Month: July 2011

The miracle of rain

Four days ago, .4 inch of rain fell. The day after that, there was another .4 inch. That was enough rain to greatly revive the garden. Tomatoes ripened on the vine that otherwise would have rotted on the vine. The corn freshened. The pumpkins and melons resumed their growth. There may even be more peppers if the rain continues.

I’ll probably scald the tomatoes to remove the skins, then freeze them. As for the pumpkin, I couldn’t possibly eat a whole pumpkin pie. Even though it’s a shame not to use the pumpkin fresh, I’ll probably cook it and freeze it and use it later when I have company. I have at least two more pumpkins that I left on the vine, plus a couple of watermelons and canteloupes. I planted only two watermelon plants and two canteloupe plants, as an experiment. They’ve done amazingly well, so next year I’ll plant more than two.

Book review: Sovereign's Son


Don’t judge the book by its cheesy cover!

In the old model of publishing that is now dying, it’s tragic to think about how many books never got published. Deserving authors simply couldn’t get the attention of agents and publishers. They weren’t deemed worth the financial risk. In the old model, only so many books could be published, and at least some of them had to have big sales. In the new model of publishing, in which anyone can cheaply self publish, it was inevitable that many authors would release their books into the wild just so that they would be read, not caring whether the book ever made money.

That seems to be the case with Sovereign’s Son, by Brad Dalton, which was released in March 2011 and is available free in many digital formats. To my knowledge, there is no print version of this book. It is available only in digital formats. I got my copy from iTunes. I was intrigued to find a dystopian science fiction novel that was not only free, but also from an author with the same last name as mine. I believe he’s also a Southerner who lives in Virginia. I’ve been making a survey of dystopian novels — old and new — so of course I had to check this one out when I came across it on iTunes. The book is full of typos, as though it was never edited. But I was hooked right from the start, and I kept reading. It was such a hot read that I finished the book in two days.

The story takes place in a world that has been seriously screwed up by war, climate change, nuclear accidents, and a shift in the earth’s poles. Most of the population of the earth has died. And not only that, but aliens from elsewhere in the galaxy have arrived and set up a base in the mountains of California. The story gets off to a ripping good start when a 19-year-old boy is awakened by his mother in the middle of the night and told that he must leave home immediately and run for his life. The plot is beautifully constructed, and we even have strong characterization and character development, often missing in science fiction. The author also reveals himself to be one of those people — like John Twelve Hawks, who I have written about in the past — who is able to see through the fog of distortion and propaganda and grasp the essence of what is really going on in the world today. I believe that is largely what motivates people like Brad Dalton and John Twelve Hawks. They want to wake people up to what is all too likely to happen if we don’t come to our senses, if it’s not too late.

In a strange way, I have to say that I find dystopian novels comforting. This is because I feel less alone and less isolated in rejecting the false picture of the world that is constantly reinforced by the corporate media and all the other water carriers for the elites who hold almost all the power and all the money. It is comforting to know that other people get it and that they are as alarmed as I am about where it all appears to be leading. It’s shocking, though, how our culture can absorb the insights of brilliant writers, and yet nothing changes. The insights of Orwell’s 1984 and his warnings about power and propaganda have been part of our culture for decades, and yet no one calls out Fox News (for example … there are many other forms of propaganda) or sees it for what it is. Tolkien’s warnings about industrialization and the crushing of fragile local cultures by centralization and homogenization likewise are part of our culture. And yet nothing has held back industrialization and centralization.

In any case, the messages contained within a novel are secondary. What matters is that a good novel is a good read. I couldn’t put this one down.

Note to Brad Dalton: If you happen to Google across this, I’d appreciate it if you could drop me an email. I couldn’t find contact information for sending you a note.

Update: I’m glad to have been able to bring some much-deserved attention to this book. A Google search for the title and author now brings up this review as the first listing.

2011 garden, R.I.P.


Pumpkin vines in 99-degree heat

I haven’t posted lately because I’ve constantly been in a foul and angry mood. I’m afraid my mood is not going to get any better until it rains and the weather turns cooler. And of course it’s not just me made miserable by the weather. This heat wave is affecting something like two-thirds of the country. Thousands and thousands of acres of crops and growing things are being scorched.

Every summer has been like this since I moved here from California in 2008. I’ve been going over the nearest local data from the National Weather Service. In June, July and August, daily high temperatures have been substantially above normal almost 75 percent of the time. I don’t even know how normal is defined anymore, since we’re almost always above normal. Scorching summers are the new normal. That’s clear.

With a practical, data-hungry and reality-modeling mind like mine, what can I make of this? For one, I’ve had to consider the possibility that I simply bought land in the wrong place. I was years behind the curve in understanding just how much the climate has changed. I’ve realized that, not only am I not living in the North Carolina of my childhood, I’m not even living in the North Carolina that I left when I moved to California 20 years ago. This land, which fed generations of people including my ancestors, is now no longer capable of supporting a summer garden without irrigation. I can’t explain how awful it is to face that fact. Sir Walter Raleigh’s men, surveying inland North Carolina in 1585, called it “the goodliest soile under the cope of heaven.” Now it would be dangerous to live here (as in most places) without the cheap energy that makes modern agriculture and long-distance food-hauling possible. If people were smart enough to understand this and let it sink in, I’m sure they would panic. Most people assume that the grocery stores will always be there for them, and that food will always be cheap. My practical, data-hungry, reality-modeling mind knows better than that.

But where could one go where a tiny farm can still operate the way they used to operate? I took a trip last week up to the mountains, westward toward the Tennessee line, where temperatures are lower and there is a bit more summer rainfall. The altitude varies from about 2,400 to 3,500 feet. They do indeed have thriving gardens and beautiful fields of cabbage up there. But to move now is not practical for me, and there are many downsides. There are even some compensations. For example, the growing season is longer here. Less energy is required to get through winter. And the hillbilly culture in those places makes Stokes County seem sophisticated. No, I’ve got to rethink some things and make some changes at Acorn Abbey.

As part of that thinking process, I read Bill McKibben’s book Eaarth, hoping that the book might contain some specific, practical ideas for adapting. But I was disappointed. This is not necessarily a criticism of the book, because the book does make it quite clear that there is no single answer and no single strategy for adaptation. As we relocalize and adapt to climate change, we must each relocalize according to our own locations, our local resources and our local problems.

Before I made the decision to move back to North Carolina, I did check the climate models for this area. They showed (and still show) a slight increase of 2 to 3 inches in annual rainfall, in addition to higher temperatures. But what I failed to understand is that water evaporates from the soil much more quickly in high heat. The equations for water loss from the soil are differential equations that look as complicated as the equations for launching a spacecraft toward Mars. I don’t understand the equations, but one thing has become obvious: The soil dries up much more quickly in a run of 98-degree weather than in a run of 88-degree weather. It’s that fact more than any other that has made the summer garden so difficult. I think that’s why people in the mountains north and west of here can still garden in the summer. It’s cooler there, just as it used to be cooler here.

One thing that’s clear is that, next year, I must irrigate. As I’ve said before, I am opposed on principle to irrigating with well water. Well water is simply too precious to be pumped out and used for irrigation. That’s what rain is for. My steep roof is not suited to gutters. Snow avalanches would rip the gutters off. The most practical plan I can come up with is to buy one of those 275-gallon tanks in aluminum frames that are used for shipping industrial liquids. They sell for $100 or less. I’ll buy a gasoline powered water pump from Harbor Freight, about $150. The tank will fit on my utility trailer, and, using the Jeep, I can take the tank down to the stream and fill it up. Then I can park the tank and trailer above the garden and attach a hose to drip-type fixtures in the garden. I also plan to get a local grading guy over and see if there’s a spot where I could make a very small pond. However, I don’t think that’s likely to work.

In any case, this year’s garden is now in salvage mode. The tomato crop, which should have been extensive with more than 30 tomato plants, was very poor. The plants were constantly water stressed, which led to bottom rot. I got small, tasteless tomatoes instead of plump, juicy ones. The tomatoes were simply starved for water and for the nutrients that come up from the roots with the water. The squash dried up and died almost two weeks ago. The peppers barely produced. The corn did fairly well. I had some decent green beans. The cucumber crop was excellent. I may get a couple of pumpkins and one or two watermelons and canteloupes if there’s any rain within the next few days. I’ll have to say this, though. Even with the miserable, dry weather, I don’t think I’ve spent more than $15 on produce in the last three months — some garlic, two or three avocados, a couple of canteloupes. The garden has fed me well and saved me money. But there was not nearly enough of anything to freeze or can.

For those of you who may be reading this blog because you’re planning projects similar to my Acorn Abbey project, I’d urge you to put a lot of thought into your sources of water. It also takes a few years to get your gardening skill — and your soil — up to speed. Even if one had enough land and enough help, I think it would take years to learn what one needs to know to truly become self-supporting. But every little bit helps.

Downton Abbey

This is the best BBC mini-series to come along in years — amazing cast, including Maggie Smith, lavish budget, great scripts. It was shown on British television last year and is now available on DVD, and from Netflix. A second season is in production for broadcast this fall.

It’s set in Yorkshire starting in 1912. The plot and subplots involve the Crawley family as well as their servants. It’s awesome television, not to be missed.

My new dog substitute?


I’m not ashamed to say that all that overgrowth is in my front yard.

I was reading near the upstairs window with Lily curled up beside me when I saw that Lily had her eye on something out the window. She has stopped growling at the fox now. She just watches it, alert. Clearly the fox feels very much at home in the yard, and for some reason I’m seeing it more often in broad daylight. It lies in the sun. It moves to the shade and lies in the shade for a while. It yawns. It stretches. It patrols for voles. It’s just like having a little dog in the yard.

I rarely get an opportunity to photograph the fox, and something always seems to go wrong. This time not only did I have to change to the telephoto lens, the camera’s battery was dead and I had to snap in a fresh one. I was too afraid to miss a shot to fiddle with the adjustments. These photos were taken with too narrow an aperture, which forced a slow lens, which led to some blurring.

I’ve had no further incidents with the fox and chickens. I’m hoping the fox is eating enough voles to not get too hungry for chicken.

It’s nice having a dog — I mean a fox — in the yard. I don’t even have to feed it, and, unlike Lily, it’s not always demanding attention.

Climate change, under our noses


Temperature data for Greensboro, NC, June 2011

If the American people were rational, rather than cracked up on right-wing propaganda, they would suspect that the same people who are lying to them about climate change also are lying to them about other things. But there is something about right-wing minds that makes it easy to deny what is right in front of their noses if it conflicts with some belief or prejudice.

Just over a week ago, NOAA released new 30-year temperature normals, revising average U.S. temperatures up by .5 degree F. These 30-year averages are kept lower by data that is up to 30 years old, of course. We’re actually, on average, even warmer than that now. “The climate of the 2000s is about 1.5 degree F warmer than the 1970s,” NOAA’s director of climate data said. We’re not talking about models, or predictions. This is official observation data.

The chart at the top of this post shows temperatures for June 2011 in Greensboro, NC. That’s the station closest to me with official weather data. If you do some scouting on the NOAA web site, you’ll be able to find similar data for your state.

There were those who thought I was just being subjective — and just plain wrong — about this summer’s weather being much hotter than when I was a boy. But look what the chart above shows. There were 24 days in June when the temperature was above normal — often far above normal. There were 12 days when the temperature went above 95. There were only three days during the entire month of June when the high temperature was in the normal range. There were only five nights in June when the temperature went below normal, and only slightly below normal at that. So far for July, every single day the temperature has been above normal.

Not only is this miserable, it is making dry weather and droughts much more dangerous to crops and other growing things. A drought with normal temperatures is one thing. A drought when temperatures are running 10 degrees above normal is deadly.

Anyone who is not terrified by this is in a state of denial. This changes everything, for ourselves and for our children.

And we’re doing nothing about it, because of greed, denial, and the right-wing mind.

Baby pumpkin

There’s something magical about pumpkins. I’ve never grown pumpkins before, but I’ve wanted to for years. I thought they might be hard to grow, and they’re said to be heavy feeders. But the vines from my two pumpkin plants are now the biggest, most vigorous plants in the garden.

Last week’s rain helped the garden get through the hot, dry week that followed, with temperatures over 95. Yesterday evening, 1.1 inches of rain fell. I took advantage of the soft ground to do some weeding and hoeing this morning. The forecast for the next five days looks good — pretty good chances of rain and normal temperatures in the upper 80s.

Even with the drought, the garden has supplied 99 percent of my fresh food for over two months. I hardly ever go to the grocery store these days. I had been planning to make my monthly trip to Whole Foods this week, but I realized that there really isn’t anything I have to have, so I’ll wait until I run out of half and half or something. For those of us who use a lot of fresh produce, I can definitely testify that a garden saves a bunch of money.

As for the pumpkins: pumpkin pie!

The abbey organ has been upgraded


Rodgers Cambridge 730, made in 1992

For a long time, I’ve known just what sort of organ I really want. It needed to be a Rodgers, because Rodgers has such a sterling reputation. I’m talking about electronic organs, of course. There’s no way I could afford a wind instrument. I wanted a Rodgers made after 1990, because that’s when Rodgers switched from analog technology (oscillators — an artificial, synthesized sound) to digitally sampled pipe organ sounds. The post-1990 Rodgers organs also have MIDI interfaces, which allows the organ to be controlled (and played, like a self-playing instrument) by a computer connected to the organ. I also wanted an organ with at least one 32-foot stop (I’ll explain what that is in a second). And I wanted a classical instrument, not a theater organ.

I kept hoping that such an organ would jump into my lap, at a price I could afford. One did. The organ was being abandoned by a church about 20 miles from here that has changed to a different kind of music. They just plain didn’t want the organ anymore. It was taking up too much room up front on the platform that they call “the stage.” Anyway, their loss is my gain.

Rodgers has an interesting history. The company was started in 1958 by some nerds from Tektronix. For a while they were owned by CBS, which also owned Steinway. In 1988, they became a subsidiary of the Roland Corp. — good sound engineers, they.

This 1992 organ is by no means obsolete. It has only been out of warranty for eight or nine years. It uses the same digital sampling technology that Rodgers still uses today. They call it “Parallel Digital Imaging.” Using several microphones, they record the sound from thousands of individual organ pipes, each pipe separately. When you touch a key, you hear the sound of actual organ pipes. Each pipe sound is played through a minimum of two speakers for a kind of stereo effect. My organ has six audio channels (two for each keyboard and two for the pedals) and requires a minimum of six speakers, though it came with 10. There are two subwoofers, each weighing 92 pounds. The other eight speakers are of more normal size, 40 pounds each. That’s 500 pounds of speakers, plus about 650 pounds for the organ console. It was no easy moving job. And it does make a mighty sound, though it also can be very quiet and sweet. I was prepared for this. I knew before I built Acorn Abbey what kind of organ would eventually be here, so I made sure that the house had an appropriate place for the console (in the living room) and the speakers (upstairs). I put wiring in the walls for the speakers when the house was being built.

The subwoofers are there for the 32-foot pedal stop. Not all organs have 32-foot stops — only larger organs. With a 32-foot stop, the longest pipe in the rank is 32 feet long. This produces a very low note — 16 cycles per second, too low for human hearing. Nor can recordings of organ music capture this sound, because few stereo systems support frequencies that low, and I believe frequencies that low are outside the specification for CD recordings. But the sound can be felt, as a kind of vibration in the room. This profound organ sound is something you’ll only experience when you’re in the same room as a large organ. The organ is the only musical instrument that can make a note that low.

The abbey’s new Rodgers 730 is a more competent organ than I am organist, to tell the truth. But I’m practicing to work on gaining technique that I’ve lost over the years. And of course the computer will be able to play what I can’t play.

I’ll post YouTube videos of me, or the computer, playing the organ in coming weeks.

Note: It’s probably misleading that I call my house an abbey, and there’s a church organ in it. Though I value much of the cultural and community work that churches do, I consider myself a pagan, like my Celtic ancestors before Rome with its armies and bishops came around and stomped all over everyone.

Jefferson the foodie


Monticello

Salon magazine has a nice article about how Jefferson was America’s first foodie.

I sure would like to know what the sources are for all this information about Jefferson. My guess is that it’s scattered throughout Jefferson’s letters and diaries. I’ve read two biographies of Jefferson in the last year, and though there are passing references to Jefferson’s vegetable garden, there’s not much else.

Of the founding fathers, Jefferson is my favorite. He was a Southerner and proud of it, but he didn’t let that close his mind to the larger world. His values were Enlightenment values, not the Puritan values that stank up the political environment then, as now. He loved languages. He loved science and technology. And best of all, he never stopped being rebellious. He was as much a rebel when he died (at age 84) as when he wrote the Declaration of Independence.

Jefferson’s cuisine was a fusion cuisine: Southern comfort food fused with Mediterranean, and wine rather than whisky.

Oh what I would give if it were possible for Thomas Jefferson to write an op-ed in today’s New York Times, wielding his rhetorical light sabre against the Puritans, corporatists, Philistines and know-nothings who have bought the government.