Farm News 02-03-08

Sunday morning, after chores, 38°
Weight 211 lbs., off to a terrible start, I gained three pounds

Barn News

It was a computer error, that's all, but I've still been bombarded with comments:

I am astonished that you only weigh 118 -- I would have guessed that you were more like 138! More power to you! I am envious.

You've lost way too much, way too fast.

You weigh 118 pounds? Not possible! did you mismatch a number ... 811? no 181? Too much..??

I'll join your diet group and have started a couple days ago with an assist from the stomach flu. Already lost 2 pounds!

How tall are you ? As I recall, I’d put you at about 5’10.” If that’s anywhere NEAR correct, I’d say you need to GAIN some weight, not lose it ! Of course you don’t want to just gain FAT, but mostly muscle – more a matter of TONE, probably, but it sounds like you get enough activity to be in reasonable ‘tone.’ We can’t keep someone alive by just making them thinner and thinner, or ALL the “supermodels” would still be around. But then, I’m not a physician, just a physicians assistant. Best of luck !

Okay, okay, the number should have been 208.

Dr. M. was the only one who was reassuring:

Well, if your MD doesn't make it for another 43 years to keep you alive, I'll step in!

When I reach 110 a DVM would probably be a better choice for health care than an MD. By the way, for those of you who have been wondering what happened to Dr. M.'s occasional commentaries, she's pregnant. You'd think a Vet would know what causes that, but maybe she likes being that way.

Nothing of interest is happening in the barn. I borrowed a buck goat to breed Lucy, but I think I was too late. Lucy is showing no signs of coming into standing heat, it's too late in the year.

Several strange tomcats have been hanging around, so we might be preparing to start a new crop of kittens.

There are only five hens in the chicken house, but they are laying five eggs most days. What excellent chickens!

Tripping to Chicago – part 3

Illinois Beach State Park is an almost 3,000 acre strip along the west side of Lake Michigan running south from the Wisconsin border, bounded on the west by the city of Zion. We stopped there to rest after we fled from Chicago. Zion was founded in 1901 as a utopian community built around the Zion Tabernacle of the Christian Catholic Apostolic Church. After Chicago, a garbage dump would have felt utopian, but Illinois Beach State Park and Zion were both quite pleasant without being compared to their noisome neighbor.

The only thing we lacked was pot. How can you be good hippies on a road trip without pot? We all put flowers in our hair (I had hair, then), smiled a lot, and, sure enough, a nice young man with long hair showed up and offered to share a joint with us. Peace, Love, and Brotherhood meant something real in those days.

Peter, the nice young man, was the younger son of an Israeli mother and a Palestinian father who had fled from the Middle East to find peace in Zion. He was a senior in high school, very mellow, and an altogether delightful person. He invited us to his home, where we met John, his older brother, who was a student at Shimer College, very mellow, and a delightful person. John was the author of a wonderful book, Edifying Tautologies, which occupied twenty or so four inch square pages. I don't remember a single word of it, but I distinctly remember the effect it produced, especially when one smoked a good joint before reading it.

Shimer College was, and is, an excellent Liberal Arts college. Their students graduate with degrees in Liberal Arts, there are no majors or electives. Shimer had another characteristic, the student body consisted of people who were seeking both academic and spiritual growth. In the yearbooks of that time there are no pictures of a football team, but there are many pictures of students sitting outside on the lawn, smiling at each other, and discussing the meaning of Peace, Love, and Brotherhood.

Peter and John had created a great little trip room in their house. Their bedrooms were in the attic, with vertical walls about four feet high on the sides. The trip room was in the little triangular space left under the roof outside the bedroom sidewall. It had oriental rugs on the floor and the ceiling and walls were covered with India prints. It was cozy, comfortable, and an excellent environment for getting high.

Our second day at Illinois Beach we decided to express our disdain for Chicago by attacking the city from the air. We went to Zion and purchased some colored tissue wrapping paper, a small bottle of Elmer's glue, and we scrounged up a few feet of wire from somewhere. We glued eight sheets of the tissue together to form a square tube, about two feet on each side and six feet high. We cut triangular pieces to make a peaked top to the tube, and another set to make a peaked bottom, but we left the center of the bottom unglued. With the wire, we made a ring about eighteen inches in diameter, with a few spokes radiating toward the center. The ring of wire was then glued to the bottom peak to form a round opening. We tore a strip of old tee shirt about two inches wide and two feet long, soaked it in melted candle wax and then rolled it into a tight cylinder. Using the spokes of wire, we secured the cylinder of waxed fabric in the center of the wire circle.

That evening there was no moon, and a very gentle breeze blowing toward Chicago. Two people held the tissue paper balloon, for that is what it was, upright, while another lit the wax wick. The flaming wick quickly filled the balloon with hot air, and, after a few minutes, we released it. It floated into the air and out over the lake, glowing in different colors as it turned. It was a beautiful thing, and it slowly drifted away toward Chicago. It finally drifted out of sight. If the power had gone off in Chicago that multicolored thing in the sky probably would have created a panic. The power didn't go off, but we were happy, for we had expressed our feelings in an appropriate manner for hippies who believed in Peace, Love, and Brotherhood.

Book: Touchstone by Laurie R. King

The 1920's were not one of my favorite eras. That is the decade in which gangsters became a part of the society, thanks to prohibition. The people who wanted to force us to follow their standard of morality ended up producing something even worse. The whole decade seemed to be shallow and without ideals. Then Laurie King writes a book about idealists in the 1920's.

Her idealists are the union sympathizers, socialists, communists, anarchists, and similar weirdos, whose ideals lead them to throwing bombs (actually, the bomber hides them in various places). On the other side is an American FBI agent who both hates and sympathizes with them. And, the whole thing takes place in the English countryside.

Once, in Kansas City, I received an anonymous phone call, and the caller said, “Be sitting outside at around 7:00 pm.” I forgot to go outside, so I missed hearing the bomb go off, but I did understand why he set off the bomb. Touchstone reminded me of those days. It's far from being her best book, but it's worth reading.

Music

Have you heard Daft Punk's Technologic? It's interesting, but the video is creepy.

Farm News 01-20-08

Sunday morning, after chores, 17° with a cool breeze

Barn News

Jesse, who works for me occasionally, asked if he could keep a rabbit or two in my rabbitry until he made a set of hutches for himself. I happily agreed, and last week he showed up with a very pretty Red Satin doe. He hadn't named her, so I called her Sally, after a pretty red-haired reader. He hopes to purchase a buck soon, and then breed Sally. I'm delighted, and he can keep them here as long as he wishes, for baby bunnies attract children, who amuse me.

I saw the physician last week for an annual checkup. The appointment was scheduled so that I would have baby bunnies of just the right age to act as attack rabbits. Unfortunately, Suzette lost her last litter, so I had no bunnies. The physician took advantage of my lack of defense-bunnies to tell me I had to go on a diet and lose weight. I haven't noticed him losing any weight, but I kept my mouth shut and accepted his orders.

It's COLD. Saturday morning it was 4° when I did chores, and the thermometer I checked is on the porch, where it generally reads four or five degrees high in the winter. That means that all the water containers were full of ice. Water doesn't cool below 32°, below that it turns into ice. Ice, however, can be as cold as the air temperature. If you put 55° water into a bucket that has ice in it, the ice rapidly cools the water and the bucket freezes over again quickly. So, it is best to break the ice on top, pour out any water under it, and then knock out as much of the ice as you can without breaking the bucket. All the time you are doing that you are shivering and have, if you aren't careful, wet gloves. Where is global warming when we need a little bit of it?

Finally, Something from Our Asian Correspondent

The following dispatch has been edited to improve intelligibility:

I'm going to Vietnam and China for a visit. My base remains here in Sihanoukville. I'll be traveling for a month. I will be mainly in Hanoi. I guess I'll have to buy a Ho Chi Minh t-shirt. I want one with a big hammer and sickle on it.

Gonna check out Shanghai, China. At last! All the Chinese food I want and then some.

No bad guys here. Only poor and very desperate people. I was leery of cops when I got here, but they don't bother me at all. I buzz right by the cops on my rented 250 cc Honda: no helmet, no license, no insurance, no problem. The 250 cc bikes are incredibly powerful and fast. Today is my fourth day on it and only 25 years since I last rode a motorcycle. It ain't no motorbike, it's a kickass motorcycle. I am getting the hang of traffic around here. It is treacherous and terrifying, but I'm catching on. So far I've skinned my thumb and ankle (but I only dropped the bike once), and burned the inside of my ankle on the hot engine. I just picked that bad boy up off the ground and rode on with a cop looking on. No problem, this is Cambodia. You gotta love it.

Tripping to Chicago

Early in 1968 I decided I needed an automobile, not just any auto, but one that suited my station in life as an Acid Priest. What I found was a 1940 Chevrolet Panel Delivery truck. It was shaped like a station wagon, but there were no side windows behind the front seat, nor were there any seats behind the front seat. It had two doors at the rear that opened to either side and met in the middle.

When I purchased it, the body showed neither dents nor rust, but the blue paint was faded and discolored. A few hours with a couple of cans of paint and brushes, and I had a panel truck with a white body and black fenders. On each side, where the side windows would have been if it had any, Dixie, an artist, painted rows of small pictographs in various colors. Bingo! It became the Aztec Ambulance, a vehicle fit to carry an Acid Priest on his appointed rounds.

I found a mattress that would fit in the back, and then covered the interior with a an excellent hippie collage of flowers, peace signs, butterflies, and album covers. I installed an incense holder, an essential accessory for pot smokers; rigged up a couple of small interior lights; tossed in an assortment of pillows, cushions, and quilts; added a picnic cooler; and the Aztec Ambulance was ready to rock and roll.

It was spring, I had a fine vehicle, so the only sensible thing to do was to take a road trip. Road trips are more fun with companions, so I mentioned to a few friends that I was ready for a road trip. Marilyn and Becky quickly said, “Yes, and we have a friend, Julie, who will want to go.” Fred and Tom looked at Marilyn and Becky and immediately said they wanted to go.

Many hippies feel that making plans denigrates The Force which leads all of us to where we need to be. I'm of the opinion that The Force can guide planning as well as it can guide us at highway intersections. I wanted to choose a destination and study a map to determine the best way to reach that destination, 'best way' meaning the most interesting path, not necessarily the most direct.

The six of us piled into the back of the Aztec Ambulance, lit a stick of incense, fired up a joint, and started discussing a destination. Fred and I had recently made a trip to the West Coast, none of us were interested in the south, north of Kansas there is a lot of road but not much else, so we decided on east. The Democratic National Convention was to be held that summer in Chicago, which is to the east, and Abby Hoffman was calling on hippies to attend, so we set Chicago as our destination. Yippee!

Before on departs on an important journey that is supposed to be both spiritual and spatial, it is wise to have a religious service. The six of us all retreated to a nice old stone farm house where friends lived and, early one morning, sat down together, smoked a joint, and took a hit of LSD. For the next six hours or so we sat and laid around, occasionally saying, “Wow,” or “Ruuushh.” It was pretty decent acid.
The next morning we all piled into the Aztec Ambulance and headed into the rising sun.

Velvet Underground

A reader writes:

The first Velvet Underground and Nico album is now widely considered the most influential rock album in history, even though it was never conceived as a rock album. The Velvet's didn't give a damn what anyone thought of it and that's the only way it could ever have been made. Any young band musician now is familiar with the entire Velvet Underground oeuvre, even if they may or may not be familiar with anything by Elvis or the Beatles.

I used to listen to it while injecting heroin as a teen. You could time it perfectly to get off during the crescendo. Some real artistry there. Most junk heads just preferred soft blues background sounds. There was a later VU album for that too just called The Velvet Underground. I listened to all four VU albums on an iPod driving across Kansas a couple of years ago. Got me all the way across the State with no stops, and still sounds as cool as ever.

He seems to be saying that listening to the Velvet Underground will increase bladder capacity. Amazing.

The Kansas Legislature

Waiting for debate is a resolution condemning 'Gangsta Rap'. You will never convince me that a majority of the legislators have listened to, and been able to understand, any kind of rap, but, nevertheless, some legislators think it needs to be condemned. Their action will, I'm sure, have a great influence on the music to which young people listen.

There has never been a recorded instance of an undocumented immigrant trying to vote in Kansas, but we are almost certainly going to have a law against it, if the governor signs the bill once it passes. If the legislature makes enough noise about fixing non-existent problems they hope we won't notice they have done nothing about fixing real problems.

Farm News 12-02-07

Sunday morning, after chores, 40°

Farm News, including previous editions, is available at the Farm News blog.

Barn News

Suzette spent Wednesday with Bucky, so she should have bunnies on New Year's Eve or thereabouts. I need to build a new, covered nest box before then, the old one finally fell apart. Does like a covered box so they can sit on top of it and escape from the demands of the bunnies. The high sides and cover also help hold the fur in the nest box.

Thursday evening I killed a possum I caught stealing cat food. It has been living in the barn for some time and was the biggest, fattest possum I have ever seen. Although possums do well eating cat food, they generally prefer young birds, which they kill by biting off their heads. They then eat the heads and leave the rest of the bird behind. I was very glad to get that possum out of the barn before baby chicks and ducklings start hatching.

Darkness

We are sometimes told that the Arabs preserved knowledge during the Dark Ages. It is interesting to note that the Dark Ages began not in Europe, but in Egypt, when the monks of Nitrea, led by Cyril, Archbishop of Alexandria, took Hypatia to the nearest church, laid her on the altar, and removed her skin with clam shells. Hypatia, the last librarian of the great library of Alexandria, did not survive the experience, nor did the library. I instinctively dislike people who abuse librarians or libraries.

News from Cambodia

Ray was asked to report on local reaction to the start of the trial of former Khmer Rouge officials on charges of crimes against humanity. Ray said that the only thing he has heard about it was from the news on CNN. The trial that has drawn the most attention is that of a rich Russian with a strong appetite for very young virgins. The interest is over whether justice or money will prevail.

Ray hasn't unpacked his camera, yet. He is staying busy walking on the beach, drinking coffee, and watching the passers-by. He reports that he still hasn't seen any violent acts, nor any aggressive police activity; instead, everyone is busy tearing down old buildings and replacing them with new shops. The people are industrious and feel that prosperity is finally arriving in Cambodia.

Writing

As I write this it is Monday evening, 8:16pm to be precise, and I don't want to write anything. Why not, I wonder? I'm 70 years old, I should have something interesting to pass on, but I can't think of anything. The day's events? Hardly.

I started the morning with chores, as usual. It didn't freeze last night and all the various water containers were unfrozen this morning, making the job much easier. I fed the goats, held a coffee can of grain for Beth, the human imprinted goose, to have a few bites before I tossed it out to be picked up by her and the other two geese, and gave a coffee can of non-medicated layer mash to the ducks. As I fed each I said their names, trying to teach them that when I call their name it means food. Lucy goat knows that when I call her name it means food, and Beth might make that association. The ducks seem to associate “Ducks, ducks” with food but generally prefer what they can find on their own.

Breakfast was my normal winter morning meal: a big bowl of oatmeal with honey and skim milk. I once spent a week in Scotland, staying at the rural home of three young men, all true “men's men.” They approved of me because I enjoyed oatmeal for breakfast, Scotch whiskey after dinner, and I liked their sheep dogs so much that I would yield my chair to the sweet old bitch who liked to spend the evenings in the house. Ever since I have preferred oatmeal for breakfast on cool mornings. During the summer I generally have a small bowl of Cheerios. My preference for oats in the morning I consider a major factor in my being the oldest male member of my family on both the maternal and fraternal sides, all the others died of heart attacks.

There were two computer repair jobs scheduled for today: a new client near Meriden and a repeat client near Oskaloosa. The gentleman near Meriden needed a new monitor. I charged him $20 for making the trip and told him to call me if he needed more help. The lady near Oskaloosa was unable to renew her Norton AV online, not surprising, as no one else can either. I spent over an hour trying to make it work and then installed AVG anti-virus. She had already paid Symantec $70 for renewing her Norton anti-virus and didn't want to waste her money. I kept trying to explain that she had already wasted her money, which took several hours. I charged her $35 and came home.

I could continue with this for pages, but to what end? It's dreadfully boring, even though I enjoyed the day. It wasn't solving the computer repair problems, it was driving through the countryside I enjoyed. I saw a badger and two big flocks of wild turkeys, but mostly I just enjoyed the trees, shrubs, and grasses along the roads. It's nice to be simple.

Friday morning a Blue Jay visited the bird feeder, the first in more than a week. Something, probably West Nile, almost wiped out the Blue Jay population. They're noisy and obnoxious, but I like them for their boldness. Jays are fairly easy to tame if you start with the young ones. I keep trying to remember to find a nest in the spring and start hand feeding the babies, a sure way to win their hearts and minds.

Two populations of crows live here: a year-round family who raise their babies here, and a migratory flock of mostly young, unmated birds that spend only the winter. The permanent residents do not approve of the rowdy ways of the migrators and don't mix with them. When the babies leave the nest in late summer the crows raise such a fuss that it becomes obvious what is happening. This year there didn't seem to be any young leaving the nest; again, I suspect, victims of West Nile. Young birds without feathers are helpless against the mosquitoes that carry the virus.

Health Care

Each year medical schools in the US reject about half of their applicants. We end up with a shortage of physicians which we then fill by robbing developing countries of physicians they disparately need. Why? Because the AMA, the organization responsible for accrediting US medical schools, has put a limit on the number of physicians the US can produce, has set a limit so that their members will make more money. If physicians were steel producers instead of health care producers they would all be paying a fine for anti-trust violations.

Farm News 11-04-07

Sunday morning, after chores, 52°

Seen on a 12-13 year old girl in downtown Oskaloosa, a tee shirt, across the front of it written, “Under Construction.”

Inadvertently, I implied that one of my bright, good-looking nieces did not know the meaning of the word 'ephemeral'. I should have been more sensitive in my expression, and I apologize, but use this opportunity to remind her that her physical beauty is ephemeral, but, if she writes of what she knows, the content of her mind can last as long as civilization.

Barn News – Kitten Found

Just when I had decided that Shotgun has been faking it somehow, and some of last year's kittens were still nursing on her, I went into the barn and heard a kitten yowling. There is no mistaking the sound of an unhappy kitten, and this one was very unhappy. It had fallen out of the hay loft, down between the studs, the up-down frame pieces of the barn walls, and into the gap between the outside wall of the barn and the inside wall of the stall below, the stall where the ducklings are currently growing. This sounds terrible, at first, but the stall walls are only four feet tall, and the 4” space between the stall wall and the outside wall is filled with straw, a place where many kittens have been born. The kitten suffered injury only to its dignity, causing it to yowl all the louder. Cats seem to be very sensitive about their dignity.

To reach the kitten, I had to cross a duck swamp. Ducks are the messiest creatures in the barn, generally; they spill lots of water, root around and stir up lots of mud, and dump most of their feed into the mud. They build up low, round mud knobs, sticking up on the end of their upper beak, which they then use to shovel up mud, feed, and water. Duck pens are stinking mud-holes, and I had to cross that to rescue that silly kitten.

I may be 70 years old, but I have not forgotten one of the prime directives of civilization: when given the opportunity, men must be willing to give their lives if necessary to rescue something young and helpless, in the hope of presenting it to the nearest human female so she can care for it. I wore out my wife with that kind of thing long ago, so I brought the kitten to the house so she could inspect it, and then returned it to the barn to find its own way in cat society. The younger adult cats, of whom there are far too many, immediately checked out the kitten and, after quite a bit of sniffing, decide that it was one of them. Then the young adult cats went through some acts to show their places in the hierarchy of cats, those places being far higher and more important than the place of the kitten. In cat societies everyone knows the rules.

The kitten is gray and white, mostly gray on top and white on the bottom. It's a pretty kitten, a tomcat I would guess by the look in its eyes, and it was smart enough to quickly find a place to hide in the wood pile by the stove. When I left the barn after evening chores, the evening I found the kitten, it was hiding in the wood pile, occasionally giving a half-hearted, pitiful yowl, and successfully telling the older cats that, yes, it knew its position in society.

The kitten was discovered on Wednesday, given the name Pitiful on Thursday, and Friday evening when I went to do chores there was no sign of Pitiful. I called, which normally starts it to yowling, and looked in all the likely places. Sadly, I assumed that some misfortune had removed it from the barn, and began chores. When it came time to feed the adult ducks, I called, “Ducks, ducks,” as I always do, and the ducks came running, as they sometimes do. Behind them, running as fast as his legs would carry him, came Pitiful. Pitiful has found friends, the adult ducks.

Other Barn Events were headlined by the appearance of the Lady Bugs. After 2:00 pm or so, there are millions of Lady Bugs flying around in the yard, gathering together for winter hibernation. Groups of several hundred will collect in sheltered spots, spaces between the exterior wall and vertical poles of the barn being popular. Programming geeks look at behaviors like that and are delighted by how all that was shoe-horned into a bug brain.

There are still no leads on a buck to breed with Lucy, but Jesse will probably find a mate for Beth, Bebe, and the unnamed young goose (that young goose needs a name). Not that it is very important, she will probably never learn to respond when I call her by name. Beth is the only goose that responds to my voice, Beth was incubator hatched and imprinted on humans as parents. The others hatched under a goose named Nadeane, a sweet tempered small goose who was incubator hatched and strongly imprinted.

When a goose hatches, the first thing it sees that moves is Mommy. If the thing that moves is a human, then that human remains part of the goose's family for the rest of the goose's life, and we say the goose is 'imprinted' on humans. The goose might make the human their closest friend for life, if encouraged, but it is far better for the goose to be weaned away to the goose flock. Geese live 30-40 years, and, unless you want to have goose poop beside your door for 30-40 years, it is best to help the goose adjust to living as an adult goose, with a gaggle (a gaggle is a flock of geese) of its own kind. A strongly imprinted goose will wait beside your door for your return, and fail to eat enough to remain healthy.

Imprinted geese will form into a flock if kept together. There is a year or more of fighting and general uproar any time new adult geese are introduced into the flock, but little problem with young geese raised under a member of the flock.

In some culture, somewhere, I think in Switzerland, someone figured out that geese could be trained to regard a stick, with some kind of ornament atop it, as Mommy. Sure enough, if you took the stick and walked to the goose pasture for the day, you could plant the stick in the ground and the geese would remain within sight of the stick all day.

Next spring I think I might concentrate on raising some new geese from the incubator.

Weasel celebrated Halloween with a skunk. I don't know how the skunk is doing, but Weasel is very aromatic.

Old Computer Wanted

I need another computer, one that is just becoming outdated, to replace my server. Actually, I just want to replace the motherboard inside the computer, the one component that does nothing much but compute. The replacement must have a Pentium type processor, be capable of holding 512 MB of RAM, minimum, and PCI bus. I can't afford a new server, and, besides, I like this one. It is a huge box, too tall to fit under a desk, with room inside for three CD drives and four hard drives. It's big, heavy, ugly, and I've lived with it for many years, but, for the second time, it's brains have worn out.

If you left click once on this your computer will initiate a series of actions. First, it will tell the program http to start and to send out a request on the internet. The words, 'left click once on this', are actually part of what is called a hypertext link, and they contain the address of something else on the internet, in this case it is the address of my web site, www.geezernet.com. The internet, with its amazing mind, will route that request straight to my server, which lives under the Oskaloosa water tower.

When the internet delivers the request for www.geezernet.com to my server, the server jumps to life and sends back over the internet the contents of my home page on GeezerNet.com. That is what is supposed to happen. However, my server is broken, and your request never gets there. The server isn't connecting to the internet. I replaced the network card in the server, and it didn't help. Thursday, after weeks of searching for a software problem, I realized that it had to be in the hardware, somewhere, and that I need to replace the motherboard.

For all two or three of you who are interested in diagnostics, I can't find any changes that have occurred in the Linux setup. Suddenly, the server lost connection with the internet. I installed a new PCI bus network card, but there was no change. I plugged a USB to Ethernet into a USB port and ran the Ethernet connection from the router to that. No connection. Everything seems okay, but no connection is there when I try to use it. I can't ping anything.

Now, the interesting part. There are two hard drives on the server, each with it's own, bootable, operating system. Drive 0 has Ubuntu desktop on it, and drive 1 has Ubuntu server on it. No matter which drive I boot from, the problem remains. From that, can I safely assume it is a hardware problem? No, but it might as well be, because I'm out of all ideas short of replacing the motherboard.

This deep pit of problem, though, then led me to think of yet another test. I will take Drive 0 from the server and replace the C: drive on my desktop with it. Then I will boot up the desktop with the copy of Ubuntu desktop on the transplanted drive. If the problems show up then on my desktop, then the problem is in the software stored on the drive. If there is no problem, I will know the motherboard on the server is at fault and must be replaced.

It is Saturday night as I write this, and I have been writing this article all week. Also, I've been drinking a bit of vodka, so I think I will leave the resolution to Sunday afternoon.

If you would like to provide a donor for a computer brain to be transplanted into my server, please send me a note. I am always happy to receive old computers, whether I can use them or not. Usually I remove usable parts and send the rest to the dump, an environmental offense to my county, probably.

A Good Sentence

“The other side of danger, an exuberant, awful certainty: the world, a complex contraption, operates not to slake human desire but from immaculate necessity, and our small consciousness a wondrous but transitory and superfluous attribute of its unspinning.”

From Liar's Moon, and I wish whoever borrowed my copy would would return it. The author, Philip somebody, I think, but I can't remember his last name, lives in Lawrence and has a daughter who is a sophomore at KU, I think. Thank you, Philip, if that is your name, Liar's Moon is a fine book, one I've read three times. The above quotation has been on a scrap of paper stuck to the wall above my desk for years and stuck in my mind with the idea that it was the subject of a sermon once given in Tonganoxie.

Another Day in Paradise, from our correspondent in Cambodia

Just returned from a walk on the beach. Wet sand feels very good on bare feet. Troubles, traffic, worries are not a concern today. Today I walked on Independence Beach. It's kind of deserted down there; very quiet. You might imagine that it is dangerous, but it isn't. Maybe at night it is spooky, but wandering about in the dark is never a good idea.

There must be crime here, but I haven't seen it. The police must arrest someone, but I haven't seen that either. The police must pull over some errant drivers, but I haven't seen it. Nobody gets a ticket for running a stoplight; there are no stoplights in Sihanoukville. Nobody gets a ticket for running stop signs; there are no stop signs here. Surely someone here comes to blows with someone else, but I haven't seen any fighting either. They say there are a lot of weapons here left over from the IndoChina wars, but I haven't seen a single gun. There are many things to worry about, but please don't worry about me in the Heart of Darkness.

My camera was mailed to me. It is still in the box. It's my intention to take some pictures and post them here. Right now, a latte across the street at an Englishman's shop, Espresso Kampuchea, seems like a good idea. Now the weekend is here, so no doubt I'll be too busy to be taking any pictures for a while. Gosh, it's 1:27 PM already. Where does the time go? I'm kinda planning on heading down to another beach for the sunset. If I wasn't so well rested, I'd take a nap. Decisions, decisions.

Raymond, whom, please, is the Englishman? [Grammar experts, did I get that right?] He has a coffee shop in Sihanoukville so he must be some special sort of Englishman; you have met him, it seems, so he is quite possibly an interesting looney. I hate to remind you of this, but the big salary you are drawing is for reporting the things of interest occurring in Cambodia. Please show a bit more ambition, and send those reports from Southeast Asia.

When the server is repaired and serving again, Farm News will be available at www.GeezerNet.com.

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