Spring Peepers

3/30...first evening I've heard the peepers.

Woodcutting Sunday 3/20

First day of Spring today...first time I've been in the woodlot since early in January when the snows started.

Had planned to drop more trees but the oil cap on my big saw (MS360)broke and all the dealers around are closed on Sunday!  So I blocked and hauled down to the yard more wood then I planned instead.

A Red Oak with the Box Elder sitting on top of it (the Red Maples to the left if you look closely).  Counted 54 rings on the oak, surprised me a little bit but I guess that's about right, the land was pasture up until around 1950.  I was expecting it to be more like 60 to 70.  I do have some "middle age" pasture oaks up in there.



My small saw, the 024AV earned it's keep.  Three full gas tanks plus a little.  Had my least favorite chain I own on it, some sort of safety chain.

Both clumps of grove of ratty Red Maples in the background, left side I had been planning to take down today before I was done in by a flippy cap.





Two loads this size, plus one smaller load, to collect everything in the pics above.  I'm figuring when it's split, I'll be close but not over 3/4 cord that I hauled down to my house today.

Grandpa & Dad

Likely 1923, somewhere in New York City.

My grandfather Arvid Kivela, my uncle Bill on the scooter, and my father Rudy.

Update:
I posted that photo on a firefighting site I'm on frequently that I knew had a decent number of New Yorkers...and a one guy from Colorado gave me a strong lead --

It may be the Morris-Jumel Mansion:

I hate this escalator.

When I was five or so, I was with my dad when I fell at the top of this escalator and rode it most of the way down prone -- terrified. Very vivid memory of watching the bottom where the teeth are as the escalator disappears under the floor get closer and closer. Plus I lost my lollipop, I can still see it trapped at the bottom as the escalator rolled underneath it.

It was a very long time -- into my 20s -- before I could ride an escalator again without gripping the rails so tightly I got white knuckles.

AUBURN — A 4-year-old Dudley boy died last night from injuries he suffered when he fell from an escalator at Sears Friday night.

The boy, Mark DiBona, was pronounced dead before 10 p.m. at UMass Memorial Medical Center — University Campus, according to the district attorney's office. The child's parents are Eric and Laura DiBona, authorities said.


The boy had been with members of his family and a friend as they shopped in the mall when he fell from the escalator on the second floor inside the Sears Department Store Friday night.

Auburn police and fire were called to the mall about 6:30 p.m. to investigate and give aid to the child. State and Auburn police continue to investigate, but there are no signs of foul play, the district attorney said.

Authorities said the boy grabbed the moving railing of the down escalator with both hands and was pulled off the escalator and through a 6-inch gap between the escalator and a plastic barrier. The boy fell onto a store display case on the floor below and suffered a severe head injury.

March 13th...Snow hasn't melted yet!

At least a week, probably more like two before I can start working the garden!

That's OK, I was sizing up the woodlot today and picked out a bunch of junky trees I can cut down next weekend.

Everything you really need to know about Finns & Conversation...

I stumbled across the post by Hank W. below today, and found myself chuckling away as I read it:

I am really tired of all these complaints on the difficulty of learning the Finnish language.

The easiest way - and hardest for most foreigners - to learn the Finnish language is just to sit down and shut up. Over than half of a Finnish conversation is silence. You can practice *that* on a city bus for example. See, only mad people talk to strangers (or themselves). OK, I need to rephrase that - only mad people used to talk to themselves. Coming back in 1996 just after the 'kännykkä' boom and seeing well-dressed people blabbering to themselves freaked me out. Once I got new glasses the little dangling cord from the ear became more evident. Still freaks me out though. Must be hereditary.

The theory is, that silence has etched itself into the Finnish genes. Probably this happened already during right after the Ice Age when the Proto-Finns moved over and found it feasible to keep their mouth shut and use the energy for keeping warm. The blabbermouths then froze on the lake ice when they were icefishing (its quite windy on a lake). The silent men then slid the ones frozen stiff with their mouths gaping under the ice. And their hearts felt warm, and nobody said nothing, because everyone was thinking the same thing, peace at last.

So a couple thousand years later trying to introduce polite small talk instead of the cavemanlike grunts causes native Finnish speakers to seem rude and impolite. Every foreigner in Finland is bound to be asked these two questions let it be he's been here one day or ten years: "Where are you from?" and "What are you doing here?". Now these questions are honest to God attempts of "small talk", which is some unnecessary foreign invention. As we all know, peoples' faces in Finland are solemn, the mouth is a straight line, the edges slightly pointing downwards, just like a mouth should look like. (Only angry dogs and Americans show their teeth when meeting people.) - so a friendly question like that asked with a straight face is really just trying to be friendly. It is not exactly *our fault* the practice is to "cut the crap" and tackle the issue. So then the funny foreigner takes offence and the Finn is even more sure that silence is better and staring into the bottom of the beer glass is quite the thing to do.

Ah, one thing I must add though. The silence is gender-related. Somehow the silence genes are attached to the X and Y chromosomes because in Finnish women there is a wonderful and frightening ability to talk sentences without pausing, inhaling and exhaling the vowels and consonants so that the speech continues as a steady flow of... andreallyIthinkthatyoushouldcleanupafteryoushavethesinkisfullofhairsandthenthemirrorisstainedandyouleftthetoiletseatupagainhowmanytimesdoihavetotellyouaboutthatlikeIhaventtoldyouthatathousandtimesanditisdisgustingreallyyoudonotseemedoingthatnowdoyou...
Now this can also be used to explain the suicide rate of Finnish men, why there are 10:1 ratio of women to men in the 65+ age groups and why Finnish women marrying foreign men are so happy. Well, the first case is self-explanatory, as it relates to the second. The fast way out is far more desirable apparently than the slow lingering "death by nagging". And foreign men are happy as they cannot understand a word - and as Finnish women (due to the vindictive school teachers) dare not say too much in a foreign language as they are so afraid to make a grammar mistake the naggedyness in a foreign tongue is less evident. Divorces only happen if the men learn Finnish too fluently to actually pay attention to what she is saying...

So basically, the Finnish language is the easiest to learn in the world. Learn the silent parts first.

Snow, snow go away

1" of 50º rain overnight melted a good foot or more of the snow pack :)

First time since mid-January I'll be able to have mail service at my house again now that the snow banks are gone so the postman can pull up to the mailbox.

Still have about 6" to 8" of snow on my front yard, but that's about the deepest other then snowbanks around. I wouldn't have tried pulling into the woodlot off of Prince Hill Road on Saturday; now I just have to wait for the ground to drain since there's only a small patch of snow left. The garden is almost visible again!

We have survived the Great Snow of '11!

Edited to add: Heh...the mail lady just stopped and dropped off all the mail instead of stuffing it in the box :)

Down I Go, Again...

Let's preface this by saying I once walked into the firehouse and the gang their got sheepish faces...they had been reviewing the best falls I've taken on fires caught on video tape (some I remember, some I forgot...). Apparently one of the youngbucks had made up a list of which minute on which tape to watch.

So tonight I go out and fill up my firewood cart with wood.

Deck is wet from a light rain. I'm wearing old boots with worn, slippery soles.

There's one step I have to go down with the cart, so I pull back on it to slow it as it eases over the step...

My arms stay in place, my feet slide forward, I end up sitting keister wondering what the heck just happened.

*sigh*

Just a note to myself...

Richard Denning as Kenneth Bradley in An Affair to Remember.

And Friday we continued digging...

And Friday, we continue digging out...took me another 2 hours on top of the 3 hours spent Thursday to finally make it out. Spent another three hours on Saturday up by the house.

Deer have been feeding on the Cedar tree:


Finally broken through to Route 6! I remember this shovel from back when I was a kid; it's the same one dad would've used digging out from the Blizzard of '78.


Neighbors have the right idea :)




Had to run to Rhode Island to pickup a check -- a contractor pushing back the snow on a state road:

It snowed. Again.

While I first measured 14" on my deck, but that was near the house. I got 16" on the far end of the deck, and I believe I got a total of 18" including the 2" that fell during the day.




I have never gotten stuck before in my driveway. Other parts of the yard, yes. Driveway, no.

I ended up shoveling four times so far as I work my way down...





The small green posts with the white tops sticking up (you can see them better if you click on the pic to get the full-size view) are I believe 4' tall, and the garden fence is 5'


After nearly three hours since I started shoveling my way out of the front door, I still got about 75' to finish.


If we have anymore snowfall this winter, I'll have to just keep going out every couple hours and pack the driveway backdown again.

Bluebirds!

Went to make lunch today, what a view from the kitchen sink window!

With the heavy snow we've had, I've been seeing a lot of different birds. Seldom seen a Bluebird at my house...I didn't even realize they don't migrate in winter. Had four Bluebirds (the smaller orange-chested ones) and a Robin when I went to get the camera, came back and a Blue Jay replaced two of the Bluebirds. Couple days ago I had a bunch of those little black birds you see in flocks around farms, they were drinking from the open water were a spring feeds one of my ponds.

Click on the photos if you'd like the bigger versions:

The Oscar is NOT amused.

Had a nice little nor'easter that started snowing about 11pm last night. Snow was up to 19" when I measured at 4pm, and still going -- should end up around 20".

I watched the movie Despicable Me last night, so I must say this -- It's so fluffy I'm gonna die!

Snow was moderately wet -- not super heavy, I was able to shovel 14" depth a shovel full at a time. But it wasn't the nice light and fluffy snow you can just use a broom to move, either. It's not supposed to be above freezing (and then only barely) till Sunday, so I'm hoping this is dry enough it will fall off the trees and not freeze to them. If this snow freezes to limbs and we get some wind, it's gonna be a mess.

Click on pics for full-size.

My favorite -- Oscar with his "I am NOT amused" face:



The rest in chronological order. I ended up "packing" the driveway, using the pickup to pack down the snow. I really need to get the tractor up and running again!

Only 14" when we took the first pic of the day.

The Dogs...Summer 2000

Some pics Cindy gave me Jake & Oscar (the liver spotted one) from July, 2000...click 'em for the full size images:

Another Flashmob...with a twist

Prudential Center in Boston, early in December:

Clark Griswold, Eat Your Heart Out

A guy who is REALLY into his Christmas Lights. Says it takes 150 hours to setup, and 150 to do the choreography. He also did Halloween lights this year.  He's on Route 205 just south of Brooklyn Iron Works (since the state rebuilt that section years ago, it was really wide shoulders so people can pull off the travel lanes completely and tune their radio into 95.1 to listen to the music).

They have a donation box for the Make-A-Wish foundation which collected $3600 in 2009 and more in 2010.

More YouTube:  http://www.youtube.com/user/QuietCornerChristmas#p/u

And their Facebook page:  http://www.facebook.com/pages/Quiet-Corner-Christmas-Christmas-Lights-in-Brooklyn-CT/126464914537

Noodlepalooza

Today I attacked the odds and ends (like the trunk and crotches) from Red Oak I cut last year (year before?).

Didn't bring my good camera, but here's some from the Crackberry.

I'm proud of my stump circumcision -- how even it came out even though I had to walk 360º around the stump as I cut since I didn't want to haul out the big bar.





The Fiskars is good but it ain't that good for those 20" plus crotch pieces. So those had to be cut up using the saw lengthwise...some times one noodle and you could split the rest, some pieces required a pattern of 3 x 3 noodle cuts in both directions to form 9 pieces of firewood.






It's called "noodling" when you cut like this because cutting with the grain produce "noodles" -- normally you cut across the grain which forms much, much smaller chips.

Marching Band is the Kicker

A nice piece of Ash...

Nothing that interesting in the last two months, at least when I had a camera handy :)

Hauled in two loads of Ash today, I figure about 1/2 cord total. This is the "good stuff" -- it has about 24 million BTUs per cord, compared to the Red Maple I burn the most at 18 Million BTUs.

Last weekend I brought down two loads of Red Maple, since that usually good for early and late season, and I keep my Ash & Red Oak for January and February.

Of course we get a bitter cold snap -- Thursday morning it was 5º overnight!





Second load I finished around 4:30, late enough I needed to use the flash to take the pic.

Next couple days are supposed to be a mess -- freezing rain overnight, followed by about 2" of rain over the next two days.

The Kaiser and China

Excellent essay I'm copying here because I don't want to lose it if they ever change the URL. From here.

Posted on September 26th, 2010 In the Footsteps of the Kaiser: China Boosts US Power in Asia Walter Russell Mead Posted In: Asia, Decline of Europe, Economics, History, U.S. Foreign Policy

Is China the best friend of American power?

Beijing’s recent missteps in Asia — moving ahead with reactor sales to troubled Pakistan and crudely threatening Japan over the arrest of a Chinese fishing captain — are swiftly solidifying America’s Asian alliances. The new Japanese government came into office hoping to rebalance Japan’s foreign policy and reduce tensions with China. That dream is now dead. And China’s deepening relationship with Pakistan, intended in part as a counter to America’s nuclear opening to India, is driving Asia’s other emerging nuclear power closer than ever into the arms of America (and Japan). South Korea, once drifting peacefully toward China, has moved back towards the United States following China’s support for Pyongyang after the sinking of a South Korean naval boat.

In all this there is one clear theme. America isn’t containing China. China is containing itself. As China’s economy grows and its military develops new capacities, it is looking for ways to turn that potential power into actual power over events. In the past, China has tried to attract its neighbors into its orbit with sweeteners like trade deals and aid.

But these measures apparently strike a new generation of Chinese policy makers as unsatisfactory. China is too great a power to play nice, they think. So they assert their territorial claims more and more boldly, and blow up disputes with Japan out of all proportion.

John Tenniel’s famous cartoon “Dropping the Pilot”: Otto Van Bismarck is fired by Kaiser Wilhelm, who will steer the Ship of State on a different course (Wiki).

The last great power to make this shift was Imperial Germany. Once Wilhelm I had put his empire together (defeating Napoleon III in the Franco-Prussian War), he and his brilliant chancellor Otto von Bismarck realized that Germany’s greatest danger was to unite the surrounding powers against it. It was time for sweet talk and flowers, or as the last generation of policymakers in Beijing used to put it, “peaceful rise”. Wilhelm and Bismarck were nice to everyone who might join a coalition against them: Russia, England, Austria, Italy, the Ottoman Empire, America — and even France. This was an exhausting policy and German foreign policy sometimes looked like a French bedroom farce as Bismarck hid Austria in the closet when Russia stormed into the bedroom. Nevertheless, it worked. Germany rose peacefully after 1871; it overtook Britain in manufacturing and its exports filled the world. German financial firms developed a world reach and Germany even built up a colonial empire with dependencies in Africa and the Pacific.

But the old Wilhelm died and a new Wilhelm (Wilhelm II) brought a new generation of Germans into power. Firing the elderly and crotchety Bismarck, Wilhelm read Admiral Mahan’s Importance of Sea Power in History and dreamed of the blue water navy that would turn Germany into a true Weltmacht, world power. Moreover, ‘Willi’ was sick and tired of deferring to all the neighbors. Enough of this insipid “Dreikaiserbund“, the complicated three-way alliance between Russia, Germany and Austria! And enough of this being nice to France. The French were losers, has-beens. It was time they were made to feel it. Germany was the greatest power in Europe and it was high time people accepted this fact.

Wilhelm’s new policies led to series of unsettling crises in Europe and to the shocking development of a firm alliance between staunchly republican France and the arch-conservative Russians. The unthinkable happened; the autocratic Tsar of all the Russias stood for La Marseillaise (the bloody-minded French revolutionary hymn that his ancestors had once banned) and the Republic and the Tyrant joined forces against the Bully.

That was only the start; German ambitions ultimately turned this odd couple into an even unlikelier ménage à trois; first the French and then the Russians composed their differences with the hated Brits to form the Triple Alliance — the only combination of powers that could possibly thwart German ambitions. Germany was left with the most decrepit and useless European powers: the imploding Ottoman state, the ramshackle Austrian monarchy and (temporarily) the disorganized but appealing mess known as the Kingdom of Italy.

Chinese policy today seems bent on following Wilhelm’s road to ruin. Chinese pressure is pushing countries like India, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Australia towards closer cooperation with the United States. China’s regional allies are substantially weaker and more problematic: North Korea, Myanmar, Pakistan. It’s a picture Wilhelm II would recognize.

Worse, from a Chinese point of view: it will take many years to live down the unpleasant impression its current actions are making. Twenty years of scrupulously patient effort at getting its neighbors to embrace China’s peaceful rise are being squandered by six weeks of aggressive diplomacy. Just as Soviet bullying periodically strengthened the NATO alliance by reminding Europeans just how much they needed American protection, so China today is unintentionally solidifying America’s Pacific alliances at no cost to us.

Personally, I am not gloating about this. America’s goal in Asia is not to win diplomatic or, God forbid, military contests with China. Our long term goal remains the development of some kind of stable international system in Asia that creates the same kind of long term peace and prosperity there that the European Union (with all its faults) has brought to Europe. Our interests will be best served when and if China ceases to throw its weight around in a sterile quest for Wilhelmine Weltmacht and seriously dedicates its power and wealth to the construction of a peaceful Asian system with appropriate protections for its neighbors. The rise of a peaceful German democracy plus an American presence and German memberships in NATO and the EU has helped other Europeans overcome their well founded fear of their Teutonic neighbors. For all the EU’s many problems, Germany today enjoys more real influence and has more security than the kaisers ever knew. One only hopes that China can learn these lessons without repeating the inexpressible suffering that Germany both inflicted and endured in the twentieth century until Konrad Adenauer (in my view the greatest German statesman in 1000 years) finally set the country on the true path to peace and self respect. (If you really want to worry about Europe today, don’t worry about Greece and the euro. Worry that the new generation of post-unification German politicians think of Adenauer’s foreign policy as an expression of weakness rather than wisdom.)
Lessons for American Power

These developments in Asia illustrate an important truth about America’s world role: the foundations supporting our power are much stronger than many people here and abroad understand.

We have had a decade of hand-wringing about American power. First, 9/11 was seen by some as a deadly blow against the citadel of American strength and the collapse of the World Trade Towers was seen as the start of the fall of America’s economic and political domination. Then the unpopularity of the Bush foreign policy was alienating our friends. In the Arab world in particular, we were so hated that not even friendly governments could continue to work with us. Then we had lost the war in Iraq, and leading foreign policy analysts and politicians (most of whom had endorsed the war at the beginning) called for ignominious retreat as the best and indeed the only possible strategy. After that came the stock market crash and the financial meltdowns of 2008, and the “Anglo-Saxon” model of cutthroat capitalism was said to have decisively failed. After that came the rise of China, the hot new superpower in the east that owned our debt and therefore owned us — and that was going to sweep all Asia into a new economic and political bloc that would leave us in the cold.

This was and is all a bunch of hooey. Americans do make mistakes in our foreign policy and these can be costly both for us and for other people, but American power is more durable than it sometimes appear. American power is not eternal, and the world political order is not unchanging, but strong and deep forces in world affairs have brought the United States to its present position of influence and power; those forces will not disappear overnight. Rome wasn’t burned in a day.

The latest round of events in Asia provides a textbook case of just how strong the foundations on which American power rests in Asia really are. The more China rises, the more Asian countries rally to the American side. We are a balancing power in Asia; we have neither the ability nor the desire to conquer any Asian countries or break them up. We do not support any boundary changes and we are promoting an economic system that has led all of Asia to its greatest prosperity ever. This is a golden age for Asia, and American foreign policy aims to keep it that way.

In the Cold War, many Asian governments rallied to America’s side because they feared communist revolutions and Soviet domination. During the interval between the fall of the Soviets and the arrival of China in the first rank of the great powers, many Asian countries were less interested in relations with the US. Countries like Japan, South Korea and even Australia began to speculate on whether they would do better by drawing closer to China. A few diplomatic flirtations ensued, and the world’s chattering classes started yammering about the eclipse of American influence in Asia and the rise of China.

Surely enough, however, the rise of China changed things. The Chinese grew less cautious and restrained; their neighbors took fright. Distancing yourself from America no longer looked quite so attractive. America’s warts seemed less ugly, less unappealing — while, viewed close up, China’s faults and blemishes seem much more off-putting.

Something quite similar has happened in the Middle East. A few Sunni Arabs (mostly in Kuwait) welcomed the American overthrow of Saddam Hussein, but most were violently opposed. The Arab street hated the invasion for all the obvious reasons; the political elites and the clergy hated it because the replacement of even a secular Sunni state in Iraq with a Shi’a-friendly government was a strategic defeat for the Arab nationalist dream in its Sunni incarnation. Lebanon, Syria, Iraq: some of the most culturally, politically and economically important Arab states and cities are now, in many Sunni eyes, under Shi’a rule. Look at the great cities of Arab history: the last generation of Sunni leaders have ‘lost’ Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut (as Hizbollah grows in power) and Jerusalem.

Yet what we see now in the Middle East is a rallying of many Arabs to the American side in the confrontation with Iran. Compared to the perceived menace of an aggressive Persian Shi’a regional superpower, the United States and even Israel look less threatening and horrible than they once did. Israel may be a blot on the region, but realistically its ambitions are confined to the West Bank — a moral outrage from an Arab point of view but not a strategic threat. And the Americans, for all their stupidities and blunders, are a known quantity and precisely because the Americans are so unpopular with the Arab street, the Arab governments are confident that they can always deal with any American attempts to introduce unwanted reforms. The recent massive arms sales to the Gulf states and the steady Arab support for the current round of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians do not reflect a new Arab love for the United States, but they do show that the region’s power brokers understand their need for the US to maintain the regional balance of power that protects their standing and security.

Paradoxically, if the US confrontation with Iran should end in total victory (which I would define as a peaceful revolution in Iran that establishes a non-nuclear democratic state that eschews confrontation with the United States), the consequence would be to undermine our relations with our current Arab friends. With the Iranians less of a threat, the Arabs would feel freer to concentrate on what they don’t like about the United States and Israel. It is likely that at least some Arab countries would start looking to China and even India to reduce their strategic ties to the US. Arms deals and aerospace contracts would go to the Europeans, Indians, Chinese and Russians. The pundits, I have no doubt, would start yammering about the decline of American power in the Middle East.

American power in the world has both a ceiling and a floor. If America gets too powerful and the world looks too unipolar, then countries around the world start acting in ways that cut America down to size. If China collapsed into years of internal dissension, turbulence and instability, India, Japan and South Korea might well take the opportunity to distance themselves from America. When the Soviet Union collapsed, many of the NATO countries (and especially Germany and France) looked for ways to stake out a more independent world role.

In George W. Bush’s first term, many officials foolishly did and said things that triggered ‘ceiling behavior’ around the world. They created the impression that America had the power and the will to reshape the entire international order to its taste. In truth, we lacked both the ability and the will to carry that through; the Bush rhetoric alienated other countries and set off negative reactions around the world in part because it did not fully grasp the dynamics of America’s world role.

But American power has a floor as well as a ceiling. Just as the defeat in Vietnam ended up by strengthening our ties with Asian countries who were suddenly terrified we would abandon the region in a general retreat, the difficulties the Bush administration experienced did not, as so many of its critics predicted, lead to a general collapse of America’s world position. A chastened but still powerful America is more or less what most of the world really wants: an America that is strong enough to defend regional power balances in Europe, Asia and the Middle East, but not so strong and cocky that it believes it can remake the world in the short term.

Many Europeans (especially in Germany and France) told me during the first Bush term that they hoped that America would win in Iraq once the war started — but that they hoped the win would be slow and painful enough that we would not want to repeat the experience. This, more or less, is what happened and today many of those same Europeans are more worried about the possibility that President Obama will not be assertive enough with American power than they are worried about American arrogance and pride.

For American policy makers, the point here is that we should understand both the natural strengths and the natural limits of America’s position. We want and need to operate in that middle ground between feckless retreat and hubristic assertion. If we do that, we will still face problems in the world, but more often than not we will face them with friends and allies at our side.

Over the long term, what American policy makers need to remember (and what I fear too many have forgotten in both parties over the last couple of decades) is that America’s international standing and security ultimately depend on health of our domestic economy — and that the economy in turn ultimately depends on the dynamic, self-reliant, entrepreneurial and, yes, virtuous character of the American people. Unless our educational, cultural and political institutions reflect and support these characteristics, American power could rot away at the core.

It is hard to know in advance whether the consequences of that would be worse for the Americans or for a world, whose fragile peace and prosperity so largely depend on what we do. But I have no doubt that the consequences for both Americans and the wider world would be much, much grimmer than anything the world witnessed in the dreadful century now receding into the rear view mirror.

Sunday Garden

Picked a couple more pounds of 'maters today.

This time of year the tomatoes get really funky -- I threw as many into the woods as went into the basket. One was green on one half, and over-ripe on the other side already!

If I can get decent weather for a couple more weeks, may have some peppers and a couple more eggplants, too.