March-April Blended To Apriarch

I hope to be the first to coin this new moonth name I am seeing. March, which is supposed to come in like a lion and go out like a lamb, was lion on both ends this year and April showers, as I recall, were not the entire months of March and April. We are wet and warm and that has made for some super nice days, things growing weeks earlier than "normal". We certainly had more April days in March than March days in April.

When living in an era during which no parameter may ever again be "normal", I can honestly say, it is probably way better than the alternative, which physical reality proves would be a mile thick ice sheet covering my property, in the next thousand or so years.  It took almost half the fossil energy in the crust to do it, but we have staved off an ice age!

Burning through the fossil carbon on planet Earth not only has staved off the ice age that is supposed to be building, but heated the Earth instead, nothing about that is normal. Millions of years of solar energy charged, bio-batteries solar energy sequestered as carbon has been exploited as fuel. We cannot yet grasp, but perhaps those reserves were a precursor to life, guarding our species from Earth's internal radioactivity, shielding us from the solar wind at night or something. Perhaps those deposits help to create a magnetic shield or enhancement that was beneficial to human beings and other life forms.We can never know what we do not know.With the reserves half gone,"played out", in miner's terms, the debt for fossil energy exploitation will outlive reserves in many areas. This unpaid debt will dwarf the housing collapse.

I know that the business community loves stability, but change is the rule of nature. Apriarch makes good sense as a moonth, (who really cares if there's two of them, you see them together all the time, so it is already like a couple. Because if we're not going to honor it during Saturnalia, the world has to be turned upside down at least once a year! Why not now, when it can now be summer and winter all in the same day for two months straight!

Bio-char Bio-assay

I have developed a relationship with char by the time I call it biochar. Some people just add char, un-developed and have great success. If you routinely add lots of nitrogen to your growing beds, or if you spread the char thinly enough amongst very rich dirt, this is probably acceptable, however, in my case, I'm typically healing very sick soils, so the char I make has to be ready to feed life immediately.

I have written about the importance of adding rock dusts or subsoil, herbs containing minerals or I have even experimented with supplements like a person might take. I have written about several sources of locally available natural sources of nitrogen, but what makes the most difference is the time it takes to inoculate the char with living organisms.

No matter how we make it, when made, it is like having a pet. Anyone who has made beer or yogurt has the basic skills needed. If you have had chickens, it is a plus (although certainly not required) Bakers and brewers, vintners and distillers all know how to create the perfect environment, for a specific kind of life. Charmaking and transforming char to biochar actively creating soils, requires a complex diversity of organisms, not just one kind or type of life (ie:spirits). I believe char making, and biochar are the most important gift one could give, to civilization. Growing twice as much food in the most healthful and efficient ways has no down side. 

When making char, some add straight compost, some like adding micorhyzae, others make compost tea, which is just water that has been enriched by adding a cheesecloth bag full of compost to a bucket of water and then leaving an aquarium-style air pump bubbling in the water overnight. The resulting tea is teeming with microbes and the oxygenation of the water translates to billions of healthy soil microbes per teaspoon of liquid. I came upon a great way of thinking about the char and how it develops over time into biochar. I compared it to a three dimensional petri dish.

Depending on the warmth and activity of natural processes, I may stir char that has been inoculated two to five times a day, folding the surface critters into the low bin containing char. Some healthy soil microbes double their numbers in hours, some in days, or even weeks,but when things are rocking, I typically stir and mix those developing organisms throughout whatever vessel I am making it in.

A shallow but wide container works best because even the pollen grains that fall from the air and microscopic dusts that find their way to the char can add important nutrition for soil organisms. Like we humans find along the paths we take, "What are the chances? 100%! That's why the Police named an album and wrote a song about it, Synchronicity. In fact, when I make char, I usually add loess (wind transported dirt) because it is high in minerals, the soil nutrition it adds is well known for long term fertility on loess and it is already full of the embedded energy energy it took to lift it into the sky and bring it to me on the wind.

The photo at the top is of a particular method of bio-assay that is done by finding some local soil that has worms in it. That is the lighter color material on the left side of the container. I have used worms from a bait shop as well, but if you can find a dozen or two worms in your garden, they will work fine as well. I start by putting a piece of cardboard or tag board in the middle of the container and the soil containing worms on one side, then fill the other side with what I have deemed to be finished biochar. Next, I pull out the cardboard divider and wait a few days...at least overnight. If the worms "like" the char, and invade it willingly, I consider it done.

Another thing I have learned over the years is that when the char particles start out, they have a texture like "singing sand", as if there are millions of tiny pieces of sharp glass shards roughly squeaking past one another while I stir. Keep in mind, the mixture is about as wet as a wrung out sponge. No puddling or ponding in the bottom of the container, not completely saturated either, because I typically add a bit of compost tea or rainwater at the very end of my process. The primary ingredients during the weeks of stirring that I do is my own loving energy, moving the microbes through the material, fresh air and warmth. I have had great success when the temperature is at least over 50 degrees Fahrenheit (10 C) In colder weather, the time required to get things going in the char can double triple, or even take longer than that! Here's the coolest thing...as a coating of microbial life develops, the "hand" of the material changes slowly to almost like downy feathers, or a very light marshmallowy texture.

It is still hard to imagine fourteen acres of surface area per handful...that's a hella lot of petri dishes!

The smaller you can micronize your char, the better. the largest particle sizes need to be smaller than 2mm, so worms can consume the char and fill it with worm castings...

Attention All Readers in GDR

I have repeatedly seen concentrated readership in your nation. Compared to more populous nations, perhaps your readership numbers are small, but for a smaller nation, there seems to be concentrated interest on the part of Germans. I am sure that many of our issues, political concerns and cultural biases are similar, but it would be good to know if you have certain issues that seem to draw you to my posts, or if there is another reason you find my work worthy of your time, please, let me know. Sometimes comments can be better than the articles that spawned them. It helps me to get to know my audience as well. It would mean a lot to me as an author to hear your responses to many of my works. One, that specifically comes to mind is "Bird Doggin' It" from November13, 2015 or "Strange Days Indeed" from Winter Solstice that same year...

There is no representation in my nation's government for the majority who rely on and use science-based decision-making. If there is a way for an individual person to apologize for their nation's leaders, let me take it! Lord and Lady both know that there is no end to the intolerable behavior that results from letting the oligarchs buy our candidates. The massive groundswell that got behind Bernie Sanders will not be silenced and none of us are going away. The outrage that got our current train wreck of a leader into power has overwhelmed our ability to contain it. The jig is up as they say for the "business as usual" crowd. Writing is on the wall in nearly every language. Fossil energy is dead. The outstanding loans that built the frack fields will never be repaid. Just like the housing boom before it, the build has been artificial and as oil continues to bust, there just is no way to get people back into their cars.

I have personally designed a lifestyle that requires me to only be in a car occasionally and I would never want to go back to spending more time burning fossil energy. Massive savings can be had by leaving a car unused as well. These are reasons I get ruffled sometimes when policies are running contrary to common sense, in fact, they seem to be trending in the opposite direction. that of destruction, instability, chaos and death. Here in my state of Wisconsin, which is about the same size as the GDR (if you include half of either Lake Superior or Lake Michigan.) Our statewide limited access highway speed increased from 55 to 70 MPH (88.5 to 112.7 kph). As I see it, the folks who advocate policies like these, which with the stroke of a pen can increase highway fuel use 15% are not only not "conservatives", not only are they specifically designing ways to continue "business as usual" as long as possible. It is hard to believe that they are not aware of the reality of oil markets! More likely, these changes were brought about as a direct subsidy of the oil markets that are already "hurting". Gone are the days of oil being the most lucrative act humans could engage in. Now, it the frack fields, they pump three BTUs of energy into the ground to get five out. Subsidies all along the "production" chain, which is better thought of as a chain of destruction.

The true nature of conservation has been lost on the exploiters. I want to encourage everyone to rediscover the lost art of the give back (some call it the give-away) true conservation is about giving back more than we take. The billionaire -owned media will never admit, but the Revolution that has never been televised is going on worldwide! We all know what better would look like and more and more people are walking away from their dead end jobs, their outrageous debt, and the institutions designed to pump money into the hands of the oligarchs. The more people who learn the truth, the faster it is eroding their own private islands. The Donald can use U.S. Government resources to make himself relevant and to generate income for his failing "resort". The rest of the ruling class has far fewer options.

Blessings this fine spring day and don't forget to plant a tree!

This week I added a pin to the map. ECO-Tours of Wisconsin planted at the site of Grow It Forward, a local group spearheading community gardens in Manitowoc, Wisconsin.

Doubling Down On Failed Policies

We have had a series of unfortunate events take place in recent history. Sadly, even though the vast majority recognizes them and has a pretty good grasp of the reality that we confront, the ultra-wealthy continue to dig a deeper hole for the rest of us to crawl out from. Long ago, the oligarchs had a very tame way of saying what they really meant, "pro-business" is what they called the first round of their assault. Fed up with union organizing and having to clean up their act under the Clean Air and Clean Water acts, enforced by EPA, business released one of their first salvos in the class war. Pro-business was the sanitized way to say, anti-worker, anti-environment, anti-tax. These folks are adept at the majicianship of getting heads to turn with distraction...Who knows distraction more than Disney, Comcast, CNN, MSNBC, ESPN and Faux News?

The monied interests now own the media outlets, so the only voices that get heard are the ones they allow to be heard. I am one of the people who has been participating in "The Revolution That Has Never Been Televised" since I first learned of it. It is interesting that no matter what terms have been given the exploitation and destruction of our economy, Trickledown economics, austerity, tax-breaks...the result is always the same. We have, for nearly fifty years, created more direct channels to recirculate more wealth to fewer hands, faster. Astute and thoughtful economists warned about this even before the term Reaganomics was coined.

We have known for decades that the wealthy hoard wealth, they don't spend like the rest of us. If it "cost" you a quarter million a year to live, but you made ten million, you would be a fool to spend that extra money (unless you could find a tax sheltered investment that was a sure thing...like art, or diamonds, gold, or antique or high end automobiles) That is not like the spending we do. "Investing" in things that don't matter is the expertise of the ruling class. They often know old wines better than we know our neighbors. The vast majority of people on planet Earth are living hand to mouth and our only investment is in survival.

Why I should do actual work, dangerous, hot and disciplined work, for money, yet I pay over 30% of my income as tax, but when a business sells you something, made by people like me (each paying over 30% of their wages as tax) for money, the corporation only need to pay half as much (15%) tax is the ultimate slap in the face! Adding insult to injury, we have to carry the weight of those corporate exploiters even before they can make their first dollar! Indeed, most large corporations get money from the government rather than having to pay a single penny! The number of wealthy people in our nation, (the U.S. of A.) not paying taxes might astound you. Corporations avoid taxes and accept government hand outs that exceed all social welfare programs combined! The public is no longer satisfied to just turn their heads away from the madness!

This image shows very clearly, the difference between giving back and exploitation. I moved onto the property I continue to buy from the bank over fifteen years ago. The soil was so hammered that it took ten years in some areas to even get earthworms. The soil I have made through giving back is on the right hand side of the container. The dirt created by ignoring the needs of the bottom of the food chain is the dirt on the left-hand side of the container. I keep working to build a community. The oligarchs keep tearing them apart.

I have been writing soulution, instead of solution, but I don't believe it is a typographic error. I would wish to add a depth of meaning to the word. Things that work, are supported by science and are in line with humanity have soul to them. They are the result of love. What the ultra-wealthy want us to think and know and think is real has no bearing on these things. Their imagery and deceitful representations are based on fear and hate. I have heard linguists claim that the word fuck comes from the verb meaning "to plant", like a seed. We need to fuck the liars who sell us soul-less solutions and who cheer-lead for destruction, death and chaos. Perfecting the art of the Give-back or Give-away as some tribal cultures call it may take lifetimes, but what else do we human beings have going on? Distraction? I've got biochar to make and soil to build, catch ya' on the flip side!

Twitternation

As a child, my grandmother was one of the few eddies within which you could feel stability and some degree of safety. Few things I knew, outside her countenance, and perhaps my other grandmother's to a lesser extent, were not in the flow, needed negotiating, deftness. when i learned to shoot rapids, it made perfect sense, in almost any part of the river, without helm, or moving through water, you are pulled randomly along, like a stick or discarded take out box. The turbulence of society was something I was attuned to back then. When i heard the term "blessing and curse", it was something a very young, as yet undefined, "I" had noted from childhood. to say that most adults seemed, to me, retarded is complicated by the fact that we have always been so.

I wish that it was easy to go back to the earlier prejudicial words of the past, but in a very true sense we can retard the growth of many organisms at will, so why not have the term retarded be allowed. In many ways, without being able to talk about it, how can anything change? Just branding someone with a "diagnosis", limits and changes our perception of capabilities and limits to performance that may not even exist. I was socially retarded because most of my friends were adults and now that many of them have died off, most of my really good, lifelong friends have died. None of these relationships might seem significant, but to me, my mentors are all I have connecting me to the great arc of human history. The things they taught me and the things I was able to explore because of them may be, one day, the most important things for our species to know. It is not for me to judge. Only time will tell. All data I have had available seems to indicate I'm on to several parts of the solution to many environmental hazards.

We can double the crop production, the output in BTUs the very calories our soils produce, but we have to switch from a petrochemical-based agriculture to more natural ways. Building soil is the most labor of love, eternally giving back to future generations. It is worthy of at least as much time as is spent on "religion". I still can't seem to distill it purely enough for people to understand the significance of doubling crop production. It is as if they just get a blank stare. Not commercial enough, to the average person, means insignificant. A pro-non-commercial good has not even been allowed to be defined. Many of us have been exposed to the fact that seventh generation thinking is a thing, that it means something critical to understanding permaculture and sustainability. Doubling production for generations, what an investment that is! Remember, the dust bowl blew away thousands of years worth of soil, which has never been replaced. The soil contains biomass, living microbes and invertebrates, each one a packet of moisture inside cell walls, each one a vibrant metabolic reservoir for energy, nutrients, they are what make a true, living soil.

When we have devolved into a digitally-induced haze, it is easy to forget...Billions of interconnected relationships bring soil health, these energetic and chemical factories create, not only more food, but better food. Plants grown in a community of relationships and interaction feed plants appropriately, unlike commercial chemical agriculture. The dystopia created when we forsake our basic needs for imagined ones. The only thing worse is mistaking wants for needs. We all see the bull. Even tee vee programs have become "news", but only on the right channel. The distraction factor has been raised by orders of magnitude with the fractured media landscape. This de-values content in many ways. Sheer abundance of content can dilute the message. I get news from twenty or more sources a week, but i would like to think I'm paying closer attention than the average person who only watches Faux, or CNN, etc. The tweet quality headlines seem to be as long as the media wants you to stay interested. If they can hit your indignant self-righteous hatred in the headline, right off the line, (pardon the racing lingo) they can deliver you as clickbait. Get used to it!

The true heroes, as I see it, around the world today are the ones speaking up and out against the erosion of our civil liberties. I believe that not addressing issues of global climate change is irresponsible and short sighted. We have to spell out the fact that we, as humans, possess at least the right to exist, unmolested. I speak of these things here, because I trust that the truth will one day be fully recognized and that these words would have helped make a difference, throughout the next seven generations and beyond!

The reason I brought the story from the place of  the eddy behind Grandma's steady rock, in the stream of life, is because we are now left to create those stable eddy currents for future generations. without places of refuge from flow, our youth experience undue stress and nothing is harder to heal than a sense of dislocation from that stable eddy, carved out by stable elders. we have the basic human right to pass along a better world to each and every generation, not blowing off evermore expensive weapons to destroy and kill, create rubble where society once flourished. Feeling justified in attacking people in their own nation, or supporting rebels against a popularly elected leader, the oligarchs don't have the authority to intervene in sovereign nations. more and more American patriots and heroes are standing up to say clearly, when any of us are harmed, we are all harmed! These are issues that resist both being expressed on social media, because they are too elaborate to spell out in a few glib and/or cynical lines. In too many platforms, social media keeps to the ultra short hard hitting messages, emotional gut kick images with a handful of carefully crafted words and people get off, literally on the flurry, like a dust devil made only of electrons, we get our dander up and blow off the steam without thinking...

We customize pigeon holes in new ways today. Sometimes we even learn to make our compartments into useful furniture.

This digital realm has an oscillation in and of itself. sometimes it can feel as if we are jumping or skipping up them two at a time, and at other times it may feel like you are tumbling down them! Our relationships in the digital realm have a quality of organism themselves. As in all organisms, there are differentiated systems and organs for a variety of purposes, invasions of pathogens and a resulting immune response of sorts. In my experience, many great things have come from this media outlet, the internet and social media on the whole have been so great. I describe it as if one were to take the revolutionary power of Gutenberg's Bible and multiplied it times the billions of people who can access a document  in this format. Worldwide, over 30K readers have been able to "read my book". This is revolutionary and I am not sure whether many young people even understand or respect this fact.

Tarnation, damnation, and consternation were but a few of the levels of frustration Grandma would have expressed. She faced all obstacles with resolve, but I'm sure twitternation would be right up there.  Something about the flutteryness of the word makes it feel like the proverbial, ungainly, June bug or bumble bee, who is not supposed to be able to fly, according to physics, but who does so anyway, out of sheer will. I have recently had a job that required me to become a member of the twitter sphere. I have posted there a few times at #TCSaladino. It intrigues me when I find people in that realm who have chosen to follow me, because I tend to limit my posts to music and not much more. That again points out the fracturing of media. not only are there more options available in more locations all the time, but very discreet threads can be woven together to create a media landscape to our personal desire.


Tweet your friends that #TCSaladino and Saladino 4 District 8 on facebook are the same guy!

 

Spring Clean Up

It is time to clear away the detritus that blew in over winter, start a new compost and turn over what has languished over the frozen time so that it can continue to degrade into new soil. There have been plenty of signs that the winter is over, but this year I was sick for an entire week of the nicer weather that signals the beginning of the growing season. When I took ill, there was nothing to indicate the coming nice weather but a few sprigs of green coming out of the iris beds. The shallow rooted corms had pushed out the start of tiny green leaves and there were a few suspiciously bulging areas of mulch where other early Spring flowers would later emerge. My sickness lasted about ten days and I have not fully recovered, but When I emerged from my house after about a week, there were 6-8 inch tall (15-20 cm) ephemerals greeting me. Daffodils, tulips, hyacinth and a half dozen more foods and flowers are pushing up toward the Sun!

I have heard many calls for cleaning up our political system as well, but that is not something I feel like wasting time on today. I am not completely sure that composting the detritus of government, the unsatisfactory representatives or complicit ones who sit in silence as our nation destroys itself would be a prudent course of action. I worry that if we composted them, nothing would grow from that poisoned dirt for generations.

Instead, I would like to share a song. It appeared this week and is worth a mention. Virtually everyone has hear The Boy From Ipanema, a jazz standard with legs, but Sandy and Richard Riccardi have re-tooled it for our times and the title of their song, which you should be able to find on you tube sung to the tune of the older song, but the updated lyrics go like this: When you see the ... symbol, that is where the audience participation happens and I urge everyone to shout our what you would really like to sat to Tiny Hands, just shout out your favorite messages, everyone will ge tthe picture.

Boy From Mar-A-Lago (sung tot the tune of Boy From Ipanema)
Tall and Orange and Rich and Tubby, The Boy fromn Mar-A-Lago goes walking
and when he passes each one he passes goes...

Spending Millions on Vacation, He Laughs as He Rips Off a Nation
and when he passes each one he passes goes...

Oh, and I Watch Him so Madly, How Can I Tell Him I Loathe Him?
Yes, While He's Dining on Lobster, and Melania stays in NYC,
The bill comes not to him but to me!

How much Money is he Making from Presidential Golf Vacationing
at his own Mar-A-Lago by the sea?

Oh, is he running the country? How can I tell if he's working?
Yes, I Would Vote to Impeach Him, but each Day when I walk to D.C.
I can't find Him He's by the Sea

If He Works No One will Ever Know, "Cuz He's Holed Up at Mar-A-Lago
Laughing at his Own Government Money Tree...
He's living Free...
and charging Me...
down By the Sea...

Now that we have had a bit of diversion, back to the matters at hand!

SNOW Many Years I Was That Sick?

In my trembling chills and alternating sweats, coughing so hard and for so long that it felt that my diaphragm was bruised; I came to grips with how easily I might die, how important getting a new breath in truly is!  I may not express it enough, but I'm no friend of needles and even I contemplated a flu vaccine. Shot in the dark that vaccines are, in fever induced psychosis and afterward, ever going back to being the writhing, shaking and trembling puddle of flesh I was, turned me to into a potential customer.

How sick is that? Right? Tony Appleseed? Ready to take up willful association with the corporadoes? Believe me, I have wondered too. Sadly, even in my flu wracked state, I knew that sequestering yourself for even a week, to protect the health of others, is a small price to pay every half-dozen years or so, to try to keep others from having to go through it. Perhaps Creator's intent was to have that disease act as a clean-up crew on superfluous elders. I'm not in the mood to judge. I have a fly hangover and expect to not feel my best for at least another week. I'm no longer contagious and yet, can't muster the strength to get up and go. It has taken two sittings at my desk to capture just these two paragraphs.

I could not imagine going out in public during a sickness like that, I would have been the Vesuvius of viral infection! In fact, I still want to blame the guy who coughed pretty much right on my last bite of lunch. I had brought two apples and a few granola bars for getting through the day and a poorly timed and directed cough cost me a week of work. When taking this sort of penalty from life, one knows that sharing is not, in this case, caring. Here's a little diversion I planned to execute before I got sick.

I thought it would be fun to present a sort of scramble. I took the following photos through this last winter. As I shoveled, I would make a letter in the snow each successive snowfall. Can you determine what the real order was that I took the pictures?

I will present the first person to e-mail me the correct answer, with approximately a kilo of char, enough to enrich a typical 4X10 foot garden bed. Send your guess to: tnsaladino42@hotmail.com your e-mail will not be sold.