I’m not cut out for blogging. I get wrapped up in life and stop writing about it, but I’m still here, still working on poultry genetics, still frustrated that I can’t travel, still putting a plan together to get out of here and onto a tropical farm.

In the meantime, the president of the United States is trying to kill himself and take as many people down with him as possible, my cell service is getting worse by the day (thanks, Verizon), I’m drawing unemployment for the first time in my life (thanks, Covid), the claims website is so overloaded I’m lucky if I can submit my weekly claim at all, and when I do finally manage to get through the process without the page crashing, I’m a week behind schedule, and oh— I have a huge rat problem. So, uh… interesting times we’re living in, I guess.

I’m not trying to complain. The truth is I have it better than many people right now, maybe even most people. And I’m more or less healthy; these days that should be the headline, not the afterthought. But I do feel we should all get to subtract one year from our ages and give 2020 a do-over. Plus that would mean I get to go to Panama again, right?

Here’s a partial list of what I’ve accomplished toward my goal since the last time I posted:

1. I have a shipping container and am in the process of moving my tools and some other belongings into it. When it’s moving time it just has to go into a trailer and I’m off. I do not have the trailer yet, but I’m working on it. Having the tools and other stuff out of the shop will also allow me to clean the shop up. (I’ll write more about how shipping containers figure into my larger plans at a later time.)

2. I’ve put the word out that I want to sell my property. I had been hoping to keep it, but I realized that was holding me back, so I’m working on selling it. I owe very little on it now so a sale would mean enough for a big down payment on a ranch and plenty of moving budget.

3. I’ve been paying down my credit cards. I haven’t been super good about it, but I’m getting there. Depending on what happens with the next stimulus, I should be in a place where my only debt is my student loan, and we’ll just not talk about how much that is.

4. I’ve been getting my vehicles in better shape to move. My van is at about 90%; my truck needs more work, but I’ve made major progress and the main things I need are a good body person to tighten up all the panels I’ve replaced, and a good HVAC person to fix that system, since the local hacks have failed to do so multiple times.

4. I bought a car dolly so if my Camry doesn’t get fixed by moving time I can tow it easily.

5. I’ve added some new breeds to my poultry. That doesn’t have anything to do with moving but it does get me closer to my future goals with regard to poultry breeding, and it doesn’t change anything for the move. In chickens, I’ve added Sicilian buttercup, Penedesenca, and Appenzeller Spitzhauben. In pigeons I’ve added Texan pioneers and American giant homers. I’ve also had some successful Narragansett turkey, Ayam Cemani, and Muscovy duck breedings. If this is all nonsense words to you, that’s understandable, but to me it’s pretty exciting stuff.

6. This one’s big — I have a partner of sorts. Basically, if I move to Texas and am able to get a property with two homes on it, or one home and an RV hookup, I have a family that will move with me, rent the larger home from me, and share in some of the farm chores. Obviously nothing’s a done deal until a lease is signed and there’s money in the bank, but if things work out on that front it will essentially ensure that my mortgage is paid and I can travel some, assuming Covid goes away at some point and Americans are welcome abroad again. If the arrangement falls through I’ll look for someone else to rent from me.

Anyway, I’m going to give this thing another go, and try to write a little more about the things I started this blog to write about. First thing will be to re-read everything and see what I already said. For now, I’m losing my train of thought, so I’ll sign off.

I hate that I’m writing about this.

Netflix really wants me to watch Tiger King. With a stay home order in full effect, there’s not much left on Netflix that I want to watch and haven’t seen yet. I feel like if I haven’t watched Tiger King by now, it’s pretty unlikely that I’m going to. You’d think that after suggesting it to me about fifty times and having me pass every single time, the algorithm would take the hint, but the Netflix algorithm, for all its purported sophistication, is a blunt instrument.

It’s not the first time the algorithm has offended me. For one thing, it seems to think I speak every human language fluently, as it constantly suggests foreign films and TV shows. I like foreign films, but I also like to multitask, and that’s hard to do if I have to read subtitles. And there was that time when I watched one standup special and Netflix spent the next year trying to get me to watch the racist ventriloquism of Jeff Dunham. I watch one British comedy and suddenly it’s all tea and crumpets and ‘ello guv’na. I watched Six Feet Under and for the next two years the algorithm assumed I was gay. It has no sense of moderation or subtlety. It doesn’t get that when I watch one DIY show, that doesn’t mean I want to watch every DIY show, or only DIY shows. Even worse, when new episodes come out of something I actually do watch, the algorithm is so busy pushing shit on me that I don’t want to see, it doesn’t bother to let me know. And I get it — First World problems, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t seriously annoying.

Still, none of it sticks in my craw quite like Tiger King. Continue reading →

Is it OK to pun off a pun? Don’t @ me.

A few weeks ago I watched an old episode of Penn and Teller’s show, Bullshit! (OK, I watched more than one episode… I was self-isolating due to Coronavirus at the time, which is my excuse for everything going forward.) On the show, I heard a familiar name — Andy Puzder; if that name sounds familiar to you, too, it’s because it should. Puzder used to be the CEO of CKE Restaurants, and CKE owns the Carl’s Jr. fast food chain, but it’s more likely that you heard of him when his name took a trip through your news and social media feeds due to his outspoken support for Donald Trump and his tone-deaf defense of using women in bikinis in his burger ads, both of which, rather predictably, became liabilities to his employer.

I don’t like Puzder, but it’s not because he supports the worst President and possibly worst person in US history — lots of people do that. And it’s not because he thought the height of the #metoo movement was a good time to rationalize selling hamburgers with videos of women dripping ketchup on their boobs. I’d have a hard time attacking those ads without attacking the women who starred in them, just as I’d have a hard time criticizing Andy Puzder’s anti-abortion activism while simultaneously telling the women in his burger ads what is and isn’t OK to do with their bodies.

My beef, as it were, with Puzder has nothing to do with his politics or his objectification of women. I don’t like Andy Puzder because he’s a liar. Specifically, on Penn and Teller: Bullshit!, Puzder looked right at the camera and said that Carl’s Jr. sells Angus burgers because Angus beef tastes the best. Continue reading →

The newest development for rural America in the midst of the Coronavirus pandemic — we’re being flooded with tourists.

Hey, city people — I get that you’re laid off from work, and you’re bored, or maybe you’re really scared, but you need to understand a few things. First and foremost, here in rural America, we’re underserved. That means that on a normal day, when there’s not a pandemic, we don’t have enough goods and services for everyone who lives here. What that means in practical terms is that we have to make trips to more populated places for supplies, there are various types of businesses that don’t operate here, and there are medical services, educational programs, etc., that simply aren’t available to us. For example, when one of us gets really sick or needs a complicated surgery, we get airlifted to your hospital, while you might have noticed that no one from your town has ever been airlifted to our hospital.

When there’s a disaster, our need for goods and services increases, and we become even more underserved. We might not be able to make our regular supply runs. The goods we truck in from elsewhere might come less frequently. Our hospital could be overwhelmed. When you then show up here and buy goods and use services, you make our situation even worse, and you actually put us in danger. Right now, my town’s one grocery store is rationing certain, essential items because people were hoarding them — that was a problem before you tourists showed up, but now you all want to buy those things, too. We’re running out. This problem disproportionately affects families on food stamps, by the way, as they have fewer alternatives when the items they need are out of stock.

The second thing you need to understand is that when you leave the city or the suburbs and come here, you’re making us sick. You don’t know if you’re carrying Coronavirus, but what you do know is that there are many more cases of the infection where you live, where more people live and work closer together, and it’s far more likely that you’ll spread the virus to us than the other way around. Cities are where viruses thrive, and they gradually make their way out here to us. It’s a good thing it takes awhile for the viruses to get to us, too, because it takes longer for us to get the resources we need to treat sick people. If we don’t have that lag time, we all get sick before we have the resources we need for treatment. Let me be perfectly clear — you’re going to kill some of us.

This is nothing new. For thousands of years, country people have been producing ‘stuff’ for city people, and city people, in return, have been shitting on us for it. We’re the uneducated, backward, backwoods creeps you love to make fun of, right until you want something from us. We grow all your food and fiber. We produce the materials that make up everything you own. Your fuel comes from us. Your electricity comes from our communities. We even make a lot of the air you breathe. We fight your wars, too, and when you want a vacation, you come to us.

(For the record, I have a graduate degree and I’m a liberal Democrat, just like you. The difference is that in addition to my book lernin’, I know how to survive indefinitely without your help, and I can kick your ass.)

You probably think you’re doing us a favor; you are giving us your money, after all. But the exchange is disproportionately in your favor; most of what you get from us is at the upstream end of the supply chain, where the lowest profit margins are. When finished products come back to our communities, we pay more than you pay for those same products, because we get a bunch of transportation expenses added to our prices. And at the downstream end of the supply chain — the wholesale and retail end — the margins are much bigger, and that’s money that leaves our community and goes back into yours.

Still, when it comes to services that tourists use, we give you a hell of a deal, especially on lodging; it’s great to get a little bit back from you in the form of tourist dollars, but most of us don’t work in tourism. Even those of us who do are going to use whatever money we earn to buy things that funnel the money right back into your community.

I’ve gone off on a bit of a tangent here because this is a big part of the subject matter of this website — how rural people can make more money and keep it in their own communities. But I’m also trying to illustrate just a few of the ways city people take advantage of us and take us for granted. Sometimes it’s just annoying. Sometimes it results in systemic issues that do a lot of harm. And in the case of a global pandemic, it can kill us.

Let me put this really clearly: a pandemic is not an occasion for you to travel. Don’t risk our lives for your convenience — I know, it’s essentially what you’ve been doing for thousands of years and your McMansion is made out of logger blood, but this is something much more linear and easier to understand. I’m asking you, please, don’t kill us. Go home. Stay home. If things get a better, we’ll see you this summer.

As I write this, locals are talking about closing the roads in and out of here, and not in any kind of official way. If that sounds extreme, let me assure you that it wouldn’t be the first time. Alternatively, we could all just stay home, where we live, and maybe we’ll all live a little longer.

I first heard about the new Coronavirus on January 22, at the Vancouver airport — not where you want to be when a deadly disease is spreading around the world via, you know, airplanes. At the time there wasn’t a lot of information yet, and certainly not enough to change my travel plans, so I went ahead with my Panama trip.

By the time I got back to Vancouver a couple weeks later, the first cases had been reported in Washington state. People were taking precautions. There were restrictions on travelers coming from mainland China. On the plane, an Asian guy coughed directly onto the back of my head, having made no attempt whatsoever to cover his cough. I’d like to think I’d have been just as pissed off if he’d been a white guy, and obviously white guys travel to and from China, and Asian guys travel to and from places that aren’t China, and I have no idea if the guy was even Chinese, much less where he was traveling from, apart from Houston… So I’d like to think my mind didn’t immediately go to a racist place when I felt that cough hit the back of my head like a wet fucking fist, but there was definitely a thought process that I went through…

I got home, and I got sick within a few days. First it was diarrhea, but I assumed it was just the change in diet. I always feel like shit when I transition back to American food. I had some mild, flu-like symptoms, but nothing serious, and I was well enough to take a small, home renovation job about two weeks after I got back.

A day or two after that job was done, I had a lot of fatigue and muscle and joint pain. I had frequent headaches and a fever. I had nightmares, which I attributed to the fever; I couldn’t sleep much at night because I thought people were coming into my room. At least once I woke up and yelled at someone to get out, but there was no one there.

I did not have any significant respiratory symptoms. I had a very minimal, dry cough. Within about a week I started to feel a bit better, but my sleep schedule was messed up from the nightmares I’d had, so I was sleeping during the day and staying up most of the night. I had good days and bad days from there on, and that’s where I am now. Last night I had some sinus issues but they were gone by morning. Some days I sneeze a lot, and other days I don’t. My symptoms have never been severe, I’ve been able to keep up with my chores, and if there wasn’t a pandemic in the news I might not think much of any of this. I’ve had long, lingering illnesses in the wintertime before, typically about once every five years or so, and they’re usually worse than this. Mostly I’m just tired.

I don’t think I have, or had, Coronavirus, but I’d like to know. I’d like to be tested. I don’t think that makes me paranoid or a hypochondriac; I think I’m being very reasonable.

Today I noticed that the hospital has a new drive-up window, so I drove on up. Inside the booth was a woman in sort of a hazmat suit — it wasn’t like the guys in the movies, but she was fully covered. I explained my situation and asked if I could get a test, and long story short, I could not. I was able to get my temperature taken, right there in my car, which was great — they should have that all the time. I’d be all about drive through blood draws, too. Anyway, I did not have a fever, so I was advised to just keep track of my symptoms, but I didn’t qualify for a test. And that makes me really fucking angry.

We’ve had the ability to test for this virus at least since late January; today is March 19. Other countries are testing thousands of people per day. Our president told us last month that anyone who wanted a test could get one, and that the tests were “beautiful,” whatever the fuck that means. And then today I find out that while the president and other Republicans were downplaying the severity of the virus, at least one Republican senator was quietly selling off his stock portfolio. I wonder how many of the others were doing the same, while claiming that this virus was no big deal, or that it was a Democrat hoax — stalling for time while the rest of us went without the ability to even check to see if we had the fucking thing. To be clear, people died during that time, and people are still dying.

A friend of mine told me I’m not in the right tax bracket to get tested. I don’t know if that’s true, but it kind of seems that way.

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No one will eat at the local Chinese place anymore. I’m trying to go at least once a week; I really like the soup. All the restaurants are take-out or delivery only, and a lot of them are just closed until further notice. The grocery store is out of toilet paper, hand sanitizer, pasta, beans, and rice. It’s almost like people are planning a very big, weird, gross party that I’m really happy to not be invited to. When the last of the toilet paper was gone, they started buying up all the paper towels; I’m pretty sure they’re going to start flushing paper towels down the toilet and doing catastrophic damage to the sewage system. This will probably start happening all across the country in the next few weeks, creating a nationwide fatberg apocalypse.

I’m a ‘wash it, don’t wipe it’ guy, which means I probably have a cleaner and healthier butthole than you do, and I haven’t bought toilet paper (or had a hemorrhoid) in a decade. I have a good immune system, and I’ve had regular medical checkups to prove it; if I haven’t already had this virus, when I do eventually catch it, I’ll survive it. I’m also not worried about people hoarding food; I have plenty of eggs I can eat, and chickens, and whatever else I can find around here; I’m good for at least a few months before I have to start poaching deer or pillaging neighboring villages.

I’ll be fine. I just want to know if I have this virus, or if I had it before and I’ve since recovered. I’d like to know if I’m immune to it now, or still at risk, but since I couldn’t get access to testing in any kind of a timely manner, and I still can’t, I may never know if I’ve had this thing or not. I’d like to know when I can visit my family without putting their lives in danger. And I can’t help thinking that I wouldn’t have all these questions if the guy in the White House wasn’t a bumbling psychopath.

I wonder how people would have voted in 2016 if they’d known this pandemic was heading our way. I wonder what this country would look like if we voted like our lives depended on it. Because it turns out they fucking do.

November is coming.

I was in Panama from the end of January, 2020, through the beginning of February. I didn’t drive to Panama, but I drove for two straight weeks in Panama, so it’s a road trip, and this is my report. For a quick description of what this report is, and isn’t, go here.

The plan: Go to Panama, rent a car, drive it all over the place.

This map shows everywhere I drove in Panama, although a few roads weren’t on the map and in some cases I don’t know what road I was driving. Red dots indicate places I spent the night, including three separate nights in Panama City and two nights in Mechi. I need to look into an app or something that can generate maps like this for me, because this took way too long to make.

Panama in a nutshell: Modern cities, indigenous villages, beaches, volcanoes, jungles, coffee, cattle.

Continue reading →

Imagine you have an orchard, and in your orchard you have ten thousand apple trees. Your trees are planted in rows, spaced several feet apart, and having them all together in one place is very convenient. It allows you to harvest apples and conduct maintenance operations easily. The trees themselves are all identical — clones of the same parent tree, let’s say Red Delicious, and your clones are all grafted to rootstocks that are also genetically identical. Having identical trees is great; you know exactly what’s in your orchard, there’s no confusion as to how the trees need to be cared for because they’re all the same, and come harvest time, there’s no chance of the apples getting mixed up, because they’re all Red Delicious. This is how nearly all modern commercial agriculture is done — one, homogeneous crop, on the largest scale possible.

One day, one of your apple trees develops a fungal infection in its roots; there’s no way to know where it came from, but it’s an infection unique to apple trees, and as it turns out, the rootstock you used is especially susceptible to this particular fungus. The conditions this year were just right for the fungus to thrive, and since it’s in the soil, you can’t really remove it. There are treatments you can try, but none of them are 100% effective, and from that first tree that became infected, the fungus is now spreading, and trees are dying.

Continue reading →

When I came up with this url a few days ago I was thinking: I’m 44, ergo this is year 45 of my life, and it’s simple and easy to remember and hard to misspell… Today I realized that 45 is also the number of a certain terrible US president and the current worst person in the world, whose name I’d prefer not to mention at the moment, so at the risk of getting some really stupid hate mail, no, this has nothing to do with that 45.

Anybody can have a website, and if you create enough content, search engines will present you to the world as a leading voice in a field in which you’re a mere novice, or worse yet, a tourist. This is a problem.

Likewise, true experts can get buried. Sure, you have a PhD in your field, decades of experience, dozens of articles in peer reviewed journals, a couple books, and the respect and admiration of your colleagues, but how many Twitter followers do you have?

I’ve found a lot of misinformation online, some of it even dangerous, much of it from bloggers, many of whom make money from blogging. People tend to present themselves as experts, even when, maybe especially when, they are not. One of the truest marks of expertise is a realistic assessment of what you haven’t yet learned, while a beginner dips his toe in the water and fancies himself an oceanographer.

It feels good to think you know a lot about something. It feels good to think you’re helping people. I don’t believe many people are deliberately spreading bad information and getting paid for it, but that doesn’t change the end result — an Internet that is supposed to make us smarter, and instead does quite the opposite.

So I want to make a few things clear: I’m a good researcher, but I’m fairly new to a lot of the subject matter on this site. The reason I’m here is to cast a wide net by publishing what I’m working on, and hopefully connect with some people who share my interests. I want to be very careful to not present myself as an authoritative figure, and I want to ask forgiveness in advance if I get something badly wrong. As a lifelong learner, being wrong from time to time is part of the deal.

The most important thing I learned in school wasn’t math or science or English; it was critical thinking, and unfortunately, it seems that schools don’t teach it much anymore. I urge anyone reading this site to muster all of your critical thinking skills and apply them to what you read. I don’t necessarily need an email from you every time you disagree with me, but you shouldn’t assume that I know what I’m talking about simply because I have a website. Millions of idiots have websites, and I could easily be one of them. Reader beware.