May 9, 2019 Night

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Good evening! Rain showers and 57 degrees ☔ Breezy, ️18 mph breeze from the south-southeast 🌬 with gusts up to 29 mph 💨💨💨. You can hear the wind blowing around. The skies will clear Saturday around 2 am.

I went over to John Wolcott’s house for a while to keep going through his files. 📂 I found a few interesting tidbits and a lot of other random stuff that both of us struggled to figure out. Never know what you will find in the archives. I’m more interested in contemporary history although lately I’ve not seen much of that in the boxes.

John was saying Another Save the Pine Bush person is donating their family land to conservation. 🌳I think that’s a wonderful thing to do. If some day I own 50 or 100 acres of a mountain somewhere it would be nice to donate it to a state forest preserve after my time has gone and the house is burned to the ground and the foundation backfilled in. It’s not like I’m going to need it when my time is thru.

Tonight will have a chance of showers, mainly after midnight. Cloudy 🌧, with a low of 52 degrees at 3am. Seven degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical night around May 30th. South wind 15 to 18 mph, with gusts as high as 29 mph. Chance of precipitation is 40%. New precipitation amounts of less than a tenth of an inch possible. In 2018, we had mostly clear skies. It got down to 56 degrees. The record low of 28 occurred back in 1958.

Tonight will have a Waxing Crescent Moon 🌒 with 39% illuminated with the moon setting at 12:58 am. The moon will set at 1:00 am. The First Quarter Moon will be tomorrow with mostly cloudy skies. The Flower Moon 🌝 is on Friday, May 17th. The sun will rise at 5:38 am with the first light at 5:07 am, which is one minute and 11 seconds earlier than yesterday. 🌄 Tonight will have 9 hours and 33 minutes of darkness, a decrease of 2 minutes and 15 seconds over last night.

Tomorrow will have showers likely, with thunderstorms also possible after 5pm. Cloudy 🌦, with a high of 66 degrees at 5pm. Two degrees below normal, which is similar to a typical day around May 5th. Maximum dew point of 57 at 4pm. South wind around 14 mph, with gusts as high as 30 mph. Chance of precipitation is 70%. New rainfall amounts between a quarter and half of an inch possible. I think the Western Adirondacks may have more. A year ago, we had mostly sunny skies. The high last year was 73 degrees. The record high of 92 was set in 1970. 5.0 inches of snow fell back in 1945.❄

I decided to call off the weekend trip. Saturday may be half decent but the inch plus of rain we may get tomorrow – especially in the Western Adirondacks – doesn’t sound real nice. ⛺ Unless a campsite is well drained, it’s going to be saturated as will all the wood for burning. 🔥 I am a little worried about the campsites at Stewart Landing being really wet, as I don’t think they are particularly well drained and there always is some big mud puddles back there, and honestly the ground is not really firm as snow has been gone from that area less than a month now. Plus parking tomorrow in the city with the tulip festival 🌷 would be a female dog 🐶.

Right now, a split verdict on the weekend. 😕 Saturday, partly sunny, with a high near 62. Northwest wind 14 to 16 mph, with gusts as high as 26 mph. Saturday doesn’t look bad but the woods will be so wet. Maximum dew point of 41 at 6am. Maybe I could hike Platte Kill Road in West Saugerties through the gorge? Sunday, a slight chance of rain. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 58. Chance of precipitation is 20%. Typical average high for the weekend is 68 degrees. I’ll take it one day at a time I guess. I’m hoping now for better weather come Memorial Day Weekend.

I’d love to have a big ass fire 🔥 and drink some beer 🍻 but things can wait until Memorial Day Weekend. Probably black flies will be bad that weekend ant 🐜 but that’s what staying up late is all about. Hopefully the ground will dry out by then. If

After reading that Bloomberg article 📰 on wealthy hermits without wills I’m actually kind of fascinated by the topic – and hermits more generally. I know that I at some point should write a will 📝, especially as I acquire property and would like it eventually to be public land 🌲for hunting and recreation. I really like the idea of the simple life, living in the backwoods without all the material crap of modernity. Maybe a 4×4 truck, al tractor 🚜 and an ATV but duck a television 📺 or home internet.

In four weeks on June 6 the sun will be setting at 8:30 pm,🌄 which is 25 minutes and 38 seconds later then tonight. In 2018 on that day, we had partly sunny and temperatures between 72 and 48 degrees. Typically, you have temperatures between 75 and 54 degrees. The record high of 94 degrees was set back in 1925.

I am thinking now about a June trip to Moss Island. 🌼 It will be warmer than and maybe more wildflowers at that point. I believe Green Acres dairy bar 🍦will be open and I can grab a burger 🍔 after hiking and then camp ⛺ up on Piseco Powley Road and if it’s warm enough out cool off in the potholers.

Looking ahead, Average High is 70 🐮 is in 1 weeks, Summer ️⛱️ is in 6 weeks, Independence Day 🇺🇸 is in 8 weeks, August 🌻 is in 12 weeks and Last Sunset After 7 PM 🌆 is in 21 weeks.

Fourth and final night at Chicken Co-op Rd

NPR

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Trump Administration Considering Changes That Would Redefine The Poverty Line : NPR

The current poverty line for a family of four is about $26,000. Each year, the government adjusts the line for inflation based on the consumer price index. Among the options that the administration is considering is whether to use a version called the "chained CPI," which is lower than the rate currently used. The chained CPI assumes that as the prices of goods go up, individuals substitute less expensive items, thereby reducing their overall expenses.

Some economists argue that this is a more accurate way to measure inflation, and both Barack Obama's and George W. Bush's administrations tried, without success, to introduce the use of the chained CPI in federal programs.

Why Is It So Hard to Predict the Future? – The Atlantic

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Why Is It So Hard to Predict the Future? – The Atlantic

The bet was on, and it was over the fate of humanity. On one side was the Stanford biologist Paul R. Ehrlich. In his 1968 best seller, The Population Bomb, Ehrlich insisted that it was too late to prevent a doomsday apocalypse resulting from overpopulation. Resource shortages would cause hundreds of millions of starvation deaths within a decade. It was cold, hard math: The human population was growing exponentially; the food supply was not. Ehrlich was an accomplished butterfly specialist. He knew that nature did not regulate animal populations delicately. Populations exploded, blowing past the available resources, and then crashed.

Japanese knotweed, the invasive plant that just won’t die.

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Japanese knotweed, the invasive plant that just won’t die.

t’s been nearly four years since I bought hypodermic needles at a CVS, squatted in my backyard, and drew them full of glyphosate. I’d done my best to build a little garden in Brooklyn, only to see the ground begin to vanish beneath the fastest-growing plant I had ever seen. It sprouted in April with a pair of tiny, beet-red leaves between the flagstones, and poked up like asparagus through the mulch. By May the leaves were flat and green and bigger than my hands, and the stems as round as a silver dollar. My neighbor’s yard provided a preview of what was coming my way: a grove as thick as a cornfield, 10 feet high, from the windows to the lot line. I had to kill the knotweed.