Likes me some birds and that is a spectacular one right there.
This past week we’ve seen the return of the Blue Jays, Red Wing Blackbirds, the BIG woodpeckers, a bird I was not familiar with so I looked it up. I couldn’t find it. Small, finch size, coloring sort of like a sparrow, but hard white on it’s wing tips and white stripe through it’s eyes. Strange. No Dark Eyed Junco’s yet.
This evening I plan on baiting the side yard with sunflower seeds then sitting out by the firepit and sip some suds and then burn some dawgz on the fire when it gets dark. Might even take a couple slugz off the Fireball. The temp will be in the 40’s. If you’re close, stop by.
SKNovember 4, 2023, 1:37 PM
That beautiful bird in the photo is, I think, a blue eared kingfisher. Quite like a common kingfisher but more intense blue and less yellow but it’s not a North American bird.
Such beautiful creatures. Thank God we have them and other of nature’s beauties to distract us from the daily doses of bad news.
The birds that come to my feeders seem to have very regular schedules this time of year showing up like clockwork three times a day at the same times every day. Late breakfast at about 10, then lunch, and supper early now that the evenings darken so soon. The finches nuthatches and chickadees are the only ones that come all day long. And the pesky squirrels of course.
ghostsniperNovember 3, 2023, 8:47 AM
Yeah, right. Right on time.
That’ll teach him to drag his feet with the Big Guy’s 12%.
Nasty is as nasty does.
Pardon me while I give this the 48 hours test.
FBI Raids Home of Eric Adams’ Fundraising Chief
FBI conducted a raid on the Brooklyn residence of Brianna Suggs, the chief fundraiser for New York City Mayor Eric Adams, the New York Post reported. The raid took place on Thursday morning, according to reports. Brianna Suggs has been a pivotal figure in Mayor Adams’ political journey.
They really are a pretty lawless crowd. I think we have passed the knee of the slippery slope. We’re done with slowly, and are accelerating towards suddenly.
ghostsniperNovember 3, 2023, 2:30 PM
This may seem weerd but I am on a, so far, 10 year journey to find the perfect spoon.
It doesn’t even need to be perfect, but it can’t be drastically flawed.
In the past decade I have purchased a dozen or more spoons and every one of them has been a failure. To be honest, I probably wouldn’t have bought half of them if the GD ads provided the proper information to make an informed decision.
Piss poor info and pictures seem to be the norm for internet advertising now, and it’s frustrating.
See, at least once a week, sometimes more, weather permitting, I don my old army web gear and me and my mutt Shannon trod deep into the forest behind our house sit down for a grub-in in the woods. Her an me have done this hundreds of times and we’ve even done it in the rain (under a poncho strung up between trees) and in the snow, again, strung poncho with a small tarp to sit on.
I have a small MSR Pocket Rocket butane stove and a MSR 800ml titanium kettle, and Shannons silicone collapsible bowl, and whatever spoon I am putting up with at that particular time.
I make my own dehydrated camp meals that are simple, inexpensive, small, and only require the addition of water and then heated. Each meal is about 1 cup of dehydrated food (rice, chicken, vegetables, spices, for example) and I add 1.5 to 2 cups of filtered water to it.
I dump all of that into the kettle, fire up the pocket rocket, and bring them up to speed.
I sometimes bring a tube of ritz crackers too.
It only takes about 3-4 minutes for that grub to get up to boiling, then let it sit for about 10mins to cool down and absorb.
Afterward I lean against a tree and Shannon rests her head on my leg and we just stare out into the woods and enjoy the silence, the wild animals, and being together. Time to think, and time to let things go.
Anyway, each of the spoons I have purchased for the above purpose fail for all the wrong reasons and the reasons are obvious. In fact, I can’t believe the design of the stuff that’s out there.
The problems I have encountered are:
1. Handle too short. I need at least 8 inches to reach the bottom of the kettle and not get food all over the handle.
2. Weerd shaped bowl. The bowls are too shallow, too narrow, or squarish with round corners.
The food we eat is on the “looser” side, not soup but sort of like stew, so bowl size and shape is important.
Seems like half the camping eating utensils are these ridiculous things called sporks.
Have you seen these misfits?
A terrible spoon, and someone filed 3 or 4 angular slots on the end to pretend it’s a fork.
Please.
Couple more points.
I have a plastic type spoon that was almost acceptible but unfortunately I let it touch the bottle inside of the kettle when stirring and it melted on the edge.
Went right into the can.
So only metal is acceptable.
My preference is titanium because of the weight (yeah, I’m one of those people).
A normally sized and shaped bowl for getting decent sized mouthfuls every single time.
And a handle long enough to stir the bottom of the kettle without getting my fingers messy.
If you ever encounter such a thing let me know.
TNX
PS, never forget that I am but a poor white sharecroppers chow so cost is always important but I don’t mind paying good money for good stuff. I hate paying good money for junk.
SKNovember 4, 2023, 1:54 PM
Have you ever seen an old fashioned English soup spoon? They have long (about 7 1/2 inch) thinnish handles and a very round (not oval) bowl. No idea why they aren’t widely used in the States bc they’re incredibly practical for eating soups, pottages and soft mushy foods. You could probably find an old silver plated one on eBay for very little.
There are also cream soup spoons which are similar but much smaller and probably would not be of much use to you because the handles are short.
Hope this helps.
John A. FlemingNovember 4, 2023, 5:55 PM
Get this titanium long-handled spoon. The exact same spoon is sold by several different outdoor backpacking gear suppliers with their brand, so I suspect there is only one maker of these spoons.
And, for outdoor backpacking/climbing cooking, you don’t need the perfect spoon. Once you have finished your meal, you should put more water in your bowl, get all the food particles and sauces suspended in the water by gentle stirring and scraping, and then drink the water. Do it again, do it a 3rd time. You have been carrying that food for days, you are not going to throw it on the ground for the ants and other bugs. You need every calorie you can carry. And you need to drink lots of water, because you are dehydrated after a long day of backpacking/hiking/climbing/boating/canoeing/kayaking. It may not feel like it, but you are dehydrated and you need to recover from the day’s exertions.
Once there is no more food residue in your bowls, then put in some really hot water to sterilize them and the utensils, throw that water out, and then wipe your utensils and bowls dry with a paper towel. If you need to, because you just ate yummy high-calorie greasy sauces, the last two hot boiling water applications are first with a little soap to lift and cut the fats, and then fresh water.
So my recommendation is don’t keep looking for the perfect spoon. That titanium spoon is good enough. This is how I do it and teach my young folks on our week-long trips through the wildernesses. The part they don’t like at first is drinking the food-water, I guess because they associate that with dirty dishwater. Eh, I tell them, it’s all the same in your stomach, just without the bile. So drink up and stay alive.
ghostsniperNovember 3, 2023, 2:36 PM
It just keeps getting better.
I saw mention of this a few days ago and hung my head in disgust. Again.
Joe Biden proposed, and the US Senate confirmed, the first woman to lead the US Navy.
The US Senate has confirmed three high-ranking military nominations, including Admiral Lisa Franchetti, who becomes the first woman to lead the Navy. Senator Tommy Tuberville allowed the votes to go through after months of blocking all confirmations in an anti-abortion protest.
Franchetti, 59, was sworn in as the 33rd Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) on Thursday, following a 95-1 vote on Capitol Hill. The four-star admiral also became the first woman granted a seat at the Joint Chiefs-of-Staff. President Joe Biden nominated her in July – reportedly against the advice of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. Since her nomination she has been serving as acting CNO, due to Tuberville’s obstruction.
First woman approved to lead US Navy, 3 November 2023
To say this bodes ill, particularly in the current circumstances, is probably the understatement of the year. But if the limits of imperial overstretch have indeed been reached, it would be absolutely appropriate to have that critical historical moment overseen by the first female Joint Chief of the Navy.
I’ll just say some stream of consciousness things about Franchetti and the CNO appointment.
At 59, she’s a bit older than you’d expect from a flag at this juncture of time. I mean, contemporary warfare, and naval warfare, isn’t always jumping out of foxholes and bayoneting Xhinamen in the heart, but it still is a very strenuous job. (Inside scoop) The commandant of the USMC went down with a heart attack (is he even out of bed yet?) and service members blame Tuberville’s moralist stance and holding up of promotions. The commandant, it seems, was doing several flag rank jobs at once because retirements and the lack of advances was emptying the billets. I call bullshit on that. Wasn’t the commandant vaccinated? hmmmm. You’re telling me the commandant of the USMC doesn’t know how to delegate?
The new CNO: I note she’s considered a woman. I have the utmost respect for women, BTW. I knew some scary female officers in the army and their ability to wield authority rivals that of many men. But she’s hors de combat and that, my friends, is a deal breaker for me. We are in the opening stages of WWIII, no less, and we’re hiring for diversity. In the revitalization of NATO since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I believe most of the female defense secretaries/ministers have been replaced by more believable and menacing characters. I don’t know about you, but I want a defense minister who looks like 300 pounds of kill about to unleash.
War. Yesterday I had an eye-opener because I heard VDH give analysis that was 180 degrees from mine on the current war in Israel. To my mind, the Hamas achieved their war aim on day 1 when they de-coupled the Saudi-Israeli pact, and at the same time I think that Israel will also achieve it’s war goals of attriting into oblivion the ranks of Hamas. If you know your war, you realize two belligerents can achieve their initiatives. After the war, the status quo ante will re-assert itself, and Israel will still be surrounded by enemies and the Palestinians, so-called, will be as ever unremittingly impoverished Jew-haters. Nothing changes.
Victor Davis Hanson says otherwise. I’m compelled to listen to him because his knowledge of history, diplomacy, war and politics is unparalleled. It’s his contention that this time the world leaders of the West are less prone to put limiters on the Jewish state; they aren’t talking as much about bullshit “proportionality” as usual. The pundits and media are, but apparently VDH thinks the leaders are more appalled by the Hams Oct 7th action than usual. The point is that Hamas and the greater Arab ner-do-wells have stepped in it this time, and shocked the world a little too much. The limiters are off, fuck the curfew and to hell with the bag-limit.
DVH is suggesting that the sorting of politics after the 2023 Israeli-Arab War will result in more moderate Arab states (Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, etc), damaged NGOs such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and Houties, and give Israel a bit more breathing room in its environment. His proposition requires more proof than mine, but my ears and eyes are wide-open to test his theory.
AnneNovember 3, 2023, 8:27 PM
We are a Navy family. DH tries to show support, but the rest of us . . .
ghostsniperNovember 4, 2023, 4:04 AM
QotD
====
The world slides ever further over the edge of oblivion….
“Wolfie, as I like to call the greatest of musical miracles, wrote six immortal operas including the Requiem, 41 symphonies, almost fifty concertos, 24 chamber works, and eighteen miscellaneous pieces, but is now replaced by “artists” who include the F-word, the N-word, and the S-word in every single woman-hating, violence-praising sentence of their singularly untalented noise.”
My Dad liked Big Band and jazz. I kind of picked that up. When I was traveling back and forth to Asia some years ago I got hooked on Stan Getz music played on the airline music options. Today I hear crappy rap music with horrid language blasting out of some car at a stoplight and sure enough it is usually some white dude listening to it.
Daily we get older and closer to the point of our eventual demise. We do not get out of this alive. Along with our physical bodies goes all of our knowledge and memories. I like to work with wood and realized through experience that if your table saw blade is off a half degree then it will certainly show up when you try to put four corners of something together. Our team was on a conference call with a client discussing a device failure during qualification and realized I knew more about the test methodologies than our engineer answering the questions. I haven’t worked in our engineering group in more than 20 years. We have junior managers running manufacturing lines and don’t have a math model for expected output. They go off of historical output and think that is as good as it gets. I wore out a chronograph many years ago to help build such math models. I try to pass that knowledge on and get resistance based on emotion although the solution is mathematical. Some people will relearn all those things I know, and I suppose there were many before me that had such knowledge which is gone from them too.
I am not sure where I am going with this. I was up well before dawn and watched the sun come up with a pot of coffee. A good time to think.
ghostsniperNovember 4, 2023, 9:05 AM
I know where you were going.
When we’re gone it’ll be mostly over.
Only hard men will survive and they are very rare these days.
Casey KlahnNovember 5, 2023, 7:28 AM
Kansas, I hear ya loud and clear.
After you leave the corporate world, all that will go to hell and quickly. I agree 500% and I’m not being facetious at all.
Look at the current corporate and also political environment. They don’t know shit about actual things and about leadership. The nutbag in Seattle (Everett?) comes to mind who didn’t want his submersibles built and tested by “40 year-ld white Navy veterans” and proceeded to kill his first clients when the sonofabitch sank. He’s the poster boy for what you’re saying.
Politics? They count their ballots at night, with paper over the windows, and computer tallies hooked up to the internet. What part of that sounds good?
I could rant forever but it’s Sunday, and I need to go to work. All my best.
DTNovember 5, 2023, 7:18 PM
Having recently more or less left the engineering profession, I noticed – in my recent experience – that management positions, albeit low-level, come early and many of these so called engineers are so dependent on the Oracle of uPs, they don’t recognize when something’s off kilter in the lab. OK in a mentored newbie but management? I’ve run across to many managers that have business degrees but know little or nothing about the practice they attempt to manage (mostly cost and schedule. Product performance sometimes slides in but more by accident than design)
Granted the universities stopped teaching the smell of burning resistors and charged capacitors long ago, so it’s hard to blame the new-outs – they don’t know better. But it takes more time than it should to get a newbie up and running. Surprisingly, it’s the lack of writing/reading skills more than professional weakness that creates the largest problems.
One university I know recently dropped the senior level statistics course and now allows the sophomore level course to count for accreditation. The higher level class was “too hard”. I get weird looks when I suggest “flunk-out” courses are a good idea.
If I want an answer, I don’t go to the “Director” – he has no idea. I go to the tech on the floor, preferable without his engineer around.
I’d not like to be in the profession as a newbie or mid-level – but then, I wouldn’t know better, would I? I miss the work but I have no desire to re-enter the corporate world. Not even as a visitor.
ghostsniperNovember 4, 2023, 3:06 PM
An imaginary person that doesn’t know me very well or long asked, “Why are you so hateful?”
IP told me about an incident of complete stupidity involving spending money committed by someone we both know that defied logic and left them in an unenviable position. I told IP I won’t help this other person out.
IP said it will hurt to do so (she’s not wealthy) but she is thinking about giving this person some coin and that I should rethink my position. I told IP she was being too kind and short sighted and that giving the other person coin deprives them the benefit of the learning experience and the mending of their ways. We all make mistakes and with age hopefully we make less, but only if we learn from them.
I asked IP why she thought I was hateful and she said it was because I wouldn’t give this other person some of my hard earned coin.
I told IP, “You know, I didn’t agree with your method, and I think it’s stupid, but I didn’t ask you why you were so stupid. But here you are jumping the gun and saying I’m hateful for not doing what you think I should do.” “If anything, I should be asking YOU why you are so hateful.” IP created her on definition of hateful on the fly.
IP was taken aback. Obviously she never considered that there are always 2 sides to a story and that her assumption about my opinion was wrong. I asked her, “Why do you think my opinion is hateful?”
She reacted just like I’ve seen a thousand times before. She stammered around and threw up a wall of chatter that was an almost apology and an almost agreement with my position, but never really coming right straight out and admitting she was an asswipe.
I just left the conversation at that, not giving IP anything positive to get ahold of. Let her quandry on that for a spell.
I believe IP came to the table with a preconceived notion about me and intended to exploit me for her own entertainment. Yes, there are people like that. If you’re not paying attention they’ll walk right over you.
I’ve heard of this DEW business but don’t know enough to form an opinion.
I do realize this rotten assed gov’t (TRAG) is capable of anything and everything.
But I doubt they are capable of altering the weather on such a scale.
TRAG has proven me wrong before.
What’s your take?
AnneNovember 4, 2023, 8:21 PM
Like I said before: In the mid 1950’s we lived a few miles from Lockheed aircraft. My stepfather was friends with some of the engineers. Those engineers were convinced that “the Russians are messing with the weather!”
ghostsniperNovember 5, 2023, 2:43 AM
One more pathetic excuse for a human being running his yap, making false accusations, ASSumptions, and banal threats.
The audience should have stormed the stage and issued him a sound ass thrashing.
*******************************
GOP presidential candidate Asa Hutchinson was booed Saturday when he told a Republican summit that there is “significant likelihood” that former President Trump will be found guilty of a felony next year.
The former Arkansas governor told the Florida Freedom Summit in Kissimmee, Florida, that such an outcome will make it harder for Republicans down the ticket to win their races if Trump, who is leading in the polls, wins the 2024 Republican nomination.
Hutchinson cited his own experience as a prosecutor to say that “there is a significant likelihood that Donald Trump will be found guilty by a jury on a felony offense next year.”
“That may or may not happen. Before you vote in March, and it might not make any difference to you, but it will make a difference for our chances to attract independent voters in November. It will make a difference for those down-ticket races for Congress and Senate, and it will weaken the GOP for decades to come. As a party, we must support the rule of law,” he said.
The claim was met with boos from the crowd, one of a number of instances where anti-Trump statements by Republican candidates. Both former NJ Gov. Chris Christie and former Rep. Will Hurd have been booed for making perceived anti-Trump statements.
“We cannot win as a country without integrity in the White House,” Hutchinson said on Saturday. “And while some will ignore that destructive behavior of the former president, I assure you we ignore it at our own peril. The next generation will not look favorably back on this time.”
Apparently, there are still some deer remaining that haven’t been killed by predators.
I’m not kidding. First, the state ended the use of dogs to hunt cougar, and the upshot is that cougar flourish. Then, the re-introduction of wolves here. Almost 10 years ago, a bout of black-tongue decimated the Whitetail herd, and they still heaven’t recovered. Where we had hundreds in my part of Eastern WA, we have almost none.
Grizzly doesn’t eat only berries or picnic baskets. He eats deer. How many big predators do we need? The pioneers were smarter than you give them credit for. They whittled the predators down to manageable, and my own experience with this shows that you can’t eliminate the predator, you can only modify him slightly. The documentary about wolves and elk in Yellowstone is bullshit of the highest order.
My state has fukt up preservation as much and as thoroughly as humanly possible, and in my own lifetime. Fish & Wildlife needs a 2 year sabbatical, and then all new blood when it cranks back up. I’d put nobody in service there whose under 60 years of age.
ghostsniperNovember 5, 2023, 10:42 AM
Even when you witness it with your own eyes, you still won’t believe it.
Clear Glass.
My take is, the dot gov. can do incredible weather modification. INCREDIBLE. They are not hiding this fact anymore. That is the real story here. Like LBJ stated in his famous speech, Control the weather and you control the world. Or something close to this.
The current Mex President is a Trump supporter. That makes him a danger to the DS. Acapulco is (now was) a top tier destination resort that had more to offer than Vegas. Much more ($$$$). As they say, follow the money.
Real World Address for Donations, Mash Notes and Hate Mail
Gerard Van der Leun
1692 MANGROVE AVE
APT 379
Chico, Ca 95926
Green Pants Interior by Klahn
Who Am I? by Carl Sandburg
My head knocks against the stars.
My feet are on the hilltops.
My finger-tips are in the valleys and shores of universal life.
Down in the sounding foam of primal things I reach my hands and play with pebbles of destiny.
I have been to hell and back many times.
I know all about heaven, for I have talked with God.
I dabble in the blood and guts of the terrible.
I know the passionate seizure of beauty
And the marvelous rebellion of man at all signs reading “Keep Off.”
My name is Truth and I am the most elusive captive in the universe.
Duty, Beauty, Liberty, Country, Honor, Family, Faith — Plus a few simple easy to follow rules for guys
Men saw the stars at the edge of the sea
They thought great thoughts about liberty
Poets wrote down words that did fit
Writers wrote books
Thinkers thought about it
Take it where you find it
Can’t leave it alone
You will find a purpose
To carry it on
Mainly when you find it
Your heart will be strong
About it
Many’s the road I have walked upon
Many’s the hour between dusk and dawn
Many’s the time
Many’s the mile
I see it all now
Through the eyes of a child
Take it where you find it
Can’t leave it alone
You will find a purpose
To carry it on
Mainly when you find it
Your heart will be strong
About it
[Chorus]
Lost dreams and found dreams
In America
In America
In America
Lost dreams and found dreams
In America
In America
In America
And close your eyes
Leave it all for a while
Leave the world
And your worries behind
You will build on whatever is real
And wake up each day
To a new waking dream
Take it where you find it
Can’t leave it alone
You will find a purpose
To carry it on
Mainly when you find it
Your heart will be strong
About it
[Chorus]
Change, change come over
Change come over
Talkin’ about a change
Change, change
Change come over, now
Change, change, change come over
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I see my light
See my light
See my shining light
I see my light
See my light
See my shining light
Gerard Van der Leun
Comments on this entry are closed.
Likes me some birds and that is a spectacular one right there.
This past week we’ve seen the return of the Blue Jays, Red Wing Blackbirds, the BIG woodpeckers, a bird I was not familiar with so I looked it up. I couldn’t find it. Small, finch size, coloring sort of like a sparrow, but hard white on it’s wing tips and white stripe through it’s eyes. Strange. No Dark Eyed Junco’s yet.
This evening I plan on baiting the side yard with sunflower seeds then sitting out by the firepit and sip some suds and then burn some dawgz on the fire when it gets dark. Might even take a couple slugz off the Fireball. The temp will be in the 40’s. If you’re close, stop by.
That beautiful bird in the photo is, I think, a blue eared kingfisher. Quite like a common kingfisher but more intense blue and less yellow but it’s not a North American bird.
Such beautiful creatures. Thank God we have them and other of nature’s beauties to distract us from the daily doses of bad news.
The birds that come to my feeders seem to have very regular schedules this time of year showing up like clockwork three times a day at the same times every day. Late breakfast at about 10, then lunch, and supper early now that the evenings darken so soon. The finches nuthatches and chickadees are the only ones that come all day long. And the pesky squirrels of course.
Yeah, right. Right on time.
That’ll teach him to drag his feet with the Big Guy’s 12%.
Nasty is as nasty does.
Pardon me while I give this the 48 hours test.
FBI Raids Home of Eric Adams’ Fundraising Chief
FBI conducted a raid on the Brooklyn residence of Brianna Suggs, the chief fundraiser for New York City Mayor Eric Adams, the New York Post reported. The raid took place on Thursday morning, according to reports. Brianna Suggs has been a pivotal figure in Mayor Adams’ political journey.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/11/breaking-fbi-raids-home-eric-adams-fundraising-chief/
They really are a pretty lawless crowd. I think we have passed the knee of the slippery slope. We’re done with slowly, and are accelerating towards suddenly.
This may seem weerd but I am on a, so far, 10 year journey to find the perfect spoon.
It doesn’t even need to be perfect, but it can’t be drastically flawed.
In the past decade I have purchased a dozen or more spoons and every one of them has been a failure. To be honest, I probably wouldn’t have bought half of them if the GD ads provided the proper information to make an informed decision.
Piss poor info and pictures seem to be the norm for internet advertising now, and it’s frustrating.
See, at least once a week, sometimes more, weather permitting, I don my old army web gear and me and my mutt Shannon trod deep into the forest behind our house sit down for a grub-in in the woods. Her an me have done this hundreds of times and we’ve even done it in the rain (under a poncho strung up between trees) and in the snow, again, strung poncho with a small tarp to sit on.
I have a small MSR Pocket Rocket butane stove and a MSR 800ml titanium kettle, and Shannons silicone collapsible bowl, and whatever spoon I am putting up with at that particular time.
I make my own dehydrated camp meals that are simple, inexpensive, small, and only require the addition of water and then heated. Each meal is about 1 cup of dehydrated food (rice, chicken, vegetables, spices, for example) and I add 1.5 to 2 cups of filtered water to it.
I dump all of that into the kettle, fire up the pocket rocket, and bring them up to speed.
I sometimes bring a tube of ritz crackers too.
It only takes about 3-4 minutes for that grub to get up to boiling, then let it sit for about 10mins to cool down and absorb.
Afterward I lean against a tree and Shannon rests her head on my leg and we just stare out into the woods and enjoy the silence, the wild animals, and being together. Time to think, and time to let things go.
Anyway, each of the spoons I have purchased for the above purpose fail for all the wrong reasons and the reasons are obvious. In fact, I can’t believe the design of the stuff that’s out there.
The problems I have encountered are:
1. Handle too short. I need at least 8 inches to reach the bottom of the kettle and not get food all over the handle.
2. Weerd shaped bowl. The bowls are too shallow, too narrow, or squarish with round corners.
The food we eat is on the “looser” side, not soup but sort of like stew, so bowl size and shape is important.
Seems like half the camping eating utensils are these ridiculous things called sporks.
Have you seen these misfits?
A terrible spoon, and someone filed 3 or 4 angular slots on the end to pretend it’s a fork.
Please.
Couple more points.
I have a plastic type spoon that was almost acceptible but unfortunately I let it touch the bottle inside of the kettle when stirring and it melted on the edge.
Went right into the can.
So only metal is acceptable.
My preference is titanium because of the weight (yeah, I’m one of those people).
A normally sized and shaped bowl for getting decent sized mouthfuls every single time.
And a handle long enough to stir the bottom of the kettle without getting my fingers messy.
If you ever encounter such a thing let me know.
TNX
PS, never forget that I am but a poor white sharecroppers chow so cost is always important but I don’t mind paying good money for good stuff. I hate paying good money for junk.
Have you ever seen an old fashioned English soup spoon? They have long (about 7 1/2 inch) thinnish handles and a very round (not oval) bowl. No idea why they aren’t widely used in the States bc they’re incredibly practical for eating soups, pottages and soft mushy foods. You could probably find an old silver plated one on eBay for very little.
There are also cream soup spoons which are similar but much smaller and probably would not be of much use to you because the handles are short.
Hope this helps.
Get this titanium long-handled spoon. The exact same spoon is sold by several different outdoor backpacking gear suppliers with their brand, so I suspect there is only one maker of these spoons.
And, for outdoor backpacking/climbing cooking, you don’t need the perfect spoon. Once you have finished your meal, you should put more water in your bowl, get all the food particles and sauces suspended in the water by gentle stirring and scraping, and then drink the water. Do it again, do it a 3rd time. You have been carrying that food for days, you are not going to throw it on the ground for the ants and other bugs. You need every calorie you can carry. And you need to drink lots of water, because you are dehydrated after a long day of backpacking/hiking/climbing/boating/canoeing/kayaking. It may not feel like it, but you are dehydrated and you need to recover from the day’s exertions.
Once there is no more food residue in your bowls, then put in some really hot water to sterilize them and the utensils, throw that water out, and then wipe your utensils and bowls dry with a paper towel. If you need to, because you just ate yummy high-calorie greasy sauces, the last two hot boiling water applications are first with a little soap to lift and cut the fats, and then fresh water.
So my recommendation is don’t keep looking for the perfect spoon. That titanium spoon is good enough. This is how I do it and teach my young folks on our week-long trips through the wildernesses. The part they don’t like at first is drinking the food-water, I guess because they associate that with dirty dishwater. Eh, I tell them, it’s all the same in your stomach, just without the bile. So drink up and stay alive.
It just keeps getting better.
I saw mention of this a few days ago and hung my head in disgust. Again.
Joe Biden proposed, and the US Senate confirmed, the first woman to lead the US Navy.
The US Senate has confirmed three high-ranking military nominations, including Admiral Lisa Franchetti, who becomes the first woman to lead the Navy. Senator Tommy Tuberville allowed the votes to go through after months of blocking all confirmations in an anti-abortion protest.
Franchetti, 59, was sworn in as the 33rd Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) on Thursday, following a 95-1 vote on Capitol Hill. The four-star admiral also became the first woman granted a seat at the Joint Chiefs-of-Staff. President Joe Biden nominated her in July – reportedly against the advice of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. Since her nomination she has been serving as acting CNO, due to Tuberville’s obstruction.
First woman approved to lead US Navy, 3 November 2023
To say this bodes ill, particularly in the current circumstances, is probably the understatement of the year. But if the limits of imperial overstretch have indeed been reached, it would be absolutely appropriate to have that critical historical moment overseen by the first female Joint Chief of the Navy.
https://voxday.net/2023/11/03/hultgreen-curie-naval-edition/
I’ll just say some stream of consciousness things about Franchetti and the CNO appointment.
At 59, she’s a bit older than you’d expect from a flag at this juncture of time. I mean, contemporary warfare, and naval warfare, isn’t always jumping out of foxholes and bayoneting Xhinamen in the heart, but it still is a very strenuous job. (Inside scoop) The commandant of the USMC went down with a heart attack (is he even out of bed yet?) and service members blame Tuberville’s moralist stance and holding up of promotions. The commandant, it seems, was doing several flag rank jobs at once because retirements and the lack of advances was emptying the billets. I call bullshit on that. Wasn’t the commandant vaccinated? hmmmm. You’re telling me the commandant of the USMC doesn’t know how to delegate?
The new CNO: I note she’s considered a woman. I have the utmost respect for women, BTW. I knew some scary female officers in the army and their ability to wield authority rivals that of many men. But she’s hors de combat and that, my friends, is a deal breaker for me. We are in the opening stages of WWIII, no less, and we’re hiring for diversity. In the revitalization of NATO since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I believe most of the female defense secretaries/ministers have been replaced by more believable and menacing characters. I don’t know about you, but I want a defense minister who looks like 300 pounds of kill about to unleash.
War. Yesterday I had an eye-opener because I heard VDH give analysis that was 180 degrees from mine on the current war in Israel. To my mind, the Hamas achieved their war aim on day 1 when they de-coupled the Saudi-Israeli pact, and at the same time I think that Israel will also achieve it’s war goals of attriting into oblivion the ranks of Hamas. If you know your war, you realize two belligerents can achieve their initiatives. After the war, the status quo ante will re-assert itself, and Israel will still be surrounded by enemies and the Palestinians, so-called, will be as ever unremittingly impoverished Jew-haters. Nothing changes.
Victor Davis Hanson says otherwise. I’m compelled to listen to him because his knowledge of history, diplomacy, war and politics is unparalleled. It’s his contention that this time the world leaders of the West are less prone to put limiters on the Jewish state; they aren’t talking as much about bullshit “proportionality” as usual. The pundits and media are, but apparently VDH thinks the leaders are more appalled by the Hams Oct 7th action than usual. The point is that Hamas and the greater Arab ner-do-wells have stepped in it this time, and shocked the world a little too much. The limiters are off, fuck the curfew and to hell with the bag-limit.
DVH is suggesting that the sorting of politics after the 2023 Israeli-Arab War will result in more moderate Arab states (Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, etc), damaged NGOs such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and Houties, and give Israel a bit more breathing room in its environment. His proposition requires more proof than mine, but my ears and eyes are wide-open to test his theory.
We are a Navy family. DH tries to show support, but the rest of us . . .
QotD
====
The world slides ever further over the edge of oblivion….
“Wolfie, as I like to call the greatest of musical miracles, wrote six immortal operas including the Requiem, 41 symphonies, almost fifty concertos, 24 chamber works, and eighteen miscellaneous pieces, but is now replaced by “artists” who include the F-word, the N-word, and the S-word in every single woman-hating, violence-praising sentence of their singularly untalented noise.”
https://www.takimag.com/article/goodbye-wolfie/
My Dad liked Big Band and jazz. I kind of picked that up. When I was traveling back and forth to Asia some years ago I got hooked on Stan Getz music played on the airline music options. Today I hear crappy rap music with horrid language blasting out of some car at a stoplight and sure enough it is usually some white dude listening to it.
Daily we get older and closer to the point of our eventual demise. We do not get out of this alive. Along with our physical bodies goes all of our knowledge and memories. I like to work with wood and realized through experience that if your table saw blade is off a half degree then it will certainly show up when you try to put four corners of something together. Our team was on a conference call with a client discussing a device failure during qualification and realized I knew more about the test methodologies than our engineer answering the questions. I haven’t worked in our engineering group in more than 20 years. We have junior managers running manufacturing lines and don’t have a math model for expected output. They go off of historical output and think that is as good as it gets. I wore out a chronograph many years ago to help build such math models. I try to pass that knowledge on and get resistance based on emotion although the solution is mathematical. Some people will relearn all those things I know, and I suppose there were many before me that had such knowledge which is gone from them too.
I am not sure where I am going with this. I was up well before dawn and watched the sun come up with a pot of coffee. A good time to think.
I know where you were going.
When we’re gone it’ll be mostly over.
Only hard men will survive and they are very rare these days.
Kansas, I hear ya loud and clear.
After you leave the corporate world, all that will go to hell and quickly. I agree 500% and I’m not being facetious at all.
Look at the current corporate and also political environment. They don’t know shit about actual things and about leadership. The nutbag in Seattle (Everett?) comes to mind who didn’t want his submersibles built and tested by “40 year-ld white Navy veterans” and proceeded to kill his first clients when the sonofabitch sank. He’s the poster boy for what you’re saying.
Politics? They count their ballots at night, with paper over the windows, and computer tallies hooked up to the internet. What part of that sounds good?
I could rant forever but it’s Sunday, and I need to go to work. All my best.
Having recently more or less left the engineering profession, I noticed – in my recent experience – that management positions, albeit low-level, come early and many of these so called engineers are so dependent on the Oracle of uPs, they don’t recognize when something’s off kilter in the lab. OK in a mentored newbie but management? I’ve run across to many managers that have business degrees but know little or nothing about the practice they attempt to manage (mostly cost and schedule. Product performance sometimes slides in but more by accident than design)
Granted the universities stopped teaching the smell of burning resistors and charged capacitors long ago, so it’s hard to blame the new-outs – they don’t know better. But it takes more time than it should to get a newbie up and running. Surprisingly, it’s the lack of writing/reading skills more than professional weakness that creates the largest problems.
One university I know recently dropped the senior level statistics course and now allows the sophomore level course to count for accreditation. The higher level class was “too hard”. I get weird looks when I suggest “flunk-out” courses are a good idea.
If I want an answer, I don’t go to the “Director” – he has no idea. I go to the tech on the floor, preferable without his engineer around.
I’d not like to be in the profession as a newbie or mid-level – but then, I wouldn’t know better, would I? I miss the work but I have no desire to re-enter the corporate world. Not even as a visitor.
An imaginary person that doesn’t know me very well or long asked, “Why are you so hateful?”
IP told me about an incident of complete stupidity involving spending money committed by someone we both know that defied logic and left them in an unenviable position. I told IP I won’t help this other person out.
IP said it will hurt to do so (she’s not wealthy) but she is thinking about giving this person some coin and that I should rethink my position. I told IP she was being too kind and short sighted and that giving the other person coin deprives them the benefit of the learning experience and the mending of their ways. We all make mistakes and with age hopefully we make less, but only if we learn from them.
I asked IP why she thought I was hateful and she said it was because I wouldn’t give this other person some of my hard earned coin.
I told IP, “You know, I didn’t agree with your method, and I think it’s stupid, but I didn’t ask you why you were so stupid. But here you are jumping the gun and saying I’m hateful for not doing what you think I should do.” “If anything, I should be asking YOU why you are so hateful.” IP created her on definition of hateful on the fly.
IP was taken aback. Obviously she never considered that there are always 2 sides to a story and that her assumption about my opinion was wrong. I asked her, “Why do you think my opinion is hateful?”
She reacted just like I’ve seen a thousand times before. She stammered around and threw up a wall of chatter that was an almost apology and an almost agreement with my position, but never really coming right straight out and admitting she was an asswipe.
I just left the conversation at that, not giving IP anything positive to get ahold of. Let her quandry on that for a spell.
I believe IP came to the table with a preconceived notion about me and intended to exploit me for her own entertainment. Yes, there are people like that. If you’re not paying attention they’ll walk right over you.
Look at this in ‘mex-co'”
https://rumble.com/v3t3u3g-weather-modification-blamed-for-mexico-hurricane-cat-5-storm-devastates-aca.html
I’ve heard of this DEW business but don’t know enough to form an opinion.
I do realize this rotten assed gov’t (TRAG) is capable of anything and everything.
But I doubt they are capable of altering the weather on such a scale.
TRAG has proven me wrong before.
What’s your take?
Like I said before: In the mid 1950’s we lived a few miles from Lockheed aircraft. My stepfather was friends with some of the engineers. Those engineers were convinced that “the Russians are messing with the weather!”
One more pathetic excuse for a human being running his yap, making false accusations, ASSumptions, and banal threats.
The audience should have stormed the stage and issued him a sound ass thrashing.
*******************************
GOP presidential candidate Asa Hutchinson was booed Saturday when he told a Republican summit that there is “significant likelihood” that former President Trump will be found guilty of a felony next year.
The former Arkansas governor told the Florida Freedom Summit in Kissimmee, Florida, that such an outcome will make it harder for Republicans down the ticket to win their races if Trump, who is leading in the polls, wins the 2024 Republican nomination.
Hutchinson cited his own experience as a prosecutor to say that “there is a significant likelihood that Donald Trump will be found guilty by a jury on a felony offense next year.”
“That may or may not happen. Before you vote in March, and it might not make any difference to you, but it will make a difference for our chances to attract independent voters in November. It will make a difference for those down-ticket races for Congress and Senate, and it will weaken the GOP for decades to come. As a party, we must support the rule of law,” he said.
The claim was met with boos from the crowd, one of a number of instances where anti-Trump statements by Republican candidates. Both former NJ Gov. Chris Christie and former Rep. Will Hurd have been booed for making perceived anti-Trump statements.
“We cannot win as a country without integrity in the White House,” Hutchinson said on Saturday. “And while some will ignore that destructive behavior of the former president, I assure you we ignore it at our own peril. The next generation will not look favorably back on this time.”
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/hutchinson-booed-significant-likelihood-trump-found-guilty
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/us-drafts-plan-to-bring-grizzly-bears-back-to-washington-s-north-cascades/ar-AA1jnpUq
Apparently, there are still some deer remaining that haven’t been killed by predators.
I’m not kidding. First, the state ended the use of dogs to hunt cougar, and the upshot is that cougar flourish. Then, the re-introduction of wolves here. Almost 10 years ago, a bout of black-tongue decimated the Whitetail herd, and they still heaven’t recovered. Where we had hundreds in my part of Eastern WA, we have almost none.
Grizzly doesn’t eat only berries or picnic baskets. He eats deer. How many big predators do we need? The pioneers were smarter than you give them credit for. They whittled the predators down to manageable, and my own experience with this shows that you can’t eliminate the predator, you can only modify him slightly. The documentary about wolves and elk in Yellowstone is bullshit of the highest order.
My state has fukt up preservation as much and as thoroughly as humanly possible, and in my own lifetime. Fish & Wildlife needs a 2 year sabbatical, and then all new blood when it cranks back up. I’d put nobody in service there whose under 60 years of age.
Even when you witness it with your own eyes, you still won’t believe it.
Clear Glass.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UsUC8bDvEw
My take is, the dot gov. can do incredible weather modification. INCREDIBLE. They are not hiding this fact anymore. That is the real story here. Like LBJ stated in his famous speech, Control the weather and you control the world. Or something close to this.
The current Mex President is a Trump supporter. That makes him a danger to the DS. Acapulco is (now was) a top tier destination resort that had more to offer than Vegas. Much more ($$$$). As they say, follow the money.