Musings
On a late-afternoon walk exploration in the neighborhood of friends, a place unfamiliar to us in any detail, we discovered a lovely county park, sheltering historic Trimborn Farm.
As we wandered among the outbuildings clustered around the house, they all seemed to be related to farming until I spotted this one long stone structure that seemed quite industrial. Of course, we’d wandered onto the property through a side field, completely bypassing the hysterical marker, so we had no cues from the written word.
The Guru, determined to utilize all powers bestowed by the iPhone, quickly googled and discovered we were looking at the remains of a lime operation.
Diversification in farm country, I thought….
Posted at 7:25 PM |
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Seems like our future, maybe the future of life “as we know it” on this planet, is wrapped up in water. Gotta have water.
Gotta have air, too, but it seems that we can survive long enough to reproduce when we live with polluted air. For example, consider smokers, who deliberately inhale highly polluted air (although other airborne contaminants are more dangerous than the typical modern US ciggy), and modern urban China. No lack of reproductive success with either of those populations.
Food, well, yup, that’s a necessity. But we get our food primarily from agribusiness. And agriculture is without a doubt dependent on water, so our food sources depend on water. too.
By water, I don’t mean simply potable water, or rainfall, or even groundwater. But the big, capital W water: that is, water from anywhere.
If I decided to go into the legal profession, I’d specialize in legal issues associated with water. It ties into human rights, civil rights, group vs individual rights, ownership, distribution control, the whole shebang.
I’m thinking, in fact, that the folks who are specialists in other resources (petroleum products, scarce metals and minerals) are already working to corner markets and build in legal loopholes to give Them advantages in the economics of water. I also figure that The Angler and his ilk have been getting laws changed to help those folks, and that we’ll only find that out sometime in the mist-free future….
At first glance, I was mystified today when I examined our water/sewer bill and discovered we pay over twice as much for sewage (based on how much water we consume, so the volumes are—assumed to be—the same) than for water. But then I figured, I suppose it costs more to make sure sewage doesn’t contaminate, tada!, water, than it does simply to deliver clean water to my house.
Next topic to ponder: how better to use graywater (more on this in the southwest than these parts: examples from Arizona and New Mexico), a practice promoted in a leaflet included with our water/sewer bill. Someone who goes to the trouble of toting their shower water out to plants was lauded. We use our dish water on outdoor plants, but the shower water goes down the drain (for now). As I understood it (maybe this is now incorrect: note to self, check on this), we couldn’t directly pipe our graywater into the yard, but we can carry it out there. Some people use graywater (sometimes greywater) for flushing, and I guess that may not be a violation.
Rather twisted logic there, no?
So, would the agribusiness water demand drop if we consumed significantly less grain (takes lots of water to grow and process) replacing it with non-starchy vegetables (as diet specialists recommend would improve our health)?—veggies sold only minimally processed?
Posted at 5:30 PM |
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Yeah, I know; this is not a horse. But it’s the closest I had….
While browsing tables of contents for issues of the International Journal of Historical Archaeology, I ran into this term: horselads.
The term harks back to the days of horse-farming in rural Britain, and to the social hierarchy on rural farms (those Brits!). Horselads were at the bottom, while still valued for their knowledge of work horses, although they were assigned other menial field labor. The horselads received room and board as part of their compensation, in part because the farms were relatively isolated, or at least by keeping horselads resident on the farms their labor was assured.
Horselads could be recognized by their by their distinctive dress at the hiring fairs where they looked for their next position—they moved each year—while striving to move up the hierarchy.
Because of their low status, annually fluid employment situation, and the way written history (even modern history) is generated, little directly from horselads has made it into records. Giles and Giles opted to examine the graffiti in barns where horselads lived and worked to obtain insights into their lives.
Conclusions: horselads wrote about sex and the ladies, they glamorized themselves, they recorded song lyrics, they wrote about hardships (extreme weather, boredom), and they drew pictures (mostly line drawings) on the same subjects (especially the first).
I wondered if the horselads are in the direct social ancestry of North America’s western cowboys, but these British researchers do not address this point.
Posted at 10:22 PM |
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Today we hosted a day-long biz meeting here at the house, where we talked about sims and 3-D of archaeological sites and topics. Exciting!
Posted at 10:22 PM |
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Today’s NYT science section takes evo-devo as its topic. I had to look up the term, and only felt mild relief to find it’d been around less than ten years. (I think.) Still…. Evo-devo evolutionary development biologists look at how molecular and genetic changes put in motion a whole set of possibilities and take away another whole set.
So, here’s my contribution. Two thoughts….
Here’s an article on the bushy tree of life, and its many branches, a more technical explanation than what the venerable NYT offers. I provide it, not merely for the content, but also for the final subhead. My response: let me count the ways….
Second is the photo above, of a mature tree next to Lake Clara Meer. Its neighbor, disfigured by a streak of rot and a blob of uncontrolled growth (virus?), I noticed, has an orange dot at eye level. I’m guessing it’s slated for removal. So this oak will survive a little longer, offering its leaves to the sun-gods and its shade to the squirrels…and me. Another tree of life….
Posted at 12:57 PM |
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A long time ago in another life, I worked for a contract archaeology firm in Athens, GA [no link]. Last week the NYTimes included a quote from one of my then-bosses, Tom Gresham.
Another friend, who works for the state DNR, wrote a book on Georgia cemeteries, in part because of this very problem: people, especially developers, buying land that has a special surprise, a cemetery. Several years back the state legislature ramped up laws regulating disturbance of human remains, which was aimed at preserving Indian sites. Since, lots of folks have found they’ve had to change their plans for lands that include historic cemeteries and burials, too.
And the picture, that was me jumping for an undergraduate acquaintance back when I was living in Athens (and Atlanta, at the same time: whew!) who had a journalism photography class and was assigned to take some action pictures of people jumping, to learn to click the shutter at just the right moment. How different that experience might be today using a digital camera!
Posted at 10:22 PM |
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Okay, this rose is from the files. Our small digital still camera is in the shop, and I haven’t been lugging the big SLR-like one around, so no new pictures. This is the tenth digital still picture I took with my first camera, a Sony that’s long since been passed along down the inevitable food chain for electronics.
The Guru gave me the camera one afternoon, right after I defended (successfully) my dissertation. The rose was part of a lovely bouquet some of my buds sent me, delivered by the secretary after the stress was over.
I just realized that the fine woman who spearheaded the arrival of that bouquet, the lovely MM, is the one who received the hand-me-down camera.
Ah, the inverted twists and turns of life….
Posted at 10:22 PM |
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Need I say more than that today was Mandatory Fun Day? Well, I could say that I avoided the margaritas, although they looked frosty and tasty.
Posted at 10:22 PM |
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Yeah, I know these are wasabi peas not chickpeas….
Most people theorizing on the origins of plant domestication—agriculture—get around to improved dietary energy sources and risk reduction sooner or later. In other words, they find 1) the calories with respect to the energy involved in production, especially of grain species were improved with domestication and formalized planting/growing, and 2) the assumed storage potential for grains and seeds means the food source is available for a longer period.
In a recent article, researchers propose that the chickpea has a somewhat different story behind it. Both its wild progenitor and domesticated versions have elevated levels of tryptophan, which increase serotonin in the brain. Increased serotonin means increased satiety, and, possibly, increases in cognitive performance, thus lowering aggression and improving social integration (yeah, I’m collapsing the argument substantially here). The enriched tryptophan diet also increases ovulation rates, and increases demographic potential. The chickpea was, as I understand it, the largest pulse in use at that time (over 10K yrs ago), so had, you might say, the most bang for the buck along these lines.
I take it as a given that long before the Neolithic revolution, our ancestors were very aware of biochemical inputs from dietary sources, so I don’t find this farfetched. Nutritional subtleties had to have been factors in domestication and the adoption of agricultural practices. That and the great fun attached to consuming fermented starchy foods…but that’s another topic….
Posted at 10:22 PM |
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Played hooky today and headed for northeast piedmont GA, where the rains came last night (is that why the hummers were so busy?), but had gone by the time we arrived. ATL got nary a drop.
Today’s vocabulary:
levigate
to reduce something to a fine powder or paste
Posted at 10:22 PM |
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