My life lately has mostly consisted of maintenance: the usual cleaning, tightening loose screws, and troubleshooting appliances.
I also finished knitting the hat I am giving for a Christmas present, and I looked up how to make the pompom for it. I have an additional little knitting project going on with the leftover yarn.
I cut another jar's worth of kitchen wipes, from fabric that I have no other use for, with the assistance of a tiny human who was happy to have the job of putting them into the jar.
The older children have been taking on some of the snackmaking work; wacky cake and popcorn, so far this week.
Wacky cake is very easy to make, and doesn't require milk or eggs, although we do use milk in ours, instead of water. The recipe I use is in this post.
My husband's work had some kind of a catered lunch, and he brought home quite a bit of leftover pasta and salad and bread from it, easily enough for two meals.
One of his co-workers has the interest, time, ability, tools, and space to work on cars, and has been helping him do some of the work that needs to be done on our aging vehicle.
Thursday, December 19, 2019
Tuesday, December 17, 2019
An interesting take
Dorothy Sayers, in an address titled "Are Women Human?", which she gave to a Women's Society in 1938, gave an answer to the chauvinist objection that women were "taking men's jobs" by listing a number of female occupations in medieval times that had since then been taken over by men:
Sayers believed that work should be done by those who are best fitted for it, whether male or female, and that the work should be not only well done, but also worth doing well. Since industrialization had taken over much of women's traditional work, then women should be allowed to take on other kinds of work.
The more modern book Radical Homemakers, by Shannon Hayes, similarly chronicles the shift of industry out of and away from the home, and suggests ways to bring some of it back in. It has been a number of years since I read this book, but it is safe to say that she wasn't a conservative Christian when she wrote it. More like an anti-capitalist feminist.
Neither of these authors concerned themselves much, if I remember rightly, with the idea of home being the place for the production of new people. That is another thing has largely been outsourced, over the last few decades, in this case to other countries. In her speech, Sayers did mention the impossibility of housing a family with a dozen children in "a small flat", but she was perhaps forgetting the small size of many medieval peasant dwellings. Even my father-in-law grew up in a house that was under 450 square feet, and they weren't so far from having a dozen children.
There is a book that I used to own, The Structures of Everyday Life: The Limits of the Possible, that goes deeply into the economics of European life, a few centuries after the Medieval period. Most families owned only a few pieces of furniture. France at one point instituted a prize for families that reached twelve children, although it was not able to feed the population that it already had; the book said that there were many French families at that time with twenty children or more.
It is a formidable list of jobs: the whole of the spinning industry, the whole of the dyeing industry, the whole of the weaving industry. The whole catering industry and...the whole of the nation's brewing and distilling. All the preserving, pickling and bottling industry, all the bacon-curing. And (since in those days a man was often absent from home for months together on war or business) a very large share in the management of landed estates.... Even the dairy-maid in her simple bonnet has gone....
Sayers believed that work should be done by those who are best fitted for it, whether male or female, and that the work should be not only well done, but also worth doing well. Since industrialization had taken over much of women's traditional work, then women should be allowed to take on other kinds of work.
The more modern book Radical Homemakers, by Shannon Hayes, similarly chronicles the shift of industry out of and away from the home, and suggests ways to bring some of it back in. It has been a number of years since I read this book, but it is safe to say that she wasn't a conservative Christian when she wrote it. More like an anti-capitalist feminist.
Neither of these authors concerned themselves much, if I remember rightly, with the idea of home being the place for the production of new people. That is another thing has largely been outsourced, over the last few decades, in this case to other countries. In her speech, Sayers did mention the impossibility of housing a family with a dozen children in "a small flat", but she was perhaps forgetting the small size of many medieval peasant dwellings. Even my father-in-law grew up in a house that was under 450 square feet, and they weren't so far from having a dozen children.
There is a book that I used to own, The Structures of Everyday Life: The Limits of the Possible, that goes deeply into the economics of European life, a few centuries after the Medieval period. Most families owned only a few pieces of furniture. France at one point instituted a prize for families that reached twelve children, although it was not able to feed the population that it already had; the book said that there were many French families at that time with twenty children or more.
Wednesday, December 11, 2019
Paleoclimate in Minnesota
I continue to prepare for my comments on our electric utility's plans to go to zero-carbon-emissions.
Since the whole point of their effort is to stop climate change, I thought I'd take a quick look at Minnesota's historic climate...all of it.
In the Permian Era, Minnesota was at the bottom of an ocean. At various later times, much of it was covered by smaller seas. Even today, a lot of it is covered by water; it's the "Land of 10,000 lakes" after all, although actually there are even more of them than that.
As recently as the Cretaceous Period, Minnesota's climate was tropical. During the Ice Age in the Pleistocene, Minnesota was under glaciers. One of these is much more habitable than the other.
Since the whole point of their effort is to stop climate change, I thought I'd take a quick look at Minnesota's historic climate...all of it.
In the Permian Era, Minnesota was at the bottom of an ocean. At various later times, much of it was covered by smaller seas. Even today, a lot of it is covered by water; it's the "Land of 10,000 lakes" after all, although actually there are even more of them than that.
As recently as the Cretaceous Period, Minnesota's climate was tropical. During the Ice Age in the Pleistocene, Minnesota was under glaciers. One of these is much more habitable than the other.
Monday, December 9, 2019
Finds
I got some of my Christmas shopping done at the thrift store, but I also found a couple of other things while I was there.
The first was four spools of cotton carpet warp thread. I can definitely use these, since I have found that crochet cotton thread is a bit weak for the warp of the things I am trying to weave.
The other was a copy of The Brothers Lionheart, a children's book by Astrid Lindgren, originally written in Swedish. Last year, in a different thrift store, I bought a Norwegian translation of it. With a little help from the pictures and a Norwegian dictionary, I read it all the way through, over and over, and basically worked it out like a hundred-page puzzle. Norwegian has a lot of similarities to English, although there is a twist to them, and that helped a lot. By the sixth time through the book, I could understand most of it, or at least I thought I could.
So it is exciting to have the English translation now, and see how well I did in figuring out the Norwegian. So far, it looks like I got most of it right.
The first was four spools of cotton carpet warp thread. I can definitely use these, since I have found that crochet cotton thread is a bit weak for the warp of the things I am trying to weave.
The other was a copy of The Brothers Lionheart, a children's book by Astrid Lindgren, originally written in Swedish. Last year, in a different thrift store, I bought a Norwegian translation of it. With a little help from the pictures and a Norwegian dictionary, I read it all the way through, over and over, and basically worked it out like a hundred-page puzzle. Norwegian has a lot of similarities to English, although there is a twist to them, and that helped a lot. By the sixth time through the book, I could understand most of it, or at least I thought I could.
So it is exciting to have the English translation now, and see how well I did in figuring out the Norwegian. So far, it looks like I got most of it right.
Saturday, December 7, 2019
Aspirations
When I started this blog, I planned on leaving politics out of it, but it turned out that politics doesn't plan on leaving me alone, and is having serious effects on my household's finances. In today's example, Minnesota is working hard to transform itself into the California of the Midwest.
It's all kind of intertwined, but at the foundation are a solid belief in climate change*, and a steadfast faith in the power of collective, government-led effort to get things done. There is a law on Minnesota's books, the 2007 Next Generation Energy Act, which mandates a 30% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from 2005 levels, and a 80% reduction by 2050. The state is not on track to meet those goals, but by golly, they're trying.
The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency is considering adopting California's ZEV and LEV standards, as several other states have already done. The initial public comment period on this effort closed yesterday; fortunately I was working on some of these things yesterday morning, and I noticed the deadline in time to get my comments prepared and submitted.
The LEV (Low Emissions Vehicle) standard would require that most new vehicles sold in Minnesota meet California emission standards. Apparently, federal law requires that states wanting to set more stringent emissions standards must either use the California standards, or do nothing. The MPCA may take Colorado's LEV standard (which basically incorporates the California standard by reference) as a model for Minnesota's version.
I don't see how letting another state write your state's laws can end well. Population of Los Angeles metro area: 4 million. Population of the entire state of Minnesota: 5.7 million.
The ZEV (Zero Emissions Vehicle) standard would set delivery quotas for electric, hybrid, and hydrogen-fueled vehicles for car manufacturers wishing to sell new cars in Minnesota. From a news report, it appears that people wanting to buy ZEV vehicles in Minnesota at present are having a bit of a hard time finding them, though most of them manage to purchase one in the end.
It turns out that this slight shortage in ZEV supply is because California and several others states have adopted ZEV standards, so the manufacturers are delivering these vehicles first to the states where they are required to deliver them. In my comments, I pointed out that the economic forces at play will sort this situation out over time, without any government intervention at all. And that if government intervention sets the ZEV quotas above demand, then the manufacturers and dealers may start having to subsidize ZEV sales by charging more for higher-emissions vehicles.
This is another of those "unintended consequences" that keep popping up. They're never in my favor, either.
The MPCA claims that the LEV and ZEV standards would only affect manufacturers and dealers. That is baloney; new car buyers would also be affected, as well as used car buyers in a few years as these vehicles trickle into the used car market.
Colorado's LEV standard exempts passenger vehicles over twelve passengers; I see a fifteen-passenger high-emissions van in my future. Our family is large, but not that large. It's not a gain on the climate change front, either.
On the utility front, our utility is proposing to reduce carbon emissions by 80% by 2030, and to get to zero-carbon electric generation by 2050; not only meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement**, but exceeding them. They are asking for permission from the Public Utilities Commission to retire all of their coal-powered plants ten years early, and to build a lot more wind and solar power generation capacity.
The problems, of course, are that wind and solar electricity generation often don't track with electricity demand, and that it is very hard and expensive to store excess electricity in large quantities for the times when the wind isn't blowing or the sun isn't shining--which could be for days or even weeks.
Their solution is *waving the magic Technology wand* to use the power of technology to manage demand rather than supply. That looks to me like it is going to involve some kind of real-time pricing: very cheap electricity when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing, and very expensive electricity when they aren't.
Minnesota does have a nuclear power plant, but from what I've read, it sounds like they are working only on keeping it open, and not on building another one. The environment lobby Force is very strong in Minnesota, and it does not always act coherently.
Buried deep within the bowels of the utility's Carbon Report, I have found an implied wish list: 1. Substantial tax subsidies for their "de-carbonization". 2. That Minnesota be converted to a "high-electrification state, requiring that electricity be used for cooking, water heating, space heating, and passenger vehicles. 3. That private generation of electricity (at least at the level of large businesses, etc.) be banned.
So, their brilliant plan to stop climate change and save the world is to use my tax money to force me to use electricity for everything, and then, when their zero-carbon-emissions electricity proves unreliable, to bar me from making my own electricity.
I just finished reading Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, which makes a strong case that socialism always requires some sort of a common cause, and always ends up using coercion by force. I am also in the middle of a book about the history of the Baptist church in Russia. Under the Soviet Union the Communists found it politically convenient to set the Church up as the internal enemy of all good Communists--as opposed to creating an external enemy that they might end up having to fight a war with, if passions ran too high.
More and more, I am starting to see climate change as the modern unifying cause of the socialists, the justification that they are using to take over control over more and more of the world's physical economic activity. Climate change cannot be separated from economic activity, because in their view economic activity causes climate change. The climate modelers are having to incorporate manufacturing and land use and so on into their models, and they already are showing a distinct tendency to want to control those activities in order to control climate change. This will not end well; it doesn't even end well when the economists are in charge.
---------------------------------------------------
*The short version of my opinion of climate change is that we are working very hard to solve a problem that may not even exist.
**I read the Paris Agreement. It's only sixteen pages, but it has already spawned a complex of committees busily generating large quantities of documents written in bureaucrat-ese. The character of the Paris Agreement can be seen clearly in its practice of calling a regular international assessment of progress toward reducing carbon emissions a "global stocktake"--overt Newspeak, in an Orwellian global program. The U.S. is withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, but the process will take some time.
It's all kind of intertwined, but at the foundation are a solid belief in climate change*, and a steadfast faith in the power of collective, government-led effort to get things done. There is a law on Minnesota's books, the 2007 Next Generation Energy Act, which mandates a 30% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from 2005 levels, and a 80% reduction by 2050. The state is not on track to meet those goals, but by golly, they're trying.
The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency is considering adopting California's ZEV and LEV standards, as several other states have already done. The initial public comment period on this effort closed yesterday; fortunately I was working on some of these things yesterday morning, and I noticed the deadline in time to get my comments prepared and submitted.
The LEV (Low Emissions Vehicle) standard would require that most new vehicles sold in Minnesota meet California emission standards. Apparently, federal law requires that states wanting to set more stringent emissions standards must either use the California standards, or do nothing. The MPCA may take Colorado's LEV standard (which basically incorporates the California standard by reference) as a model for Minnesota's version.
I don't see how letting another state write your state's laws can end well. Population of Los Angeles metro area: 4 million. Population of the entire state of Minnesota: 5.7 million.
The ZEV (Zero Emissions Vehicle) standard would set delivery quotas for electric, hybrid, and hydrogen-fueled vehicles for car manufacturers wishing to sell new cars in Minnesota. From a news report, it appears that people wanting to buy ZEV vehicles in Minnesota at present are having a bit of a hard time finding them, though most of them manage to purchase one in the end.
It turns out that this slight shortage in ZEV supply is because California and several others states have adopted ZEV standards, so the manufacturers are delivering these vehicles first to the states where they are required to deliver them. In my comments, I pointed out that the economic forces at play will sort this situation out over time, without any government intervention at all. And that if government intervention sets the ZEV quotas above demand, then the manufacturers and dealers may start having to subsidize ZEV sales by charging more for higher-emissions vehicles.
This is another of those "unintended consequences" that keep popping up. They're never in my favor, either.
The MPCA claims that the LEV and ZEV standards would only affect manufacturers and dealers. That is baloney; new car buyers would also be affected, as well as used car buyers in a few years as these vehicles trickle into the used car market.
Colorado's LEV standard exempts passenger vehicles over twelve passengers; I see a fifteen-passenger high-emissions van in my future. Our family is large, but not that large. It's not a gain on the climate change front, either.
On the utility front, our utility is proposing to reduce carbon emissions by 80% by 2030, and to get to zero-carbon electric generation by 2050; not only meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement**, but exceeding them. They are asking for permission from the Public Utilities Commission to retire all of their coal-powered plants ten years early, and to build a lot more wind and solar power generation capacity.
The problems, of course, are that wind and solar electricity generation often don't track with electricity demand, and that it is very hard and expensive to store excess electricity in large quantities for the times when the wind isn't blowing or the sun isn't shining--which could be for days or even weeks.
Their solution is *waving the magic Technology wand* to use the power of technology to manage demand rather than supply. That looks to me like it is going to involve some kind of real-time pricing: very cheap electricity when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing, and very expensive electricity when they aren't.
Minnesota does have a nuclear power plant, but from what I've read, it sounds like they are working only on keeping it open, and not on building another one. The environment lobby Force is very strong in Minnesota, and it does not always act coherently.
Buried deep within the bowels of the utility's Carbon Report, I have found an implied wish list: 1. Substantial tax subsidies for their "de-carbonization". 2. That Minnesota be converted to a "high-electrification state, requiring that electricity be used for cooking, water heating, space heating, and passenger vehicles. 3. That private generation of electricity (at least at the level of large businesses, etc.) be banned.
So, their brilliant plan to stop climate change and save the world is to use my tax money to force me to use electricity for everything, and then, when their zero-carbon-emissions electricity proves unreliable, to bar me from making my own electricity.
I just finished reading Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, which makes a strong case that socialism always requires some sort of a common cause, and always ends up using coercion by force. I am also in the middle of a book about the history of the Baptist church in Russia. Under the Soviet Union the Communists found it politically convenient to set the Church up as the internal enemy of all good Communists--as opposed to creating an external enemy that they might end up having to fight a war with, if passions ran too high.
More and more, I am starting to see climate change as the modern unifying cause of the socialists, the justification that they are using to take over control over more and more of the world's physical economic activity. Climate change cannot be separated from economic activity, because in their view economic activity causes climate change. The climate modelers are having to incorporate manufacturing and land use and so on into their models, and they already are showing a distinct tendency to want to control those activities in order to control climate change. This will not end well; it doesn't even end well when the economists are in charge.
---------------------------------------------------
*The short version of my opinion of climate change is that we are working very hard to solve a problem that may not even exist.
**I read the Paris Agreement. It's only sixteen pages, but it has already spawned a complex of committees busily generating large quantities of documents written in bureaucrat-ese. The character of the Paris Agreement can be seen clearly in its practice of calling a regular international assessment of progress toward reducing carbon emissions a "global stocktake"--overt Newspeak, in an Orwellian global program. The U.S. is withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, but the process will take some time.
Thursday, December 5, 2019
Almost a routine
I found this post at Laine's Letters...Revisited! a few months ago, and it has been very helpful.
In particular, I took the advice about setting down my daily routine on four index cards. Nothing is scheduled by time, it is just a sequence of tasks to go through. Start at the top, and work my way down, and when there are interruptions, that's okay. When one card's tasks are finished, flip to the next one. I do try to make sure that our meals land at regular times, though.
It very nicely solves the perennial daily problem of Too Many Things To Do And No Idea Where To Start.
In particular, I took the advice about setting down my daily routine on four index cards. Nothing is scheduled by time, it is just a sequence of tasks to go through. Start at the top, and work my way down, and when there are interruptions, that's okay. When one card's tasks are finished, flip to the next one. I do try to make sure that our meals land at regular times, though.
It very nicely solves the perennial daily problem of Too Many Things To Do And No Idea Where To Start.
Monday, December 2, 2019
A pot scrubber and a new knitting project
My homemade pot scrubber was wearing out, and it was time to make a new one. I have some plastic mesh produce bags tucked away in my craft drawer, but I also had a few narrow lengths of tulle, salvaged from gift wrapping. I chose to use the tulle this time.
I didn't follow my pattern from before, but instead did a chain ring, followed by a round of half double stitches, followed by a round of slip stitches, increasing as necessary to keep it flat. The result is denser than what I usually do. I probably would have been better off doing a single round of double stitches; I don't think there was enough tulle to do triples.
For the knitting project, I've started knitting a hat to give as a Christmas present. I bought the yarn a while back, and did a gauge swatch, and figured out how many stitches around it would need to be. I also decided to make it double-layered, as I did for my own hat. Today I actually cast on and knitted the first inch or so. With my recently improved knitting speed, I should easily be able to finish it before Christmas.
I've also been selectively cutting down the dead plants in the flower beds. Some I am leaving there until spring, because I like to look at them. Since I learned this year that you can get usable fiber from nettle plants, I've been looking forward to harvesting the patch of nettles that is well-established in one of our flower beds, but by the time I got to them, there were only a few of them still standing, and the rest were down and mixed in with some other tall plants.
I didn't follow my pattern from before, but instead did a chain ring, followed by a round of half double stitches, followed by a round of slip stitches, increasing as necessary to keep it flat. The result is denser than what I usually do. I probably would have been better off doing a single round of double stitches; I don't think there was enough tulle to do triples.
For the knitting project, I've started knitting a hat to give as a Christmas present. I bought the yarn a while back, and did a gauge swatch, and figured out how many stitches around it would need to be. I also decided to make it double-layered, as I did for my own hat. Today I actually cast on and knitted the first inch or so. With my recently improved knitting speed, I should easily be able to finish it before Christmas.
I've also been selectively cutting down the dead plants in the flower beds. Some I am leaving there until spring, because I like to look at them. Since I learned this year that you can get usable fiber from nettle plants, I've been looking forward to harvesting the patch of nettles that is well-established in one of our flower beds, but by the time I got to them, there were only a few of them still standing, and the rest were down and mixed in with some other tall plants.
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