makes me focus on continuing education AFTER you leave school. But, to you young people I say this one thing – if there is one subject you really want to try but it isn’t in your regular course of study, figure out a way to TAKE IT! I always wanted to try out fencing, but for various reasons I didn’t. I should have. For you, there will never be a better time.

So, I have 4 things to say about Life-long education:

1. It’s not too late and your mind works fine

2. It’s all about interest

3. There are more ways to skin a cat than with a dull butter knife

4. Why bother?

First thing: It’s not too late and your mind works fine

When I was young, I was thrilled to be able to go to BYU. We lived about 90 miles from the Y, in a very small town. Provo was like a dream for me, and I loved every minute of it.

My second year at the Y was my Mother’s first year going back to school. She had been there as a young woman, earned her teaching certificate, and was teaching school when she met my father. But she only had a 2-year degree and wanted to get a bachelor’s degree. It was a tough decision to go back, especially since she still had kids at home. The three youngest ones, especially, worried her. She felt like she might be abandoning them. In the end it was arranged and my youngest sister came to the Y with Mom while my youngest brothers stayed with Dad, along with the older kids. Mom missed them terribly while she was away.

Mom was scared of whether she could complete college courses at her age – she was in her 50’s then.

I saw Mom on campus fairly often, which was great. We settled in to the regular grind of classes and studying.

Mom put me to shame with how hard she studied. She focused on her school work so much that she had no social life beyond Suzy and me. That first semester she was learning how to be a student and at first her grades were only acceptable. After that she hit her groove and got A’s. She fussed and worried one time when she got an A-.

The next year, I started my hitch in the Marine Corps, married Liz, and came back to the Y in December, three years later. My first semester back at the Y was my Mom’s last, so Liz and I were there for her graduation. The college reserved a row for us at commencement. During the program, the Dean had Mom stand up as a special tribute to the most senior graduate from the Y that year, and an honor student. Then he asked the family to stand. My father stood up, all 9 of their children, 3 of our spouses, and 5 grandkids. I mentioned that they reserved a row for us, and we’d filled the whole thing. It was a long row, too.

My mother had worried that it was too late for her to go back to school. She had found that it was not. She outperformed almost every 18 and 19 year old there. In truth, it was her focus and dedication that earned her top marks. Her age forced her to study harder to keep up with her younger classmates, but her age had also taught her how to do just that. It was not too late.

I, too, had a later-in-life education experience. A few years ago I took a class in human anatomy and physiology – just for giggles. My experience was like my mothers. I had to work hard, but I didn’t settle for less than perfect grades.

The old noodle still works, even if it is a bit slower than it used to be.

Second thing: It’s all about interest

Many of you who know me, know that I keep honeybees. Beekeeping is not for the faint of heart. People often ask me, “But don’t you get stung?” I answer that of course I get stung. In fact, I get stung often. When I have to work with Africanized bees, I get stung a LOT! The thing is that I don’t mind getting stung in return for the reward of honey to share with my family and friends, and it is my pleasure to do so.

I enjoy reading about beekeeping. Many books about it are written by rank amateurs, but I like them anyway, because they have insights and tidbits of knowledge about my favorite subject.

I find that the more I learn about them, the more I want to learn about them. There is no end to this process, and it applies to more than just beekeeping.

We all have things that interest us. There are very few of you who are interested in bees, but there is something that interests each one of you as much as bees interest me. Well, maybe almost as much as bees interest me.

On the subject of lifelong education, there is no mention of a requirement to learn about honeybees. We, each of us, get to choose the subjects. We should continue to educate ourselves about whatever subjects interest us. The subjects we love the most, are the subjects at which we have the will and means to continue to learn more. If you put me in a room and forced me to memorize baseball statistics, I would think it pure torture. But I guarantee there are people in this hall who would think it a delight to be in that situation. Who would lap it up like sweetened milk and use the knowledge as the base for a lifelong pursuit of that interest.

All we have to do is continue with the things we already enjoy. But if we fail to continue to learn, then we will begin the process of forgetting what we knew. This is one of those use it or loose it things.

All of us who sit on the stand today hope that everybody in this building will spend some time learning about the gospel of Jesus Christ, in addition to other things we learn. But even on that topic, there is room for individual focus. Many of us love family and focus on genealogy, or family histories. Others of us love the scriptures and pour over them daily. Some spend their time with the organizations of the church, others on pure service. Some devour every word spoken by latter day prophets.

All of these things are good. We should each continue our lifelong education about the gospel.

Third thing: There are more ways to skin a cat than with a dull butter knife

I told you about experiences going back to college. I don’t mean that you should all sign up for classes tomorrow. College is a very formal method of learning about something. It is particularly appropriate when we need proof that we have mastered a topic. It is one of the best ways to start your professional life. But in most cases proof of knowledge is not needed. The knowledge itself is the thing.

There are many ways to continue our lifelong education. More than I can list here today. But I will list a few ways to illustrate the point.

· Back in the olden days we had books called The Encyclopedia. I loved sitting and reading the Encyclopedia – it was full of interesting things. A few years ago, Liz and I threw our Encyclopedia Brittanica away. Today, we surf the web. Today, we say IT is full of interesting things. It is also full of garbage, but remember, we get to choose our subject. Go forth and learn!

· Join a book club. Book clubs are for people who need a little nudge to get started reading books. Liz is in a book club that meets once a month to discuss a book everybody read since the prior meeting. The members are mostly LDS and the books are all suitable for LDS readers.

· Personally, I love to read and need help stopping, instead of help getting started. When I pick up the 23 volume set of books by Patrick O’Brien, Liz will roll her eyes because she knows I will be “out of the house” until I have read them all. I am an unabashed reader.

· When we can’t read, we can listen to audio books. I find that driving to Utah is a fast and enjoyable drive when I have a book playing. Of course, if Liz is along we find things to talk about and never play our audio book. That’s even better.

Fourth thing: Why bother?

By this I mean what are the reasons to continue our lifelong education. In the end, I think the reasons boil down to two: We pursue lifelong education for our work, or we continue lifelong education just for fun. Beekeeping was my example of learning just for fun.

Work is a very good reason why we learn. Our employment is the basis for our daily security. It gives us our homes, our food, our clothing and shelter. It can make life good or it can make it hard. I’ve tried it both ways, and good is better.

As our children left home, Liz, who had been a full-time homemaker, began to look around for something to do with the rest of her life. She wanted to have a credit score of her own in case anything ever happened to me. And she wanted an income that did not depend on me. These were legitimate concerns.

We addressed the credit score by taking out car loans in her name only, and obtaining credit cards with only her name. We paid them off as we have always paid off our debts. That part was easy. The employment was a bit more complicated.

She had not worked since we were first married, and did not feel very qualified for anything. After all, I plucked her away from her college education after only 1 year. When she had worked, it had been in an office capacity.

So she started looking for office work and landed a job as an accounts payable clerk in a small investment firm, involved in multi-family housing. It was a starter job by anybody’s account.

The next few years were intense for her. She took a class in basic accounting and found that she had a better head for mathematics than she had supposed. This surprised her father, who had tried to coach her through high school math classes.

She has always been very organized, and she applied her organization skills to her job. She flourished.

As she got better at her work, she was given more responsibility. The company expanded their holdings in commercial office space and she accepted responsibility for the day to day operation of a building – then another.

She learned how to calculate square footage, and apply it to rates to give quotes – all in her head while talking to clients. She learned how to sell.

As she moved on to more and more responsibility, she decided she needed a realtors license, so she studied and passed that exam. She has grown immensely in her abilities and today manages about a half million square feet of office space.

She has grown in her employment, but she has also found great satisfaction in being able to do things she did not believe were possible for her. She is continuing with her lifelong education, and I am very proud of her.

I’ve talked about

1. That it’s not too late for lifelong education at any age, even for college

2. That it’s all about your interests and that you get to choose the course of your lifelong education

3. That there is more than one way to skin a cat and

4. Why we bother to make education a lifelong pursuit

It is my prayer that we may all continue to learn and grow in the gospel and other areas of life.

The Africanized honeybee Blues

2011-08-19T16:04:00.005-05:00

I am strictly a hobby beek. Africanized bees have driven me nuts the past 4 years. Before that I had no problem with them. This year I finally gave up on keeping two hives at my house in town, mostly because I am worried over the liability in an area with so many children and non-beeks (BEEK = beekeeper) near by. The decision came because of an incident, of course. I had two hives at a widow's house out in the country and one of them went insanely Africanized . When I harvested honey, smoke had no affect. So many bees were flying in front of my face I could barely see, and I got many stings through my bee suit, plus several on my face from bees inside my veil. The widow is fine, but my assistant and I were chased for over a mile - that is we stopped about a mile away and got out of the truck to take off veils and coveralls, and got mobbed again. My assistant no longer goes to bee yards with me.

So I moved all 7 hives to a new yard where there is nobody living nearby. The Africanized hive from the widow's place was packed full of bees and had made a lot of honey. I debated with myself whether to simply burn the little meanies, but I opted to re-queen. But even re-queening an Africanized hive is problematic.

Two new queens arrived from a commercial apiary that specializes in gentle, productive queens.I opened the Africanized hive to find the queen and got mobbed, as expected.Didn't find the queen in the top box and gave up. Instead, I took the advice of an experienced beek and separated the hive into two, hoping to make queen finding easier.

Returned after 3 days and verified there was no queen in one of the boxes. Queens come in a little wooden box with screen on one side and a plug of candy in the hole where they were inserted. For shipping, a cork is placed on top of the candy to prevent premature release. Normally the cork is pulled as you put the new queen in the hive. It takes a couple of days for the bees to eat the candy, and then the queen can escape into the hive to start her royal life there. I installed a new queen, but left the cork in place so the workers couldn't release her because sometimes Africanized bees are reluctant to accept a new queen and will kill her if you put her in with them too soon. This box didn't have a large number of bees, so I moved the bigger box 30 feet away and put the smaller box where it had been.

After I moved the bigger box, I went through every frame looking for the old queen. There were a lot of bees in there and I was unable to find the queen amongst all the piles of bees. I am good at finding queens, so I think she was a runner. I needed to spread them out some more, but I didn't have another bottom board. I had a box from a failed split that still had a few bees and some stores in it. I put this deep on top of the Africanized box, with paper towels between (a newspaper combine - where you combine two hives, but separate the bees from the hives with paper so they can get used to each other before they come into actual contact. It prevents the bees from killing each other. After a couple of days they've chewed holes in the paper and the bees mingle peacefully).

It was five days before I could get back out to the bees. Pulled the cork on the queen cage I'd placed in the smaller box. Looks good for this new queen. She has plenty of bees with her now and good comb to work on.

Went to the remote box and the entrance looked like there were fewer bees than there had been - a good thing. I smoked the entrance and opened it up. Checked the top box and found the queen almost immediately. Lucky, lucky, lucky. Not for her - she's dead - it was lucky for me because I didn't have to go through both deeps to find her. I figure she ran from the smoke, right into my waiting queen catcher. I returned later that day and put a new queen in the box, still in her cage, of course.

So hopefully I will be back to all gentle bees. The real penalty of Africanized bees for me has been that I HAVE to wear a full suit. We've had record high temps this summer and there I am dressed for a winter blizzard, sweat gushing from every pore. Even my eyelashes sweat. Every time I go out to the bees it takes a day to recover and get re-hydrated. Only a few years ago I enjoyed working bees in shorts and a T, plus a veil. I wouldn't dare do that anymore. I used to get stung only rarely, but now I get stung regularly in spite of the sweat suit. I get stung almost every time I go near bees, and when a hive goes Africanized I get stung a lot - right through the bee suit. I have two veils that I've had for many years. This year I had to buy a new one with elastic to keep it tighter, because when the Africanized bees mob me a few of them will get under the veil when I bend over.

On the other hand, Africanized bees are aggressive about gathering honey as well, and they produce lots of it. I had a great harvest this year.

Sammie

2011-08-09T15:24:00.004-05:00

We are all alone, again - just the two of us in this big house. We have had kids here for the past several weeks. Angela and Nancy both brought their families here to share our summer, and found the hottest summer on record. Yum!

Yesterday, Nancy took her kids to a play house, bumper cars, arcade, kind of place and they didn't want to take the baby, and I didn't want to go at all (gimpie wimp that I am.) So I got to stay home with Sammie.
He has been fun to have. He took his first steps while he was here with us, and is fully prepared to enter that most hazardous and crazy stage where he suddenly has the ability to reach and climb on most things, without any notion of whether he should. But I digress.
While we were together, he pooped his pants and I changed him. Afterwards I went in the powder room to wash my hands. When I finished, I turned off the lights and closed the door behind me. I could hear Sammie the entire time, but after I left, he started to cry. He was in the living room, so I went that direction. But no, he was in the office, so I turned back that way. But after a couple of steps it sounded like he was in the living room again. Maybe he was in the kitchen? It finally occurred to me that he was in the now-dark powder room. I inched the door open and a very angry little Sammie crawled out. I picked him up to comfort him and he gave me a very dirty look indeed! The mystery is how did he get in there without me knowing it? It is a tiny room, and with my big awkward boot, I just can't imagine how I left that room without stepping on him or bumping him with the door. Oh well. I made him a bottle and that made everything better again.

This morning, early, Nancy and Richard loaded up their kids and headed for the airport. I got up to see them off, and then headed out to Gunter to care for my honeybees. Morning is the best time to work them before the temps get high, but it's no picnic. I have them where they get afternoon shade, which means they get morning sun. Which means it was HOT! I got there at about 8:15 am and it was just under 90 degrees, and humid. It was quite a bit higher than that by the time I finished up and crawled out of there, although not quite so humid. As I write, it is 109 and still climbing - forecast to reach about 111. Dang! I got a few frames of honey out of the hives as I pulled the (empty) supers off them in preparation for the fall nectar trickle. These are the supers where I already extracted spring honey. I put the supers back on the hives for a short time so the bees can clean the sticky, left-over honey off the comb. Now I can store clean supers with good comb until next spring.

Letters from WWII

2011-08-04T16:33:00.003-05:00

When Liz's mother died last January, one of the treasures we found in her possessions was a box full of letters from her husband during WWII. Everyone was curious as to what they might contain, but the work of going through it and doing anything with it was too much for anybody to deal with - at least at that time. There was talk to dividing them up between all the siblings, but ultimately Liz offered to look through them and decide what to do next. As she read them, it became apparent that they are a real treasure, both historically and to the family.
When Mark Ashurst-McGee, who is a Doctor of History, visited us recently, he suggested that the first step is to take good quality scans of all of them, to preserve them and make it easier to share them. The originals can then be archived in a manner to preserve them, and the scans can be transcribed to make the text searchable and more easily read.
I happen to be waiting for my new job to begin, so I volunteered to do the scanning, which I just completed. There are 136 letters, each of 1 to 15 pages, so it was a very large project. I scanned the envelopes and anything included in the letters, too.
It has been fascinating to read these letters and get a better understanding of what the war really meant to be a typical American couple during that time of conflict. The letters begin before they were married, and since they were together quite a bit while Bill was in training in the states, they skip over some important events in their lives, such as their marriage. When he went to sea in the U. S. Navy, they became full of the yearnings of a young husband who missed his wife immensely, but they are also full of interesting views into life during the war years. The HAWAII dollar bill he included in one letter is fascinating all by itself, being marked to make it useless to the Japanese in case they captured additional U. S. territory and the cash in use there. It tells a lot about the fear of Americans for the Japanese who had attacked them.
Only a few of his letters were censored (words cut out of them with scissors, or in one case an entire page removed), but it is apparent he was always aware of the censor looking over his shoulders. After the war ended and censorship halted, the tone and content of his letters was radically different.
While I read the letters and wondered about his ship and the battles he mentioned, I took the time to read in published histories the larger view of what was happening. I found photographs with his ship (LSM-130), usually next to the ship being photographed, or in the background. I also found crew musters and other supporting documents for LSM-130, which are of some interest in themselves.
But the best part has simply been sharing my father-in-law's thoughts as he served his country. He would deny he was a hero, but he was to me.

The secret to hot weather hog hunting

2011-07-25T19:48:00.002-05:00

Keith and I made an important discovery today. How to hunt hogs when it is miserably hot and the creeks are dry.

Fact: It was 105 degrees today - the hottest day of the year, so far.
Fact: So far, every day this July has been over 100, except 2.
Fact: Today we jumped two herds of pigs.

Here is the deal. Water is drying up with our long spell of hot weather, and the pigs are actually quite fussy about where they want to wallow. They want a place where they can walk down to the waters edge, no gravel, and nice shallow water and/or wet mud.

Several weeks ago, Keith went with me when I went out to Honey Grove to pick up my bees, and while I was working he walked over to a pond where we know pigs hang out. He shot a big sow over there as it got out of a mud hole.

Today we headed out to go over there again, but we decided to walk down the creek a bit first. I didn't really think I would be making any long shots, if any, and I wanted a light rifle, so I carried my Win 94, which I haven't shot in some time.
Keith was trying to sneak along close to the banks so any pigs wouldn't see us until we got in range, but I was trying to stay on high ground where I could see them ( pigs don't have very good eyesight, but they can hear extremely well.) So I saw a pig (I think a boar) down the creek. It got up out of the mud and was moving around slowly. It knew we were there, but didn't know if we were a threat. So I took aim with my 30-30 and missed! What? I usually hit what I aim at. It was around 100 yards, with iron sights, and should have been a gimmee. The pig hurried on around a bend in the creek. So we continued. Again, Keith was hugging the bank, so when I saw two more pigs as we rounded the bend, I couldn't get his attention. I was amazed the pigs were still there, but they clearly didn't want to leave that cool spot on a hot day. As I watched, another pig came down the bank and joined the first two. No piglets, so that's why I think they were boars. As I aimed, this third pig got directly behind one of the others, making a really big target. I aimed at the center of mass and fired again and missed again! So I am doubting my sights. We messed around, but of course, all the pigs in the World knew where we were after that.
We continued down the creek and a dog came out to bark at us after a bit. Smart dog, too. When I bent down to pick up a rock, he split.
We kept walking, but it was HOT and we were getting tired, so after a half mile or so we turned back. We'd walked further than I thought and it seemed like a long way back. As we got to about 100-150 yards from where I'd shot at the pigs, I saw a sow come down the bank into that same mud hole! Yippee! A bunch of little piglets followed the sow and another sow. We watched them settle into the mud. Than a third pig came down the bank and joined them.
We tried to sneak closer, but after a bit one of the sows stood up and we froze. It laid back down, but clearly we'd been made. We got a little closer, but when they all stood up, we both knelt and took aim. I let Keith take the first shot (the one where you have a chance of connecting) and I could tell it was a good hit. We both fired once more. This is a photo of the sow we found around the bend. Notice the razorback hair standing up? The sow was gravid and we felt good about this because we'd removed 10-12 feral hogs from the area with that one shot. That is our mission - to keep in check the feral hog population.

Lessons learned:

Following the creek bed with the breeze in your face is a good tactic for hot weather feral hogs.
Be sure to take a rifle with a scope, even though it is heavier than the carbine.
Sight in your rifle periodically, whether it needs it or not.

By the way, we were half a mile downhill from the nearest point where we could get with the truck. We had no cooler, nor ice. We had no water and were both getting over heated rapidly. Did I mention that it was hot? So there was no chance of recovering good meat from this sow. We left her for the buzzards.

Going to the airport

2011-07-06T17:34:00.006-05:00

I took Mark A-M to the airport this morning and Naomi and Haley wanted to go along for the ride. Well, of course we stopped at Outdoor World to see the fish tanks and stuffed animals.

They wanted their photos taken by this stuffed rabbit. Well, of course we can do that!

They tackled this Kodiak bear.

And they saw the rattlesnakes. I think there were three of them in there - all in a ball - but it could have been 4.

They just had to pick out a gun they wanted for when we go hunting together. (Just kidding.)

And we had fun with the bear.

I HATE chiggers!

2011-06-30T11:10:00.002-05:00

Chiggers are a fact of life in the South. I usually take some care in preventing getting chewed up by them, but they caught me off guard this year.

I tended bees out at Honey Grove and applied insect repellent. No problem.
I tended bees at the new place in Gunter, TX and forgot to apply insect repellent. No problem. Whew! Dodged a bullet on that one.
I worked in the yard last Friday and got two bites. Drat it! I put applying insecticide on the yard on my list of TO DOs, but not right at the top.
Sunday when we got home from church, Liz parked close to the lawn and I had to take two steps on the grass. I got absolutely eaten up!
Monday I put a heavy dose of insecticide all over our yard and onto the neighbor's yard where we might wander while running around the house. I applied insect repellant on my rubber boots, but before I poisoned I adjusted the sprinklers and must have washed it off a bit because I got a few more bites. I don't like to put insecticide on my yard. I don't like poison where I live, and I don't believe it is beneficial to kill everything that lives in my grass. But chiggers tip the scales in favor of a total wipe-out.

The troubles with chiggers are these:

You can't see them or tell where they might be lurking. They are tiny little light-red mites. The test for them is to put little black cards sticking up out of the grass. They crawl to the highest point and the card will turn red as thousands of them crawl to the top of it.
You can't tell when they bite you. You could easily brush them off if you knew you had them, but you can't tell. The bite only begins to irritate you the next day and the chigger is dead and gone by then.
They don't bite you where they get on you. They crawl up your body looking for a soft place where it is easier to chew. They can't actually get any good out of biting mammals, and it is difficult for them to do it. So they keep crawling until they find a place where it is a bit easier. This is most often the back of the knees and the groin area, or sometimes under your arms. Little buggers!
You can't do anything about the bites that really helps. They itch like the dickens, but if you scratch or rub them it makes it worse. Some people put nail polish on them, but I can't tell that it makes any difference. After about 3 days the tube the chigger left behind kind of pushes up and if you care to risk an infection you can scratch it (and attached skin) off at that point. Or you can suffer through 2 or 3 more days and it will be over.

Did I mention that I really, really hate chiggers? Little buggers!

Do you want to join the DAR or SAR?

2011-06-30T10:39:00.004-05:00

The DAR - Daughters of the American Revolution, and SAR - Sons of the American Revolution, are both ancestry-based organizations. Membership requires that you prove descendancy from a participant in the Revolution. The DUP - Daughters of the Utah Pioneers is also such an organization.
To all my children: If you want to join any of these organizations you CAN.
My bro. Jim sent out an email some time ago with information on John Kennedy Jr. who was captured by the British and confined in a prisoner ship. People in those days were pretty casual about caring for prisoners, and Jn. died of starvation in 1781, a common fate.
So, I have verified that this is indeed our ancestor, the father of Josiah Ashurst's wife, Rebecca Kennedy. This image is one of three images containing an application for membership in SAR based on descendancy from Jn. Kennedy Jr. It was approved and can thus be used as the basis for further applications. You just have to prove your descendancy from Jn K. and you will be IN. I can help with that. The important thing is that the document lists the source of the short narrative about his service.

"John Kennedy was a soldier of Virginia in the War of the American Revolution and was at the Battle of Guilford Court House, North Carolina, where he was taken a prisoner and he died aboard a British Prison Ship of Starvation."

It also states that his wife was Esther Stilly ( my records show the spelling as Esther Stille, but spelling was quite variable in those days, so that is no worry.)

Beekeeping

2011-06-20T18:43:00.005-05:00

I've been pretty busy with bees for the last week or so. I set out last Tuesday to retrieve honey from my two hives at Honey Grove. One hive had died out. The other had lots of nice honey. I planted sweet clover out there a few years ago and every other year it blooms copiously, and this honey seems to have clover mixed in with the wild flowers. I also picked up several frames of honey from my friend, Dan's, hive so I could extract it for him.
Then I stopped at my friends, the Hubers (sadly, Harold died last winter) to pick up honey from there. I had two hives there and both did very well, but one of them has become Africanized, meaning the bees were MEAN, violent, aggressive, persistent, unpleasant jerks! I was wearing a full bee suit and still got 15-20 stings. Some of them got inside my veil, which I need to be more careful about.
My intention had been to take all three of those country hives to a new place with mesquite (it starts blooming now when most nectar flow is over and lasts about a month), but I was tired of bees and left them there.
At home, I unloaded the honey and the one hive I'd brought from Honey Grove and hit the rack. Next day I rested until afternoon, then took the Huber hives out to the mesquite. I had another experience with the mean bees, but at least it was short - all I had to do was drop them off.
Thurs. I got all my equipment washed up, bottles out and washed, all the flat surfaces in the garage covered with paper, and started extracting honey. That is a messy job. Honey gets spread around in small amounts and pretty soon everything is sticky. The process is this:

Pull out a frame and put it over a tub.
Use a serrated knife to cut off the caps (thin wax the bees put over each cell when the honey is ripe).
Use a scratcher tool to remove caps I couldn't get with the knife.
Insert the frame in the extractor - a plastic tub with a cage that holds 2 frames and has gears to spin them around - with the opened cells facing out. Centrifugal force pulls the honey out of the comb and throws it against the side of the tub, where it flows into the bottom of the extractor.
Carefully spin the frames until the honey is out. If you spin too fast, the comb can break and send big chunks of wax into the extractor where it tends to clog things up. This year I have mostly all-plastic frames which are not so prone to breakage, but I have a few all-wax, unreinforced frames of comb and I broke most of them.
Take the frames out of the extractor, and cut/scratch the caps off the other side of the frame, and put them back in the extractor.
Spin the second side. Sometimes I only partially spin out honey on the first pass because there is so much honey and the total weight might break the frame. In that case I have to reverse the combs and spin again, then reverse a second time and do the final spin on the second side.
Put the empty frames aside and start two more.
After 4 or 6 frames are extracted the honey level is up to the bottom of the spinning cage, which makes it hard to spin, so I open the gate in the side of the extractor and let the honey (which has some wax in it, too) flow into a filter, which is two 5-gallon buckets. The top bucket has a bag filter in it with the top folded over the top of the bucket and rubber bands holding it up. The top bucket has holes drilled in the bottom to let the honey flow into the lower bucket. The lower bucket holds clean honey and has a pouring gate in the side of it. When it gets full I carry it in to the kitchen and fill bottles, using the pouring gate.

This is a photo of the kitchen after extracting honey from the country hives and the 2 hives here at the house. The double bucket filter is at right on the higher level of the counter. Notice lids in the foreground, bottled honey on the lower counter, bottled honey on the far counter, boxes of bottled honey, and you can't even see all the boxes.

Liz made a couple of movie clips of me extracting, so I hope she sends those out.

I made a mistake this year. I left honey supers on the hives at the house last year after I extracted. Here in TX, the good honey is in the spring (and summer if you have mesquite), but honey made in the fall is very dark and smells strong like molasses with a bitter aftertaste. My mistake was that the bees stored some of that Fall honey through the winter and it was still there when they started making new honey this spring. This is a photo of a decapped frame with an area where Fall honey was stored. It made a lot of honey a bit strong, but still usable. Just not as good as I like it.

Missionaries and a surprise guest for dinner

2011-04-11T12:40:00.003-05:00

The house is coming together nicely, which inspired Liz to test it by inviting the missionaries for dinner last night. We also invited Bill and Barb, and they asked if they could bring their house guest. It went off without a hitch, but the surprise of the evening was when I figured out that the house guest was none other than Quinn Gooch, a linebacker on the BYU football team from 2004-7. If you google him, you can see a video clip of him making a hit on an opposing team's receiver that is a real tooth breaker. After graduating he started a BLOG - deepshadesofblue.com - that has become the premier site for BYU sports.
We found Quinn to be very personable, unassuming, and the perfect guest. He recently went back to school and just finished his MBA at U. Texas. He is staying with Bill & Barb until his family arrives, after which they will live SE of Dallas.

Today, I am hanging a couple of curtains and a few other little things to complete the bedroom transformation. It has been a long, difficult project, but we are delighted with it.

The following photos illustrate what still needs to be done.
This is the sun room. The curtain on the floor in the foreground will go on the window next to our bed, and it is the same as the ones on these windows. I love sitting here watching TV with the view of the trees and bushes (and the occasional neighbor), but Liz says it weirds her out. This room is essentially done, but we are thinking of buying a big amoir to put in the corner where Mom used to have her desk.

This is the bedroom. Some of the fittings for the curtain rods are on the bed. This room will be done when the curtain is hung. We put all our Queen Anne furniture in this room and it worked wonderfully. Liz went to First Monday Trade Day in Canton a couple of weeks ago and got the little flower arrangement that is now in the nitch in the wall. Nice!

This is the sink area. I still need to put travertine marble under the mirror to tie it in to the marble vanity top. And I have some towel hooks to install.

I was standing in this area when I took the photo above of the sinks. Liz wanted the outlets where she could reach them as she sat here, but we've decided they need to go down under the table, near the window. That will give me enough room to properly hang the mirror.

Setting up PMs

2011-03-24T10:40:00.002-05:00

PM = Preventive Maintenance = Maintaining equipment at a regularly scheduled interval that will allow you to find and fix problems before they become disasters. Actually, you can't prevent disasters. Things WILL break down when you don't expect it, but it doesn't happen as often on well-maintained equipment.
I currently have a nice little gig setting up the PM schedules for Varsity for two large commercial buildings, totalling almost 1.5 million sq. feet. It is a little bit overwhelming sometimes, but I am making good progress and everybody is happy with my work. That is good, because from what was already done, it is clear that none of them had the slightest clue how to get it rolling.
So, now I am obsessed with equipment and what has to happen to it. Some of it was converted over from the old system, but it's fragmented. For example, I already have a list of equipment in the buildings and the serial numbers. I also have a list of tasks that were done before. Part of my job is to match up the equipment with the appropriate tasks, and that gets a bit tricky sometimes. Most of it, though, is just grunt work. Just keep slogging away until you reach the end of the pile. Never mind that there are 154 Fan Powered Boxes to schedule. Just take the first one, give its schedule a name, give the PM you will generate a name (I always call it PM: whatever I called the schedule), assign it a task (usually a monthly task). Then, if there are PMs to be done on another interval, enter those and make sure they don't pile up in the future - there are monthly tasks, quarterly, semi-annual, annual, biennial, triennial and more and you can't have all 154 triennial tasks hit the staff in the same month, or even year or they will be overwhelmed. So you tell the system the triennial task happens every 36 months, but add 2 months before it is generated, and 4 months for the next one, and so on.
Confused, yet?
This stuff is rattling around in my head and it is making me a bit squirrely. I have been accused of being a little creative with how many hours I've been working. Somebody said I can't work over 100 hours for Varsity + 40 for Cabellas, + 50 on the remodel and fit it into one week. Well, I did say before that the 100+ hours were in a little more than a week, actually 9 days. It is still a lot.
So, yesterday, my good buddy and bro-in-law-squared, who has finally returned from California, and I went out in the woods and filled feeders. It was a delightful break. I even got to fire my pistol. I flushed out a monstrous big, well fed rat that had made its nest in one of our blinds and was eating our bait corn. Well, he won't be doing that anymore.
We talked about going back today for some actual hunting, but I have too much to do.

Cooling Tower #4 will have PMs monthly, starting 4/15/2011, which will take 30 minutes. It will also have a quarterly PM which I'll just let happen each third month, and that will take an hour. A semi-annual PM will be every 6th month, plus an offset of 5, and that will take 2 hours. The annual PM, every 12 months, plus an offset of 11, will take 2 hours. The biennial PM, every 24 months, plus offset of 20 months will take 4 hours. Check it all over, and BE SURE to save it.
And now I'm done whining, and need to get back to work.

SQUIRRELY!

Goodby Cabellas

2011-03-20T21:01:00.004-05:00

I resigned from Cabellas Friday. It was a tough decision for me, as I do not like to give up on jobs, women, or overwhelming projects. But I had to do it. Here are my reasons:

I've worked the last two Sundays and they had me scheduled for the next two as well. Nobody asked me what I needed, they just scheduled it that way.
When Cabellas hired me as a Maintenance worker I envisioned what I was doing for Varsity, which is pretty high-end maintenance, HVAC, high voltage electronic systems, pumps, etc. Cabellas envisioned someone who cleans the bathrooms three times a day. They said that isn't what it will be long term, but they didn't give me any info on what it would be, so that's all I had to judge by.
I got a job with Varsity to enter maintenance schedules for all the equipment in two large commercial buildings into the new CBRE Work Order system. That pays a lot more per hour, and they are in a bind so they want me to work lots of hours. Last week I put in over 100 hours on that, in addition to 40 hours with Cabellas, and at least that many more trying to clean up the remodel project. That's too many hours for one person, which brings me to...
I needed a day off! I had to quit to get a day off?!?

On a lighter note, the bathroom looks great. Below is the tub. It is awesome! We got a Jetta brand tub that was special ordered but cancelled. Jetta has such tubs on a special part of their web site. This one cost about half what we'd have paid, and then it turned out it was a foot longer than we'd thought when we bought it, so it would have cost more than we thought if we'd ordered in the ordinary way. It is VERY nice, and the marble turned out nice, too.

This is the little chandelier Liz got to hang above her dressing table. I put in a couple of little spot lights for actual light and this adds a feminine touch to it. Gives me the willies.

I hate to post this photo with all the stuff piled on the sink, but it goes with the outlets and switch with no covers, yet. The plumbing all works, including a new hot water pump so there is instant hot water. We're making the paint guys come re-do a lot of the walls, though.

And this is the view into the master bedroom. Reminds me somewhat of tornado damage.

Where did the time go?

2011-02-28T10:20:00.005-06:00

My last post was 7 months ago. Here is a quick update on what has happened since then.

My census job ended in Oct. because it was all done.
November: Harold Huber died while snorkeling in Hawaii, which may be one of the great ways to go. He was a great friend. I have 2 hives of bees at his place in Trenton, which Yolinda is happy to let me continue to keep there. She is also selling me his woodworking supply of walnut.
December: Our friend, Krista Oakes, died after a 5 year battle with brain cancer.
Also in December I got a new DROIDX cellphone, which is fun. However, I left it home while we had a fantastic family reunion in Mexico.
I worried a lot about keeping everybody safe in Mexico, but in the end there wasn't anything I could do about it, and it wasn't an issue. I still need to post photos.
As soon as we returned from Mexico, Joe and family packed up and moved to Holland for at least 1 year while he gets an MBA.
Jan. 1: Liz's Mom died. We have very mixed feelings about this. Happy that she is reunited with the love of her life. Sad that she is gone. Happy that we can get our master bedroom back. Sad to walk in there and not see her. The construction is in full sway as I write this - the house is full of dust - the built-in vac. doesn't work because I am waiting on parts to re-connect it where we had to move a wall - the new Jetta tub is waiting to go in and that is exciting.

March 6 will be the first day on my next job. I will be doing maintenance at the new Cabellas store about to open near by. It is very low pay and only part-time. I expect to work hard and get a FT position with better pay after a short time.

Earl's trip to Utah

2010-07-05T19:29:00.025-05:00

Here is Levi, all tricked out with his borrowed bicycle.
For a movie clip showing the uninvited guest - wind! - see the end of this post.

Dad and Jim converse while the dance starts out slowly.

Charlie accompanied the dance music on his keyboard.

Joe's dog. It is black, white, and tan - making him a calico dog.

Dad recently received a medal for his WWII combat efforts. It was awarded by the governments of the islands of the Pacific.

My camera ran out of battery juice just in time for the parade, but a good time was had by one and all.

Afterward, we had lunch in the Capital park.

I managed to catch Angela and Mark being a couple in the dungeons of the Fillmore Statehouse.

Elizabeth and family live out at the farm and they used farmer's assets to make the World's best water slide! There was a carpeted walkway to the top, where an irrigation pump provided huge amounts of water to assist sliders going down the plastic slide.

We sure have a bunch of cousins! I couldn't get them all into one photo.

Mark wanted to see the lava tubes, which Logan had seen with me and Sam Allred a couple of years ago. This photo shows the kids about to climb down into the biggest tube, which is about 30' high.

In one of the smaller tubes, Logan is looking out at the camera. He was on his hands and knees at the time.

Jesse is crawling into the small tube.

And believe it or not, that is Logan's finger sticking out of solid lava rock from that small tube.

This is the kids going inside the tube.

I tried to take photos of us in a large intact-ceiling lava tube, but the dust kicked up by our footfalls reflected the flash so badly that it was hard to see what was going on. This one was about 15' high. As is often the case, the floor slowly rises as you go deeper into the tube. They rarely drain out completely, so some lava cools and solidifies at the end of the tube, making the floor 'rise'.

Mark helping Jesse over jumbled, broken lava rock on the way into the tube.

Logan wanted to sit in the cubby he is reaching for. In the end, he gave up on the idea. We did see two great-horned owls fly out of a hole very near there when we first approached the sink hole.

Here I am clawing my way out of the hole.

The kids wanted a photo of them standing on unsupported rock. A few minutes later, we drove the van over it.

We got to the fairgrounds just in time for the fireworks, which are spectacular for a little town like Fillmore.

And here is the promised video of the wind during the kid's parade.

Battlefield promotion

2010-05-22T20:20:00.002-05:00

About the term: In time of war, people in command positions from corporal up to and including generals are lost via WIA, MIA and KIA. You can't tolerate vacancies in a command structure so the best available person gets promoted to fill vacancies on the spot. Sometimes in intense battles, positions like platoon leader may change hands several times in a single day (albeit a very bad day).

But what about at the census?
It turns out that the census has adopted the same procedure in case people go missing for any reason. Last Thursday morning I reported for work at 7:30 am for a nice relaxing day at the office. At about 8:00 am our new AMA (Asst. Manager for Admin.), Vasantha, called me aside where nobody else could hear us and asked me if I'd like to become an OOS (Office Operations Supervisor). I told her no. She stepped back a quarter step then told me that they needed a night-time OOS, probably as soon as the next week and they really need me. I hemmed and hawed and finally caved in. Then I went back to work.
Let me step aside for a moment and tell you a wee bit about our night-time OOS extant. She was a very nice oriental woman of 30 something who is super quick on the keyboard, very knowledgeable about the census systems, and who has worked as an admin at the census for at least a year. She is also a single Mom who doesn't really like working nights, but couldn't work days because she has a home and child to operate. She had some issues with Vasantha, but I don't know what they were.
So back to last Thursday. I got the news at about 8:00 but it was a week away. No worries. Vasantha pulled me aside again at 8:20. She said they really needed an OOS right away and how late could I stay that night? We dickered a bit and I agreed to work until 10:00 pm. YaHOO! Overtime. And I got a battlefield promotion that very morning. My promotion was processed and official by 11:00. I got new computer permissions by noon. I got building access codes by 3:00, and I got congratulations from all kinds of people, high and low, in all the various departments. Many people were very kind in the things they said.
But what about the previous OOS, you ask. Her status changed even quicker than mine. She was going to stay in Admin as a regular worker - then she was going to work in Field Ops (in the room next to ours) - then she was going to transfer to QC at the other end of the building. She came by and picked up her few personal items after a while and then she was gone. I don't know if she'll be back or not. I spoke to her briefly - we are friends - but she was too emotional to say anything. It all happened so fast I felt kind of disoriented.
FYI, I did not take over the old OOS's desk. It feels kind of haunted or something, so I took over another one.

What does this mean for me? MORE MONEY!! Oh yeah, and more responsibility. It's not really that hard, but I have to keep an eye on things and people constantly ask me what they should do next. I'm not very good at telling other people what to do, but I'm trying. I'm still mostly doing what I was doing before: hiring, firing, and processing time cards. In the end, the job will only last another month or two, so why worry? I will work 2:30 - 11:00pm weekdays, Wed. off, and half days Sat. and Sun.

Mother's Day update

2010-05-12T19:08:00.002-05:00

Well, the bishop took the chocolate bar shrinkage in hand this year. I bought 88 bars and there are only about 65 women normally in attendance. In the past, the bishop has sent the young men to retrive and distribute the bars. This year the bishop posted his councilors over the box of bars, which was right up there on the stand all during Sacrament meeting, and had them hand them to the young men for distribution right up there in sight of everyone. Amazingly, we had about 20 chocolate bars left over. Imagine that.

Now home teachers are being commissioned to pass the remainder out to women who can't or don't attend Sacrament meeting. The young men will do fine, and the mothers will do better.
I like this.

I hate to really take any credit, but I've noticed over the past 10 years or so that other wards in our stake are no longer passing out carnations and are passing out chocolate, instead. Yes, ladies, you are very welcome.
Even better, last year, for the first time, the Relief Society decided to get big chocolate bars for the men on Father's Day. Well, that's more like it! I used to indulge in a little good-natured, friendly, whining when the father's Day treat was one, single, no bigger than it needs to be chocolate chip cookie. I mean, where could the women find the time to go all out like that? Heck, Hershey's has plenty of chocolate bars all ready to go and it's no trouble at all.

Mother's Day

2010-05-09T10:02:00.004-05:00

Recently, my brother, Charles, pointed out that Mother's Day was started by a peace activist named Julia Ward Howe. She wanted it to be Mother's standing up to stop war (the Civil War in this case), but she failed to get it going because she kept getting distracted by her other social reform activities and lost focus on Mother's Day. The idea hung around, though, and years later Anna Jarvis, who also had anti-war feelings, pushed it as a day when Mother's would perform service as a way of honoring their mothers. After she pushed the day through Congress and really got it going she fell into fits of depression over its commercialization. I don't know how she felt about it when Woodrow Wilson, as he made it official, encouraged mothers whose sons had died in WWI to put a flag in their windows in their honor. He saw it as a day when Mothers would honor their war dead, hardly an anti-war event. But now we get it as a day to buy, Buy, BUY something for momma. Cards, flowers, diamonds, pottery, cars, Ipods and everything else. "If you LOVE your momma, you just HAVE to buy her my [insert name of cheap, overpriced merchandise] to show her your undying love!"

Our ward used to present a single carnation to the women in our ward on Mother's Day. That was nice - carnations have come to symbolize Mothers. I have to admit that it was me that changed it for our ward. I was assigned to buy the flowers one year and it just seemed a little small to get one single flower. So I asked if I could get something a little better and I was given a budget. I bought 4-5 oz. (quarter-pound) chocolate bars for all the mothers, and I noticed that they were well received. Very well received! Every year since I've purchased more chocolate bars and all our women are fat, happy, and well honored. This year, though, I was working overtime on the census and I just didn't see how I could go around buying chocolate bars (it usually takes several stops to get enough of the big bars). So I stopped by Sam's Club and bought boxes of "Jumbo" size Hershey bars, which are only about 2.5 ounces. When I got them home, I was informed by a woman in our ward that those little bars just wouldn't do. I'd raised the bar and it would not be well received to lower it again. New, bigger, bars were purchased and Saturday morning I stopped at Sam's to return the little Jumbo Hershey bars. Yes, the tradition continues. Today, all our women will feel the warmth of our love melting like chocolate on their tongues.

BTW, we usually have the young men pass the bars to the women at the conclusion of sacrament meeting. For some reason we have to get quite a few more choc. bars than there are women in our ward. I suspect the boys feel our love melting on their tongues, too.

Happy Mother's Day to all you mothers out there! And may this day be like chocolate for you.

Old photos - Families can be together

2010-03-22T09:37:00.009-05:00

This was Mom and Dad's place in Brawley. Dad's folks came over and we got them to pose with us and the boys. My Grandmother had alzheimer's and I think it was setting in pretty hard at this time.

I think this is in Washington. Or Oregon?

Liz with Mica and Grandpa Benac.
Liz is holding a bowl of peaches. Grandpa usually made me trim his hedges to earn my keep, but Mica showered us with food. She'd cook two chickens to go with all the other stuff, not eat any herself, and insist we take it all with us when we left.

Cutting a christmas tree on the Olympic Penninsula. I loved going over there.

Look at all the hair on that girl. I loved Liz in long hair, but I understand why she wants it shorter and less work.

Ruth adoring her mother and her kitty.

This one of my very favorite photos of Liz. She looked so dapper in her cub scout uniform, and the flowers and growth were one of the reasons we loved being in Washington. This location is Bainbridge Island.

Old photos - Who's that with Mom?

2010-03-22T09:23:00.008-05:00

This is our 1 year anniversary. We were still in deep smitt.

Since these are all love shots, I thought I'd put in one of some nice trout I caught in Salem Lake, just down the hill from where we lived.

More smitt

This is when we were engaged. Liz's parents kept telling us how young we were. They were right, but we didn't care.

Seriously deep smitt!

At our wedding reception in Naperville, although I think this was actually taken at the house on West Road.

Old photos - Group shots

2010-03-22T09:09:00.012-05:00

Who knows the dates on these?
Clearly the white one is older than the other.

These look like when we lived in Poulsbo.

This one is at Glen Rose, TX, at the state park where you can see dinosaur tracks in the creek bottom. Angela and Roscoe were visiting, and I think Joe was on his mission

This is my siblings and spouses and Dad beside Oleve's house in Fillmore.

Spring? What spring?

2010-03-21T19:39:00.009-05:00

I will tell my story mostly with photos:

We have an evergreen, broadleaf bush growing outside Mom's kitchen window. It is big and it is behind the grey bush, behind the leafless bush. This is after the big snow a month or two ago. Snow slid down the roof and landed on the bush. It has been SO VERY wet this year that the ground is pretty much mush. My plan is to cut this bush to the ground and let it regrow in an upright position.

This is a before and after: Saturday morning - the first day of spring, and almost exactly 24 hours later on the 2nd day of spring..

10:00 pm Saturday:

There were a few flakes during the day, but it really started late.

Sunday morning

I paused to take photos - and was late for my first meeting at church. More amazing - I was the only one late for the meeting.

Liz took this one early in the morning, of the car across the street from us.

Popcorn popping on the Bradford Pear Tree.

2010-03-20T12:33:00.007-05:00

Here in TX we don't have so many apricot trees, but we have TONS of decorative pear trees. The builders like to put them in our yards because they grow quickly, are a beautiful shape and who cares if they break during every wind storm as long as it happens After the sale.

- segway -

Last week I got home early enough to take little Ginger with me on an errand to help out a friend. As we drove down the streets lined with pear trees in full bloom, I started singing "popcorn popping on the apricot tree". She doesn't like me to sing to her (which wounds my pride, but she usually gets what she wants) and told me to stop. But the trees were in full bloom. So I asked, "Do you see the popcorn trees?" as I pointed at one. It suddenly struck me that she had no idea what I was talking about and wasn't even looking at the right tree. So I stopped under one and pointed out the blossoms and explained how the blossoms look like popcorn, and when the song says, "a popcorn ball that smells so sweet" it's because the song is about the flowers. What a treat to see her eyes suddenly get large as she made the connection. We made the rest of the drive happily singing the song together and pointing out particularly outstanding examples to each other.

"Spring had brought me such a nice surprise,
Popcorn popping right before my eyes."

Sadly, a late winter storm is moving in today and snow is forecast. It means the popcorn season is over for this year.

It may also mean that the woodworker in the family will have an opportunity to harvest some freshly broken wood. Fruitwood is hard to come by commercially, but it's easy to get it in these parts. Milling it is difficult, but do-able with persistance, and the results are quite stunning.

What to do when the honey gets hard

2010-03-15T10:47:00.002-05:00

Last year I had a bumper crop of honey and many of my fam have some of the abundance. Trouble is, it is the first batch of Texas wildflower honey I've ever harvested that has a tendency to crystallize. When the sugar granulates like you can see in Angela's BLOG, the danger is that the water in the honey doesn't participate, so the honey on top is loosing sugar to crystals until it is watery enough to ferment. Yuck! So, what are you gonna do? (Asked in rising tones like Mark likes to do.)
I use my canner for this. I put as many jars as I can in the canner while the hot water is running in the sink. The point is to get water as hot as the water heater (usually 120 degrees or lower). I make sure each bottle has a ring, screwed down tight so water can't get into the jar. Then I fill the canner to about the top of the jars and cover it. I try not to inundate the jars. Then I go about my business for a half hour or so before returning to remove the jars, dump the now-cold water, replace the jars, refill with hot water, and re-cover. I repeat this cycle at least 4 times, or until the sugar crystals are melted.
Why take this complicated path? Simple. Honey looses flavor and micro-nutrients when heated above 110-120 degrees F. Commercial honey is routinely heated at or above this point, which is why it tastes flat, though still sweet. My honey tastes like blossoms and I like it that way! You can use a double boiler, but the risk of exceeding 110 degrees is too great. Soaking in hot tap water makes it nearly impossible to raise the honey temp above 110.
Of course, you can also stir the crystallized honey to distribute the thinner stuff throughout, which is an attractive alternative in some cases. Just remember that a little bit of fermentation will ruin the entire batch of honey, so get that thin stuff out of there! How do you know if there is fermentation? Bubbles and foam and pressure.

Chaco Canyon

2009-11-08T09:14:00.018-06:00

Oct. 3, 2009
For many years, one of my favortie places has been Chaco Canyon. I've taken most of my children there for one-on-0ne adventures, and I was pleased when my good friend, Keith wanted to stop by there as we were driving home from Albuquerque.
One thing new: Apparently a smallish herd of elk wandered into the canyon a few years ago and have never left.
We camped in the Park Svc. campground and when I had trouble sleeping, I listened to elk bugling in the remote parts of the canyon. I asked several people if they'd heard them and they hadn't. Sound sleepers, I guess, but in all fairness the elk were a long way away and I wouldn't have heard them over the sounds of daytime.

We were at a ruin at the bottom of the canyon and this photo includes a stairway (partially circled) cut by the Anasazis to make it easier to reach the top of the surrounding cliff. There are quite a few of these stairways scattered around the canyon and they are part of the Anasazi road system radiating out from Chaco to their communities as far away as Mesa Verde. One of the Anasazi mysteries is why they built graded roads 15-20' wide when they had no vehicles, no beasts of burden, and only primitive tools. It is amazing to contemplate how much labor they spent building these roads, buildings, and stairs, with only stone tools. Why did they do it?

Pueblo Bonito is the impressive ruin in almost all photos of Chaco Canyon. One of the treats of a tour of Pueblo Bonita is that you can go deep into the ruin and enter this room that is completely intact. You can see how the Anasazi built the multi-story buildings - Rock walls with embedded logs to support the floor of the room above.
The Anasazi carried these logs by hand more than 60 miles from where they were felled!

We decided to take the 6.3 mile hike to Jackson Stairs, the only official trail at Chaco I've never hiked before.

To get to the top of the canyon rim, a path leads up a steep slope over fallen rocks and scree, then into a cleft in the rock. In this photo, I am about half way through the cleft, as we exchanged photos ops.

I stayed put while Keith passed me and here he is, just emerged into the sunlight near the top. The rock to the right has separated from the cliff. The debris at the bottom of the cleft is slowly forcing it away from the cliff and may someday push it right on over.

Here is Keith coming up the final stretch to the top of the mesa. I passed him to take this photo and he is only a few feet beyond where he was in the previous photo. The inside of the cleft in the rock is so deep it's almost dark. The nicest thing is it's very cool - a pleasant relief after a hot, sweaty hike in the sun.

I've been intrigued by this spot for many years. It was not mentioned in any Park Service pamphlets, signs, etc. until just recently. It now has a sign, "pecked basins". There are two basins here and there are more scattered around the canyon in random, remote locations - all on canyon rims. Nobody knows why. The one in the foreground is about 5" deep (the photo can trick your eyes into thinking it is sticking up, but it is a basin) and 14-15" in diameter. It was difficult to get both basins in one photograph without some aid, so I set my water bottle in the far one to make it stand out better.

Jackson Stairway

Keith is sitting at the top of this stairway. It is interesting in that there are hand holes at each side of each step. It is a mystery why the Anasazi made their stairways so wide. Some are 8 feet wide, these are about 3-4. The bottom of the stair was on rock that has since sloughed off, so now it kind of disappears, re-appears, and then is gone for the bottom 20'.

This is the view from the side. You can just see the steps extending down from the rock. Keith is standing on the rim a little farther along.

I sat on the rock at the top of the stairs and pointed the camera straight down, past my foot. As you can see, this is no house staircase - it is STEEP!

As you hike along the mesa, there is a layer in the stone where it looks like re-bar is weathering out of concrete. It turns out that they are the remains of where ancient shrimp tunneled in the mud of an ancient sea bed. The tunnels filled with minerals and it all hardened as you see here next to Keith's hand. The red pebbles are pieces of the tubes. Most of the tubes are about 1/2" in diameter. These are a little larger, and in one place we found one that was about 18" in diameter, but I don't think that one was a shrimp.

We had to go through this narrow chute when going from one mesa level to a lower one . Keith is struggling to get his boot past the other - you know, like, taking a step. I had a difficult time, too, but Keith's feet are several sizes larger than mine and he really had a tough time getting through it. It didn't help that we'd been hiking for a while and we were both getting kind of beat by then.

View from the top looking down at one of the ruins. The round things are Kivas and they originally had log and earth roofs. Current pueblos have a kiva for each clan, and they use them for religious, social, ceremonial, and other things. I think they are just cozy places to gather, kind of like foyers in LDS churches.

A native of Chaco Canyon.

A handsome devil

2009-10-06T17:13:00.002-05:00

Something Angela said while I was there last week made me think I should post this old flyer from my college days. My second year at BYU, my roommate at Helamon Halls was a photographer, named Roddie Willis. He had a part-time gig with the "program bureau" which did publicity for campus events other than classes. One morning he asked me to get dressed in my Cougar Band blazer and turtle-neck so he could photograph me. We went down to the old Smith Fieldhouse, which was all set up for the weekly devotional, with the fancy podium with the seal of BYU on it standing on a dais in the center of the basketball court. I was kind of nervous about it, because I didn't think I belonged up there, but I stood there for about 20 minutes while Roddie took photographs from all angles. This is the photo he chose for the flyer. I had no idea what he needed the photograph for, but next thing I knew my pretty face was posted all over campus. I would have gone, just to see what it was all about, but I didn't have $15 to spare. That was a lot of money in those days, when I spent my summers working for $1.25 per hour.

BTW, this was the year before I met Liz.

Great Grandparents are great

2009-10-06T16:32:00.007-05:00

A few years ago I was contacted by a lady named Ann Carrington in Kentucky. She was interested in Sparks genealogy and had a photo. She knew the people in it, but not which was which. I immediately recognized that the man on the right had to be an Ashurst. We now have them all ID'ed.
From left to right, they are:

Julia Sparks, who died in 1938, which dates this photo.
Edward Bailey Sparks, Great Grandma's brother.

Joseph William Ashurst, Great Grandpa.
Alice Cochrane Sparks Ashurst, Great Grandma.

When I told him I was bringing the photo above, Dad dug up photos of his grandparents. He didn't recognize his Grandpa in the photo because he said his Grandpa always wore a beard when he remembers him, but he had a photo of him at a young age.

This is the only photo Dad could find of his grandfather.
It's a little difficult to see this young man in the photo above, but the shape of his face is the same.

This is his grandmother, as he remembered her. And is there any doubt that is her standing next to her husband? No! It is very clear.

It's kind of fun to find out things about your distant ancestors. It's like finding old friends.
It seems that the Sparks family left Kentucky right after the Civil War, including Alice and her new husband, and they all settled in Brown County, Texas. The Sparks parents returned to Kentucky after a short time, but Grt-Grandpa and his family stayed, working closely with Grt-Grandma's brother, at least for a while.

I have a new truck

2009-09-11T19:12:00.003-05:00

I've been using my Jeep Liberty CRD for my handyman business for the last year. I love the Jeep, but it stinks for a handyman business because you have to have ALL the tools you might need for any job with because you don't know what people think a handyman does, and have to be ready for anything. And I hate that a used paint brush tumbled out of a can and landed paint-side down on the back seat a while back, turning my good seats a shade of primer red.

So I decided to get a pickup. As I researched prices I noticed a "utility bed" pickup and decided it is for me. They come in various sizes, but most are on the big pickups. They have steel boxes on the sides and a smaller bed . Many have ladder racks, generators, etc. permanently mounted. I researched them a lot and got pre-approved for an auto loan of up to $16k to get a used one. I found that the ones I like are available for around $12k from truck dealers. But then I noticed one that said the truck had been a government truck so it was well maintained. No comment on the well-maintained thing, but it suddenly struck me, "Where do they get a government truck?" Then it hit me, they get them from government auctions, and anybody can bid in those auctions, unlike the dealer-controlled used car auctions where they only let dealers in.

The fed. gov. auctions their cars off in live auctions and there is one scheduled in Dallas next week. Sadly, there aren't any utility bed trucks in that auction. Joe learned what I was doing and he sent me links to some other auctions, including one where they do internet auctions of city and utility company surplus items. That's where I noticed a util. bed truck being sold by the city of Allen, which is just down the road from us. I got myself signed up for the auction and bid on a 2001 F-250 truck and I won the auction! I got this beauty for $5605.00 :
http://www.renebates.com/cgi-bin/mnlist.cgi?bates43/1

My plan is to spend a couple hundred to install cruise control, a couple hundred to re-upholster the front seat, and $3-400 to paint the back, which is older than the rest of the truck. I may also have to do some repairs, but I won't know about that until next week some time. After all that, I'll get it titled, licensed, and taxed, and have a nice truck for thousands less than I'd have paid for it retail.

On the plus side, those safety light bars are of no use to me, so I'll sell them to offset some of my expense.

This auction thing is fun! It makes me want to get another one and make some money.

Ruth's graduation from A&M 08/ 12-14 /2009

2009-08-30T12:48:00.015-05:00

Standing on the school seal

The Convocation. Each college has a flag. While waiting for the program to start we spent time discussing - no, guessing which college goes with which flag.

The graduate association's truck makes a patriotic backdrop. There was a line of grad's waiting to pose here.

Mom and Dad get to share in the glory.

Ruth struggles to open her graduation gift from her mother.

She finally gets it open. Liz made the blanket from squares of A&M logo material and A&M color, interspersed with denim.

Our honor graduate, diploma in hand, in front of some of the flags of the countries whose citizens were graduating that day.

We had some difficulty taking the photo because this very large family kept encroaching. And we were there first!

Ruth with her proud parents. Notice the A&M tie.

The diploma! Years of work, sweat, frustration, and ultimately the reward.

Ruth at the portal. The ceremony was grand, but it started at an ordinary, austere place.

Liz has an intimate chat with Pres. GHW Bush

Ruth ponders the words of former U.N. Ambassador, Pres. GHW Bush from the U.N. Assembly Hall.

Ruth, Scott, and I having dinner in Madisonville.
Liz was there too, but she was behind the camera.

The Benac Reunion - Part 2

2009-08-26T19:28:00.004-05:00

At the National Harbor:

The natural result of letting kids dip their toes in a fountain while the adults rest for a moment.

Bill and Chris enjoy it from a shady spot.

The tour of the Capital included the statue of Brigham Young.

The tour guide (left) asked Levi if he knew who B. Y. was, and was surprised when he shot back, "Sure, he was my Uncle."

The kids imitate flames.

The Capital Rotunda - looking up

An evening meal on the lawn of the Capital building.
The truck was there to deliver instruments for THE Navy Band, which gave an after-dinner concert just for us.

Mary and Ruth waiting for The Navy Band to strike up.

Gettysburg

Richard at the Sachs Covered Bridge built in 1862.
We found this bridge entirely by chance, but it was a hoot.

Both armies crossed this bridge during the Battle at Gettysburg in 1863.

Sterling, Levi, Mark, and Logan at the earthworks where the 20th Maine defended Little Roundtop during the Battle of Gettysburg.

Roscoe at the "Devil's Den", Gettysburg

Union forces were on top of these rocks.
Confederate forces attacked through even rougher ground towards these rocks and eventually took them.
Both sides lost a lot of men.

The Wheatfield is behind Roscoe.
Little Roundtop is on the skyline to the right.

The Benac reunion - part 1

2009-08-25T11:51:00.003-05:00

Liz, Roscoe, Joshua, and Earl at the Smithsonian "Castle".

Roscoe and Grandpa enjoyed some serious science time in the Smithsonian.
We purused the bone collection,
insects,
deep sea life,
and gems.

Haley and Naomi in their new dresses.
What a couple of dolls!

Haley and Naomi in their new dresses. Doing ballet.

Lunch in Aunt Nancy's garage dining facility.

Lunch in Aunt Nancy's central dining facility.

Lunch in Aunt Nancy's actual dining facility.

Sue and Nancy take a moment for a glamor pose

The Talent Show

Naomi dances to Ruth's opera singing

Enjoying the talent show

Earl, Liz, Bill, and Barbara took a Segway tour of DC

The Washington Monument behind Earl on a Segway.

I always think of the Wash. Mon. from this very spot - I don't know why.

Liz riding a segway on the street behind the White House.

Barbara and liz approaching the Newseum.

Waiting for the elevator inside the Washington Monument.

Some pretty girls inside the Washington Monument

Mark Qshurst-McGee demonstrates how to pack children between museums.
Roscoe and Angela are unfazed.

The Ashurst almost-a-reunion

2009-08-24T17:33:00.020-05:00

Angela herds kids to the park and pool from Nancy Worthiness's house.
Roscoe, Logan, Jesse, Haley, Naomi, Winter, Ginger, Levi

Morning TV at Nancy's house.
It seems to be a fascinating program, don't you think?

On the deck overlooking the Potomac River. Haley, Asher, Ginger, Sterling, Jesse, Naomi, Isaiah.

Eating an oreo, Isaiah-style

Eating an oreo, Jesse-style

Eating an oreo, Ginger-style,
with backup from Haley/Naomi and a deadpan Sterling who doesn't seem to like seeing a lense.

The gang joins the fun.

Enjoying the rocks at Grand Falls, Va.
Ruth is happy, but what's with Sterling and Logan?

Enjoying the rocks at Grand Falls, Va. Nancy and Isaiah are happy, maybe Ginger, too.

Enjoying the rocks .... Logan?

Logan?!?

Logan! Oh, never mind.

Well, Jesse was enjoying them.

Grandma and Grandpa enjoy sharing the hot tub with Ginger and Isaiah

Isaiah seems to like it.
A lot!

Joshua was also a popular host at the hot tub.

What is better than frozen pops after a dip in the hot tub?

Joshua figured out how to put this foam pirate-ship together.

Now Asher, Isaiah and ginger are trying to figure out how to take it apart.

Two happy campers by the pool

Logan caught a nice catfish in the Potomac. Joshua helps by holding it up. Levi and Jesse appreciate the situation.

More photos from Fillmore

2009-08-23T12:18:00.010-05:00

Liz and I enjoy a moment with Dad and Claire.

Joe's family - pre wedding.

I can't believe I didn't get one of his family - post wedding!

The wedding.

Dad, Mark, Roko, and I.
Four generations!

This is my father and all his current kids.

John, fat ole me, Charles, Joe, Jim
Barbara, Dad, Susan, and Ann in front.

This is a rare photo - Joe isn't making rabbit ears.

Angela with her temporary foster girl.

Mark, Kelly, and Roko joined in the fun. What joy. We loved having them there.

4th of July

2009-08-19T20:20:00.007-05:00

It’s time I reported on the goings on in my life for the past month and a half. Whew!, what a lot of activity. Liz and I went to Utah for the 4th of July weekend. Liz went to see our grandkids, and I did, too, but my main reason for going was to see my little brother, Joe get himself married to a real nice lady. It was a hoot seeing them so besotted with each other, just like newlyweds. I really liked that!
Here are a few photo highlights.

Liz and Mark enjoy a little together time.

We love our kids.

Watching the parade down Redwood Road, near Angela’s house. July 3rd.

Levi is in the 2nd cart. Roscoe (2nd from left) and Logan (not visible in this photo) are walking. The “Tiny Tim’s Foundation for Kids” owns these little cars and is run by Angela’s neighbor and friend.

Liz enjoyed a hike in the mountains with everyone while I drove down to Fillmore.

Here is Joe getting his reward for saying, "Ah do."

And the cutting of the cake.

With my father looking on. He hosted the party. Well done, Dad!

The tables were decorated with a Western theme.

I stole a number of the bandanas, because Shirley said I could, and because I like a generous snot rag.

Just north of Nephi, there is a farm where they grow lavender. It's pretty stunning to see big fields of it.

2009-08-19T17:39:00.003-05:00

Harry & David Onion & Pepper relish Wannabe substitute adventures

2009-05-20T15:43:00.003-05:00

Sometimes I get in WAY over my head. Here's the story:
Some time back (a few years) Liz came home with a couple of little bottles of Harry and David Onion Pepper relish. I tried some and came to really love it mixed with mayo on quesadillas, or with cream cheese as a dip. It is sour and sweet, and tasty. But it is expensive. So, last weekend I got to rumaging around on the internet and found a recipe for a home-canned version. So I started gathering up the ingredients and equipment. I should have just gone to H&D and bought a case of it - it would have been cheaper. OTOH, I now have all the equipment and know=how so next time will be cheaper (I hope - maybe?)
The recipe calls for a pressure cooker to process the bottles. We used to have one, but got rid of it many years ago - probably when we moved to Texas where nobody home cans. The web forum is rife with tales of people processing it in a Boiling Water Bath, and I happen to have a BWB canner that I use for melting beeswax. The forums are also full of debate about whether you will get botulism trying to can this relish without pressure cooking. Lots have done it and nobody reported having died from it, so I press on.
I went to Sam's on Monday to fix an account problem and got 6 beefsteak tomatoes and 6 red bell peppers as the start to the list of ingredients. When I got home, I noticed that the recipe calls for 6 CUPS of peeled, drained, diced tomatoes. And it occurred to me that if they are supposed to be drained, wouldn't it make more sense to use a not-so-juicy tomato? And there are other ingredients I still needed. So off to Kroger where I bought a bunch of roma tomatoes, jalepeno peppers, huge onions, vinegar, red pepper, and so on.
As I diced and drained, I was putting the stuff into our biggest pot. When I was done, the pot was full and there was absolutely no way I was going to add 8 cups of sugar and 3 cups of vinegar and other stuff to it and have it still in that pot. Liz recommended that I use two pots to cook it in as she fled the scene. Besides, I started dicing all the veges at about 7:00 pm and it took until 9:30. I was ready to start cooking, but the first step in bottling this stuff is to cook everything down for 2 1/2 hours. I decided not to start that at 9:30 pm and went upstairs to watch a movie.
This morning I had a flash of inspiration. My good buddy, Keith, has a pot exactly like mine and I could use his for the other half of the brew. So I went over and borrowed it. While I was there he let me look at the bigger pots he had and there was a pressure cooker. A BIG one. Great! So I borrowed it, too.
Instead of cooking in two pots, I put the mix into the water canner and put it on to simmer. I prepared the bottles, boiled lids, and all that stuff, but it occurred to me that we don't have our bottle gripper nor our canning funnel anymore, either. So I made another trip and got new ones. I got sauce in all the bottles and put them in the pressure canner. Keith's pressure cooker didn't have a wire rack, so I put marbles in the bottom to keep the bottles off the bottom of the pot. I hope it doesn't matter that the bottles can touch each other as they process? And I had to do two layers so I smashed a cheap pie plate more or less flat and put that between the layers. I put it all on the stove and started building up steam. All went well until it was time to put the jiggler on and let the pressure build up. It is supposed to take 3-5 minutes to build up pressure and start jiggling the jiggler. After 20 minutes I decided that the places where steam was coming out really were a problem. But there was some kind of pressure in there because if I jiggled the jiggler by hand, steam came shooting out. So I started my processing timer. 15 minutes later I turned off the heat. Whoo! No explosion. That's a good thing. But I don't know how well it all worked.
One last error. You are supposed to let it cool off slowly. I kind of got busy and let it cool off longer than I thought it would take, so I walked in and took off the jiggler. WoW! There was still steam in there. A LOT of steam! By the time I found the jiggler on the floor and got it put back together the steam was almost all gone. I hope it had pressure long enough to properly process the relish. What do you think?
BTW, the stuff tasted great before it went in the canner! I just opened the canner and took out 10 8 oz. jars and 4 12 oz. jars. None broke, so I guess it is OK that they were touching each other. It was nice to hear seals popping down, but only about half of them so far. One bad thing about not having a wire rack is that the marbles readily let the bottles turn over. Three bottles spent a small amount of time on their sides before I could get them out. Will that ruin the seal? Maybe. There is some vege stuff in the water in the canner and that can't be good. I hope it's all from that one jar that I might have kind of over-filled quite a bit. Well, we will see.

Misadventures of a hobbyist beekeeper

2009-05-16T13:15:00.003-05:00

I have beehives scattered around the Texas countryside these days, which I now see is a mistake - especially the ones in places too muddy to get to when it's rainy like it ALWAYS is during the springtime. But on to my story. In January I ordered some queen bees and then I couldn't get out to put them in hives for a while. I was going to put some in the hives at my house, but those don't need new queens, it turns out, so I went out to my old friends, the Hubers, where I have 3 hives. The first hive had a failed queen and laying worker bees. If I'd only re-queened them a month or more ago they would have done great, but laying-worker bees is a fatal condition. When worker bees lay eggs the new bees are all drones because the workers never mated. So as the workers die off, there are only worthless drones left. And once a worker bee starts laying her drone eggs, she will never stop. She doesn't produce sufficient queen pheromone to stop other workers from laying drone eggs, so you soon have a lot of them in the hive and they won't stop. And since they weren't raised to be queens, they are the same size and shape as the other worker bees, so you can't find them, and there are lots of them, and they won't stop. So I pulled their comb, shook all the bees into the grass and took the woodenware away. That hive is a total loss.
Next I went a few yards away to where I have two old hives sitting side-by-side. A nearby cedar tree had grown enough to hinder me working around the hives so I gave the bees a few puffs of smoke to keep them calm and started cutting branches back. Suddenly a bee stung me on the finger and as I looked down, 2 more were hitting me on that same hand. I abandoned the smoker and moved away. Dratted overly protective bees! I washed my hand with alcohol to try to mask the alarm pheromone from the stingers and went back for the smoker. More bees attacked but were beaten off with smoke. I opened up the next hive and doggone if it also had a failing queen. This one, though was still laying a few female eggs and there were queen cells in place. So maybe they will get a good queen out of the deal and all be well with them. Maybe. I closed that hive up.
On to hive number 3, which I soon discovered was the one with all the mad bees. I smoked the tar out of them and still got stung almost every time I lifted a frame to check it. This queen was a fantastic layer! The brood was solid workers (which is perfect), and there were frame after frame of them. This would be the ideal hive if they weren't so darned angry. When I found the queen, I picked her up and put her in a cage to be killed later on and away from the hive, then I put one of the new queens into the hive and closed it up. It will take about 10 weeks for all the old, hostile worker bees to die off and be replaced by nice gentle bees from my new, commercial queen. I also took a couple of frames of brood from that hive and put them in the first hive's box, along with some of their comb and then I put another new queen in there. They will build up this year and be good for next year, thus replacing the hive that had laying workerbees.
I was going to go to the next farm where I have two more hives and check on them, but I was so very sore from all the stings after working those three hives that I decided to call it a day. I still have one new queen, but she can't last too much longer in her cage and has to go into a hive somewhere pretty soon.
I still love keeping bees, but I've got to get them so they're closer together and close to where I live. I currently have bees in 4 locations, 3 of which are 45 minutes or more away from home so that a quick inspection involves an hour and a half on the road, and more like 3 hours to visit all the locations. If I spend 12-20 minutes on each hive, it takes all day to do them all, and that is just too much.
On the plus side, I have honey in jars again, which is nice.

Ashbys and Ashursts

2009-05-11T19:32:00.002-05:00

Nancy was concerned whether it was a problem that Richard's Mom was an Ashby. It is not - Haddie was too distant a relation to be a concern. But there is another interesting connection.
Haddie Ashby Stringham moved to Holden, Utah after her husband died to live next door to her daughter, but when she got older she moved to Pomona, California and lived there until she died. She was my Grandma Stevens's mother. Meanwhile, my Grandpa Ashurst's parents moved from Texas to Pomona, Ca. to retire and grow oranges. They lost the orange grove after a killing frost wiped them out, but they stayed in Pomona until they died and they are buried there. So they might have known Haddie Ashby. Who knew their descendants would marry?

About the Ashby's

2009-05-11T09:13:00.004-05:00

Many years ago, we spent a day in Nauvoo. If I remember correctly, we were in Illinois for a family reunion? I think we already lived in Texas, but it had to have been soon after we moved here, if so. Anyway, we asked a missionary couple if they knew where the Ashby's home had been and it turned out the missionary couple were living in it. It is a two story house that is one room deep and two rooms plus a hallway wide - very plain and simple.

-I tried to draw it, but the BLOG compressed it and it didn't work. Picture two squares, with a small rectangle between them and connecting them.

They were very nice to us and gave us a tour of the house, even though it is not open to the public, being used as a residence. The overwhelming impression I got was that it was tiny. It is on a nice, big lot, however. Of course, at the time the Ashby's were there a good home had a stable for horse and tack, a garden area and fruit orchard, a well, and an out-house away from the well (hopefully). My mother used to tell us the story of how horrible it was that the Ashby girls were forced out of their home in the dead of winter and forced to cross the Mississippi on the ice to live in their wagon, out in the open in Ohio. She also told us about the girls remembering looking back over the ice and seeing the temple burn. Trouble is, the temple wasn't burned until quite some time later - maybe a year later. They may have seen it burn, but not on the night they crossed over the ice. That's the trouble with family stories - they tend to drift around as details blur and get reinvented, unless they are written down.

My talk on Mother's Day

2009-05-10T19:14:00.001-05:00

Given in Sacrament Meeting:

Women of strength

My topic today is the Strength of Womanhood. Strength can be measured in many ways. Being a man, I am most familiar with those that involve challenges such as (flex my arm) or seeing who can climb to the top of a 40 foot rope and be the first to ring the bell. And yes, there was a day… But if we examine the essence, the true core of strength, we find that it is often expressed in other ways than brute force.
A week ago, Saturday, Bro. White called me. His cell phone connection was so bad I could barely make out what he was saying, which distracted me a lot and by the time I figured out he was calling to ask me to speak today it was too late to dream up a good excuse. However, he made up for it during Fast Meeting by sharing with us his adventures in beekeeping. I, too, worked for a beekeeper as a teenager. I remember it as being hot, dirty, sticky, often painful work. There is something about it, though, which is why I still meddle with honeybees. It is a fascinating hobby which is made even better by the fact that most people are not willing to accept the heat, dirt, stickiness and occasional painful sting. There are many examples of people who are presented with difficult tasks, but having triumphed, find that they are most proud of having met their challenge. In many ways, Mormon people are like that. I have heard non-LDS folks say how unfair it is that a religion should ask its people to pay tithing, fast offerings, building funds, education funds, missionary funds, and so on. Or to abstain from the simple pleasures of hot or strong drinks. Or to give so much of their time. And yet we find that having done these things, we feel a great sense of accomplishment. We feel tighter bonds with our fellows. We feel the veil getting thinner as we receive affirmations of being on the correct path. We feel joy in the strength we’ve found alongside the spirit.
I’d like to share some examples of women in my family who found great strength through their trials. It is not that we are likely to face those same trials or meet similar challenges, but we can sometimes find inspiration to build our own strength when we contemplate the strength of others.
My grandmother’s grandmother was one of these inspirations. “Haddy” Ashby (her full name was Harriet Maria Ashby) was born shortly after the church was organized and was a member of it all her life. Her family moved to Nauvoo in 1843 when she was 10 years old. When she was 13 they were forced to leave Nauvoo, crossing the Mississippi River when it was frozen over, and as they crossed the prairie and with her parents of failing health, she assumed the duty of caring for her brother who was 6 months old. She later said that by assuming care for her infant brother she was a mother starting when she was 13 years old. During those difficult years when church members were moving slowly towards Utah, her father died and a young man was assigned to help care for her family, a responsibility he took very seriously. His name was Briant Stringham and he married Haddy’s older sister, Susan, shortly after they arrived in Salt Lake.
When Haddy was 16, her mother died. Her mother entrusted her young children to Briant to raise as his own, but Haddie was given care for her sister Louisa, who was 18 months old. Briant suggested that she come live with them so she could attend school, and that’s why she came to live with her married sister.
Imagine the kind of life she led, having spent many of her teenage years caring for her siblings, not just babysitting, but as the primary caregiver. What kind of a social life could she have had, saddled with children? Did she ever think to rebel? Did she try to find somebody else to take over? Did she ever think about just running away? I am sure she had those kinds of thoughts, but she did not act on them It takes a particular strength to shoulder that kind of load and carry on with living. Haddie accepted her lot in life and made the most of it. People who knew her describe her long life of service for her siblings, her children and their posterity. She was an inspiration and a guide for righteousness as she sacrificed Worldly pleasures for the principles of her espoused faith – she always held fast to the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and her influence was still evident in my own grandmother who had many of these same qualities. Love, patience, unflagging support for her family and dedication to her faith.
Now for the fun part of her life. During the 1849 California Gold Rush, Haddy and her sister, Susan made straw hats which they sold to the miners for $1.00 each, and she continued to live in Susan and Briant’s house during this time. The sisters were very close, although their friendship was about to be strained. I am going to read her own account of what happened next.
“When I was eighteen years old Briant began paying attention to me. One night when we had been out walking, as I came into the house, Susan said, “Had! Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?” I said, “Yes, I am, and I will never do it again.” I felt so sorry for Susan that I took Louisa and went to sew for Sister Gray. There I stayed three weeks, I was determined I would not have Briant talking to me any more, but every night I would look over the fence to see if he was coming. He finally did come and after a time and arranging matters satisfactorily with Susan, we were married.
My first child and Susan’s second, Briant Jr., were nursing babies at the same time. Little Briant became very ill so that his life was despaired of, seemingly from lack of nourishment. His father would bring him to me to share the nourishment I was able to supply my baby, and with what I could give and his mother could furnish, baby Briant soon got fat.”

Since this is a moderately shocking tale, I should add that Briant Stringham built a house for each of his wives and was a devoted father to all his children. Sadly, he died at the age of 47, leaving his widows with young children. Personally I am very glad those days when polygamy was legal and accepted are long gone. As I said before, Haddy’s life was devoted to children and church. When I think of her, I think of her as a Woman of Great Strength, and of her sister as a woman of Extraordinary strength.

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It is an interesting historical fact that in those days, and really until the mid 20th Century, the #1 cause of death for women was childbirth. For men, it was infection, often from small wounds as simple as wood slivers in hands or feet. We enjoy some immunity from those things, now, but they lurk in the very near background. We recently had a scare of a pandemic (a World-wide infestation) with the H1N1 influenza. The last serious pandemic of flu was in 1918, during WW1. In fact, more soldiers died of influenza in 1918 than died in battle. In late 1918, when the flu pandemic reached the little town of Fillmore, Utah where my grandparents lived, my grandmother Hattie, was pregnant. So she was facing the double peril of both infection and childbirth. The decision she made was only reached after much prayer and soul searching.
Imagine how we would have felt if the recent flu had been as bad as was initially feared. In 1918 people were dying in droves. People would feel fine in the morning - by evening they would be so sick they would be helpless - and by morning they would be gone. It was a terrible time and Grandma was terrified, both of the flu itself, and at the thought of loosing her unborn baby.
When grandma heard about the first influenza cases in Fillmore, she resolved to lock herself in her house until her baby was born and healthy, and she did just that. It was not an easy thing to do. She had two unusually rambunctious boys, 2 and 4 years old, who were nearly impossible to contain and even more impossible to live with in a small house (It was two stories, but only about 1700 sq. ft.). She had to miss church meetings, which were her primary social outlet. She couldn’t fulfill her church callings and accepted her visiting teachers by inviting them to pull chairs up to the closed door on the front porch and talk to her through the glass. Grandpa tended to his farm and livestock, but he, too, tried to minimize contact with other people. He was able to give Grandma some relief by taking the boys with him to the farm, but as winter came he too had to stay at the house. Fortunately, their little house had that new-fangled luxury of piped in water. Food, however, was another story. To isolate themselves, they had to rely mostly on what they had in the house and garden, forgoing trips to the grocery store. As you might expect, their neighbors, all members of their ward, pitched in with meals as they could, passing them through a briefly opened door. That was a blessing, but not a total solution as the resources of all the people were stretched very thin. Fortunately, my grandparents were keen gardeners and their pantry was stocked with home-canned fruits and vegetables. Their experience that winter served to reinforce their dedication to home storage and they continued to grow and bottle their produce long past the time when they could easily afford factory-canned goods.
All this time, there was intense social pressure to leave the house. I think the hardest thing for my Grandmother was staying there protecting her babies, while other people needed help. She had to focus on her own children at the expense of fulfilling other duties, including tending for and otherwise supporting the many sick people in town. That was a hard choice, and she never afterwards stinted when providing help to other people. She served many years as the Relief Society President and fulfilled innumerable service projects.
My grandmother was successful in avoiding the 1918 flu, and I am very happy to report that her baby was born in the spring, a healthy, happy little girl – my mother. My Grandparents’ family was one of the very few in Fillmore who did not loose anybody to the dread disease. You can walk through the cemetery there and find many, many gravestones with a death date in the dread winter of 1918-1919.
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There is a common thread to the strength of the people whose stories I’ve shared. I wish to finish by quoting the 14th Chapter of John.

26 But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.
27 Peace I leave with you,
my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you.
Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.

Rain, rain, go away. Come again some distant day.

2009-05-05T10:15:00.002-05:00

Joe blogged a photo of the floods remaining after last week's rains. He can post about his adventure driving to early Sunday meetings. As for me, Sunday afternoon it fell to me to drive out to Joe's place to spend the night and get the kids off to school and Grandma's house on Monday morning. On the ride out I passed several flooding streams, including one near Melissa, TX where the half-mile wide floodplain was a solid sheet of flowing water. The freeway is elevated above that floodplain, but the frontage roads disappear into the muddy water. As it got dark, Joe and I set out to clear the land of those pesky rabbits, but finding none decided to walk up the road a ways to view the destruction. There is a spot on the road where it washed away in the rains, leaving a 5-6 foot wide gash in the road, about 4 feet deep. There was still a fair amount of water flowing through the gash, but since the rain stopped some 12-15 hours earlier, it wasn't such an impressive amount of water. What was impressive was how abrupt the sides of the washout were, how much compacted, gravel roadbed was washed away, and how many crawfish were crawling around in the muddy water. You would guess that thousands had already washed past by then, but that racing water was alive with crawdads! A few were good size, but the bulk of them were smallish, perhaps 2 inches long. It was a contrast between destruction vs. overflowing, abundant, burgeoning life.

GPS Stories

2009-05-01T19:30:00.001-05:00

A year ago Christmas Jessica gave us a GPS roadmap unit for Christmas. Prior to that I had considered them a luxury/toy. As we played with it, it became apparent that it is a luxury/toy that you quickly learn you can’t live without. When I started my handyman business, it became even more important. It is marvelous to simply enter an address into the GPS unit and drive there. However, Liz wanted to have it at times, too, so I would have to do without during those times, and/or Liz would be frustrated to do without. So last Christmas Clear Sky Handy Men gave me a new (cheap) GPS for Christmas so Liz could have the older one in her car at all times. Life was good.

A few weeks ago, Liz went to a fancy production in Dallas with her brother and when they used valet parking at the restaurant, the GPS in her car went bye, bye. That was sad. Even sadder, my new GPS (the cheap one) just quit working last week. I was actually entering an address and the touch-screen stopped responding to touches. It refused to respond to any input after that. It is under warranty, so I will get it back eventually, but meanwhile I NEED a working GPS. So Clear Sky Handy Men got a new GPS, another cheap one. I was spoiled by the first one, which was an older model Garmin, and my cheap imitation of a Garmin. This new cheap GPS is also a music player and photo viewer, and the menus were designed by someone who already knew where all the hip hop music clubs and concert venues are. At least, it is clear they’d never been lost and needing directions. It was impossible. On top of that, I tried to enter Joe’s address in the Favorites and it refused to accept his road. “Nope! No such road can be out there,” it said. So I took it back and bought a somewhat more expensive Garmin Nuvi 255.

https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?pID=13428

What a delight! First thing it did when I plugged it in to my PC was let me download the very latest U.S. highway map (June 2010). Then I downloaded a Jeep icon to show where I am. It will even let me build my own Point of Interest lists if I want to. (I wonder if I could sell a list of all the Home Depot and Lowes stores as a POI file?) I am very happy to be back in the GPS game. Liz is not so happy, but we WILL get my GPS back after warranty repairs.

2009-04-30T13:03:00.000-05:00

My recent posts have failed to post. Why? ???
So this is a test to ensure a direct post will work.

Commence the Census

2009-04-04T16:04:00.001-05:00

We had a visit from a nice young lady representing the 2010 Census yesterday who wanted to know if we live in a single-family house (well, duh! Plano has the strictiest zoning laws you can imagine and nothing else is allowed here.) It was the first puff of wind in the coming deluge of census taking for the constitutionally-mandated decenial enumeration of the US of A.

So I got to thinking about it all and made a visit to the Census web site where I did a little digging on the name, Ashurst. In the 2000 Census there were 751 of us (not counting those that were not recognized as valid – too complex to define here, but you can read all you wanted to know and MUCH MORE on the Census web site.) There were 26 names with 751 people, and 751 was the 29,598^th highest in the US. Ashursts were about 88% white, 8% black, 3.5% hispanic, and less than 1% of the other races. There were 0.28 of us in each 100,000 people in the US (or about 1 in 357,143).

Now, don’t that make you proud?

BTW, Smith is by far the most commnon name is the country, but Jones is all the way down at #5.

The top ten surnames are:

NAME	Number of occurrences
Smith	2,376,206
Johnson	1,857,160
Williams	1,534,042
Brown	1,380,145
Jones	1,362,755
Miller	1,127,803
Davis	1,072,335
Garcia	858,289
Rodriguez	804,240
Wilson	783,051

The dress-up box.

2009-03-30T11:50:00.003-05:00

What do you do with a wearable skirt Liz outgrew in her youth? Or a sequined shawl? Or a brightly colored tutu? Simple, you keep them in a box in the play room where any child can dress up with them as their spirit moves them.

The harder question is how to keep it in tune with "For the Strength of Youth"?

Happy Birthday, Liz

2009-03-30T10:58:00.005-05:00

After being married for nearly 40 years, Liz and I know what to expect from each other in many cases. So her birthday present from me was not a great surprise, but it was well received. Now that it has been given, I can relate the sad story of the Japanese teapot lid. Early last year I happened upon an antique store in an out of the way place and discovered a treasure trove of antique (more or less) teapots at very reasonable prices. It was a delightful find. I chose one or two, and then found another one too good to pass, and another and soon I had an armful. When I finally had all the ones I couldn’t live without, I started towards the front of the store to check out. My arms were full to overflowing with teapots and when one shifted, I adjusted a little, which overbalanced the little Japanese teapot and the lid fell straight onto the tile floor and shattered into millions of little shards. I was devastated. Of them all, I think I liked that one the best because of the fineness of the the painting, the shading, and the overall care taken in its simple design. It is the one in the center of this photo.

But the lid was in pieces. I took the rest of my haul up to the register and returned to gather up the shards. They had scattered to a remarkable degree and I found pieces in at least four of the little display cubicles near where it dropped. So that’s my sad story.

We had a nice dinner and party with a special guest, Uncle Keith, who recently burned up his kitchen, was tired of eating steak every night at the insurance co.’s expense, and was in need of a home-cooked meal. The party was in celebration of both Liz and Joe’s birthdays.

The birthday heroes

Joe got jerky and some fishing lures for his lake from his parentals: Liz got makeup from her mother.

Joe got a boot from his espouse: Liz got a very nice new casarole from all her children.

Joe got new pants from parentals, but they were too small: Liz got teapots from her most special, true love, the hero of all time, her knight in lustrous, shining armor.

An essay on Science

2009-03-14T20:37:00.001-05:00

Let us start with asking, “What is science?” Science is a method for regulating the gathering of knowledge. It has a Method, and it has a rule. The method is very simple.

You decide to learn about something, so obviously you have an interest in it.
You observe all you can.
You form a hypothesis (a theory, or educated guess) about the truth of what you are observing.
You devise a way to prove your hypothesis, and you perform the test.
At this point one of two things will happen

If the test does not verify your hypothesis, you go back a few steps and try again
If the test verifies your hypothesis, then you publish it and become famous (at least in your close, scientific field).

This is the point where the rule come in. The rule is that scientific knowledge is only accepted as fact when other scientists can review your work, perform your test, AND get the same outcome, repeatably. If your results cannot be duplicated, your hypothesis is not considered to be knowledge - it is only a theory and while you still get credit for it, it is not considered to be scientific fact. This failure to become fact might be because you failed to publish your theory and test results, or it might be because nobody else gets the same results. There are a few special cases I’ll discuss later.

What is not obvious until you think about it for a while is that science does not give us a method to discover facts. Instead, what it gives us is a method to evaluate discovery methods (which lead to the discovery of facts). Scientific Method is what helps us distinguish facts from theories, which lets us know what is really knowledge and what is somebody’s unproven idea.

Another non-obvious thing about science is that it forces us to share information, thus improving all of mankind in a uniform way. The fact that the scientific method requires us to publish our results before our theories can become scientific fact means that scientists everywhere have to know what other scientists are thinking. Governments and military leaders are sometimes bothered by this openness when ideas of a dreadful nature are published. For example, in 1932 Sir John Cockroft and Ernest Walton formed a nuclear reaction by splitting atoms. Other scientists built on their work and others built on it further until atomic bombs were developed in 1945, only 13 years later. The United States did not want other countries to get atomic weapons because they did not want to be threatened by them (and who can blame us?), but scientists the World over already had all the information needed, except for details on how we actually constructed the bombs. The knowledge was already available to scientists everywhere. Many people fervently wish knowledge had not been shared in that instance, but scientific method demands it. The positive results of this sharing outweigh the negative many times over.

On the other side of the scientific sharing of information coin is the internet. The internet was developed by scientists and educators specifically to improve the ability to share scientific information of all kinds. The first efforts were slow, but productive. As computers became more capable, the internet also became more capable until suddenly it exploded out into the world at large and now it is readily available to everybody in almost all parts of the World. With it came all kinds of junk, but scientific knowledge has never before been so available to so many people. We have proved over and over that scientific concepts such as open sharing of information gives us tremendous capabilities to increase our knowledge of the World around us, so the internet will surely be ranked as one the most important developments in science ever.

Special Cases: There are a few cases where a hypothesis remains a theory because it can’t be tested. The most famous example of this is evolution, the theory about how there came to be so many species of animals on Earth. We have never witnessed and documented the origin of a new species, and there are very good reasons why we do not want to invent new species, even if we could. From what we observe in nature and the fossil record, new species arise at random times, and as frequently as a few times per thousand years, so keep your eyes peeled.

An essay on the origin of life and Evolution

2009-03-14T17:47:00.000-05:00

This largely an extract from an email I wrote to my brother.

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It is argued that life sets aside the concept of entropy in certain ways, including the step from primordial soup to life. It is argued that life originated in a warm, chemically active environment stirred by volcanic action and intense radiation where chemicals became more and more complex until some of them came together and voila, there was life. After that, this first life had only to replicate itself in the most elementary way and evolution took over, leading inexorably to you and I.

What bothers me is the theory that chemicals that might BECOME life somehow set aside entropy. That's the point that seems far fetched to me. Entropy doesn't care what will become. It only cares that everything decays. Even though chemicals sometimes combine to form more complex, rather than less complex new chemicals, that is still a monstrous step away from forming life. Even microbial life is complex. It's not just a chemical joining with another, it is a huge number of specific chemicals combining in just the right way.

So the theory that a primordial soup spawns life is very much like that old story of putting thousands of chimpanzees in front of typewriters and eventually one of them bangs out a novel like "War and Peace". Cute story, but does anybody really believe it? It's also like the old story of putting explosives around metals of various kinds, and in the resulting explosion they come together to form a watch. It's not just a single mingle, it's a huge merge. So, in my humble opinion, there had to be a nudge. As a man of religion, I think this nudge came from God, but it makes no difference if it came from some other source. I don't care if it was aliens, or a meteor with life already on it, or whatever. I just don't think it happened spontaneously. Spontaneous generation of life has been a popular theory for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years, but it is scientific nonsense, at least between the popular, stylish outbursts. I'm a conservative guy, so I don't buy into the stylish and popular, so I still think spontaneous generation is nonsense. Prove me wrong and I'll buy it, but all the evidence points to entropy winning in a lifeless soup, primordial or not.

It would be nice if we could count Mars as example of life #2, but it is premature to do that. There was a lot of excitement over a meteoric rock originating on Mars that looked like it had bacteria fossils embedded in it, but it turned out to be something else. There is a lot of excitement about Mars in the debate over life in the Universe, but it is not that we know about life on Mars. It is that there is great evidence of water on Mars, and if there is/was water maybe life could have formed there out of its own primordial soup. (Here we are, back in the soup.) So far, we have zero evidence of actual life on Mars but we still have very little evidence of any kind. It is exciting because it is the first place where we have a good chance of finding out, not because it seems like it really happened. So no, the count is still only 1.

Then the next question if we find evidence of life having been on Mars, will be whether it is the same life as on Earth and was transported from one to the other via a cosmic interaction like what happened to the meteorite with the bacteria-looking formation. In other words, was one the nudge for the other? That will be a tough question to answer, but it will be fun and productive to try.

Before you can discuss evolution, you should discuss the special status human beings currently enjoy in the scheme of things. Evolution really does not apply to human beings because we have the ability to ensure survival of so many who would otherwise die, and because we all have breeding opportunites. All humans survive to breed. The quarterback may mate with the cheerleader, but their offspring have no survival advantage over anybody else's offspring in today's World. And yet, with no advantage, the species still changes. And even though the species is changing, it is still good old Homo Sapiens.

I don't reject evolution per se, but I don't hold to the popular view of it, either. Darwin's book is a great thesis, but it hasn't held up to scientific scrutiny and his morphing theory of evolution is only held by the masses arguing over whether to teach it in school. In case that isn't clear, perhaps it will help to define it a little better. The morphing theory of evolution is that those individuals of each species with the best survival attributes survive to pass on their genes. Over time, those survival genes are concentrated in a population and it slowly changes. Small changes, generation after generation add up until the species is no longer what it was - it is a new species. It is "morphing" because between every old/new pair of species there are innumerable individuals that are somewhere between the old and the new. That is the theory Darwin proposed, and brilliantly so. But science does not bear that out. Further study showed that we just don't see that slow change, the morphing, when looking at species. When we look at the fossil record, what we see is that before our duckbill platypus, there was a pre-platypus that was distinct in certain ways. It bears a resemblance to our platypus, but isn't one. And before that, there was some other beast, perhaps similar to, but distinctly different than the pre-platypus. We find those, and nothing in between. And the end of one does not often match up with the beginning of the next one. And therefore, the morphing theory / survival of the fittest / Darwin evolution is not scientifically valid.

Instead, what we see is that new species erupt at irregular intervals, fully formed - already distinct from other species. We surmise that there are hundreds, thousands, or perhaps even millions of other potential species that erupted but did not survive. At this level, there is survival of the fit. If they are fit enough to compete and breed in their environment, then the species lives on. If not, they die out very quickly. We see these “possibles” quite frequently, but we have not yet seen one of them live on to form a new species. The possibles we see are aberrations like three-legged chickens and two-headed snakes and people who can do incredible mathematical solutions in their heads, but can't tie their own shoes. But it isn't a question of the "fittest" surviving. Whether a possible new platypus is fitter then regular platypi is irrelevant. The only relevance is whether it is fit enough to survive, and oh yeah - it also has to be capable of passing on its genes with a mate, which must surely, in the vast majority of times, be one of the old specie because what are the odds of having two identical aberrations, male and female born at the same time and place? And if, after the mixing of genes, the offspring isn't still the new kind of critter, then it didn't pass the "fit" test and Daddy was just an aberration, a "sport", a singularity.

So, given the above, I find it amusing that so many people spend so much time and angst arguing over whether to teach creationism or scientific Dawinian evolution in school. I say we should teach them complete, solid science, instead. And real science, by the way, having no proof of the origin of life, will explore all possible theories, counting none of them as more "scientific" than another because we don't know what is the correct answer. In this case, as in any other, science says to explore all avenues to knowledge, and some young, budding scientist of the future will have to prove which theory works best. It's not for us to say the only choices are God or Darwin, or one and not the other. It's far better to teach them that we don't know how it happens. We'd certainly teach them what Darwin thought, and that it didn't hold for these reasons. Along those same lines, and for the same reasons, you would teach them what other people thought, including religious thinkers, and the reasons those thoughts don't hold up to scientific scrutiny. Science says you examine the facts, you form your hypothesis, then you attempt to prove it however you can. In education you'd teach them as much as you can, then challenge them to form their own hypotheses and turn them loose.

Weird! Who, me?

2009-02-27T20:37:00.001-06:00

Way back in the 1980’s I was working at a citrus ranch on the East side of Imperial Valley. That was when I decided on a life promise to never live West of where I worked, again. I’d drive to work with the rising sun in my face, work all day, then enjoy the setting sun in my face on the way home. One day I was driving the company’s little red Japanese pickup home with a couple of other guys in the cab. It was mostly cloudy so the sun wasn’t an issue that day, but there were breaks in the clouds, too. As we drove along I noticed a bright light in the western sky above a big, dark cloud. It was coming down, but quite slowly. I am fairly certain it was a meteor and that it was coming nearly towards us, which would give it the illusion of moving very slowly. We watched it for a couple of minutes until it went behind the cloud, and here comes the fun part. Suddenly, it came right through the cloud, leaving a clear spot behind, through which we could see blue sky. The hole continued to grow bigger for a couple of seconds after the light passed through. Shortly after, the meteor burned up or something, because the light went out. Now my mind says meteor, and the heat of its entry into the atmosphere made the cloud turn back into water vapor. We all saw it, so it wasn’t my feeble brain creating things in response to the sun in my eyes, or swamp gas or any of that.

Well, today I was eating my lunch at home and I turned on Discovery Channel and watched a show about UFOs. They were describing an incident at the Chicago airport where an object was visible (but not on radar) above one of the concourses, but then it shot up into the sky and left a hole in the clouds through which people could see blue sky. They claimed that is proof positive it was a UFO, because there is no other explanation for something with enough energy to melt a hole in a cloud. Wow! So I saw a UFO after all? Well, that’s one thing.

Second thing. I’ve seen very unusual, big, black cats out at the farm where we hunt pigs, and I’ve seen them on 3 separate occasions. They have a short tail, but are otherwise proportioned more like a cougar. The bobbed tail says, Bobcat, but I’ve also seen bobcats out there and they are an entirely different kind of cat. In fact, I’ve been within 4 or 5 feet of a bobcat out there and had a very good look at him, indeed! I’ve seen these black cats in full sunlight twice, and I’ve seen them up close (20 feet away or so), moving slowly, and out in the open. There is no doubt about what they are and what they are not, but it leaves me in a curious situation of having observed something unknown to science. Scientists are all from Kansas (Show me!), and invariably react to reports like mine with disdain. They always respond with something like, “There is no such thing as a black cougar”, or “All cats look black at night.”, or “I’m sure he thought he saw it, but it was actually just swamp gas nebulizing into a poltrificating storm, causing caustrophying ions in his eyes and making it look black” while giving the impression they really believe it has to do with inbreeding.

That makes two different, unrelated things where I find myself on the opposite side from scientists, and I desperately don’t want to be there. Well, I can’t do anything about duplicating a meteor punching a hole through a cloud, so that one has to remain in the category of an interesting tale, but I will probably see a black cat again. The thing is, I have had an ongoing argument with myself over what to do about it. The easiest thing would be to shoot one. But I don’t really want to shoot an unusual animal, even if it does give me scientific credence, because then I would have well and truly earned scientific disdain for having killed a rare animal - one that probably deserves to be on the endangered list. The other alternative is to photograph it in detail, but there is a big problem with that. It’s probably about a hundred times harder to get a good photograph than to shoot it, and I am not THAT good at sneaking up on wild predators. Plus, I don’t have the proper equipment for it, nor the money to buy it, not, frankly, a burning desire to get that far into photography. So, I guess I’ll just have to remain in that poor, pitiful, unloved and un-believed group of people who are generally labeled as weirdoes.

How disasters come to happen

2009-02-19T22:34:00.001-06:00

I’ve always heard that big disasters (the man-made kind, that is) are caused by a series of small mistakes, rather than a big bone-head one. I’m a believer. Let me explain.

Tuesday, Liz was hosting a little book-club group at our house. The fireplace had some ashes in it and she decided it would be nice to have a cheery fire and that would also make it so she didn’t have to clean up the ashes. Who could argue with logic like that? I was assigned to provide the wood. I almost always have some scrap wood laying around, but this time I didn’t have much. However, I had some logs of osage orange (aka Bois de Arc) I am hoping to turn into beautiful bowls some day, and that some day hadn’t come up in a long time. So I brought in an 8” log and put it on the fire with enough small stuff to keep it crackling merrily. The party/book club was a roaring success. That night I couldn’t sleep and came downstairs to find the place full of smoke. Osage orange is dense wood and burning it is kind of like burning iron. It takes a long time. But through the night that log had burned and burned until the front half of it burned away and the log rolled forward, coming to rest against the screen at the front of the fireplace. From that position, the smoke didn’t go up the chimney, it went out into the house. I set it back on the grate and turned on the gas starter to maintain a flow of air up the chimney and went back to bed. Next morning, Liz wanted to turn off the gas, and I wanted to keep the smoke out of the house (even though it was too late), so we decided the log needed to go outside. I carried it outside and put it on some bricks in the back yard, then went to work. Along in the afternoon, I was cutting some molding pieces to frame a doorway, working outside in a fairly brisk wind, but of a very pleasant temperature. My phone rang and it was Liz’s mother asking me if I was home. I told her no, I was at work, and she said, “Well, your little shed is on fire.” That set me back. I asked her if it was actual smoke and flames fire and she said yes and should she call the fire department. YES!!! I mean, “Yes, please. Right away would be nice. Do it NOW!” So the fire department came and tore down my shed and put out the fire. It seems that some time during the day a piece of the log, fanned by the wind, fell off the bricks and landed in the grass. Who knew that flat lawn provided enough fuel to sustain a flame? It did, though. The grass burned along the edge of the lawn for 8-10 feet just beyond the porch, turned 90 degrees and burned about 15 feet along the edge of some bushes and ignited two paper bags of leaves Liz had raked up a few days before. The two bags of leaves burned for a while and started the corner of my plastic storage shed on fire. Meanwhile, the lawn burned in the other direction, spreading out generally and ignited a section of plastic construction fencing I had abandoned on the back lawn temporarily (honest, it was just a project that had to be halted by darkness). The thin plastic mesh burned amazingly well, including going right over the concrete edging into a bunch of leaf litter under a weeping willow, which was also burning merrily when the fire department arrived. Amazingly, right next to the fencing was a Harbor Freight 12 ga. extension cord which was not harmed in the slightest by the fire, even though the grass burned all around it on its way to the fencing stuff. But I digress. When the fire department (those blessed, intrepid souls) arrived, all started to go well again. They pulled the front side of my shed down and put out the fire just before it ignited the 2 7-gallon plastic containers of gasoline I keep for the emergency generator. One of the containers had actually begun to shrink down as the plastic softened – the thing plastic containers do just before they burst into flames. That would have been bad, but our heroes saved us from that one. They also put out the fire under the spreading weeping willow tree and they put out the osage orange log. I have more thanks to offer than those stout-hearted men will ever hear. My mother-in-law is safe and well on her way to ensuring I never forget a moment’s carelessness and haste. The shed will be re-built. The lawn and bushes will grow back. The bricks are fine, though darkened.

My face is red, but I still have a pillow to rest it on, so all in all, I have no complaints. But if your spouse ever hosts a little group of book enthusiasts and suggests a cheery fire……

2009-02-15T13:29:00.003-06:00

I watched a TV show the other day about a mountain lion attack on a couple of hikers. It reminded of an experience I had as a young lad. As you know, when I was growing up, my father guided deer hunters in the Fall each year. As a result, the deer season was a big deal for our family. While the dudes were with us, we all focused on filling their tags, but after they were gone, we hunted for ourselves. One year, Jim and I were hunting in the long canyon next to Ebbs Canyon. There were ravines coming down from the highest peak into this canyon and we hunter in them after the first rush was over. There was a lot of country in there with thick rush and the deer would go hide in there.
Well, one morning, Jim and I were riding horses up two adjacent ridges, keeping abreast so that if one kicked out a deer, the other might see it. I think Jim must have gotten hung up in some thick stuff, because I realized we were no longer abreast. I tied the horse and sat on a rock to wait for him. Pretty soon, Jim came into view and I watched him working his way up his ridge. Then I noticed a mountain lion following him, about 50 yards back. Mountain lions are fond of horses, but their riders are often hurt during attacks - a fate I did not want for my brother. So I lifted my rifle and prepared to take a pot-shot at that lion next time it ame into sight. The lion may have seen me move, because it melted into the brush and never came back into sight. Or maybe it smelled the gun Jim was carrying, or maybe it wasn't prepared to take on such a large animal, or maybe it was not hungry - only curious. In any case, Jim entered a large open area about then and the lion did not follow him there.
The thing I remember about this is that I was Jim's protector for a while - a role reversal. I was there, I saw the danger, I had the means to act to save him, and I was interested in doing the job. All through H.S., Jim looked after me and was my protector, but for that few minutes, I looked after him.
It is this role of protector that I've been thinking about lately. It is such a major comfort to have someone to look out for us, but very few of us have such a person with us always. It falls to the Holy Ghost to always be there for us, but there's a catch with that. You have to let him be there. He won't stay if he's not wanted, so we have to have the desire to have him with us. And he won't tolerate the least degree of sin in our minds, so we have to be "in tune" for him to be there. And finally, his constant presence is a gift given to those who have faith, enough faith to repent of our sins, and follow that up with baptism. When we do that, we are given the gift of having the Holy Ghost attend to us at all times - if we remain true.

More owl news

2009-02-06T15:24:00.001-06:00

Keith drug me (kicking and screaming all the way) out to the pig-hunting farm Wednesday. We wanted to see the feeders while there was still corn in them and hopefully see what pigs are coming to them. I sat in my tree stand again, and I was interested to see if the owl would come back and harass me again. Along towards evening, I saw him winging along just above the tree tops heading straight for me, but when he got close he suddenly veered away and landed in a tree on the other side of the creek – about 50 yards away. He flew back to the North after a while and then returned to that same tree, but he never came close to me. So I think the pressure is off and he is no longer the harbinger of doom. I find that very reassuring.

Today, I cut all the rest of the panels I need for the trailer sides, and I started sanding and priming. I am continuing to make the pieces interlocking so that a single screw might hold 4 or 5 panels securely in place. It’s a fun way to do it, but it takes longer to do it, this way. It also makes it harder to paint, because of all the little cutouts and holes.

I also (reluctantly) applied for jobs at Home Depot and at Lowes. This is hard for me. It’s not that I want to quit Clear Sky Handy Men, but we need some steady income. I hope that I can do both, but there is an excellent chance that they won’t allow their employees to do handyman work on the side, or at least not use the employee discount for it.

Owls

2009-02-03T14:15:00.002-06:00

In Harry Potter, owls are just delivery boys, but the Sioux and some other tribes believed that if an owl took notice of you it was a message that you were doomed to die soon. They are equivalent to the Grim Reaper.

A few weeks ago, Keith and I went pig hunting. I sat up in my favorite tree stand and enjoyed a very pleasant evening. A boar even came in, although he came in behind me and I didn’t get a shot. But that’s beside the point. As it was getting dark, an owl flew in and landed in a tree right over the feeder. There are lots of owls in that wood and we see them and hear them hooting all the time, but not usually that close. I enjoyed watching him and he quickly started watching me, too. Then he flew to a tree just behind me. I had to lean way back to watch him, but it was way cool to have him so close. Owls are interesting birds. They have exceptionally large heads to support their extra large eyes that enable them to hunt at night in the woods. Their wings are bent further forward than most birds’ wings, and their feathers have fluffy trailing edges. Those two odd wing attributes make it so they fly silently and it is kind of eerie to see them flying around against the night sky. So that’s why I was studying this owl in the tree behind me. I looked back towards the feeder finally, mostly to give my neck a rest, when the owl left that tree breaking off a branch as he launched. That is really odd – remember all that about how they fly silently? They are all about stealth! He only flew a short ways and landed in another nearby tree, and when he left that one he again broke a branch. He did that for 20-30 minutes before he finally moved off. He landed in trees all around me, watched me for a bit from each perch, then broke a branch off as he flew. I guess I was encroaching in his/her territory, but it was extremely odd behavior for an owl. I enjoyed it all, but it did remind me of the Sioux and their version of the GR. So far, though, I’ve been OK. I haven’t died, yet. Knock, knock.

Who's the worst BLOGger?

2009-02-01T15:08:00.004-06:00

I would probably be in line for that honor if it wasn’t for Mark, whose last BLOG was back in the olden days when a young couple bought a bicycle built for two. Still, I have reason for shame with my own. Oh well.

Joe kindly offered to weld up some reinforcement on my beat-up old trailer, so I could put nice, wooden sides on it and make it a thing of honor. He said something about a day or two, about 2 weeks ago. He did a TON of welding on it and it still needed work, so I asked him for some pointers and endeavored to undertake the task myself. Now, back in the olden days when I last welded, the equipment was a bit simpler. In fact, in those days, the Harbor Freight solution to welding was to take a used-up D-cell battery apart to remove the carbon core. You’d sharpen one end of the carbon rod in a pencil sharpener and hook the other end up to a car battery. Ground what you want welded to the other battery terminal and you’d get a welding spark. If you needed to add steel, you’d grab some baling wire. It took a lot of practice to get a decent weld with that level of equipment. But that was then. Joe has a neat, updated welder and it is a lot easier and more forgiving than back in the day. After a few minutes of instruction I took off welding and was able to finish it up. Now, some of my welds are ugly, make that UGLY! But they have steel where they need to be and none of them have broken (so far). So, the trailer is now about a thousand times stronger than it was, it has metal tubing to keep the tail-light wires safe as they run along the bottom, and it isn’t much wider than my Jeep (reducing the chances of collision), even though it has just as much floor area as it did before. I paid $200 and change for it and I bought about $200 worth of steel and parts, but it is now worth something over $1,000. Joe had some MDO which is a weatherproof, high quality plywood used for highway signs. I am making sides from that material and when I’m done it will have arches in the large side pieces with my company logo on it. I have gotten several jobs from people who have seen me at home centers, so I figure if it is easier to see my sign, I will get more of those.

In the photo of the back of the trailer, where I don’t have the deck mounted, yet, you can see the steel tubing we used to build the frame. It is all welded up tight and a coat of primer paint has been applied so it won’t rust if it gets rain on it.

The photo of the front shows how the front panel is arched above the frame. The two sides will also be like that, and I’ll have signs made up that say “Clear Sky Handy Men” and my phone number right under the arches. That way, it will match my Logo.

Yeah, I know. It doesn’t look like much with all the excess MDO piled in the back and the used signs looking like - well, used signs, but paint covers many ills and it will be looking awesome very soon. I’ll post more photos then.

2009-01-05T16:26:00.002-06:00

Winter in Texas is just getting weirder and weirder. Saturday it was 84 degrees and so humid the sidewalks stayed wet all day, and I turned on the a/c upstairs. By Sunday morning there was a cold wind blowing and it was very uncomfortable to be outside. Today we have had freezing rain all day. Fortunately, the ground is still warm enough that it can’t get much of a hold on the roads, but the overpasses are treacherous. I took some photos just for grins.

It’s not just that ice is hanging under the branches. There is a thick coating of ice over the entire tree. Sometimes, I get free wood when it gets thick enough to break the trees down.

This is a nice look. I wish it looked like this when the water is flowing. In the summer the girl holding her umbrella looks happy as a clam. In this photo she just looks cold.

The water flows over the leaves and into the icycles.

Fall -> Winter --> Christmas lights ----> PIGS!!!!

2009-01-01T21:26:00.002-06:00

Certain members of my close personal family made light of me when I mentioned that we have had an extraordinary fall with colored leaves and the whole thing. So, while licking my wounds over the last couple of months I have occasionally stopped to take a photo proving that we really did have Fall leaves. Fortunately, I’ve lost most of them and winter is really, truly here so there is no chance to enhance my collection. Still here is the proof.

This the one that started it all. I took it out in front of our house, looking North. It actually has some nice colors in it, but they are down the street a ways and the low resolution makes it a little hard to see, much less jump out at you.

Yes, I know. It is a pale shadow of the Fall leaves in Utah, but then Utah’s Fall colors are a pale shadow of places like the Hudson River Valley, too. Well, I thought that first photo showed some nice color, but a couple of weeks later we still hadn’t had our first frost and I took this one. It was taken from our front porch, looking NorthWest.

Our tree is blessedly leafless so you can see those bright maples across the intersection. The tree on the right is that most-odd of the conifer family, one of only two deciduous evergreens, a cypress. This is more like it – real Fall colors in anybody’s book. It’s a shame they’re not on a breathtaking mountainside, but hey, we don’t have those round here.

About that same time, I was working on installing cabinets and countertop in the laundry room for a nice young couple over in Murphy and I stopped to take this photo of a Bradford Pear tree.

Yes, I know, the tree is pretty, but noways spectacular. But take a little peek at the valleys in those rooftops. Is that snow? Well, no. This is Texas and we had spent the wee hours of the morning huddled in our hastily-emptied downstairs closet between the leaves from the dining room table, waiting for the tornado warning sirens to signal the all-clear while I fiddled with our expensive, self-winding AM/FM/Weather Band radio that doesn’t seem to actually do anything weatherwise, trying to get a better clue on whether we were in immediate danger of visiting the Wicked Witch of the West or not. That white stuff on the roof is hail.

Well, in spite of our obvious handicaps, we do try to have seasons round here. Not too long after the tornado scare we had our first hard freeze. We got in a couple of ice days after that. We don’t do snow days, we only close the schools when it ices over. Yup, so now all the leaves are off the trees and piled up in that dead-air spot on my back porch, and most everything is all dead looking. But we do get into Christmas lights. You know how there are people who go all overboard with their Christmas lights and computer program them to flash to music by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra? Well, Planet Christmas picks the best display each year, based on videos of the displays. This video is of this year’s winner and it is just up the street a short ways. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szLmAPW39uE Yep, that’s 67 storage cases full of lights. If you look closely you might notice that the lights reflect off the back wall of our local Lowes store. In my new line of work, I average about 2.3 visits to Lowes and Home Depot store each and every day. It’s kind of like Heaven, but costs more.

But the real news of 2008 is that after nearly 2 years with very few pigs out at the farm – only a couple of cagey old boars – we finally have a residence herd of sows and juvenile feral pigs again. I first found sign of them last Saturday morning and Keith and I have been taking turns carefully putting out bait and cleaning off the trails so we can sneak around to check on them without alarming them every since. We want them to get real comfortable, thinking they’ve found the Big Rock Candy Mountain, free food Paradise, Garden of Eden, hog heaven before we commence slaughtering them again. I mean this has been a real loooong dry spell and we don’t want to blow it by blowing any of them away while they are still exploring and checking out the natural pantries.

I hope everybody has a great New Year!

eashurst@tx.rr.com has a new email address

2008-12-26T16:02:00.001-06:00

TrueSwitch

Earl Ashurst

has a new email address.

Old Email Address: eashurst@tx.rr.com

New Email Address:earlashurst@att.net

Hello,

eashurst@tx.rr.com asked us to shoot you a quick note about this new AT&T email address.

It's earlashurst@att.net and that's where to send all messages to earlashurst@att.net from now on. Be sure to update your address book now.

Thanks,

Earl Ashurst

Check out AT&T Internet. AT&T includes the most comprehensive set of free safety and security tools such as advanced spam filtering, virus protection and Parental Controls. Also, get the best of online content including free access to millions of videos, music, games and more.

Sweet Potatoes

2008-11-28T08:37:00.007-06:00

We were invited to have Thanksgiving with Uncle Bill and Aunt Barbara, and our assignment was sweet pot.s. Liz decided to participate in the T-Day Turkey Trot in downtown Dallas that morning, so the assignment to peel and cook the spuds fell to me. It was not an onerous chore, so I popped out of bed and turned to. In my rush of enthusiasm, I didn't even check with Miss Fannie Farmer, whose book has instructions adjusted to the meanest of understandings. Since my task was given to me as peel the spuds and cook them, I peeled them first. I know - we often do it that way, but the CORRECT way is to scrub them, cook them, and THEN peel them. You let them cool a little after cooking and then the peels will slip right off. I read this little gem of information as my sweet spuds were cooking, so after they came off the stove I checked. Sure enough, there was a distinct layer of peel still on the spuds. We still had time, so when Liz got back from her stroll down turkey trot lane I was trying to find an easy way to get the rest of the peel off. Liz says she doesn't bother getting it all off, and it tastes OK - just not as smooth and sweet as what's inside. I made a pact with myself that next year I will remember to cook first and peel later, but then I had this sinking feeling of having made that resolution before.
What we made was a sweet potato souffle from an internet recipe:
http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1950,148174-244197,00.html
Liz found it while researching for interesting wedding foods and when we made up a test batch, we all thought it was outstanding! Josh says it tastes like sweet potatoes with ice cream mixed in.
Dinner at the Benac's is always an excercise in bedlam, but we had a good time. There was lots of great food. Afterwards the Cowboys won their game, so that was a nice topping on the T-Day cake. Sadly, Ruthie had to watch A&M go down in defeat later in the evening.
I left Benac's with Joe to help him get his PTAC kit together for his big debut Friday (today) when he and Josh are doing all the PTAC units at a Red Roof Inn in Irving, as a test to determine whether they do a good enough job to qualify to do a boatload of motels in that chain. Joe borrowed a brush, two rechargeable drills, two levels, two canvas tool bags, and five Sharpie pens. And maybe some other stuff. Aren't you impressed that I had all that stuff to loan them? I was.
This morning, Sterling wanted me to put a new roll of tape in the dispenser in the art drawer. Then he wanted to keep the empty roll, and ultimately he taped the colored version on his nose to become a piggie. So then Winter did too, but Ginger just made a pig face.

Fall is finally here

2008-11-26T13:43:00.002-06:00

We’ve had a remarkably nice fall to date. Of course, I always like Fall best of all the seasons, but this one was great. We finally had our first freeze (low temp. was 32 degrees) about a week ago and it was slightly chilly for a couple of days, but now it’s back to beautiful, again. This is a photo of the trees on our street. We usually don’t see so much color at one time, because just as the trees are turning color we either get a good, killing freeze, or high winds. We are forecast to have a few more nice days, then over the weekend the high temps. Will dip down to the lower 50’s. We might even get another “freeze” on Sunday. Yes, winter is on her way.

We are having a low-key Thanksgiving, going to Liz’s brother’s house for T-day dinner and watching the Cowboys. Wedding plans are consuming us more than anything else, because we plan to get it mostly settled before December, so we can then stress about Christmas, instead.

Clear Sky Handy Men is hard to measure just now. I’ve been getting lots of good leads. Of course, some don’t turn into actual income, but what’s happened here lately is that people don’t want to start a project until after Thanksgiving. I’m sure Christmas will slow work down a lot as we get closer to it. Still, I have several large jobs to do next week that have been waiting for the turkey to die, and I have a helper lined up. Maybe I can actually make some money for a change.

Jessica is a fine photographer, but she took one that is kind of amazing. I wish I had a copy of it full-size, but this one will do. It is my granddaughter, Ginger, and her pet (for 2 or 3 days) frog.

2008-11-01T19:26:00.003-05:00

Thursday, Joe called and told me he was going to a Facilities Managers Show at the Market Hall in Dallas. So I decided to tag along, thinking that I might learn something, and probably could gather some nice "trash & trinkets", which is always fun. At first I was just tagging along, but I registered as Clear Sky Handy Men, not as Varsity Contractors like Joe, so I got all the sales pitches separately. I was pleasantly surprised that 2 of the exhibitors told me that if I'd like to do installs for them, they could sure use me. That's exciting and I WILL follow up.
At the end of the first row there was a big exhibit by Sunbelt Rentals, which is located in the Lowes stores. They had some big lifts and heavy equipment on display so it took me a few minutes to place them. They also had a big wheel, kind of like a roulette wheel, but homemade. They had Joe spin it and he won $60 in coupons, which I thought was way cool. Then they let me spin and I gave a gentle little spin thinking I might get the same thing. As it slowed down, all the Sunbelt guys started talking and saying , "he might make it" , "it's coming up", "I think he's going to hit it" , and stuff like that. I was surprised, because they hadn't been that interested when Joe spun. Turns out what whey were excited about was that I was sneaking up on a slot labeled SURPRISE, and I did land on it. As a result, I got to choose between two Bosch tools and take it home. I was really dumbfounded! Bosch makes high-end tools - very expensive, but extremely well-made. I chose the circular saw, even though I already have a pretty good one. But this one is way better! So now when I get to the point of hiring help, I can keep my good one in the shop and have one for work.
Joe and I got through the last booth at about the same time as the show ended, so we also got lots of trinkets.

After the Show, Josh and I went out "hunting". We got there too late to do much serious hunting, but we sat out and watched the woods for a while, then lit a fire and enjoyed foil dinners with feral hog hot-links in them. Next morning, we did some serious target practice. Josh is a good, natural shotgunner. I was throwing clay pigeons and he was breaking most of them. Then we shot my carbine, and then a 30-30 I've had for a few years and that I had big plans for. I have previously offered all of my kids a gun if they wanted one. So far Mark and Joe are the only ones to take me up on it, but Josh hadn't had a chance. I told him he could have that 30-30 if he wanted it and he thought that was grand. I told him a bit of the history of the Win 94, and that they are no longer being manufactured. It is fun to see him so pleased.

2008-10-29T20:56:00.002-05:00

Fall is a very nice time of year. I noticed a few years ago that we live in the Monarch butterfly fly zone. For the past couple of weeks I've been watching them move constantly south-west on their way to a particular tree in Mexico. I've noticed that if I mention that they are migrating past us, people give me a deadpan look, like they're wondering if they've just run across an unwashed, evil scientist working on a nefarious destructive device. Oh well, I've always been interested in all things nature - way more than "normal" people.

I enjoyed being a scout leader but hikes with scouts were frustrating, because they clashed so horribly with my inclinations when hiking. I want to hear and see birds, but the scouts are always yelling at each other about something trivial and city-ish, which means you never hear anything, and seldom see wildlife. I like to stop and watch a bug or spider or other critter, but scouts are only interested for about 1/2 of a second before moving on, fairly often right over the top of what I'm trying to show them. I find an owl scat and they think it's disgusting to look at poop. I tell them I see a racoon and if they move really slow and quiet they can see him, too, and they all come rushing and pushing and wonder why it is gone.

Fortunately, I am blessed with exceptional grandchildren who will listen when I have something to tell them about, and will mostly obey my request for calm, slow movement. Of course, the rabbit that lives just outside our door is just too much. I'll tell them to move slowly and very quietly and not get too close, and they do it. For about 5 seconds. Then one moves forward a little and one of the others will rush forward a little more, and the others follow suit and in a flash the rabbit is bounding past the neighbor's house with Sterling right on its tail and little Ginger not far behind.

We had a cold day on Tuesday and the monarchs have all hurried past us, or froze.
Josh and I are planning to go camping tommorrow night and I am looking forward to a very pleasant time. The cool weather is good for discouraging mosquitoes, and for pleasant sleeping. The wild hogs are getting a bit desperate for food, so they're likely to come check out the feeders. My camo trailer is full of cobwebs, but is still intact and a pleasant place to spend a cozy night. Life is grand this time of year.

A few miscellaneous photos

2008-10-21T19:07:00.003-05:00

Josh hugs his Mommy as he arrives home from his stint in the Navy.

Happy to be home.

Angel modeling a new sweater.

A few miscellaneous photos

2008-10-18T16:05:00.006-05:00

This is our newest neighbor. You have to look closely because his camo is very good. He lives right outside our front door, but he is a good neighbor: quiet, unobtrusive, cute as a button, etc. He was born here and while his siblings all left to see the greater World (or feed them, as the case may be), he stayed right here.

One of the Benac girls had this necklace, which we thought might inspire Nancy.
At one end is a loop made by running both threads through one bead. At the other end is a button with one bead after after each button hole. It is reported to be "cute" and "clever". Chics rule!

Nancy said she had never even seen a photo of Brant, so here is a fresh, hot out of the oven photo of him early this morning.

2008-10-04T21:07:00.008-05:00

Nancy said she liked the bracelet displays, which made me happy. So, I called her and asked how she was going to display her necklaces. There was a pause before she admitted that she and Richard had planned to make one out of a paper towel tube.

"Oh! The Humanity! This is just terrible, folks. "

After she also admitted that it wasn't going all that well, I offered to give it a try and this is my attempt to be creative and functional. Notice the upright is our good old Bois D'Arc? In fact, it is the same branch as the necklace displays. Of course it's not as pretty with bark and sapwood still attached, but this was a rush job and I just didn't have time for that. The base is common whitewood, aka soft pine. I'm thinking the base needs a couple of coats of black paint. What do you think? There are 19 pegs, but it wouldn't be too hard to add more.

I will ship it unassembled, but the only assembly required is to screw in a long deck screw from the base into the bottom of the branch.

Bois D'Arc

2008-10-04T15:41:00.004-05:00

A couple weeks ago Nancy asked me to make her something on which to display bracelets at a craft show (on Oct. 11). By coincidence, I've been thinking about some Osage Orange trees (aka Bodark, or my fav. Bois D'Arc) out at the piggery farm that were killed a couple summers ago when it was so hot and dry. The wood is nearly impervious to the things that destroy dead wood, and in fact there are 100+ year-old bodark fence posts all around and through that farm and they are still sound and strong. But my interest was as a woodworker. It's a crazy-hard wood, but it turns quite well, and Nancy's request was primarily a turning project, so this is what I did.

The round parts are Osage Orange wood, the bases I made from scraps left over from Roko's cradle. They are about 9" long and the logs lift right off the stands so it will be easy to add/remove bracelets.

A nice job turns into two

2008-09-30T00:10:00.004-05:00

I was checking out the competition on Craigslist a few days ago and noticed a misplaced ad where somebody wanted help adjusting an “iron” entrance door. So I replied and asked for phone, directions, etc. or to call me. Next morning I had an email from the guy which included his phone #. I was just picking up the phone to call him when the phone rang from him calling me. So, I went to his house and inspected the door. It is a big, double, steel door in an arch, about 8 1/2' tall, leading into a courtyard. The upshot is that the arched door frame had been bent sideways while getting bricked in place, and that made the doors too close together and they had trouble shutting it. I concluded that one hinge needed to be cut off and moved 1/8” or so to tilt the door enough to let the two doors pass each other. It was a little over my head, but I figured I could still do it with a little help from Joe, my friendly welder. So, later we went out there and looked it over again. We loaded the door into Joe’s truck (it's too long for my Jeep) and on the way home we decided it really needed to go to a welding shop. That evening I needed to talk to the customer so I dialed the number he’d given me in his email. Wrong number, but the lady asked me who I was so I told my name and that I was calling for Clear Sky Handy Men. She said, “Handyman! I’ve been looking for a handyman. Can you do stucco?” Well, of course. So next day I took the door to a welding shop and then drove over nearly to Ft. Worth to look at this wrong number lady’s strip mall which had some wind damage to the stucco. I took photos and measured it out from a distance (it was about 15 feet up) and had Joe’s crew estimate it for her. I told Joe he could charge whatever he wants, but I’m going to add 10% for finding the lead.

BEFORE: This is a photo of a hinge on the removed door before welding (It's the big one at the bottom. Notice what a great job they did of welding it perfectly so it’s nice and smooth. --- Too smooth! It's impossible to weld that good.

IN PROGRESS: This is a photo after the hinge was cut off and re-welded. It turns out that those nice smooth edges were just epoxy, and the welder told me that actually there were only a few spot welds holding it on. As you can see he put a nice long weld on each side.

AFTER: When I got it home (I have a trailer now, big enough for this kind of job) I used plumber’s epoxy to do my best imitation.This is the welded, epoxy-ed, and painted hinge back in its door frame at the customer’s house. I turned the photo sideways so it would be oriented the same as the earlier photos. It’s not quite as pretty as the factory ones, but with its much larger welded surface it’s the strongest hinge on the two doors. And I think it looks pretty good.

This is a photo of the stucco job resulting from the wrong number call. The biggest space is supposed to be an off-white stucco about like the ground-level wall below it, and it needs to be recessed a bit. It’s about 150 sq. feet, plus those two smaller, patches that should be the darker color. I haven’t seen Joe’s estimate, yet, nor heard from the lady. I hope the job is still on. I’d hate to loose out on a good contact from a wrong number!

A normal day at our house

2008-07-29T19:33:00.006-05:00

Well, actually it has been anything BUT normal around here. It's been fun, but not normal.

Here is a photo of Angela at work in our front room. Cell phone, laptop, and brilliant intellect all hard at work - multitasking happily.

LATER:

After all the kids were finally settled into bed and more or less quiet, we went upstairs and found this little art decor piece in the bathroom.
All the paper cups and glasses are brimming full of water, but that's not all. Here is a view of the sink.

Angela calls these "experiences from the Underworld". She asked Levi about it this morning and he said wanted to make it so that if anybody wanted a drink, it would be ready for them.
If they wanted to wash, brush teeth, or anything like that they were out of luck, but drinks were ready to go.

Today I was scheduled to take Roscoe out to the pig hunting farm to work on his shooting merit badge for scouting and to endeavor to find a trophy boar. Instead, I went south of Plano to buy a used LCD monitor (no answer at the house, no answer on the phone, but a repeat call brought an answer and they admitted they'd sold it to somebody else.) Then I drove out to Joe's farm to pick up Logan who was supposed to be helping, but was sick instead. When I returned, the Allred kids were here, so I ran some errands. When I returned, Allison was here to pick up her kids and took Roscoe and Haley with her to play at their house. So, no shooting/ camping/hunting tonight. Levi is also sick on his 2nd go-round. I was sick a couple days ago, and angela is also battling it - whatever kind of crud it is.
Liz got home a short time ago, after a long day at the office and a trip to the hair dresser. And now I'm headed upstairs to watch a few hours of mindless TV, hopefully at least some of it with little cuddle-bugs snuggling close.

Life is good.

My new solar cooling system

2008-06-21T08:39:00.000-05:00

Summer slammed down on us several weeks ago. So did a tornado. On a hunch, we called our insurance company and asked them to send someone over to check our roof for damage. We have a lot of neighbors who are missing shingles from the high winds, but we didn’t. Still, the roof has been there for 8 or 9 years (they are “20 year”, 3-tab shingles) which can be a lot around here. To our delight, the adjuster came and spent about an hour climbing around our roof, then reported that we need a new roof, new rain gutters, and new wind turbines. Often they specify a single storm to blame for the claim, but this went down as cumulative hail damage.

So we hired a roofer with a great reputation and chose our new shingles to install. The roofer estimated a couple thousand less than the insurance adjuster, so we chose “30-year” shingles and had him do some little extras to get his price up to the adjuster’s. But here’s the thing: our house is very expensive to cool each summer (no big surprise in Texas), so we decided to take advantage of this opportunity to put in some solar cooling. We chose the whitest shingles we could find. They just happen to be top of the line, too, but it was the color that drove the decision. The old ones were nearly black. You can see our neighbor’s roof in the attached photo. It is a brown tone and lighter overall than our old roof. Not anymore!

We’ve had the new roof for over a week now and I can confirm that they have made a huge difference. Shortly after we got it installed, our upstairs a/c unit quit and we just lived without it for 2 days. It wasn’t that bad up there, which was very surprising. When I go out into my shop on a hot afternoon, it is now about 20 degrees cooler that it used to be under those conditions. We’ve started turning off one of our a/c units at night, because the house has so much less heat load that we don’t need it. I usually turn it back on at about noon. This passive solar cooling system is marvelous, and it didn’t cost us a penny. What a deal.

So, thanks to all of you who pay your insurance premiums. They’ve been put to good use.

<<...>>

2nd big Storm of 2008

2008-06-17T18:14:00.001-05:00

A few weeks ago we had a lot of tree damage from a small tornado that touched down about ½ mile south of us. That one broke trees and ripped shingles off roofs all around us. Today we had another event. It was cloudy and getting quite dark, but no actual storm seemed imminent. We had a crew putting up rain gutters – all of them on aluminum ladders except for one up on the roof. All of a sudden high wind hit the house, sending lengths of gutter into the back yard. The guy on the roof headed down the sheltered side and found an overhang to cower under. Sadly for him, the storm was rotating and after the first couple of minutes it was blowing right onto him. The other guys didn’t know where he was and were calling for him when I went out and told them to take shelter. They had no English and my Spanish is limited, so I didn’t know about the guy on the roof, but they headed for their van. When I spoke to them from the front porch, I saw two trees across the street that had major branches split off and land on the lawn. In the attached photo you can see the tree branches on the ground. If you look through the branches of our mimosa tree towards the left of the photo, you can see the yellow gash where the bigger tree split. The other tree actually had a lot more damage. If you open the photo and zoom in, you can see that it just missed the neighbor's Jeep.

<<...>>

The rain lasted about a half hour and when it was tapering down the roofer we'd hired arrived to make sure the gutters were going on correctly. When he pulled up to the back of the house he saw the guy under the ledge hanging on like he was really in trouble, with wide, wild eyes showing white all around. He was OK as soon as they got a ladder up to him, but he was soaking so the crew took him to WalMart to get him something dry to wear.

This storm damage was very local – what they call a “micro-burst” – so those two trees are the only ones damaged in our neighborhood. We had a new roof that was only completed last Thursday, but it was fine. We’ve had HOT weather lately and they sealed tight within a day or so. The houses (3 or 4) to the south of us on the same side of the street got enough wind to scatter their garbage cans, but that appears to be all. I don’t like these near misses, but I’d much rather have them than a full-on tornado in the class 2-4 range.

Techno Disaster

2008-06-13T06:21:00.000-05:00

It seems like every other year or so our computer slowly slips away into the land of old computer junk. This may be related to the fact that I buy used PCs to start with, but still…

The worst thing about that is that it is a pain to try to get all our old data off the nearly dead PC and load it on to the nice shiny, new one. So, last year I bought an external 160 GB hard drive and put everything we cared about onto it. I figured we were then safe from computer death and could just move the external drive to any new computer we chose to use.

WRONG!

The shiny, new external hard drive crashed and burned. It turns out that when a hard disk crashes there are several levels of how hard it is to recover data. The worst possible is where the crash destroys the directory that tells the computer where to find files. In that case, they need to take it into a clean room (expen$ive), disassemble it, and install it into a special drive ((expen$ive) to read it sector by sector trying to recover undamaged data. Guess which kind ours is? I got two quotes: $1,100 and $1,300. Among other things, all our photo files are on it, including last year’s photos which I hadn’t got a Round Tuitt for writing DVDs for everyone. I have most (hopefully all) of last year’s on the old hard drive, so I can recover those. But at some point, I made the transition to this new, “bullet-proof” hard drive and all those are gone, gone, gone. Photos of Roko we took in Calif. – gone. Photos of various grandchildren who have visited us this year – gone. Photos of the great pig hunt where Keith and I took a couple of our friends to a pig-shooting ranch – gone. Photos of this year’s Dallas Blooms where we took many photos of different kind of flowers, close-ups and landscapes – gone. I still hope to find a way to recover. It’s a dim hope, but the flame still flickers.

So, that’s what’s new from sad ole Grandpa.