Still alive

Haven't had a lot of spare time lately to connect with the web of world weirdness. It's just stuff, but busy stuff.

Here are a few videos from a farmer friend in Herefordshire. First (and sadly, perhaps the last) a classic English Ploughing Competition.







Next, stacking straw bales. These are used as bedding whilst cattle and sheep are housed indoors during the wet English winter.



And finally, the scene near the White Hart Inn and Bunkhouse near Brecon, Wales. Lovely countryside.

1814

In eighteen fourteen we took a little trip,
Along with Kernel Jackson down the mighty Mississip.
We took a little bacon and we took a little beans,
And we caught the bloody British in the town of New Orleans.

Nah, this post isn't about the War of 1812, or the Battle of New Orleans, or the song, or Johnny Horton.

I just happened to glance at the clock as I was trying to come up with a post title and the time was 1814.

It is a catchy tune.



I thought this was interesting as well. Check out 14:50 to see a serious "oh shit" moment.

Tanker tours the mother-in-law

I've been struggling a bit of late. There really don't seem to be many folks who share my principles, and that's quite bothersome.

Only a couple of possibilities of course. Either my principles are correct, or they are not.

Taking a page from the Socratic playbook, I've been examining my life under the brightest lights I can bring to bear. It's a process.

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Hail storm last night. Some years we have snow on September 15. Some years we have a different kind of snow.



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Seen in the local kwik stop. My recruiter was a bb stacker too. If I were a younger man...

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The fellow who made these videos is an Army tanker who was born and raised in Ireland and served for a time in the Irish armed forces. He seems to have an interesting story. You might enjoy visiting his youtube channel, particularly if you like tanks. And who doesn't like tanks?

Back in the olden days...

Air Force Special Report circa 1975

Days of whine and poses

Had a few bothersome days there.

My blood pressure kept crashing. Well, not crashing, exactly, but falling down into the 60/30 range. Which isn't so bad, I guess, except that I feel exhausted and mentally foggy when it does that. I don't like feeling that way.

I'm in the middle of a 30-day heart monitor trial to see if my heart is having a rhythm problem which might be causing the low blood pressure.

Of course we can't see the readings until the 30-day period is over. "Ve haff procedures vitch must be followt, nicht wahr?"

The regular ekg is fine, and although my heart rate is only about 50 when the b/p drops, 50 beats per minute is not profoundly slow and the rhythm is dead normal. For certain values of dead, of course.

The medical cookbook used around these parts does not allow for any real investigation of real symptoms. Patients have to be lumped into a particular category. Period. Once placed in a category, the cookbook requires that treatment follow the recipe precisely. Period.

The category I'm supposed to fit into is the old fat guy with a failing heart category. The cookbook says I'm supposed to take powerful heart drugs designed to make a post-heart attack heart beat more strongerly. Despite the fact that I have had no heart attack and have no signs of any kind of cardiomyopathy. Also I am supposed to go home, hit the recliner, and watch the 24/7 news cycle.

Well, firetruck that.

Fortunately for me, I'm aprofoundly and fundamentally uncategorizable individual with a rudimentary understanding of human anatomy, physiology, and medicine. I have the ability to reason, and when I bend my mind to the task I can pretty easily tell when a recipe is likely to do more harm than good.

I am, therefore, according to the cookbook, a non-compliant patient.

I suppose they'll come for me in the night. That's fine, my Sig has lovely night sights.

Up until a few years ago medical science held a lot of promise. But America began to kill it off when people decided that the ponzi scheme of "insurance" would be a good idea. After all, it said so right there on paper! You get something for free! More importantly, you get to punish your enemies by making them pay for your care! What's not to love? And the best health care in the world, state of the art medicine, all rainbows and unicorns and shit. Says so right there on the paper!

Which is all wonderful and tingly.

Reality in the real world is different than the reality described by Royal Tailors Who Produce Cloth Which Can Be Seen Only By The Wise.

I'll take the ratty old denim, thank you very much, and I'll take a pass on the nostrums which will only hasten my descent into decrepitude.

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It's been very hot so far this month. Hot and dry. So hot and dry, in fact, that all the experts is sayin' how the weather conditions is all unprecedented, and that we're on track to shatter ever' single record and stuff. Boosche caused grobal warmering by stealin' the 'lection from the saintly, world's-champeen climatologist algore, and now we all gonna die.

Funny thing though.

You have only to look back five years, to September, 2012, to find near identical conditions.

Through the first 11 days of this September at Kimball, the daily high has averaged 85.54 degrees, the overnight low 52.09 degrees, and the daily mean 68.81 degrees. Those numbers through the first 11 days of 2012 were 85.90, 51.36, and 68.63, respectively.

Nicht nach den Experten!

Well, you know. Reality.
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I did some prairie dog hunting this morning. I stalked in from a mile, paying careful attention to the wind and to the noise and vibration of my approach. The last 100 yards I did on my belly, slowly and quietly worming my way through dry, scratchy, stabby vegetation.

It was a good stalk, and I was rewarded by the presence of a happy, above-ground group of prairie dogs. The scope brought the first one into sharp focus, and I laid the cross-hairs just to the left of the third button down on the Tattersall vest he was wearing. I put my thumb on the safety and prepared to fire.

The prairie dogs disappeared.

Overhead soared a large Ferruginous Hawk.

Breathtaking.

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Reality has hard edges and stickers. Sweat and blood and gore and bitter disappointment. In the end, mortality.

I would far rather hurt and bleed and suffer and die than spend my precious and limited time in the psychotic realm of an externally dictated alternative reality.

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And now that the temperature has touched 89 degrees I shall go charge some hills.

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I have charged those hills. It is now two hours later, two degrees hotter, and I am not dead. My workout covered 4.5 miles in an hour and a quarter and those hills were lovely. In February I could not have walked up heart attack hill. Today I did it five times in succession and had to sprint (for certain age-adjusted values of sprint) the steep pitches to feel like I was doing something exercise related.

When I finished my heart rate was 57 and my pressure 107/75.

I'm beginning to suspect that my bouts of hypotension will even out as I continue to improve my level of fitness and cardio-pulmonary health.

Time will tell.

I'm not gonna take those firetrucking drugs and sit around waiting to die.

Curlycup Chimney Rock

I'm reasonably certain that everyone in the world is familiar with the world-famous Chimney Rock near Bayard, Nebraska.

If you search for Chimney Rock on the Webbe of Universal Connectedness you will find that the first results are not in fact for the Nebraska version of Chimney Rock, but for some other lame-@$$ rock in North Kackalakki.

However, a more refined search will lead you to a site managed by the nebraska state hysterical society where you can learn all about the famous landmark and stopping-off place for pioneers heading west bitd.

It really is an interesting place and worth visiting if you're passing by or are very interested in pioneers.

However, I do not favor our state hysterical society nor their administration of the landmark. They take a huge bite of property taxes to showcase nebraska history, but then the greedy corksatchers charge admission, too. This I don't approve of. But that's just me.

Anyway, Mom and I visited the site yesterday -- as well as a nearby rv park -- to get the lay of the land and prepare a scouting report for left coast family who will be passing through next month.

We had a very nice time despite the hysterical society. Sometimes it's fun to drive around the local area and look at stuff. We finished the trip with a late lunch at a Mexican restaurant in Scottsbluff.

Before we left I took a few pictures of autumn sunflower and curlycup gumweed, two colorful fall-blooming forbs.

Today, I'm afraid, has been rather busy. Tomorrow will be as well. Sigh. That time of year.

Goose Summer

Don't worry, it's not here yet.

But it won't be long!

Goose Summer is a nearly forgotten concept. That's a bit ironic when you consider that it gave us English-speaking folks the word gossamer.

Gossamer, of course, means a fine, filmy cobweb, or an extremely delicate gauzy fabric, or things that are extremely light and delicate.

In looking at the etymology of the word, it appears to have come to us from the middle-English of the fourteenth century as a conjunction of the words gos (goose) + sommer (summer).

Goose Summer referred to the warm period in autumn -- usually late October or early November -- when the first icy blasts have faded and the world seems to reawaken in a brief but lovely golden splendor. Today this period is most often called Indian Summer, and sometimes St. Martin's Summer in England and on the Continent.

Late October and/or early November was, in 1300's England, the traditional time for harvesting geese. It also coincided with the ballooning of millions of recently hatched spiders which relocate to winter quarters by being borne aloft on threads of silk in sun-warmed air currents. These silky threads gradually became known as gossamer, and that name stuck while the reference to autumnal Goose Summer faded.

In Sweden the season has been called sommertrad (summer thread) and in Germany Gänsemonat, or goose month.

But, you might say, it's not even September yet, what's all this about Goose Summer then?

Well, to make a short story long...

Yesterday I posted an image of a funnel web spider crouching in its web, prepared to sally out and ambush prey.

This type of funnel web spider is a member of the family Agelenidae, which belong to the suborder Araneomorphae. The ubiquitous grass spider (Agelenopsis) is also a member of this suborder, so the two are related. And grass spiderlings are common autumnal balloonists all across the planet. The Americas, Europe, Asia, Australia. Everywhere.

So with summer fading, coming across the funnel web spider reminded me of ballooning grass spiders, which reminded me of gossamer, and Goose Summer, and, well, you get the picture. It's a bit untidy, but that's how my mind sometimes works.

Now then.


I really like spiders. Always have. I freaked Miss Meyer out in second grade when I announced that Charlotte was obviously an example of Araneus cavaticus, or barn spider.

She was really pleased the next day when I showed up with a barn spider in a baby food jar. But I digress.

As I was out and about working on fence yesterday, I noticed a plethora of jumping spiders. These guys (family Salticidae) are really cool. They are ambush hunters with amazing vision. Rather than build webs to trap prey, they leap out and capture the bugs that they eat. Like all spiders, they do have the capacity to spin silk, but they use this almost exclusively to anchor and tether themselves when leaping.

Many of the jumping spiders I saw yesterday were red-backed jumping spiders, most likely Phidippus cardinalis, or Cardinal Jumper.

These are interesting because in the color and texture of their red hair they demonstrate mimicry of the multillid wasps, also known as velvet ants or "cow-killer" ants. The female multillid wasp has one of the most painful, yet least toxic, stings known to man. In mimicking the multillid, Cardinal Jumpers are likely able to prevent some predators from attacking them. Which could be useful.

Pretty cool, huh?

But wait, there's more!

As summer fades into September, college football is beginning. Our local side, the Nebraska Cornhuskers, will play Arkansas State at home in Lincoln Saturday night in fact. And the Cardinal Jumpers wear very much the same color as our beloved Cornhuskers, which were known as the "Bugeaters" back in the day (1892-1900). So do the math. Gotta be a good omen, right?

Finally, here's a non-cardinal jumping spider.

I'm particularly proud of this image, even though the camera did all of the work. Sometimes you get lucky.

I suppose that's enough for today.

Fading heat

There's been an upper air pressure ridge embedded overhead for the last week or so, and as of this morning the weather guessers believe it will stay in place for perhaps another week.

Nona the Wonder Dog. Not a big fan of fixing fence.

Although she does enjoy a dip in the stock tank.

In a lot of ways the predicted future movement or non-movement of the pressure ridge is pure speculation. Forecasters go by history and trend models. They have a huge amount of very precise historical data to work with, data that stretch back from this very moment to 100 years or more ago. History shows that the general outline of seasonal weather seldom strays far from the statistically established norm.

What neglected cross fencing looks like.

But the details are very hard to suitcase. The Earth is a dynamic and complex place, and factors affecting weather are manifold. We generally understand how it all works, but puzzles remain to be solved, and the interactions of uncountable trillions of air and water molecules are impossible to quantify and predict. We can come close, sometimes, but that's about it.

The incredible melting fence post.

Nature is a great woodworker.

Anyway, back to the pressure ridge. While it's in place the big continental weather systems are moving around us, and our weather is seemingly unchanging. The sun beats down from clear skies. Air temperatures climb. Little wind is present to move the warm air around. In the afternoon water vapor flows upward from transpiring ground cover and condenses out into heat-holding cloud cover, so that the air remains warm long after the sun has retired from the field for the day. The clouds break up and depart late in the evening, heat radiates upward, and by morning the mercury has tumbled into the mid-50's.

Is that smoke?

And the cycle begins again.

?

This is the last hurrah of summer's heat.

Hmmm...

August 2017 was rather an interesting month so far as weather is concerned. Across the Nebraska Panhandle and much of the tri-state region the first half of the month was more cool and wet than average, while the second half of the month was just the opposite -- warmer and drier.

Not smoke.

From August 1-15 rainfall south of Kimball totaled 1.84 inches, which is 0.04 inches more than the long term average for the entire month. Peak daytime air temperatures averaged 79.4 degrees, about six degrees below average. Daily low air temperatures came in at 54 degrees, again six degrees cooler than average. Unsurprisingly, the daily mean air temperature of 64.73 degrees was about six degrees lower than average.

Funnel web spider.

From August 15 - 29 (as this is written August 30-31 are forecast to be much the same) precipitation south of Kimball totaled only 0.07 inches, or about 0.85 inches less than the long term average. Daily high temperatures climbed to 85.76 degrees, overnight lows climbed to 54.3 degrees, and the daily mean rose to 70.45 degrees. With the exception of rainfall totals, weather conditions over the second half of August were very close to the long-term norm.

The non-Australian, non-deadly funnel web spider.

Overall for the month, the cool and wet first half will make August, 2017 slightly wetter and slightly cooler than average.

Very little of the actual weather conditions of the month were predicted by the weather guessers. As always, there's a significant difference between real reality and the artificial reality we manufacture.

It ain't easy being insectoid

This bug was laying on the porch stoop yesterday morning.

It wasn't quite dead yet but it had obviously had a rough experience. It was partially encrusted in small gravel particles, tangled in a mat of dog hair, and its starboard eye was partly crushed.

It was slowly moving its legs and extending/curling its abdomen, but judging by the damage and tha fact that you really can't just pick up a healthy one, it appeared to be on its way to the great bug mansion in the sky. Or wherever.

So, dragonfly or damselfly?

I don't know and I'm not going to spend the time right now to identify it. I'm leaning toward dragonfly as the eyes touch, the wings are held away from the body at rest, the back wing is wider at the base, and the body type is generally more chunky than slender. But I could be wrong.

As to what caused the trauma, I don't know. I suspect it might have been hit by a vehicle and carried up to the house with said vehicle. Just speculation.

Later in the day this colorful bug visited me whilst I was engaged in working on fence.

Again, I'm not going to try to ID the thing, at least not this morning. Is it a butterfly or a moth? True to my second grade training, I'm going to go with butterfly. It's got slender antennae with knobs on the end rather than branched or comb-like antennae. But I could sure be wrong.

This, I think, is a bumblebee.

I like watching them because of the old story that aerodynamicists "proved" that they cannot fly. Just like helicopters cannot fly.

Beating the air into submission?

Or being rejected by the ground, which finds it terribly irritating?

It doesn't really matter of course.

We all know from the breathless reporting on television that all bees, just like all glaciers, have been destroyed by evil, non-progressive corporate lackeys of yankee imperialism.

And stuff.

Um, I have a question?

So last April I found and imaged a long-tailed weasel on the ranch. This was the first one I'd ever seen in the wild and the first one I'd ever seen on the ranch.

That's perhaps not as surprising as it might be. The ranch is large, weasels are small, and they seem to tend toward nocturnal behavior. Badgers are much larger, and I see evidence of their presence all the time, but I only see them very rarely. Like once a decade or so.

Last month the dogs got a weasel along a fenceline just south of the ranch house. It wasn't a good day for the weasel.



Did you notice the difference in coloration and markings?

Yesterday I surmised that the difference was due to sex and time of year.

It had to be that. Different markings and coloration is never associated with different species, right?

The other day I saw and photographed yet another long-tailed weasel, this one under more salubrious circumstances.

Well, I did a little more research and a little more digging.

Any number of publications confirm that the long-tailed weasel (Mustela frenata) is native to Nebraska.

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Any number of publications confirm that the stoat, or short-tailed weasel (Mustela erminea), also called the Ermine, is absent from Nebraska.

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The only real similarity between the two is the black-tipped tail. The Ermine is much smaller and has distinctly different markings.

Most of the range maps for Ermine distribution follow the border of the Nebraska Panhandle precisely. They are present and secure in Wyoming and Colorado, yet absent across a man-made and invisible line. Hmmm.

It's impossible for me to say for sure. I'm going by images only. It's an interesting puzzle.