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Open thread 4/12/23

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  • Anne April 12, 2023, 9:48 AM

    I don’t know, but I think Gerard would have liked this from Norm McLean:
    “Each one of us here today will at one time in our lives look upon a loved one who is in need and ask the same question: We are willing to help, Lord, but what, if anything, is needed? For it is true we can seldom help those closest to us. Either we don’t know what part of ourselves to give or, more often than not, the part we have to give is not wanted. And so it is those we live with and should know who elude us. But we can still love them – we can love completely without complete understanding.”

    “Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.
    I am haunted by waters.”

    “Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it.”
    ― Norman Maclean

    • ghostsniper April 12, 2023, 12:54 PM

      Very nice Anne. There’s enough in there to chew on for awhile and even revisit a few times.

    • tallowpot April 13, 2023, 8:20 AM

      The book and the movie, both moved me to tears.

  • Casey Klahn April 12, 2023, 12:17 PM

    I’d like to compliment Anne’s poetic post except with this new music video that I’ve been watching every day. John Rich and a weird new country singer who doesn’t fit the mold, Tom MacDonald.

    It’s a gloomy outlook, but it gives me comfort to know that others are willing to say it: we are in a bad place worldwide and it’s not uncommon to think this. Misery, meet company. It’s a nice melody, too.

    https://youtu.be/H1kLQ7yfY0I

    • ghostsniper April 12, 2023, 12:53 PM

      Jeez, I could barely put up with that thing. I kept hoping it would get better but it didn’t. I saw that dood in another vid a couple months ago and it was tolerable. Anyway, I want my kowz back!

      A local dood that I met the 2nd day we moved here 17 years ago retired about a year ago. I hadn’t seen him since, until yesterday. Bored with retirement, he went out and bought 5 cattles for his 32 acre property. He knew next to nothing about cattles. He bought 5 kowz and 1 bull. The bulls names is vernon and he keeps all the gurlz satisfied. So much so that my friend is renting vernon out to other cow owners in the area. He gets paid $200 everytime vernon scores. In the past 2 weeks vernon has scored 23 times. I told him he needs to change vernons name to a chinese version, “Won-Hung-Lo”.

      These cattles are what’s called Limosin’s and they are known for their fine marbeling texture. Which is kinda funny because my fried doesn’t like beef, says it tastes cheap, and only eats deer meat. (he kills 3-4 deers per year – bow, crossbow, rifle, black powder).

      Interested in the money aspect, I asked him some questions. In 7 months his ladies will drop their loads and I can buy them from him at that time for about $800 each for the gurlz and $1000 for the doods. Then I pay him $50 per month for the next 2 years while they fatten on his property and he will sell them to a local processor for $4k each. At that point I can take the money, or fill the freezers, or any combination thereof.

      Friday evening I’m supposed to come by his place and we’re gonna sit on the porch and drink non-budwiser brews and shoot guns and play loud assed toonz (I’ll probably take a guitar and an amp – and a truck bed full of guns and ammo) and I might give him a big pocketful of coinage. Secretely, and even unknowingly, I might have always wanted to be a cowboy.

      • Casey Klahn April 12, 2023, 1:00 PM

        Make sure you get a UFO levitation clause in your cow husbandry contract.

      • Terry April 12, 2023, 6:55 PM

        Cows, cattle. We raised heifers on our acreage in NV. Sold them as yearlings at auction every year. Lots of work involved. They got pinkeye one year, something else another year and so on. Someone left a gate ajar and they all took off into the outback a couple times. Huge open wilderness all around our place. Had to coax real cowboy friends of ours with horses to locate and herd the cows back.

        Lesson learned after a few years . . . . no cows at our place that are ours. Lease the pasturage out to other folks. Partial payment in return would be one half a butchered animal per year.

        • ghostsniper April 13, 2023, 4:05 AM

          @Terry, for me it is just a “money” thing.
          I will have no interaction with the animals.
          If I place $1000 in cash on the table, in 2 years it will be worth less than $1000.
          If, instead, I put that $1000 into cattle, in 2 years it may be worth more than $1000.
          As always, I will not invest more than I am willing to lose.

    • Anonymous April 12, 2023, 4:26 PM

      Different tunes for different folks I guess. My first thought was Bud Light drinker. Each to their own though – I have my own weird taste in music.

      • Casey Klahn April 13, 2023, 6:05 AM

        John Rich distills an expensive label whiskey, and at his drinking establishment he outlawed BidLite. Just an FYI.

        I’ve been enjoying the BudLight memes and shorts, and near the top of the heap is a short vid by MacDonald – first time I’d seen him. H’es a wordsmith.

        The John Rich Whiskey tastes good. My Liq. Cabinet has only room for one Kentucky whiskey, though. The rest is all Irish. The Irish are a good lot; I’d love them especially more if they’d just decide to keep O’Biden there.

        On taste. My family loves beef, and although I have the property, I won’t be taking up ranching. When the balloon goes up, I’ll be bartering with my many neighbors who have cattle or horses. If the cows go up, though, that’s a whole ‘nother matter.

        • Casey Klahn April 13, 2023, 6:11 AM

          In end-of-the-world news, I just opened the news to see that 18K dairy cattle just went up in a conflagration in Texas.

          • ghostsniper April 13, 2023, 6:38 AM

            The ever tightening noose. Now milk will be >$5/gal. Just because.

            • Casey Klahn April 13, 2023, 9:30 AM

              I’ve been around since Eisenhower; democrat in office/down economy. It’s axiomatic.

              Now, just to place a fine point on it: burn and ‘kerslode our food sources. I guess – I mean some have said these food processing accidents are running to normal stats. Who knows?

              The wife & I are looking at a new kitchen range, and I had the worry that the fascist stores would be not selling LP appliances anymore. her anxiety level is sky high with the news these days, and I was saying there’ll soon be a ghost economy – a parallel economy of normal folks selling beef, poultry, fuel, horses, fire armz, vehicles that run on gas. The commiconomy cannot continue much longer as it is. I vote for Trump on the dollar bill.

              • Anonymous April 13, 2023, 4:17 PM

                I’m thinking silver dimes and quarters will be the new currency once they force digital “money” on us.

                • ghostsniper April 13, 2023, 7:34 PM

                  Yep, 90% silver US coins.
                  http://www.jmbullion.com

                  • John A. Fleming April 13, 2023, 11:29 PM

                    Ag jumped in price quite a bit in the last six months, it’s up 33%. Best time to buy “junk” silver was last August. Doesn’t matter what inflation is, a silver dime is worth a loaf of bread.

                  • ghostsniper April 14, 2023, 4:26 AM

                    John, yep, dime = loaf.
                    But if you make em yourself you get 5 times as much.
                    Make up a 5lb batch in a stand mixer, cut em out in 1lb balls, put in zip lock bags and store in freezer. We bake 1 about every 10 days. 5- 1lb balls cost about 3 dollars – or 1 theen silver dime.

                  • ghostsniper April 14, 2023, 4:28 AM

                    One more thing. Since our bread has no preservatives we keep the baked loaf in the fridge and slice off what we want as necessary. We’ve saved and cleaned lots of commercial bread and hamburger bun bags over the years and that’s what we use to store our bread in the fridge.

  • John A. Fleming April 12, 2023, 11:04 PM

    I wonder where that riparian idyll is, if it’s close to Paradise, CA. It looks like some of the trees have been seared by fire, the leaves and needles anyway. The creek water is dark with tannins and algae, late summer or early fall, I think spring melt water would flush out the swimming hole and make it clear. The mosses at creek edge are still vibrant green. Very nice.

  • neo April 13, 2023, 11:27 AM

    To John A. Feming:

    If you right-click the photo you may notice it’s titled “tassanarrows.” To me that indicates it is in Zion National Park in Utah.

    • John A. Fleming April 13, 2023, 11:24 PM

      Thanks much Neo, that was the hint I needed. It’s somewhere along a “narrows” section of Tassajara Creek, in the Big Sur highlands. Pictures on the internet show similar rock. I don’t remember if Mr. G spent any time at the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center there, perhaps in his younger days. There’s a hot springs close by. California has a lot of very nice natural places, some were colonized by the hippy-dippy types and the navel-gazers long ago. It once was a big enough place that there was a somewhere for everyone.

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