Farm News 05-25-08

Sunday morning, after chores, 76° and muggy

Weight: 207, oops!

Barn News

There are ten baby chicks that Jesse hatched in his incubator now living in a brooder in the barn. I moved the ducklings out of the barn brooder and into the bigger brooder in the rabbitry.

Early Thursday morning we had 2.6” of rain, which we needed. I did some tilling in the garden on Wednesday, it was like trying to till up a parking lot, only dustier. Saturday morning we had an additional 0.9” of rain.

Drusilla, one of the bantam hens, has a nest in the same stall where Beth goose has her nest. When I went out to do chores Saturday evening Drusilla was walking around making disgusted, angry sounds. I looked in the stall and, sure enough, there was Beth sitting on Drusilla's nest instead of her own. Beth was possibly influenced by my having removed all her eggs from her nest and putting them in the incubator; I thought she had quit laying. Beth frequently returns to her nest when she is upset, which is a good deal of the time.

A few minutes after I arrived Beth came out of the stall and went back to following the goslings around, worrying like a Jewish mother. Drusilla went back to her nest, but continued to make unhappy sounds. Finally I went back in the stall and chased Drusilla off her nest to see if Beth had perhaps broken an egg.

No, Beth didn't break an egg, but she did leave a very large goose egg in the middle of the nest. When Drusilla tried to sit on the goose egg, she couldn't reach down far enough to cover her own eggs. I moved Beth's egg over to Beth's nest, Drusilla returned to her nest, and, after a few more expressions of disgust, settled down to incubating her eggs.

New FOOL Web Site

All readers are invited to visit www.OskaloosaFool.org, the web site of the Friends of the Oskaloosa Library. I have spent the past month or so creating the site, and then I completely crashed it last week and had to start all over. If you register on the site, you can use it to send messages to me. Also, everyone is welcome to add book reviews.

Books

My gosh! I only read one book last week. The June issue of Scientific American arrived, which took some time. Also, I'm started on a new non-fiction which I might finish this week.

The Big Pasture by Will Henry

A good enough western. And, it's in large print. At one point in the book he lists the different species of wildflowers blooming in a high Montana meadow. One he listed was a late summer bloomer and he had it blooming in the spring, but the rest were correct. He also knows that a moon just past full rises a while after sunset. I appreciate an author who knows what he is writing about.

Farm News 05-18-08

Sunday morning, after chores, 69

Weight: 206 lbs.

Barn News

Baby ducks! Saturday morning, when I went to the barn to do chores, I looked at a duck that was setting on eggs, and a little head popped out from under one of her wings! They're hatching! Saturday evening three little duckies were out from under mama, looking at the world.

Tuesday morning Sally's bunnies discovered they could hop out of the nest box and see all sorts of things. They are plump, healthy bunnies with great curiosity. They're all black, even though neither parent is black. On Monday they will be going to the library to learn about handling small children.

The three goslings are now running free with Beth and Albus. Albus is treating them better and they are enjoying life on the lawn. Bobby, the oldest gosling, seems to prefer Albus to Beth; when the adults go in different directions Bobby usually follows Albus.

Shotgun has some sort of disorder and is displaying strange symptoms. She seems be vertiginous, walks with her legs splayed out a bit, and her head twitches about some. She has become very noisy, yowling whenever she sees a human and demanding attention. She is continuing to feed her kittens, although she ignores them otherwise.

I asked Dr. S., our glamorous vet, if Shotgun could have rabies, but Dr. S. thought not, that once an animal starts showing signs of rabies they usually die soon. Shotgun has been this way for more than a week, becoming neither better nor worse during that time.

The Year of the Fairy

In Kansas City I entered the Year of the Fairy, 1969, by associating myself with the North American Council of Homophile Organizations, (acronym NACHO, but that was before nachos you eat, so it was pronounced nay ko, which means, in some forgotten language, 'a club of fairies'). The Ecstatic Umbrella took on the job of being a communication center for the national gay movement, and, as part of the deal, I was named 'Director of Communications' by NACHO. That was an honor that very few people had been trying to win, especially not a heterosexual man who frolicked in bed several times each day with his Jewish Butterfly. That my father-in-law forgave me is a testament to the basic decency of mankind.

A Director is a very important person and is expected to collect a wardrobe in keeping with his status. [Whoops! '. . .his/her' status]. I had black Italian shoes, pearl-gray bell-bottom trousers, snug across my ass, an indescribably floral gold, green, and scarlet shirt, a black, claw-hammer tail coat, a beaded sash, that crossed my chest from shoulder to waist, carrying a great medal, and a naval officer's hat with an outrageous drawing of male genitalia on the top, done with pink marker. By golly, I was splendiferous in that costume. Those fairies were licking their chops over getting me to direct their communications.

The big event of 1969 was the annual conference of NACHO, when lesbians, fairies, and transsexuals from all across the nation congregated and conjugated in Kansas City for a week of planning the struggle for gay rights. The discussions at the various meetings was usually sober and serious, but, conducted in a wash of sexual desire. It was strange to be in situations where everybody was horny but there was nobody who stimulated my desire.

One of the participants, an astronomy professor from an east coast university, was a T-room Cruiser. I had to ask what that meant. A T-room Cruiser is a man who likes to have casual sex with men he meets in public toilets. The professor was cruising the public toilets in a city park on a Friday night when he was intercepted by several large men carrying clubs. They beat him half to death and left him lying in the park. A second T-room Cruiser found the professor lying unconscious, ran to the nearest phone, and called the Ecstatic Umbrella.

I called for an ambulance and went to the park, arriving just before the ambulance. The professor was regaining consciousness and asked me to stay with him while the ambulance took him to the hospital. He was still alive when we arrived at the hospital, but he looked pretty rough, bleeding from the ears and nose. The hospital people whisked him away and I sat around reading old copies of Ladies Home Companion for about an hour.

Finally, a doc came out and asked me what had happened to him. I told the doc that someone had beat him up, which I thought was fairly obvious, as the man hadn't done all that to himself while shaving. The doc said that the only times he saw injuries like that they had been inflicted by the police. Again, that seemed fairly obvious, as the police were about the only people in Kansas City who would regularly beat up folks in public parks. I think the doc expected someone to do something about a professor of astronomy being beaten up by the police, I guess he hadn't lived in Kansas City very long.

The professor recovered and, a week later, returned to his home in the east. The cops continued to beat up people they didn't like, although they had not yet killed anyone I knew, that would come later. I became more committed to gay rights. Nothing really changed.

Books

Three westerns. The first was even more trite than the title and the other two were pretty good. Then I read a prize winner.

Gunsmoke Over Texas by Bradford Scott

Cowboys versus oilmen. Not a good book, but it was in large print.

Shotgun by Elmer Kelton

Kelton is a reliable writer. His books are always interesting enough to read all the way through.

Fort Hogan by Frank Bonham

This one was about cowboys running guns to Mexico and selling them to the Yaqui Indians. I liked it. I'll read more by Bonham.

The Known World by Edward P. Jones

A great book, one that will be around for a long while. I hope to read it again in a year or so, after the first reading has had time to settle in.

Farm News 05-11-08

Sunday morning, after chores, 45°

Weight: 206 lbs.

Barn News

Friday morning there were two baby ducks in the incubator. Saturday morning the two babies were still there and three more were trying to escape from their shells. By noon on Saturday there were four baby ducks, with one still working at escaping the shell. Newly hatched ducks can stay in the incubator for several days before they need food or water. Just before hatching they draw what is left of the yolk into their bodies and it provides the nutrients they need for their first few days.

The three goslings were allowed to go out of their brooder box and roam free for the first time on Saturday. Albus, the gander, likes to hassle them but he doesn't seem to do any damage.

I've been lazy and haven't written anything for this week. Instead, I ate a cheeseburger and gained a pound. When you get old the wages of sin are paid in pounds.

Books

A political thriller and a western I'd read several years ago.

The Whole Truth by David Baldacci

Baldacci writes good political thrillers. This has all the standard parts, including a hero who is bitter but unbeatable. I had a hard time putting it down.

Ace in the Hole by Jackson Gregory

I first read this several years ago but didn't remember much of it. A fun book.

Farm News 05-04-08

Sunday morning, after chores, 47°

Weight: 205 lbs. Hah!

Barn News

Thursday, I took Bobby and the two younger goslings out of the brooder box to see a bit of the world. Auntie Beth, the oldest goose, is very maternal and has been staying near the goslings most of the time, talking to them often. Beth became excited when I took them out of the box, making a lot of noise, which alerted Albus, the gander, who came charging into the barn to rescue his flock. Like most ganders, Albus's behaviors remind one of the back end of the white horse the hero is riding.

Beth, unable to stand the confusion, retreated to her nest, complaining of a headache. Albus looked around wildly for a foe to vanquish, saw one of the goslings, and gave it a hard pinch. The gosling, unhurt, scampered out of reach while Albus searched for the next foe. It is difficult to maintain a heroic life when guided by only testosterone and a bird brain.

I picked up the three goslings and put them back in the box. Albus left the barn to see if there were any threats outside, and Beth left her nest and went back to watching the goslings. The goslings need grass. Geese are grass eaters, normally consuming large amounts of roughage to obtain small amounts of nutrition. The three goslings are living on a 17% protein grain ration, all they want to eat all the time. They are growing rapidly, which is good, I guess, but I know they like grass in their diet. If I put them out in the yard with a dish of their ration, they will spend more time time eating grass than they will eating the 17% ration.

Inside, covered and sheltered from the wind, the goslings can easily tolerate 50° temperature.

Yesterday, Jesse candled the eggs in the incubator. None of the thirteen goose eggs were developing, and only eight of the duck eggs. Bebe goose and Babette goose are each sitting on one egg. Beth goose isn't broody, yet, and I haven't counted her eggs. This is why day old goslings can cost $16 each.

Sally's bunnies are a week old, now. In a few more days they will open their eyes. Will they, like humans, be very nearsighted at first? Based on my inexact observations, the goslings are very nearsighted when first hatched. Is that a natural result of the way our type of eye has evolved? Seems probable to me that, at least in birds and mammals, natural selection has provided an eye that is nearsighted when it begins functioning.

I read somewhere that the eye has evolved seven different times. Octopuses, for instance, evolved with an eye that is as unlike ours as is the rest of their anatomy. Are the eyes of baby octopuses nearsighted? There are a lot of different kinds of animals around here, but no octopuses. Could it be that nearsighted infant eyes are found primarily in species in which the young are dependent upon the adults during an early period of development? Such an adaptation could serve to focus an infant's attention upon their caregiver by excluding visual stimuli except those less than a few inches distant from the infant's nose, a way of our genes saying, “You must learn, right now, to recognize mama, and then you can learn other stuff.”

Shotgun's kittens have their eyes open and are growing fast. I've moved the kittens to a more easily accessed spot, so we can start socializing them. If I moved them to anywhere inside the barn, Shotgun would have simply move them back, or, worse, hid them somewhere in the hayloft. So, I moved them to the back porch, hoping she will leave them there, where they will see lots of human traffic and receive occasional tidbits.

The Oskaloosa FOOL Web Site

Trying to impress a bunch of old women, justify my continued tenure as Chief Fool, and add accomplishments to my resume, I created the FOOL's web site, www.OskaloosaFOOL.org. I enjoy boasting of my successes, especially when they are sufficiently esoteric that very few people have any understanding of or interest in the object of my boasting. (Farm News is actually a long note from me to my grandchildren, and their grandchildren, in which I can brag of my accomplishments, safe by age from any critical analysis.)

One of the computers given to the library by the Gates foundation lost its power supply, (in the sense that 'losing one's heart' is equivalent to having a fatal heart attack). It is a fine machine, with a 2 Ghz Pentium 4 CPU, 512 MB RAM, a zip drive, a large hard drive, and a big, well ventilated, case. I suggested to the FOOLs that we have our own web site, and, instead of paying a hosting service, we run our web site on our own server and have the ability to host other web sites. The old women who run the FOOLs all listened intently to my suggestion, figured it was something the Chief Fool might actually be able to do, and voted to set up a server and to spend $35 for a new power supply to make it work. I ordered a a new power supply, installed the power supply when it arrived, and set about creating a web server for a bunch of FOOLs.

First, I erased the hard drive, partitioned it, and installed Ubuntu Linux 7.04 LAMP server edition, the operating system. Then I configured the internet connection with a static IP address, borrowed from NEKLS, the North East Kansas Library System, obtained by using my overwhelming masculine charm on a pretty young grad student who is also a techie for NEKLS. (She's bright, doing tech support work for NEKLS while she finishes a PhD in Library Science, and pretty enough to make me feel all warm and friendly to her when I see her.)

When I finished, the server had Apache2 web server, PHP5, and MySQL database, installed and working together. Next I installed Joomla, a Content Management System. Joomla takes care of things like registering to use the site, menu buttons, and all that stuff. Other than occasional tweaks for maintenance, Joomla will create web pages as they are requested on the internet, called www.OskaloosaFOOL.org/ sometimes with something after the '/', and Apache2 will then send those pages over the internet to the web browsers which requested them. In order to make all that stuff work right, I needed some development and management tools, and some additional parts and pieces of software for Joomla.

I recycled a module that placed a NewsFlash of the Day in the upper right side of the home page, to placing a Quotation of the Day there, instead, and populated the list of quotations with dark sentences from Little Davey Sunshine, a friend. I added the frameworks for an online 'Yellow Pages', classified ads, photo albums, personal blogs, and book reviews. Then I added some more management tools to help me keep all that stuff working together. Finally, I wrote a couple of paragraphs called, “Getting Started,” and published the site on the web.

Currently, I'm working on adding voice and video chat, messaging, and mail. I'm also looking for tools to help manage FOOL memberships. I hope to merge the paper member records into the online FOOL membership list and use the technology to broaden and strengthen FOOL membership services. My goal is to have at least a 10:1 ratio of non-resident to Oskaloosa resident memberships.

Anyway, that's what I'm doing in my Chief Fool disguise that has made me so pleased with myself. Aren't you glad I told you all that?

Books

Three westerns this week.

Call Him Amos by Vic J. Hanson

One of the nice things about reading large print books is that you always have something good to say about the book. This one was in large print.

Return of the Fast Gun by Lauran Paine

Another large print western, but this was a decent read and it only required a few hours of reading time. Lauran Paine is a reliable writer, a descendant of Thomas Paine, the revolutionary radical. Lauran Paine is twenty years older than I am and still writing.

Friends by Charles Hackenberry

Another large print western and a good book. If you like westerns, you will probably like this one.