I’ve had a terrible track record over the last month writing here, I’ve noticed. The last month has been busy and stressful, and yet pleasant and productive. Still, not a month I’d like to repeat any time soon. I did manage to have wonderful visits with family both old and new, nearly finished building the two greenhouses, and fenced in a portion of the back yard for the puppy. Seed catalogs have arrived, so I’m now deciding what to grow this year, and that gives me a lot to look forward to. As you may well know, this year saw me (us, really, but it’s so much easier to write on my page in the first person) make the jump from having a large personal garden to a small market garden. I’ve got this goal of having the farm completely pay for itself, including mortgage and everything, within five years. Well, four now. And the first year was a good healthy start toward that. There were a number of things that could have been done better, so that gives me goals to work on this year. One of my biggest disappointments this year was not being able to document the creation of the farm with pictures. I suppose I could have broken down and snapped lots of 35mm shots, but the time and expense involved wasn’t worth it. I’m expecting some extra income in five weeks, and I’ll do my best to apply some of that toward a decent digital camera so I can document this year’s efforts. It’s been a joy (and an incredible amount of sheer physical labor) to hack out a nurturing environment out of land that have been neglected and in some parts abused over the last umpteen years. I’d love to be able to show it off through pictures, in some part to brag, and in another part to inspire others to do the same. Speaking of the farm, I’ve made a number of changes to the website over the last month, including converting all the newsletters to PDF, adding an easy to search table of them all, and updating details of how folks can buy into our “Meal Plan”. I’ve been doing lots of fun behind-the-scenes web work lately. As of yesterday, I am president of the Town and Gown Players, the Athens-based community theater work I’ve been involved with over the last five years. The year coming up will mark our 50th season, and there are a lot of plans in the works to commemorate the occasion. One of my goals as president will be to change the group of people in charge of the organization, the Board of Directors, from a group focused on the operation of the theater into a group focus on governing the theater. It’s a hard idea to succinctly write about here, but in effect the board has in the past been so wrapped up in getting everything done that is needed to put up twelve different plays a year that it hasn’t had any time to address the continued sustainability of the players. The very real possibility exists that increased competition and expenses could drive us right out of business. One problem that has been pointed out be several advisors we’ve had in during the last few years is the rapid turnover of board members – we have yearly elections and the board effectively cycles every 12 months. This means that a lot of time gets spent just getting up to speed on the tasks at hand and institutional memory becomes almost impossible to maintain. So, I’ve been working on a suite of web-based tools that may make that part of the job less painful. It includes job how-tos for the benefit of new members, calendars showing when things need to get done, easy to update information about upcoming shows and events, and so forth. Just having everything in one place, accessible on demand, will make a huge difference. And the time saved can be put to better use. Soon, I’ll include the public pages in this system. I’d like to change things around on this page, too, but I don’t yet know what exactly. I’ll just keep thinking about it.

Peace to you and yours!

Prof. George W. Hart, of the Computer Science Department at SUNY Stony Brook, has an enviable web presence. His Encyclopedia of Polyhedra alone is worth the visit, his geometric sculptures make the nerd in me weep at their beauty, and his trilobite recipe looks mighty yummy.

I’ve added a copyright notice to the bottom of this page, using one of the licenses released today by Creative Commons. I’ve granted permission to use anything of my creation from this weblog for any non-commercial purpose. You can copy my wrings verbatim or use any of my photographs, so long as you give me credit. You can re-use my creations to create works of your own (such as photoshopping one of my photographs), so long as you release the resulting work under this same license. One of my biggest complaints about society is how industry is claiming exclusive rights to things that ought to be (and have always been) common property, and how industry takes advantage of creators for its own financial gain (see the RIAA, for example), and how our lawmakers allow this behavior and encourage it by granting virtual unlimited copyright and patent lengths. Besides complaining, it doesn’t appear that there is a lot I can do. But I’ve found ways that, while small in themselves, add up. I buy music directly from the artist. I grow heirloom vegetables naturally. I avoid patronizing companies that abuse the medical and agricultural systems. And I can share my creations with the world. Creative Commons didn’t make this possible, but they have made it absurdly easy. And if its easy, perhaps most everyone will do the same and before we know it, the big industries will lose some of their power.

Something akin to a small tornado tore through the farm today, just before I left for work. The sky got very dark, so I couldn’t see, the rain fell might hard, and the big wind came. It only lasted a few minutes, and then all was calm again. I went outside to find the small chciken huts in the neighbors pasture. The tin roof on his well house was peeled back. Several trees across the driveway were down. The only “damage” to our house was the satellite dish was popinted in a new direction. I cleaned up what I could and then left for work. There were only two trees down across the highway that I had to wait for the crew to cut. The scariest sight was seeing the car that spun around and impaled itself on a guard rail. Right through the drivers side door. The authorities were on the scene already, so I didn’t stop. In other news, I found a tiny screwdriver today and took apart my handspring visor. I looked at all the pieces, and then carefully put them all back together again. When the last screw was back in place, it seemed to work again. We’ll see how long that lasts.

One day shy of exactly a year after it arrived, my Hanspring Visor has given up the ghost. I don’t know what the problem is exactly, but I suspect the built-in rechargable battery developed a short in its connection with the unit, and now it doesn’t work at all. The warrenty was only for 90 days, and the repair cost will be just a few dollars shy of buying a new one. So I guess I’ll need to hunt around on ebay for a cheap replacement. I’ve grown far too attached to the thing to just not use it anymore.

Thanks to another coincidental confluence of events I’m known for, it looks like I’ll get to meet Alton Brown at a private undisclosed location in a couple hours. More later… UPDATE: The location was a small classroom in the Fine Arts building at UGA. Mr. Brown is a graduate of the program, and stopped by to talk about his experiences in the TV world. There were less than two dozen people there, and the event lasted about two hours. He talked less about food and more about the production process and how he got from a film student to where he is today. The talk was great, the opportunity to have him sign my copy of his book was unexpected, and opening the door for a possible huge event for Boánn’s Banks was exhilarating.

You might not have known it from my lack of updating, but we survived Thanksgiving quite nicely. Despite all the cooking, I found the whole weekend very relaxing. Read a nice thick book from cover to cover (Larry Niven’s Lucifer’s Hammer. Very good, well deserving of the classic status it’s reached.), saw Star Wars Episode II on an IMAX screen (I’d missed it up until now and thought I’d have to see it on a TV, so this made me very happy. The dialogue, not so happy.), and even mostly finished building one of the two greenhouses. The first winter storm has hit today. I may well be iced in come morning.

Today’s Menu

• Cheese Tray
  • Georgia Chevre
  • North Carolina Raw Milk Farmer’s Cheese
  • American Smoked Mozzerella
  • French Raw Milk Blue
  • Basque Raw Sheep’s Milk Cheese
• Missouri Spumanti mixed with Cranberry Juice
• Roast Cornish Game Hens with Wild Rice and Mushroom Stuffing
• Roasted Local Sweet Potatoes
• Pureed Creamy Parsnips (from our farm)
• Broccoli and Pesto (from our farm)
• Mashed Heirloom Turnips (from our farm)
• Braised Winter Greens (from our farm)
• Freshly Churned Eggnog Ice Cream
• Poached Pear and Almond Tart

The seating area is now full. We are accepting reservations for next year.

I’ve just blown the afternoon reliving my college days – or, more specifically, my college nights -- by reading an on-line account of the exploits of New Mexico Tech’s Stealth Force Beta. Led by General Sasquatch (who was also known during his student career as publisher of the student newspaper and student body president), Stealth Force Beta got themselves into every nook and cranny possible on campus and performed daring feats of “constructive vandalism” before graduation dispersed the team. The members of this team were all a year or two ahead of me, but given the small and isolated nature of the school, I knew all of them very well. Thanks to their code of secrecy, I didn’t even know the undercover nature of the group existed, and could only speculate that they were involved in the vandalism incidents. Interestingly enough, my more immediate circle of friends were similar enough to this bunch that we were doing many of the exact same things, often at the same time. Because of that, I got a special joy reading these – I’d been through similar trials or had solved the same problems differently. The General has always been a great story teller. Even those many of you that have never heard of Tech other than through my ramblings should enjoy what he’s got here. And maybe in a year or two, when the statute of limitations expires for me, I can add to the Tech lore with stories about the Eaton Hall Social Club, the Office Supply Store, the Midnight Mining Society* , using well-practiced clandestine entry techniques to win Killer and Laser Tag games, and other bits of fun. One thing that surprised me was the group’s concern about being spotted by Campus Police. Once, while caught in a potentially compromising position during one of my activities, I assumed an attitude of “I’m only doing what I’m supposed to be doing”. The patrolling officer came over to me, shined the light on me, and said, “Oh! It’s you.” And he went on his way. Techies who were there at the same time as me may enjoy the brief cameo by “Bouncy Ball Jack”. He annoyed the entire student body, and I fondly remember the time I accidentally kicked his bouncing ball a few hundred yards down the longest sidewalk on campus. I wouldn’t have ever done it on purpose and couldn’t have recreated it if I tried, but the event coupled with his reaction to it made it priceless. * Actually, the cover of that bit of fun got blown wide open when the entire local Search and Rescue team got called out, featuring Schlake in a full anti-radiation suit, just because we’d asked for a rope ladder. After laying low for a bit, we resumed, only to be halted again when the area we used became the target zone for heavy artillery testing.