One year ago today: September 7, 2022, it’s 77F in Switzerland.
Five years ago today: September 7, 2018, Ray-B a year late.
Nine years ago today: September 7, 2014, introverts blame themselves.
Random years ago today: September 7, 2010, another 138 years.
I was around eight years old before I figured out I could write a letter. That’s late but consider my environment and the impossible logistics. I remember the letter a bit, just not who it was to. By age ten I had a pen pal which my family considered on a par with wasting time. And the pen pals, in Australia and Mexico, well, it was some kind of school assignment because they wrote back once each. What gives, talking logistics--about letter-writing? If your experience is limited to just grabbing a pen and paper and start writing, you had a soft life.
Here’s the stalk of my cactus plant, now growing what look like flower buds. Unlike the stalk shooting up in a day or two, the twigs are very slow growing and it’s like looking at those artist’s conceptions of some ancient age of the Earth before dinosaurs. Now aren’t you glad I dug this plant up and moved it further from the door a year ago? JZ donated the original of this plant which is now four plants, all of which grew to different sizes at different speeds, despite being with in 30 feet of each other. This is the only one that sprouted.
It was another solo library visit, where I finally downloaded the fiddle notes to “Amarillo By Morning”. There’s few tunes we do already that I play bits of the melody on the bass. The Prez thinks it’s great but I told him it can be only sparingly and not all tunes lend themselves to it. Having four time extensions on the computers, I read more on the introduced flora on Ascension Island, so named for its discovery on a Catholic holiday. The first known inhabitant was a Dutch sailor stranded there for being a queer. He kept a diary for six months and then disappeared. There is a fresh water spring on the island, so the Brits took to building a small military base. Darwin stopped there on the way back home and some guy living there took Darwin’s advice to begin planting things to “make the volcanic rock into better soil”. See addendum.
The remote news item today is we may have a battery powered mower for the Reb. Lem has kept an eye out for a good one and reported in last day he’s got something. At this time, the battery is testing. If it is bad, I’ll replace it, either way, I don’t want the Reb mowing that huge back yard with a regular mower. She does, but I don’t like it. More mower news as it happens.
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Shopping is no longer fun, the Biden prices have finally gotten to the lowest-priced items and people just cannot afford any but the cheapest items—and they are nearly always sold out. I needed basics so I went to Wal*mart to find the food aisles surprisingly empty. A pattern emerged immediately. There was a shelf full of Land-o-Lakes™ butter at $5.75 per pound but a blank shelf of GreatValue™ at $3.76. Yes, that’s quite the spread but that’s another amazing change. The two products used to be within 25¢ of each other and people would buy the Land-o-Lakes because it is locally produced. If you say Biden is toast, I’m certain you mean unbuttered.
The USA has its first official “thought criminal”. The Bidenistas arrested a guy for insurrection who was nearly a thousand miles away at the time. He was, they say, thinking of planning something. Forget that backlog of unsolved murders and bank robberies, this is important, they tell us. How about Alex Jones appearing on the top Russian talk show to inform them most Americans do not support the war in the Ukraine. We view it as a Biden money-laundering scheme and the military here would be nuts to get involved. But the saying goes how a tyrant would rather burn down the house than let you have it.
I also made muffins. Here is your version of what transpired.
Terraforming, the alteration of a space to suit human habitation, or at least life where it wasn’t before. They say a thousand years to make Mars suitable. On Earth, the concept brings to mind the Australian desert and the Sahara. The one that intrigues me is Ascension Island. It was a barren volcanic blump when the Portuguese found it. If a tree is growing there, somebody brought it. I don’t follow the whole story but enough to be impressed by how they’ve changed the place. Darwin once visited and noted that trees would help retain rainwater. The British began importing tree species in 1850.
Here is a NASA photo of Ascension, showing the pattern of clouds forming to the upper left, densest and breaking up over the volcanic cone, and then dissipating complete before clearing the land, which is only 38 square miles. I was aware a cloud cap was a sign of land out in the vast Pacific Ocean. This is the first I’ve heard of it in the Atlantic. Just you watch the theories that abound if species like this are transported to Mars. I believe it is inevitable, that things will grow on Mars, and good or bad, it will mean irreversible damage.
Nor is my report here to mean it is all good for Ascension. This is too small-scale to be representative of “terraforming” and is better labeled as geo-engineering. And as Reddit puts it, the Dutch have been doing that since the 1100s, and you might include Chinese terraces. The island would these days have been declared a nature preserve. As it was, the British brought the rats who overran the place. So they brought the cats, which killed the rats but went on to destroy the birds, and now they’re talking of bringing in snakes to kill the cats, and away we go, Florida-style.
No many people know the open ocean is not full of fish. There is mostly nothing living out there. Hence, island like Ascension, with at least some sunlight reaching the surrounding ocean floor, become almost natural fisheries. During research, I found several ads for “deep sea” fishing excursions to the waters offshore. Look out, Ascension. First come the tourists, then come the Japanese and Chilean fishing fleets.
