Dig The Beets From Your Ground, Cut The Grapes From Your Vine

Looking at the pictures of "cotton picking" made me remember how my back felt after a day of that shit, and reminded me of those that came to work for us and help us bring in the crop.

The last time that we had a collapsed economy us Okies and Arkies were the "aliens" in Arizona and California. We were the type of people actually turned back from their borders. Yet, here we are in Oklahoma contemplating a law similar to the ones from the 1930's that were used to keep us out of those states. Truely we are thinking about copying Arizona's law. Our Grandparents would understand wouldn't they?

PASTURES OF PLENTY

It's a mighty hard row that my poor hands have hoed
My poor feet have traveled a hot dusty road
Out of your Dust Bowl and Westward we rolled
And your deserts were hot and your mountains were cold

I worked in your orchards of peaches and prunes
I slept on the ground in the light of the moon
On the edge of the city you'll see us and then
We come with the dust and we go with the wind

California, Arizona, I harvest your crops
Well its North up to Oregon to gather your hops
Dig the beets from your ground, cut the grapes from your vine
To set on your table your light sparkling wine

Green pastures of plenty from dry desert ground
From the Grand Coulee Dam where the waters run down
Every state in the Union us migrants have been
We'll work in this fight and we'll fight till we win

It's always we rambled, that river and I
All along your green valley, I will work till I die
My land I'll defend with my life if it be
Cause my pastures of plenty must always be free

--Woody Guthrie

Stripping, Picking, Pulled, and Picked

Farming has changed.
The terms used in farming are beginning to die.
I mean go into your local ACE et.al. hardware store and ask for chicken wire and you might get a clerk who knows what that is. Now ask for hardware cloth and you'll be shit out of luck even though they sell it and it is on the shelf labeled "screen" next to the Chicken Wire.

Dragging a twelve foot sack in tall cotton @ 2cents a pound.

Recently I start a project (as though I needed another) to build a model of a two row tractor mounted John Deere Stripper. Now I know that almost no one except those of us who have bent over the cotton rows knows the differences between pulling bolls and picking cotton. (Cotton picking means you reach around the cotton ball and pull the fiber from the cotton burr. Pulling bolls means you cup your fingers behind the cotton burr and pull the whole thing, burr and cotton ball off together). That may seen insignificant but if you've ever picked cotton you know that those burrs stick in the ends of your finger tips and hurt like hell until you develop a callous there a half inch think or so. Boll pulling can be done with gloves on and the sharp burrs don't get you unless you are careless.

Picking cotton out of the burr.

Now in my quest for information about the mechanical cotton harvester know as a two row stripper, I was reminded that mechanical cotton strippers are often confused with mechanical cotton pickers. Now a mechanical cotton picker picks cotton just like the people used to pick cotton in that it picks the cotton fiber out of the burr leaving it intact on the plant and the plant itself green and alive. Cotton picked can be picked more than once as latter flowers bud into cotton bolls.

Mechanical cotton picker of the modern ilk.

Cotton stripping on the other hand strips the plant of all the cotton bolls at the same time pulling off the whole boll, burr, fiber, and all. A plant can only be stripped once. So in order to reduce trash in the stripped cotton the plants are normally defoliated before they are harvest thus eliminating the leaves and the green covering behind the boll itself. A field ready to strip then has been covered with a defoliant and is brown and dead when stripped.

Two row tractor mounted cotton stripper c.a. 1950's.

Thus there are four terms discussed here:
Cotton Stripper
Cotton picker
Picking cotton
Pulling Bolls

A ripe cotton boll.

Test will be next Thursday.

Saw this happen once, just thought I'd add the picture here.

Next lesson: How To Ride a Go Devil.

I Sleep With An Older Woman

Well she is older than most of America, but she is not older than me. Indeed, she was a teenager when I married her going on 44 years ago and I, well, I was not. Today is her birthday. So Happy Birthday to the woman fool enough to marry a skinny ugly proto-fatman with no prospects, no education, and no money. What the hell were you thinking?

I know what I was thinking. I was thinking , well "a good woman is so hard to find." so I would make her into one myself. She was cute and smart and had wide hips for child bearing (I used to judge dairy cattle when I was in FFA).

Well turns out she had similar thoughts about me. Not the hips, but that I might be made into a "good man". Most times those transitions don't work out to well. As we went along I discovered she was the best of women already and that she really could whoop me up into a semblance of a good man.

She had me under construction from the get go.

We went a lot of places together when we were younger.

(older too)

Some places were further away than others.

But she went along and carried her weight. She didn't want me to take pictures back then cause she was too fat.

I can't say that she always appreciated the trips we made.

I've always accused her of just being a kid herself. (She taught 4th grade the last three years before her retirement so that she would have someone to play with)

Speaking of kids, we had three of them.

She was one heck of a mother.

(and would make one hell of a grandmother)

Jacks anyone?

"No we can't take this home with us."

Even today she wants to go along and do things with her children.

True it doesn't always work out just right.

(I'll let her blog about this one)

And she has never quite gotten rid of her attitude.

But I'm sure there are many more birthdays to come and I hope I'll be here to share them all with her regardless of that attitude.

I love you woman!

Happy Birthday!

Rule of Law ? : Oklahoma U.S. Senate Republicans Say To Hell With The Law We Won't Pay

House pressured to pass stripped-down war measure

By ANDREW TAYLOR, Associated Press Writer Andrew Taylor, Associated Press Writer – Fri Jul 23, 6:36 am ET

WASHINGTON – After a take-it-or-leave-it vote by the Senate, House Democrats face little choice but to drop more than $20 billion in domestic spending from a must pass bill funding President Barack Obama's troop surge in Afghanistan.

The Senate rejected the House measure, passed earlier this month, by a 46-51 vote that fell short of a majority, much less the 60 votes required to defeat a filibuster.

"The measure... does not provide more than $4 billion requested by the administration to finance settlements of long-standing lawsuits against the government, including $1.2 billion to remedy discrimination by the Agriculture Department against black farmers and $3.4 billion for mismanaging Indian Trust Funds.

These Court Ordered funds have been blocked by Oklahoma Senators over and over and over again......

The U.S. Department of Agriculture was found by the Courts to have discriminated against minority farmers for decades and awarded them compensation.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs was found by the Courts to have stolen and squandered billions of dollars of money that should have gone to Native American tribes over the past 50 years.

The rulings were all appealed and upheld.

But the U.S. Congress time and again has refused to pay the judgement. Specifically the Republicans in the Senate continue to block paying what is owed these Americans.

Spite? Meaness? Stupidity? Ignorance? Racism?

Who knows? But it is certainly not complying with the "Rule of Law" under the "Constitution".
Big talk from stingy greedy little people, Oklahoma's own included. We believe in the rule of law except when we don't.

How many tribal Oklahomans are personally continue to be robbed of their just payments by their own Senators? How many Black Oklahoma Farmers have been destroyed and lost or will lose their farms because of their own Senators? Just who do these old wealthy supposedly Christian white men represent anyway? Certainly not those wanting justice. certainly not those wanting the "Rule of Law". Have they no decency? Have they no shame?

How about those of us who continue to support them? We are the guilty ones aren't we? Are they doing what Oklahomans want them to do?

The End of the Happy Trails

If your not over 40 years old then Roy Rogers must be an unkown or vauge character to you. Someone mentioned in the lyrics of a Lyle Lovett song perhaps, or maybe you bought a hamburger at a fast food place with his name on it.

But for us old geezers, Roy was the "King Of The Cowboys".

He has been dead 12 years now. Yesterday and today they auctioned of the stuff from the Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Museum.

The Museum was in Victorville California for many years. We drove by time and again on the way to the in-laws' home. Never stopped. always wanted too but....

In 2003 they moved the museum to Branson, Missouri, a play ground place for middle aged middle America.

I guess Roy's allure had faded away by then, cause it only lasted less than seven years in that location. So now they are auctioning off Roy's stuff.

Trigger Roy's Palomino and the star of a bazillion B-movies and a TV show was auctioned.

The original Trigger died in 1953 over 57 years ago. He was stuffed and mounted in his famous rearing stand and displayed in the Roy's museum.



Trigger sold yesterday for almost a quarter of a million dollars.

Bullet the Wonder Dog who was Roy and Dale's personal pet dog became a star in the Roy Rogers TV Series. Again stuffed and mounted Bullet fetch $35,000 at auction.

It is not the end of the trail for Roy and this dog and horse, but the happy trail part is definitely over.

Icons-Iconoclast-Iconoronism : Reflection on the deaths of Steinbrenner and Jackson

While reflecting on the deaths of George Steinbrenner and Michael Jackson I was reminded of two elements that actual made them what they were and are and will be. 1. The new era of visual communication outside of the alphabet. 2. The need of all of us to undermine and subvert the order of our times.
George and Michael were animated organic Graffiti for the masses. Icons performing the iconoclastic function necessary for iconoronism.


Icons:
Pictorial representations of objects, important not only for aesthetic reasons as part of the visual identity of a program, but also for utilitarian reasons as shorthand for conveying meaning that users perceive almost instantaneously.
--Windows Vista Instructions


Warhol by Ron English

Iconoclasts: [French iconoclaste, from Medieval Greek eikonoklastēs, smasher of religious images, eikono-, icono-, + Greek -klastēs, breaker (from Greek klān, klas-, to break).]
(noun)
One who attacks and seeks to overthrow traditional or popular ideas or institutions.
One who destroys sacred religious images.


The United Steaks of America by Dominic Episcopo

Iconoclast:
The original iconoclast were Christians who went around with hammers breaking up Greek religious alters and Pagan idols. Later, they were again Christians, who wandered around breaking up Christians alters and Christian Idols. Still later they were Muslims blowing up Buddhist Idols in Afghanistan.


big eye marilyn with mickeys by Ron English




by Max Papeschi




by Ron English



loch ness starry night by Ron English




by Max Papeschi

Unicorn Meat available at Think Geek for $9.95 plus shipping

by Ron English

mcbigboy at bigben by Ron English

by Max Papeschi

By Ron English

By Max Papeschi

by Max Papeschi

Abraham Obama by Ron English

Iconoronism:

"We all know that many cultural figures have been lauded for their iconoclasm. they are said to be abrasive and ironic about society, life, people, values, and institutions. they undermine, counter, subvert, question, and/or mock all things that we take for granted as conventional wisdom or truth. yet, such ironists have, ironically, become icons either thru their own design/intention or by the adulation of their fans, among whom are many influential figures who control the cultural institutions. this is both amusing and distressing. how is it that these figures who are admired for their iconoclasm have become surrounded by a new kind of iconography. instead of serving as models, they serve as giants or gods. by looking up to them, it's as though we don't have to ironic or iconoclastic ourselves on an individual basis. instead, we can just slavishly rely on the Great Maverick to do the rebelling, questioning, and subverting for us."

--Jean-Luc Godard and Bob Dylan Iconoronism

Looking for a single portal to the world of the visuals pictured above try : The Jailbreak

The Hand of God: Sometimes Simple Is Stupendous

There is an example of a simple concept that makes a big impression. It is in the Atacama Desert. It is known as the "Hand of God". Art is as much where as what.

Waveland, Mississippi Screwed Again

July 8, 2010
Mississippi coast faces environmental crisis

By Leigh Coleman
WAVELAND, Mississippi (Reuters) - Coastal Mississippi is facing its biggest environmental crisis since Hurricane Katrina as oil from a leaking BP well in the Gulf of Mexico fouls its beaches and creeps onto inshore wetlands.
People watched in horror on Thursday as high tides washed oil onto beaches in the southeast of the state and in some cases the chunks of hardened oil floating offshore were as big as a school bus, said Long Beach Mayor Billy Skellie.
The previous day, oily water breached a sea wall and cascaded onto a coast road, leaving sticky patches.
It also flowed into a stretch of marsh, coating around one mile of marsh grass where it has the potential to do long-term harm to a delicate ecosystem. In one spot, fishermen pulled crab traps from the marsh bed only to discover that all the crabs were dead."
More: HERE

A Rose By Any Other Name... What Should It Be Called

A rose is a rose is a rose....

Unless it is an apple.

A rose and an apple may be from the same family of plants but an apple is not a rose.

Names are important. Cut an apple in half, from side to side, and you can see its ancestor the original five petal rose, but no one wants rose pie a la mode.

So when the phrase BP "oil spill" is used as it is each day now, it totally misses the mark as to what is being described. It is not a spill. A "spill" is something you mop up. A "spill" has a given specific volume that makes up the spill. You can spill a cup of coffee. You can spill a truck load of dirt. You can even spill an tanker-ship of oil. But you can not "spill" an oil formation.

What has been done here in the Gulf is the poking of a hole in a oil formation within the earth.

Now that hole is allowing oil to empty from that formation under pressure and there is no set amount like in a spill and no end to it guaranteed except in politics and theory. So it is NOT A SPILL any more than an apple is a rose.

What is it? Is it a blowout? a runaway well? explosion? tragedy? All of these have been used and they are true except they represent generic events and single events with a beginning middle and end. So far with the Gulf all we have is a beginning and then "ongoing".

The term "spill" is hardly even partially adequate to what is happening.

All sort of words are being use or have been use to attempt to corral the meaning of this.

Editorial boards around the world have discussed what "words" to use. NPR has had stories about the "word".

There are cute words being used such as oilmageddon, and oiltastraphy etc. but this is not worthy of cute this time.

I have pondered and ruminated and have decide to use "eruption".

Oil well eruption...

Erupting oil...

Oil eruption...

Erupting well...

But even that seems insufficient. I mean that is not a well down there, it is a hole in an oil reservoir erupting continuously.

The ongoing oil eruption...

The continued eruption of oil...

The oil reservoir rending eruption...

Better but not strong enough.

Got any suggestions?

This needs terms that are correct but gut wrenching.

What would you call it?

Drink Ye All Of It !

The Whale, An Oil Recovery Vessel, Makes Lemonade.

I would like to think this was because someone was reading my blog, but the basic idea and opportunity is so damn obvious that I can not begin to take credit for it. Ah heck, why not! Look what I did!

This ship which arrived yesterday was modified to extract oil from the water just days after it was built and a week or so after the BP "oil spill".
Check out the video: "A Whale"