Ok, I’ll admit it. This is old footage I shot in March of 2006 when Senator Obama visited Burlington. Somehow I had the feeling he would run for President even though he said at the time that he was not ready for it. It’s been a long time since any politician has stirred interest like Obama has. Young people seem particularly receptive to his message. Here is a short clip I shot of Barack Obama campaigning for Bernie Sanders and Peter Welch.
Damn cold out but I managed to drag my self outdoors and start working on this greenhouse. I previously bought three 10 ft lengths of 1 3/8″ diameter galvanized steel chain link fence top rails. I wanted to see if I could bend them to make curved hoops for the greenhouse before buying the whole lot.
I spent a couple of hours making a wooden bending jig to bend the rails. I drew a 10 ft radius curve on a piece of 3/4 ” plywood I had left over from another project and cut out two identicle pieces and sandwiched them together and screwed them together with large drywall screws. Then I screwed an old joist hanger to one end to insert the end of the pipe into. Any piece of sheet metal would do. I just happened to have this laying around. Then I screwed the curved wood pieces to a larger backer board and screwed the whole thing to the outside wall of my garage/shop so it was good and solid.
This was all pretty quick and dirty and cost almost nothing since I had the materials laying around already. It seemed pretty solid. Would it work? I inserted one end of the pipe into the bending jig and pulled down. The pipe bent easily around the curve of the jig. Success! Well almost. As I repositioned the pipe to continue bending it I realized that there was quite a bit of spring back. I probably should have made the radius of the curve on the jig a bit tighter. Also, it was difficult to bend the ends of the pipe and they seemed to want to stay straight. I inserted a 3/4″ iron pipe into the galvanized pipe to use as a lever. That worked well. All three pieces were bent but I had difficulty getting a really uniform curve that was exactly the same on each piece. They were pretty close though. Probably close enough. I figure that when I bend the rest of the pieces I’ll be careful to repeat the procedure exactly on each piece pulling them down the same amount for each one. One good thing is that it seems as though there is quite a bit of flex in the pipe so that a precise bend is probably not that critical. Photos soon!
I just sent the following letter to the St.Albans Messenger. Maybe they will print it.
The Senate has passed a bill allowing the Federal Government to continue to conduct surveillance on U.S. citizens by listening in on their phone conversations and accessing electronic communications. The new legislation grants retroactive immunity to telecom businesses such as Verizon and AT&T accused by some of violating the law.Make no mistake about it; our government is watching you even though your Constitution protects you from this invasion of privacy.
Vermont’s own Senator Leahy has been diligent in his efforts to stop this abuse of power by attempting a filibuster of the bill earlier this week. He was unsuccessful.
This means that the United States government is able to listen in on your phone calls, read your emails and spy on you without your knowledge and without a court warrant saying there is a good reason for them to do so. It also means that the phone companies that are working with the government cannot be held accountable if it is later found that this activity is illegal and a violation of the Constitution of the United States.
People may think this is not a problem because they have nothing to hide and are not doing anything illegal.They are willing to sacrifice this privacy if it means they will be protected from terrorism attacks. This is a serious mistake. Here’s why.
If we allow our government to spy on us without court warrants, what is to stop those in power from listening in on the communications of their political opponents in an election? Who would know? Remember Watergate? Richard Nixon was ousted from the presidency for doing exactly this. If those in power can gain an unfair advantage over their political opponents by ordering the phone companies to provide the means to spy on candidates, then we no longer have a Democracy and we are no longer any better than the terrorists from which this legislation is supposedly designed to protect us. This undermining of our Democracy is exactly what terrorists want. The FISA amendment passed this week in the Senate works toward destroying American democracy and I can think of nothing more anti-American than the passage of this legislation.
It is encouraging to see Barack Obama leading the way toward correcting the mistakes and abuses of the Bush administation over the last seven years. It shows that our system of government can correct itself as long as the Constitution is upheld.
Unfortunately, yesterday, the new FISA amendment passed in the senate despite Vermont’s own Senator Leahy’s effort to filibuster the bill. This amendment releases the telecom companies such as AT&T and Verizon from any wrong doing related to the illegal and unconstitutional spying on U.S. citizens by our federal government without a court warrant. Big Brother is here and watching.
Even if we try to rationalize and condone this invasion of privacy in the name of providing security from terrorism, let me ask you this. If the federal government can listen in on phone calls and read email of anyone without getting a warrant, what is to prevent them from spying on their political opponents here in the U.S.? Nixon resigned under threat of impeachment for doing exactly this. If those in power can legally spy on those who oppose them and seek popular election, this creates an unfair advantage to those in power and the basic idea of Democracy is undermined.
Its cold here in Vermont in February. Real cold. Tonight it will get down to around zero degrees F. Imagine being able to walk into a tropical climate. Now that would be really nice.
One way is to have a greenhouse where plants can be grown in a warm environment while its freezing outside. I decided to look into this. Realistically its probably not feasible to expect to have a tropical heated greenhouse. Keeping it that warm would simply cost too much. A more reasonable approach would be to have a green house that extended the growing season on either end of our summer season. I’d be happy having a greenhouse that enabled me to start plants like tomatoes in March and grow a few cold weather type crops like lettuce and spinach.
I started looking into hoop houses as the least expensive option. Permanent greenhouse structures built on concrete foundations and made of aluminum framing and glass or rigid plastic panels look the nicest, but I’m really going for function over appearance and the cost of the permanent type greenhouses is prohibitive. In fact, since a permanent greenhouse would increase my property tax assessment (Vermonters already pay some of the highest real estate taxes in the nation) its easy to see that the cost of the structure would not come close to covering the value of the plants grown in it. Hoop houses on the other hand are pretty simple and consist of a series of circular bent metal half round hoops over which polyethylene plastic is attached to create a barrier from the outside that lets in the warming sun. They are viewed as temporary structures so are not taxed as real property in my state.
I looked at hoop houses in my area and noticed that most are not operated in the dead of winter. Its simply too cold to heat them up enough using the sun and fuel is too expensive. But I also noticed that most of the greenhouses I looked at did not use any ideas from solar engineering that I was familiar with. They seemed to be very inefficient at collecting, storing and regulating the heat from the sun. For example, all of the hoop houses I looked at were oriented with their length running north to south. This placed the smallest surface area in direct relation to the sun during late Winter and early Spring. Such an orientation works fine later in the year when the sun is high but here in Vermont, at 45 degrees latitude, we want to orient the collecting surface toward the sun at a lower angle. This means turning the greenhouse so the length is east and west and rather than using a circular cross section instead raising the angle to take advantage of the lower winter sun. Also, what is now the entire north wall now receives no direct solar gain and serves only to lose heat. Why not insulate this section and try to hold in some of the heat gained?
Solar greenhouses like this have been designed and built before and it it surprising that more greenhouses are not configured in a more efficient way. Maybe its because the cost of construction increases. How can we take advantage of using efficient solar orientation concepts and still keep construction costs down? That’s the problem I will attempt to address over the next few weeks.
This year will be a BIG gardening year. Why? With the sinking economy will come a revival of interest in trying to grow a few things at home. Luckily the unemployment rate is still pretty low around here. Once that starts to deteriorate, as it probably will, people will have LOTS of time to get out and get their hands dirty in the garden. But growing your own food has never been a money saving venture. The amount of labor involved in growing a small amount of vegetables at home is huge compared to the price of food in the store. America’s success at industrial scale farming has made food pretty inexpensive if you compare how much you make an hour at your job and what the yield will be from trying to grow a few tomatoes. So why would anyone want to waste their time?
With the looming economic recession upon us, we are finding it more and more feasible to consider spending the extra effort to try growing some food ourselves. The reasons go beyond mere dollars and cents. Here is a rundown of the reasons why I personally like having a big garden.
I have the land, why not use it? I feel sorry for people living in the city who have no access to land for growing things. This makes them totally dependent on a corporate system of food supply and distribution. If something happens such as a natural disaster or economic collapse, they will go hungry.
It makes political sense. Current food distribution and production is largely in control of multinational corporations rather than local citizens. What drives corporate interests is profitability. With something as important and basic to life as food, we need to have systems that take into consideration the well being of people, not just profitability.
Current industrialized food production activity is not sustainable in the long run. We are seeing the use of genetically modified plants whose safety for consumption is unknown. Because large scale food growing has become dependent on chemicals for fertility, weed and insect controls, the soil has been depleted of nutrients and the physical properties necessary to continue growing plants indefinitely. Anyone who has children should be concerned about the longterm sustainability of soils for growing food.
Food prices have been rising. This year, by some accounts, the price of food has risen approximately 20%. This is due in large part to the fact that most of our food is grown in places far away from where it is consumed. It makes logical sense that as the price of petroleum climbs, so will the price of food as long as we are dependent on having food shipped from California to Vermont. We need to develop systems of food distribution and production that are not dependent on petroleum for transport. One approach is to grow food locally.
I know what I am getting. Recent problems with bacterial contamination on fresh foods is cause for concern. E-coli bacteria comes from fecal matter (shit) on the food. During the last few years we have seen an increase in food related illness. I don’t really want to eat shit. If I control the food from garden to plate, I know it will be clean and wholesome.
It’s good excercise. Many people have jobs that do not offer the physical activity necessary to maintain a healthy body. They pay big money to join a health club. Sure that’s fun if you can afford it. But instead of wasting that activity on something like working out on a treadmill or stationery bike, why not turn it into something useful, like growing some food?
I enjoy being creative. Some people like to be creative. Creativity involves imagining something, acting on it and them seeing the results. Gardening allows that.
So these are a few of the reasons why I think growing a big garden is a good thing. As I look outside today all I see is white snow. It’s time to order seeds, plan the garden and think about biting into a nice ripe tomato that I grew myself.
I keep asking my Republican friends if they can think of ONE GOOD THING George Bush has done for Americans. Just one! Almost invariably there is a long silent pause. Then they chirp, ” He lowered taxes!”
Unless you are in the upper income tiers, to my understanding, taxes have not been lowered. Here in Vermont, tax burdens have been shifted to the local level through higher education/property taxes. Cuts in public spending on health care services have resulted indirectly in higher medical service costs and health insurance premiums. Let’s not even get into fuel costs, food costs and inflation in general.
This is a sad state of affairs for the Republican party as they desperately vie for re-election this November. Who do they think they are kidding? Let’s just be thankful that our brilliant American system of Democracy will self correct itself as the majority of citizens, even the die hard Republicans, come to the realization that the current situation is not acceptable.
One has to wonder whether those few die hard Republicans are also looking at the recent surge in popular support for Barack Obama with a “those fools, Americans will never elect a Black president” type of Cheney-esque sneer and secret hope that Obama is successful in the primaries, beats out Mrs. Rodham Clinton, and proceeds to lose the election to the only viable candidate the right has come up with; John McCain.
This time around, after eight long years of Bush legacy (you know, the one where nothing positive was done for the American people), their sneers will go unnoticed while the majority of Americans, fed up with Bush, will elect a new kind of president. The six hundred dollar rebate that Bush will desperately try to buy our approval with will soon be gone. Then our Republican friends will finally be able to answer that question by saying that the one good thing George Bush did for Americans was to encourage them, through his profound misguidedness, to rally around a leader that will finally, finally, get Americans working together in a positive direction.
