The Sound of Sirens

Photo credit: Oklahoma City Examiner

The one thing that has distinguished the past couple of days from most is that at least once each day we have heard sirens wailing in the distance. My mom even commented on this. Many of you will shrug and think, “So what?” and I understand this. When we lived in St Louis, the mournful wail of emergency vehicles was so ever-present it was just part of the background noise that we tuned out – unless the siren came into our neighborhood. Continue reading “The Sound of Sirens”

Space: a Really Dangerous Place to Live

We often think of outer space as being a great big empty nothing littered with trillions of stars and their attendant planets. All big enough to avoid and with lots and lots of empty void between them. Other than having to traverse the vast distances, empty space offers few dangers, right? Very wrong! In this episode of my on-going series about the fact and fancy of science fiction we’re going to take a look at what life for human beings would be like in outer space.

Orbital Space Dangers

First, let’s look at the area of space with which we are most familiar: that shell of space immediately surrounding our own planet. The most prominent problem here, or in any part of outer space, is the awesome destructive force of a near perfect vacuum. Any craft sent into space must be built to resist the forces of the interior atmosphere wanting to rush out into the vacuum surrounding it. Even a pinhole in the hull can turn into disaster if the material is not strong enough to resist the erosive, tearing forces of hydrodynamics as the air screams out the hole.

Orbital space has another main issue: space junk. Human beings have become experts at trashing virtually every environment they can get to, including the space around our planet. NASA says that currently there are approximately 6,300 tons of man-made debris orbiting the earth; some as small as a fleck of paint, some as large as the defunct Vanguard 1 satellite.

What harm can a fleck of paint do? When it’s traveling at 17,000 miles an hour, even a paint fleck can do serious damage. Early in the space shuttle program, during the STS-7 mission, a tiny paint fleck hurtling through space hit a shuttle window, causing so much damage the entire window had to be replaced. There are tens of thousands of junk bits in Earth orbit, some just flakes of paint, but some are nuts or bolts, tools lost by space walkers, discarded fuel tanks or rocket stages of previous space craft, even whole satellites. Continue reading “Space: a Really Dangerous Place to Live”

When Being Green Makes You Blue: Global Warming

Today is Earth Day; a day set aside to review and speculate about our conservation efforts and to show support for those initiatives designed to preserve the natural functioning of our planet and promote activities to reduce our “footprint” on its ecological well being.

Anyone who has been reading my work knows that being ecologically conscious is important to me; I endorse reducing waste, support recycling to conserve resources and reduce landfill clutter. My articles often encourage everyone to find ways to re-use their cast-offs by selling or donating things they don’t want to those who do. I write regularly for the local chapter of Keep America Beautiful.

We designed our home to be as energy efficient as we could make it – within our means. We are growing a good portion of our food, and doing so without herbicides and pesticides. And I try to share what I learn about all this with you; my Dear Readers.

My article on Pocono raceway becoming the largest solar powered sports facility, and other Green initiatives within my favorite spectator sport was just published by Sportales eZine.

“Green living” is important to me. However there are some aspects of the modern ecology movement that I can not buy into; particularly Global Warming. Continue reading “When Being Green Makes You Blue: Global Warming”

A Blog With No Name

A few people (mostly young people) have asked me about the tag line for this blog (Writing Through the Desert on a Blog with No Name). What in the world does THAT mean? Those in my age bracket will most likely get the reference. For the Paduans among us, it’s a reference to an old song; one of my favorites. Perhaps this will help clear things up – just for fun.

America: A Horse With No Name

Songwriters: BUNNELL, DEWEY

On the first part of the journey,
I was looking at all the life.
There were plants and birds. and rocks and things,
There was sand and hills and rings.
The first thing I met, was a fly with a buzz,
And the sky, with no clouds.
The heat was hot, and the ground was dry,
But the air was full of sound.I’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name,
It felt good to be out of the rain.
In the desert you can remember your name,
‘Cause there ain’t no one for to give you no pain.
La, la, la la la la, la la la, la, la
La, la, la la la la, la la la, la, la

After two days, in the desert sun,
My skin began to turn red.
After three days, in the desert fun,
I was looking at a river bed.
And the story it told, of a river that flowed,
Made me sad to think it was dead. Continue reading

Planting Potatoes

I spent most of the day yesterday putting in my potatoes. Well… half of my taters. I planted two boxes in Yukon Gold as my early crop. Next month I will plant another two boxes in Russets as my main crop. But before planting them I had to get the boxes ready.

To hold potatoes I need a double-depth box (2 2×8’s stacked) that I fill half-way with soil. To do this I have bottomless boxes that are used as the second level and are held in place on top of a regular box with pocket hole screws. These screws can be backed out and the second level moved from box to box as I rotate crops each year. I mixed 1½ pounds of composted chicken manure into the soil of each box to enrich the soil.

Then I used a modified Stout method of planting. The Stout method sows the potatoes on top of the soil then covers them with a thick layer of straw mulch. Regular planting puts them down about 3” then mounds dirt up around the stalks as they grow to keep the tubers covered. I plant my taters an inch or so deep, then 1½” of mulch on top — as a start. As I plant them, I mark the locations with a craft stick just behind the seed-spud – careful not to stab it!

I planted the box in a checker-board fashion with 8 cells as potato and 8 cells as bush style green beans. I put 1½” of mulch over the potato cells – leaving a dimple over the potato for the shoot to rise through. No mulch on the beans yet; there are 9 bean seeds per cell, I’ll wait for them to sprout and get a little size to them before mulching to discourage weeds and retain moisture – I don’t want to discourage my beans. As the potato plants get tall (12″ or so) , I’ll mound up more mulch around the stalks to keep the tubers that will grow from them covered. Sunlight makes the taters turn green and toxic. The mulch makes it easy to reach in and pull out young taters as they get to be golf ball sized. The deeper spuds will get large and be harvested later.

The white grid-like thing is one of two planting guides that I made from PVC pipe fittings; this one helps me plant things 1 or 9 plants to a cell, the other is made to plant 4 or 16 plants per cell (it’s made as 4 quarters, 16 get 4 plants in each quarter – I just eyeball them). These take care of all the common planting schemes in the square foot gardening method.

My late crop potatoes will be co-planted with black beans. The late crop will be allowed to grow undisturbed for larger spuds, but I’ll use the same planting method. (NOTE: this co-planting scheme did NOT work out. Here’s why.)

It rained last night, so I’m off to a good start – as long as the frosts are over with; that would hurt the bean seeds. Since it is early April now the frosts should be done (here in Tennessee) but… ya just never know these days!

The Old Homestead: Life in the Mountains

Living in a semi-remote mountain area is a mixed blessing.

I call it a ‘blessing’ because it is primarily a good thing. It is for us at least. The beauty and grandeur of The Great Smoky Mountains region is breath taking. Especially at this time of year. The peaceful serenity here is blissful. And the people in these parts are truly the salt of the earth. Mostly descendent from Scotch-Irish immigrants who settled here during pre-civil war times, they have their quirks and peculiarities – like any one. They’re ‘Mountain Folk’ from way back. They have their own way of doing things and thinking about things. But if you take a little time to get to know them and don’t come in determined to “reform” them over night, they’ll welcome you into the fold and be some of the best friends you could possibly want. Continue reading “The Old Homestead: Life in the Mountains”

Prattle: Wireless Blondie

I went down to check on my Mom this morning. She lives in her own house on the property my wife and I own and live on. It’s a whole lot more convenient to look in on her and help her out when she’s living a couple hundred feet away than when she was in Nebraska. Normally I drop in on her mid-day with the mail, today I needed to follow up on yesterday’s excitement, so I went down first thing this morning. Continue reading “Prattle: Wireless Blondie”

Orbital Space Dangers

Alien Empire: The Story

America: A Horse With No Name