Get after it! Great things aren’t coming to you unbidden.
” Don’t loaf
and invite
inspiration;
light out
after it
with a club. “
Category: Uncategorized
Weaving Wagon
This is an excellent idea, especially for a skilled willow weaver.
If you need a bicycle wagon and can get a lightweight frame built, this seems to be a great, eye-catching option. I suggest watching the short videos on their site as well. I find their site somewhat difficult to navigate, but who am I to talk with all the clutter around here?
Here is a quick link to the video about the Weaving Wagon:
Click here for their full post about the Weaving Wagon and I suggest looking around. They have some neat stuff going on.
I think I would really love to have something like this.
Carrot Soup ~1819
Great little recipe.
Carrot Soup Recipe.
Take a close look at this recipe and you’ll notice a small, but important, detail. A detail which may seem minor, but underscores the scope of genetic engineering, selective breeding, and the industrial food complex in altering our mental image of a carrot.
Source: American domestic cookery, formed on principles of economy, for the use of private families. 1819
More Fun Discoveries from Antique Cookbooks
The Appalling Case of the Diligent Scout Master
The dangers of being an outgoing Scoutmaster in the 21st century. Please give me your thoughts on this or better yet, comment on the original article (or both). I am very interested yet very skeptical of the modern professional Scouter.
Joe has no idea who reported him. It’s difficult to imagine anyone in town doing that. More than likely, some well-meaning visitor to the campground saw the empty kayaks floating downstream, and called 911.
As everyone in town knows (who has not been comatose, away all summer, or boycotting Facebook) that incident led the Boy Scouts of America to suspend our long-time Scoutmaster, Joe Brandl. The BSA has now denied his appeal.
It was a routine outing last May, a typical outdoors training exercise for the troop that Joe headed for many years. The Wind River was predictably high with the late-spring runoff of snowmelt, and some of the boys were tipped from their kayaks.
None of the scouts was hurt or even (in the other sense of the word) upset. This had happened before, and was hardly unexpected. Thanks to Joe’s guidance, they already knew what to do. In…
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The Ideal Tool Cabinet
Arranging your workspace and tools is critical, and one of the most difficult things to do. Here is a good post of an excerpt from Charles H. Hayward – The Woodworker. It is pitching a reprint of the book but worthy of a read nonetheless.
Feast for the eyes
Sad news, but not surprising with massive growth, industry given free reign, and populations far beyond that which our planet has ever seen.
The World Wildlife Fund just released their living planet report for 2018. Up front it seems it seem the report could well be titled the dying planet instead of the living planet report given the summary states “On average, we’ve seen an astonishing 60% declinein the size of populations of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibians in just over 40 years, according to WWF’s Living Planet Report 2018. The top threats to species identified in the report link directly to human activities, including habitat loss and degradation and the excessive use of wildlife such as overfishing and overhunting.”
You can read the full report here.
or here
https://www.worldwildlife.org/pages/living-planet-report-2018
Please pass along the report to all who care and even those that may not.
Photo: Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, 2018.
Cozy Camp
I made it out for a brief stay in the eastern Ozarks this week. The rain and cold came back just in time for my outing making it a little less comfortable than it could have been but I still enjoyed the time out.
I chose to stay fairly low-tech with the exception of a sleeping bag instead of the old blankets and I sheltered under an old military poncho instead of the more usual canvas. Since I was out, in part, to work on some crafts I packed in very heavily with tools and a few raw materials.
It’s easy living for the most part in the Ozarks and I think I could happily live primitivly in this environment indefinitely. There is not much legal hunting this time of year as the furry critters are off procreating and having babies so I brought some basic foodstuffs with me. I’m back in civilization now but expect to get back out very soon. Maybe the sun will stay out for a few days and dry things up as a preview of Spring. I’ll post some follow-ups about gear and some things I’m working on very soon.
~gtc
Swallowtail Jig
Since my playing time is very limited I’ve learned to connect with other musicians via the internet. Having a great selection of “Play Along” tunes lined up on YouTube has really helped me out, especially when trying to keep up or understand variations in a tune. There are so many great garage artists out there that it’s easy to pick four or five versions of a tune to really learn it inside and out. I suspect you would have been a lucky itinerant musician to have stumbled across such an assortment in the slower Pre-Industrial days.
Here’s a fine English fiddler performing the Swallowtail Jig. I’ve been playing along with him recently and I suggest checking out the rest of his videos if this type of music suits you. He has a nice version of the old classic Old Mother Flanagan I particularly like as well.
What is the Real Price?
Henry David Thoreau once wisely wrote that,
“The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.”
Or, in essence, that in the abstract economy in which we live that we pay for any goods or services by giving up a portion of our lives to another person in exchange for a credit to be spent elsewhere. We are so deeply entrenched in this thinking that most of us don’t even realize that this is how the system works.
If we want to eat, we no longer wander out to hunt, gather, or farm our food; we go somewhere, perform an abstract task, and receive a token. The tokens are then counted out and given to another in exchange for food that they likely didn’t hunt, gather, or farm either. And we’re in too deep to change this now…
At best, we can remain conscious of this fact and hopefully remember this lesson when we spend most of our allotted time away from our loved ones, our interests, or our real passions. Who wouldn’t prefer to go on a bike ride, spend time with their children, learn a new skill, or just sit on the banks of a creek? Instead, we rush to work, ignore our better selves, and spend our remaining hours seeking entertainment and distraction. That’s what we were trained to do.
I’ve been there myself. I spent too much time working away from home, living in motels; too many hours in overtime, for what? Even in doing a job I found extremely interesting, I began to resent the time lost from the things I could be doing for myself or my family.
I have no real answers. Just the knowledge that an awareness of the trade-offs may help us budget and balance our short time here on Earth. I know, just another late night ramble so please take this with a grain of salt.
Do good things.
Albannach – The Scotsmen
I’m a sucker for this music and it brings out a load of primal feelings for me. Presenting Albannach, and I recommend setting your speakers to eleven and letting letting it pour over you. Have a glass of something good and enjoy the upcoming weekend.
Preindustrial Craftsmanship 