Sustainable living – Into the Woods

No. 1 pencils, now and always

One of the finest writing instruments ever made is the No. 1 pencil. Whenever I have bought No. 2’s, because No. 1’s are often hard to find, I have regretted it. Pencils with harder lead don’t produce good contrast. And one has to bear down harder.

The first twelve or so years of my career were as a newspaper copy editor. (In the mid-1980s, when newspapers started using publishing systems built on computers, I became a systems guy, because I was good with computers, and it paid better.) In those pre-computer days, the type was set in the composing room with hot-lead Linotype machines. The newsroom was full of typewriters, always heavy office machines, usually Royals made between 1945 and 1958. The copy paper actually was cut from the same huge rolls of newsprint that went onto the presses. A big hydraulic knife in the pressroom was used to cut the copy paper 8.5 inches wide by about 20 inches long. When you loaded a typewriter with paper, you always used two sheets of copy paper, with carbon paper in the middle. The top sheet, of course, went into the production process. The carbon copies from the entire newsroom were collected each evening (by a copy boy) and filed away, in case there were ever any questions about whether errors originated with reporters or whether the errors were made during the editing and production process.

Copy editors made their marks with, and only with, No. 1 pencils. This was not so much because the marks ever needed to be erased. It was because No. 1 pencils make clear and readable marks, and the need for less pressure meant much less fatique for the copy editors’ hands. To have edited with hard-lead pencils would have been miserable work.

So, when a copy editor’s evening started (usually around 4 p.m. for morning papers), he or she would sharpen a handful of pencils. During the evening, there would be multiple returns to the pencil trimmer. We wore out a lot of pencils.

In those days, everyone recognized everyone else’s handwriting. By the time a piece of copy was ready to go to the composing room through the pneumatic tube, there would be many pencil marks on it. Every editor would know quite well who had done all the edits, all the way back to the reporter.

Years before I entered the newspaper business, one of the jobs of copy boys would have been to carry copy from the newsroom to the composing room. By the 1930s, pneumatic tubes were the rule, larger versions of the pneumatic systems that large department stores used to use for making change from a single room somewhere where all the cash was kept.

While I’m on the subject, one of the nicest things that ever happened to me was getting a weekend job as a newspaper copy boy when I was in high school. There was no job in the world that I would have been better suited for. One of my favorite parts was looking after a room full of Teletype machines — loading paper, changing their ribbons, tearing off copy, sorting it, and distributing the copy to the right editors in the newsroom. I also typed stories going out to the Associated Press onto a Teletype system that had a keyboard and a tape punch. Punching paper tape before sending the stories allowed typing errors to be corrected, and sending stories out with punched tape meant that the Teletype machine could operate at full speed (about 60 words a minute), reducing the time used on the Teletype’s telephone circuit. Typing directly onto the wire was possible, but it was frowned upon.

Maybe someday I’ll write about the machines that were used to transfer photos over telephone lines, from coast to coast as well as transatlantic. One of those machines (in Nuremberg) actually appears briefly in the Netflix series on the Third Reich (now streaming on Netflix). The machine involved a rotating cylinder to which the photo is attached. Anyone who noticed it in the documentary is unlikely to have figured out what it was. A few of them must still exist in museums.

A few years ago, Ken saw the copy tube (below) in my attic and said, “What is that.” Oh how things have changed, that someone as deeply immersed in writing and publishing as Ken didn’t recognize it.

⬆︎ This copy tube used to belong to the San Francisco Examiner. The typewriter is a Royal HH from around 1952. I have about a dozen typewriters in my collection. Click here for high-resolution version.

⬆︎ This recipe for quiche was typed on a Royal KMM typewriter on newsroom copy paper. You can see some of the pencil marks over pâte brisée and the scratched-out typos. As for pâte brisée, you can be very sure that copy editors were as careful with French punctuation as with English. Whereas the uncaught typo “parpare” embarrasses me now, 45 years later. I have used this recipe for 45 years. Click here for high-resolution version.

(The Royal KMM typewriters were made from the late 1930s into the 1940s. It’s one of the models of typewriter that helped fight World War II. It has been said that World War II could not have been won without typewriters. The logistics of war are formidable. But consider also how the Nazis managed logistics and kept records, and what the evidence at the Nuremberg trial might have looked like had it not been neatly typed.)

A baby rabbit, and baby figs

I see the baby rabbit every day. It likes to hang out near the front steps and eat clover. Each year the fig crop gets better and better. I have to fight the squirrels for the apples, but it’s the birds that I have to fight for the figs. I have three Rose of Sharon trees. Each is a different color and blooms at a different time. This one grows at the edge of the woods in the backyard and seems to like it there.

Click here for high-resolution version

A lightning bug

A firely on a basil leaf

It has taken more than ten years for the abbey’s one-acre clearing in the woods to become a suitable habitat for lightning bugs. There are far fewer fireflies than there used to be because of pesticides and loss of habitat. When I was a child, there were fireflies virtually everywhere in rural places. That is no longer the case.

One of the things I have learned about fireflies is that even an acre of suitable habitat helps them to thrive. As I read up on fireflies, I was not surprised to learn that light pollution is a part of what threatens them. That makes sense. Through the 1950s, rural areas were actually dark at night. Now those horrible so-called security lights blare their ugly light all night long and cannot be turned off.

Firefly larvae (glow worms!) like to live in moist (but well drained) grassland and leaf litter. The abbey yard with its surrounding woods is the perfect environment for the larval stage. As for light pollution, the fact that the yard is 98 percent surrounded by tall trees means that light pollution from the horizon is blocked. The only light comes from directly overhead — the stars and the moon.

There are many species of fireflies, but the lightning bugs we have here in the North Carolina Piedmont and Appalachian foothills are easily recognized because of their black wing covers and the orange carapace at their heads. Starting in May, when I close my book and turn off the reading light in the bedroom, I can see the lightning bugs blinking through the bedroom window. What a privilege, to have lightning bugs in the yard!

The critter birth rate is high this spring

Click here for larger version.

Mama Deer was having lunch on my day lilies while Baby Deer was having lunch on Mama. The baby’s walk was very wobbly. I’d guess that the baby is not many days old.

I’m seeing lots of wildlife babies this year. There are a great many baby rabbits, baby birds, and young squirrels to be seen in the yard. A turtle comes each morning and hides at the bottom of the front steps hoping to catch a porch lizard warming itself on the steps in the morning sun. This morning, during a walk in the woods, I saw a tiny black snake no more than four inches long. I have not seen any baby foxes or baby possums, but they’ve got to be around somewhere. A neighbor says that Mama Bear up on the ridge has some cubs. I don’t think I’ll go up there to look.

Cabbage rolls

Some of the most beautiful leaves in the garden are the outer leaves of cabbage. They’re usually wasted, though. Some are removed at the farm, some at the grocery store, and some at home. But if you can get them fresh enough, there are things you can do with them.

Last week when I picked up my weekly vegetable box from Brittany and Richard, I pre-arranged to get, this week, a cone cabbage that they would cut while I was there, outer leaves and all. Then I’d rush home and make cabbage rolls. This dish was in progress in the kitchen less than an hour after the cabbage was cut.

The stuffing is brown Basmati rice and crushed Brazil nuts, well seasoned. The sauce is a basic red sauce. I didn’t bother to even steam or boil the cabbage leaves before rolling them. They seemed tender enough, and I cut out the thickest part of the stem.

It’s a wonderful thing being able to get one’s vegetables fresh and organic from a farm only a couple of miles away. One of the things I realized today, as I took things out of the box and got them ready for the fridge, is that the growing of the vegetables is only part of the luxury. The other part is that the vegetables have already had their first wash, and they’re ready for the kitchen or the fridge. I also get to do a garden walk-through during my weekly pickups and even poke my head into the greenhouses.

As I mentioned last week, I’ve not completely quit gardening. This year I’ll grow tomatoes, cucumbers, and basil in my own garden.

The cabbage, fresh from the garden

I also got some beets today, with the beet greens in perfect condition. Click here for high resolution version.

The first box of 2024 produce

Bok choi, snap peas, green onions, cone cabbage, lettuce, and broccolini

It’s only the 3rd of May, and I just picked up my first box of 2024 vegetables. Again this year, I’m outsourcing the gardening. A young couple who live about two miles away, who moved here from Chicago, are making a living from their little farm. This year they’ll have three seasons of community sourced agriculture boxes each week — spring, summer, and fall.

They are superb gardeners. Over the winter they added a second greenhouse (for starting their vegetables from seeds). They do organic, no-till gardening on remarkably little land. None of the space they have is wasted, with some room left over for blooming things that feed the birds and bees. They sell most of their produce at a high-end farmer’s market in Greensboro, which is open on Saturday mornings. I believe I’m their only local customer who picks up at the farm, which is a bit sad. Most rural people just don’t care about fresh vegetables anymore. Very few people garden, and based on what I see local people buying in the grocery store, their diets are terrible. As much as rural people complain about grocery prices, you’d think they’d get a clue.

I have a standing appointment for pickups on Fridays at 11. They pick my things early in the morning, wash it, and put it in their chiller. When I pick it up it’s fresh from their garden.

Again this year I’ll grow tomatoes and herbs (especially basil) in my own garden plot. But I’ll get everything else from Brittany and Richard.

Trains: Social glue we Americans will never have

When people ask me why I love Scotland, I have lots of answers. Most of them are nice, because there are so many nice things about Scotland. But I also have a snarky answer:

“Scotland,” I say, “is what white people are like when they aren’t Americans.”

We Americans are overexposed to wedge-issue social toxins and desperately underexposed to social glue. A train network, with stops in villages as well as cities, is a powerful social glue.

The village of East Linton is about 25 miles east of Edinburgh. Though East Linton is right on the route of the eastern train line between Edinburgh and London, the train station in East Linton had closed in 1964, and all the trains sped through without stopping. It was a very big deal when a new train station in East Linton opened a few days ago. There was a crowd, and there were bagpipes. The two people who made the video above are YouTube celebrities who travel around the United Kingdom making videos about trains.

A friend who lives in East Linton sent me the link to the video above. That new train stop will change his family’s life. They’ve been eagerly waiting for the new station to open. (The station, newly built, opened three months ahead of schedule. Scotland may have its ferry problems, but the trains are doing fine.)

Twenty to twenty-five minutes to Edinburgh Waverley! By car, it would be about 35 minutes or more.

On my first trip to the U.K. in 1985, I rode that train from Edinburgh back to London (there was no stop then in East Linton), and I’ll never forget it. North of Newcastle, the train line is often in sight of the English and Scottish coasts. That was my first-ever sight of those coastlines. Trips to other coasts — Wales, Cornwall, Ireland, and western Scotland — eventually followed.

It’s certainly true that Britain’s compact geography is much better suited to train travel than America’s sprawling vastness. American trains are good transportation between a few major cities, but there are no longer any passenger trains that are of any use to rural America. It’s all about cars now, of course. It could have been otherwise. But Americans wanted roads, not trains.

If the United States had invested in a train network rather than super-highways, would the country have fractured into a Red America and a Blue America? I doubt it.

The video above is a reminder that village life, in some places, still exists. We Americans have suburbs, and we have rural places. Villages? Not so much.

Five minutes of highlights, London to Edinburgh ⬇︎

Update:

Both the video above, and a comment on this post, mention the “Beeching closures” of the 1960s, when more than 7,000 miles of Britain’s railways were closed, supposedly in the name of modernization and efficiency. That this was a terrible mistake to which a certain kind of thinking always leads (in the U.S., think Republicans) is shown by how many stations have since been reopened. The man responsible for the closings was Richard Beeching, who was then chairman of British Railways. This deserves a political rant, but the video of the East Linton opening is so cheery, and speaks for itself so well, that I’m in no mood for a political rant.

Outsourcing is now an option

I grew the tomatoes on the upper shelf. The tomatoes on the lower shelf were part of my weekly vegetable pickup.

Technically, where I live is a food desert. The nearest grocery stores are about twelve miles away. A shocking number of rural people get most of their food these days from dollar stores such as Dollar General. Dollar General stores are everywhere. This makes it easier for me to believe the terrifying statistic that 70 percent of the American diet these days comes from ultra-processed foods.

It’s shocking how few rural people have vegetable gardens. And why should they? They don’t eat that stuff anymore. With transplants it’s a different story.

I’ve always had a garden, for better or for worse, in the fifteen years I’ve lived here. However, I do not enjoy — at all — summer gardening. It’s the heat, the humidity, the bugs, the ticks, the weeds, the briars, the gnats in the eyes. No matter how energetic my start in the spring, by summer the garden is always a wreck.

This summer I have an entirely new option. A young couple who live about two miles away (transplants from the Chicago area) have taught themselves to be superb gardeners. When they first moved here, they had day jobs. But this year they’ve quit their jobs and are making a living with their garden. Mostly they sell on Saturdays at an upscale farmer’s market in Greensboro. But, for a few local people like me, they started a weekly pickup of an assortment of vegetables — community supported agriculture. I was able to downsize my own garden this summer to a very manageable one row of nothing but tomatoes and basil, both of which are easy to grow and neither of which I’d be able to live without in summer.

These two young people taught themselves to garden, mostly by watching a lot of videos. In retrospect, I can see what a good idea that is. Old hands like me tend to garden the way we saw it done as children, and though we may experiment with newer methods, we never reach the state of the art. Whereas the garden I’m buying from this summer is a sight to behold. I’ve never seen anything like it other than at Monticello, or an abbey garden on Iona in Scotland. Almost half the garden is in flowers. They don’t till. Everything is perfectly mulched and well watered. The climbing system for such things as beans and cucumbers is ingenious, not to mention tall. They make their own compost, partly from the compostables they collect from their customers in Greensboro as part of the business. They even make enough wine for their own consumption, from native varieties of grapes.

There may well be some local young people — that is, young people who were born here and grew up here — who are interested in doing this kind of thing. But I don’t know of any. The reason for this, as I see it, has everything to do with the cultural decline of the rural deplorables. In a county that voted 78 percent for Trump in 2020, it’s safe to assume that 78 percent of the calories are coming from Dollar General and fast food from the nearest towns — Walnut Cove and Madison. These people — the people who are making America great again — eat their burgers and chicken sandwiches in the car and throw the bags, wrappers, and empty cups out the window onto the road.

Show me someone who lives otherwise, and the odds will be greater than 78 percent that that person is a liberal.

The nearby gardeners, at their booth at a Greensboro farmer’s market

Into the woods, and more each year

Click here for high resolution version

Fifteen years ago, after I cleared an acre of elderly pine trees for the house, the landscape looked like a huge red gash in the earth. I moved as fast as I could to restore ground cover and to start planting. Growth takes time, but nature moves fast. Though there is a band of grass on all sides of the house, this is woodland, and if I didn’t like woodland then I wouldn’t be here.

I planted a great many arbor vitae trees, as well as ornamentals such as deciduous magnolias, camellia, rose of Sharon, abelia, and rhododendron. But mostly I’ve let nature take its course, as all sorts of native trees volunteered and I left them alone to grow — poplars, persimmon, beech, maple, and oak. There was even a magnolia grandiflora already here. It was a spindly, shapeless thing that never got any light. But, once the pines were gone, the magnolia has grown into a very grand tree, as tall as the house and with a perfect magnolia shape.

You would think that the people in these parts would welcome a natural woodland landscape, but they fight it. They prefer huge, square, easy-to-mow lawns, with nothing to stop the eye. I have done everything possible to stop the eye, with a yard that is more like little ponds of grass that meander around the trees. Such a yard is a pain in the neck to mow. But now that I have a zero-turn mower, I can get the mowing done in less than two hours. That’s still a lot of grass, none of which is visible in this photo because so many things stop the eye.

There is another very welcome advantage to welcoming the woods into your yard. The cool air from the woods flows into the yard as the new trees gradually link up with the woodland canopy. Even a slight breeze is surprisingly cooling. The day will come when there will be shade on much of the roof even at midday, but we’re not there yet. And because the trees are deciduous, there’s plenty of sun in winter.

Few people see my house, because I’m near the end of a unpaved private road. But, of the people who have seen it, the abbey landscape is starting to inspire some envy, and a few country folk — country folk, who ought to know! — have asked me how I did it. That’s actually pretty easy. The first thing is make sure that there’s something growing everywhere, that no sun and no water are wasted. Even the ditch along the road in front of the house is a beautiful thing — tall grasses, some wildflowers, blackberries (which get out of hand and must be restrained) and persimmon trees. Not only do ditches channel and preserve runoff, the water makes them lush. They’re a path for wildlife, especially the rabbits, of which there are a great many. Except for the difficulty of mowing a yard in which nothing is flat and in which you can’t walk more than ten yards in any direction without bumping into something, a natural landscape is an easy landscape, suitable for lazy people. A minimum amount of time is spent fighting nature. Another thing I emphasize to the country folk — and the birds agree — is that you can’t have too many arbor vitae trees. Arbor vitae trees are hotels for birds, as are the dense thickets of honeysuckle and jasmine that grow along the top of the orchard fence.

My biggest disappointment is that the deer will eat almost anything. For example, azaleas can’t live through the night. I’d like to have more blooming things, but the deer won’t allow it. Defending my beloved daily lilies has been almost impossible, though I haven’t yet given up. Fortunately there are a great many green things that don’t taste good to the deer.

Every year, the house will be a little more hidden in the woods. I’m like a deer, or a rabbit, or even a cat. There have to be places to hide.

Are you ready for power failure?

⬆︎ My solar panels can produce, at most, a modest 150 watts of power. That’s enough to keep some deep-discharge batteries charged at all times. The solar power also is a supplement to my small generator.

Clearly the risks to the power grid are growing. This is true not just in the United States. Just two days ago, France issued a warning about winter power failure. Whether in summer or winter, power grids can become overloaded (and, these days, often do). For some strange reason, right-wing terrorists seem to be targeting the power grid. The vulnerability of the power grid to cyber-hacking is well known, though no doubt too little has been done about it. Even solar events such as coronal mass ejections could shut down the power grid and damage major components of the grid that would be very difficult to replace.

Being prepared is not necessarily just a matter of comfort and convenience. In some cases, lives depend on it. Everyone needs a plan. In rural areas such as where I live, short power outages (three or four hours) happen many times a year. I’ve never been through an outage that lasted for days, but that’s always possible.

Getting equipped with backup sources of power and heat is not necessarily something that must be done all at once. Being prepared is expensive. And not only are the things you need expensive to buy, they require maintenance, or they won’t work when you need them. Here at the abbey, I’ve gradually built up my ability to weather longer and longer power failures. Each power failure is a kind of test that lets me figure out what my next priority for improvement should be.

The first big question is: Would your heating system operate with the power down? Few systems would these days. I have a heat pump, which is of course all electric. For backup, I have a propane fireplace and a tank that holds 200 gallons of propane. The fireplace provides a helpful amount of heat, but it can’t compare with the house’s main heating system. Kerosene heaters make me nervous. But if you’re careful with them, they can be a safe source of emergency heat.

How would you cook if the power went out? Here at the abbey, though I can boil water in small quantities on generator power, my emergency solution is to cook outdoors using propane. The gas grill, also propane, is always available.

Refrigeration is a biggy. That’s a problem that can be solved only with electricity. My solution at present for refrigeration uses two battery-powered power inverters. The 1000-watt unit can run the refrigerator for five hours or more. I have two such units, so that one can be recharged from the generator while the other is powering the refrigerator.

Lighting is not a big deal. Flashlights and candles are a given, with better light sources if you have the power. You’ll also need to think about water. Even if your water is city water (as opposed to a well, which I have here), frozen pipes could be a problem in extreme cold, especially if the power is out.

For me, communication is a major issue. Cell phones aren’t enough. I also need to be able to keep my computer and WIFI running in a power failure. How I do that is shown in the photographs below. And because I’m an amateur radio operator, I also need to keep all my radios running, if they’re needed. Amateur radio operators are always about community service if a disaster strikes, not only for communication with the outside world but also for providing a means of staying in touch with one’s neighbors.

⬆︎ This small inverter generator is enough to power my refrigerator, computer, radios, and some lighting. I am wary of larger generators that cannot produce pure sine wave power.

⬆︎ You can’t have too many batteries. These batteries are kept charged by the solar panels. On the right is a power inverter that attaches to the batteries. The inverter can produce standard 115-volt house current as pure sine waves. The inverter also can charge USB devices. My solar power goes into my garage, not to the house. And speaking of the garage, that’s my Jeep on the left. It, too, is a nice thing to have for winter emergencies.

⬆︎ The front panel of the power inverter, with its three USB outlets as well as house current. These days, keeping USB devices such as phones charged is a high priority.

⬆︎ Fortunately, inverters like this made in China are fairly affordable. If you’re not clear on the difference between “modified sine wave” inverters and “pure sine wave” inverters, I’d recommend reading up on that. Pure sine wave inverters are more expensive, but I would not want to run electronics or expensive items such as refrigerators on dirty power.

⬆︎ These two devices contain batteries. Their output is house current and USB. They are expensive. I use these devices mainly to keep my refrigerator running — a high priority that I deem worth the expense. One can be charging while the other is powering the refrigerator. Both can be charged from my solar panels, but charging from the generator is much easier as long as the generator is running.

⬆︎ Maybe someday we’ll be able to live without gas-powered engines. But, until then, you’ve got to have fuel. I never store gasoline, kerosene, or propane indoors, and I insist on the safest possible containers.

⬆︎ Propane for emergency cooking, outdoors. I also have a propane grill.

⬆︎ Kerosene heaters scare me. But they don’t scare me as much as a cold house when it’s 5F outdoors, which happened as recently as last week.

⬆︎ This uninterruptible power supply can keep my computer running for hours. But when the power goes out, I get the generator out of the basement and put it in a safe place outside the basement door. I plug the cord from the generator into a receptacle in the basement that terminates at the red outlet that you can see in the wall behind the UPS. When I built my house, I installed the wiring for that. This is a heavy commercial UPS that I’ve had for years. Its batteries have to be replaced every five years or so.

⬆︎ My radios run on battery power at all times. The batteries are kept charged by the trickle charger in the photo below. In a power failure, by moving a plug, I can keep the batteries charged with the generator.

⬆︎ The trickle charger that keeps the radio batteries at full charge.

⬆︎ I sometimes joke with my neighbors that, in a catastrophe, one reason why they should keep feeding me in spite of my age is that they can count on me for communications during a catastrophe. I have had an extra-class amateur radio license for years, and I take very seriously the responsibility to provide emergency communications for the people around me, not only long-distance communications but also local communications using handhelds, of which I have a great many.