MODIS Terra – Earth Day 2024 !
Watching as things green up locally.
Drivin’ the train high on cocaine 
Singing along with the Grateful Dead, I woke up at four AM to start the beans and while I laid on and off in bed through seven AM I also put the bread in at 5 and cooked cornmeal-spinach-onion pancakes for breakfast and had some coffee using up the rest of the milk, putting the jug into the white bag for carbon dioxide recycling.
Apparently all the farmers were showing the turning over of earth and burning off the burn piles of DEF jugs in celebration of Earth Day yesterday. 
That and it won’t be long until planting season, with May a week off and things starting to green up. I was seeing the Pennsylvania rednecks were happy to see the wind died down. 
Happy Belated Earth Day. 
Been sleeping so well until last night. 
I woke up around 1 AM fell back asleep, at 4 AM I started the beans on the stove, and sort of dosed off a bit but by 5 AM was up cooking
Going to be a nice day for the ride in. 
Sunny and mild, light breeze, deep blue skies. Tomorrow too. More clouds on Friday though which I am planning to take off and rain come Saturday, Not exactly sure where I’m going but I want to get out of town for a few days. 
I miss nights in the wilderness, and finally it seems like the fire danger is down and the weather is improving, though I’m sure soon the black flies will be back. I haven’t taken Friday off yet but I’ll make the decision this afternoon. 
I
This evening regardless of my weekend plans I need to get to the grocery store. 
I am already pretty low on supplies but by this evening I’ll know what I’ll need for the weekend. 
Even if it looks rainy, I might still want to get away, as it would be good for fishing 
and doing some reading 
that is next to the fire 
or the heater. I could certainly just use a few days away from it all, particularly without the phone and the internet. 
Plus I wouldn’t mind getting some bacon from For the Love of Bacon. 
I am starting to think my laptop is on it’s last legs. 
I think one of screen capacitors is going, or I have a loose connection in it. I have had this laptop since November 2016, so it’s nearly 9 years old. It has worked much better then the previous Samsung laptop I had which died after 4 years, and same with the Thinkpad that I got 5 years out of since it really started to fall apart. I am happy with the performance of this machine, it runs Linux well, but I think I want to look at a used laptop going forward.
Closing The Nutrient Cycle
On Earth Day, I was watching some videos about of all things - Earth. Seriously though, it sure seems like a crap a lot now that I eat healthy, and it seems like such a waste of materials not to be capturing that as compost but instead sending it all to landfill. Outhouses are great in sense they provide local disposal, but at same time, you're still not recovering the nutrients in the waste.
It’s the wind that is going to get you. 
The late Albany historian John Wolcott talked a lot about risks of climate change driven wind causing local calamities. The jet stream winds is rapidly accelerating as more and more energy in the form of carbon is dumped into the atmosphere and cold and warm are fighting it out. The right conditions and insanely fast winds can be pushed to the ground.
Wind is no joke. Mr. Wolcott told stories of the Great Appalachian Storm of 1950, that Thanksgiving Day storm that not only devasted the south with flooding and a blizzard and caused a great blow down of trees in the Adirondacks. During that day in Albany winds blew at speeds averaging 50-60 mph with a peak gust of 83 mph recorded at airport. Several buildings in Albany – some built before the Civil War – collapsed under the forces of the all day winds. The New York City area saw winds in excess of 100 miles per hour during that storm.
Not to mention the fire risks. Much of the Albany Pine Bush is a fire dependent ecosystem, and there is a belief that local fire departments can control brush fires and that brush fires are unlikely to burn far into suburban neighborhoods or even urban areas. But that’s a dangerously ignorant belief. A small brush fire may be containable but a fire pushed by 100 mph plus winds might burn through whole neighborhoods, incinerating Crossgates and SUNY without mercy, even pushing into the Pine Hills. While such things are thought unthinkable, such thinking is dangerously outdated.
Consumerism and House Buying Experience 
“Mr. Green, He’s So Serene, He’s Got a TV in Every Room” – Pleasant Valley Sunday, the Monkees!
Being in my forties now and researching buying houses and land, I am struck by how many consumer ads I am flooded with. I get that I am in my prime purchasing years in my life, and once I own a home, I will need to make repairs and get at least some furnishings and appliances, but the endless advertisements for dinning room sets, roof replacements, insulation and building systems, solar panels and especially those gutter leaf guards. As apparently leaf-filled gutters are the biggest menace ever to the suburban house-owner. I get it — leafs plug gutters, they rot, make gutters heavy and overflow, rotting the boards near them, then eventually the gutters fall from the building if not cleaned. Just like vinyl siding is convenient, even if it’s often poorly applied and accelerates underlying rot, as is case in one house I looked at earlier in the summer.
There are first the endless seeming ads for heat pumps and grid-tied solar. I swear NYSERDA with their promotion of Heat Pumps is always one of the top targeted ads on my blog, at least for me. Since I’ve started advertising on my blog it’s usually the first ad I see. I am not saying that that a heat pump won’t necessarily be a choice when I build my off-grid homestead, but I think I would much rather use a woodstove and locally-harvested source of wood for heat and open the windows in the summer. I’ve never had air conditioning nor do I have much interest in it.
Maybe I am particularly annoyed by the web and podcast advertising as I don’t own a television so I’m not bombarded with television messages all day long, and I’ve cut back dramatically on listening to NPR as it’s mostly stories about how Donald Trump is a dark cloud over the nation. And maybe it’s a good change over what was the advertising I got a few years back, which all way praising the benefits of Better Help and Mental Health Therapy, then weight loss and meal plans, then financial advisors. I get targeted advertising is just trying to sell to interested customers.
But it makes the whole idea of owning a home all the more repulsive. Buying a new house — you’ll want to consider renting a dumpster for all that shit you’ll inevitably rip out and not want to bring into your new life and instead send to that growing mound of toxic filth on the outskirts of the city. Don’t forget the convenience of garbage service, as the advertiser remind you. You can toss it one bin for pretend recycling! Don’t even think of burning it, that’s illegal even out in the country. And you’ll want home internet, because nobody can live without high-speed internet in every room. Got to recycle the paint, that you inevitably won’t use up, because they’re is lots of state money now for paint take-back programs. And so forth. Even thinking of buying a home, or expressing any kind of interest, fills you feed with so much repulsive advertising crap on all the things you will want to buy.
Earth
One of my new camp flags is this pretty Earth Flag. The screen print of the Blue Marble isn't perfect, but it still is a nice flag that was quite affordable.
Sunday April 16, 2017 — Exploring the Apartment
The Pope Smokes Dope 
That was the album I was listening to while riding in yesterday morning. David Peel and Lower East Side. And that song was playing when I pulled into the office on my mountain bike, probably not the most appropriate song but maybe better then F is Not a Dirty Word.
Happy Earth Day. As they say, Earth First Biden Second. Or something like that. Lol. I think I like thinking about smoking dope more then I actually do. I haven’t beens stoned since up at camp in January, and even then I didn’t really smoke that much. I do just think about to those days singing along with the Dire Wolf last summer next to the waterfall, laughing my brains out. 
Good times.
Riding to work today, you know it’s Earth Day, gotta be green. 
Plus I don’t want to pay for gas for my big jacked up truck or the bus fare. And I like riding in. Going to be a nice day for riding. I have a Save the Pine Bush Zoom Meeting, which I will participate in during the evening commute over my Bluetooth speaker. 
Seems like a green thing to do, plus it’s fun and doesn’t cost anything. Well except for all the parts it seems like I’m constantly feeding the bike with all the miles I ride.
Lots of onions, mushrooms, spinach, tons of freshly crushed garlic, turmeric and cumin with two eggs this morning. 
What can I say, I like pungent, strong things. None of this weak saucy crap people like to eat loaded with grease. I want to smell and really taste my food. Maybe that’s why I like farming, burn barrels and smoking pot so much, it’s pungent. 
Honest, if you burn that plastic garbage hot it doesn’t smell that much. I should get by the For the Love Bacon 
if I can get out of jail early on Thursday or Friday to head to the wilderness. Bacon is good, as is supporting local hog farms 
and yes that plastic wrapper will burn just fine, but don’t tell a liberal on this Earth Day. Hell, I’ve produced a lot less trash than most people bit maybe a bit more dioxin.
Yesterday I went out to Five Rivers after work, 
down off of Mason Lane and walked around a bit and I’m listening to the Maggie Haberman’s Confidence Man about Donald John Trump. I am always fascinated by power brokers and how power works even if I’m increasingly repelled by politics and quite happy now to be in data department far removed from downtown and all the craziness. 
That said I need a vacation away from it all. Maybe with the Dire Wolf, some fire in the wilderness.
I haven’t asked for Friday much less Thursday afternoon off to head to Adirondacks but it all depends on the state budget, as it’s kind of obnoxious to ask for a day off to smoke pot in wilderness and burn things up in woods when people are stuck at office working. Maybe I’ll take Monday off instead of Friday, or maybe I’ll just leave on Friday after work and do a two day weekend in Schoharie or Rensselearville. Saturday once again looks rainy but I still want to get out of town. 
What can I say, the mountains, or at least the hills and hollars are calling and soon the black flies will be out.
Maybe I have lyrics on my brain… “Everybody smoking marijuana / Everybody smoking marijuana / Everybody smoking marijuana”
