Ted’s essays

summer solstice – this year’s longest day

Today is the summer solstice. Celebrate it. Go dance in the sunshine… Or walk… Or play… We are in it, but few know, having been disconnected from nature and the real world. For most of human existence, people knew seasonal cycles from direct experience. They paid attention because summer, winter, spring and fall mattered. Today experts tell them what they need to know, there’s an app for that covers much of their research, and food comes from grocery stores completely disconnected in their minds from farmers, agriculture, seasons and shipping technologies. In our location, today is the longest day of the year. Tonight is the shortest night of the year. The sun will not set over The North Pole […]

solar controller upgrade

The beast of a solar panel was too much for the economy controllers I tried. As I mentioned in my previous article about it, solar power upgrade, I put an antique ammeter on the incoming power that I could know how much was hitting the controller and a blade switch in the line so I could cut off the incoming juice when it became too much. This was not a system I could just leave on its own. If I was ever going to be able to ignore it, and if I wanted to absorb maximum power from the sun on this system I needed to upgrade the controller. When my refund from the smoked controller arrived I did […]

TARGET: BITTERROOT

On June 4th I published the warning from ANTIFA that they were heading out to make rural America feel just as unsafe as their big city counterparts. Here is the headline and a blurb from that article: BULLETIN: Antifa moving attacks to rural heartland this weekend “Today Natural News has learned that Antifa operatives are organizing a plan to bus large numbers of Antifa terrorists to the vicinity of Sparta, Illinois, where they will be directed to target rural white Americans by burning farm houses and killing livestock. The purpose of the attack, according to sources, is so that Antifa can send a message to white America that “not even rural whites are safe” from the reach of Antifa, and […]

keeping your cool, Montana style

Montana Air Conditioning   Open windows mornings  – cool house below 70 Summer acclimated bodies need long sleeves When outside temperatures rise to 70 close windows Yard work best be completed before noon Fans are often appreciated afternoons and evenings So are cool drinks – remember nice, cool, clear water Watch outside thermometers Open windows when evening cool finally arrives —————— I printed this out as a reference document; posted it under refrigerator magnets on, where else?, the fridge. In case you want a neatly formatted copy for your fridge, here is a .pdf of it. Montana air conditioning.pdf […]

cello video

As I post this it has over 3 million views. The link takes you to a Twitter video clip of a young cellist over-dubbing multiple parts with videos of each simultaneously. Oh, just watch this. Cute. Clever. Knight Rider – had quite a few requests for this one and no wonder because it's a total banger pic.twitter.com/7C6Gq6Kn5u — Samara Ginsberg (@samaracello) May 23, 2020

I outran my supply train

In war college military leaders are taught that the leading elements must not outrun their supply train. The resultant troops without food and guns without ammo are doomed to failure. I am also reminded of a famous World War I lesson from Corporal, later Sergeant York: I teched off the sixth man first; then the fifth; then the fourth; and so on. That’s the way we shoot wild turkeys at home. You see we don’t want the front ones to know that we’re getting the back ones, and then they keep on coming until we get them all. Of course , I hadn’t time to think of that. I guess I jes naturally did it. I knowed, too, that if […]

Ma Nature to the rescue

With a year-round creek running through our yard we do have a wasp infestation problem. It was overwhelming with nests all over our house, out buildings, just about any structure in our yard, and the barn/shop rafters were full of them. We hired professional big guns to bring some level of balance to the situation. I put out some wasp traps as soon as the insects began to move this spring (that is supposed to get the queens before they start reproducing), but the intended targets just laughed at me. We scheduled a date for the eradicators next month. As much as I dislike chemicals, I like even less being assaulted as I go about my daily business. This week […]

.45 vs 20-gauge

There are three standards in the shooting community that are simply not worth challenging within a group chatting behind the firing lines. Chief among them are the irrefutable power of the .45 ACP (“forty five”), the superiority of the 1911 (“nineteen eleven”) among handgun platforms, and the requirement that shotguns must be 12 gauge. Even if not a majority, the acolytes will be adamant, staunch and vociferous in defense of the aforementioned religions. You may not lose, but you will never win those arguments. Fortunately we are here not there. I brook no counter-arguments, in fact I don’t want to police a comments section so there is no possibility of any back talk. Thus ‘my truth’ is THE TRUTH. That’s […]

a basic home armory

Inspired by the “10 Guns Worth Keeping” article that I copied and linked below is my more fundamental version of that here. Author Bob Campbell describes his double-handful with make/model specificity that is always welcome to people considering one or another of the recommendations. However, as I read through the article I was confident that my long and short guns were functionally every bit as good as his favorites, perhaps better in my opinion. Of course opinions are like ________ , everybody has one. I am a mid-pack shooter with at least a little experience in most shooting sports, and have at various times been student, competitor, certified and active as a junior rifle coach, range officer and president of […]