Airports

As I write this, at 6:54 am local Frankfurt time, the sun is rising over the far terminal at the airport. I am watching it climb in the sky. In front of me, I see Singapore Airlines, Air India, Qatar Airways, Thai Air, and Lufthansa. And that big, gorgeous sun in an unobstructed sky.

Traveling for work as much as I have of late can be a drag. You're always on someone else's turf working on their schedule. And time is always limited. So my days stretch and stretch into 12 hours or better in the office. Then I work from the hotel until the end of the workday in the U.S. The work is incredibly rewarding and that's why I go through those long days and those numerous weekends that I lose to airports.

But right now, with this sun (and my morning Bitburger), the edge is dulled. For 22 years in Michigan and now another eight around Philadelphia, I have seen this sun rise in a similarly unobstructed sky. When you watch it come up red and then get yellow on it's way to white, how could you not be happy? Or, maybe more in line with today, how is it that people are scared, mad, or indifferent to our environment (terrestrial or celestial)? It's all so beautiful.

I feel that way and I'm seeing it from a mere airport.

Composting

Those romantics in the crowd will realize that love lost, hard times, and broken dreams pile up and become the foundation of new opportunities. Then there those of us that have given up on that. But those romantic thoughts certainly work for food scraps! Hot dog!
Half of my backyard is turned over into garden and I have neighbors on all three sides. I realized that if I was to compost, I had to find some sort of technological solution or be run out of town on a rail. Through a series of other accidents, I discovered the Lehman's catalog. Much of the goods there are American made, as the Amish don't really live anywhere else except Ohio. There, I found the Urban Composter, a black recycled plastic barrel that composts without omitting hardly any smell.
When I first got the barrel, I put it close to my house so I could easily put my scraps in it. Sounds reasonable, no? Everything worked that first summer. Then fall came. My backyard is to the north of my house, which means in the winter, the sun does not touch the earth close to my house and my big black plastic compost barrel froze solid. Finally, spring came and I started over.
So last year, I moved the compost barrel as far away from my house as possible. This kept the compost cooking – very slowly – all last winter. I emptied it just a few weeks ago and tilled it into my garden.
Of course, I didn't let it cook quite long enough and I fear that as the composting continues, I will leach every last free molecule of nitrogen out of my soil and kill all my poor plants. Where could I find some free nitrogen?
Enter the chickens. Well, more specifically, chicken poo, which is jam packed with nitrogen. Raising these chicks has helped complete the use and reuse cycle of my own little backyard farm. Plus, when fully grown, chicken scratching aerates the soil and the birds eat grubs and other pests. Just make sure to wash the veggies before you eat them…

The Land of Pharma - 1

I'm going to start a new type of entry. I've have some experience in the Pharmaceutical Industry and, with all of the new attention on that industry, on socialized medicine and on the FDA, I figure I should try to explain what I know about the industry.
What are we talking about?
"Big Pharma" is a convenient way to discuss a certain kind of company. However, just as terms like "republican platform" or "socialism", Big Pharma does little to explain anything about the pharmaceutical industry. So let's begin by explaining as best we can everything that goes into this industry. Along the way, we'll do a pretty good job of describing a lot of industries, in case you, dear reader, are interested.
Behind the counter of any pharmacy lies hundreds of different prescription medicines. There's hundreds more in the surrounding area known as Over the Counter (OTC) drugs. That's just the piece found in the store. In every doctor's office are another host of medicines that can't be dispensed through the corner store. These are vaccines, tetanus shots, anti-venom shots, and things like that. In hospitals are another suite of therapies like antibiotics of last resort (those ultra-antibiotics that still work against our ever increasing number of antibiotic resistant super-pathogens). That's the goal. Everything we're going to talk about is a means to that end: medicine.
Let me say one more thing now. There are arguments or editorialists that hold to the idea that our reliance on Type II diabetes drugs is because of the larger issue of obesity. Or that we have these super-pathogens in the first place because of over use of antibiotics medicines and cleansers. They say that Big Pharma pushes it's products on the public and…. Yes, television is littered with drug advertisements and yes, millions of people run to the doctor for a prescription for a little ache or a sniffle. That interplay is incredibly important and interesting, but that won't be explored much here. We'll talk about the social use of these products only insofar as the public does use them and that gives this industry the same capitalist footing as any other industry.
So, the goal is medicine. We'll use the company I just imagined, The World Medicines Corporation, as our example. It's an established Fortune 500 company (way, way higher on the list than number 500, I assure you, as I only imagine big things) with factories and research centers all over the world. It employs many tens of thousands of people. This is the general conception of "Big Pharma," right? The World Medicines Corporation (WMC, as it's known on Wall Street) makes all forms of medicine as well, so we'll be able to look at each sort. And we'll start with two: Hemopres, a pill that lowers blood pressure and Menengvax, a shot that vaccinates against the virus that causes viral spinal meningitis.
Hemopres is one of those first drugs we talked about above. It's found behind the pharmacy counter in your local grocery store. It's called a "non-sterile small molecule" pharmaceutical. This type of pharmaceutical must be taken at some regular interval (this one is one 5 milligram, or mg, pill each day). It's an oral tablet, which means that when it's manufactured, it doesn't have to be manufactured to be sterile. A person's stomach is pretty much a big bag of acid and will kill most any bacteria that gets in there, so oral medicines don't need to be sterile. The small molecule (the Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient, or API) passes through the stomach into the intestines, where it is taken up into the blood stream. When the API circulates around the body, it can do it's work.
This is in contrast to Menengvax. Most vaccines (a biological product) are injectables (you don't get this in a pharmacy – a doctor or nurse sticks a needle "subcutaneously" and injects the fluid into your body). Vaccines, generally, are based on a protein or other complex molecular structure, which is a "large molecule." Proteins couldn't survive the acid in your stomach, so it's put into your body in a way that bypasses the stomach. But because it doesn't go though the protective acid of the stomach, it must be manufactured to be absolutely sterile. Also different from the small molecule pharmaceuticals, this vaccine will only need to be taken once (or at least only a couple of times). Vaccines make the body's immune system react as if you were sick. When that happens, the body "remembers" what made it sick and will be able to react much faster when the natural form of the illness-causing agent tries to infect the body again.
Before this gets too boring, I'll stop here and go further later.

Forward Thinking and Hanging Cloth

I was lucky enough to have a week off last week. One of my many little tasks I desperately needed to complete was settling the second story bathroom privacy issue. Long ago, the door, if it could be so called, was pulled down and thrown out. The bathroom, which is far smaller than the inside of a late 70’s Chevelle, couldn’t have a normal swinging door and the closet-style collapsing door made being in that bathroom feel like jail time. After deciding against saloon doors, I settled on a curtain that gives privacy and would still let light in from the hallway.

It has been more than a month since I went to Fabric Row in Philly to purchase the proper cloth to make my curtain. It is an unbacked off white base with soft blue and green stripes matching the colors of the bathroom and offsetting the hallway color (so I’m told as I’m horrible with color schemes). Anyway, it was measured, sewn and hung.
As I made the inaugural use of that bathroom post-curtaining official by washing my hands, I realized I didn’t hang a curtain. I envisioned a dozen drunken friends going into and out of that bathroom and realized no, it isn’t a curtain – it’s a very big hand-drying towel. Tomorrow, I start work on signage for use of the second floor bathroom.

Fury and the Art of Patching Up an Old Truck

Like clockwork here in Pennsylvania, my 1991 Chevy C1500 pickup was tested by the State to ensure it was safe for the roads and met environmental standards. I have been fighting back and forth in my mind regarding the environmental part for years now. How can I square my desire to grow a lot of my own food, by local goods, organic goods, and environmentally-safe / petroleum-free products whenever I can with my utilization of an old truck?

Similar other struggles have been vexing me for years, now. I think that dairy cases in shopping centers are about the dumbest things in Creation. They are refrigerators designed to not have doors, yet keep milk from spoiling. How are these things legal? Then, not only is the milk kept cold by open refrigerators in stores, but dairy products are shipped cold and kept in huge fully-refrigerated warehouses while still at the dairy. That, to me, is a broken system. What to do instead?

I started buying ultra-pasteurized milk. This milk is sterilized, shipped and stored warm. This system could save huge amounts of energy costs and air pollution (unless, of course, electricity somehow went 100% renewable), but the containers for the milk are like big juice boxes. This means many different types of material (a product contact surface, structural layers, paper to print on, etc) compressed into one package. Multiple inseparable materials means that this is a package that cannot be recycled or reused.
Damn it! Why can't any of these things be easy!?! So either you can save fuel energy or you can save waste put in landfills. Right, but I was talking about my truck.

I could buy a Toyota Prius or some other foreign-made ultra-fuel-efficient vehicle, thereby adding to the death of American companies, American jobs, and removing one industry where science and engineering is paramount from the U.S. Or, I could hang on to my Fort Wayne, Indiana-made truck until an electric hybrid is made on U.S. soil by one of the (remaining by then) Big Three.

At least this one has a middle ground. I'm looking for a used Chevy car to get me through. I can keep my truck long-term for the utility of having such a vehicle and have a day-to-day fuel-efficient car to keep emissions down.

The Fabled Tale of the Mobile Suburban Chicken Coop

I need to better the original idea of the coop. Or better the memory I still have of the original idea of the coop, rather. The length of the coop itself (not counting the wheels or the handles) will be six feet long with an A-frame design with the cross of the A forming the second-story floor. The structure will be made of 1 x 4s - legs, A-frame and all. The lower (ground floor) enclosure that will allow for the chickens to free-range will have chicken wire on the A-frame sides. The long sides will have chicken wire "frames" so all pieces will be able to fold open. Also, the plywood upper structure (long sides) will be hinged at the top connection strap so all four panels will be able to open as well.

The ends will not be removable in any way, but with eight fold-up portions, the entire thing will be very cleanable. The "A" ends and middle will have cross braces, as is the habit of all capital letter A's, which will give the floor strong support on the ends and in the middle. The floor, cut to fit within the frames of the A, will be pushed up into the frame and then the cross brace added and fixed to make a tight fit.

Where the cross braces are on the A's, an eight foot 1 x 4 is fixed to extend two feet off of one side as handles. The side opposite the handles get wheels so the entire thing can be moved around wheelbarrow-style by one person.

From the floor, a ramp must allow for the chickens to get up to the floor-level. The ends of the floor level (the upper part of the A on either side) will be chicken wired in and allow for the addition of glass windows for the winter so light can be allowed in but the winter cold kept out. Somewhat.

This design fits in nicely with my backyard garden. The chickens, once full grown, will be able to roam around in the grass completely safe from attacking dogs, cats or hawks. I can move the coop to fresh grass every few days. The birds will have the warm penthouse to roost in as well.

What could possibly go wrong?

This Damn House - March 2009

It's been a bitter winter. The Summer 2008 Second floor and patio projects ended abruptly when I decided to rededicate myself to my career. This decision coincided wonderfully with my 401k diving into the toilet, but was in no way caused by this, of course. So I still have not added the quarter round to the baseboards and most of my patio has heaved toward the grey sky.

All did not cease, however. Slowly, I worked up the nerve to finish the staircases. They were painted and American-made carpet runners were stapled down with my new Craftsman brad nailer. The hardness of old wood is surprising, as are the brads that carom off of that wood and imbed in your thigh. Remember to always wear safety glasses when using power tools.

The worthless washroom door has found its way out of the second story window and into the trash. Lucky I live alone. Though I have the material, bought on one fine Saturday trip to Fabric Row in Philly, I haven't found the gumption to sew a curtain for the door yet. All in due time. I am rededicated to my career, after all.

Avid readers of this communiqué will remember that my bathroom is one of the certain projects in the not too distant future. Though I have done some tiling in the past, I was nothing of an expert (or a practiced novice for that matter) until this past Christmas. The key to successful home renovation and repair is to always practice on someone else's house first. Preferably a new acquaintance that doesn't know you very well. A small tiling job (only the tub surround) deftly turned into a three-wall demo down to the studs, a full rebuild, and a new floor. And now I have a new hammer drill to boot.

Winter turned to spring and my attention has been on the garden for months now. Six weeks ago, I planted all of my seeds as I did not want to drop another $200 on plants. Those sons-of-bitches still haven't sprouted. But I'm not afraid. Sunny days will come and I'm sure I'll be able to grow everything from seed. Just in case, I have a plan B.

One thing my backyard farm has lacked, besides a Paw Paw Tree, is a source of protein. I've got that licked now. Weekend before last was spent crafting a new mobile chicken coop of mostly my own design. It's an A-frame with wheels on one end to allow for easy movement. It allows for free ranging of the chickens and has a second-floor enclosure to keep them warm at night. This should also be found to be suitable for the neighborhood skunks and copperheads that will invariably kill my chickens and attack me at sunrise some horrible Tuesday morning. Tomorrow, I buy a gun.

So the summer plans are laid. Gardening, chickens, living room window stripping and repainting, and a fresh color for the living room walls that is as far away as possible from the last-night's vomit color they currently are. Hopefully, this will be completed before my foundation crumbles and the house finally kills me.