In article ,
songbird wrote:

Billy wrote:
songbird wrote:
Billy wrote:

...much snipped but appreciated thanks Billy...

i didn't measure the volume as it
was made in a trench (in clay) and
it was then submerged in water for
a few days before i could excavate.

it was mixed with the clay as it
was shoveled out of the trench into
the test plots next to it and appeared
to be roughly 10-30% charcoal, but i
couldn't be sure of the exact proportion.
enough of it was large chunks that it
will take some time before those get
broken apart.

Ay, there's the rub. Surface area is everything, and the larger the
piece of charcoal, the less effective it is. You may want to hammer on
some of the larger pieces of charcoal to reduce their size.

it's being used at the moment.


I'm just using charcoal from a wood stove, and a barbecue, It's slow,
but Rome wasn't built in a day.

right. if i gradually smash and break
up the pieces over the course of a few
years then the end is still accomplished.
the carbon is largely sequestered and
acting as a substrate for all sorts of
other interesting things.


to do a measured proportion test plot
would take a lot of separation and then
remixing. if i were to go that far i'd
have to grind it up too. all in good
fun if i had an old chipper or meat
grinder around to encourage into more
decreptitude... but at the moment i
see little movement towards such
happenings. i'm so far behind in
weeding all my extra time is going to
keeping the new patches going and getting
caught up.
Amen, sister, Amen.

coming along slowly. chiropractor is
getting me untwisted from last fall's
raking. i could go all summer last year
hauling tons of materials and have very
few back troubles, many hours of digging,
etc. a few aches but nothing major.
a half hour of raking and i was scrod.
finally gave in beginning of June and
started seeing if something could help.
so far it is helping so we'll see how
it continues. cutting into my gardening
time though. grr!

Yoga is good.


in fun reading lately:

_Long for this World, the strange
science of imortality_ by Jonathan Weiner.

This would be the other Wiener?

o.s.c.a.r. ha, j/k, interesting
read. i've moved on to Socrates/Plato
for the nonce.
If your too careful, you'll miss the humor in them.



interesting read, much somewhat familiar
to me from general science reading.
Immortality?! (shock, shudder) What if leaves were immortal? We'd be up
to our necks in ancient detritus.

if there weren't worms, fungi, bacteria
and mechanical forces they would be quite
a pile, but there would be plenty of other
stuff too (wood, dead organisms, bones, etc).


The anthem, here at Camp Runamuck, is "Thank Heaven, I'm not Young
Anymore", closely followed by "Ah yes, I Remember It Well".
http://www.rhapsody.com/#/artist/the...um/gigi-origin
al-motion-picture-soundtrack
These are only snippets, but you'll get the drift.

i'm looking forwards to gnawing through the
resources and reading list in the back on the
rainy days.

next up is Darwin's classic _Vegetable
Mould and Earth-Worms_. 1888 edition,
still in very nice condition. i know i
won't look as good at 123 years.

Taxidermy is your friend ;O)

it was a quick read, some of it
interesting.


My main reading material (by my bed, not the one in the bathroom [The
Great Derangement by Matt Taibbi]) is Animal Factory: The Looming Threat
of Industrial Pig, Dairy, and Poultry Farms to Humans and the
Environment by David Kirby
Kirby has a novelist's style of writing, which makes it easy to read,
and the first 3 chapters are brief biographies of 3 people's run ins
with CAFO pork producers. There is enough Sturm und Drang in it for
anyone.

my previous readings on this topic leave
me no doubt that it's a time-bomb. i have
no idea how regulators, government agricultural
folks, agricultural scientists at the universities,
etc can be so blase' about the whole mess.
complacency may do many more us in.
It's the usual suspects greed and avarice.


Billy rolling over now to stare at the stars.
You know that we are stardust? Except for hydrogen, all the other
elements were made in stars. It's a marvelous place that we live in.
How far away is that star, or that star? How far away determines when
you are seeing it, and the further away it is, the faster it is moving
away from us. Earth is about 5.7 billion years old, but our kind have
only been around about 2 million years (3.50877e-5ths of it's
existence.)

fireflies are going gonzo now here so those
are the stars i see.
I've only seen them once, and it was a magical time.


songbird
--
- Billy

Mad dog Republicans to the right. Democratic spider webs to the left. True conservatives, and liberals not to be found anywhere in the phantasmagoria
of the American political landscape.

America is not broke. The country is awash in wealth and cash.
It's just that it's not in your hands. It has been transferred, in the
greatest heist in history, from the workers and consumers to the banks
and the portfolios of the uber-rich.
http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/.../michael-moore
/michael-moore-says-400-americans-have-more-wealth-/