How to make a writing pen

How to make a writing pen

Here’s a few links on the subject. Note some methods are more complicated than others.

1)      A hard one:  http://www.woodturningvideosplus.com/writing-pens.html

2)      An easy one:  http://www.education.com/activity/article/Make_Quill_Pens/

3)      A medieval one:  http://medievalwriting.50megs.com/tools/quill.htm

Then here is one YouTube video on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHDKqpvBM4I

Last is a story on writing and quill pens: https://www.nhhistory.org/edu/support/nhgrowingup/quillpens.pdf

And here is one more link from YouTube on making a feather quill pen:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EIgYQZZIes

As to how to make ink, well that is another subject. Our ancestors figured it out and so can you.

In the meantime, here is one link: http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Make-a-Quill-Pen-Ink/

Pillars of Agricultural Literacy

Pillars of Agricultural Literacy

First is a link on the subject:  http://www.agfoundation.org/files/final_pillars_packet.pdf

Note it is in pdf format and 9 pages long.

The intent is to realize that most recommendations as to diets usually reflect “good times” kind of diets.

To date, I cannot find any recommended diet that I trust for any kind of hard times, which includes things like farming, the ground military, and any other kind of hard times situation, like football, both American and even International, or even sweating a lot in an airplane.

Given that most diets are situational dependent, like the circumstances will probably vary all over the place, there is not one size fits all in my opinion. That also includes things like you sex, and even if you are nursing or not.

Two obvious examples follow: During good times one should probably keep their sodium input down to recommended levels, but when outdoors sweating a lot, one should increase their sodium input, along with lots of clean water, too. Humans need adequate sodium (usually with some potassium, too) to live. Even our deer often benefit from salt licks. In the same vein, humans need some fat in their diet to best live, and one should try adjust that amount to their situation. Now one can get their fat from many sources, in other words, fat is usually found in many diets, and should be thought of that way.

Now the Marine training kicks in, too.  Do not sacrifice yourself for the sake of others, like your children. We all count in our own ways, and not getting sick from malnutrition is one way to show that.

Last, all this assumes you have access to fat in your diet. Sometimes we won’t have access, but then the idea of barter and community then kicks in. So even count yourself lucky if you are overweight, because that might just get you through the initial transition to any kind of hard times diet. In the interim, do try live as healthy and at the proper weight as you can. Chances are we will even have “diminished” times, which to me means access to fat in our diets.

Quick Start Guide for a Hemlocks’ hard times startup

Quick Start Guide for a Hemlocks’ hard times startup

6/8/2015

Twelfth  Draft

1. If times get hard suddenly, and we have to get "things" running quickly, here's a proposed draft of how to try “start” it.

2.  It is assumed (for worse case planning purposes) people will come here, vice the other way around. The Hemlocks’ place can get overwhelmed with refugees.  Remember the local town of Monterey (rural east Tennessee, USA has great capacity, too. Interstate 40 and US 70 are the obvious conduits. The working assumption is the Hemlocks can handle 20+ adults and an equal amount of kids.

3. The priorities are water, food, waste water and sanitation, staying out of foul weather, fire safety, initial medical help for the ill, and “simple” security. The particular season, like the cold season or the warm season, will dictate a lot of actions.

4. The people priorities are Family and Friends, then refugees in general.

            a)  The Hemlocks expects not all will get here, mostly due to road blocks.  Been there and done that, too. In my case, having a pistol on my lap in obvious view sure helped my cause. If you don’t have a pistol, use a kitchen knife, for example.

            b)  Family and Friends will have to use the two main cottages. Imagine a barracks style setup with more than one Family living in the same room.

            c)  All others are refugees, including their children. That is harsh, but this is a quick start guide. Said another way, one still has to try survive (until times get better or we transition to a more permanent way of existing) as best they can.

            d) The refugees will have to use all the other many facilities, including the Cliff Field Pool area, which includes a fishing and washing pond (for the warm season) and an outhouse.

            e)  A "spare" primitive wood stove should be moved out to the Cliff Field Shelter (3 sided) for both cooking and heat during the cold season. A kit to exhaust the CO1 gas (carbon monoxide) outside comes with the stove if necessary. Plan B is to cook "camping style" if we have to. Think “Dutch Oven” or Scout type cooking, for example. We can do it if we have to. We have the “Dutch Ovens” and sample recipes to start with.

5. Food initially should be served "soup kitchen" style at both cottages and the Cliff Field Shelter. We can transition to a cafeteria or other styles later.  Initial requests for soup kitchen help from Monterey will be honored as best we can. Food for cooking can be obtained from either cottage, and various cooking tools are all available. Some soup kitchen supplies are already stockpiled.  Wood is the main source of cooking heat (we’ve got plenty of wood). The Dutch Ovens (3) and large cooking pots setup will probably be used. Cups and "sporks" and paper plates are the main eating means initially. Initially, use all the short shelf-life foods before they go bad.

6. Water comes from the local springs, and the ponds. Bathing is by water and baby wipes if we have them (we have an initial supply of 3,000 baby wipes). Sanitation is by the four toilets in the two cottages, the Cliff Field outhouse, and dug holes for urine and feces. Going to the bathroom just anywhere is forbidden. The garbage pits will still be used. Menstruation products will go to these pits, for example.

7. Fire safely is by ruthless checking and observing by all adults.  We don’t want a house fire if we can avoid it. There are plenty of fire extinguishers around the various facilities. Know where they are.

8.  Initial Hemlocks’ medical help is to keep the ill (either the individual or a group as in a pandemic) as warm and hydrated as possible. Use all the sleeping bags and sleeping pads and cots, too, plus local wood stove heat. Given I 40 and US 70, one can expect disease to follow any migration.

9. Initially security is to maintain good order and discipline while setting up something better and more long term. Patrolling is key. LED lights for after-dark are available. Protecting ourselves very well comes later. Protecting ourselves at a minimum level must come right away. Now is a good time to make your own peace about how you will deal with desperate and often marauding invaders as times may become real confusing to many.

10. One person will be the overall "boss". He or she will quickly appoint people to maintain the water, cook, maintain sanitation (mostly to avert cholera and typhoid), appoint an initial doc, and a security chief that even assigns where to go, like even where to live. Any frictions will be sorted out by the boss. For those that don't like this proposed setup, then they are welcome and expected to leave, like go back to Monterey or elsewhere, just go away. Those who don't go along can expect worse.

11. The water powered electric plant and solar powered electric plant are a lower priority to get the benefits from these existing energy sources. Said another way, if they work, fine. If they don’t work, fine (for the initial setup time). Initial electricity and artificial light during darkness will be from battery powered lights, and chemical lights like the hurricane lamps and the candles.

12. Transition to a more detailed way to exist should begin within one week as things settle down. Expect change during the transition. A draft detailed way to go forward already exists at the Hemlocks (it is on the kitchen refer door right now). I suggest to use it initially until it can be changed which most certainly will happen.

13. Initial heat for both cottages will be provided to the wood stoves by those living in the cottages (i.e. they cut and gather wood (and split it as necessary) for heating and cooking). Heat for the Cliff Field Shelter (and for cooking) will be always be provided by those living there, or living in the near vicinity. The tools to manually chop or cut (and split) wood are available.  If public electricity is on (maybe using a rolling blackout method), then the electric heating bill will be paid for collectively by those in each cottage. Each cottage already has its own account at the local VEC (Volunteer Electric Co-Operative). There is no grid or off grid electricity at the Cliff Field Shelter. The barn and electric powered pump house are on the existing house accounts. If the public electricity goes out, then gravity power will still work and use existing PVC lines and garden hoses to deliver water (albeit more slowly) for human drinking, cooking, and waste water purposes. The Hemlocks has two kerosene stoves for heat, too. There is a very limited supply of kerosene, also.  One should never use gasoline in these stoves, either. Gasoline will most likely explode and cause worse problems to solve.

13. Keep in mind the barn and 4 smaller storage sheds are also available for initial use (they will need better organizing and cleaning than exists today, like they could benefit by the old cars in storage there being put outside. None are hooked up to water pipes. The metal shed has some electrical hookups and a “motel type” heater and cooler.  The barn does have some electrical hookups and an electric arc welder. This barn also does have a lay down freezer with human and animal type food in it (I figure good initial food for pets). It also has a very minimal "puppy house" that works OK for dogs. Those with cats will decide what to do with their pet cats, like don’t bring them to the Hemlocks (the yard dogs will probably get them (like kill them) if they do). The same goes for farm animals, and even guineas (a bird that tends to nest in trees above the ground).

14. There are ten gallons of clean and filtered water spring water in 5 one gallon BPA free jugs  and one 5 gallon “jerry can” of spring water in the main house to initially help things along if needed.

15. There is an existing solar plant (with inverters) to recharge batteries intended to be used for powering security (24/7/365) and some light after dark.  There are also some homemade candles burning paraffin wax (plus some commercial candles) intended to provide some light after dark until they run out.  Matches to light them are in the kitchen. The cottage next door has magnifying lenses to start fires if the matches run out.

16. Initial burials will often be in mass graves.  Just keep a record so the relatives know where their loved ones are buried.

I suspect and hope many readers will use this kind of post to modify for where they live. Said another way, I suspect and hope many will borrow some of these ideas and apply them to where they live if it makes sense to them. There are many existing and good communities around the world, too.

Jenn[d]er and Other Confusions

Jenn[d]er and Other Confusions

By Clarice Feldman in the American Thinker

Bruce Jenner’s decision to take hormone treatment, wear a wig, call himself Caitlyn, get tarted up and pose in a corset for the cover of Vanity Fair has created a media avalanche, despite the fact that transgendered folk make up a truly small percentage of Americans. It’s been estimated that 700,000 or 0.03 percent of Americans are transgendered and most but not all of these are what’s called transitioning to another sex.

If this confuses you, it’s because the terms “gender” and “sex” have themselves been undergoing transition, as Grammarist explains:  

Gender was traditionally used mainly in grammar, language, and linguistics contexts to refer to the sex assigned to nouns (especially in non-English languages). For example, the gender of the French noun maison (house) is feminine, while the gender of livre (book) is masculine. Words of the same gender tend to have similar endings, and they affect the forms of some of the surrounding words. Sex, meanwhile, was traditionally the term for males or females viewed as a group.

In recent decades, the meaning of sex has narrowed, and the word is now mainly confined to uses having to do with sexual intercourse and sexual organs. Gender, meanwhile, is increasingly used to refer to a person’s maleness or femaleness. For instance, we tend to say that a boy’s gender is male and a girl’s gender is female. Of course, the term is more complicated than that, and gender identity is not always tied to one’s sex organs. This at least partially explains why gender is now preferred in this extended use; gender denotes identity, which can be fluid and complicated, whereas what sex organs one has is pretty straightforward.

Sex is still sometimes used in its traditional senses. No one considers it wrong, but it tends to give way to gender for the reasons mentioned above and also because gender is considered more appropriate in contexts where sex and sexuality are not to be brought up. 

With the greater acceptance of gender fluidity and availability of surgery to add something or subtract something external (genital reconstruction and breast implantations), many jurisdictions have included transgenders as a protected class in laws against various kinds of discrimination .A whole army of helpers for pay have not surprisingly also arrived on the scene. The Washington Post style section notes that in addition to lawyers and surgeons who work with transgenders there are voice coaches, therapists, and feminine-image consultants, voice and hair-removal specialists.

The Motherless Child (Radical Feminists versus Transmen)

Female transgenders who have undergone such surgery are called transmen. Male transgenders who have are called transwomen. (Figures are sketchy but there are about 3 times more transwomen than transmen.)

In either case they have only the new outward appearance of the opposite sex, none of the internal workings  of the opposite sex. Transmen, that is women who have adopted a male identity and undergone hormone and surgical treatments to alter their appearance, still have the internal equipment they were born with and on rare occasions -- perhaps 41 -- with another switch in hormone treatments have been able to give birth, Transwomen never can. 

All of this makes the statement of the Nation’s Michelle Goldberg quoting young radical feminists utterly ludicrous. On “All In With Chris Hayes” this week, she said:

...that many young feminists "no longer want to use the word 'woman' in relation to abortion because it excludes trans men." There's a lot of "conceptual murk to clear away," she added with admirable understatement, "but among younger people that I've talked to, it almost seems amazing to them that anybody would question the need to have gender-neutral language."

Her colleague at the magazine Katha Pollitt argues strongly against the young feminists:

The primary sources of abortion data in the US -- the CDC and the Guttmacher Institute -- don’t collect information on the gender identity of those who seek abortion, but conversations with abortion providers and others suggest the number of transgender men who want to end a pregnancy is very low. I don’t see how it denies “the existence and humanity of trans people” to use language that describes the vast majority of those who seek to end a pregnancy. Why can’t references to people who don’t identify as women simply be added to references to women? After all, every year over 2,000 men get breast cancer and over 400 die, and no one is calling for “women” to be cut out of breast-cancer language so that men will feel more comfortable seeking treatment. If there was such a call, though, I wonder what would happen. Women have such a long history of minimizing themselves in order not to hurt feelings or seem self-promoting or attention-demanding. We are raised to put ourselves second, and too often, still, we do.

Maybe like the People’s Front of Judea dolts in Monty Python’s The Life of Brian the young feminists should all just agree that while men actually can’t have babies no matter their outward appearance, as a symbolic move “against oppression”, these men have the right to have babies or abort the ones they can’t actually have.

B. Elsewhere in Media and Administration Silliness

Meanwhile, the media is ignoring issues of far greater consequence and otherwise beclowning themselves.

1) Relishing Being a Beheading Target

CNN’s Erin Burnett interviewed Pamela Geller after it was learned that she was the initial target of the man who tried to behead a Boston cop. 

Referring to the Draw Mohammed contest Geller sponsored (of course Burnett used the honorific “The Prophet Mohammed” though she certainly would never refer to the Prophet Moses or the “Savior Christ”) she asked: “Do you on some level relish being the target of these attacks?”

Geller responded to this absurd question, “Relish being the target? Who self-promotes to get killed?” She said she has recruited an “an army of security” for protection and criticized the media for siding with “those that would target me.”

2) Paying Illegal Immigrants Tax Refunds for Taxes They Didn’t Pay

Instapundit brings to our attention something the media is too busy with transgender abortions and aides to note:

EXECUTIVE AMNESTY WITH BENEFITS: The IRS has confirmed to Congress that individuals granted amnesty by President Obama’s unilateral lawmaking ”executive action” will indeed qualify for a refund of back taxes, even if they never filed a tax return:

IRS lawyers have ruled that once illegal immigrants get numbers, they can go back and re-file for up to three previous years’ taxes and claim refunds even for time they were working illegally.

The lawyers said since the EITC is a refundable credit, that’s allowed even when the illegal immigrants worked off the books and never paid taxes in the first place.

Terrific -- so the President can take executive action that not only transforms individuals whom our law classifies as “deportable” into “not deportable,” he can simultaneously confer upon them multiple benefits, including work permits and now, tax refunds, which will be funded by law-abiding individuals who are present in the country legally.

The conferral of benefits -- now even more significant than previously believed -- is a key indicator that President Obama’s executive actions on illegal immigration are not, in fact, mere “prosecutorial discretion,” as he asserts.  Prosecutorial discretion allows the executive branch to prioritize enforcement given the reality of limited resources; it does not grant the executive branch authority to go further and grant benefits to lawbreakers.

3) TSA Continues to Foul Up

Last week even though I passed a security clearance for a global entry pass I was prohibited by TSA from bringing a circular thread cutter onboard or a stick blender, neither of which I can figure out how to weaponize. On the other hand, the Transportation Security Administration failed to stop undercover agents in 67 out of 70 recent probes of TSA screening. These agents carried fake weapons through checkpoints at major airports across the country and were not stopped.

4) Harvard Law Professor and the Atlantic Illustrate Foggy Thinking

James Taranto brings to our attention the befuddled thinking of Cambridge’s finest:

Try not to laugh, but Lawrence Lessig thinks inevitable Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton would be a great “champion” for abolishing political corruption by way of “campaign-finance reform.” Writing for the Atlantic, the Harvard law prof argues in the spirit of the old Vulcan proverb: “Only Nixon can go to China.”

5) Time Magazine’s Miss Piggy Editorial

Perhaps inspired by the very well-paid Chelsea Clinton, known for her hard hitting interview with the Geico gecko, Time ran an op-ed by the Muppets’ Miss Piggy entitled “Why I am a Feminist Pig”. Maybe next week they’ll interview her on whether trans men should be included in the abortion debate.

6. The New York Times and the Rubios’ Traffic Tickets

Undoubtedly as important to them as the never-ending Clinton Foundation payoff scandals and record destruction or the administration stonewalling on the IRS targeting of administration critics and political opponents, the paper assigned three people -- Alan Rappeport, Steve Eder, and Kitty Bennett -- to report on Marco Rubio and his wife’s traffic infractions since 1993. (He had all of 4, his wife had more.) Worse than giving space to such nonsense it turns out that they got the story from Clinton opposition researchers and then, when caught out megaphoning them, pretended they’d dug this up themselves. 

As Mollie Hemingway notes:

"In order to make this hit on Rubio work, [the] reporters

[snip]

had to combine Marco Rubio’s driving record with someone who is not Marco Rubio. Namely, his wife.

This would be like claiming that Hillary Clinton and her husband had sexually assaulted numerous women. I mean, it’s true in one sense, but it’s a totally weird thing to group together."

7) Elsewhere in the real world

In case you find what the media covers distracting and idiotic, here are some of the many matters that really should be of concern.

1. The Iranians are spreading their tentacles into Saudi Arabia, which is now in the middle of a sectarian war.

2. ISIS is expanding its reach and we have no plan to stop the contagion.

We should begin with a total economic blockade on ISIS-controlled areas, notifying all governments that the United States will cut off economic intercourse with any country from whose jurisdiction persons or goods reach ISIS, or within which any ISIS-related financial transactions occur. Air patrols over the desert access routes can finish starving the cutthroats as a U.S. expeditionary force moves in around them. Never again must Americans be sacrificed in house-to-house fighting. Artillery and bombs from B-52s should do the bulk of the killing. The expeditionary force would finish off survivors. No prisoners. The Geneva Convention does not apply to pirates or cutthroats.

U.S. forces should come home quicker than they left, having minded our business by showing what happens to those who harm America.

3. Iran Continues to Ignore its Obligations and the Administration Doesn’t Care

In one of his many emails for The Israel Project Omri Ceren notes that Iran is increasing its enriched uranium stocks and the administration is laughing this off: 

On a policy level, the ISIS analysis emphasizes that Iran's refusal to meet its obligations "show the risk posed by relying on technical solutions that have not yet been demonstrated by Iran." Tehran is under sanctions and in the middle of negotiations -- and still can't be relied upon. The risks of Iranian intransigence post-sanctions relief are straightforward.

Politically, observers may worry about the seriousness with which the Obama administration will take Iranian violations of the future nuclear deal, given that they're literally laughing off concerns of current Iranian cheating that one of the world's best experts says are “legitimate questions” .

4. The Feds Still Have Insecure Data Storage And Critical Information Continues to Be Stolen

Chinese hackers seem to have hacked into Interior Department Office of Personnel management records and stolen three decades of security clearance information (including that of intelligence agents), this is the second known hack of federal records in recent years and though it occurred in December this major security breach was not discovered until April. 

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/06/jennder_and_other_confusions.html#ixzz3cMPogkg2