Glens Falls (NY) Online Book Discussion Group discussion
What are U doing today?
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What are U doing today? (Ongoing thread)
Jackie wrote: "That is crazy. I know I sound paranoid but I dont' have a cellphone for that reason and I won't get into a car that has GPS nor public trans.
People say to me that it shouldn't matter if I'm ..."
Wonder if my $15 Trak phone has GPS? Mostly it stays on the dresser except for bike rides to LG.
Is it what's called a pre-paid phone? As far as I know, ALL cellphones manufactured after 2005 have GPS tracking under the guise of 'safety'.
Ben Franklin said: Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
I happen to agree with him. If I learned anything in extensive study of history, it's that liberties are eroded in small increments and under the cloak of protection.
Jackie wrote: "Is it what's called a pre-paid phone? As far as I know, ALL cellphones manufactured after 2005 have GPS tracking under the guise of 'safety'.
Ben Franklin said: Those who would give up esse..."
I pay $6/month to keep the minutes I have. I think that's prepaid. It's a tiny little thing, wonder how I could tell if it's got GPS?
I was asking if it's a pre-pay (or 'burn' phone) because even though they can be tracked, they have no idea who owns them so it wouldn't matter.If you're paying monthly, then it's not a pre-pay in the sense that I mean. The kind I mean is you'd have bought it in a convenience store and when the minutes are finished, you throw it out.
If your phone was manufactured after 2005, then it does have a GPS chip in it. Where it's located, I have no idea.
Last night PBS aired The First Encampment, the story of the first ever Boy Scout Camp. In 1910, the group camped out at Silver Bay on Lake George. One of the most interesting points was that in order to get to Silver Bay, a steamboat had to be taken to Silver Bay from Lake George Village, as there was no road on the west side of the lake at that time.Written and produced by Blake Cortright, an Eagle Scout from Latham, New York, the documentary was quite informative and a tribute to another "first" for our area.
Katherine, thanks very much for telling us about the TV documentary regarding the Boy Scouts at Silver Bay on Lake George in 1910. That is indeed interesting! I wish I had seen the program.Wiki says: "Lake George is the site of a YMCA conference center, the Silver Bay YMCA, founded in 1900 and one of only a few of its type in the United States. The Silver Bay Inn was built in 1904 and is on the National Register of Historic Places."
FROM: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_C...
More about Silver Bay Conference Center on Lake George at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_B...
(See photo of Silver Bay Inn, which is still there and thriving as part of the Conference Center.)
http://www.silverbay.org/index.php
I need to vent, so don't read any further.People are lying %&*^*&s.
My daughter's boyfriend, Josh, works with this guy, Terry, who bought a puppy, a registered English Pointer, & then proceeded to abuse the dog by locking her up & not caring for her properly. After a couple of weeks, Terry gives the puppy away to a gal who does the same thing. When the puppy, Lily, is 3 months old, Josh finally manages to rescue her after 1.5 months of hell.
Josh & my daughter, Erin, live in a one bedroom apartment with a medium sized dog & a cat. Josh works & goes to the university full time. My daughter is also a full time student with a part time job plus a lot of extra work with horses. After a few months of trying hard during the summer, they decide that they just can't keep Lily any more, so we wind up with her.
Lily is a pointer &, while she loves running around our place, she keeps telling us where every meadowlark & sparrow is lurking. She obviously wants to point, but we don't have any need for a pointer. We've gone through this with other breeds before. Like Erin's dog, Molly, who REALLY wants to herd things, but we won't let her. We never let her until one day Marg got mad at the pony & told Molly to get him. With NO training - actually negative training - Molly proceeded to herd the pony in perfectly.
She's now 6 months old & just getting corrupted by us. We let the dogs on the furniture, sleep in bed & do pretty much what they please. The Jack Russells are teaching Lily to catch voles, rabbits & moles, so if we're going to find her a good, working home, we need to move fast. We want to see Lily go to someone who would use her as she was bred for, do with her what she loves, even though we really like her. Still, if you love something, you should let it go be all that it can be, right?
I got in touch with a local guy who owns a game farm & through him found a guy who is a guide at another place. One guy & his wife, late 30's, has a 10 year old English Pointer & wants to start training up a younger one to take his place since he only has a couple more years left in him. The dog can sleep in the house, will be well cared for & see more birds in a year than most do in a lifetime. They'll even come up & get Lily this weekend, maybe tonight. They send me a link to the web site of the game farm & all. Looks & sounds perfect, right?
Well, Marg decides today that we should bring Lily down there, meet the people & such. I call the guy & leave him a voice mail about the change. It shouldn't be a big deal since we'll come down any time over the weekend that they want.
He calls me back & tells me he found a different dog & hangs up.
You know good & well that he was leading me on & Lily probably would have been stuffed in a kennel or worse.
That's it. Lily is ours. I'm not going to try to give her away. I just can't do it. She'll never be a decent bird dog, but she gets to sleep with me & Amber &, sometimes, Pixie, so what more could she ask for?
;-)
I just hate liars.
End of rant/vent.
Jim, I'm so glad that Marg decided to go meet the people and look things over. I know Lily will probably be happier with you and your family instead.
Jim,I think you and Marg made the right choice.
Have fun and love your doggy. She's where she belongs, with people who will treat her kindly and love her.
It's amazing that people can think of getting a full-sized dog and keep it in an apartment. Even a tiny dog (though I never had one) is still a DOG, and needs to RUN. I had beagles and, yes, I kenneled them. But they got out in the woods pretty darn often. They always arrived back home filthy, exhausted and very satisfied. If they happened to be in the house, putting on my hunting boots would set off a frenzy.
Oh, yes, our dogs are attune to our every move. They love to go out and if we do anything to signal that we're going out, they are right there chomping at the bit. The slightest move on our part is a clue for them. Even a whiff of perfume must perk Romeo's interest as to why I am putting on perfume. If I go into the kitchen, he is right there, hoping for a treat. When I go upstairs, he's there following me. A sweet companion.Even when Romeo is half asleep, he seems to stay aware of whatever I do. His eyes are always on me, waiting and watching. It must take quite a bit of energy for him to keep that constant watch. The only time he can completely relax is when he's in a deep sleep. (And I must say, that's fairly often! LOL)
Today I joined Book Crossings, an international organization that encourages reading by registering books, releasing them into the wild, and tracking them in their travels. There are over three hundred thousand members in the United States, with twenty-seven in Glens Falls and thirteen in Lake George.I released a book this afternoon at Price Chopper by leaving it in a shopping cart. Maybe the person who picks it up will go on line to Book Crossings so I can track the book.
It's quite a concept. Hope it works for me.
I've read about that, Katherine. Sounds kind of fun.
Katherine wrote: "Today I joined Book Crossings, an international organization that encourages reading by registering books, releasing them into the wild, and tracking them in their travels. There are over three hun..."Katherine, I went to the bookcrossing webpage for more information, but it requires registration.
http://www.bookcrossing.com/
So I went to Wiki and found an explanation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bookcros...
Excerpts:
"BookCrossing ... is defined as 'the practice of leaving a book in a public place to be picked up and read by others, who then do likewise.'"
...
"Ron Hornbaker conceived the idea for what is now known as BookCrossing in March 2001. About four weeks later, on April 17, he launched the website, which has expanded and grown throughout the world."
Another website says:
"Read and release your books into the wild! Tag your used books with a unique tracking number, then follow their travels through the world at BookCrossing, ...
FROM: http://www.emtags.com/site/www.bookcr...
Here's another:
"Better World Books Teams Up with BookCrossing.com:
BookCrossing.com, the world's largest free book club is anonymous and safe and seeks to make the whole world a library. Winning 2 Webby Awards (the Oscars of the Internet) in 2005 for the "Best Community" and "Best Social Networking" site on the web, BookCrossing boasts an ever-growing membership of over 750,000 passionate readers and receives about 25 million hits a month with its membership having "registered and released" almost 5.5 million books in 160 countries." ... ""Better World Books, like BookCrossing, offers new life to books through innovative alternatives to recycling."
FROM: http://www.betterworldbooks.com/custo...
I did find a website which explains about labels:
It says:
"Labelling your books with a unique BookCrossing ID number (BCID) is vital to successful BookCrossing. The BCID you get for each book you register here will stay with the book for the rest of its natural life, which of course is probably longer than you or any of us will live. Anytime during that long, long future ahead of us that someone reads the book, then comes to www.bookcrossing.com and enters that BCID, they will be able to see the complete journal history of the book and make a new journal entry of their own. Cool, huh?"
FROM: http://www.bookcrossing.com/labels
Yes, pretty cool! Thanks, Katherine!
PS-I've started a separate topic about "Bookcrossing". See it at:http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/4...
My son sent me a cherry burl earlier this week. It's pretty cool. A small cherry tree, about 4" in diameter, had this growth on it that was about 10" in diameter. I cut it up & should get 2 bowls out of it. Unfortunately, it was full of black ants. I sprayed them some & sealed the pieces in a couple of plastic bags, but some of the ants were still alive. They're big, black carpenter ants. I turned one bowl tonight & the damn things wound up all over the place. I even had a couple crawling up my legs, arms & down my shirt. It's very distracting & I don't need distractions while trying to make a nice smooth bowl out of a rough hunk of wood spinning at 500 rpm. I got it done & it looks pretty nice. Let's hope it stands up to drying. I know the ants won't. The microwave makes them pop! I like it when they do that, the little buggers.
Sounds like you had a fun day! I'd love to see what you make with it.
Yes, Jim, I'd like to see the bowl you turned too. Too bad about the ants. I once bought a chain-saw sculpture, a wooden bear. When I got it home I discovered carpenter ants in it. So I returned it. Darn ants.
The bowl is very simple because the grain in a burl is so cool. I'll try to take some pictures when it's done.
I just read a really interesting thread on book publishing.http://mssv.net/2007/07/23/the-death-...
is long, but good & written 3 years ago. There are some great comments at the bottom.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/technolo...
is a current follow up to the first article. Adrian Hon is a good writer. He wrote a similar article about how the movie industry is also broken. The comparison between the two is really interesting:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/technolo...
I started reading the above because of Mike Elgan's article about how the book industry needs to follow Silicon Valley's example:
http://www.computerworld.com/s/articl...
It's a fair amount of reading, but very interesting.
Update on the bowl(s): I started taking pictures of the process. I didn't get a picture of the original burl until I'd already sliced it up some. I'll post them publicly on Facebook or Picassa when they're all done. I'm actually following 3 bowls; one from the burl & 2 others from another cherry tree. I thought the differences & similarities would be of interest.Two of the bowls are dried & one never got finished because it wouldn't work out. That's about typical. Because of a flaw in the wood, I made it a bit too wide for the wood to support & wound up flaking off some bark from the natural edge. That's real easy to do with a flaky bark like cherry. Also, there's a huge difference in the hardness between the heart & sap wood. That makes turning it smoothly harder, as it tends to vibrate. So with it being a bit too wide & the other two issues, it just didn't work out.
Now that the bowls are dry, I sanded them down & put a coat of polyurethane on them. That sealed the wood enough that I can put the clear epoxy filler into voids of the burl. It takes 24 hours for each coat to dry & I need to position the bowl so that the epoxy lays in the voids flat. It could be a over a week, even applying a coat every night, before I'll get the epoxy done. Then a final sanding & a few more coats of poly are needed, so if it is done in 2 weeks, that's pretty good time for the burl.
The other should be done in a week since it doesn't need any epoxy.
Jim wrote: "I just read a really interesting thread on book publishing.http://mssv.net/2007/07/23/the-death-...
is long, but good & written 3 years ago. There are some great comments at the b..."
Thanks for the links, Jim. I'll check them out.
Jim wrote: "Update on the bowl(s): I started taking pictures of the process. I didn't get a picture of the original burl until I'd already sliced it up some. I'll post them publicly on Facebook or Picassa w..."Wow, that's a lot of work! You must really enjoy doing it.
I'm giving up on my plants. Too much work. Messy too. :) Haven't got the stamina anymore. I enjoyed them for years. So enjoy your hobbies while you can, Jim.
I appreciate the work you put in Jim. Woodworking is a labor of love. It doesn't feel like work when you love doing it. And the finished product gives a great sense of accomplishment. Let me know when you post your photos, I'd love to see them.
I do like it & for exactly that reason, Jackie. You KNOW I don't do it for the money! On a good day, in the right place, I might get $100 for the burl bowl. I doubt I make $10/hour, although that's what I shoot for when pricing them.
I know it.I have neighbors who ask me to restore furniture for them and I can't even begin to charge what it's really worth. I usually do it for free just because I love doing it.
That's how it is with Barb and her hand-carved picture frames or plaques --if she priced them according to the hours of work she has to put into making them, only the really rich could buy them. So she mostly gives them as gifts. And it's a type of creativity she engages in just because she loves doing it.Jim, your information about the woodworking process is fascinating. The sanding, and the sealings and coatings you put on your bowls, sounds comparable to some of the things she does with her creations (including the long waits for coatings to dry).
Jim wrote: "I need to vent, so don't read any further.People are lying %&*^*&s.I love happy endings. I will sleep well tonight knowing a good dog is in a good home. God Bless you and Marg and your daughter. nina
My daughter's boyfriend, Josh, works with this guy, Terry, who bought a puppy, a registered English Pointer, & then proceeded ..."
Jackie & Werner, I agree. I'd rather give my bowls away to a good home, someone who appreciates them, than sell them, especially as cheap as some want them.Thanks, Nina. Lily is very happy, although she is a bed hog.
Well, the Breeder's Cup started out with a bang. I came in just after the first race & turned on the TV to make sure it was recording. My first sight, Calvin Borel trying to beat up another jockey! For any of you who don't know of him, he's one of the best liked & best jockeys out there. He's about the last one I would have expected to see doing this. Gomez, yeah - not Borel, though. Thought I turned on the Twilight Zone channel.Then, the starters put the horses into the wrong slots in the gate! They had all but 3 loaded & realized they only had 2 slots left, so they had to shuffle most of them around.
Then, kids say the damdest things: Bob Baffert, the trainer of Looking At Lucky, has his 5 year old son with him while a reporter interviews him.
The reporter asks the kid, "Who do you think will win the Classic?"
"Zenyatta" the kid says.
Baffert says, "But Looking at Lucky is running against her."
His son looks at him seriously & says, "Why?"
Hah! I sure hope she pulls it off.
Thanks, Jim. Here's an article about the fight:http://www.argus-press.com/sports/nat...
"Jockeys Borel, Castellano fight at Breeders' Cup"
I don't know much about horse racing. So, out of curiosity, I looked for some info.
Wiki says: "The Breeders' Cup World Championships is an annual series of Grade I thoroughbred horse races operated by Breeders' Cup Limited, a company formed in 1982. ... The location changes each year."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeders...
I see it was at Churchill Downs, KY, this year.
I looked up Churchill Downs at Wiki:
"The track is named for John and Henry Churchill, who leased 80 acres of land to their nephew, Colonel Meriwether Lewis Clark, Jr. (grandson of explorer William Clark). Clark was president of the Louisville Jockey Club and Driving Park Association, which formed in 1874.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churchil...
Live and learn. Winston Churchill had nothing to do with it. LOL
One thing the article didn't mention is that this was the 2d close call on the track in 2 days. Gomez fell in a race yesterday & was taken to the hospital. He rode today though & was hot. I believe he won two races. If Garcia had fallen, he would have been trampled badly. It was scary to watch.Castellano isn't known for such moves, so it was obviously a goof, but it may well have cost Borel the race. Borel had to really pull up A.U. Miner just after he started making his move & then go for it again. Even with that jarring interruption on the stretch, they came in 4th. I guess Garcia was just in Castellano's blind spot, but it was really bad interference.
Tomorrow is the big day. At 7:15pm Eastern, Zenyatta will be running the Breeder's Cup Classic. This will be her final race. Can she be the first to do 20 wins in 20 races? She's already beat everyone else.
Interestingly, Marg & I thought Secretariat was bigger than Zenyatta, but it turns out he wasn't, according to the show tonight. They said he was only 16-2 while she's 17-1 (4" to the hand, so 66" or 5'6" compared to 69" or 5'9"). She's a BIG mare.
Still, she's used to an artificial track in CA & the dirt track at Churchill tends to favor the home horses. It will be chilly, night & under lights. She'll be facing some very tough competition, the best of the boys. She whupped them last year, but that was on her home track. Well, no matter what happens, I just hope no one gets hurt.
Agghh! Zenyata got beat by a nose! Garrett Gomez on Blame beat her out. Well, she's still 19 for 19 with an amazing 20th race & she's not hurt, so it's a good thing. Considering how often she just barely pulled off her wins, it wasn't too surprising she finally got caught, especially against the hottest jockey this weekend & a horse that loves the Down's track.
Jim wrote: "Agghh! Zenyata got beat by a nose! Garrett Gomez on Blame beat her out. Well, she's still 19 for 19 with an amazing 20th race & she's not hurt, so it's a good thing. Considering how often she just..."That's a big disappointment for a lot of people but, as you say, she's till 19 for 19. I'm glad she's OK. Thanks for letting us know, Jim.
I just heard the news about Zenyata. Too bad but as you said, she's not hurt and has a wonderful record. i am not certain if I told you all that my house in located on what was once the grounds of Woolford Farm. Mr Woolf owned and bred racing horses and one of them, Lawrin won the Kentucky Derby in 1938. The jockey was Arcaro, first time in the Derby. Lawrin is buried along with his sire a few blocks from my house in a small wrought iron enclosure. There is still vacant land across from my house except for a radio no one has built on it from that time on. At times I look out and wonder about all the horses racing around the track over there. nina ps our street is called Paddock Ct.
If you're interested in seeing how I make a burl bowl, I put some pictures with descriptions of each step up on Facebook. Even if you don't have an account, you should be able to see this.http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid...
You might remember we were discussing this a few weeks ago. I have some other pictures to put up showing regular bowls, too. Not sure when I'll get to that, though.
I am impressed! Big Time.Your bowl is incredibly beautiful! That's a lot of work you've done but it's worth it to look as beautiful as it does.
I like how you explained the process as you went along.
Wow!!! Now I can appreciate the value of that bowl. It's beautiful. A true labor of love. Thank you, Jim, for the pictures and the explanations. I never knew that voids could be filled that way. Also, I never really understood what burl is until now.From online dictionaries:
burl: "a rounded knotty growth on a tree, used especially in handcrafted objects and veneers"
burl: "A tree growth in which the grain has grown in a deformed manner."
burl: "Wood of a mottled veneer, usually cut from such a growth."
Jim's comment: "a burl is an odd mixture of bark, heart & sap wood all swirled together."
Now I can see why certain veneers look the way they do. I'll look upon them with more appreciation now. Thank you again, Jim.
Thanks! Glad you liked it. After what you said earlier, I thought it would be a good way to answer a lot of frequent questions I get & I like showing it off. ;-)
It's pretty amazing to me - even after doing it - just how a nasty old lump in a tree can reveal something so cool. When I first started turning wood, I was too cheap to buy wood to turn, so I picked it out of the firewood pile. I quickly realized that I had a treasure trove readily available. It looks like junk to start with, but a little cutting & polishing shows off a gem.
If you want to see what a burl looks like on the tree (sorry I didn't get a before picture) look at the Wikipedia entry & about halfway down you'll see a picture of a 'black knot infection'.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_ch...
That's what I called a burl. This even looks like the one I had before I sliced it up with the chainsaw.
Wow, what a transformation!Why is it called an 'infection'?
Maybe because it LOOKS like an infection. LOL
I guess, but I would think it should be accurate. What I want to know is, Is it truly an infection?I'm not articulate when asking questions. I wonder why that is.
I don't know what it is, Jackie. I generally find the inside hollow & full of carpenter ants, though. I'd guess it is a wound that gets a fungus or something in it. Cherry trees often aren't long lived in MD or KY because the warmer weather leaves them open for more infections. Often their centers get hollowed out & they'll have just a bit of sap wood running up the sides supporting healthy branches & leaves. That's a problem because when a storm knocks them down in a field with livestock, the wilted leaves will kill. When they start to wilt, they form a type of cyanide, I've been told & it tastes sweet & good to horses, cows & such, so they'll eat enough to kill themselves. Kind of like antifreeze will to a dog, I guess. I've heard the same about red maple leaves, too.Hollow cherry trees can be scary, too. I cut up one into short lengths & hit a snake one time. They're usually full of sawdust inside. Another time, I was picking up such a piece when something moved in one log. Thinking I missed a snake, I about had kittens on the spot. Turned out to be a mother screech owl with 2 babies. All were fine, so I shoved them into a bag & relocated them. They were gone the next day, though.
Jim, that sounds like an infection to me. Interesting. I didn't know all that. I love cherry trees and I never see them around here. 200 miles to the south, I see them everywhere. We had two at the house I grew up in, and a really old one at the funeral home my grandfather owned.
Those cyanide leaves are worrisome. Especially for those of us who have animals. I think my quest to have a cherry tree in the yard is over.
Thanks for the info.
Jackie, I've never heard of the wilted leaves being a problem with dogs, just horses, cows, sheep & the like.Any rot spots in a tree can attract insects which will bore them out further - unless a woodpecker gets to them first. Anyway, I don't know if it is an infection or what. I should know. I think I'll try to find out.
Glens Falls (NY) Online Book Discussion Group
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I know I sound paranoid but I dont' have a cellphone for that reason and I won't get into a car that has GPS nor public trans.
People say to me that it shouldn't matter if I'm not doing anything wrong, I say That's beside the point. I have a right to privacy and if it means I have to forego some luxuries, then so be it.
I read 1984 at a young age and it left a lasting impression on me, for good or bad it is what it is.