Selling us the rope. Life in Craig, CO after coal. And, because it's Friday, bringing in the sheaves.
Selling us the rope....
The Free State Colorado** did an interview with Natalie Menten on how government-hired (and thus taxpayer-funded) consultants are being used to help sell you on getting rid of TABOR and/or to help you agree to part with yet more of your money.
I keep writing about being a skeptic and this video is another good example of learning the persuasion (manipulation) techniques such consultants use. Arm yourself and share with others.
Worth a watch, and particularly so if you live in JeffCo because you'll be facing just such a ballot measure this November.
**Free State CO does some excellent work and I highly recommend a follow.
https://freestatecolorado.com/menten-persuasion/
Related:
Less urgent (and, to me at least, concerning) but still interesting, another Free State Colorado video about how yes indeed there is a CO law that requires businesses to take cash.
As someone who still uses foldin' money from time to time, I'm glad.
https://freestatecolorado.com/hughes/
Life in Craig, CO after coal.
A reader sent in the Big Pivots newsletter and I wanted to share (part of an effort to share stories from all over the state, particularly those outside the Front Range).
It was an interesting read. Not entirely new to me, maybe also not to you, but worth a look. Particularly since this newsletter updates the most recent news which is that the power company (forced to shut down coal operations by the state legislature essentially) just recently finished a settlement agreement with about 16 groups, a settlement which will now be up for review by the Public Utilities Commission (PUC).
I'll leave it to you to read up on the details, but in some things stuck out to me that are worth highlighting:
--The utility will still pay in to the local tax base. This is good. In this area, the power company (and mining) figure largely in the tax base. Take that away and either you lose a lot of government services or you tax the remaining people back to the Stone Age.
--The utility wants to convert their coal over to natural gas power generation. Additionally, likely to buy the assent of the greenies, the agreement also calls for renewables, and possibly some underground carbon sequestration.**
--I thought the following quote was telling (a somewhat tacit acknowledgement of what we all kind of suspect about renewables and the switch to same): "The settlement agreement also includes provisions for how Tri-State is to conduct modeling to help ensure that its resource mix will allow it to continue to provide reliable, affordable power in the event of an extreme weather event, such as several days of windless but cold winter weather or extreme heat in summer." Yeah, still working on that generator myself.
--One more telling quote: "Many of Tri-State’s precise plans depend upon whether it gets aid from the federal government through the New Era funding provided by the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. Tri-State has applied for substantial aid to smooth the transition from coal to a generation portfolio with fewer emissions." Again, tacit acknowledgement that our glorious future with renewables is not (repeat NOT) self-funding.
**Some of the biggest proponents of renewables are ... wait for it ... NOT environmentalists. It's natural gas companies. The unpredictable nature of renewables plus the ability to quickly (relatively to coal anyway) add in natural gas capacity to the grid mean that adding renewables is essentially adding natural gas generation.
https://www.craigdailypress.com/news/big-pivots-life-after-craig-coal/
Bringing in the sheaves ...
That time of the week again. Last post til Sunday and so it's time for something for fun, and not related to politics.
During last week's God-awful, blistering heat, I noticed some sparrows (ever the fans of novelty: "Can I eat this? Can I eat that?") poking around my oats.
I'd been watching the oats and almost all of them were at a point where I could harvest, so I figured it was time. I didn't do all that work planting, tending, etc. just to have them gobble it up, or end up knocking the seeds out in the attempt.
It was time to bring in the sheaves in other words (see the hymn linked below if you want to hear it again or if you don't know the reference).
Pictures 1 and 2 show the oat bed before harvest, and after I took some down. I used my kitchen shears. If I continue to plant lots of grain (which I do though maybe not always oats), I think I'll ask Santa Claus for a sickle. The bed is too big for scissors but not quite big enough to justify a scythe.
Picture 3 shows one of my mini sheaves. I didn't bother to tie them up and stand them up. I put them on clean fitted sheets and then covered them with the clean top sheet so they could dry without birds pestering.
I'll skip the details on threshing and winnowing since I've covered that for a variety of grains in previous years. I'll skip ahead to the post-harvest plan.
In picture 4 you can see the bed after my homespun "hydroseeding". I planted some wax and green beans in the bed, wetted it down, and covered it with straw so it can stay moist. This bed sits right in the full, high power, all day sun; I need all the help with germination I can get.
Beans don't take long to bear, so if they germinate and barring some problem, I will probably get a crop.** I'm really okay if I don't though. Beans are legumes. I'd be happy if they get mature enough to develop some nitrogen nodules on their roots (which I will leave in the ground). That is, I'll either get some soil restoration or I'll get the restoration and some food. A good gamble in my book.
Picture 5 is the entire point. It's my first-of-the-season bowl of steel cut, homegrown oats with some brown sugar and cream. No, there's no intended design on the cream, that's just how it came out. Delicious, and made more special by knowing it was from my own yard and I was the one that put the seed down to begin with.
When people ask why I like teaching, I usually reply with the joke "my two favorite things about teaching are June and July". It gets a laugh, but I'm being serious in some ways (and not just the cynical one about being away from students). This is one of those cases.
I feel fortunate that I have a job where I have time to explore and wander this way. I wouldn't trade that for a full year salary. Plus, teaching is a fun way to earn a living in and of itself.
That's it for today. Have a good rest of the day. Back at it Sunday!
**I have a friend who told me she was going to gamble on some late season peas. I'm eager to hear from her on that effort. It could provide yet another way to double crop.
Related:
A couple more pics from the garden, combined into one image.
I wrote about the hailstorm we had a while back that decimated my plants. In particular, it turned all of my blackberry canes (right at the point where I was getting ready to tie them to their horizontal cables per my usual protocol to increase production) into green sticks.
Well, I guess you can file this under "God never closes a door without opening a window" because it turns out that pummeling my blackberries into submission actually acted to "tip" the canes (when you cut the top 6" or so inches off the canes as a way to encourage side shoots). So, now I have a ton of side shoots on the blackberries which are just now in flower.
Never out of the fight. A lesson we could all take.
The second picture has no lesson attached. Just a cute little baby watermelon I saw.
Speaking of underground carbon sequestration, have you ever heard of Vaulted Deep? We're negotiating a contract with them right now to pump a slurry of manure and oil drill waste water 7,000 ft below the surface into an apparently suitable underground rock formation. Fracking is involved. They operate two other sites in the United States, but some must see the process as viable; it's EPA approved and Frontier Airlines has invested just shy of 60 million into the idea, I'm assuming as a carbon credit.