1611 and 1560 Bibles

As a book collector, I was impressed with the facsimile reproductions of first edition, first printing Bibles made by greatsite.com. They have ended this project, and I wanted to share the few, poor photos I took of these books owned by a friend of mine. https://www.thekjvstore.com/ has some left in stock, I purchased some for myself, a large format first edition seems to be a project we won't see available any time soon, and not for the current price of $140 with free shipping.
 

Hendrickson "Normal full sized" Bible on top. It's the next best option for those looking for a 1611 facsimile, but the smaller print is not as easy to read.

Greatsite had included real Bible pages from Geneva and KJV printings with their facsimiles, since their main business is original volume restoration. The text of those originals are small but very clear. The letter quality of the facsimiles are very good but not flawless. I'll try to upload a photo when I get my own books.

The Greatsite team made a site where original Bible page scans can be viewed. 
https://bibles-online.net/

PDFs and other smaller format Bible printings are out there, but this was the only full sized, easy to read original edition printing I could find. 
 

purpose in time

I'm working on this idea to replace the dose of nihilism I got in college. Its working but I'm not sure its articulated well, so consider this a draft.

what to do about the problem of the ultimate futility of endeavors? Excluding scientific utopianism, the likely future in most thought systems is the end of the world. Entropy dissolves all. Kingdoms are forgotten. Its in all the key religions including my choice, Christianity. The salvation and restoration of the faithful survivors and land itself comes after wickedness takes power and destruction covers all. So what are we striving for in our political systems, in our architecture, businesses and dynasties? If these things we must build (for they are necessary) are doomed, why do we build?
The answer I have found, is to consider their lifespans. Like a tree, they start, are protected, are productive, and depending on variety, can stand grand and tall for many ages. They only last so long. They must give way and let another take its space. Perhaps they go to fuel flames, or become some other building or instrument.
So our daily work, with few exceptions, is not for eternity. It is for the life of the structure. That I accept. For now, to build a thing or maintain something where my lifespan is a small part of its duration. Our efforts are futile, aren't futile? We don't know. The work is here before us, so let us act in the service of what is good, beautiful, and true.   

Direct seed conference notes

Pacific Northwest Direct Seed Association 2020 Cropping Systems Conference
January 6-8

Here are the notes I took. It was a valuable conference for me. I learned that many of the ideas I've been hearing about have been successfully tried in my bioregion.  

1^st session. Innovative farmers told of their new projects.

Andy Juris has upgraded his equipment and acres over the years until he’s running a 620hp tractor and an industry best CrossSlot drill. 10K acres, much is custom hire for others. Harvests with a stripper header to leave maximum crop residue standing and less work for the combine to do threshing. Grew 120 bu wheat in an 11 inch rainfall year! Has been switching fields from grain production to annual hay production. Mainly forage barley or forage triticale mixed with peas. Hay yields have been good, one cutting a year, 1.5 ton/a Barley, 2.5 ton/a Trit, 1.8 ton/a dryland alfalfa.
Has ran into rattail fescue infestation and glysophate resistant cheat grass. Had to start tilling some badly infested fields, switched herbicide recipes, took grass crops out of rotation there, and worked at better weed control timing. Resistant cheat is a disaster that he and his neighbors are working to get under control. It was caused by a previous farmer who sprayed low rates of roundup and assumed the weeds wouldn't get used to it.

Rob Dewald

9-12 inch rainfall zones. Has tried all the planter types, has both. Using stripper headers now. Is doing some grass seed now. Working at having living roots in ground at all times. Sunflowers do improve the soil for next crop.
Planted a 10 species cover crop mix, it really does create its own moisture! Roots put carbon in the soil, and now getting livestock to join the party. Didn’t use too much moisture to hinder next years crop.

Now doing the cover crop mix 25 lbs an acre, mixed with a cash crop, tried fields with CC + 60lbs wheat, CC + 90 lbs trit, CC+5 lbs canola. Fert at spring planting was humics and molasses. Grazed 65 days, could have been longer. Excellent gains, but could have been better as calves took a while to calm down and learn to eat the cover crop. Fertilized with solution32 in fall. The cover crops winter killed, the cash crops that had been hiding out in the mix took off in the spring, and had a decent grain crop.

Chris Eckhart

12-16in rainfall. Also switching to hay production, doesn’t want to flood the local market. With careful residue management, was able to use a tillage style drill to do no-till at first. As a beginner, Chris discovered the problem of ruts and ridges from previous year are there to contend with. Chaff out the back of the combine wasn’t spread evenly, leaving a chaff strip that the next crop didn’t like at all. Really likes a well adjusted double disk drill. Main reason for buying a proper no-till drill was the old one wouldn’t adjust to a low enough rate for small canola seeds. Ended up getting a used, mechanical feed corn planter from the mid-west for that. Row cleaners are important for this style of machine. Since canola wants to be planted shallow and moist, and you don’t always have the right conditions, Chris tried putting down high rates of water with the seed instead of fertilizer. It sort of worked, but takes a LOT of water.
Fertilizer plan is all dry granules in spring. Mycorhyzal fungi inoculents for wheat are producing good results. Ordered wheat seed without the usual fungicide coating, and used inoculent power instead. It worked great! No problems found. Good fungus displaces bad.

Eric Orem

5-12in rainfall. Flexicoil hoe drill with stealth openers.
He cut 800 lb/a sunflowers with a wheat header! Yes they do get caught on the reel and flip out. Had his kid walking along, tossing them back in. Bought a corn header for next sunflower crop, that worked good. Tried dryland corn, it didn’t work, but will try again. Also moving grain acres to hay, trit/pea did 2.3 ton/a. Next year planning on expanding crops to sunflowers, milo, sorgam, beans, corn, peas, and cover crops.

Pat Purdy

All irrigated, heavily depleted gravel soils in Idaho. Crops since 1883. Season is such they can only grow annual spring crops. Growing hay, barley, mustard, cows, hunting and fishing land. Not using pesticides because bugs for fish are more valuable. Need to regenerate the soil with natural carbon. Tried other drills, liked disk drill best. Even with transport, its cheaper to find used drills in the midwest.
Roundup Ready alfalfa was too hard to kill. Cheap alf in for 3 years is better. Seeds 25lb/a alf with 50lb/a barley to boost first year production.

Giving up tillage means you can’t wipe slate clean. So plan each operation for its long term effects, don’t make ruts! Bought a powercast tailboard for better combine chaff spreading. Working on goal of no synthetic fertilizer.

2^nd Session

Mike Nestor and Doug Poole 6-9in rainfall.

Doug has bought into all the regenerative agriculture concepts, but how to apply? The soil is alive, work with nature, soil typically has 500-1000 years of minerals available. Biology first. Natural vs synthetic chemistry. Even poor soil has greater potential!
Tried 30 day covers, but when terminated, moisture would leave. Have to find economically viable solution when leasing land at 25/75 crop share. (Farmer gets 75%)
Tried mixed cover crop and cash crop. Triticale, turnip, clover, pea, sunflower. Humic and molasses instead of fert. It grew well, but it was a summer with no rain. Was looking bad in late summer. The weed that wasn’t suppressed by mix was marestail. Will have to adjust mix next time. Soil was hard. Roots in plates and clumps of soil, but they were live. A quarter inch of rain in October brought it back, soil was soft, crop was growing and photosynthesizing despite the cold. Decided to fertilize, 20% less than usual since other farmers who have gone down this path have said it takes a while for soil to get used to all natural fert instead of synthetic. As the snow melted, it didn’t run like usual. There was less frost, soil had air bubbles, and the mud left this field first. The roots looked great. In the spring, sprayed humics, molasses, with 24D for mustard. Way less weeds than usual. Other field with this mix had a goat grass problem, but not enough of it grew to be worth spraying. As the triticale crop matured, it grew great, the soil was darker than ever, there was still moisture, soil testing showed no deficiency. But the leaves did. The grain was slow to dry. Yield wasn’t as great as it could be, but of the four fields the results were:
May planted mix 1300 lb/a net profit -28
June planted mix 2100 lb/a net profit 19

winter trit mono 3000 lb/a net profit 46
spring trit mono 1100 lb/a net profit -2.5

(Long term average grain yields in this area are 2040 lb/a)
The mixes had additional advantages of way less weed spray, less equipment use, better activity timing, and they were exciting and beautiful. Didn’t get these grazed, but that would add an additional boost. The mix fields were full of birds, bugs, deer, and ranchers were asking to graze it, but none were able to pull off the logistics this time.
Version 2 of this trial this year had more cover crop species, which all germinated. There was a 3 inch downpour that caused some damage, not as much damage as the conventional fields suffered. And more of the water was caught and held.
We learned that the concept works, covers do suppress weeds, the roots look 2-3x better than conventional with the same fert and seed variety. It definitely works for triticale, a try as this mix with canola has room for improvement. And we need to figure out how to graze it.

3^rd session

Microbes give you 25% yield increase

Tom Poole 6in rainfall.
His big thing is applying liquid extracts of composted manure.

Principles: 1 break down residue. You can bail and till it, but its better to get that carbon back in the soil.

2 moisture, 3 fertilizer, 4 water infiltration.
Adding Nitrogen burns up soil carbon. Get your Carbon : Nitrogen ratio right with managing tillage, environment, crops, fert and rotation.
Use these same factors to manage your bacteria/fungal ratio.
Tillage benefits disease. The future is microbes instead of trucked in N. No one sells carbon, you have to do it yourself.

Applying compost extracts has brought the soil biology from and assay of 50lbs N to 100 lbs N.
Counting protozoa/amoeba that are easier to see can give you an idea of your bacterial population. The amount of soil disturbance a no-till planter causes is acceptable, it releases water from fungal hyphe in the root zone for seed germination. But the microbes and soil life will be doing the tilling and converting crop residue. Tom started with organic matter of 0.6 to 0.9%, now up to 2%! Root sugar is the best carbon injection. Fertilizer program is now 21 Lb/a N instead of 50, split between planting and in season. Two applications of compost extract, after harvest, and in October. It is made by buying one truckload of manure compost, putting it into 400 mesh bags, soaked in IBC totes over night. It has to soak so the fibers swell and stay in the bags, otherwise they clog the sprayer nozzles. 10 bags per tote. Can use them twice, then reload. Applying 12-13 gallons per acre. Isn’t it better to use the compost directly? That would cost too much, and require different equipment to apply. Only uses one $2000 truckload a year. The spot where the compost got dumped grew as well as the extract acres.
Once you have good revived soil, you can use your old conventional hoe drill to plant. There wasn’t these clay knobs 50 years ago, they have eroded. They need carbon, rebuild the soil.
With this program of no-till and compost extract, yields have gone from 50 bu/a to 67 in one area, 27 to 38 in another. Yet a good year now is about the same as the top yields 100 years ago, when farming had just started here.
How does the extract work? Don’t know, just does somehow. Too much Phos in it being from cattle? Tests say it isn’t a concern. Also it has 1-2 lb of N.

4th Session
Cat Solois from McGregor company.
Sports talk, trying to get crowd engaged with talk of couches and teams.

Think outside the box, have a young mindset. Yield breakers, offense and defense planning. What scoring opportunities do you have? Be ready, not reacting late.
What is yield? Seed weight, grains per head, heads per acre.
What are limiting factors? Water, growing degree days, N? Not any one thing, it changes throughout the lifecycle of crop. Plant needs what it needs when it needs it. Different mineral use at different stages. Research from high yield contests show helping crop early is easier, later made the most impact. Phos most needed early, get it in the furrow for sprouts.
30-40% of inorganic fertilizer gets tied up in soil, broke out later by biology. Early wheat tillers are productive, later ones just use resources and don’t make much grain.
Later N application is better, during stem elongation in spring. Since its often put down during seeding, inhibitors that slow N release have been shown to help a lot, better than split application in cool PNW conditions. Mid season need for boron & zinc, can boost yield 10 bu.
85% of photosynthesis happen in head, top two leaves of wheat plant. Track your heading date, grain fill date, to really know which varieties perform the best. Heat stress is anything over 85 degrees!
A bunch of plot trials show strobie fungicide increase plant growth, some sort of hormonal trigger. Lowers ethylene which causes premature reproduction. Improves N use efficiency. Fungicide timing is critical, can see 5bu difference. These fungicide trials were all in conditions where there wasn’t any of the wheat fungal diseases present.

5^th session
Dale Strictland, Green cover seed.
Wants to pass land to the next generation that will be prosperous.
All around the country, the cost of farming adjusts to water availability. Drought is just less rain than you were expecting. All crops need the same stuff.
Stories of cover crops. They increase water infiltration, reduce evaporation, improve capacity, boost root depth and root efficiency.
In this soybean field, the previous crop of wheat had all the straw baled off. With a hot, low rainfall summer, the beans all died, except where the baler broke down and left a big patch of straw covering the soil.

Rysotron root imaging shows crops using the root holes made by previous crops. Worms improve infiltration, and lots of other aspects. Feed them with legume crops. Slow evaporation a lot with standing residue and tree wind break field boarders. They work and don’t take up that much of the field. In Kansas, 5inches of moisture can be saved per year with some kind of mulch covering the ground. Most stands of cover crops can be killed with a roller crimper instead of herbicide. Topsoil is built the best by mixes of perennials. Overlapping roots types share exudates. Cows turn top growth into perfect microbe soil amendment. Hardpan layers are hard for roots to get through because they need soil pore space for oxygen. Less than 10% space and roots won’t have enough oxygen to grow.

8^th session

Dale Strictland, Green cover seed.
In an Australian trial, no cover went 27bu, early terminated millet did 40 and late terminated 44. But with cover crops you have to measure the result of the whole rotation, not just one crop. Long term soil building benefits. Before synthetic fertilizer, farmers would often broadcast clover into winter wheat in the spring. It still works.

Picking the right cover crops for your situation. Every plant has its unique characteristics. Teff grass produces a lot of biomass and winter kills. Photoperiod sensitive sorgam sudan grass can be timed so it stays vegetative and frost kills before it tries to produce seed, which takes a lot of water to do. Sunhemp is tropical, produces lots of biomass above and below ground, water efficient but only one variety is palatable to cows. Gaur is the most drought tolerant legume. Only produces seed in a SW Texas environment.

Fall plant options can start with tillage radish, oats. Hairy vetch, needs terminated in spring, popular for making enough N for organic crops. A field of bellonsa clover in Indiana was measured at providing 275 lbs of N.
In some mixes, the right grasses will use up the available nitrogen, starving weeds and giving good conditions for a subsequent crop of legumes.
You can use corn stalk chopper rollers as a roller crimper to terminate covers, though you will need to add weight, and some are too sharp. Cutting isn’t as effective as crimping. In addition to a roller crimper, there is a non-inversion sweep called a noble blade, slices through root zone without much surface disturbance.
Calculate the moisture bare soil would loose in comparison to what a cover crop will use.

A precision corn strategy is to interseed with perennial clover, then a tool that is a row of string trimmers can go between the rows to keep clover suppressed. Graze after corn harvest. Replant by spraying a narrow band of herbicide in front of each corn planter.

Wide crop spacings are finding more uses with compatible crops between.

The homestead act required 10 years of successful grain crops to claim the land. 80% failed. The loophole was using fallow years between crops, this worked. But fallow doesn’t store as much moisture for the next year as you’d think. Bare soil fallow held 10-17% of the rainfall, chem fallow with plenty of residue held 25-30% of rainfall. A well designed cover crop can match, beat or at least be more useful. So find out if you can afford to fallow. Use the moisture, don’t store and loose it. Consider grazing, baling, some farmers have found perennial pasture more valuable than grain crops.

6^th session

Nutrition of wheat Dr David Killilea, private research scientist & nutritionist.
Does part time nutritionist work at a children's hospital, recently got a grant to look at identity preserved wheat varieties. Not taking any funding from industry or pharma. Will be speaking about all public domain data.
Everyone is micro nutrient deficient – in statistical population studies.
The biggest deficiencies are in potassium, Vit E, E K, and magnesium. To a lesser extent Calcium, A, C, and zinc.
There’s no legal definition for “whole grain”. Regulations use industry definition, which has wiggle room.
There are many well designed grain nutrition studies. According to which, eating whole grains are good for preventing many diseases and and some GI cancers. Good for all the common ailments, heart, diabetes, blood pressure, stroke, asthma. Most benefits are gone, and some health problems worsened in studies tracking intake of white and refined flour. Lists of studies can be found on informationisbeautiful.net.
Whole grains contain a lot of vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and flavinoids. A half cup of whole grains has half the RDA of fiber.
There’s a lot of new research being done on lignans, which are in wheat, flax, and sesame. Gut bacteria processes some nutrients into other forms the body can use.
White flour has carbs and protein, enriched flour only adds back in a handful of the vitamins and minerals that scientists knew of a 100 years ago. A chart of the nutrients in whole vs enriched flour looks pathetic.
There are toxins in wheat. Gluten which can irritate the digestive tract, phytates that can bind nutrients unhelpfully, lectins that are wheat antibodies that stick to bacteria, though lectins can have good properties. Immune system activators. And can there can be agriculture toxins. In whole wheat the problematic elements are balanced by the good stuff. The popular opponents of wheat base their concerns on some facts but exaggerate and take their conclusions beyond what science can verify. Some people just can’t digest wheat.
Soaking, sprouting and fermenting have only been found to improve nutrient profile and digestibility.
The OSU Linus Pauling Institute has wheat articles you can read, and there is more research being done in the field of testing the nutrient density of particular grain varieties and growing methods.
Only 8% of population is getting enough whole grains, so we can all promote better, unprocessed products.

7^th session

Farmed Smart certification program and NORI carbon credits market Jill Clapperton
Within industry meetings and government policy meetings, wheat industry people are working to build recognition for identity preserved and regenerative practices and the carbon capture they facilitate. General Mills isn’t interested, organic certification is enough for them. EPA and state agencies are interested. Work is being done to make Farmed Smart a certification process that measures sustainability, carbon capture, energy efficiency, fish and wildlife protection. Working to build new marketing opportunities with this. Trying to convince banks that anyone with this new cert is a lower risk for loans. Looking to get it into the government grant / loan system. Working to measure effect of integrated livestock, companion and intercrops. Moving toward rewarding farmers who stop using a fallow system. Might use microbiometer test from Prolific Earth Sciences in New York.
Some of the players involved: Indigo Ag, Tech Stars, South Pole, 3Degrees, Native Energy, Climate Underground, Nature Conservancy, and NORI.
Check out nori.com/resources

Nori is a private startup, backed by investors. They are researching carbon credit marketing and working to build a CC trading platform. Connect the buyers with the farmers, ranchers, foresters. Other CC ventures had the middle man getting 40-60%. Nori shooting for 10-15%. Something like $14 per ton for the farmer and $16 per ton for the buyer.
No where in the developed world do market prices cover farm expenses. Everyone is getting some kind of subsidies. Carbon credits would be a better way. Currently, the big buyers of CC are power/electric companies and oil companies.

Part of any venture like this is verification. You need to work with partners you can trust with your data. Farm data is extremely valuable on the secondary data markets. Make sure you get paid for your data! Read all contracts carefully. Some of the Nori team are long time data tech industry workers and are committed to not selling your data.
Contract length? 10 years. At most can buy credits backwards in history 5 years. You would agree to do your best effort to maintain a dynamic baseline. No double selling (to other CC vendors), and submit annual reports. What if some disaster results in carbon getting unsequestered? (fire, flood, drought) There’s a buffer in the credits sold, some are held unsold for such an event as insurance. The farmer will never be charged. Buyers of damaged credits will have to write off or buy more. Nori will have a complicated token system that makes everything work. Who buys CC without legislation making offsets mandatory? So far its rich people, company executives, big ag, Granular, power companies and fossil fuel companies. The biggest worry on their side is that there won’t be enough CC available to buy. Its easier to buy CC than to build smokestack scrubbers, even though there are subsidies for scrubbers. How are farmers tested? Farm visit, the practices you are using. Cornet farm model. New model in the works. For extra credits, you can agree to satellite data analysis, and taking soil samples. The Farmed Smart program will do the visits and map checkup points for future sampling. Working to train more certified conservation planners, and offer them B&O insurance.

9^th session

Derek Axten
Learned from Dakota Lakes Research farm, then met Gabe Brown standing in line at a hotdog stand. Has been using a microscope to identity fungus and microbes in soil samples. Started chasing this metric, using compost from local cows. Turns out there are lots of good nematodes and only a few bad ones. Has improved his soil to where it will infiltrate one inch of rain in 29 seconds, and the second inch in 10 minutes. In the neighbors field its one inch in 10 minutes. Went with wider row spacing for less soil disturbance. Got a stripper header, works fine unless weather flattens crops. Started using controlled traffic, got all his equipment the same size. Modified this combine so the heavy chaff is dropped into the permanent wheel track. Has gone to all intercrops. Peas & mustard, Flax and chickpeas/lentils. Stacking crops is more efficient land use, 35% more money. Seeding rates of 50-50. Legume and a broadleaf. So canola pea, lentil vetch, flax bean. No need for fungicide when intercropping. Haven’t gotten watermold like the neighbors. And somehow the crops mature together, haven’t had a problem with harvesting. Even some neighbors are including some flax in the lentils to improve standability. All intercrops are in alternating rows! 20 inch spacing, there wasn’t a yield hit. Only time Derek had to use fungicide was when mixing the seed and planting them mixed. Mixed seed rows have the most symbiosis going on, help each other grow, but alternating rows has been amazing at avoiding diseases. For beginners, clover is the easiest to include in wheat. Better planter openers have made a big improvement. With live downforce automatic adjusters the applied map shows compaction and soil types. Planter can now plant into live crop, early July. Haven’t had problem harvesting two crops together. Upgrading from a complex mobile seed cleaning plant to a full scale industrial seed cleaning facility. Not just for separating the crops, certified clean seed sells for more. Screening refuse goes into compost. Got into thermal manure composting with windrow equipment. Makes liquid extract of compost with an aerobic bubbler system. Inoculates the extract with peat moss, its cheap, $1 per acre. Use peristaltic pumps to avoid pump clogging issues. Starting to get into sap testing.

10^th session

Joel Williams integratedsoils.com

Only microbes get nitrogen from the air.

Foliar nutrient applications skip the soil, are more efficient, fast but limited in how much can be delivered at once. Foliar applied urea can be applied up to 7% solution, 2-5% is more typical. At anthesis is is best timing for wheat.
Carbon compounds are carrier for other nutrients. By itself, a nutrient may tie up with the wrong stuff in the soil. Microbes want carbon, and symbiotically break out the nutrients in forms the plants can use. Carbon amendments are molasses, aminos, fish, kelp, teas, humates.
Plants use natural forms of N easier than synthetic forms. Using legumes for N is all about roots in the round. Top growth doesn’t contribute much. Could breed for greater root growth. It has been found that other bacteria contribute N to plants, not just the legumes. There’s a Mexican maize variety that has slimy air roots that work with bacteria that give it 30-80% of the N it needs. Synthetic N suppresses nitrogen fixing bacteria. In the right situation with lots of fungi, and root overlap, legumes can contribute N to other plants. Alfalfa isn’t good at this with its deep taproot, doesn’t have many lateral roots that will overlap with other plants. More N is fixed later in plants growth, and defoliation increases it. In the process of using N, a plant converts it into other forms. Other minerals are necessary in this process, which differ depending on the form of N coming in. Ammonium needs magnesium and manganese as catalyst. Nitrate need those, plus sulfur and molybdenum. Urea needs nickel. N fixation in bacteria also need catalysts, so your bacteria may need nutritional supplements! Foliar applied N hinders root N fixation the least.

Get up Peter, kill and eat.
Yes, no, or delay by endless debate and discussion?
Get up and act.
Take action.
Whatever result may come.
Kill and eat.
Journey to a far town.
Act on faith, despite your ignorance,
your clueless peering into the unknown.
Why do you act?
Why do what is never done?
Because you have been transformed down to the core.
A light in your heart, resting on the whole group of your friends
We met God.
No action is too much.
No sacrifice too great.
No obstacle will stop our movement.
"Get up" is enough, even when we don't understand.
And what of the results, the consequences?
We don't know, we only trust God, who we have met.
The calling is sure, the next step illumined,
the conclusion is not our concern, it belongs to God,
who we have met.

Stop keeping things

Stop keeping things

your arms are full

your mind is full

your unmind that is the dark side of your moon-psyche 

is overcrouded with stinking heaps of things

let gravity disappear

permit it all to float out into the beyond

have nothing left. 

Wait in the emptiness

one year-of-your-planets moving

and all your left will come around as meteors

every color, fast streaking

and hit you like gravel

slam into you as if you were flying and stopped by a road.

What remains

what survives

what you accept this time

only the immutable

the things that will survive the pain of impact

and you want to carry on even still.

 

camera repairs

I've been kinda sick this week and last night I didn't sleep much. I was actually too tired to drive to church. Not cool. I did get some things done today. There's nothing like fixing something to make me feel better. Lately I've spent way too much time reading about photography. So I fixed my old camera today. My Nikon D40 has a stuck shutter mechanism problem that I've learned is fairly common when its wearing out. So I opened it up and oiled two gear shafts. Its the second time I've done this, so it may not last to long. First time was in Africa, a cactus thorn worked to reach inside to place oil. 60757 clicks so far, I've got to get a few more out of my first dslr! After that I finally got apart the two filters I had cross threaded a while ago. I was in a hurry and put a circular polarizer on top of the uv filter. Not smart! I took apart the polarizer, there is a retaining clip that holds the glass in, then pulling on it separates the rotating ring from the threaded ring. with just that cross threaded ring in the uv filter, I tried gripping it in various ways with padded pliers and a kitchen lid opener. Turns out the lid opener and my hand worked. The polarizer went back together and both filters still work. I sure am happy I didn't bend or crack something. These filters are 72mm, a Hoya HMC Super UV and a Hoya circular polarizer. Expensive filters and now they're back in service! When these where stuck I put on a cheap uncoated Quantaray UV I just happened to get in a box of misc stuff I bought on Craigslist. It was very obvious how much better a coated filter is, there was tons of flare with the Quantaray. I never use lens hoods, and multicoated filters make that work. After having the D7000 almost a year, I reacquainted myself with the D40. Its tiny! When I upgraded the D7000 felt odd in my hand, and now its the opposite. The pictures are smaller and lack the quality of the D7k, not that it matters for most pictures, I'll still be using it. The biggest difference was the three autofocus regions vs 39 with intelligent subject tracking. I set up a flash and was shooting the dogs, it was way easier to follow and frame the action. If I put in more practice the D40 would perform as well, a newer camera just has a lot more convenience. And the dials feel nicer. At the moment the D7k is the best balance of features and improvements though the more expensive pro bodies have a few things it doesn't. The next Nikon full frame camera will likely have the image quality and software enhancements to beat the D7k, but it will cost a lot more and doesn't exist yet. As all the best advice-writing pros say, go make pictures with what you have. One camera might beat another by some measurement, but it rarely effects the final product if you put in the practice to master your tools. My resolution for the coming year is to focus on practicing specific forms, mainly landscape and portraits. I'll keep working on editorial style shots of the farm as well. The other thing I keep looking at is making my own lenses. I made some measurements today, the Nikon f-mount doesn't look that hard to make!

Update: after using the D40 for a few days and thinking about why I chose the D7000, the only glaring deficiencies of the D40 is the lack of extra buttons for changing settings quickly and photo quality in low light. I'll probably just use the D40 for strobe work and as a secondary at well lit events. It still has the legendary 1/500th flash sync!

Can you tell which pictures came out of which camera? Lens was the same. A one year old camera doesn't make better pictures than a six year old one.

This was disappointing that I missed getting the focus right. I'm out of practice with the D40.

Boxes

Finished a paperback novel. Its been quite a while since the time I read several novels a week. It felt about the same to read this one, since it was well written. What's different from highschool is my literary education that lets me see the construction and tropes within it. Read enough and you see the similarities between them. It was enjoyable. A world between covers, where I got to experience the emotions and actions of all the people. The experience is made by using compression, shortcuts, description. Its like putting ones consciousness into a box. The closeness makes everything seem more real. The author constructs the box, paints the scenes on the inside, but eventually you have used up the novelty and have to leave. Outside the box the world is not so trim. Looking back on a long term pursuit of fiction, I see the parts of reality I missed. Always climbing into a box, and too often using the methods of box interpretation out in the real world, which has not such walls and continuity. The world has its own boarders, entirely different than squared line-by-line pages. The world was not designed for our amusement and catharsis. My point is not that we should stay out of the narrow box worlds we create. Vacations have their utility. It is I who needs to inhabit a new set of interpretive constructs. The ones for out here. Because, I am coming to understand with my own warped methods, that this world is itself a box. A far more deadly and immersive one than fiction media. The world was created by someone with intentions and populated with characters. Where else would we have gotten the idea for our little boxes? Likewise there will be a conclusion out here. I have faith in the author of the truest of myths. Even my role here has meaning, and there is something within me more than a human who runs through his role and never exists again. There is wisdom encoded on pages. Wisdom that holds true across many a scene and worldly circumstance. Bits of wisdom, like math, are permanent qualities that had to exist outside of our knowing them. And so, even a misguided soul like me can pick up the wisdom I've found and use it on the straighter path. Our father, who is in heaven, hallowed be your name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us. For thine is the kingdom, the power, the glory forever and ever, amen.

Alternate photo for drive poem

Driving tractor earlier this spring.

a driving poem

I switched to the classical music channel and wrote this on the tractor yesterday. I wouldn't rate this poem very high, but I enjoyed writing it.




     I can drive
until the sun falls from the sky
and boils the ocean dry
and is left,
a hard cold coal of sun
and an albatross carries it back in time -
to start the day again.
      I can drive
until all the aluminum is removed from
all the feldspar everywhere
and the stripes on the roads are
anodized.
      I can drive
until you've learned every song ever wrote on piano.
and all the people
who ever existed have listened to it all,
live in concert.
      until
every tear is cried
every tear, and all weeds are
gone from every field
with friends across every phylum.
until
all weariness is sated
and time is measured
as the space between then and now,
not from within
as we wait until.

rafting

Today I did white water rafting for the first time. It was fun and exciting, enjoyable to propel the boat as a team, and had those nervous bits when it seemed dangerous.
As we floated through smooth and rough water my thoughts where on the experience of being on uneven water, and how that is so often used as a analogy for the function of thoughts themselves. The water is singular in substance, a tangible mass made of a myriad tiny pieces, hard yet splashing to drops, swirling mysterious currents turning this way and that, yet all going downstream. There is power in water, but in most arrangements it is harmless.

After all the reading I do, it was grand to experience the foundation of a metaphor.

camera stick discovery

What good is a monopod with a ball head? Maybe I'll sell it.



But wait!






It's a keeper! I read about doing off-photographer camera and there's all sorts of ways to get unusual angles with a big stick! I can also use it for off-camera flashes once I buy some.

Bombed

I've been trying to get this picture for a while. Hopefully I'll get it better some day. We live in a navy jet training run and all my life I've been bombed by these guys. They target our house, our barn, combines out in the field, and today our equipment shed. I was standing outside with the birds chirping, connecting a chemical pump. I heard the beginning of the noise and rushed to grab my camera. I had about a second and a half to pull it out and point it up and hold down the shutter button.

When directly in line with the sound it is such a short intense roar with the build up and taper off. Its a whole body sound.

I've always liked the jets going over. They are most always A-6 Intruders, sometimes they are low enough to see the pilot. As I've got older, I also think of how glad I am that I'm not Taliban or Iraqi hoping one of these isn't going to come by and blow me up. It leaves me feeling strange inside to be working on some farm equipment, three seconds of ZOOM and the plane is a dot in the distance. If this weren't a test, I'd be dead.

This one seems to be between 500-1000 feet up. They stay under the sound barrier.

Blog day 2010: want to buy a condo?

I've been working on an advertisement for my condo in Bellingham. It was nice to have it for college, but overall it was not smart financially. I could pay it off over the next decade, but I don't think its a good investment with all the interest I have to pay. Its always best to buy things entire or not at all. As soon as I can get rid of this I'll have no debt and I intend to never borrow any money again. The "borrow is slave to the lender" and all that. Dave Ramsey is my main inspiration for being financially sensible. Second would be my parents.
Click here for to see photography of the place. $119k if you want it.

Listened to today:
some streaming praise music through Shoutcast
Buzz Goertzen - God Loves Country Music and Yodelers too!
Black Sabbath - Paranoid
Christsafari - Valley of Decision
Car Talk on NPR

Here is a guy in Lesotho building a house.

Book Review: War Cycles Peace Cycles - by Richard Kelly Hoskins

So my dad was loaned this book by a neighbor, and since my dad has a phonebook sized EMT textbook to memorize, he passed on 'Cycles' to me.
This book is an economic history of the world, emphasizing historical causes for economic collapse and what individual Americans can do to prepare for the next crash.
My recommendation: Do not read this book!
It was written with engaging style and confidant authority. It does have some interesting ideas about economics that would be worth researching elsewhere. Anywhere else. But the only reason to read this book is to have a look at the reasoning of one of the respected sages of the White Supremacist movement. I started reading 'Cycles' with no knowledge of who Hoskins was. I as just judging the book by its cover, which is black with a bold font and a crashing stock market graph. The text of the book is a fixed width font, printed by some process that looks like a copy of typewriter pages, and somewhat blurry at that. It was a glue bound paperback. This styling portrayed genuine underground publication, cheaply done in someones basement with outdated equipment. Probably was, since no publisher would put there name on this.
Growing up here in the inland northwest there may be few colored peoples, but there is a population of White Supremacists. Even so, they are portrayed as violent nuts who hate Black people. I had not thought about their reasoning for believing themselves supreme. 'Cycles' holds a lot of that reasoning. Based mainly on warped interpretation of the Bible and inability to get over past grievances (mainly the civil war), Hoskins explains how Whites are really God's chosen race, how the current Jews are not. He also claims that the Jewish bankers know the system is flawed and use it to maintain power and get rich off the wars and revolutions they instigate.
The only point worth pursuing is that lending at interest always leads to economic collapse. I found Hostkin's explanations for this lacked rigor. What was engaging was his detailed account of how large scale borrowing-at-interest had caused the collapse of nations throughout history. Not sure if he was accurate about that, but it was interesting.

'War Cycles Peace Cycles' was too full of 'trying to prove a point' to be a valid source of economic education, but it is a detailed read if you want to understand the thinking of White Supremacists.

Blog day 2010: RV family

Arrived at 49degrees North, my brothers preferred ski area. On the way here we where behind a slow RV for a while. It was an old dirty RV with what looked like a lawn mower on top. Written on the back in sharpie was "Don't Laugh, we found it in the Paleozoic layer!" There was a cardboard sign duct taped on that read "Homeschooling heaven" and in the back window was "Honk if you believe God made the Grand Canyon", and "Arizona or Bust". It appeared that inside someone was cooking breakfast. The kids waved at us. When my 50hp VW pickup was finally able to pass, I honked.
I wish I could have got a picture of that RV. What a great way to travel.
Snowboarding sure is fun. I should have started years ago.Its great just being up here in evergreen mountains.

Speaking of slow vehicles, here is an ox cart in Lesotho.

Tomorrow: Blog day 2010

Tomorrow I'm taking my brother snowboarding. I'm glad to have learned how this year, but just not feeling like snowboarding tomorrow. So instead I'll sit in the lodge and catch up on some computer chores. Why not liveblog the thought stream? This might be fun. I'll try to update at least once an hour once I'm there.

It's always nice to put a picture up with each blog post. Blogging advice bloggers say its one of the secrets of success. I see blogs where the writer has obviosly went to a microstock photos site and found a picture that vaguely illistrates the the point of their post. It looks kind of lame when people do this on every post. I'm a photographer, so I see it as my duty to at least have it be my own photos I put up. Photos are like ideas; rather pointless unless you do something with them.

Here is a photo of me five years ago.

Lots of tractor driving to look forward to

This week I've been riding in the tractor as it drives itself! Autosteer been working well. It makes the tractor driving experience new and strange. Now I can take notes, eat with both hands, wave my arms around. There is still plenty to keep an eye on, and I have to make the turns at the end of each pass, but now there is none of the fatigue of focusing on the GPS line all day.Also, the frogs have came out of hibernation!

Don't fly!

It was late at night. The household was asleep, except the hamster and I was awake typing. On the floor above me suddenly dad starts stomping around. This is most unusual. "Are you awake?" dad asks, "there is a bat in the house."
Oh boy, what great fun!
Fortunately it flew into the bathroom instead of the living room with clearstory windows. It could dodge with far more skill than a bug! I chased it in circles with a waste basket and towel, but only caught it when it got tired and landed on the towel.
I put it in a makeshift cage (a bug zapper screen) to photograph it. The bat kept opening its mouth to echolocate. It was kinda cute.
Recently I was hiking across some pasture we bought, just to see what was there. It was close to our house but I had never actually walked through it before. While watching chipmunks on some rocks that looked like grave stones I heard a buzzing sound coming from a hole in the ground. Perhaps its a bumble bee I thought, they live in holes like that. So I waited and waited, and this is what came out!


I had never seen a hornet so big. If it flew at me I would have ran screaming across the countryside, but it wasn't disturbed by me photographing it. The hornet instead was digging in the loose debris scooping and pushing a load into its hole. Then it continued to buzz, probably making egg chambers.


It was an inch and a half long I estimate. Not all wasps are carnivorous but this one sure looked like it.

Hello readers. In my life I have developed a habit of saying 'no' to worldly choices, but just as often I was saying 'no' to the work of the Lord as well. The result was an empty, dissatisfied existence. So I write this message only because I saw it, found myself able to articulate it, and thanks to technology of this age, can to display it for you.

2 Tim 1:7 “For God gave us a spirit not of fear, but of power and love and self control.”

Think of what this means fellow Christian, God gave us a spirit of power, love, and self control.
The spirit of power – to do and speak; the power to move our own self and to move others.
The spirit of Love – to care and sacrifice in imitation of Christ.
The spirit of Self Control – to refuse the body what would hurt it or harm the soul; to refuse the mind the pleasure of evil thoughts and bad advice. And also Self Control to choose the narrow way when the broad has every indication of superiority. It would be wrong to anthropomorphize these divinely gifted spirits as three 'angels' given to us, invisibly floating around working these virtues into our lives. We have no trustworthy explanation of how spirits, and the empowering of God, operates. But it does happen, though the method is beyond our knowing. An unattainable question of 'How?' distracts from the vital point of this verse, our living, loving God has given us what we need so that we can successfully do what is good and right. Our focus should be on what actions we have before us today that require power, love, and self control. This is following God. These are the 'all things' I can do through Christ who strengthens me.
Lord, help us, your servants, to remember and use these great gifts you have given, and to give you praise for the good that results.

Found this weasel on the side of the hiway. Don't get to see them too often. The only other time I saw a weasel was many years ago. I was combineing wheat and the weasel was running through the stubble. I then saw it again the same way the day after that, in another part of the field. In a couple months this dead one should leave an interesting skeleton behind.


Yesterday and the day before I've driven tractors and while doing so, photographed these hawks. This one flew from one pole to the next as I was passing by.




I spent the day mowing weeds. There are few mowers more serious than a tractor pulled mower with three rotors, each having four 50lb blades. Four foot tall patches of thistles too dense to walk through are turned into a layer of pulp that smells like the definition of green. As I was hunting down thistles among the grass, two hawks followed me, dropping down on fleeing mice.
I also saw a little owl, various mice themselves running away, and a female pheasant with some chicks, but didn't get photos of them.