Zebra Swallowtail - White River AR

 

Another young Waksman photo

 I am proud I was a sportsman from a young age. It never developed much.

In this shot I am catching small fries in the Tarn River.

Driving to Las Vegas and Back with Barb

Before I forget our stops:

Heading out:

Wilkes Barre PA, Pittsburgh, Sikeston MO, Webb Lake on the White River AR, Clarendon TX, Winslow AZ, Las Vegas

On the way back:

Tucumcari NM, Mt Vernon MO, Clayton OH, Pittsburgh, HOME.

We camped at Webb Lake and in Clarendon TX. Clarendon is a town full of nice people. I talked to the Lady at the motel, the Sherriff, the mechanic "Byron" who was recommended by the lady (he vented our condensation duct, for the price of a handshake), and the gentlemen running the water authority plant. The poor town got 0.58 inches of rain last year and I hope they do better this summer. I see a couple thunderstorms in their forecast. We discussed how beavers couldn't work with total drought.

I can tell you I took my grandchildren to see my little hill in Hidden Valley. I failed to engage them, as I got more interested in what is under my own feet. On the subject of archaeology, I failed to get to any river's gravel. Although I saw many fine stretches of gravel as we drove, they are all fenced off. Even in parks that contain a river, the river is fenced off. I found it particularly annoying in Winslow AZ, where Homolovi Park surrounds a stretch of the Little Colorado -and yet has the river fenced off from visitors. What a pain! By contrast I got to the edge of the White River in AR and it was high water and silted in. IN fact I failed to get to gravel at every river I tried:

Ct river in Glastonbury; the Susquehanna in Wikes Barre, the White River in AR, the Salt Fork of the Red River (in Clarendon) - where I actually did hit up a bit of gravel walking around the shrunken lake. The Little Colorado in Winslow AZ. Parenthetically, I nearly got on some gravel next to the Newark Octagon: there is a Racoon Creek behind some gas stations. Would have been well worth a look but it was a steep bank with poison ivy and uncertain footing. 

I had planned to need an oil change, somewhere on the way back. It happened near the MO border with Indiana. So we started looking for a garage in Marshall IL. We called the first name on the list and the guy was scheduling out till the next week. So at a gas station I asked an elderly guy if he knew a garage and, seemingly exasperated, he said there was a place just north of the highway. So I went there and "Randy" said they were closed. I assumed they had just closed, and I said "please", thinking they would just be open a few more minutes. So they changed my oil. Then the guy said they were actually closed permanently. I gave him and extra $20 but I think I took advantage of his good will. Nice mechanics everywhere.

I should also mention some food experiences. I had my first Chicken Fried Steak with white gravy and mashed potatoes in Las Vegas. I had an exquisite second example at Del's in Tucumcari on Rt 66. I never had Chicken fried steak and -boy- is it good. I also had a great birria corn taco in Las Vegas. Later I had a great Ham Hock at a large German restaurant in Pittsburgh, with out friends the Ratz's.

A little joke or two

 - There are no clouds on the horizon

 - ....er.... that's not the horizon.

Another: The espresso was no better than what you can get at a gas station [or variants]

My friend Dave Larson re-enters the picture

After ignoring my phone calls for several months, for whatever reason, an old friend decided to get in touch again. He added to his previous poem (see here):

SEARCHING FOR ARROWHEADS IN NEVADA WITH PETER WAKSMAN

The breath of the ancient ones did flow

Carried by westerly winds to the soul

Treading lightly on their hallowed ground

Through light and silence, there was no sound

Searching for signs of their time on earth

Carefully sifting through stones, desert hearth

Looking to find simple marks of their time

Migrating across this timeless sublime

The ancient ones can fill your soul

With dreams and visions that take their toll

Eyes to the ground but look up ahead

A stone circle gathering place we are lead

We can sense and feel their feet at the fire

As they rested, and ate, smoke rings rising higher

To see their lives and works turned to dirt

Opens the window of death... and it hurt 

I was hungry so I painted the garage

The title "I was hungry, so I painted the garage" was an example of a non-sequitur that can be resolved with an intermediary narrative. For example, 

I was hungry and walking into town. I saw a woman working in the yard of a house and she said she would give me a meal if I painted the garage. I was hungry, so I painted the garage.

The point of this story is that the phrase "I was happy, so I patted the dog" works without an invented narrative, because we all know that passion evokes action. 

To explain "I was hungry so I went to the kitchen" is a little more work.

Flowery language

 You could cut the tension with a fork.

Sunset across Gardiner Rd

 

Peter Waksman as a young hunter

 

Stories can continue

 The lowest level assumption of transitivity is that 

A story can continue from where it left off. 

To illustrate the meaning of this, consider the statement: 

If you can get from A to B and from B to C, then you can get from A to C. 

This is functionally false if you forget everything that just happened when you get to B. Who remembers A at that point? Or, by contrast, if you do remember getting to B from A, then you can remember that as you get to C and remember the whole sequence. It must play as a story that is being continued.

Another example is: if a<b and b<c then a<c. Mathematically we say b-a is positive and c-b is positive, so c-a is positive. But that is because c-a = (c-b) + (b-a) and the sum of two positives is a positive. Adding two numbers together is a narrative that is continued from a, to a+, to a+b.

In these cases, there is a preserving of information through the intermediate step, embodied in the idea of a story continuing. Am I overcomplicating this? The idea is that information from an earlier part of the story is still available if the story is continued. In my linguistics, this is built into the persistence of a ledger.

Fluffy Yeast Donuts

I have been trying to make yeast donuts and failing pretty miserably. I am not sure the ingredients are critical, so much as the method of kneading and yeast prep. So, you are going to make a typical dough with 2-cups of flour and about a total 1 cup of liquid, counting the egg. Finally payed attention to what was said in this guy's video: The apron - YouTube

Wet:

I use about 1/3 cups warm milk, 1 tsp yeast, 2 tbs sugar. Let sit till it foams, then add a stirred egg.

Dry:

2 cups King Arthur flour, 1-2 tbs more sugar, 1/4 tsp salt, stirred together

Mix wet and dry plus ((add another 1/2 cup milk), till you get a sticky mass. Add that extra moisture gradually. Then add 2 tbs of soft (salted) butter.  

Keep stirring the sticky mass until it becomes more silken. Turn out onto a surface. Do not add more flour, just keep working the dough with hands and spatulas. Eventually it becomes smooth and less sticky, and passes the "windowpane" test.

Let rise till doubled. Then punch down, roll out 1/2 inch thick, cut into 6-8 pieces. Roll each into a ball and punch a hole through it, placing each piece on a small piece of parchment paper. After the doughnuts are rolled and placed on paper, let them double again.

Then deep fat fry for 1-2 minutes a side. Take each one off its paper, without handling or deflating. And drop in the oil for 1-2 minutes a side. Not too fast or the insides are raw, not too slow or it gets greasy. They say you want 150-160 degrees but, by now, I have figured out where to set the burner dial.

The ideal is somewhere near golden brown, with a white ring around its equator. I dust them with granulated sugar mixed with cinnamon. But now that I have figured out how to get fluffy donuts, I might try a glaze.

Note: I have always had trouble getting a foam to form on top of my initial yeast+sugar+milk mixture. It is very helpful to warm the milk to body temp or slightly above. Then let sit for 15 minutes.

Spy vs Spy

How about a thriller plot where a web of Iranian sleeper cells became aware of a web of Israeli sleeper cells and -somehow- destroyed them while redeeming themselves with the US public.

3 Neanderthals loading a wooly mammoth carcass in back of a pickup truck

'If...then' or 'After...and'

I am in the habit of taking logical primitives and examining the original language version of them. So, for "then" in "if...then", I am clear that it simply means to come next, i.e. it has the same meaning as "and".

 - I went to school and went to the store and came home.

  - I went to school then went to the store then came home.

So much for "then". What about the "if" in "if....then"?

I have been considering this as some kind of trigger setup, but more simply it is saying: "after this happens, then that happens". The "if" simply means "after".

The trigger mechanism is related to playing out the narrative.

Cathy Cramer's House in the snow

Now look what the "Copilot" AI did to clean this up:

A nice picture of Esque

The AI did this, which I like.

Still playing with the chatbot imaging

This is its re-rendering of the morning sunlight on snow I sketched the other day.

Interesting. Originally:

Hitting the limit

Not only did I hit a limit on how many pictures I could ask it to draw, I think I reached a limit on the utility of having a chatbot draw my pictures.

Then look what happened:

Testing chatbot image generation

I gave it this text:

Scene: an elderly Red Dragon, wearing glasses and trying to take apart a delicate gear assembly. His claws keep getting in the way and he fumbles a small part on the floor. "Darnit!" he says and emits a small belch, melting the whole thing by mistake. It is tempting to have commentary to the effect that red dragons can spit on themselves by mistake, causing minor pain, like stubbing your toe.

Turing in reverse

How about a chatbot trying to prove it is not human.

Got Bing Chatbot to draw a scene from the Boy and the Dragon

 This is where Esque and Tom commandeer Otto's Boat:

Otto offers Esque a piece of Malachite. The extra man is a chatbot error.

Here is a version of Bark, done with one of my sketches as a starting point:

Not bad.

An insight into adjective order

Considering the difference between "big, red ball" and "red, big ball", the former allows both adjectives to accumulate for a ball object, while the latter forces 'red' to be a single adjective of a compound "big ball" object.

I have been writing about lexicons of object (topic) types and wrestling with how colored sub-types are defined before sized subtypes. The lexicon itself defines 'isKindOf' relations that are physical and only one-way. So, the adjective order is hard-wired and, presumably, it comes from the history of how those object types were stored to create the actual lexicon. In other words, it comes down to the timing when those adjective types were acquired.

When the Swiss Chard cooks the Swiss Chard

I was thinking about mathematics and how, so often, the entities become self-reflexive - like when "1" is used as the endpoint of an interval that started at "0". As I drifted off to sleep, I started thinking about a leaf of Swiss Chard cooking a pan of Swiss Chard. 

Had a nice snowfall

Is what goes unmentioned still there?

Let's say you have a pet dog named Rover. You know lots of things about Rover but you could have an entire conversation about the tricks you taught him without ever mentioning those other things. Here is my question: in what state are those other things during that time?

Apple Empanada

So, if you make a dough with 1 cup of flour 1/2 tsp of salt and 1/2 tsp of baking powder, 1/4 stick of butter and 1/3 cup milk. Then wrap pieces of it around slightly stewed apple/cinnamon/sugar/butter filling. This gives you a starter empanada. You can certainly bake it but if you fry it in peanut oil until golden brown, you get something pretty delicious.

Was thinking of calling them "Apple Fried Hand Pies".

Sunset from 103 Gardiner Rd

 Sunset from 103 Gardiner Rd - upper house.

Onion Fritters

Got this from the internet. (No eggs needed). It is really good.

Ingredients: 1 large white onion, 1/3 cup flour, 1/3 cup milk, 1/2 tsp salt, pepper and paprika to taste.

Slice onion as thinly as possible

Mix ingredients thoroughly. The result is slightly clumpy but does not really hold together. 

Heat peanut and olive oil in cast iron skillet - maybe ~1/4 inch deep. Turn to high heat.

Drop clumps of onion mixture, flatten out to make a pancake shape. Let cook for ~5 minutes, on each side - till brown but not black.

Chicken with Mushrooms

Cut chicken breasts into equal thickness pieces. Salt, pepper, paprika, etc. all surfaces of the pieces, thoroughly. Fry pieces in oil, on med high for 2-3 minutes on each side. Remove pieces to the side. Put chopped onions in pan and cook till translucent, put sliced mushrooms in and cook for a while. Add a small (!) amount of flour and cook for 2-3 more minutes. Put chicken back in pan and add chicken broth till chicken pieces are partially submerged. Cook for 20-30 minutes. At the end, add 1/3 cup of cream.

Serve over rice or mashed potatoes - especially with leftovers.

Golden Milk

My dieting routine is a small lunch and dinner with minimal between meal snacking and a drink in the afternoon. This leaves me quite hungry and uncomfortable in the morning, so I started drinking "golden milk" as follows:

Warm 1 mug if milk in saucepan. Add:

1/2 tsp turmeric

1 tsp ginger

pinch of cinnamon (easy does it)

pinch of black pepper (easy does it)

Wisk contents and bring up to a simmer. When it becomes fragrant like a cow, say around 4 min. of heating, remove from heat and add 1 tsp of honey.

***

While waiting for the milk, I take a heaping 1/2 tsp of fenugreek, add a drop of honey, and stir it into about 3 tbs of yogurt. Properly mixed, it is good and I eat it before drinking the milk.

This is a yummy and satisfying breakfast. Milk and honey have low glycemic indices. Fenugreek allows the body to absorb the turmeric.

Face on a Devil's Foot Rock

I thought I already posted this, but I could not find it, so I am posting now. The face apparent in the foreground rock is, I feel, too deliberate to ignore. Rather, it is an important clue as to all the different things that went on, on this island in Woods Hole harbor.