Metastasis

Thunderstorm over Wyoming rangeland near the Wind River Mountains, from a trip this summer.

For most of my life, I've had unanswered questions about my maternal grandparents. Both Oma and Opa came of age in Hitler's Germany.  I knew them both as good people, yet I also knew they had played significant roles in Germany's collective insanity leading to WWII.  

They were both members of the Hitler Youth, of which my grandmother related some fond memories -- hiking through the woods in big groups, singing, and camping. They came to this country as part of Operation Paperclip, my grandfather as one of Werner Von Braun's V-2 rocket scientists, and my grandmother having worked as one of Von Braun's secretaries. How could such good people have been part of what happened in Germany?  

Did they know Jewish people who had been taken away?  

They did.  But my grandmother says they were told that they had gone to "resorts".

Did they truly believe that?  Did they know more than they were willing to share?

How does an entire country lose their moral and ethical compass and either support or acquiesce to some of the greatest atrocities of the last century? Nazis, after all, are the *gold standard of evil* in most discussions. (unless they're Ukrainian Nazis, in which case they're the new paragon of virtue). 

Certainly there were some psychopathic individuals in Germany's leadership roles, but there were also some resistors (such as the "white rose" group). The vast majority of Germans, however, followed the psychopaths over the proverbial cliff of insanity.  My grandparents were no exception.

Dutch psychologist Mattias Desmet has produced by far the most convincing explanation for what happened in Germany, as the same phenomena has happened many times throughout history.  "Mass Formation" is his specialty, and is of special interest to me at the moment, because I believe I'm living through just such an event right now.

What is mass formation?  Orwell called it "groupthink".  Others have called it mass hypnosis, or mass psychosis.  It's probably best to get the answer from Mattias himself.  RFK Jr's interview of him is excellent.  To summarize, mass formation only arises when very specific conditions are present.   A collective fear, anxiety, and isolation are essential.  People in such a state are looking for a way out of their misery. Someone offers a solution, and it's immediately embraced by the masses, who are unconcerned with critical thought at that stage. 

The Solution gives them all a collective sense of meaning, of belonging, and a way out of their previously miserable state, and they will do everything to defend their new sense of salvation.  Desmet provides a perfect example of what those under the influence of mass formation are capable of, where an Iranian mother reported her son to state authorities and proudly placed the noose around his neck on the gallows.

Anyone who questions or points out serious problems with The Solution is ridiculed, ostracized, and typically destroyed, as anyone who questions The Solution is viewed as a threat -- as someone who would return everyone to The Problem.  This is exactly what happened to the White Rose Society in Germany.

Mass Formation is a sensitive subject for me, because I believe my entire family and most of my friends have, to varying degrees, taken up the current mass formation.  I'm writing this not as a way to point fingers.  I'm hoping I can help the people I love, in the same way that I might try to help a family member who had descended into alcoholism.  As Desmet explains, the only way to break the spell of mass formation is to keep talking to its victims.  Shunning only deepens the spell.

Just as Germany emerged from the mass formation of the WWII era, I've no doubt that the people I know will emerge from the current formation.  I'm hoping that I can expedite this process, before the damage done to themselves and others continues further. Hopefully some of them have not developed an immunity to discussing the topic.

As with my past attempts, I expect that most will simply refuse the information I'm about to give here, or will search for "fact checking" articles that debunk them. There's certainly no shortage of those (most provided by pharma-funded media -- they're currently the source of 60% of all advertising money), including a great many that are now demonstrably false and misleading.  

When confronted in court by the British Medical Journal, Facebook "fact checkers" claimed that their fact checks were "protected opinion" rather than facts.  Google search algorithms have been modified to make such "fact check" articles bubble up to the top while suppressing any truth. Paypal and Patreon regularly refuse payments to anyone not touting the pharma narrative.  Speaking the truth while avoiding Youtube's censors has become a new sport.  The increasing grip of censorship here in the "Freest country on earth" is not a comforting trend.  

There's a reason we had to imprison Assange before this all started, as he would've revealed the truth just as he'd done before, pissing off Pharma just as he'd done with military industrial complex. Over the last 3 years, the US has grown uncomfortable parallels with the East Germany that my great grandmother lived in -- a state driven by surveillance and censorship.

Perhaps one of the best examples of the illogic of the covid mass formation is the oft repeated mantra, "Safe and Effective".  The "effective" part of that is clearly not true, not when Rochelle Walensky (head of the CDC) gets covid a month after publicly getting her new "bivalent" booster.  That's the same booster tested on exactly eight mice -- all of whom contracted covid during the trial.  It's not effective when a family member's coworker dies of covid a few weeks after the vax, and not when the only family members I know to have been hospitalized by covid were also vaccinated.  Then there's Canada's Justin Trudeau as well as our own president --- both fully vaxxed and boostered, both of whom have been infected twice.  I can go on and on here with both personal as well as famous examples, but you get the point.   

Safe?   Well, that doesn't look to be the case either.  The vast majority of people who are tested after receiving the purported vaccine are showing elevated troponin levels. 13 out of 17 teenage boys tested showed exactly this.  That's hardly a "rare' side effect. Troponin in the blood is an indicator of heart damage.

A rural BC doctor had patients who were experiencing problems after the Moderna jab.  He ran d-dimer tests on a number of them, and found 62% were positive -- indicating the formation of blood clots. He wrote of his concern to the provincial government, seeking guidance.  They told him to shut up and pulled his license when he refused. 

Funeral directors in the UK, US, and Australia have all reported finding massive "rubbery" blood clots in bodies of the vaccinated deceased, which they find during the embalming process where they have to replace the blood.   They all say this started when the vaccines rolled out.

Not surprisingly, these issues are manifesting in a very public manner.   This news anchor suffered a stroke on live TV.

This one in Germany did the same.  What's especially rich is the fact that she was promoting vaccine mandates for all Germans while her stroke occurred.

Then there's US comedian Heather MacDonald.   She was bragging about being fully vaxxed and boosted when she suffered a stroke on stage, fracturing her skull when she fell.  That's what it took for her to think twice about the vaccines.   She now says she's not likely to take another booster for some strange reason.

I could go on and on here too.  There are video compilations of athletes all over the world collapsing on the field, at rates well beyond anything ever seen in history.  There's Justin Bieber and his wife, who've both suffered significant damage from the vaccine.  A young Canadian couple had it even worse after their boosters.  The wife was hospitalized with myocarditis. The day she returned from the hospital, her husband had a major heart attack, slipped into a coma, and had to be resuscitated when his heart stopped later in the hospital.

Perhaps even more disconcerting than obvious health issues is the fact that multiple US health insurers are reporting a 40% spike in mortality -- beginning only in 2021 as the vaccine was rolled out. 

Australia is reporting a 17% rise in all cause mortality, as are most countries in Europe.   Those with the highest vaccination rates are experiencing the greatest rises.

Perhaps even more damning is the fact that Pfizer told the FDA -- in December of 2020 -- that their vaccine did not stop transmission.  Considering how much vaccine mandates (many still in effect) have been pushed since then -- using arguments which were entirely at odds with this knowledge, I'd say that some officials have a little explaining to do.

I'm not the only one to think this.   Holocaust survivor Vera Sharav gave a passionate speech recently at the 75th anniversary of the passing of the Nuremberg Code, talking about the parallels between what she experienced and what is happening today.  The rollout of the covid "vaccines" is a clear violation of this code in multiple ways.  I couldn't agree with her more, and firmly believe that a 2nd round of Nuremberg trials is in order.  Vera is currently working on a film, titled 'Never Again is Now" where she documents how Nazi ideology was imported to the US and is alive and well.

One of Britian's most prominent cardiologists, Dr Aseem Malhotra, publicly promoted the vaccine on British TV earlier on in the pandemic, and recommended it to his father (also a doctor) along with everyone else. Shortly after receiving the vaccine, Dr Malhotra's father died, and Malhotra is convinced that the "vaccine" was the cause. This event caused him to question his support, and he began a period of intensive research into the jabs.  Listen to what he has to say here:

Malhotra repeats something that I've long been pointing out -- that public corporations meet the clinical definition of a psychopath, and act accordingly.  What's worse, is the fact that these psychopaths now control most governments.

As I see it, we've created a veritable Frankenstein with our corporate legal structure.  Placing shareholder return above all other considerations, and allowing corporations to become more powerful than governments the world over, we've created our own worst enemies. Pfizer is a repeat criminal offender, racking up fines in the billions of dollars -- just a cost of doing business, it would seem.  

The military-industrial-complex has captured the US government to the point that we are constantly at war around the world, with our citizens continually fleeced to support this industry.  Not only is that immoral and economically destructive, but it now clearly threatens our very existence.  Working largely at the behest of the military industrial comples, our government overthrew Ukraine's democratically elected government in 2014, and encouraged them to antagonize their Russian speaking citizens, ultimately killing 14,000 of them. Whose idea was this?   A psychopathic corporation's idea, of course!   In this case, the Rand Corporation.  Read it for yourself.

Not to be outdone by their MIC peers, the pharmaceutical industry has created their own racket, whereupon they've created both a disease as well as a "cure" that's actually worse. They've leveraged their power through the World Economic Forum such that they now own most major governments in the world, having installed their "Young Global Leaders" as presidents, prime ministers and high officials in dozens of countries including Canada (they actually bragged about how they had "penetrated" the Canadian government), the US, France, New Zealand, Australia, and even Russia.  

Who is the World Economic Forum?   Find out for yourself, on their own website.

The psychopathy of corporate power has overtaken the planet, and seeks to start war, spread disease, enslave, and fool the citizenry through a wholly owned media.  They distort the truth, subvert democracy, cause extensive and irreparable harm -- all in the name of "shareholder return".  As envisioned in the 1971 Powell Memo, corporations have overtaken not only nations but the entire planet.  Corporate power has metastasized, and we will not survive unless we recognize this and dismantle it while we still can.

Alpine aster in the Wind River Mountains

Two short videos well worth your time

 First up is from Gonzalo Lira -- a Chilean film maker currently living in Kharkiv, Ukraine.   He's been cranking out videos since the war started and has been spot on.  Those who get their news from American TV will not believe him.  Watch it.

Second video was put together by Robert F Kennedy Jr's organization, regarding the WHO and their recent actions in Africa -- which will seem strangely familiar now that those operations have come to the rest of the world.

An industry and their purchased agencies, worthy of our trust?

 

And her scientist husband's testimony.

A Pfizer victim -- Maddie De Garay.  Pfizer listed her trial results as "functional stomach discomfort" and forgot to mention that she was paralyzed.  Like Brianne Dressen, neither has received the promised medical assistance.

BWCA, Duluth, and northern Michigan

Jordan Lake, on our way to Ima Lake in the BWCA

A week ago, Rachel and I got back from a trip to the Boundary Waters in northern Minnesota.  With over 13 years since our last real vacation, it was a welcome trip, and the BWCA did not disappoint.  It's an amazingly beautiful place, a veritable network of island studded lakes, rocky outcrops, and stunted boreal forests.  The fishing wasn't what I'd call fantastic, but it wasn't bad, either.  

Though we've done some canoeing before, this was our first involving portages.   In a typical day, we tried to be on the water by 7, often traversing 4-5 lakes and as many portages, anywhere from 5 to 220 rods in length (there are 320 rods to the mile).  That way we could be looking for a camp by noon, which is something of a requirement due to the large number of visitors (BWCA is the single most visited wilderness area in the country).  We'd usually meet 3-4 groups on a given day, typically at the portages.  We found moose tracks and wolf scat, but saw none of their makers.

Loons, beavers, and eagles were in abundance, as were the campsite chipmunks and red squirrels.   One camp had an enterprising groundhog who announced his presence with a loud "thump!" as he hopped off a rock ledge and casually ambled over to our equipment, which he tried nibbling on before being scolded and running away.  We had a family of river otters check us out, and also saw the biggest snapping turtle I've ever seen (by far) -- I'd guess a shell length of 30".  

Unfortunately, there was a campfire ban in place while we visited, and it was definitely not unjustified.  Dead brown trees and bushes were everywhere.  This year's blueberries were a complete no-show, causing some bears to become problematic at the many campsites.  I chose not to share this fact with Rachel, who has sensitivity to bears resulting from a college backpacking trip and a friend who left peanut-butter-honey bagels in their tent while they slept. 

Wildfires just north of the border kept the skies filled with smoke, with the sun casting an orange light for the first few days of the trip.  This weekend the USFS closed the entire BWCA to all uses for the first time since it was established.  We're lucky we didn't schedule our trip for late August, as that was the timeframe I'd originally hoped for.

Beginning of the portage from Ima
 to Hatchet lake

For the trip home, we took a few days and came down through Michigan's upper peninsula, staying a night in Grand Marais (MN), Marquette, and Mackinaw City.  The UP was surprisingly desolate, with long stretches of stunted northern forests occasionally punctuated by old mining downs in various states of decay or attempts at renewal.  Marquette (a university town) seemed surprisingly vibrant;  perhaps a little *too* vibrant with all of the newer big box stores on the edge of town.  

In Mackinaw city, we visited Fort Michilimackinac, first established by the French in the 1700s.  Really enjoyed the "living history" staff and presentations as well as the archaeological displays. On the morning of our last day, we stopped at the restored 1700s reciprocating sawmill, which I really liked.  Many of the boards on our 1870 barn were milled on a similar mill (some also on the "new" circular blade mills), as evidenced by the straight saw marks.  

Me demonstrating the use of Ojibwe 
birchbark "sunglasses" I made
for Rachel to replace a pair she'd lost. 
  She wasn't ready to adopt such high fashion,
 as it turns out

We also stopped in Duluth on our way north, apparently a hot new destination for climate refugees from California.  It strikes me as a neat town, and I like the proximity to the BWCA and Lake Superior, but I fear their summers are only slightly cooler than those I'm ready to flee.  On the plus side, jobs are available, and housing is quite affordable.   

At the moment, I'm interested in Juneau.  No heat or smoke there yet.  Their job market looks more promising than Sitka, but they're still relatively scarce and the cost of housing and living is atrocious.  

----------------------------------

This looks to be a fantastic apple year in our orchard -- a great improvement from last year when we had just enough to make a single pie.  The dry spring has given way to a relatively wet summer, with our pastures still growing well.  On the downside, the lack of spring rain dried up most of the local ponds, eliminating the predatory mosquito eating insects.  The summer rains have re-established the ponds where mosquito larvae now have free reign, resulting in the absolute worst mosquitos we've seen since living here.  In a typical year, I would see a few dozen (mosquito eating) dragonflies patrolling our garden and orchard at any given time, but this year there are hardly any to be seen.

 

The rains started up a few weeks ago, just as the grass was getting brown and crispy, and now we're getting pretty regular storms rolling through.  I found 3/4 of an inch in the rain gauge when I got back from work this evening.  

This is the first year since 2008 (when our hay was just being planted) that we haven't cut any hay.  It's nice not to have to worry;  there's always concern that the lack of rain is stunting growth, or that too much is keeping us out of overgrown fields, or that it's going to come down on fields already cut and drying.  

Our hay fields have reverted largely to grass and are in need of replanting now.  I'm not sure if it's worth it to replant them or not. There's a few thousand dollars in seed, lime, and potash required, not to mention the time spent prepping the soil, or the fact that it's always best to spread some manure on the fields before plowing to keep fertility up.  

If we make the investments that need to be made, I'll feel the need to make use of them, which means working ourselves and the horses in the heat, when the flies are at their worst and the risk of a runaway goes up.  Is it worth the effort?

For now we've decided that it isn't.  Taking the time for our first real vacation in over a decade means that I don't have the time to put up hay anyway.  Spending the money on hay (about $6k to see the three horses and 2.5 cows through the winter) is certainly easier on the back, but doesn't seem so easy on the pocketbook.  Then again, I'm not so sure that growing our own hay is a whole lot easier on the pocketbook once all the planting, equipment, risk of injury, and time costs are factored in.

_____________________________________

While our son Henry was out visiting family in Washington a couple weeks ago, their temperatures exceeded anything we've yet experienced in Michigan.  Places where a typical June high might be in the 70s broke 100 degrees, even hitting 110.  BC's town of Lytton (which we've been through) hit 121F, promptly caught fire and burned to the ground the next day.  

I read that walking along the beaches now, you can smell all the dead creatures rotting after being baked in the heat  Perhaps it's for the best that I remember walking the beaches while things were still very much alive. Despite this, people are happy to resume flying again, and questioned Henry's decision to take the train instead of flying like a normal person. As if I needed any more confirmation that we're never going to rise to the challenge of keeping a livable planet.  

_____________________________________

Many, if not most people, will reject any theory as ridiculous if the implications are too far from their lived experience, even when they know full well that history is full of such events. As such, I expect most people will discount what I'm about to suggest, and in all honesty, I hope they're right.  I know this will make people uncomfortable, but I'd much rather endure derision a few years from now than ask myself why I stayed silent.  I already have significant regrets for not speaking up sooner.

In Elie Wiesel's book about his experiences in being sent to a concentration camp where his family perished, he wrote about a man from his village who had been taken to such a camp and escaped, returning to his village to warn everyone of what the Germans were up to.  Nobody listened, and discounted him as a crazed fool.  Today we would refer to him as a conspiracy theorist, and point to fact checkers to debunk his claims as we step confidently into the "perfectly safe" cattle cars.

There is one terrifying glimmer of hope on the horizon when it comes to climate change.  It seems to me that someone may in fact be trying to save our species.  Considering that we've all demonstrated a collective ineptitude for the required behavioral change, I'm not sure I can blame them for resorting to the only possibility which remains -- that being a dramatic reduction in population.  Granted, with the feedback loops we've already set in motion, I don't expect that they'll be successful in saving our species this late in the game, but I suppose they can't be blamed for trying.  The super wealthy of our planet are nothing if not eternal optimists.

As the owners of controlling interests in industry, governments, media, and damn near everything else, there's nobody I can think of with better means or organization skills. Many of them are obsessively fascinated with extending their own lives through the use of technology, so have certainly realized that this won't be possible if they don't have a place to live when their birthday candles hit the triple digits.  Saving their own bacon certainly sounds to me like a good motivator.

Considering that their money almost invariably turns them into sociopaths (though most, like Gates, probably started that way) they're the perfect people to take the reins at this stage, to do the essential dirty work.  Perhaps this is what really broke the Gate's marriage?

My first inkling came as Dr. Pierre Kory's senate testimony in early December was censored, demonstrating beyond a doubt that those in power were not interested in public health, but in pushing the vaccines.  In fact, every single treatment before or since which has shown significant promise (HCQ, Ivermectin, Fluvoxamine, Prednisone, etc) has been poo-pooed or just plain censored.  Why is that?  I've heard numerous personal accounts of the efficacy of the first two, and have no reason to doubt any of them.   All of them, strangely, are well past their patent expirations, and are decidedly unprofitable.  

The simple explanation is that the emergency use authorization of any medication legally requires that there be no other effective treatments.  So it's not unreasonable to think that the pharmaceutical corporations are simply acting to protect their investments in the vaccines (much of it taxpayer funded), by denying the existence of effective treatments.  That would certainly be consistent with the state of regulatory capture of the FDA and CDC we've seen in recent decades, or the way these same companies have been willing to jack the price of essential medications like insulin to the point that people regularly die for going without.  

Though covid-19 itself doesn't appear to be particularly lethal (granted, I still don't want it!), the vaccines created to fight it may very well be.  Deaths recorded on the VAERS system just passed 9,000.  Considering that Harvard's study of the VAERS system found about a 1% reporting rate, it would not be unreasonable to think that the 9,000 reported deaths are potentially representative of 900,000 actual deaths -- thus surpassing the 607,000 attributed to covid, though the covid numbers are also quite suspect.   A number of California counties recently reviewed their covid death numbers and found them to be greatly inflated.  I see nothing to suggest that these are isolated cases.

Beyond the immediate effects of the covid vaccines, there are a number of other concerns.  One FOIA request to the Japanese government obtained tissue deposition study results, showing that the vaccines had a particularly high affinity for ovarian tissue (which may have the greatest ultimate effect if it results in infertility).  Former Pfizer VP Michael Yeadon warned of similar concerns, as has microbiologist Sucharit Bhakdi.  There have also been numerous reports of miscarriages shortly after receiving the vaccines.  Irish biochemist Dolores Cahill has stated plainly that most younger vaccine recipients will not survive the decade, or even a couple years for older recipients.

Other studies have shown that the spike protein itself (which your body manufactures after receiving the vaccine) is responsible for damage to endothelial cells (which line your circulatory system), as well as triggering blood clots (and no, it's not just the Astra Zeneca vaccine -- they all do this).    

The spike proteins have also been demonstrated to open the critical blood-brain barrier, both for themselves and any other pathogen which might happen to be in the neighborhood.  There are numerous accounts of strokes shortly after receiving the vaccine, and "brain fog", which is likely a result of numerous small clots -- much as what happens with covid itself.

Luc Montagnier, the nobel prize winning virologist who isolated HIV has expressed concern that the proteins in the vaccines are very similar to prions, and could ultimately develop into a prion like disease (think mad-cow or chronic wasting disease) over the course of a couple years.  We really don't know just yet.  I see that even his own Wiki page has been updated to label him as a crank despite his undeniable expertise and accomplishments.  The censorship these days is really becoming complete.

Going down the rabbithole even further, I see now that the president of three nations -- Magufuli of Tanzania, Moise of Haiti, and Nkurunziza of Burundi -- all of whom rejected the covid narrative and associated vaccines, have now died or been killed -- after which, their replacements in each nation begged for vaccines asap.  Interesting coincidence, I suppose.  

Yet another interesting coincidence...  A year ago, anyone reporting on the Wuhan Institute of Virology's bat-virus gain of function research was being censored and labeled a crazy conspiracy theorist.  

Then, about a month ago, that all changed.   Someone ran an analysis using artificial intelligence on the mysterious "vaping disease" that killed a number of people in the summer of 2019 near Fort Detrick, MD.  Fort Detrick also worked with gain of function on bat coronaviruses, among other bio-weapons.  

The AI diagnostic software apparently didn't have a functional political sensitivity algorithm, because it said "That's COVID!" when presented with the vaping disease symptoms.   I think it was no more than a few days after this event that it became legal to discuss the Wuhan lab leak theory.  Fascinating... both because Ft. Detrick was shut down because of (by their own documents) bio leaks averaging once every three days, and also because this mysterious disease completely disappeared despite the continued popularity of vaping.  

In 2013, mRNA vaccines were tested for the original SARS virus.  Like today's vaccines, they produced a decent immune response.  As the study progressed, however, the participants developed antibody-dependent-enhancement, whereupon their immune responses to further viral challenges became overly responsive, killing some of them with cytokine storms if my memory serves.  This problem has plagued all attempts at coronavirus vaccines thus far.   Was it suddenly resolved?   I've heard of no explanations as to how that might've been done.  Perhaps someone with a different idea of what a vaccine should accomplish viewed this as a feature, rather than a bug.

Raul Illargi has done a fantastic job of compiling covid related news each day on his website, "The Automatic earth", for any who have an interest in diving down the rabbit hole with me. Those who can handle the hard core may want to check out the podcasts at The Last American Vagabond, whose interview of Robert Malone (the inventor of MRNA vaccine technology) is excellent.   For the most level headed and mainstream analysis, I highly recommend Bret Weinstein's Dark Horse Podcast, particularly his extensive interview of Robert Malone and Steve Kirsch.

I'm going to put my special tin hat on now, and step outside to see if there are any black helicopters hovering over our house.  Or maybe UFOs...

Motivation

I haven't had a whole lot to say lately, in large part because there are few things about which I've got any great deal of confidence nowadays.  On the one issue where I do still have an (unfortunately) high level of confidence, the window of opportunity for positive change has passed such that it seems unproductive to try and educate anyone. Talking about climate change anymore feels like striking up a conversation on electric chairs and nooses with a death-row inmate.  It seems better to let everyone maintain a state of blissful ignorance for as long as they can, as the ultimate outcome will be no different.

I spent a lot of money on hay to feed our small Jersey herd yesterday, as our own hay production last year was horrible due to the drought and the fact that our hayfields are overdue for replanting.  Paid about 30% more than ever before.  This was a reminder that our modest herd is not self-sustainable from our own acreage, at least not without a steady stream of purchased inputs (lime, potash, alfalfa seed, etc).  We don't currently need the milk, and in fact I only milk about once a week now as I let the calf take all she wants.  Rachel and Henry have stopped drinking milk, and I'm probably allergic to it (chances are it's one of the triggers for my eosinophillic esophagitis, which makes it difficult to swallow food at times).  

So keeping cows at the moment doesn't seem particularly smart, especially when the costs amortized over the milk we consume probably put it close to $30 a gallon.  A Simpson's reference comes to mind here.

On the other hand, we would likely be able to feed one or two cows for a while (we currently have 3 cows and a young bull) if things really go south -- and that milk would instantly become a whole lot more valuable to ourselves as well as our neighbors.  Ditto for the manure to keep gardens producing well.  

Such Chicken-Little thoughts get tiring after a while though, as does forking out a never ending supply of hay and the resulting manure.  Then there's the never ending hoof-trimming and occasional veterinary issues, and the fact that on-farm butchers have all disappeared, or that it's no longer possible to schedule with any of the few remaining butchers (whom I'd have to deliver a live animal to, which is not always easy) with less than a year's notice now.

Another lesson from yesterday's hay purchase came from one of the farmers I bought it from.  He was missing an arm. I presumed either a wartime injury or perhaps a farm related accident had cost him his limb, but it turns out that neither was the cause.  He simply wore out his shoulder putting up so much hay over so many years that his arm ceased to remain attached, and his doctors suggested complete removal.  

It's not that all farm work is drudgery -- far from it, in fact.  I still love working with cows as well as the horses, and I also miss our old flock of sheep.  It's just that all of this work, when added on to the requirement of a full-time job makes it nearly impossible to do other things that I would  enjoy even more. Farms simply don't mesh well with a recreation filled life of canoeing, sailing, skiing, hunting, climbing, or a myriad of other things that I once enjoyed at every opportunity.

Granted, contemplating a life without the need for hard physical labor is a luxury afforded to only the last few generations in most families.  My great grandparents, farming in southern Illinois exclusively with mules up through the early 50s, had no such option. In some ways it seems dishonorable for me to even consider it. At other times, I feel like the little piggy who built the brick house, looking longingly at the carefree lifestyle of his brother in the straw house and wondering if talk of the big-bad-wolf was just a bunch of nonsense.  

Is there a big-bad wolf?  Is he coming anytime soon? The lesson to be gleaned from the fable of the Three Little Pigs hinges upon this vital bit of information.  The brick house, as it turns out, is NOT always better.

Well now, this ought to really fix our election process.

 https://news.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2020/03/27/what-is-electionguard/