The Power, or the Confusion, of Language

The power, or the confusion, of language: With my dinner, I had a glass of beer. After dinner, sitting on the deck, I enjoyed another glass. 

I feel safe with the admission of having had two glasses of beer, much more than having had 'two bottles' of beer which over here to the followers of Sam Adams is the same. A glass is thought to hold eight, twelve ounces at most, while an honest bottle, to the beer lover raised in Europe, holds a liter - approximately a quart to those who dwell on this side of the pond. "Back there" even two bottles would not have raised an eye brow.

A Flock of Turkeys Down on the Pasture

I am watching a flock of turkeys down on the pasture. I wish for a camera to furnish a picture. They are great, big, fat toms, all of them. I imagine them to be half-brothers from this past season. They were ousted by their progenitor who wants to keep control over his flock, which, on last sighting, counted twenty-one members. I could easily pick one of them out from where I am sitting. But then what? What trouble! And I being saddled with some 15 pounds of fresh turkey growing old in the freezer. 

They are there on the edge of the grass area. Look up from the bird box on the tight, just a tad to the left.😂 

I can't wait for the next season. Those boys are going to be no push-overs for the old man.

The Flies

A small fly fell out of the pine seedling I have standing, potted, on the deck table next to my chair. 

It fell together with a large fly which held it in its clutches. When hitting the table, the large fly was compelled to release its victim. The small fly landed on its back, but valiantly struggling with wings and legs it righted itself and began grooming its wings with its hind legs. The large fly, for whatever reasons flies might have to pursue each other, made motions to recapture its pray. 

However, when the small fly sensed the approach of the large one, it abandoned its toilette and hopped a few inches away. 

At that moment, the large fly must have caught the scent of the hunting grounds: the foot of my empty beer glass. Instead of continuing the pursuit of the small fly, it flew up and over the rim of the glass and began to eagerly taste the remnants that had escaped me. 

It must have sensed the approach of the camera - it was there, in the glass, just a moment ago. If I chased it away - the small fly has the benefit of the deserted field.

Up to Date with the Turbulent Past

Today I got sidetracked by a lengthy list of unread e-mails. Working my way through that is a time-consuming chore! About half of them were marketing messages, catalogue pages, urges to buy now or forever regret having missed this once in a lifetime opportunity and such stuff. So I started at the bottom and tried to unsubscribe to all and everyone of them. Some were easy, some not so, some required actual thought and work and three responded immediately either acknowledging that I had unsubscribed or asking for any good reason why I want to do such an atrocious thing: “you will never again hear from us!” or “please change your mind on this. We can’t imagine that you wanted to push this button!” But the deed is done now, and I hope that more peace in my mailbox will help make my days more enjoyable. I like to hear from friends, but strangers who think I should buy a half a dozen new swim trunks just because they are cheap . . .

Yesterday I had invited Brenda and Chip for dinner, and then ran into our new neighbor across the street, an ‘economic history’ professor from Charlottesville, UVA. It turned out that he is temporarily alone, his wife visiting friends in the NE and he himself being chained to his key board to complete a task he is expected to finish before the new term starts. So I invited him for dinner on Saturday and also to yesterday’s affair. Saturday, we started talking about this and that and everything else and did not finish till close to midnight, which caused me to oversleep on Sunday morning and I got into a terrible panic that my cooking was not going to be finished by the time my guests arrive. But is turned out quite well, after all. I BBQ-smoked a four pound slab of spare ribs. It was simmering in the oven for its finishing touches and my guests arrived punctually and we all enjoyed the feast.

So, that brings you up to date with the turbulent past and looking in the future, I just received an invitation to dinner at the DePalo’s house for Thursday, then of course comes the fourth of July with a parade in Whitingham that is held once every ten years. The participants line up on the Townhill road and I get to see the whole thing sitting on the deck. From here, the parade will go all the way to the schoolhouse about a mile away and there the ‘paraders’ will enjoy a garden fest on the ball field of the school, and that is about the purpose, since in our small town you can’t have a parade and spectators too. Lulu and her Red-Hatter friends participated ten years ago, riding golf carts, so there were not even watchers here on or deck. But what assembles for this affair reaches from the Morse’s maple syrup rig with two black horses to the compulsory group of Schreiners on miniature motor bikes and includes the ladder from the fire department and the emergency vehicle from the rescue squad.
Then, after the long weekend, I am expecting a representative of a company that received a mandate from Washington to install newfangled phones for people who have listening problems. The phone has a large screen, where one can read the entire conversation in large print captions. I asked about foreign languages and weird dialects, like the one that’s spoken in some towns around Goldsboro, and they assured me that they had no capacity for the language part but that they could handle dialects. I’m looking forward to that experience when I get back to NC! They also promised me that I will be able to take that phone with me when I travel. Plus, there is an app about to be sprung which allows to use the iPad as a phone! I love useful technology.

By the time this new phone installation is behind me, the grass must be mowed and the weed whacking must be done and we all hope for a little dryer weather so we do not sink down into the wet ground. and then it is just a short time and you all will come here and after that I will have to direct my thoughts towards ‘packing’ and preparing for the trip down south ;-) But I am sure some other things will happen in between.

So you see we are having quite a busy time up here on the Hill. Once I tried to get back on my bike between T-storms and failed completely with all the ups one gets around here. I drove the bike with the car to the Dam Road which follows the lake shore and was rudely reminded that it too goes up and down, even in sight of the level lake surface. I made it up the first hill, but just barely, and when I came to the top I saw that the road went down again and figured that, if I were to continue, I would have to make my way back up again on the return and that thought was enough to make me quit and go home. The record performance? 0.61 miles at an average pace of 12 minutes per mile and some seconds. Things sure aren’t the same anymore as they were sixty five years ago.

We Celebrated Then

For Father's Day, Brenda and Chip invited me for a BBQ dinner on Saturday and we celebrated then. Their daughter came with husband and two teens, and also Brenda's father and Mother, both older than I. He, Pete Adams, suffered a stroke some one and a half years ago, is continuing therapy and just got a warning from the Government that his benefits were about to be ended! He can get around on a walker but his left hand is practically useless. 

Anyway, we had a good time and on Sunday celebrations continued at church. The Women's Aid had baked a bunch of cookies and each father present got a little bag. Like an obedient son I had mine after dinner with a glass of milk.

Chip came over on Friday and brought me a humongous trout he had caught down by the power station. It weighed over three pounds. I butterflied it yesterday and quick-broiled it and served it with a lemon-dill-browned butter sauce, Asian stir fried veggies and, of course gave it some Chardonnay to swim in. I'm still 'full of it'. After the head and bones were out, it did not weigh three pounds anymore.

Oh, by the way: I revived the kefir grains which I had put into hibernation in ice sometime last week, I think, and they came back OK. It took them 36 hours for their doing the job they used to do in 24, but they did it! Now on to making cheese.

A Lot of Estate but Not Much Real

My daughter-in-law is often sending me pictures and advertisements for real estate opportunities near them that she thinks I might like. 

She is putting me in front of torturous choices! How can I decide? 

The Parkside - how wonderful to have just a short walk through the park to dinner in lovely company!

The Lynnhaven Drive - how convenient; just a short stroll through shaded neighborhood streets to Chick's Oyster House! The water? I checked that out, just as the side channel opens into the main channel, there is a shallow area! My 40-footer will never make it through there. Also, just look at the boats in the neighborhood: all little, noisy stinkers. 

No, at six hundred grand, I expect my own private beach, nice surf dashing at my own breakwater, and my boat safe in my private harbor in at least ten feet of water at low tide. There should also be ample detached accommodation on the property for my household crew and my captain with his hands comfortably housed. I do not wish to run into a situation where I want to use my boat and the crew must first be assembled from around the world . . .

Sorry about that. As you can see, my views of real estate have a lot of estate but not much real! 

Jason cut the rest of the pasture this morning and while I was mowing the grass around the house - it takes about two and a half to three hours to do the whole thing without weed whacking along the borders - the sun dried the grass enough so I saw Jason come back with the rake and I had time for a nice long shower and getting dressed before he came back with the machine that chops the semi dry grass for silage. By now, he already hauled three wagon loads of feed to the barn and is about to finish the fourth. I want to be here when the lights go out! 

How could I exchange this for the thrills of big city life? I've been thinking of staying here this coming winter.

Pipe dreams, I know. But still...

Without Engineers, Science Is Just Philosophy

I could not resist this one when I saw it. Getting a philosopher into our midst, we'll be a complete team!

I've been reading philosophers these past weeks. When Philip comes home from his second year, he will be thinking differently from all of us, and he'll be just at his start. I want to be able to follow him at least a little ways. This is the place to prepare for this. I can understand Socrates 'and his barrel'. The famous quote: 'you are standing in my sun light'.

Some of the Laws Still on the Books

I'm browsing car insurance and laws in VT and come across this. Lol!

Vermont is a state with a long lineage, and some of the laws still on its books reflect the old lineage more than the new. An example would be the state ordinance that requires a husband’s permission for a woman to get false teeth. 

Listen up: Tying a giraffe to a telephone pole anywhere in Vermont is illegal.

(I suppose I'm alright tying it up to the flag pole.)

A state law forbids anyone from painting a horse or whistling underwater, and all residents must bathe every Saturday night!

I wonder if a shower will suffice? Or do I break a state law with my preference?

Who has that technology under control?

Having had problems with my communication service up on Townhill since I arrived here beginning May, today exactly  two weeks ago, I have had several conversations or mild encounters with FairPoint and AT&T to try to resolve the issues.

First, of course, there was the required change of phone number. Lulu's old number could not be kept for legal and or administrative reasons. I never really pursued finding conclusive answers to this. But when I came into the house, there was a dial tone and upstairs the lights on the modem were blinking and I started to move in expecting that main communication lines to the world were all up and running.

Next day I set up the AT&T Microcell in order to get the cellphone signal up here and that's where the problems started. The Microcell did not boot up and I called AT&T and was advised - after their trouble shooting - that FairPoint had to 'open up ports 4500 and 500' before AT&T could do anything. The reply from FairPoint, when contacted, was that AT&T had to do something (send a signal to the Microcell) before FairPoint could do anything. And that's where this issue was left. The Microcell is disconnected and my cell phone reports either 'No Service' or shows five empty circles for anextremely weak signal, or one bullet, which is enough to report missed calls and voice mail messages, but not strong enough to listen to those messages nor to make calls.

In the meantime, the internet connection broke down and when I called FairPoint Tech Service they directed me through several tests and then guided me in reconfiguring the modem from my computer. I was glad to have my Mac here, because the machine had to be hard-wired into the modem to do this reconfiguring. This done, everything worked beautifully through the weekend, but on Monday morning I realized that the landline maintained by FairPoint was not working: no dilatone on my house phone. I drove to town where I can reach AT&T signal and made my calls and on the way I saw the FP line crew working on a pole and figured that there was my problem and they were about solve it. But night came and no dial tone and Tuesday started to dawn and there was still no dial tone. I called FP customer service and was redirected to Repair Service and they listened to my woes and promised to trace the problem and I would have service back not later than by 6:00PM. Just about 1-1/2 hours later, FP called me on my home phone and reported they had found the problem: a device in their central office had broken down and they had replaced it and I 'should be OK'. And I am, thank you. However, connected with this or not I do not know, Monday my internet service started to act up. It will simply shut down and while I first waited for it to reset itself as it has often done before, this time it stayed down until I reset it manually and then it stays up for a while and goes down again. Yesterday (Tuesday) I reset the thing three or four or five times. Last night it was on and this morning at about six it was down and I reset it, did my stuff on the web, went to other things, came back to the web and it was down. I reset it again and started a 'live chat' with Cynthia of the Internet Service at FP and after explaining all details of my many observations to her she recommended to call another number at FP to have this resolved. I got to talk to yet another expert and repeated basically everything I had explained to Cynthia and at last he wanted to know what the LEDs on the modem were doing and, that having been reported to him, he said 'so it is working right now? you need to call me back when it is not working. I cannot trace the problem while it is up and OK'.
Having this helpful injunction, I am sure this system will never go down again.

Unfortunately, this composition area of the Blogger offers no access to the emoticons we get lost everywhere else to save us words. If I could get to them now, I'd know of several faces that would aptly express my mood right now.

The story continues along that line until Friday the FairPoint truck came into my driveway and John O'Brian descended from the cab and offered to take care of the problem. He did! He explained after the job was done that  the phone and internet signals had been coming in on the same line and he split them. How he did this I do not know. There are the same number of lines (one) coming into the house and the modem is linked to the same phone box as before. But what matters, all lights on the modem were doing their thing and there was a phone dial tone. He gave me his private cell phone number and told me to call him directly if anything happened. And the system staid up and was stabile all through yesterday, Tuesday.

Yesterday, Julie called. Julie is the customer service representative who had take 'my case' in hand ever since I got a hold of customer service way in the beginning of this story. She told me she had seen my bill and noticed that there was a charge for connecting a new service and she had caused to have that taken off and that now there were only the subscription charge and a few customary surcharges on that bill and "Is everything going alright with the systems?" I gushed my appreciation that John had taken care of it at last and that everything was up and staple and "thank you so much".

That was four o'clock yesterday afternoon. At five o'clock the internet was down. I tried resetting the modem and it did not work. I called customer service and got an Anthony or somebody who did not want to listen to my problems but had a long-distance service for me that I absolutely must have and when I declined he wanted to sell me a faster internet connection and I growled into the phone "why would I want to have a faster service if even the slow one does not work?" He eventually referred me to tech service and gave me a number different than the one I had and and the line was answered by a girl who sounded totally puzzled when I explained my problem to her: the number I had called belonged to a credit union . . .

I called the Tech Service number I had from my previous encounters and was told by a recording that all agents were busy and . . . you know the spiel. They play background music while they have you on wait. The only disk they have is from Moulin Rouge, the scene where the Can-Can girls moon the visitors with their bloomers still properly up. By the time this tale ends I have heard this tune probably a hundred times and I do not wish to hear it again! I was on the phone for half an hour and at last hung up and went down stairs for a midnight snack and then down for the night.

This morning, before starting to yell my frustration into the phone, I reset the modem. It worked! The system is up and running. I have my fingers crossed . . .

Some short time, it felt like minutes later, the network was down again and then up, and down, sometimes after a manual reset and sometimes all by itself and this frustrating routine continued until just now, some five weeks later than the start of this tale.

There were many calls to Tech Service and to Customer Support. Over these weeks, I must have talked to about every expert on the FairPoint payroll. Sometimes we exercised some voo-doo ceremonies on the keyboard and once my computer was linked to the desk of a technician who then performed his own exercises and released my computer with words of hope that all would be alright now. It never was and my ways of expressing myself took on a different tone as time went on.

Two days ago someone must have heard the tension in my voice and promised action. Two or three technicians were put to work today, Saturday 6/6/15 and, playing their own hunch, they tested my phone line foot by foot. They broke the connection down by route 100 and tested towards to house and down to the station in Jacksonville and in all found three places where the insulation around 'my wires' had deteriorated and allowed signals to be lost either by contact with the ground or into the lines of other subscribers. I sure do hope that the coding of my computer signals functioned so that my bank statements - to mention just one sensitive subject - did not flash legibly on unintended screens.

That work was completed around 1:00 PM today. The lead technician called to tell me his tale and expressed his hope that they had at last taken care of the problem. Some of the areas with poor or no insulation must have been in the wires hanging from the phone. The wind getting them to swing may have caused the intermittent loss of service and temporary reconnection of the line. Since the line men finished their work, there is calm in my network. I hope it stays that way.

The only problem pending is the cell phone signal. About that one - later.

Not a playful question

“Is there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it? This question, which at first sight might not seem difficult, is really one of the most difficult that can be asked. When we have realized the obstacles in the way of a straightforward and confident answer, we shall be well launched on the study of philosophy—for philosophy is merely the attempt to answer such ultimate questions, not carelessly and dogmatically, as we do in ordinary life and even in the sciences, but critically, after exploring all that makes such questions puzzling, and after realizing all the vagueness and confusion that underlie our ordinary ideas.”

Excerpt From: Bertrand Russell. “The Problems of Philosophy.” iBooks. 

We are taught as fact that the earth's crust is composed of a series of islands floating on the hot liquid and gaseous core of our globe.
We are further instructed that these islands move in relation to each other and 'collide', causing one to slide on top of the other which invariably results in more or less destructive earthquakes. Take the case of the recent disastrous quake in the Himalayas.
If this quake was caused by the movement of such plates as I called 'islands' before, then it would reasonably follow that the distribution of mass around the outer rim of the globe caused a corresponding shift of the center of gravity of our world.
A simple experiment would show that the mode of rotation of a rotating body changes as the center of gravity is shifted. This can be visible in a shift in the axis of rotation or in the appearance of a wobble or the two combined.
Since our climate and weather both depend to a large degree on our earth's orbit around the sun, a change in this orbit would inevitably result in a climate change.
Since this shifting of the tectonic plates (my 'islands', above) has been going on since uncounted years' the above observations would help to explain the fact that our earth has gone through a number of ice ages in some areas, corresponding to the shifting of tropical conditions to others. Drilling in the Antarctic have indeed brought to light evidence that the area we now call 'South Pole' once was covered by tropical vegetation.

Presumably also by the shifting of the tectonic plates, the central volume of the globe would change, giving more space to, or taking space away from the molten and gaseous center of the earth. This would result inevitably in some of the crust breaking off and filling the void in the former case, or cause for an increase of pressure on the core, which in return would result in volcanic eruptions - of which we certainly have seen more recently than in previous periods. Conversely, a breaking off of a piece of a tectonic plate might preferably occur in its thinnest area, i.e. in the 'ditches of the oceans". This was demonstrated by some pictures and videos published by National Geographic which makes it appear that underwater volcanoes have more the character of cracks than of the typical cone we observe on top of the earth. Also, I speculate here that such breaking of the plates may be the cause of some of the tsunami we have recently heard more of.

The earth's atmosphere is thought to be a mantle of air which moves in unison with the rotation of the earth. Since air is mass, and as such is subject to the laws of kinetics, a wobble in the rotation of the earth would certainly have a direct effect on the harmony of this air cover's moving with the earth: there would be shifts in prevailing winds, sudden acceleration/deceleration of winds, and probably the occurrence of turbulence, some of which might become destructive. A physicist - and of course I forgot his name - declared once that" if the rotation of the earth were to suddenly stop, the air mantle would continue to rotate around the motionless ball and within moments level all unevenness - mountains, hills, trees, buildings, mankind, all raised matter would be blown into the recesses of the earth and fill sea and lake basins with a body of water covering the entire smoothly rounded globe". A stormy picture, indeed.

To my satisfaction I know that, if there is anything in this, either science or more final effects will provide the answers.

It is far more relaxing to watch the cows graze peacefully in the pasture below the deck. Jason is in the process of "drying out" his herd and giving the animals a few weeks of rest. He has purchased two bulls which he plans to put to work after this resting period and then, in another few weeks, we will hear the bellowing of the mothers and shortly afterwards the weaker voices of the newborn calves.

I asked Jason why he had changed from artificial insemination to the natural way of impregnating the cows. He grinned and laconically said: "It's because the bulls know much better than I or anybody which cow is receptive." That covers an observation we made on Old Pocket road in Virginia: we had two cows with calves and when the calves reached the desired weight we sold them. I then called the local veterinarian to come and take care of the cow in heat. He requested me to capture both and tie them up securely. I asked "why both?". He explained that even though cows jump each other when they are in heat, it is never clear whether it is the 'jumpor' or the 'jumpee' that is ready to conceive. That is why both need to be inseminated. That's the vet talking, mind you! At least back then, there is about a 50% success rate in artificial insemination and the resulting overall effectiveness and cost of the proposed procedure made me give up on breeding my own cattle without a bull. It seems that such things have not changed much over the years.