Maybe you’ve seen a field where cows have grazed, carefully eating around the Canadian thistles so that they stand out like trees in a meadow. Many a rancher and farmer has wished their cow’s priorities were reversed so the thistles went down the bovine gullets first. Of course, women know a lot about this stuff because they themselves have had to convert their own diets for health or weight loss and because they are usually the ones who must get the kids to eat their spinach. So it’s not surprising that Kathy Voth was the one to figure out how to make cows eat weeds.
Appropriately making her home in Loveland, CO, Voth figured out her techniques while studying animal behavior at the Bureau of Land Management at Utah State University. In fact, she began with goats but moved to cows when working with the Grant-Kohrs Ranch National Historic Site in Deer Lodge, MT. This ranch is a “working” ranch, not a Disneyland. The project targeted thistles, knapweeds and mustards.
Observing the rule ignored by many (“first do no damage”) Voth analyzed the weeds to make sure they weren’t toxic. This is not as easy as it sounds since plants might be toxic in the spring but not when fully grown towards fall or vice versa. Surprisingly, thistles have the same nutritional values as alfalfa! And the cows don’t seem to mind the prickles. From a human point of view, cows-as-herbicides leave no toxic chemical residue as spraying would. We are only beginning to realize the damage done by the tweaked chemicals of herbicides, esp. when spread over the huge acreages of Montana wheat farms.
Turns out, as Voss proved in Madison County, Montana, recently, bison can also be taught to eat weeds. So what can she teach people buffaloed by the diets of their own kids? First, a nutrition feedback loop makes a cow’s body want what it needs. (A universal dynamic in humans that gets suppressed because advertising and lack of experience over-rides our subtle impulses.) They lose interest in empty calories and crave whatever is missing. This is why nutrition blocks, maybe with salt, interest cows so much. Humans with deficits, maybe a pregnant woman missing a specific element, have been known to eat dirt that contains the element.
As studies of the hippocampus show in the brains of all mammals -- and the cow is the absolute max in terms of mammals defined by producing milk -- the hippocampus wants to keep things the same. “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!” It's safer to eat what we ate last time, since we didn't keel over. But the element of safety is balanced by an interest in new things, a bit of experiment and variety. The old thing might not always be available.
Training begins when Voth sneaks cubed alfalfa, wheat bran and rolled corn into the cow’s usual rations, just like a mom putting bits of broccoli and carrots into the mac and cheese. At first eating new things almost by accident, the cows begin to like it. The calves and younger cows are the first to find the novelty more interesting, but when the other cows see the new food being eaten with a certain amount of relish, they try it, too.
After four days of this, on the fifth day the cows are fed a little late so their appetites are strong and this time there are weeds in the “casserole.” On the third day after this, weeds are the whole meal for the day. Then they go to the field where the weeds are actually growing to tackle the problem of how to eat a tall thistle instead of short grass. Maybe you’ve noticed that cows can wrap their tongues around stuff and yank it out of the ground. Works good on thistles.
What’s interesting is that once one batch of cows has been trained, untrained cows who see what they are eating will imitate them and end up eating weeds just like the trained cows. You can tell your kid to eat raw carrots with no effect but if he sees another kid he likes eating raw carrots, the struggle is over! Peer demonstrations work. (Advertisers know this. But those peers are PAID to pretend that’s what they eat.)
There’s a website for this strategy: www.livestockforlandscapes.com. You can buy a DVD to teach yourself how to teach your cows. It doesn’t work on horses, only on ruminants whose series of stomachs are capable of digesting weeds pretty efficiently.
But goats, clever animals that they are, take right to the project and have been used for a while, especially in places where brush needs to be kept down as a fire preventative. Sometimes on the way to Helena one can see the goat herd on the Sieben Ranch/Baucus Ranch -- once the Malcolm Clarke ranch. There are hundreds of goats, flowing in a carpet over the hillsides. Goats are famous for eating anything, though I doubt any of them ever eat tin cans as they do in cartoons. Too bad.
This strategy of using what is already there by simply doing a bit of introduction and encouragement is increasingly attracting attention and rewarding those who figure it out. This is “organic” (my favorite word since the Fifties when I learned it in high school) as opposed to mechanical, which requires oversight and maintenance, something imposed rather than unfolding. Every time the Bioneers come on Yellowstone Public Radio I have to go do something else for a while because otherwise I get totally distracted away from my own goals. (http://www.bioneers.org/about) It’s all so beautiful and seductive that it’s near-religious. A person can’t do EVERYTHING and the bio-engineers are doing so much that I’ll just stand back and watch from enough of a distance to keep from being sucked in. But I heartily hope they convert the world. Right now the weeds seem to be winning while the people die of cancer. If a cow can turn it around, it wouldn’t surprise a Norseman or a Masai.
Showing posts with label enviro. Show all posts
Showing posts with label enviro. Show all posts
Monday, September 29, 2008
Saturday, September 13, 2008
MORAL SLIDERS, INCLUDING THE "ICK" FACTOR
Oy! There was a third disc in the “Manor House” series! This one was a bit hokey and certainly scripted to provide plot line: Monsieur the Cook took to his bed with stomach flu just as a party was planned but the “low” servants coped, Singh got insulted, and so on. At one party a huge bald black man in a lavender suit arrived to take up the duty of being the conscience of the Empire since he was from the Caribbean. At the end the two love birds stripped and jumped into one of the big soft company beds!! Rigid Mister Edgar and the indulgent housekeeper were not able to keep up the pretense of being shocked. In a lovely lingering and leveling parting, people started in their Edwardian role, passed through a door or were momentarily obscured by blowing laundry, and emerged in jeans and leather jackets. The repressed and confined sister went speeding off in a red convertible -- her OWN. The cook leapt over a fence. Mister Edgar went back to being a genial grandpa architect in sweater and cords.
But the disc makes a good lead-in to the article that has been preoccupying me this week. It was on www.Edge.org, if you know that crowd: “The Third Culture” and so on, which prides itself on getting out in front by drawing on both science/math and humanities. Jonathan Haidt’s article is called “What Makes People Vote Republican?” I sent it to one of my most insightful and vigorous Unitarian friends who said, “At last! I never could figure out why ANYONE would be a Republican!” Actually, I ended wondering why anyone would join either of these political parties.
Haidt explains his insight by telling how he’d been going along studying morality and culture at fine universities in the US, then had a chance to study in India in 1993. Here he was, a liberal atheist determined to be a tolerant and non-interfering anthropologist. In Bhubaneswar he found a society that was more hierarchical than the Manor House, totally unsanitary (undisgusted by washing and drinking in rivers full of floating bodies, offal, and cows) and sex-segregated. But after living there a while, achieving reciprocity of friendship, duties, and interdependence, it all seemed reasonable. It was simply a way of protecting a maximum of people with a minimum of resources: “A system of interlocking values, practices, institutions, and psychological mechanisms that work together to suppress or regulate selfishness and make social life possible.”
Clifford Geertz, another U of Chicago anthropologist, was never one of my professors but I’ve been much impressed by his writing. In particular, he told a story about Indonesia someplace where a man had left his traditional religion, which his neighbors practiced, but then he suddenly died. He had not been in the religion to which he was converted long enough for anyone to know how he should be buried, but they knew he had left their own way. So he lay in his house, rotting. The anthropologist had to tactfully step in to suggest rites that would get rid of the body in an efficient and dignified manner. It strikes me that in this multi-cultural world, where so many are confused among tradition, conversion, and innovation, we are in something like the same position. How do we become “global?” Who can do what and how? Where is the universal?
Normally, a culture emerges from an economy dependent on a climate and an ecology, the resources and history of a place. This happens over a period of time, organically, as people have insights and borrow from others. But if one is DESIGNING a culture, what are the guidelines?
Much of people’s intuitive feeling of what is “right” comes from their life experience. So at First Unitarian Church in Chicago, whenever worship design came up, the black former-Baptists wanted more singing, the former-Episcopalians wanted more ornamentation, the former-Quakers wanted more intervals of silence, and so on. In the same way, when outsiders come to Valier, some insist on sidewalks, some yearn for the opera, some resent the wind, and some locals feel invaded and scolded. The 21st century participants in the Manor House show, both high and low, were always in uproar because of isolation or task loads or house rules they just weren’t used to. Maybe the exception was the lady of the house, an emergency physician who became quite attached to ease and pleasure -- though she did think that such garments as crotchless bloomers made her husband a bit excessively randy. And she wept over her enforced distance from her son.
Haidt is after dimensions and assumptions about what “feels right.” He says to imagine five “sliders” such as the ones that control sound: continuums on the dimensions of ingroup/loyalty, purity/sanctity, and authority/respect -- which are much emphasized by people with Republican-type orientations. Then two values more focused on the individual’s interests: harm/care and fairness/reciprocity are more like the Democrat priorities. But they so emphasize independence and even (let’s face it) self-indulgent narcissism that the unity of the whole is endangered. (Watch the Unitarian movement tear itself apart once again by pulling in all sorts of people without adequately defining a strong reason to stick together.)
There is at http://www.yourmorals.org/ a chance to test your own morality. After the first quiz, I wandered off yawning because it was all too simplistic and either/or. There is a series of tests. The first one told me I can tolerate a lot of disgusting stuff. You could have just asked me and I’d have told you.
In fact, the discussion of “disgust” as a moral guide seems to me one of the most valuable and interesting parts of the article. For one thing it seems to me that many young people are so little disgusted by almost anything that one fears for their simple sanitation! But the generations that survived the Depression and WWII have already faced so many disgusting elements, that they seem determined to never again have anything to do with mud, dog poop, soured milk, weeds, dirty hands, unconventional sexual orientations or practices, dead animals, rot or disorder of any kind -- all signs of poverty. They feel that anything that smells bad or is slimy or has to do with the “Other” (animals, babies, women and foreigners) is a threat to civilized living. The “low” servants in the Manor House are the ones who empty the chamber pots, pluck the game birds, deal with garbage and fuel, take out ashes, and get down on their hands and knees to brush the carpets. For doing this hard work, they are paid less.
What is interesting to me is that today’s young have embraced the disgusting as a kind of liberation and defiance! Smelling “natural,” doing icky sexual things, piling up with animals, wallowing in mud, tattooing, piercing, even talking dirty -- they are drawn to the “Other” in any form, including drugs. Addicts, of course, are notorious for their filth and disorder.
What this does in the end is to reinforce the stodgy old Repubs who made it through the disgusting Depression and War -- even confinement and torture -- so that they could have a clean, well-lighted, orderly life in which to raise their children. All they really want is predictable stability, which appears to them to be produced by hierarchy and authority. These sentiments justify seizing control.
The next step, of course, is to figure out how to keep that from going wrong, either through predatory authorities or an ecology simply overwhelmed by its population. Maybe the Edge will get to it after the election, like so many other things. Certainly it will tell us a lot about the “slider” settings of American morality. I predict that the upshot will be another one of those fifty-one per cent decisions and we will go on tussling among ourselves for another generation or so. Unless, as at the end of the Edwardian Era, we are precipitated into another disgusting war winnable only by strict hierarchy. Or worse, ecological chaos.
But the disc makes a good lead-in to the article that has been preoccupying me this week. It was on www.Edge.org, if you know that crowd: “The Third Culture” and so on, which prides itself on getting out in front by drawing on both science/math and humanities. Jonathan Haidt’s article is called “What Makes People Vote Republican?” I sent it to one of my most insightful and vigorous Unitarian friends who said, “At last! I never could figure out why ANYONE would be a Republican!” Actually, I ended wondering why anyone would join either of these political parties.
Haidt explains his insight by telling how he’d been going along studying morality and culture at fine universities in the US, then had a chance to study in India in 1993. Here he was, a liberal atheist determined to be a tolerant and non-interfering anthropologist. In Bhubaneswar he found a society that was more hierarchical than the Manor House, totally unsanitary (undisgusted by washing and drinking in rivers full of floating bodies, offal, and cows) and sex-segregated. But after living there a while, achieving reciprocity of friendship, duties, and interdependence, it all seemed reasonable. It was simply a way of protecting a maximum of people with a minimum of resources: “A system of interlocking values, practices, institutions, and psychological mechanisms that work together to suppress or regulate selfishness and make social life possible.”
Clifford Geertz, another U of Chicago anthropologist, was never one of my professors but I’ve been much impressed by his writing. In particular, he told a story about Indonesia someplace where a man had left his traditional religion, which his neighbors practiced, but then he suddenly died. He had not been in the religion to which he was converted long enough for anyone to know how he should be buried, but they knew he had left their own way. So he lay in his house, rotting. The anthropologist had to tactfully step in to suggest rites that would get rid of the body in an efficient and dignified manner. It strikes me that in this multi-cultural world, where so many are confused among tradition, conversion, and innovation, we are in something like the same position. How do we become “global?” Who can do what and how? Where is the universal?
Normally, a culture emerges from an economy dependent on a climate and an ecology, the resources and history of a place. This happens over a period of time, organically, as people have insights and borrow from others. But if one is DESIGNING a culture, what are the guidelines?
Much of people’s intuitive feeling of what is “right” comes from their life experience. So at First Unitarian Church in Chicago, whenever worship design came up, the black former-Baptists wanted more singing, the former-Episcopalians wanted more ornamentation, the former-Quakers wanted more intervals of silence, and so on. In the same way, when outsiders come to Valier, some insist on sidewalks, some yearn for the opera, some resent the wind, and some locals feel invaded and scolded. The 21st century participants in the Manor House show, both high and low, were always in uproar because of isolation or task loads or house rules they just weren’t used to. Maybe the exception was the lady of the house, an emergency physician who became quite attached to ease and pleasure -- though she did think that such garments as crotchless bloomers made her husband a bit excessively randy. And she wept over her enforced distance from her son.
Haidt is after dimensions and assumptions about what “feels right.” He says to imagine five “sliders” such as the ones that control sound: continuums on the dimensions of ingroup/loyalty, purity/sanctity, and authority/respect -- which are much emphasized by people with Republican-type orientations. Then two values more focused on the individual’s interests: harm/care and fairness/reciprocity are more like the Democrat priorities. But they so emphasize independence and even (let’s face it) self-indulgent narcissism that the unity of the whole is endangered. (Watch the Unitarian movement tear itself apart once again by pulling in all sorts of people without adequately defining a strong reason to stick together.)
There is at http://www.yourmorals.org/ a chance to test your own morality. After the first quiz, I wandered off yawning because it was all too simplistic and either/or. There is a series of tests. The first one told me I can tolerate a lot of disgusting stuff. You could have just asked me and I’d have told you.
In fact, the discussion of “disgust” as a moral guide seems to me one of the most valuable and interesting parts of the article. For one thing it seems to me that many young people are so little disgusted by almost anything that one fears for their simple sanitation! But the generations that survived the Depression and WWII have already faced so many disgusting elements, that they seem determined to never again have anything to do with mud, dog poop, soured milk, weeds, dirty hands, unconventional sexual orientations or practices, dead animals, rot or disorder of any kind -- all signs of poverty. They feel that anything that smells bad or is slimy or has to do with the “Other” (animals, babies, women and foreigners) is a threat to civilized living. The “low” servants in the Manor House are the ones who empty the chamber pots, pluck the game birds, deal with garbage and fuel, take out ashes, and get down on their hands and knees to brush the carpets. For doing this hard work, they are paid less.
What is interesting to me is that today’s young have embraced the disgusting as a kind of liberation and defiance! Smelling “natural,” doing icky sexual things, piling up with animals, wallowing in mud, tattooing, piercing, even talking dirty -- they are drawn to the “Other” in any form, including drugs. Addicts, of course, are notorious for their filth and disorder.
What this does in the end is to reinforce the stodgy old Repubs who made it through the disgusting Depression and War -- even confinement and torture -- so that they could have a clean, well-lighted, orderly life in which to raise their children. All they really want is predictable stability, which appears to them to be produced by hierarchy and authority. These sentiments justify seizing control.
The next step, of course, is to figure out how to keep that from going wrong, either through predatory authorities or an ecology simply overwhelmed by its population. Maybe the Edge will get to it after the election, like so many other things. Certainly it will tell us a lot about the “slider” settings of American morality. I predict that the upshot will be another one of those fifty-one per cent decisions and we will go on tussling among ourselves for another generation or so. Unless, as at the end of the Edwardian Era, we are precipitated into another disgusting war winnable only by strict hierarchy. Or worse, ecological chaos.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
VALIER BRAINSTORMING
It appears to me that our discussions about Valier always fall into the same trap, which is describing what we want the town to look like and what kind of people we want to move here, instead of looking at the real economic base for growth. So what IS the economic base of Valier?
Of course, the keystone business is the Pondera Canal company and the irrigation it makes possible. They are low-key and we forget.
Agriculture
Of the two basic kinds, livestock and grain growing, we seem to have slightly more grain growing, which is of two kinds: irrigated and dry-land. Primary crops are wheat and barley, with activity in the breeding of new kinds. I’m not aware of organic grain farmers in the immediate vicinity. Alternative crops include canola, flax, pulse, and alfalfa.
Profit making pluses include ag chemical businesses. Chemical fallowing fields increase business, but the high cost of petroleum-derived chemicals are a detriment. (I’m nervous about consequences for human physiology.) CRP is good for individuals since they don’t have the cost of farming their land, but now the value of ethanol-producing crops is very high and there is talk of returning land to production. Since those on CRP sold their machinery, if there’s a return, dealers should be looking at good business. I do not know which ethanol crops will grow here. Switch grass? Not corn. Custom cutters are seasonal and transient.
When the newly negotiated Blackfeet water rights kick in five years from now, they represent a 30% loss of water. If this combines with drought, some folks will be out of business.
The elevator and railroad spur are dependent on grain production. They seem to be doing fine but how does the town relate to them? Could a small passenger vehicle on the tracks, possibly electrical, shuttle us to Great Falls?
Livestock is mostly cattle with a sub-theme of sheep, hogs, and chickens. Derived businesses are feed companies, veterinarians, meat-cutters, and labor for daily care, birthing, vaccination, AI, and so on. Transporting animals is done with trucks. At least one trucking business here is local.
So far as I know there is not much local truck gardening except for the Hutterites. There seems to be potential in hydroponics and greenhouses since transportation and the potential for contamination in distant foods are high. Would our successful greenhouse (a relatively new business) consider renting greenhouse space in winter for individuals to grow, say, lettuce?
Services
A local grocery store is increasingly vital as it becomes more expensive to drive to the larger towns, but monopolies are never good and a small store can’t stock the broad range of foods some people are used to. Food distributors find Valier in an awkward spot off the Interstate.
The newspaper has been moved to the equivalent of “off-shore” ownership so there is only a reporter in town instead of owners. The Great Falls Tribune talks quietly of discontinuing a paper version, which represents a possible job loss. If they did that, only people with computers would have access. The Trib rarely sends their reporters here, picking up our news through indivduals or local newspapers. We don’t seem to get the Conrad paper in Valier.
We’re down to one commercial service station combined with liquor store, video rental, and quickstop food. Netflix is probably hurting the video rentals. The laundromat is gone. This is the location of the only ATM in town. But there are card gas services at Hank Taylor. We have a couple (three?) mechanics, one of them (Fitz) with as much or more business as he can handle, partly because of quality work and partly because he specializes in engine rebuilding.
The library is going strong, moving into serving groups such as kids’ educational programs and offering readings. They hope to expand. The mayor claims they have more money than the town. Certainly everyone admires the architect designed building and the pleasant fireplace.
The motel is completely renewed. It’s biggest problem now is heat in winter.
Eating and drinking establishments seem to be thriving. The Panther is redecorated and busy, the Lighthouse draws people from a hundred miles away, and Froggies is booming.
The post office seems to be stable and efficient. UPS and FedX the same.
Valier clinic is newly rebuilt with community help. This building also shelters chiropractic service. Professional counseling is only a few doors away.
In the past there were bakeries, but none now unless one counts Hutterites or unless someone has a home business. There is no community commercial “food business incubator,” like a certified kitchen people could use for a business based on canning or baking. Squiers have a home-based baking and preserves business connected to their berry and potato fields.
The lunch program for seniors just bought new stoves. The “Senior Surrey” looks to be revived. I don’t know about outreach such as visiting nurses or social services.
I don’t know about you, but I find Wells Fargo too big, arbitrary and profit-oriented to be worth bothering with.
Infrastructure
School
Emergency services: fire, police and EMT
Town streets, water and sewer
Natural gas line
Electricity
Churches
No wood yard
Garbage pickup and roll-off.
The airport
Cell phone service is inadequate.
The cable television service seems ended by satellite television.
Through-the-air television broadcast is not maintained and will be transformed with the switch to digital. It is county rather than town. There is no town radio or television.
Internet-based streaming technology is growing so quickly that both telephone and satellite access need to be pretty capacious.
Niche businesses, brick-and-mortar or online
Fabric-based businesses, like the custom embroidery and clothing shop and the quilt shop, seem to do well. Heart Butte once had a sewing co-op that completed contracts for custom sewing (through a job broker back east) -- things like filters for the air system in tanks. It failed because the workers couldn’t cope with the fluctuations in the size of the contracts, but maybe Valier could.
The flower nursery is a success and relatively new.
The Gallery/website business of Jack Smith has developed well, but arts in general as business is undeveloped. (Small inexpensive houses invite artists.) The connection with Ivan Doig has never been exploited by identifying this town as one of his sources and the location of his high school education.
The eBay-dependent antiques business did well until the owner became ill. Rumor has it that eBay may change drastically in the next few years, which might help or hinder.
I’m not aware of a bookkeeping business. Likewise insurance. Other clerical services such as transcription (medical or otherwise), printing, database maintenance, indexing are not present. I’m told there’s a woman who proofs textbooks and I myself write. Others write grants. I reflect about a custom bookbinding but so far don't know enough.
The several “beauty parlors” have absorbed the male barber business. One value-added business offers massage.
Prairie Star, reborn as Trader’s Dispatch, has been steady and strong.
The real estate business is subject to the larger economy, which is rough right now, but recently there was a bit of a boom which was much facilitated by online entrepreneurs who find Valier and see it as good place for “flipping.”
Kenny, our long-time grass cutter, is aging out, but Joe has moved to town and begun a service.
Rick the handyman has moved on. In general, it’s hard to find people to do small technical tasks like rewiring a switch or repairing a leak.
A new AC company has moved to town.
John Padgett does house painting.
Swank/DeVoe is the premier model for a business that has over the years grown from a little hardware store to a major contractor.
There is no computer or tech support person in town.
Housing
Employees for homeland security, the prison, the border, the sheriff like to live in Valier as a quiet environment for their families.
Transient labor for big projects like the wind farm, the high transmission line, pipelines and so on, seek apartments or small houses here.
There is one low-cost apartment housing unit built and the Section 8 program is active. People at the growth meeting indicated a need for something that would sustain older people so they don’t have to move to Conrad.
A storage facility has just expanded.
Housing supplies seem to include a range: small, old houses that invite low income people; modern and roomy homes suitable for families with children and income; a few unique homes designed specifically for individuals; modular homes built and moved in to permanent foundations; trailers of various sorts. Many houses stand empty a lot because they are vacation residences. Lately there have been quite a few totally new houses. Some properties become legally frozen for a while because the owners are in institutions or deceased or ownership is somehow disputed. They tend to deteriorate.
One individual, Bowman, has remodeled a number of houses to the point of totally renewing them, moving a few into town from the country. This includes the Stone School House. He has moved away and is selling the last of his properties. He has in the past been active as “Bootlegger Realty,” dealing in more modest properties. The present real estate person does not live in the town.
The park on the main street is a major improvement but the old bank/post office is still a blot, as is the potentially cute little house that once housed a tourist business. I’m told that one person owns these two buildings plus a substantial but deserted house away from the highway. Do we know what goes on with this property owner? Are the contingencies his or ours?
Recreation
Highway 44 is known as the “cut-across” and was once promoted as the fastest and safest route to Great Falls from Browning, where Marias Pass and Canadian traffic enter the area. The signs put up then are pretty shabby now, though 89 is still a twisty, narrow road most of the way. Part of the success of the Panther is that it was halfway along 44, well-placed for taking a coffee break in rough weather. When 44 was being rebuilt, people got out of the habit of traveling it. We need to encourage return to the route now that competing highway 2 to Cut Bank is much improved and also a cut-across to the Interstate.
The irrigation impoundment fondly known as Lake Francis is the key to a campground, ice fishing in winter and small boat fishing in summer, and wind-related activities like wind-surfing. It also provides a nesting island in wet years. There is no exclusively fishing supply shop. The fish organizations contribute such amenities as the fish-cleaning station.
The Firemen’s Pavilion is a good facility for large group events and might be developed further.
Stone School Bed and Breakfast appears to be a viable business but doesn’t interact with the community so much as it did.
What seems clear is that many successful businesses come from the vision or aptitude of individuals who see a “niche” and develop it. Also, there are two competing currents: those who would like to see the town become much bigger and those who would like to see the town stay small but more orderly and prosperous. Little attention is given to world or regional influences.
Valier is too nervous about the relationship with the reservation to talk about it.
Only a few people are participating in the discussion of the future.
Quite a bit of growth has been happening in the past few years, enough to make the infrastructure groan a bit.
Of course, the keystone business is the Pondera Canal company and the irrigation it makes possible. They are low-key and we forget.
Agriculture
Of the two basic kinds, livestock and grain growing, we seem to have slightly more grain growing, which is of two kinds: irrigated and dry-land. Primary crops are wheat and barley, with activity in the breeding of new kinds. I’m not aware of organic grain farmers in the immediate vicinity. Alternative crops include canola, flax, pulse, and alfalfa.
Profit making pluses include ag chemical businesses. Chemical fallowing fields increase business, but the high cost of petroleum-derived chemicals are a detriment. (I’m nervous about consequences for human physiology.) CRP is good for individuals since they don’t have the cost of farming their land, but now the value of ethanol-producing crops is very high and there is talk of returning land to production. Since those on CRP sold their machinery, if there’s a return, dealers should be looking at good business. I do not know which ethanol crops will grow here. Switch grass? Not corn. Custom cutters are seasonal and transient.
When the newly negotiated Blackfeet water rights kick in five years from now, they represent a 30% loss of water. If this combines with drought, some folks will be out of business.
The elevator and railroad spur are dependent on grain production. They seem to be doing fine but how does the town relate to them? Could a small passenger vehicle on the tracks, possibly electrical, shuttle us to Great Falls?
Livestock is mostly cattle with a sub-theme of sheep, hogs, and chickens. Derived businesses are feed companies, veterinarians, meat-cutters, and labor for daily care, birthing, vaccination, AI, and so on. Transporting animals is done with trucks. At least one trucking business here is local.
So far as I know there is not much local truck gardening except for the Hutterites. There seems to be potential in hydroponics and greenhouses since transportation and the potential for contamination in distant foods are high. Would our successful greenhouse (a relatively new business) consider renting greenhouse space in winter for individuals to grow, say, lettuce?
Services
A local grocery store is increasingly vital as it becomes more expensive to drive to the larger towns, but monopolies are never good and a small store can’t stock the broad range of foods some people are used to. Food distributors find Valier in an awkward spot off the Interstate.
The newspaper has been moved to the equivalent of “off-shore” ownership so there is only a reporter in town instead of owners. The Great Falls Tribune talks quietly of discontinuing a paper version, which represents a possible job loss. If they did that, only people with computers would have access. The Trib rarely sends their reporters here, picking up our news through indivduals or local newspapers. We don’t seem to get the Conrad paper in Valier.
We’re down to one commercial service station combined with liquor store, video rental, and quickstop food. Netflix is probably hurting the video rentals. The laundromat is gone. This is the location of the only ATM in town. But there are card gas services at Hank Taylor. We have a couple (three?) mechanics, one of them (Fitz) with as much or more business as he can handle, partly because of quality work and partly because he specializes in engine rebuilding.
The library is going strong, moving into serving groups such as kids’ educational programs and offering readings. They hope to expand. The mayor claims they have more money than the town. Certainly everyone admires the architect designed building and the pleasant fireplace.
The motel is completely renewed. It’s biggest problem now is heat in winter.
Eating and drinking establishments seem to be thriving. The Panther is redecorated and busy, the Lighthouse draws people from a hundred miles away, and Froggies is booming.
The post office seems to be stable and efficient. UPS and FedX the same.
Valier clinic is newly rebuilt with community help. This building also shelters chiropractic service. Professional counseling is only a few doors away.
In the past there were bakeries, but none now unless one counts Hutterites or unless someone has a home business. There is no community commercial “food business incubator,” like a certified kitchen people could use for a business based on canning or baking. Squiers have a home-based baking and preserves business connected to their berry and potato fields.
The lunch program for seniors just bought new stoves. The “Senior Surrey” looks to be revived. I don’t know about outreach such as visiting nurses or social services.
I don’t know about you, but I find Wells Fargo too big, arbitrary and profit-oriented to be worth bothering with.
Infrastructure
School
Emergency services: fire, police and EMT
Town streets, water and sewer
Natural gas line
Electricity
Churches
No wood yard
Garbage pickup and roll-off.
The airport
Cell phone service is inadequate.
The cable television service seems ended by satellite television.
Through-the-air television broadcast is not maintained and will be transformed with the switch to digital. It is county rather than town. There is no town radio or television.
Internet-based streaming technology is growing so quickly that both telephone and satellite access need to be pretty capacious.
Niche businesses, brick-and-mortar or online
Fabric-based businesses, like the custom embroidery and clothing shop and the quilt shop, seem to do well. Heart Butte once had a sewing co-op that completed contracts for custom sewing (through a job broker back east) -- things like filters for the air system in tanks. It failed because the workers couldn’t cope with the fluctuations in the size of the contracts, but maybe Valier could.
The flower nursery is a success and relatively new.
The Gallery/website business of Jack Smith has developed well, but arts in general as business is undeveloped. (Small inexpensive houses invite artists.) The connection with Ivan Doig has never been exploited by identifying this town as one of his sources and the location of his high school education.
The eBay-dependent antiques business did well until the owner became ill. Rumor has it that eBay may change drastically in the next few years, which might help or hinder.
I’m not aware of a bookkeeping business. Likewise insurance. Other clerical services such as transcription (medical or otherwise), printing, database maintenance, indexing are not present. I’m told there’s a woman who proofs textbooks and I myself write. Others write grants. I reflect about a custom bookbinding but so far don't know enough.
The several “beauty parlors” have absorbed the male barber business. One value-added business offers massage.
Prairie Star, reborn as Trader’s Dispatch, has been steady and strong.
The real estate business is subject to the larger economy, which is rough right now, but recently there was a bit of a boom which was much facilitated by online entrepreneurs who find Valier and see it as good place for “flipping.”
Kenny, our long-time grass cutter, is aging out, but Joe has moved to town and begun a service.
Rick the handyman has moved on. In general, it’s hard to find people to do small technical tasks like rewiring a switch or repairing a leak.
A new AC company has moved to town.
John Padgett does house painting.
Swank/DeVoe is the premier model for a business that has over the years grown from a little hardware store to a major contractor.
There is no computer or tech support person in town.
Housing
Employees for homeland security, the prison, the border, the sheriff like to live in Valier as a quiet environment for their families.
Transient labor for big projects like the wind farm, the high transmission line, pipelines and so on, seek apartments or small houses here.
There is one low-cost apartment housing unit built and the Section 8 program is active. People at the growth meeting indicated a need for something that would sustain older people so they don’t have to move to Conrad.
A storage facility has just expanded.
Housing supplies seem to include a range: small, old houses that invite low income people; modern and roomy homes suitable for families with children and income; a few unique homes designed specifically for individuals; modular homes built and moved in to permanent foundations; trailers of various sorts. Many houses stand empty a lot because they are vacation residences. Lately there have been quite a few totally new houses. Some properties become legally frozen for a while because the owners are in institutions or deceased or ownership is somehow disputed. They tend to deteriorate.
One individual, Bowman, has remodeled a number of houses to the point of totally renewing them, moving a few into town from the country. This includes the Stone School House. He has moved away and is selling the last of his properties. He has in the past been active as “Bootlegger Realty,” dealing in more modest properties. The present real estate person does not live in the town.
The park on the main street is a major improvement but the old bank/post office is still a blot, as is the potentially cute little house that once housed a tourist business. I’m told that one person owns these two buildings plus a substantial but deserted house away from the highway. Do we know what goes on with this property owner? Are the contingencies his or ours?
Recreation
Highway 44 is known as the “cut-across” and was once promoted as the fastest and safest route to Great Falls from Browning, where Marias Pass and Canadian traffic enter the area. The signs put up then are pretty shabby now, though 89 is still a twisty, narrow road most of the way. Part of the success of the Panther is that it was halfway along 44, well-placed for taking a coffee break in rough weather. When 44 was being rebuilt, people got out of the habit of traveling it. We need to encourage return to the route now that competing highway 2 to Cut Bank is much improved and also a cut-across to the Interstate.
The irrigation impoundment fondly known as Lake Francis is the key to a campground, ice fishing in winter and small boat fishing in summer, and wind-related activities like wind-surfing. It also provides a nesting island in wet years. There is no exclusively fishing supply shop. The fish organizations contribute such amenities as the fish-cleaning station.
The Firemen’s Pavilion is a good facility for large group events and might be developed further.
Stone School Bed and Breakfast appears to be a viable business but doesn’t interact with the community so much as it did.
What seems clear is that many successful businesses come from the vision or aptitude of individuals who see a “niche” and develop it. Also, there are two competing currents: those who would like to see the town become much bigger and those who would like to see the town stay small but more orderly and prosperous. Little attention is given to world or regional influences.
Valier is too nervous about the relationship with the reservation to talk about it.
Only a few people are participating in the discussion of the future.
Quite a bit of growth has been happening in the past few years, enough to make the infrastructure groan a bit.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
VALIER GROWING PAINS
Last night was a town meeting meant to satisfy a state requirement that Pondera County have a growth plan based on smaller growth plans designed by the several communities in the county. This has put all the enthusiastic spot zoning schemes of those in control on hold: forbidden by the state without a series of town meetings. Few citizens came to this one.
One man came only to tell us that his friend from Butte (who made a lot of money and therefore was to be respected) had commented that Valier would never attract a decent business base unless they learned how to park properly. This man proposed that on the main streets we should paint stripes so people would park “right.” Because it seemed self-evident to himself and others that business thrives when a town looks good -- not that it was possible that towns look good BECAUSE the businesses are thriving. He thought that his idea might anger some people so he left as soon as he expressed it. I was laughing too hard to be angry.
My own realization -- growing for months now -- is that we are in the long-predicted “end times” when the oil runs out (or becomes so expensive that it’s the same effect). That will close some marginal businesses. Also, the supply of irrigation water will take a 30% hit in five years when the Blackfeet tribe claims its share. (It’s not that they aren’t entitled -- it’s that the non-rez people have been taking their water since the beginning.) At that point, some of the areas ag businesses (both ranches and ag supply dealers) will end. These are Third World kinds of problems. We haven’t really faced what it means to have possible bank failures or to have our basic infrastructure (like pipelines) owned by foreign countries. Spoiling the scenery by erecting wind-farms seems necessary with oil and natural gas so high, but the wind electricity will also be foreign-owned.
There are people in this town living on $500 a month or less, which is only possible with government help, but this country shows increasing unwillingness to help the poor, the elderly, the disabled, the children. There are ranchers who make it only because the government subsidizes them. One of the complaints last night was that certain streets were unpleasant because of the boat traffic headed over to the lake, but it may not be long before people park their boats under tarps in the backyard because there’s no gas for them. No one is counting them nor are they paying any fees for the dock.
There were few or no poor people at this meeting. Nor were there any identified Indians. Nor were there any of the truly prosperous people in town nor any of the owners of jewel-in-the-crown businesses like the DeVoe-Swank construction complex or the fine restaurant called “The Lighthouse” that attracts people celebrating special events from a hundred miles away. The real estate company is owned by ranchers who live in the country and dabble in state politics. They were not present.
No one was prepared to deal with the complexities of property that looks bad because ownership is in doubt, like the Willette trailer with only a feral dog in residence behind me. Owners are in nursing homes with liens on their dwellings, unpaid taxes, and -- come to that -- defaulted purchase loans. Their heirs take no interest. A new law restricting the demolition of houses until there is asbestos testing will make it even more expensive to remove old buildings.
Before the meeting I was interested to see across from the town hall a drilling rig and trotted over to ask what they were up to. Might we strike oil in the middle of town? Solve some problems, that would! But they were there on behalf of the DEQ, which has ordered monitoring stations and a test well on a highway property that formerly was occupied by a service station. The underground tanks leaked and after thirty years or so the ground contamination remains. The mayor denied that they were finding anything, but the crew said they were surprised by how high the readings were. That property is also tied up in issues of responsibility because the original owners are deceased and any inheritors have distanced themselves. Some in the room shrugged off the problem of ground contamination so I brought up the gas vapors from the old demolished service station that blew up inside the Scriver Museum of Montana Wildlife in the Seventies. No one on the town council had been born yet.
No one addressed the business issues we used to consider in the Sixties: how many people actually drive past, what percentage of them will stop, of the people who stop and come in, how many will buy something and how many will return? Highway 44 has been completely rebuilt, which is wonderful, but no traffic studies have been made to see whether drivers have returned to using it. The sign on 89 that used to direct traffic through to Valier is old and uninviting. No one addressed on-line businesses like the eBay antiques business that did rather well for a while (the owner developed cancer) and no one was aware of the issues if the Internet becomes pay-per-message. When I suggested that the town become a wi-fi hotspot, no one knew what that was except for the local businesses that had in-house wi-fi. We seem to have lost expertise both on the hoary old practices of post-WWII and the shiny new practices of the tech universe.
Most people seem to understand rather well that our water and sewer infrastructure is barely adequate for our present size and could not sustain much development. It came to light that one big section of unbuilt lots sits there because a sewer in that low area couldn’t be built without expensive “lift stations” and pumps. The few houses in those blocks are on septic systems. We also have a once-projected “subdivision” just across the highway and railroad that has been dropped out of subdivision status. They are on septic systems. There are two ranching operations there with concentrations of animals in corrals or feedlots for part of the year.
Growth, like shrinking, means change. There’s no such thing as standing still. Maybe the hardest kind of growth is the kind that fluctuates with construction like the new wind farm and the big international high-tension electrical line, which will bring in workers (though not in anything like the numbers of those who once came to build Swift Dam at the head of our irrigation system, because now so much is done by machinery) and then send them on their way again. The phrase “trailer court” came up just once. Border law enforcement, homeland security agents, and guards from the contract prison in Shelby like to live in Valier, but if gas continues to rise, it’s an expensive commute -- an hour’s drive.
Part of what prevents a realistic grip on problems is the sheer overwhelmingness of them, another part is people trying hard to deflect attention away from their own small iffy operations, and a third part is the sheer head-flattening terror of facing impossible fuel bills this winter when it goes to forty below, to say nothing of the burden of gasoline prices in a place where other towns are at least thirty miles away. No wonder the fantasy of straight parking as a cure-all is appealing. At least that’s something that a person could do.
One man came only to tell us that his friend from Butte (who made a lot of money and therefore was to be respected) had commented that Valier would never attract a decent business base unless they learned how to park properly. This man proposed that on the main streets we should paint stripes so people would park “right.” Because it seemed self-evident to himself and others that business thrives when a town looks good -- not that it was possible that towns look good BECAUSE the businesses are thriving. He thought that his idea might anger some people so he left as soon as he expressed it. I was laughing too hard to be angry.
My own realization -- growing for months now -- is that we are in the long-predicted “end times” when the oil runs out (or becomes so expensive that it’s the same effect). That will close some marginal businesses. Also, the supply of irrigation water will take a 30% hit in five years when the Blackfeet tribe claims its share. (It’s not that they aren’t entitled -- it’s that the non-rez people have been taking their water since the beginning.) At that point, some of the areas ag businesses (both ranches and ag supply dealers) will end. These are Third World kinds of problems. We haven’t really faced what it means to have possible bank failures or to have our basic infrastructure (like pipelines) owned by foreign countries. Spoiling the scenery by erecting wind-farms seems necessary with oil and natural gas so high, but the wind electricity will also be foreign-owned.
There are people in this town living on $500 a month or less, which is only possible with government help, but this country shows increasing unwillingness to help the poor, the elderly, the disabled, the children. There are ranchers who make it only because the government subsidizes them. One of the complaints last night was that certain streets were unpleasant because of the boat traffic headed over to the lake, but it may not be long before people park their boats under tarps in the backyard because there’s no gas for them. No one is counting them nor are they paying any fees for the dock.
There were few or no poor people at this meeting. Nor were there any identified Indians. Nor were there any of the truly prosperous people in town nor any of the owners of jewel-in-the-crown businesses like the DeVoe-Swank construction complex or the fine restaurant called “The Lighthouse” that attracts people celebrating special events from a hundred miles away. The real estate company is owned by ranchers who live in the country and dabble in state politics. They were not present.
No one was prepared to deal with the complexities of property that looks bad because ownership is in doubt, like the Willette trailer with only a feral dog in residence behind me. Owners are in nursing homes with liens on their dwellings, unpaid taxes, and -- come to that -- defaulted purchase loans. Their heirs take no interest. A new law restricting the demolition of houses until there is asbestos testing will make it even more expensive to remove old buildings.
Before the meeting I was interested to see across from the town hall a drilling rig and trotted over to ask what they were up to. Might we strike oil in the middle of town? Solve some problems, that would! But they were there on behalf of the DEQ, which has ordered monitoring stations and a test well on a highway property that formerly was occupied by a service station. The underground tanks leaked and after thirty years or so the ground contamination remains. The mayor denied that they were finding anything, but the crew said they were surprised by how high the readings were. That property is also tied up in issues of responsibility because the original owners are deceased and any inheritors have distanced themselves. Some in the room shrugged off the problem of ground contamination so I brought up the gas vapors from the old demolished service station that blew up inside the Scriver Museum of Montana Wildlife in the Seventies. No one on the town council had been born yet.
No one addressed the business issues we used to consider in the Sixties: how many people actually drive past, what percentage of them will stop, of the people who stop and come in, how many will buy something and how many will return? Highway 44 has been completely rebuilt, which is wonderful, but no traffic studies have been made to see whether drivers have returned to using it. The sign on 89 that used to direct traffic through to Valier is old and uninviting. No one addressed on-line businesses like the eBay antiques business that did rather well for a while (the owner developed cancer) and no one was aware of the issues if the Internet becomes pay-per-message. When I suggested that the town become a wi-fi hotspot, no one knew what that was except for the local businesses that had in-house wi-fi. We seem to have lost expertise both on the hoary old practices of post-WWII and the shiny new practices of the tech universe.
Most people seem to understand rather well that our water and sewer infrastructure is barely adequate for our present size and could not sustain much development. It came to light that one big section of unbuilt lots sits there because a sewer in that low area couldn’t be built without expensive “lift stations” and pumps. The few houses in those blocks are on septic systems. We also have a once-projected “subdivision” just across the highway and railroad that has been dropped out of subdivision status. They are on septic systems. There are two ranching operations there with concentrations of animals in corrals or feedlots for part of the year.
Growth, like shrinking, means change. There’s no such thing as standing still. Maybe the hardest kind of growth is the kind that fluctuates with construction like the new wind farm and the big international high-tension electrical line, which will bring in workers (though not in anything like the numbers of those who once came to build Swift Dam at the head of our irrigation system, because now so much is done by machinery) and then send them on their way again. The phrase “trailer court” came up just once. Border law enforcement, homeland security agents, and guards from the contract prison in Shelby like to live in Valier, but if gas continues to rise, it’s an expensive commute -- an hour’s drive.
Part of what prevents a realistic grip on problems is the sheer overwhelmingness of them, another part is people trying hard to deflect attention away from their own small iffy operations, and a third part is the sheer head-flattening terror of facing impossible fuel bills this winter when it goes to forty below, to say nothing of the burden of gasoline prices in a place where other towns are at least thirty miles away. No wonder the fantasy of straight parking as a cure-all is appealing. At least that’s something that a person could do.
Saturday, July 05, 2008
BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR!
On July 21 the town of Valier will be having another meeting to discuss growth. But it’s really about other covert agendas. Anyway, the assumption has been that growth will mean the return of prosperity and the expansion of the kind of population that the “nicer” people want. The forces driving growth have been rather different.
First, the Flathead Valley -- which has slightly milder weather because of the lake down the middle of it and because it is sheltered between mountains -- has seen land values increase so much that many of the people who lived in small corners and undeveloped tracts have been able to sell their little old houses (which will be torn down) to people from California and back East for a great deal of money. Then they’ve come to the shrinking ag towns of the east slope to buy little old houses that have stood empty. Enough money has been left over for them to live on for a few years, but those years are running out now. There are no jobs for these folks and some of them tend to have “lifestyles” that keep the sheriff busy, even felony records elsewhere.
Second, some people have found cheap lots when they came looking in the summer and neglected to really investigate some of the issues of infrastructure and cultural life. Only after they’ve built new houses, investing enough money not to be able to walk off, do they discover that the water system will require major upgradings before it meets fire insurance standards, the idyllic-seeming phenomenon of unmetered household water is not going to last much longer, and the septic system -- when the spring run-off dilutes the lagoon -- fails tests. Our wells are aged and there may be an ag chemical and aviation fuel contamination plume reaching for them. So far we can’t afford an investigation. The weather, when it is extreme, can be quite shocking.
Third, the Heart Butte schools are troubling enough that Blackfeet families move to Valier for the sake of the schools here. Though the Valier schools and the Heart Butte schools are both part of the Pondera County school system, the county takes a laissez faire attitude towards Heart Butte as they do towards all county services on the rez. Anyway, the Valier schools need the student numbers and the athletic achievements of the Blackfeet kids. Heart Butte families do not necessarily hold lawns in high regard. Wink,wink. One Blackfeet member has discovered that because of a Dawes Act anomaly some of the town lots are technically part part of the reservation. The implications are unexplored: a gambling casino in town, maybe? Or is it simply trading stock? Is it subject to state taxes and regulations?
Fourth, even with high gas prices we are a reasonable commute for the increased border population: homeland security, immigration, border patrol and so on. Some of these people are family men but others are “special agents” hired on a more temporary basis. The families tend to build houses or move in pre-built houses. The single older men are more inclined to rent.
Fifth, two major electricity projects are being built nearby over the next few years. One is a wind farm, quite large, and the other is a power transmission line between Great Falls and Lethbridge. Labor for these jobs means floaters coming in from parts of the country where jobs are short. Usually younger single men, they enjoy party-hearty weekends and fist-fights at Froggies. We have a shortage of bars in this town so the highway patrol may have more business than usual. The men will be making good money and investing much of it in vehicles. There are certain places where rental turnover is high because roommates don’t get along. At the moment, ten AM on the Saturday after the Fourth of July, around the rental apartment on the corner of this block are more than a half-dozen big pickups, mostly new. If the party continues until Sunday night, that will be a dangerous time because drugs -- including alcohol -- will be wearing off.
Before the housing bubble burst, real estate “flipping” had just reached Valier through the Internet. For instance, Michel -- who is French but had been dealing real estate in Florida and California-- bought two tiny abandoned houses which he improved for resale. One was finished before the bubble burst and is operating as a rental. The other is still empty. Our local real estate business is a sideline operated by a local wealthy rancher who has no concern for town quality.
Some folks are considering selling out. Every year a small but constant number become too aged to maintain here any longer. One person built a rather fancy house and garden combination without considering weather carefully and is surprised that methods and plants appropriate to the Pacific NW simply don’t work here. He’s not the first. One of the few newer businesses in town has gotten an offer of financial help if it will relocate to a bigger town with a broad tourist base. High gas prices have reduced tourist traffic here, even boats. The Panther Cafe has been listed for sale for quite a while. In the meantime, Birch Creek water rights will sharply diminish in a few years, ending some grain operations.
A small speculative development has been proposed on empty lots without water. When approached, the state authority advised that the procedures are so complex that the best thing to do is just to build the first one, pay for the water connection, then extend the other waterlines off that first one -- sort it out later. “Don’t let anyone know you contacted us,” he said. There are already many puzzles of this type complicating our infrastructure: backyard mother-in-law houses and the like. But those who believe that over-regulation by bigger governmental units are stifling our small town are in favor of “just doing it.”
Our town council is conscientious and hard-working, but young. Our mayor is now recovering from congestive heart failure. Our clerk is highly trained, a ranch wife. The two town employees are so harshly criticized that they’re beginning to be resentful. Citizens of the town are reluctant to face what will be emotional problems to work out. This is not a town that likes to quarrel.
Odd that probably the best advice comes from a Bette Davis character: "Buckle your seatbelts-- we're in for a bumpy ride."
First, the Flathead Valley -- which has slightly milder weather because of the lake down the middle of it and because it is sheltered between mountains -- has seen land values increase so much that many of the people who lived in small corners and undeveloped tracts have been able to sell their little old houses (which will be torn down) to people from California and back East for a great deal of money. Then they’ve come to the shrinking ag towns of the east slope to buy little old houses that have stood empty. Enough money has been left over for them to live on for a few years, but those years are running out now. There are no jobs for these folks and some of them tend to have “lifestyles” that keep the sheriff busy, even felony records elsewhere.
Second, some people have found cheap lots when they came looking in the summer and neglected to really investigate some of the issues of infrastructure and cultural life. Only after they’ve built new houses, investing enough money not to be able to walk off, do they discover that the water system will require major upgradings before it meets fire insurance standards, the idyllic-seeming phenomenon of unmetered household water is not going to last much longer, and the septic system -- when the spring run-off dilutes the lagoon -- fails tests. Our wells are aged and there may be an ag chemical and aviation fuel contamination plume reaching for them. So far we can’t afford an investigation. The weather, when it is extreme, can be quite shocking.
Third, the Heart Butte schools are troubling enough that Blackfeet families move to Valier for the sake of the schools here. Though the Valier schools and the Heart Butte schools are both part of the Pondera County school system, the county takes a laissez faire attitude towards Heart Butte as they do towards all county services on the rez. Anyway, the Valier schools need the student numbers and the athletic achievements of the Blackfeet kids. Heart Butte families do not necessarily hold lawns in high regard. Wink,wink. One Blackfeet member has discovered that because of a Dawes Act anomaly some of the town lots are technically part part of the reservation. The implications are unexplored: a gambling casino in town, maybe? Or is it simply trading stock? Is it subject to state taxes and regulations?
Fourth, even with high gas prices we are a reasonable commute for the increased border population: homeland security, immigration, border patrol and so on. Some of these people are family men but others are “special agents” hired on a more temporary basis. The families tend to build houses or move in pre-built houses. The single older men are more inclined to rent.
Fifth, two major electricity projects are being built nearby over the next few years. One is a wind farm, quite large, and the other is a power transmission line between Great Falls and Lethbridge. Labor for these jobs means floaters coming in from parts of the country where jobs are short. Usually younger single men, they enjoy party-hearty weekends and fist-fights at Froggies. We have a shortage of bars in this town so the highway patrol may have more business than usual. The men will be making good money and investing much of it in vehicles. There are certain places where rental turnover is high because roommates don’t get along. At the moment, ten AM on the Saturday after the Fourth of July, around the rental apartment on the corner of this block are more than a half-dozen big pickups, mostly new. If the party continues until Sunday night, that will be a dangerous time because drugs -- including alcohol -- will be wearing off.
Before the housing bubble burst, real estate “flipping” had just reached Valier through the Internet. For instance, Michel -- who is French but had been dealing real estate in Florida and California-- bought two tiny abandoned houses which he improved for resale. One was finished before the bubble burst and is operating as a rental. The other is still empty. Our local real estate business is a sideline operated by a local wealthy rancher who has no concern for town quality.
Some folks are considering selling out. Every year a small but constant number become too aged to maintain here any longer. One person built a rather fancy house and garden combination without considering weather carefully and is surprised that methods and plants appropriate to the Pacific NW simply don’t work here. He’s not the first. One of the few newer businesses in town has gotten an offer of financial help if it will relocate to a bigger town with a broad tourist base. High gas prices have reduced tourist traffic here, even boats. The Panther Cafe has been listed for sale for quite a while. In the meantime, Birch Creek water rights will sharply diminish in a few years, ending some grain operations.
A small speculative development has been proposed on empty lots without water. When approached, the state authority advised that the procedures are so complex that the best thing to do is just to build the first one, pay for the water connection, then extend the other waterlines off that first one -- sort it out later. “Don’t let anyone know you contacted us,” he said. There are already many puzzles of this type complicating our infrastructure: backyard mother-in-law houses and the like. But those who believe that over-regulation by bigger governmental units are stifling our small town are in favor of “just doing it.”
Our town council is conscientious and hard-working, but young. Our mayor is now recovering from congestive heart failure. Our clerk is highly trained, a ranch wife. The two town employees are so harshly criticized that they’re beginning to be resentful. Citizens of the town are reluctant to face what will be emotional problems to work out. This is not a town that likes to quarrel.
Odd that probably the best advice comes from a Bette Davis character: "Buckle your seatbelts-- we're in for a bumpy ride."
Friday, June 20, 2008
THE FLOOD PLAIN LADY SIGHS
For a few years in the Nineties I was the “flood plain lady” for the City of Portland. That is, I was the clerical specialist for the Site Development team, who had custody of the flood plain maps, and when someone called up to find out whether a property were in the flood plain, I was the one who was supposed to tell them. The maps were huge and there were a lot of them. I’d unroll them on the counter and try to figure them out. They were out of date. The flood plain was a legal category built on engineering estimates of a changing terrain and weather pattern. The public never understood that: to them it was simply whether the place would flood. Would it flood every fifty years? Every hundred years? Every five hundred years?
Hell, who cared? They just wanted to build what they wanted to build and they saw all this land sitting there with nothing built on it. Seemed perfect. Nice and cool. Fairly flat. Good view of the river... They asked their neighbor who had lived there ten-twenty years and the neighbor said it had never flooded before.
There is so much pressure from the public that the politicoes force the plans examiners to let people built on the flood plain if they build “flood resistant” buildings. (There’s no such thing as a flood-proof building.) Mostly they required high foundations, so the sills of the house were above the height the water was likely to reach. Foundations with holes in them, so that water would flow through. (Waterborne gas tanks, sheds, vehicles and trailer homes would NOT flow through.) If water comes up one-third of the way on a structure, it will float -- then turn over -- unless it’s attached to the foundation with steel straps.
One woman formerly from the Soviet Union came back with new plans every week. The last one showed foundations thirty feet high with a little one-story house perched on top. She knew from her experience in the homeland that if she nagged long enough, the authorities would shrug and say: “Aw, let her build. If she loses everything in the next flood, she asked for it.” But we held fast. She had no clout.
The point of quantifying flood damage and likelihood was actuarial because the US insures people devastated in floods. I remember as a small child watching the newsreel footage of houses floating with people in the roof, sometimes clutching their dog. The whole Missouri/Mississippi complex evolved as drainage for the North American continent on the east side of the Rockies when the glaciers finally melted ten thousands years ago. In the Thirties the engineers thought they had tamed the rivers, and they had certainly spent a lot of money.
When engineers go after a problem, they try to quantify and calibrate and invent classifications for sorting. So they got out all the rainfall measurements (since the 1800’s when there were white people around to keep records) and then they figured out how much water that must have been rolling down the rivers. Then they got out their contour maps -- the ones with all the little lines that show elevation by getting closer and closer together as the rise gets steeper -- and tried to calculate the carrying capacity of the flood plains. They chose one of those elevation lines to be the isobath, the height they figured the water would reach. Of course, those lines greatly simplified the terrain and they were drawn quite a while ago. Land doesn’t just sit there: people fill in with more dirt, banks erode.
The Flood of the Century in the Red River country in 1997 -- which was a few feet deep and miles wide -- was complicated because the Red River flows towards the north, so it melts from the south while the water is still frozen farther north, creating dams that raise the water level. The floods came so often in Winnipeg that people finally consented to create diversion canals -- they were barely adequate. Grand Forks failed to take any precautions so that the water came deep and hard. When a fire started, no one could get to it so it took out eleven buildings and sixty apartment units.
The flood about the same time in the city of Portland had nothing to do with ice: it was about heavy simultaneous rain in BOTH the drainage of the Columbia and the drainage of the Willamette so that they met at the city. Such a chance event, unpredictable as are many things when it comes to weather, was so unusual that the people -- many of whom moved there because the city was “pretty” and “civilized” -- had insisted that the top of the downtown flood wall be removed so they could see the nice view. (Historically, Portland has always been vulnerable to floods.) Luckily, there was a lot of new home construction and when the mayor put out a call for help, crews came from all over town with plywood, plastic sheeting and their hammers to save the downtown. It barely worked.
The levees that were supposed to be saving the airport from a repeat of the Vanport Flood had been breached by muskrats and nutria, burrowing in and out, and were bubbling up water from the ground on the “safe” side of the levees. At the airport the big planes that couldn’t be flown out quickly were towed up to a highway -- quite a sight. Shopping malls and manufacturing businesses had built where Vanport used to be. The mayor had to decide whether to evacuate them or not. She decided not, on grounds that lives might be lost through the chaos of evacuation and the city would be liable. Of course, if Hayden Island had flooded again, lives would also likely be lost. Luckily, she won her gamble, but it could have gone the other way.
Not long afterwards someone suggested that a much-needed county jail be situated on that flood plain. The head of Site Development, a quiet but stubbornly intelligent man, went to a hearing to tell them how likely it was that the jail would be flooded and that rising water might lock all the fancy electronic doors so that no one could escape. Another person at the hearing sneered, “Who cares? Good riddance!” Our hero, our boss, pointed out that his own brother was a guard at the jail and did not by any measure deserve to die. If anyone does.
It’s hard to educate people who don’t want to know. It’s hard to commit massive and expensive relief efforts to people who have been warned and warned and restricted and guided over and over and over again. But we are being taught hard lessons in the wettest of ways. The bottom line is that the earth does not care. Romanticize all you want. Floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, erosion, rainfall patterns -- no engineer can do much more than run along behind taking notes.
But people got so angry that when I was the flood plain lady, I kept a can of bear spray under the counter. If I’d had to use it, of course, the building would have had to be evacuated.
Hell, who cared? They just wanted to build what they wanted to build and they saw all this land sitting there with nothing built on it. Seemed perfect. Nice and cool. Fairly flat. Good view of the river... They asked their neighbor who had lived there ten-twenty years and the neighbor said it had never flooded before.
There is so much pressure from the public that the politicoes force the plans examiners to let people built on the flood plain if they build “flood resistant” buildings. (There’s no such thing as a flood-proof building.) Mostly they required high foundations, so the sills of the house were above the height the water was likely to reach. Foundations with holes in them, so that water would flow through. (Waterborne gas tanks, sheds, vehicles and trailer homes would NOT flow through.) If water comes up one-third of the way on a structure, it will float -- then turn over -- unless it’s attached to the foundation with steel straps.
One woman formerly from the Soviet Union came back with new plans every week. The last one showed foundations thirty feet high with a little one-story house perched on top. She knew from her experience in the homeland that if she nagged long enough, the authorities would shrug and say: “Aw, let her build. If she loses everything in the next flood, she asked for it.” But we held fast. She had no clout.
The point of quantifying flood damage and likelihood was actuarial because the US insures people devastated in floods. I remember as a small child watching the newsreel footage of houses floating with people in the roof, sometimes clutching their dog. The whole Missouri/Mississippi complex evolved as drainage for the North American continent on the east side of the Rockies when the glaciers finally melted ten thousands years ago. In the Thirties the engineers thought they had tamed the rivers, and they had certainly spent a lot of money.
When engineers go after a problem, they try to quantify and calibrate and invent classifications for sorting. So they got out all the rainfall measurements (since the 1800’s when there were white people around to keep records) and then they figured out how much water that must have been rolling down the rivers. Then they got out their contour maps -- the ones with all the little lines that show elevation by getting closer and closer together as the rise gets steeper -- and tried to calculate the carrying capacity of the flood plains. They chose one of those elevation lines to be the isobath, the height they figured the water would reach. Of course, those lines greatly simplified the terrain and they were drawn quite a while ago. Land doesn’t just sit there: people fill in with more dirt, banks erode.
The Flood of the Century in the Red River country in 1997 -- which was a few feet deep and miles wide -- was complicated because the Red River flows towards the north, so it melts from the south while the water is still frozen farther north, creating dams that raise the water level. The floods came so often in Winnipeg that people finally consented to create diversion canals -- they were barely adequate. Grand Forks failed to take any precautions so that the water came deep and hard. When a fire started, no one could get to it so it took out eleven buildings and sixty apartment units.
The flood about the same time in the city of Portland had nothing to do with ice: it was about heavy simultaneous rain in BOTH the drainage of the Columbia and the drainage of the Willamette so that they met at the city. Such a chance event, unpredictable as are many things when it comes to weather, was so unusual that the people -- many of whom moved there because the city was “pretty” and “civilized” -- had insisted that the top of the downtown flood wall be removed so they could see the nice view. (Historically, Portland has always been vulnerable to floods.) Luckily, there was a lot of new home construction and when the mayor put out a call for help, crews came from all over town with plywood, plastic sheeting and their hammers to save the downtown. It barely worked.
The levees that were supposed to be saving the airport from a repeat of the Vanport Flood had been breached by muskrats and nutria, burrowing in and out, and were bubbling up water from the ground on the “safe” side of the levees. At the airport the big planes that couldn’t be flown out quickly were towed up to a highway -- quite a sight. Shopping malls and manufacturing businesses had built where Vanport used to be. The mayor had to decide whether to evacuate them or not. She decided not, on grounds that lives might be lost through the chaos of evacuation and the city would be liable. Of course, if Hayden Island had flooded again, lives would also likely be lost. Luckily, she won her gamble, but it could have gone the other way.
Not long afterwards someone suggested that a much-needed county jail be situated on that flood plain. The head of Site Development, a quiet but stubbornly intelligent man, went to a hearing to tell them how likely it was that the jail would be flooded and that rising water might lock all the fancy electronic doors so that no one could escape. Another person at the hearing sneered, “Who cares? Good riddance!” Our hero, our boss, pointed out that his own brother was a guard at the jail and did not by any measure deserve to die. If anyone does.
It’s hard to educate people who don’t want to know. It’s hard to commit massive and expensive relief efforts to people who have been warned and warned and restricted and guided over and over and over again. But we are being taught hard lessons in the wettest of ways. The bottom line is that the earth does not care. Romanticize all you want. Floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, erosion, rainfall patterns -- no engineer can do much more than run along behind taking notes.
But people got so angry that when I was the flood plain lady, I kept a can of bear spray under the counter. If I’d had to use it, of course, the building would have had to be evacuated.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
GRASSSSSSS
THE JOURNALS OF JOSEPH N. NICOLLET
(forwarded by Jim Stebbings from the Minnesota Historical Society Proceedings, St. Paul, 1976. Bray, M.C. ed)
Under the date October 12, 1836, but probably transcribed from some other occasion:
Today we found the edge of the prairie spreading as far as the river at a height of twenty-five feet above water level. Our bearing was NW. The weather was very warm. The country presented a plain, spreading as far as the eye could see, without any substantial change of level and for the most part without woods or even the slightest cluster of shrubs. It is an endless expanse without a single rise, a sea of greenness without islands of woods. The country we had left behind us had dissolved into the horizon, and all the eye could see was sky and prairie.
At 4 o’clock we noticed an island of woods to the left. At 5:00, we saw another. At first this immense, uninterrupted horizon seemed both astonishing and admirable. But when the eye has probed the depths in every direction and discovers that this immensity does not stretch as does the sky above beyond the eye’s reach, when the admirer sees the biggest of animals fleeing with all their might only as black specks that seem to move no more than flowers or grass swayed by the wind, when he realizes that with each season this stirring greatness brings disastrous perils -- that in spring he may well perish there in the spongy mires of the sunken hollows, that in summer he may well die of thirst or of a fever carried by swarms of insects, that in the fall, fires backed by winds may in a matter of hours transform this magnificent green, flowered and living, into a shroud of mourning strewn with the skeletons of all the creatures that breathed there, that winter may yet cast another shroud, a white mantle two to four feet thick capable of blinding him should the sun shine bright or of burying him under a mountain of snow should the wind blow strong -- then, gloom dissolves the magnificence of this scene and proves once more that in a desert man’s glimpse of delight comes shadowed with the forebodings of fear and sorrow.
We had not been going long when the land betrayed the first signs of an increasing barrenness, so typical of plains. The woods dwindled in number and size, and we were forced to camp a little earlier than usual as as to be able to find enough wood to cook supper and keep us warm for the night. We reached another narrowing of the river. There the current, forced between high banks, acquired such speed that counter currents were formed. Some islands rose in this portion of the river, dividing it into sections through which the water sped as quickly as through the straits.
When one is able to reach the top of some elevation or other in this vast region, he always gets the impression of being in the center of immense, perfectly level plains, and the horizon invariably seems to be limited in all directions by chains of hills, which, taking into account the distance at which one supposed them to be, appear like mountain ranges. if some forests or clusters of trees happen to be there also, the illusion is greater and more misleading yet. However, it is only by comparison that this country deserves to be called a plain, for its surface is greatly diversified by long bands of primitive deposits, by depressions, gullies, small mounds, accumulations of sand and gravel, spaces crisscrossed by lakes, ponds, and swamps. The latter are invariably bordered by trees that fires cannot approach. Although the general outlook and the apparent surface are not spoiled by these irregularities, they do make the country broken and varied for the traveler.
The first flower we pick [in the spring] is coltsfoot. a few days later other species are in full bloom, esp. white anemones which are the most abundant.
Vegetation consists mainly of a few herbaceous plants, moss, and some flowering dwarf-sized shrubs. The fox was the only animal we saw. Hawks, gulls, plover, and phalaropes make up the list of birds encountered in these cold and barren plains. But as we passed along the edge of the island, we disturbed some deer, elk, geese, cranes, gulls, and some swans which were all peacefully near the shore.
This is “tall grass prairie” which ends far east of here. It’s the grass that Conrad Richter wrote about, that was as tall as the back of a horse and that one walked through blindly. Where I am is “short grass prairie” and really not even that: an ecotone where the short grass becomes “prairie parkland” interspersed with aspen stands and cut by deep run-off coulees so big they have become valleys.
It is the tall grass prairie where the tornados sweep across, where the fires “backed by wind” would also sweep across if they could, and where hail and blizzards excoriate the land and all creatures not able to find shelter. The weather created the grass -- the grass was not destroyed by the weather. The land wants to go back to that time before people settled there. And some day it will.
Someday the grass will come back and all else that will be left will be rubbled roads and town squares, the wood burned or rotted away, shards of bright plastic here and there, and glittering piles of glass with the exceptional part of a pane somehow intact.
In other places it will be different -- in the northwest all will be covered by moss and blackberry vines. Back east it will be alder thickets. The SW will let the concrete stand bare.
Might take many thousands of years, but the land wants to go back. All it would take would be an ingenious virus. All that virus needs is a population packed thick, too thick to guard all the sanitation, the vectors, the wind carrying particles, and the geese bringing infection to the hog farms. The grass whispers about it optimistically: ssssssssoooon, sssssssoooon. No sssshhhhhrouds. Cccccccelebration.
(forwarded by Jim Stebbings from the Minnesota Historical Society Proceedings, St. Paul, 1976. Bray, M.C. ed)
Under the date October 12, 1836, but probably transcribed from some other occasion:
Today we found the edge of the prairie spreading as far as the river at a height of twenty-five feet above water level. Our bearing was NW. The weather was very warm. The country presented a plain, spreading as far as the eye could see, without any substantial change of level and for the most part without woods or even the slightest cluster of shrubs. It is an endless expanse without a single rise, a sea of greenness without islands of woods. The country we had left behind us had dissolved into the horizon, and all the eye could see was sky and prairie.
At 4 o’clock we noticed an island of woods to the left. At 5:00, we saw another. At first this immense, uninterrupted horizon seemed both astonishing and admirable. But when the eye has probed the depths in every direction and discovers that this immensity does not stretch as does the sky above beyond the eye’s reach, when the admirer sees the biggest of animals fleeing with all their might only as black specks that seem to move no more than flowers or grass swayed by the wind, when he realizes that with each season this stirring greatness brings disastrous perils -- that in spring he may well perish there in the spongy mires of the sunken hollows, that in summer he may well die of thirst or of a fever carried by swarms of insects, that in the fall, fires backed by winds may in a matter of hours transform this magnificent green, flowered and living, into a shroud of mourning strewn with the skeletons of all the creatures that breathed there, that winter may yet cast another shroud, a white mantle two to four feet thick capable of blinding him should the sun shine bright or of burying him under a mountain of snow should the wind blow strong -- then, gloom dissolves the magnificence of this scene and proves once more that in a desert man’s glimpse of delight comes shadowed with the forebodings of fear and sorrow.
We had not been going long when the land betrayed the first signs of an increasing barrenness, so typical of plains. The woods dwindled in number and size, and we were forced to camp a little earlier than usual as as to be able to find enough wood to cook supper and keep us warm for the night. We reached another narrowing of the river. There the current, forced between high banks, acquired such speed that counter currents were formed. Some islands rose in this portion of the river, dividing it into sections through which the water sped as quickly as through the straits.
When one is able to reach the top of some elevation or other in this vast region, he always gets the impression of being in the center of immense, perfectly level plains, and the horizon invariably seems to be limited in all directions by chains of hills, which, taking into account the distance at which one supposed them to be, appear like mountain ranges. if some forests or clusters of trees happen to be there also, the illusion is greater and more misleading yet. However, it is only by comparison that this country deserves to be called a plain, for its surface is greatly diversified by long bands of primitive deposits, by depressions, gullies, small mounds, accumulations of sand and gravel, spaces crisscrossed by lakes, ponds, and swamps. The latter are invariably bordered by trees that fires cannot approach. Although the general outlook and the apparent surface are not spoiled by these irregularities, they do make the country broken and varied for the traveler.
The first flower we pick [in the spring] is coltsfoot. a few days later other species are in full bloom, esp. white anemones which are the most abundant.
Vegetation consists mainly of a few herbaceous plants, moss, and some flowering dwarf-sized shrubs. The fox was the only animal we saw. Hawks, gulls, plover, and phalaropes make up the list of birds encountered in these cold and barren plains. But as we passed along the edge of the island, we disturbed some deer, elk, geese, cranes, gulls, and some swans which were all peacefully near the shore.
This is “tall grass prairie” which ends far east of here. It’s the grass that Conrad Richter wrote about, that was as tall as the back of a horse and that one walked through blindly. Where I am is “short grass prairie” and really not even that: an ecotone where the short grass becomes “prairie parkland” interspersed with aspen stands and cut by deep run-off coulees so big they have become valleys.
It is the tall grass prairie where the tornados sweep across, where the fires “backed by wind” would also sweep across if they could, and where hail and blizzards excoriate the land and all creatures not able to find shelter. The weather created the grass -- the grass was not destroyed by the weather. The land wants to go back to that time before people settled there. And some day it will.
Someday the grass will come back and all else that will be left will be rubbled roads and town squares, the wood burned or rotted away, shards of bright plastic here and there, and glittering piles of glass with the exceptional part of a pane somehow intact.
In other places it will be different -- in the northwest all will be covered by moss and blackberry vines. Back east it will be alder thickets. The SW will let the concrete stand bare.
Might take many thousands of years, but the land wants to go back. All it would take would be an ingenious virus. All that virus needs is a population packed thick, too thick to guard all the sanitation, the vectors, the wind carrying particles, and the geese bringing infection to the hog farms. The grass whispers about it optimistically: ssssssssoooon, sssssssoooon. No sssshhhhhrouds. Cccccccelebration.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
DOES YOUR MITO LEAK RADICALS?
Okay now, pucker up for some biology/chemistry/genetics. That means a lot of acronyms. Might want to get a 3X5 card to make a little fudge list.
First, you know about cells. I assume you know that most cells have a nucleus, which is the double-helix computer, the brains, the game-plan, the building instructions that in the aggregate create a human being out of an ovum and a sperm. The biggest single cell you’re likely to see is a hen’s egg. The sperm you’re likely to see right now is pollen. (My cottonwood is going to put out little tassels of red sexy stuff before it gets around to leaves.) Here’s the main thing you need to remember: the ovum (female) comes with the “house” and that includes the nucleus, except only half the game plan is there. That’s why an ovum is big and the sperm, which must go into “inner space” like an astronaut, is basically half-a-nucleus with a propelling tail. So teeny are they, that they are sprayed like birdshot at the ovum in hopes that one will hit and penetrate. Thus, when the two halves of double-helix nucleus wind together, the plan begins to unfold in growth.
Among the structures in the “house-ovum” is a furnace, which will make energy throughout the life of the cell. This is the mitochondria and it has its own nucleus with its own genetic instructions. Some people believe that aeons ago it was once a separate little one-celled animal that was captured by this new organization of cells constituting a creature, not so fancy as a mammal. (Hey, what about the mitochondria of, say, oysters? I googled. Oyster mitochondria is being vigorously studied!)
One’s genome, as we are used to thinking of it, is a meiotic mix of code from both parents. But the genome of one’s mitochondria comes through mitosis and is ALWAYS from the mother, the house. Powerful as the main inheritance may be, the underlying power has to come from your mother’s inherited furnace. Since my father died at 65 and my mother died at 89, I like this happenstance.
The scientists who study longevity have not settled on a consensus about what causes it, but one powerful theory focuses on the mitochondria. It seems that when a mito makes energy, it “leaks” atoms, those “free radicals” that cosmetic ads caution against. The main cell, when it is threatened by disease, produces inflammation which might be unpleasant but turns away infection. Late in life, when the mito gets leakier, the free radicals may also cause inflammation that turns against the body, causing diabetes, congestive heart failure, cancer and dementia: in short, aging.
There are certain populations, one in Japan that tends to live to a hundred and one in Nigeria that appears to be immune to Alzheimers, that either have something in their main genetic game plan that is protective or they have less leaky mitos. Birds’ mitos leak one-tenth as much as human mitos because they make and use so much energy that they’d be overwhelmed by free radicals otherwise. Fascinating, eh?
(This comes from “A unifying view on ageing and disease: the double-agent theory” authored by Nick Lane and published in the Journal of Theoretical Biology,” available through www.sciencedirect.com. It’s English so leaves “e” in “ageing.”)
Okay, now back to the oysters which are being stressed by the changes in the ocean. I just looked at the titles, so I’ll go back later but biggest worries seem to be temperature and heavy metals, esp. cadmium. Not unlike us.
In a second article at:
But strangely, this mito damage seems to show an “inheritance pattern” that comes through the father, affecting cousins who don’t have the same mitos. So it might have something to do with the way the larger cell-house manages its mitos. (Check out those Japanese and Nigerians. The scientists can even tell you which “alleles” -- sections of the main genome code -- have mutated in this helpful way and how one molecule can be changed to another by adding or subtracting atoms.) We’re so close! We can see the moon, but we don’t quite know how to get there yet.
BUT mild mito dysfunction “reportedly has been associated with intelligence, because it can increase activity of the brain’s NMDA receptors -- but it can also increase risk of brain disease.” (Quick, Myrtle, a definition!: Wikipedia: “The NMDA receptor (NMDAR) is an ionotropic receptor for glutamate (NMDA (N-methyl D-aspartate) is a name of its selective specific agonist). Activation of NMDA receptors results in the opening of an ion channel that is nonselective to cations. This allows flow of Na+ and small amounts of Ca2+ ions into the cell and K+ out of the cell.
“Calcium flux through NMDARs is thought to play a critical role in synaptic plasticity, a cellular mechanism for learning and memory. The NMDA receptor is distinct in that it is both ligand-gated and voltage-dependent.”
Don’t we recognize “aspartate” and “glutamate” -- don’t those have something to do with sweeteners or Chinese food?
Okay. So with my NMDA receptors I’m no wiser but just as paranoid. The focus of the article is not mitos but the rising number of cases of autism in children, with special concern over the Scylla and Charybdis between the stress of vaccination versus the stress of infection. But also there is again reason to blame the modern American diet and in particular, corn, esp. processed corn oil, which is inflammatory as opposed to fish oil which is anti-inflammatory and a way of addressing free-radicals.
Should all children be tested for mito function before they are vaccinated? Should the number of vaccinations at one time be limited? We just don’t know yet.
The metaphor of house and furnace that I’ve been using leads me to reflect on the house I grew up in. At first it had a wood and coal furnace, a monster that had to be fed and klinkers removed. But the house was toasty from the bottom up and not dependent on anything but air for convection. My mother converted it to electricity for the sake of the ease and safety as she grew older. Now she didn’t have to go to the basement to chop kindling or shovel coal -- just nudge a thermostat up. That furnace became more expensive as electricity cost more. It didn’t heat the house from the bottom up the way the wood/coal had. It began to be damp. The basement was chilly. There was mold. A lesson in there somewhere -- maybe modern diets equals easy furnaces.
First, you know about cells. I assume you know that most cells have a nucleus, which is the double-helix computer, the brains, the game-plan, the building instructions that in the aggregate create a human being out of an ovum and a sperm. The biggest single cell you’re likely to see is a hen’s egg. The sperm you’re likely to see right now is pollen. (My cottonwood is going to put out little tassels of red sexy stuff before it gets around to leaves.) Here’s the main thing you need to remember: the ovum (female) comes with the “house” and that includes the nucleus, except only half the game plan is there. That’s why an ovum is big and the sperm, which must go into “inner space” like an astronaut, is basically half-a-nucleus with a propelling tail. So teeny are they, that they are sprayed like birdshot at the ovum in hopes that one will hit and penetrate. Thus, when the two halves of double-helix nucleus wind together, the plan begins to unfold in growth.
Among the structures in the “house-ovum” is a furnace, which will make energy throughout the life of the cell. This is the mitochondria and it has its own nucleus with its own genetic instructions. Some people believe that aeons ago it was once a separate little one-celled animal that was captured by this new organization of cells constituting a creature, not so fancy as a mammal. (Hey, what about the mitochondria of, say, oysters? I googled. Oyster mitochondria is being vigorously studied!)
One’s genome, as we are used to thinking of it, is a meiotic mix of code from both parents. But the genome of one’s mitochondria comes through mitosis and is ALWAYS from the mother, the house. Powerful as the main inheritance may be, the underlying power has to come from your mother’s inherited furnace. Since my father died at 65 and my mother died at 89, I like this happenstance.
The scientists who study longevity have not settled on a consensus about what causes it, but one powerful theory focuses on the mitochondria. It seems that when a mito makes energy, it “leaks” atoms, those “free radicals” that cosmetic ads caution against. The main cell, when it is threatened by disease, produces inflammation which might be unpleasant but turns away infection. Late in life, when the mito gets leakier, the free radicals may also cause inflammation that turns against the body, causing diabetes, congestive heart failure, cancer and dementia: in short, aging.
There are certain populations, one in Japan that tends to live to a hundred and one in Nigeria that appears to be immune to Alzheimers, that either have something in their main genetic game plan that is protective or they have less leaky mitos. Birds’ mitos leak one-tenth as much as human mitos because they make and use so much energy that they’d be overwhelmed by free radicals otherwise. Fascinating, eh?
(This comes from “A unifying view on ageing and disease: the double-agent theory” authored by Nick Lane and published in the Journal of Theoretical Biology,” available through www.sciencedirect.com. It’s English so leaves “e” in “ageing.”)
Okay, now back to the oysters which are being stressed by the changes in the ocean. I just looked at the titles, so I’ll go back later but biggest worries seem to be temperature and heavy metals, esp. cadmium. Not unlike us.
In a second article at:
But strangely, this mito damage seems to show an “inheritance pattern” that comes through the father, affecting cousins who don’t have the same mitos. So it might have something to do with the way the larger cell-house manages its mitos. (Check out those Japanese and Nigerians. The scientists can even tell you which “alleles” -- sections of the main genome code -- have mutated in this helpful way and how one molecule can be changed to another by adding or subtracting atoms.) We’re so close! We can see the moon, but we don’t quite know how to get there yet.
BUT mild mito dysfunction “reportedly has been associated with intelligence, because it can increase activity of the brain’s NMDA receptors -- but it can also increase risk of brain disease.” (Quick, Myrtle, a definition!: Wikipedia: “The NMDA receptor (NMDAR) is an ionotropic receptor for glutamate (NMDA (N-methyl D-aspartate) is a name of its selective specific agonist). Activation of NMDA receptors results in the opening of an ion channel that is nonselective to cations. This allows flow of Na+ and small amounts of Ca2+ ions into the cell and K+ out of the cell.
“Calcium flux through NMDARs is thought to play a critical role in synaptic plasticity, a cellular mechanism for learning and memory. The NMDA receptor is distinct in that it is both ligand-gated and voltage-dependent.”
Don’t we recognize “aspartate” and “glutamate” -- don’t those have something to do with sweeteners or Chinese food?
Okay. So with my NMDA receptors I’m no wiser but just as paranoid. The focus of the article is not mitos but the rising number of cases of autism in children, with special concern over the Scylla and Charybdis between the stress of vaccination versus the stress of infection. But also there is again reason to blame the modern American diet and in particular, corn, esp. processed corn oil, which is inflammatory as opposed to fish oil which is anti-inflammatory and a way of addressing free-radicals.
Should all children be tested for mito function before they are vaccinated? Should the number of vaccinations at one time be limited? We just don’t know yet.
The metaphor of house and furnace that I’ve been using leads me to reflect on the house I grew up in. At first it had a wood and coal furnace, a monster that had to be fed and klinkers removed. But the house was toasty from the bottom up and not dependent on anything but air for convection. My mother converted it to electricity for the sake of the ease and safety as she grew older. Now she didn’t have to go to the basement to chop kindling or shovel coal -- just nudge a thermostat up. That furnace became more expensive as electricity cost more. It didn’t heat the house from the bottom up the way the wood/coal had. It began to be damp. The basement was chilly. There was mold. A lesson in there somewhere -- maybe modern diets equals easy furnaces.
Friday, April 18, 2008
WATCHA EATIN' & HOWYA DOIN'?
As you know, I’ve managed to back off Diabetes 2 since January, 2006, when my blood glucose was 11.2. By January, 2007, I was at 6.7 (6 is the goal -- under 7 is okay to the more generous experts). July, 2007, was 6.2. November, 2007, was 6.1 and this doctor said the goal was 6.5. (I'd lost fifty pounds.) As folks with experience know, the problem with Diabetes 2 is that no two doctors agree, neither about goals nor about causes, and they will give you all sorts of advice that doesn’t fit and doesn’t work. And get mad if you say so. Yet this is a condition that requires the person (as opposed to the patient, since most of the time I’m pretty IMpatient!) to feel as though they are in control -- NOT helpless.
The April issue of Vogue is quite interesting. First of all, the cover was controversial since it “embodied” (nearly literally) a story pairing athletes with models. A HUGE LeBron James is roaring and dribbling while Giselle Bundchen (nearly as tall but maybe a fourth the circumference) in a fab green gown is swept along under his arm. The objection was that LeBron looks like King Kong and encourages the racist/sexist notion of a gorilla attacking a white victim. But Giselle doesn’t look like a victim to me. What do critics want? Clarence Thomas looking respectful? The contrasting interior photo was Daria Werbowy towering over the little squirt Shaun White who happens to be an Olympic Gold Medal snowboarder. They both have lots of hair.
Is Vogue trying to make a point about physical identity or what? Are you kidding? I typed Vogue-April-controversy and got 152,000 hits! I just watched “The Devil Wore Prada” and I can ASSURE you that the Wintour/Streep character knew EXACTLY what she was doing. Then Jeffrey Steingarten says, “Frankly, my dear, it’s your genes.” But, honey, when it comes to diabetes 2, it might not be that at all.
In fact, the theory I believe is this one from : http://fanaticcook.blogspot.com/2008/01/environmental-pollutants-may-up-risk.html (Tuesday, January 29, 2008)
“Environmental Pollutants May Up Risk For Diabetes
“The buzz at work this week is that pesticides could increase the risk for diabetes, and insulin resistance - big time. This week's Lancet came out with a commentary highlighting the work of Dr. Duk-Hee Lee, et al. Dr. Lee's group found the odds of having diabetes were 38 times higher! for people with high blood levels of toxic persistent organic pollutants (POPs, such as dioxin and PCBs) than for people with low levels. And the association was dose dependant - the higher your levels, the higher your risk.
“And this - He found no link with obesity. If you were overweight or obese but had low levels of POPS, you had a lower risk of diabetes than if you were lean but had high levels.”
The trouble is that it takes hundreds of dollars to have the tests for “toxic persistent organic pollutants.” Medicare won’t pay, I think. So I jumped into another controversial camp: “fat is okay, but dump all white sugar, white flour, corn syrup, and processing.” Part of the reason I went this way is that John Kyle, who was the dietician for the Browning Public Schools in the 1970’s, used to say they were like lead in paint -- poison with the invidious effect of making you crave more. He was pretty persuasive. Not that he persuaded many Indians.
I did keep my Oregon hazelnut bread but I vary it with muffins I make from the All-Bran package and augment with chopped walnuts and some kind of fruit. NO sugar but a bit of Splenda. Other than that, my breakfast is either the hazelnut toasted (ONE slice) with cream cheese or avocado or sugarless jam; or old-fashioned oatmeal with a handful of unsweetened raspberries, or cottage cheese or ricotta sprinkled with lemon or orange zest. Maybe two poached eggs on toast.
Lunch is a melange (I’d say a “mess” but it sounds better in French!) starting with a can of beans (NOT the kind with sugar -- check the label) often black beans, then corn niblets, chopped green pepper, olives, green beans, peas, any other veggies lying around loose or in cans, maybe chopped tomatoes, carrots cooked or not, chopped mild green chilies, and then a can of something like guacamole or enchilada sauce. Sometimes I throw in cheese buttons (cut off string cheese) or half-inch lunch meat squares. NO pasta, NO bread cubes, NO potato. But seriously, folks, experiment. Find the combos you like, eat ‘em and see if your glucose meter reads under 140 two hours later -- if it does, GREAT! If not, bzzzzt. NOT. I can get away with corn beef hash, one of my all-time winter favs IF I only eat a half can and mix it with a fried-up chop of green peppers and onions. Is this eating like a gorilla in the jungle? YES. Except they don’t do much cooking.
For supper I keep remembering a great meal I had at Papa Hayden’s in Portland, a very elegant place. It was fresh tender lettuce with a beautifully broiled thick steak cut into strips and piled on top. Never woulda thought of it, but it was wonderful. Supper is my big “lettuce” (by which I just mean leafy mostly) and protein meal. Maybe eggs or shrimp or just tuna fish. My thinking is that the roughage keeps my stomach full and the protein is there for repairs while-you-sleep. (Gorillas make a new bed every night, too. One of the Harvard Indian’s rules is to always sleep in a clean bed. But the cats and I like a bed that smells like us. We have no intention of remaking the bed every day.)
By now maybe you’ve noticed an artifact: I once had a book about a “one bowl diet,” which suggested that you could eat whatever you could get into that bowl, but no more. (They didn’t say what SIZE bowl! Presumably, about the same size as your stomach.) For one person, who tends to wander around while eating, one bowl is good. Sometimes I cut up a strip or two of bacon, fry it to make liquid fat, then fry chunks of meat in it, then dump in a whole package of fresh spinach. (You need a big pot to start with, but it ends up fitting in the bowl.) I like a bit of honey-mustard dressing.
String and strip cheese are great snacks and I eat peanuts -- a few TOO MANY peanuts. My latest idea is that I will snack on peanuts roasted (no salt) in the shells and save the shells for garden mulch, a two-fer. This means I eat far fewer nuts. But they don’t make my blood glucose go up much anyway. That’s the key. It’s fun to think up strategy. This is not a trivial pursuit. As Vogue knows.
The April issue of Vogue is quite interesting. First of all, the cover was controversial since it “embodied” (nearly literally) a story pairing athletes with models. A HUGE LeBron James is roaring and dribbling while Giselle Bundchen (nearly as tall but maybe a fourth the circumference) in a fab green gown is swept along under his arm. The objection was that LeBron looks like King Kong and encourages the racist/sexist notion of a gorilla attacking a white victim. But Giselle doesn’t look like a victim to me. What do critics want? Clarence Thomas looking respectful? The contrasting interior photo was Daria Werbowy towering over the little squirt Shaun White who happens to be an Olympic Gold Medal snowboarder. They both have lots of hair.
Is Vogue trying to make a point about physical identity or what? Are you kidding? I typed Vogue-April-controversy and got 152,000 hits! I just watched “The Devil Wore Prada” and I can ASSURE you that the Wintour/Streep character knew EXACTLY what she was doing. Then Jeffrey Steingarten says, “Frankly, my dear, it’s your genes.” But, honey, when it comes to diabetes 2, it might not be that at all.
In fact, the theory I believe is this one from : http://fanaticcook.blogspot.com/2008/01/environmental-pollutants-may-up-risk.html (Tuesday, January 29, 2008)
“Environmental Pollutants May Up Risk For Diabetes
“The buzz at work this week is that pesticides could increase the risk for diabetes, and insulin resistance - big time. This week's Lancet came out with a commentary highlighting the work of Dr. Duk-Hee Lee, et al. Dr. Lee's group found the odds of having diabetes were 38 times higher! for people with high blood levels of toxic persistent organic pollutants (POPs, such as dioxin and PCBs) than for people with low levels. And the association was dose dependant - the higher your levels, the higher your risk.
“And this - He found no link with obesity. If you were overweight or obese but had low levels of POPS, you had a lower risk of diabetes than if you were lean but had high levels.”
The trouble is that it takes hundreds of dollars to have the tests for “toxic persistent organic pollutants.” Medicare won’t pay, I think. So I jumped into another controversial camp: “fat is okay, but dump all white sugar, white flour, corn syrup, and processing.” Part of the reason I went this way is that John Kyle, who was the dietician for the Browning Public Schools in the 1970’s, used to say they were like lead in paint -- poison with the invidious effect of making you crave more. He was pretty persuasive. Not that he persuaded many Indians.
I did keep my Oregon hazelnut bread but I vary it with muffins I make from the All-Bran package and augment with chopped walnuts and some kind of fruit. NO sugar but a bit of Splenda. Other than that, my breakfast is either the hazelnut toasted (ONE slice) with cream cheese or avocado or sugarless jam; or old-fashioned oatmeal with a handful of unsweetened raspberries, or cottage cheese or ricotta sprinkled with lemon or orange zest. Maybe two poached eggs on toast.
Lunch is a melange (I’d say a “mess” but it sounds better in French!) starting with a can of beans (NOT the kind with sugar -- check the label) often black beans, then corn niblets, chopped green pepper, olives, green beans, peas, any other veggies lying around loose or in cans, maybe chopped tomatoes, carrots cooked or not, chopped mild green chilies, and then a can of something like guacamole or enchilada sauce. Sometimes I throw in cheese buttons (cut off string cheese) or half-inch lunch meat squares. NO pasta, NO bread cubes, NO potato. But seriously, folks, experiment. Find the combos you like, eat ‘em and see if your glucose meter reads under 140 two hours later -- if it does, GREAT! If not, bzzzzt. NOT. I can get away with corn beef hash, one of my all-time winter favs IF I only eat a half can and mix it with a fried-up chop of green peppers and onions. Is this eating like a gorilla in the jungle? YES. Except they don’t do much cooking.
For supper I keep remembering a great meal I had at Papa Hayden’s in Portland, a very elegant place. It was fresh tender lettuce with a beautifully broiled thick steak cut into strips and piled on top. Never woulda thought of it, but it was wonderful. Supper is my big “lettuce” (by which I just mean leafy mostly) and protein meal. Maybe eggs or shrimp or just tuna fish. My thinking is that the roughage keeps my stomach full and the protein is there for repairs while-you-sleep. (Gorillas make a new bed every night, too. One of the Harvard Indian’s rules is to always sleep in a clean bed. But the cats and I like a bed that smells like us. We have no intention of remaking the bed every day.)
By now maybe you’ve noticed an artifact: I once had a book about a “one bowl diet,” which suggested that you could eat whatever you could get into that bowl, but no more. (They didn’t say what SIZE bowl! Presumably, about the same size as your stomach.) For one person, who tends to wander around while eating, one bowl is good. Sometimes I cut up a strip or two of bacon, fry it to make liquid fat, then fry chunks of meat in it, then dump in a whole package of fresh spinach. (You need a big pot to start with, but it ends up fitting in the bowl.) I like a bit of honey-mustard dressing.
String and strip cheese are great snacks and I eat peanuts -- a few TOO MANY peanuts. My latest idea is that I will snack on peanuts roasted (no salt) in the shells and save the shells for garden mulch, a two-fer. This means I eat far fewer nuts. But they don’t make my blood glucose go up much anyway. That’s the key. It’s fun to think up strategy. This is not a trivial pursuit. As Vogue knows.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
THE IMPORTANCE OF IONS
When I moved back to Valier, I had visions of a fabulous garden. They have not become real for a number of reasons, not least of them money. The problems with gardens here include: temp extremes (zone 3 plants are pretty dependable, Zone 4 will be killed in a hard winter, and Zone 5 need special protection); high winds; enough altitude for high ultra-violet light; clay soil; and both alkali water and alkali soil. The best seed catalogues (this year they’re coming online rather than hard copy, which is an improvement in terms of keeping the piles of things under control around here) will list the acid/alkali affinities of the plants in question, but all too many of them do not. There are alluring plants like winterberry and azalea that simply cannot be grown here because they demand acid soil. Most evergreens are always on the edge of being stressed because of not enough acid. The books caution not to use poplar leaves for compost because they are so alkaline. REAL gardeners use little kits to be sure about acid/alkali balance because it can vary all over the yard. I haven’t done that, but I notice that the best local gardeners use tons of peat moss.
I became aware that humans have to think about this stuff, when I did my hospital chaplaincy. There was a little girl brought in unconscious because she had spent a hot summer day swilling lemonade, to the point that her electrolytes (which depend upon acid/alkali balance) were out of whack enough to render her comatose and possibly permanently brain dead. Here’s an explanation from Wikipedia (okay, I’m lazy -- but I can usually understand Wikipedia and it’s handy): pH of the blood: The pH is usually maintained within a narrow range by a number of buffer systems in the body. A normal pH value may still be due to a well-compensated imbalance or a mixed acid base disorder and an abnormal value is definitely due to a poorly compensated acid base problem or due to both metabolic and respiratory derangements causing an imbalance in the same direction.
Some people are more acid than others. Ireland is an acid place where much of the soil is peat and maybe those of us with Irish genes tend to be a little acid in more than our outlook on the world. My brother Paul was acid enough that his skin chemicals destroyed metal watch bands. He could patine copper by simply rubbing it. But an accumulation of lactic acid, suspected of being at the root of fatigue and other metabolic problems, can raise havoc in a body by blocking “perfusion” or the flow of fluids. I myself am a little too acid and feel better over here on the alkali prairie.
Now consider this:
“Anion gap: Body fluids including blood may contain a variable number of ions, but the total number of anions (negative ions) and cations (positive ions) are roughly the same. The ions that are usually measured in blood are cations like sodium and potassium and anions including chloride and bicarbonate. There are unmeasured ions in both groups (cations and anions), which also contribute to the ionic constitution of blood. The measured cations are usually greater than the measured anions by about 8-16mmol/L. This is because the unmeasured anions constitute a significant proportion of the total number of anions in blood. Proteins make this up predominantly, but also included are sulphates, phosphates, lactate and ketones. Causes of a decreased anion gap include hypoalbuminaemia and severe haemodilution. Rarer causes include increase in minor cation concentrations like calcium and magnesium. Causes of a raised anion gap include dehydration and any cause of raised unmeasurable anions, like lactate, ketones and renal acids, along with treatment with drugs given as organic acids such as penicillin, salicylates and poisoning with methanol, ethanol and paraldehyde. Rarely it may be due to decreased minor cation concentrations such as calcium or magnesium.”
It’s from Wikipedia, but I can barely grasp it. The point is that “ions” are electrons and it is largely the management of ions among atoms and molecules that makes our bodies work properly. They are what digest food by assembling and reassembling molecules, they are what makes glue stick, they are what cause colors to fade, they are how genes work, they are how thinking works -- all on this electromagneticochemical level that was unsuspected until recently. A few extra ions here and there, a few missing where they ought to be, and the human body (like the bodies of other critters) will try to compensate, then begin to express distress, and finally simply stop functioning. Death.
I looked up those cow acids: acetic or ethanoic acid is just vinegar. “Acetic acid is one of the simplest carboxylic acids (the second-simplest, next to formic acid). It is an important chemical reagent and industrial chemical that is used in the production of polyethylene terephthalate mainly used in soft drink bottles; cellulose acetate, mainly for photographic film; and polyvinyl acetate for wood glue, as well as synthetic fibres and fabrics. In households diluted acetic acid is often used in descaling agents.”
The use of acetic acid in alchemy extends into antiquity. In the 3rd century BC, the Greek philosopher Theophrastos described how vinegar acted on metals to produce pigments useful in art, including white lead (lead carbonate) and verdigris, a green mixture of copper salts including copper(II) acetate. Ancient Romans boiled soured wine in lead pots to produce a highly sweet syrup called sapa. Sapa was rich in lead acetate, a sweet substance also called sugar of lead or sugar of Saturn, which contributed to lead poisoning among the Roman aristocracy.
In the 8th century, the Muslim alchemist Jabir Ibn Hayyan (Geber) was the first to concentrate acetic acid from vinegar through distillation. In the Renaissance, glacial acetic acid was prepared through the dry distillation of metal acetates. The 16th century German alchemist Andreas Libavius described such a procedure, and he compared the glacial acetic acid produced by this means to vinegar. The presence of water in vinegar has such a profound effect on acetic acid's properties that for centuries chemists believed that glacial acetic acid and the acid found in vinegar were two different substances. The French chemist Pierre Adet proved them to be identical.
In 1847 the German chemist Hermann Kolbe synthesized acetic acid from inorganic materials for the first time.
Propionic acid (systematically named propanoic acid) is a naturally-occurring carboxylic acid Propionic acid was first described in 1844 by Johann Gottlieb, who found it among the degradation products of sugar. Over the next few years, other chemists produced propionic acid in various other ways, none of them realizing they were producing the same substance. In 1847, the French chemist Jean-Baptiste Dumas established that all the acids were the same compound, which he called propionic acid, from the Greek words protos = "first" and pion = "fat," ... Bacteria of the genus Propionibacterium produce propionic acid as the end product of their anaerobic metabolism. This class of bacteria is commonly found in the stomachs of ruminants and the sweat glands of humans, and their activity is partially responsible for the odor of both Swiss cheese and sweat. Propionic acid inhibits the growth of mold and some bacteria. As a result, most propionic acid produced is used as a preservative for both animal feed and food for human consumption, and can be used as a preservative for Ballistics Gel. For animal feed, it is used either directly or as its ammonium salt. In human foods, especially bread and other baked goods, it is used as its sodium or calcium salt. Similar usage occurs in some of the older anti-fungal foot powders.
NOTE THIS ONE: A recent publication by MacFabe and colleagues found that intraventricular infusions of propionic acid produced reversible behavior that was very similar to that seen in autism. Behaviors included: hyperactivity, dystonia, turning, retropulsion. In addition, the treated rats demonstrated caudate spiking and the progressive development of limbic kindled seizures. The paper concludes that this is an excellent animal model of autism and warrants further study (MacFabe, 2007).
The human skin is host to a species of bacteria known as Propionibacterium acnes, which is named after its ability to produce propionic acid. This bacteria lives mainly in the sebaceous glands of the skin and is one of the principle causes of acne.
Butyric acid, (from Greek ???????? = butter) IUPAC name -Butanoic acid, or normal butyric acid, is a carboxylic acid with structural formula CH3CH2CH2-COOH. It is found in rancid butter, parmesan cheese, and vomit, and has an unpleasant odor and acrid taste, with a sweetish aftertaste (similar to ether).
Butyric acid is used in the preparation of various butanoate esters. Low-molecular-weight esters of butyric acid, such as methyl butanoate, have mostly pleasant aromas or tastes. As a consequence, they find use as food and perfume additives.
Dunno about you, but the ions are flyin' around in my head.
I became aware that humans have to think about this stuff, when I did my hospital chaplaincy. There was a little girl brought in unconscious because she had spent a hot summer day swilling lemonade, to the point that her electrolytes (which depend upon acid/alkali balance) were out of whack enough to render her comatose and possibly permanently brain dead. Here’s an explanation from Wikipedia (okay, I’m lazy -- but I can usually understand Wikipedia and it’s handy): pH of the blood: The pH is usually maintained within a narrow range by a number of buffer systems in the body. A normal pH value may still be due to a well-compensated imbalance or a mixed acid base disorder and an abnormal value is definitely due to a poorly compensated acid base problem or due to both metabolic and respiratory derangements causing an imbalance in the same direction.
Some people are more acid than others. Ireland is an acid place where much of the soil is peat and maybe those of us with Irish genes tend to be a little acid in more than our outlook on the world. My brother Paul was acid enough that his skin chemicals destroyed metal watch bands. He could patine copper by simply rubbing it. But an accumulation of lactic acid, suspected of being at the root of fatigue and other metabolic problems, can raise havoc in a body by blocking “perfusion” or the flow of fluids. I myself am a little too acid and feel better over here on the alkali prairie.
Now consider this:
“Anion gap: Body fluids including blood may contain a variable number of ions, but the total number of anions (negative ions) and cations (positive ions) are roughly the same. The ions that are usually measured in blood are cations like sodium and potassium and anions including chloride and bicarbonate. There are unmeasured ions in both groups (cations and anions), which also contribute to the ionic constitution of blood. The measured cations are usually greater than the measured anions by about 8-16mmol/L. This is because the unmeasured anions constitute a significant proportion of the total number of anions in blood. Proteins make this up predominantly, but also included are sulphates, phosphates, lactate and ketones. Causes of a decreased anion gap include hypoalbuminaemia and severe haemodilution. Rarer causes include increase in minor cation concentrations like calcium and magnesium. Causes of a raised anion gap include dehydration and any cause of raised unmeasurable anions, like lactate, ketones and renal acids, along with treatment with drugs given as organic acids such as penicillin, salicylates and poisoning with methanol, ethanol and paraldehyde. Rarely it may be due to decreased minor cation concentrations such as calcium or magnesium.”
It’s from Wikipedia, but I can barely grasp it. The point is that “ions” are electrons and it is largely the management of ions among atoms and molecules that makes our bodies work properly. They are what digest food by assembling and reassembling molecules, they are what makes glue stick, they are what cause colors to fade, they are how genes work, they are how thinking works -- all on this electromagneticochemical level that was unsuspected until recently. A few extra ions here and there, a few missing where they ought to be, and the human body (like the bodies of other critters) will try to compensate, then begin to express distress, and finally simply stop functioning. Death.
I looked up those cow acids: acetic or ethanoic acid is just vinegar. “Acetic acid is one of the simplest carboxylic acids (the second-simplest, next to formic acid). It is an important chemical reagent and industrial chemical that is used in the production of polyethylene terephthalate mainly used in soft drink bottles; cellulose acetate, mainly for photographic film; and polyvinyl acetate for wood glue, as well as synthetic fibres and fabrics. In households diluted acetic acid is often used in descaling agents.”
The use of acetic acid in alchemy extends into antiquity. In the 3rd century BC, the Greek philosopher Theophrastos described how vinegar acted on metals to produce pigments useful in art, including white lead (lead carbonate) and verdigris, a green mixture of copper salts including copper(II) acetate. Ancient Romans boiled soured wine in lead pots to produce a highly sweet syrup called sapa. Sapa was rich in lead acetate, a sweet substance also called sugar of lead or sugar of Saturn, which contributed to lead poisoning among the Roman aristocracy.
In the 8th century, the Muslim alchemist Jabir Ibn Hayyan (Geber) was the first to concentrate acetic acid from vinegar through distillation. In the Renaissance, glacial acetic acid was prepared through the dry distillation of metal acetates. The 16th century German alchemist Andreas Libavius described such a procedure, and he compared the glacial acetic acid produced by this means to vinegar. The presence of water in vinegar has such a profound effect on acetic acid's properties that for centuries chemists believed that glacial acetic acid and the acid found in vinegar were two different substances. The French chemist Pierre Adet proved them to be identical.
In 1847 the German chemist Hermann Kolbe synthesized acetic acid from inorganic materials for the first time.
Propionic acid (systematically named propanoic acid) is a naturally-occurring carboxylic acid Propionic acid was first described in 1844 by Johann Gottlieb, who found it among the degradation products of sugar. Over the next few years, other chemists produced propionic acid in various other ways, none of them realizing they were producing the same substance. In 1847, the French chemist Jean-Baptiste Dumas established that all the acids were the same compound, which he called propionic acid, from the Greek words protos = "first" and pion = "fat," ... Bacteria of the genus Propionibacterium produce propionic acid as the end product of their anaerobic metabolism. This class of bacteria is commonly found in the stomachs of ruminants and the sweat glands of humans, and their activity is partially responsible for the odor of both Swiss cheese and sweat. Propionic acid inhibits the growth of mold and some bacteria. As a result, most propionic acid produced is used as a preservative for both animal feed and food for human consumption, and can be used as a preservative for Ballistics Gel. For animal feed, it is used either directly or as its ammonium salt. In human foods, especially bread and other baked goods, it is used as its sodium or calcium salt. Similar usage occurs in some of the older anti-fungal foot powders.
NOTE THIS ONE: A recent publication by MacFabe and colleagues found that intraventricular infusions of propionic acid produced reversible behavior that was very similar to that seen in autism. Behaviors included: hyperactivity, dystonia, turning, retropulsion. In addition, the treated rats demonstrated caudate spiking and the progressive development of limbic kindled seizures. The paper concludes that this is an excellent animal model of autism and warrants further study (MacFabe, 2007).
The human skin is host to a species of bacteria known as Propionibacterium acnes, which is named after its ability to produce propionic acid. This bacteria lives mainly in the sebaceous glands of the skin and is one of the principle causes of acne.
Butyric acid, (from Greek ???????? = butter) IUPAC name -Butanoic acid, or normal butyric acid, is a carboxylic acid with structural formula CH3CH2CH2-COOH. It is found in rancid butter, parmesan cheese, and vomit, and has an unpleasant odor and acrid taste, with a sweetish aftertaste (similar to ether).
Butyric acid is used in the preparation of various butanoate esters. Low-molecular-weight esters of butyric acid, such as methyl butanoate, have mostly pleasant aromas or tastes. As a consequence, they find use as food and perfume additives.
Dunno about you, but the ions are flyin' around in my head.
Thursday, February 07, 2008
A BITTER STUDY OF DIABETES 2
In the last few days there has been something akin to panic in the Diabetes 2 community. A study by the National Institute of Health called ACCORD was meant to prove that if people diagnosed with Diabetes 2 were given drugs for high blood sugar, high blood pressure and high lipids, they would be healthier. The opposite turned out to be true. Fifty-some more people died in the group with the “best” (lowest) scores for these factors. YIKES!
None of the subjects were controlling their “Diabetes 2” with diet and exercise. They were on American Diabetes Association diets which despise low-carb strategies that depend on high meat and fat and pitch processed foods for diabetics.
In this last year or so, reading a lot of blogs by and about diabetics, I have formed the strong opinion that Diabetes 2 is NOT diabetes at all, but only framed that way because it is usually discovered through blood glucose tests given with the intention of detecting diabetes. THEN they find out you have high blood pressure and a high lipid count, which somehow leads them to the assumption that the low blood glucose has caused the other problems. There is a huge industry based on the treatment of diabetes and providing special foods and things like special shoes for feet in trouble. Because high glucose is countered by insulin, the idea has been to administer more insulin and more insulin -- without ever testing to see what levels of insulin there are in the blood, existing right alongside the high glucose.
Few people have tried to look at all this from a deeper, cell-level, metabolic approach. The pharma people like traveling down the tracks they’ve already established: more insulin, different kinds of insulin, new delivery systems for insulin -- though some had begun to protest that insulin, esp. at high blood levels, is damaging to organs. When pharma got off their insulin obsession, they went to lipid obsession: first cholesterol and then trans-fat. The magic bullet was supposed to be statins. The more the better, until people in some of the statin trials died. No one wants to talk about an earlier obsession with estrogen -- I had to fight hard to prevent doctors from putting me on estrogen and at one period I DID take estrogen with not-very-nice results. Some of the side effects of these drugs are mood and thought-altering, so naturally anti-depressants, etc., are also prescribed.
“17 million Americans have diagnosed diabetes and more than 90% of them have type 2 diabetes.” The doctors do what they are supposed to do for diabetes, it doesn’t work, the doctors ascribe it to failure to stay on diets and take meds (which they call “lifestyle changes”) and get mad at their patients -- shutting them out of discussion. Doctors these days must hew to the prescriptions of the insurance companies, the state, and whatever institutions employ them -- few have independent offices. Mostly they depend upon prescriptions: get a diagnosis, run your finger down and across to the proper med, and then the only concern is titrating the dose. Insulin levels, vitamin D levels, or any other variables not on the list are not addressed.
Meanwhile people have begun experimenting on themselves and discussing with friends. Some researchers have begun to strongly suspect that Diabetes 2 should be called “metabolic dysfunction” and are labeling their work that way, so that Googling the latter might get you better information than “Diabetes 2.” These researchers find a high correlation between metabolic dysfunction and blood levels of pthalates, dioxin, and other organophosphates used in manufacturing and agriculture. One study found this correlation in sea turtles, which never come to land except to lay eggs. Fewer than ten per cent of the creatures on this planet have undetectable levels of these chemicals. They are in the breast milk of Inuit women.
While global warming is attracting a lot of attention, our constant molecular meddling is seeding all living creatures with subtle poisons that derange the delicate balances that control our inner workings. The Vietnam vets and Vietnamese peasants who were exposed to Agent Orange found this out in very unpleasant ways. The rest of us will soon learn a lot more. In regard to Diabetes 2/Metabolic Dysfunction, we are about where AIDS was a couple of decades ago. But you can’t evade this by using a condom. This is in the water, the air, our bottles and dishes, our furniture and carpets, our food, and our pills. The Chinese contaminations of food and paint are only exaggerations of what is true everywhere.
So what can we do? How much of this constant warning and doom-saying can we stand without running screaming over the horizon? Not much, if you ask me, unless there is a redirection of funding towards positive ends: first, to understand the molecular interference in our blood and cells, and second, to greatly diminish the amounts of these substances in the world. We DID save the raptors, remember? We DID bring the robins back after a silent spring or two.
If we leave the problem as it is, simply wailing and wringing our hands, it will solve itself by diminishing the population. Eventually, there will be only the tough and adaptive left to continue with what we call “civilization.”
At the moment there is a movement -- evidently driven by insurance and government bureaucracy -- to discover who costs the most over a lifetime. The assumption had been that fat people are more expensive in terms of health care and pressure on welfare, emergency rooms, and nursing care. The impulse was to just get rid of fat people -- put them in some kind of concentration camp where they would be FORCED to lose weight. But now another reversal research study reveals it is THIN people who live on and on and on in nursing homes, demented but vigorous. So maybe there will be a movement towards force-feeding them at MacDonalds. Underlying this is the hope that one group (one’s own) will be genetically privileged for survival and that others can defined in some mathematical and objective way as “unthriving” meaning “unworthy.” Then you can at the least keep your children from marrying them and at the most perhaps shut them out of society altogether so they’ll just disappear. What if it turns out that only hunchbacks or blind people can live in this chemical soup we’ve created?
In the meantime, all these social and psychological forces aside, perhaps each of us had better keep track of the best evidence we can find and make our own decisions about our strategies. Doctors can just get used to it.
None of the subjects were controlling their “Diabetes 2” with diet and exercise. They were on American Diabetes Association diets which despise low-carb strategies that depend on high meat and fat and pitch processed foods for diabetics.
In this last year or so, reading a lot of blogs by and about diabetics, I have formed the strong opinion that Diabetes 2 is NOT diabetes at all, but only framed that way because it is usually discovered through blood glucose tests given with the intention of detecting diabetes. THEN they find out you have high blood pressure and a high lipid count, which somehow leads them to the assumption that the low blood glucose has caused the other problems. There is a huge industry based on the treatment of diabetes and providing special foods and things like special shoes for feet in trouble. Because high glucose is countered by insulin, the idea has been to administer more insulin and more insulin -- without ever testing to see what levels of insulin there are in the blood, existing right alongside the high glucose.
Few people have tried to look at all this from a deeper, cell-level, metabolic approach. The pharma people like traveling down the tracks they’ve already established: more insulin, different kinds of insulin, new delivery systems for insulin -- though some had begun to protest that insulin, esp. at high blood levels, is damaging to organs. When pharma got off their insulin obsession, they went to lipid obsession: first cholesterol and then trans-fat. The magic bullet was supposed to be statins. The more the better, until people in some of the statin trials died. No one wants to talk about an earlier obsession with estrogen -- I had to fight hard to prevent doctors from putting me on estrogen and at one period I DID take estrogen with not-very-nice results. Some of the side effects of these drugs are mood and thought-altering, so naturally anti-depressants, etc., are also prescribed.
“17 million Americans have diagnosed diabetes and more than 90% of them have type 2 diabetes.” The doctors do what they are supposed to do for diabetes, it doesn’t work, the doctors ascribe it to failure to stay on diets and take meds (which they call “lifestyle changes”) and get mad at their patients -- shutting them out of discussion. Doctors these days must hew to the prescriptions of the insurance companies, the state, and whatever institutions employ them -- few have independent offices. Mostly they depend upon prescriptions: get a diagnosis, run your finger down and across to the proper med, and then the only concern is titrating the dose. Insulin levels, vitamin D levels, or any other variables not on the list are not addressed.
Meanwhile people have begun experimenting on themselves and discussing with friends. Some researchers have begun to strongly suspect that Diabetes 2 should be called “metabolic dysfunction” and are labeling their work that way, so that Googling the latter might get you better information than “Diabetes 2.” These researchers find a high correlation between metabolic dysfunction and blood levels of pthalates, dioxin, and other organophosphates used in manufacturing and agriculture. One study found this correlation in sea turtles, which never come to land except to lay eggs. Fewer than ten per cent of the creatures on this planet have undetectable levels of these chemicals. They are in the breast milk of Inuit women.
While global warming is attracting a lot of attention, our constant molecular meddling is seeding all living creatures with subtle poisons that derange the delicate balances that control our inner workings. The Vietnam vets and Vietnamese peasants who were exposed to Agent Orange found this out in very unpleasant ways. The rest of us will soon learn a lot more. In regard to Diabetes 2/Metabolic Dysfunction, we are about where AIDS was a couple of decades ago. But you can’t evade this by using a condom. This is in the water, the air, our bottles and dishes, our furniture and carpets, our food, and our pills. The Chinese contaminations of food and paint are only exaggerations of what is true everywhere.
So what can we do? How much of this constant warning and doom-saying can we stand without running screaming over the horizon? Not much, if you ask me, unless there is a redirection of funding towards positive ends: first, to understand the molecular interference in our blood and cells, and second, to greatly diminish the amounts of these substances in the world. We DID save the raptors, remember? We DID bring the robins back after a silent spring or two.
If we leave the problem as it is, simply wailing and wringing our hands, it will solve itself by diminishing the population. Eventually, there will be only the tough and adaptive left to continue with what we call “civilization.”
At the moment there is a movement -- evidently driven by insurance and government bureaucracy -- to discover who costs the most over a lifetime. The assumption had been that fat people are more expensive in terms of health care and pressure on welfare, emergency rooms, and nursing care. The impulse was to just get rid of fat people -- put them in some kind of concentration camp where they would be FORCED to lose weight. But now another reversal research study reveals it is THIN people who live on and on and on in nursing homes, demented but vigorous. So maybe there will be a movement towards force-feeding them at MacDonalds. Underlying this is the hope that one group (one’s own) will be genetically privileged for survival and that others can defined in some mathematical and objective way as “unthriving” meaning “unworthy.” Then you can at the least keep your children from marrying them and at the most perhaps shut them out of society altogether so they’ll just disappear. What if it turns out that only hunchbacks or blind people can live in this chemical soup we’ve created?
In the meantime, all these social and psychological forces aside, perhaps each of us had better keep track of the best evidence we can find and make our own decisions about our strategies. Doctors can just get used to it.
Saturday, February 02, 2008
PETER WARSHALL'S WATERSHED QUESTIONNAIRE
Decades ago I had a workshop that I took to UU meetings that was about knowing “where you are.” I thought it was a religious issue in a geo-sense and I used the questionnaire below. I got a little discouraged when some people insisted that under their house was “nothing,” because they lived in a subdivision. The mental image was too futuristic for me: floating in a vacuum.
The following exercise in watershed awareness was hatched 30 years ago by Peter Warshall, naturalist extraordinaire."
1) Point north.
Easy to do here. It’s on the side of the house with no windows because that’s where the really cold weather comes from.
2) What time is sunset today?
Had to cheat on this one. It's changing fast. GF Tribune says Sunset at 5:24pm. Sunrise today was 7:51am. Extras: Moonrise: 4:07am and Moonset 11:55am. I was up for moonrise, asleep again for sunrise; will be up for both moonset and sunset.
3) Trace the water you drink from rainfall to your tap.
It falls in the Rockies, east slope, filters through much glacial debris as well as the remnants of an ancient seabed. Shows up in a gravel aquifer about a hundred feet under the surface which we access through wells and pipe around to our houses. Some houses flood underneath. The connection to the irrigation system -- mountain impoundment, canals and rivers, second impoundment next to town (Lake Francis) and then ditch dispersal and pivot sprinklers -- has a controversal and unresearched relationship to our city water supply.
4) When you flush, where do the solids go? What happens to the waste water?
Down my unreliable sewer connection which was luckily new enough that it didn’t have to be replaced when the new liner was put into the main town sewer that runs in front of my house and on out to the sewage lagoon where the water and solids gradually separate. I suppose the liquid soaks into the ground. Where do the solids go? Hmmm.
5) How many feet above sea level are you?
About 3500. One can grow tomatoes and corn, but only barely.
6) What spring wildflower is consistently among the first to bloom here?
“Crocus” or pasqueflowers, also called lambs ears or kitten ears because the pale lavender flowers are fuzzy. They are capable of melting the snow next to them and are poisonous to eat. When they show up on the town librarian’s counter in a bouquet, that means it’s time to buy an Easter bonnet.
7) How far do you have to travel before you reach a different watershed? Can you draw the boundaries of yours?
It might be eighty miles over the Rockies to the West side drainage. Maybe a little less to cross the Hudson's Bay divide that runs along the 49th parallel, where the water drains northeast. Over here Birch Creek drains into the Marias River which empties into the Missouri which joins the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico. The Blackfeet want to claim water rights to the whole shootin’ match! As for the map, how much detail do you need?
8) Is the soil under your feet, more clay, sand, rock or silt?
Gumbo AKA caleche. Miserable stuff. Originally aeolian sediments from the PNW volcanoes. There are gravel moraines buried under it.
9) Before your tribe lived here, what did the previous inhabitants eat and how did they sustain themselves?
Hey, they did better than we do! Bison people living on meat and as much tuberous and rooty stuff as the women could dig.
10) Name five native edible plants in your neighborhood and the season(s) they are available.
Wheat is not native, I guess. So -- biscuit root, camas (all year round but best in spring), sarvisberry, chokecherry (late June), and daylily buds, though I don’t see much about Indians eating them. They’d be in June.
11) From what direction do storms generally come?
Depends on the kind of storm. If it’s wet, it comes at least in part over the Rockies. If it’s cold it comes from the north. Most often they mix to some degree.
12) Where does your garbage go?
The “roll off” on the edge of town, then to a landfill where highway 44 joins I-15.
13) How many people live in your watershed?
Zillions. And they all want water.
14) Who uses the paper/plastic you recycle from your neighborhood?
I’m stumped here. One gets the impression that the wind uses it to festoon any barbed wire it comes across.
15) Point to where the sun sets on the equinox. How about sunrise on the summer solstice?
This far north it’s shocking how much the sun moves its arc across the sky. In midsummer the sun is over my neighbor’s house on the north side, but in the winter it’s very low in the south sky and comes through the house raked almost flat.
16) Where is the nearest earthquake fault? When did it last move?
We’re told there is a HUGE earthquake fault, plate tectonic division, right along the east side of the Rockies. It last moved about 3500 years ago and is scheduled to move again pretty soon. When it does, the results will be massive.
17) Right here, how deep do you have to drill before you reach water? Hundred feet.
18) Which (if any) geological features in your watershed are, or were, especially respected by your community, or considered sacred, now or in the past?
The whole thing, but esp. mountains like the Rockies or the Sweetgrass volcanic extrusions, streams and their floodplains.
19) How many days is the growing season here (from frost to frost)? The problem is that it varies so much, but usually the last frost is in June and the first again is in September, but we have the potential for hard frost right through summer.
20) Name five birds that live here. Which are migratory and which stay put?
Migratory: robins, doves, flicker, meadowlark. Stay put: hawks, sparrows.
21) What was the total rainfall here last year?
Too depressingly low to keep track of. We’ve had drought for a long time now.
22) Where does the pollution in your air come from?
Farm chemicals. Dust. It leaves as quickly as it comes if it's airborne.
23) If you live near the ocean, when is high tide today? Not there.
24) What primary geological processes or events shaped the land here?
Plate tectonics, major glaciers, sedimentation, erosion, Very little volcanic.
25) Name three wild species that were not found here 500 years ago. Name one exotic species that has appeared in the last 5 years.
Not many people here making lists five hundred years ago. We’re drowning in exotic species. Dunno which is most recent.
26) What minerals are found in the ground here that are (or were) economically valuable? Oil and coal. Some gold.
27) Where does your electric power come from and how is it generated? Mostly coming from dams down by Great Falls.
28) After the rain runs off your roof, where does it go?
Into the ground right here. Not much run-off.
29) Where is the nearest wilderness? When was the last time a fire burned through it?
Thirty miles to the west. Last summer it burned again. It burns a lot these days.
30) How many days till the moon is full?
New Moon in four days, so full moon in fifteen days? Or twenty?
The Bigger Here Bonus Questions:
31) What species once found here are known to have gone extinct?
Most famously, dinosaurs. (Bison are not extinct.)
32) What other cities or landscape features on the planet share your latitude? (I cheated!) Paris, France! Stuttgart, Germany! Also, Czech Republic, Austria, Slovakia, Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, China.
33) What was the dominant land cover plant here 10,000 years ago? Grass. The prairie evolved with grass and grass evolved as the prairie appeared.
34) Name two places on different continents that have similar sunshine/rainfall/wind and temperature patterns to here.
Asia, especially in the Siberian parts which were once connected to Montana and not just via the Bering Straits -- the supercontinent was torn in half. Once you get far east of the Rockies, it’s not unlike Russia. Is that the same continent?
The following exercise in watershed awareness was hatched 30 years ago by Peter Warshall, naturalist extraordinaire."
1) Point north.
Easy to do here. It’s on the side of the house with no windows because that’s where the really cold weather comes from.
2) What time is sunset today?
Had to cheat on this one. It's changing fast. GF Tribune says Sunset at 5:24pm. Sunrise today was 7:51am. Extras: Moonrise: 4:07am and Moonset 11:55am. I was up for moonrise, asleep again for sunrise; will be up for both moonset and sunset.
3) Trace the water you drink from rainfall to your tap.
It falls in the Rockies, east slope, filters through much glacial debris as well as the remnants of an ancient seabed. Shows up in a gravel aquifer about a hundred feet under the surface which we access through wells and pipe around to our houses. Some houses flood underneath. The connection to the irrigation system -- mountain impoundment, canals and rivers, second impoundment next to town (Lake Francis) and then ditch dispersal and pivot sprinklers -- has a controversal and unresearched relationship to our city water supply.
4) When you flush, where do the solids go? What happens to the waste water?
Down my unreliable sewer connection which was luckily new enough that it didn’t have to be replaced when the new liner was put into the main town sewer that runs in front of my house and on out to the sewage lagoon where the water and solids gradually separate. I suppose the liquid soaks into the ground. Where do the solids go? Hmmm.
5) How many feet above sea level are you?
About 3500. One can grow tomatoes and corn, but only barely.
6) What spring wildflower is consistently among the first to bloom here?
“Crocus” or pasqueflowers, also called lambs ears or kitten ears because the pale lavender flowers are fuzzy. They are capable of melting the snow next to them and are poisonous to eat. When they show up on the town librarian’s counter in a bouquet, that means it’s time to buy an Easter bonnet.
7) How far do you have to travel before you reach a different watershed? Can you draw the boundaries of yours?
It might be eighty miles over the Rockies to the West side drainage. Maybe a little less to cross the Hudson's Bay divide that runs along the 49th parallel, where the water drains northeast. Over here Birch Creek drains into the Marias River which empties into the Missouri which joins the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico. The Blackfeet want to claim water rights to the whole shootin’ match! As for the map, how much detail do you need?
8) Is the soil under your feet, more clay, sand, rock or silt?
Gumbo AKA caleche. Miserable stuff. Originally aeolian sediments from the PNW volcanoes. There are gravel moraines buried under it.
9) Before your tribe lived here, what did the previous inhabitants eat and how did they sustain themselves?
Hey, they did better than we do! Bison people living on meat and as much tuberous and rooty stuff as the women could dig.
10) Name five native edible plants in your neighborhood and the season(s) they are available.
Wheat is not native, I guess. So -- biscuit root, camas (all year round but best in spring), sarvisberry, chokecherry (late June), and daylily buds, though I don’t see much about Indians eating them. They’d be in June.
11) From what direction do storms generally come?
Depends on the kind of storm. If it’s wet, it comes at least in part over the Rockies. If it’s cold it comes from the north. Most often they mix to some degree.
12) Where does your garbage go?
The “roll off” on the edge of town, then to a landfill where highway 44 joins I-15.
13) How many people live in your watershed?
Zillions. And they all want water.
14) Who uses the paper/plastic you recycle from your neighborhood?
I’m stumped here. One gets the impression that the wind uses it to festoon any barbed wire it comes across.
15) Point to where the sun sets on the equinox. How about sunrise on the summer solstice?
This far north it’s shocking how much the sun moves its arc across the sky. In midsummer the sun is over my neighbor’s house on the north side, but in the winter it’s very low in the south sky and comes through the house raked almost flat.
16) Where is the nearest earthquake fault? When did it last move?
We’re told there is a HUGE earthquake fault, plate tectonic division, right along the east side of the Rockies. It last moved about 3500 years ago and is scheduled to move again pretty soon. When it does, the results will be massive.
17) Right here, how deep do you have to drill before you reach water? Hundred feet.
18) Which (if any) geological features in your watershed are, or were, especially respected by your community, or considered sacred, now or in the past?
The whole thing, but esp. mountains like the Rockies or the Sweetgrass volcanic extrusions, streams and their floodplains.
19) How many days is the growing season here (from frost to frost)? The problem is that it varies so much, but usually the last frost is in June and the first again is in September, but we have the potential for hard frost right through summer.
20) Name five birds that live here. Which are migratory and which stay put?
Migratory: robins, doves, flicker, meadowlark. Stay put: hawks, sparrows.
21) What was the total rainfall here last year?
Too depressingly low to keep track of. We’ve had drought for a long time now.
22) Where does the pollution in your air come from?
Farm chemicals. Dust. It leaves as quickly as it comes if it's airborne.
23) If you live near the ocean, when is high tide today? Not there.
24) What primary geological processes or events shaped the land here?
Plate tectonics, major glaciers, sedimentation, erosion, Very little volcanic.
25) Name three wild species that were not found here 500 years ago. Name one exotic species that has appeared in the last 5 years.
Not many people here making lists five hundred years ago. We’re drowning in exotic species. Dunno which is most recent.
26) What minerals are found in the ground here that are (or were) economically valuable? Oil and coal. Some gold.
27) Where does your electric power come from and how is it generated? Mostly coming from dams down by Great Falls.
28) After the rain runs off your roof, where does it go?
Into the ground right here. Not much run-off.
29) Where is the nearest wilderness? When was the last time a fire burned through it?
Thirty miles to the west. Last summer it burned again. It burns a lot these days.
30) How many days till the moon is full?
New Moon in four days, so full moon in fifteen days? Or twenty?
The Bigger Here Bonus Questions:
31) What species once found here are known to have gone extinct?
Most famously, dinosaurs. (Bison are not extinct.)
32) What other cities or landscape features on the planet share your latitude? (I cheated!) Paris, France! Stuttgart, Germany! Also, Czech Republic, Austria, Slovakia, Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, China.
33) What was the dominant land cover plant here 10,000 years ago? Grass. The prairie evolved with grass and grass evolved as the prairie appeared.
34) Name two places on different continents that have similar sunshine/rainfall/wind and temperature patterns to here.
Asia, especially in the Siberian parts which were once connected to Montana and not just via the Bering Straits -- the supercontinent was torn in half. Once you get far east of the Rockies, it’s not unlike Russia. Is that the same continent?
Friday, February 01, 2008
LAST STAND AT THE LAUNDROMAT
Because I have no washing machine, I visit the laundromat thirty miles away. I have a choice of three, actually, but the one in Cut Bank (by the far the nicest) has attracted a guy who stalks me -- he’s a psychotic ex-schoolteacher who aggressively proselytizes his version of Christianity. His father is rich, so the people of Cut Bank cut him a LOT of slack. Too much, in my opinion. Conrad’s laundromat is old and worn. So is Shelby’s, but they have the most machines and a public bathroom. Since I’m more likely to have other errands in Shelby, that’s where I usually go.
In all of these laundromats I meet interesting people, because this is the Montana High-Line, a place where people pushed or pushing out to the edge come to make a stand. Once in Shelby I had a nice conversation with an enormous black man, complete with dreadlocks, who had wanted to start a bakery in town but was blocked by the mayor. Sometimes it’s people I know from long time ago in Browning. In summer there are likely to be tourists.
This time it was a rather slender, neatly bearded man with glasses. We exchanged pleasantries about the weather, since we’ve just returned to “normal” of about thirty degrees (dry roads) after a bubble of way-below-zero temps. Then we talked a bit about politics, making bitter jokes, and suddenly it occurred to me that we were sounding more like people in a West Coast laundromat than High-Line survivors. Sure enough, it turned out that this man (I never did get his name) had mostly lived in California but came back here to one of the tiny dwindling oil patch towns to take care of his mother in her final illness. She’s gone now.
He had made a good living in the wholesale food supply business in the San Francisco area, but found that everything was changing quickly and drastically -- mostly a matter of little guys being squeezed out by big guys who then set the terms of transactions to suit themselves. That is, for their own profit. We agreed that big money and evasion of regulation has made food dangerous, politically hot, and potentially devastating to the country.
We talked a bit about drug culture and he said he’d been quite a back packer “before this” and was willing to tolerate the pot growers (many of them alienated Vietnam veterans) except that they set booby traps along paths, things like fish hooks on monofilament hung at eye level. He had been to college, earned an AA degree, had been a reader “until now.” He’d recently lost a lot of weight.
I had noticed that he was wearing new but inexpensive clothing, probably from Pamida in Shelby. Heavy flannel shirt, sweat pants, padded jacket. (Mine differs only by being old.) We talked about the high cost of heating and the risk of having an all-electric house in a place where the electricity is often shut down by storms. I asked if he had gas, which I do. He did not. Did he have wood heat as a backup? He did, but the scrap wood in his yard -- plentiful -- he was not able to gather and cut up.
Then there was a pause while I digested this. And he said, “I have an incurable fatal disease. In fact, I was only diagnosed for sure this week.” What was it? Lou Gehrig’s Disease. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), often referred to as "Lou Gehrig's disease," is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. Motor neurons reach from the brain to the spinal cord and from the spinal cord to the muscles throughout the body. The progressive degeneration of the motor neurons in ALS eventually lead to their death. When the motor neurons die, the ability of the brain to initiate and control muscle movement is lost. With voluntary muscle action progressively affected, patients in the later stages of the disease may become totally paralyzed. (This description is from the ALS organization.)
So I swung into my social worker/minister mode and asked him about his plans now. We talked dispassionately, exploring options and comparing notes. He said it was too soon to make decisions since he still hadn’t really digested what was likely to happen. He showed me that his left arm and hand were curling, resistant, and said that the doctor (whom he likes, a neurologist who flies over from Kalispell) told him he was lucky that the first symptoms were there, since people who have it beginning in the neck and jaw are in major trouble much sooner.
He said that his girl friend back in San Francisco had offered to “take him in” and help him to the end, but he said, “She doesn’t know what she’s saying.” He will need professional help and equipment. He probably has about three to five years left. He’s 54, has no children, but lives near his brother and the brother’s family. He said he was grateful not to have had children because that means he doesn’t have to worry about them having those genes and because he really doesn’t have a much more optimistic view of society and the planet than he does for his own future. But actually, ALS is NOT hereditary in 90% of cases. It is MORE prevalent and faster than MS.
Money is important. Now that he has a diagnosis, he will qualify for help. Because he had no insurance, he has been paying for his own tests, thousands of dollars at a time, . He’s using up his retirement, but he won’t need it anyway now. The worst test was the MRI, which he took right there in Shelby, and though the technician was skillful and the nurses were kind, it was just hard to lie there in a machine for more than a half-hour, immobilized and told not to swallow. I assured him that there WERE resources to help him and that people around here would take good care of him. They know his relatives.
He didn’t cry. He didn’t ask if he could call me. We didn’t exchange phone numbers or email. When I began to pack my clean dry clothes out to the pickiup, he said he’d really enjoyed the conversation and I agreed. He said, “I hope we meet again.” I said, “Could happen!” He echoed, “Could happen.” He knows enough about me to find me, esp. now with publicity over “Bronze I&O” about to start and since I once worked at Marias Care Center.
Some scientists are saying we are now entering a new geological age: the Anthropocene, the era in which humans, their chemicals, their erosions, their pollutions began to change continents, ice-caps and ocean currents, to say nothing of weather patterns or species evolution. There is no doubt in my mind that this man’s ALS and my own Diabetes 2 are part of this evolution, that we are being extinguished as surely as dinosaurs. As individuals. We didn't have children anyway. Out there somewhere are the progenitors of the birds that dinos evolved into and the mammals who blossomed next. But they had a lot more time than we do.
This man said that as soon as he heard his diagnosis, he thought of the Gary Cooper movie in which Cooper played Gehrig. He said that both Cooper in the movie and Gehrig in real life, "died well" with courage and honesty. He said that was his goal now. I have no doubt that he will achieve it.
In all of these laundromats I meet interesting people, because this is the Montana High-Line, a place where people pushed or pushing out to the edge come to make a stand. Once in Shelby I had a nice conversation with an enormous black man, complete with dreadlocks, who had wanted to start a bakery in town but was blocked by the mayor. Sometimes it’s people I know from long time ago in Browning. In summer there are likely to be tourists.
This time it was a rather slender, neatly bearded man with glasses. We exchanged pleasantries about the weather, since we’ve just returned to “normal” of about thirty degrees (dry roads) after a bubble of way-below-zero temps. Then we talked a bit about politics, making bitter jokes, and suddenly it occurred to me that we were sounding more like people in a West Coast laundromat than High-Line survivors. Sure enough, it turned out that this man (I never did get his name) had mostly lived in California but came back here to one of the tiny dwindling oil patch towns to take care of his mother in her final illness. She’s gone now.
He had made a good living in the wholesale food supply business in the San Francisco area, but found that everything was changing quickly and drastically -- mostly a matter of little guys being squeezed out by big guys who then set the terms of transactions to suit themselves. That is, for their own profit. We agreed that big money and evasion of regulation has made food dangerous, politically hot, and potentially devastating to the country.
We talked a bit about drug culture and he said he’d been quite a back packer “before this” and was willing to tolerate the pot growers (many of them alienated Vietnam veterans) except that they set booby traps along paths, things like fish hooks on monofilament hung at eye level. He had been to college, earned an AA degree, had been a reader “until now.” He’d recently lost a lot of weight.
I had noticed that he was wearing new but inexpensive clothing, probably from Pamida in Shelby. Heavy flannel shirt, sweat pants, padded jacket. (Mine differs only by being old.) We talked about the high cost of heating and the risk of having an all-electric house in a place where the electricity is often shut down by storms. I asked if he had gas, which I do. He did not. Did he have wood heat as a backup? He did, but the scrap wood in his yard -- plentiful -- he was not able to gather and cut up.
Then there was a pause while I digested this. And he said, “I have an incurable fatal disease. In fact, I was only diagnosed for sure this week.” What was it? Lou Gehrig’s Disease. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), often referred to as "Lou Gehrig's disease," is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. Motor neurons reach from the brain to the spinal cord and from the spinal cord to the muscles throughout the body. The progressive degeneration of the motor neurons in ALS eventually lead to their death. When the motor neurons die, the ability of the brain to initiate and control muscle movement is lost. With voluntary muscle action progressively affected, patients in the later stages of the disease may become totally paralyzed. (This description is from the ALS organization.)
So I swung into my social worker/minister mode and asked him about his plans now. We talked dispassionately, exploring options and comparing notes. He said it was too soon to make decisions since he still hadn’t really digested what was likely to happen. He showed me that his left arm and hand were curling, resistant, and said that the doctor (whom he likes, a neurologist who flies over from Kalispell) told him he was lucky that the first symptoms were there, since people who have it beginning in the neck and jaw are in major trouble much sooner.
He said that his girl friend back in San Francisco had offered to “take him in” and help him to the end, but he said, “She doesn’t know what she’s saying.” He will need professional help and equipment. He probably has about three to five years left. He’s 54, has no children, but lives near his brother and the brother’s family. He said he was grateful not to have had children because that means he doesn’t have to worry about them having those genes and because he really doesn’t have a much more optimistic view of society and the planet than he does for his own future. But actually, ALS is NOT hereditary in 90% of cases. It is MORE prevalent and faster than MS.
Money is important. Now that he has a diagnosis, he will qualify for help. Because he had no insurance, he has been paying for his own tests, thousands of dollars at a time, . He’s using up his retirement, but he won’t need it anyway now. The worst test was the MRI, which he took right there in Shelby, and though the technician was skillful and the nurses were kind, it was just hard to lie there in a machine for more than a half-hour, immobilized and told not to swallow. I assured him that there WERE resources to help him and that people around here would take good care of him. They know his relatives.
He didn’t cry. He didn’t ask if he could call me. We didn’t exchange phone numbers or email. When I began to pack my clean dry clothes out to the pickiup, he said he’d really enjoyed the conversation and I agreed. He said, “I hope we meet again.” I said, “Could happen!” He echoed, “Could happen.” He knows enough about me to find me, esp. now with publicity over “Bronze I&O” about to start and since I once worked at Marias Care Center.
Some scientists are saying we are now entering a new geological age: the Anthropocene, the era in which humans, their chemicals, their erosions, their pollutions began to change continents, ice-caps and ocean currents, to say nothing of weather patterns or species evolution. There is no doubt in my mind that this man’s ALS and my own Diabetes 2 are part of this evolution, that we are being extinguished as surely as dinosaurs. As individuals. We didn't have children anyway. Out there somewhere are the progenitors of the birds that dinos evolved into and the mammals who blossomed next. But they had a lot more time than we do.
This man said that as soon as he heard his diagnosis, he thought of the Gary Cooper movie in which Cooper played Gehrig. He said that both Cooper in the movie and Gehrig in real life, "died well" with courage and honesty. He said that was his goal now. I have no doubt that he will achieve it.
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