Dazed and Confused

I included these two pictures of the most recent hydro site I'm working on. The site is called "Deer Rips" which is comprised of two generating stations, one on each side of the river. The powerhouse shown in the picture is Androscoggin #3. The pictures have no connection to the title. I just threw them in because I like posting current photos.

Back to my theme . . . our family just viewed the movie "Zeitgeist". The best description I can think of is a docu-drama" about world history and the future. Suitably vague I realize but you really have to watch it. You could summarize the message as there is a small group of very powerful people who are driving toward the goal of one world government. The means of doing so is elaborate deception and manipulation of the people. Not a new idea, I know.

Now, before you start giving me the fish eye and wondering if Oliver Stone broke into my house, let me say I am as skeptical as anyone. Most people love conspiracy theories, at least to watch on TV or read about. I'm not one of them, probably because of my natural cynicism and "just the facts" way of looking at events. But I found the evidence rather compelling and downright sobering. If anyone has ever watched the 1976 movie "Network", you are familiar with the idea of mass public manipulation. Think about this - how DO you know what the truth is? The media? The concept of an "objective" news source is mid-20th century invention. Prior to that newspapers were rather open about political affiliation. It's not difficult at all for me to imagine all the media as having an agenda, especially when you consider the concentration of media ownership in the hands of a few powerful people.

So I'm feeling more confused than ever about the state and future of the world. On a spiritual retreat I attended, we referred to it as "liminal space" - threshold. In my little corner of it, I'm grappling with a challenging teenager, where and in what do I want to live, what kind of people do I want to live near, how to navigate the financial system, etc, etc, etc. I told my wife yesterday that every direction seems uphill right now. And there is an urgency to virtually everything. We really feel the need to find a place and begin building our future now.

We've come to the place where it appears we have to strike out on our own rather than join a community. Find and buy land, build a house and establish food production. All with the goal of little or no debt and most of it within a short time frame. We have found people we would like to live near and work with. That helps some but this is still a scary, daunting prospect.

No post would be complete without a horse report. We had a week of temperatures in the teens every night. The water trough froze over with a 2" thick ice cover. Time for the trough heater but then the horses wouldn't drink. They were getting shocked! Turns out the heater was putting 80V on the water. New heater time. The horses are developing nice shaggy winter coats. We're now feeding them hay two times a day. They've gotten much more aggressive at eating time. I had to show the male the riding crop the other day to settle him down.

We went out today to feed them with a snow/rain mix pelting us. Although the temperature is in the high 30's versus last week's 19, it was still pretty miserable. Thankfully unlike the horses, we didn't have to stand around in it all day. Fortunately I just finished fixing the horse shed yesterday so they have a decent shelter.

All these experiences are helping toughen us for the future . . .

Winter's Coming

Much more than SW Michiganders, Mainers are keenly aware of the coming of winter. The leaves are mostly down as we enter November. Snow has already fallen in the New Hampshire White Mountains which we can see from here. Winter preparation in the form of getting plenty of firewood under cover, servicing furnaces, doing exterior home repairs and winterizing, vehicle prepartion, etc. are well underway around here. It's a topic that's never far from conversation. In our case we live in an old farm house that is FAR from well insulated and sealed up. I installed some insulation board on the unheated portion of the basement ceiling this week to help as well as put up a large tarp as a wind block.

The house is heated by oil which is EXPENSIVE. When we moved here it over $4 per gallon. The owner has a contract that caps the price per gallon and spreads out the monthly cost. Even so we are paying $480 per month. Despite this it is still cheaper to live here than rent and pay utilities. We have never been so keenly aware of the cost to keep warm as we are now. We keep the thermostat turned down at night and close the door to the kitchen (coldest room in the house) to keep a lid on things. More than ever we understand the need to live in a highly energy efficient home. Thankfully we will be some day soon!

I've started getting some amplifier repair business for Black Crow Workshop in Maine. A great guitar player I met at a local jam gave me a couple of amps to work on. The Fender Super pictured was gently abused by someone who replaced the power transformer. In the process they bypassed the tube rectifier but left it in place. My customer thought he had a tube rectifier when all the tube was doing was heating the cabinet! I replaced the transformer and restored the amp to its 1963 glory. I also repaired a Dr. Z amp that beer had victimized. The beer spilled into the amp, shorting out an output tube. Fortunately the damage was limited to a tube socket and power resistor and was easily fixed.

When I'm not working on amp repair, the same desk serves as my engineering office. I'm starting to get more settled into my job with a local engineering firm. It's a big change to be working 98% from home, especially in such a small home. I've been struggling to concentrate with the daily whirlwind going on around me. And it is really easy for other family members to forget I'm at work and interrupt me. For awhile I tried to handle the interruptions and then go back to work. But quality programming can't co-exist with multiple interruptions. So I've had to bolt the door and turn on music. Things are much better now but I'm sure the adaptation will be ongoing. And if there's an emergency such as a horse in the road I'll still be called on!

This picture is of a neighbor's yard. They moved out yesterday, heading for Kentucky. Since they only had a trailer and minivan with lots of kids in it, not everything fit. They held a yard sale and also sold or gave away the larger stuff. After the first trailer loading, they test-drove and found the trailer unstable above 35mph. So they had to eliminate some more stuff. Here's what's left. They determined what they couldn't live without and the rest went to the thrift shop. We felt put to shame in our efforts to slim down prior to moving here! Note - they managed all this in a little over a week's time!!