People had a grazing party at GM on Friday

Pseudo-Spring is coming early

Birch bribe bowl

This bowl is for the wife of the guy who plows our snow with the hope she will prevent him from retiring since she gets free bowls as long as he continues to plow. 

Interesting graphic from Greenland Ice

Since the climate alarmists talk about the truth from the ice here is a graph of what the ice cores say about temperature.   


This graphic is from an interesting article about warming that ends: 

"So where do the 1934/1998/2010 warm years rank in the long-term list of warm years? Of the past 10,500 years, 9,100 were warmer than 1934/1998/2010.  Thus, regardless of which year ( 1934, 1998, or 2010) turns out to be the warmest of the past century, that year will rank number 9,099 in the long-term list.

The climate has been warming slowly since the Little Ice Age (Fig. 5), but it has quite a ways to go yet before reaching the temperature levels that persisted for nearly all of the past 10,500 years.

It’s really much to do about nothing."

note: this stuff matters quite a bit if your job depends on global warming. 

see: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/28/2010%E2%80%94where-does-it-fit-in-the-warmest-year-list/#more-30425

Why we live in the country

Warning: viewer discretion advised since there are some unnecessary f ' ing bad words in this video.


Ardent believers in climate change are sure to like this video since it shows the destruction of an evil SUV

Morning sun and moon

For more predictions of future cold weather from a scientist (?) with wild hair see here


Another rare sunny day up in the woods.

Now the FBI is out to get TWW

pasted from an e-mail:

From: Federal Bureau of Investigation

Dept: Anti-Terrorist & Monetary Crimes Division

Office: Washington, D.C. Headquarters

Address: J. Edgar Hoover Building 93 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, D.C. 20535-0001

Date: 12/27/2010

Important: Our agents will visit you for arrest if you fail to comply fully with the below instructions.

 

This is to bring to your notice that my office has taking over all the money transfer originated from any part of Africa and European countries as contract payment, fund inheritance or lottery winning due to unauthorized/incapability of financial institutions/security companies in releasing such huge sum of money result of fraud, terrorist and money laundry activities going on World Wide.

We have been having series of meetings for the passed 7 months which ended 2 days ago with the then secretary general to the United Nations, Central Bank of Nigeria and World Bank Officials. This email is to all the people that have been scammed in any part of the world, the United Nations, Central Bank of Nigeria and World Bank officials have agreed to compensate them with the sum of Ten Millions US Dollars each victim. This includes every foreign contractor that may have not received his or her contract sum and people that have had an unfinished transaction, people who have inheritance to claim or international businesses that failed due to instability of government in some part of Africa etc.

We found your name in our list as one of the beneficiaries and that is why we are contacting you, this has been agreed upon and has been signed. This also indicate that the Diplomatic Immunity Seal of Transfer (DIST) often referred to as a criminal history record or rap sheet, is a listing of certain information taken from fingerprint submissions retained by the FBI in connection with arrests and, in some instances, federal employment, naturalization, or military service. This condition is valid until 3 days after which the funds shall be confiscated and legal action will be taken against you.

Guarantee: funds will be released upon confirmation of the DIST document. Final instruction given below;

1. Credit payment instruction: irrevocable credit guarantee.

2. Beneficiary has full power when validation is cleared.

3. Beneficiaries Bank in can only release funds.

4. upon confirmation from the World Bank / United Nations.

5. Bearers must clear Bank protocol and validation request.

We have confirmed that the amount required to procure your document which is called the Diplomatic Immunity Seal of Transfer (DIST) will cost you a total of $200USD only and the fee should be paid directly to the payment office in Nigeria via Western Union Money Transfer. Below, are the contact details of the payment office in Nigeria who will process your transaction in Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC).

Contact Information;

Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC)

Payment centre.

Name: Mrs. Farida Mzamber Waziri,

E-mail: wazirryfari@yahoo.co.jp

Contact Mrs. Farida Mzamber Waziri of the Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) for details regarding the release of your fund to your own Personal Bank Account with the following information’s below:

Full Name:

Address:

Direct Phone Number:

Current Occupation:

Once you have sent the required information to Mrs. Farida Mzamber Waziri, she will contact you with instructions on how to make the payment of $200USD only for the procurement of your (DIST) document, to enable her expedite action on the processing and release of your payment without any further delay.

You have hereby been authorized /guaranteed by the federal bureau of investigation to commence towards completing this transaction, as there shall be no delay once payment for the (DIST) document has been made to the authorized agent.

 

Note: We have requested for the DIST document to make available the most complete and update records possible for the enhancement of public safety, welfare and security of society while recognizing the importance of individual privacy rights. If you fail to provide the fee for the document, we will you with the Financial Crimes. The United Nations Department of Justice Order 556-73 establishes rules and regulations for the subject of an FBI identification Record to obtain a copy of his or her own record for review. The FBI Criminal Justice Information Service (CJIS) Division processes these requests to check illegal activities and once you have completed payment of $200USD to the agent in charge of this transaction, you're advised to keep us posted to enable us follow up with the release of your payment and act fast.

Regards,

Federal Bureau Investigation.

Robert S. Mueller III,

FBI, Director.

Garbin Moraine goes prostate-free

In early July members of the American Cleaning Institute (formerly the Soap and Detergent Association, which changed names earlier) decided to nearly eliminate phosphates in their detergents for household dishwashers.  This was to help save the planet and aqueous environments.  After  due deliberation the Board of Directors of the Garbin Moraine Foundation decided in addition to banning phosphates on GM to also ban prostrates given the amount of damage to the environment prostrates do.  Just name a social or environmental problem and there is a good chance there are prostrates to blame. The change making Garbin Moraine a prostate-free zone will take effect on January 1st, 2011. 

Weather Report from Garbin Moraine

Not much happening on a quiet Christmas. 

A global warming holiday card

cartoon URL pointing at this source: http://www.ecofriendlymag.com/general-green-news/two-christmas-climate-cartoons/

Possible Garbin Moraine Expansion

Due to capacity problems caused by heavy use of Garbin Moraine Manor,  the Garbin Moraine Foundation is negotiating with the owner of the land to the north of GM about acquisition of his land.  If the deal goes through it will become the GM Annex. The site has a screen building for outdoor mosquito-free camping and also a storage building with a tree crushing it. Possibilities for this new land are limitless.  The land also offers an awesome view of Swamp Lake. GM Manor is seen at the bottom of the photo. 

source of photo is the Washburn County GIS.

Helping the less fortunate at Christmas

Mr .and Mrs.  TWW are carrying on the family tradition up in the woods this year by helping the fishing families in the Gulf by buying oil-ready oysters. You don't need to put butter in the milk for these oysters since the oils are already in the oysters.  As the TWWs watch the oil float on top of the milk they can feel warm and fuzzy knowing they are helping the less fortunate and also helping prevent CO2 emissions by not using butter from farting cows. 

Another wind turbine bites the dust

Merry Holidays from the staff at Garbin Moraine.

And have a life enriching New Year

Same old same old boring weather

Do you see the ruffed grouse eating the buds on the cherry tree at the left of the picture?

Another no such fool as a public fool (when it comes to creativity) manuscript

A Dozen Lessons About Money (current draft)

by

TWW

copyright 2010 by TWW (using his real name)

I'm trying to get the words right for this article in a hospital room 97 miles from home where thanks to insurance from my former employer for retirees I surgically shed a gland that often troubles older men. I came in here middle-aged and now have gone through a rite of passage to wise elder male status so feel entitled to spell out financial wisdom gained over decades of dealing with money in the hope other Countryside readers can benefit from it. So to start here is Lesson #1: Be ever skeptical about financial or any other wisdom given by someone based on having or not having certain body parts or other credentials. Remember the hotshot MBA’s who worked on Wall Street buying up bad mortgages repackaged into bonds other hotshot MBA’s working for rating agencies said were a good bet. Be wary.

This leads to lesson #2 which comes from a quote from one of those experts. The late management guru Peter Drucker said in Management: tasks, responsibilities, practices “ The question that faces the strategic decision-maker is 'what do we have to do today to be ready for an uncertain tomorrow'.” Drucker was talking about management. You are the manager of your finances. So lesson #2: The future is uncertain but you have to decide what to do. Doing nothing is a decision. Only the benefit of hindsight will tell you if you made the best decision. Even then like the financial ads say “past performance does not predict future performance”.

Lesson #3: Read the book Your Money or Your Life.

In the book Joe Domingez also talks about uncertainty and then describes a method of being able to accumulate enough money invested in US treasury bonds to live off the interest. Joe reached financial independence in the 1970s and his basic method worked for the rest of his lifetime but won't work as well now because of low interest rates.   You can also get the steps in the program from a previous Countryside article on the Internet at http://www.thefreelibrary.com/How+to+achieve+financial+independence.-a079575027.   This leads to the next lesson.

Lesson #4: Take Joe's program seriously except for the part about treasury bonds being the source of income at financial independence.

Financial independence means being able to live off of a source of income separate from paid employment. The beauty of the Your Money of Your Life program is it uses feedback to help you put your money to uses making you feel fulfilled. Ironically by doing this you will start spending less and start saving in many cases. The program has nine steps starting with making peace with the past, recording and evaluating sources and application of your money while working into a future where you can live off income from something other than paid employment. Recording where your money goes is a big part of the program.

The rest of this article contains some other lessons l learned along the way often in hindsight. They helped me so maybe you can gain from them.

Lesson # 5: Choose you parents wisely

While it is not easy to do it helps to have had frugal parents who save money and try to help their kids to have a better life. Inheriting land may be one of the few ways for younger people to have a place in the country today without being swamped by mortgage payments. I inherited a nest egg for a rainy day and will be forever grateful to my parents for the financial cushion we have. But more perhaps importantly parents set an example with how they deal with money. My parents had a garden and canned and froze food from the garden all while in the city and my father could fix almost anything until the microelectronics revolution came along. They were more self-reliant than I am in the country.

Lesson # 6: Choose your partner(s) wisely

When you move to the country you'd better hope the people who come with go along with the move. It costs money to go back to the city. Since my wife and I got married a little older we had separate financial lives. We kept our individual financial identities and created a marital one with joint accounts for purchases and saving so avoided many conflicts about money. My wife was not interested in tracking money so I did it for household and my expenses but since she grew up on a farm in a family of 10 she is pretty frugal with money anyway. The money from the sale of my wife's condominium when we got married went into the land we bought 20 years before we moved on to it. Some partners also have employable skills so one person could work in a nearby city.

Lesson # 7: Choose your employer wisely

My employer kept people who retired in the employee health plan until they became eligible for Medicare. This sort of thing is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. My wife and I both also have pensions but those are also becoming less common. The pensions and my free health insurance until age 65 allowed us to move to the country. Though not matching contributions our employer had the government equivalent of 401K plans. We put money in fixed accounts like CDs rather than stocks. This is not what the experts said we should have done. Through the years we often saw other people were getting rich and we were barley gaining but other times other people losing badly as we still just kept slowly gaining.

Another former employer of mine was the military. The benefits of military service may even be better today than in the past. The GI bill paid for me getting a second college degree in a field where I could get a good job and also gave me a 0% down mortgage for the house we sold at three times the purchase price when we built in the country.

Finally, I've often heard about artists, musicians and farmers who have day jobs. Maybe that is not such a bad deal if it means living in the country. Much of what you are reading in this article shows in order to survive you may need to accumulate a nest egg while working in the city then retire in the country rather than starting out young in the country. On the other hand after some point in your life the longer you wait to move to the country the less you may have in mind, body or available time needed to do things yourself rather than trading money for them

Lesson # 8: Owe no man anything

Credit is a mixed bag. If you spend money on interest you could have been spending it someplace else but you may not be even able to have something like property without borrowing. If you owe money on something it is easier to lose the item compared to owning it. You often hear credit cards are supposed to be bad since people spend more money if they go into a store with plastic instead of cash but the Your Money or Your Life method of monitoring what you spend changes that monthly credit card statement into a source telling you where the money went.

Lesson # 9: Choose your location wisely

Wherever you end up decides the cost of something. There is a cost for getting to places where you work or trade and perhaps more importantly sick care services as you age. Weather matters too. We put our first garden in a valley below our house and it froze on August 15^th that year meaning we needed to spend more money for food. Last spring a late frost took out our entire crop of apples.  Also, access to free TV reception, telephone service or Internet  depends on location. You need to make your own list of what you need and go from there. Don't take anything for granted.

Lesson #10: The sky is not falling but stuff falls from it and may land on you

If you have something you can lose it so if you can buy insurance you might be protected. For something like a house it makes sense but insurance can be an illusion unless you remember exactly what is covered which is what happened to us. We bought nursing home insurance but then decided to only insure the big event of going to a nursing home to save money. It turned out we have needed home care due to some health issues but that was not covered. We cannot blame the insurance company for that. We made the decision ourselves and predicted wrong.

Lesson #11: You are going to get old and need to spend money rather than do things yourself

Self-reliance assumes you have the physical resources to do something for yourself and even with the healthiest of living that is what you or partners will loose with age. Gone are the old days with the large families where the kids helped out when the parents got old. As an example last fall I had planned to cut up and split five cords of wood but then did not have the time due to helping a spouse with mobility issues so had to hire someone with a machine to split the wood. If you cannot do something yourself you may need to trade money to have someone do it for you and the money has to come from someplace.

Lessons #12: Expect surprises

True surprises are not the same as hoping or pretending something will or won't happen. My hospital stay was not a true surprise since my father had what put me here though getting the disease happened much earlier to me than I expected. Getting a free healthcare expense account as part of a retirement buy-out program from my employer was a true surprise since it could not have been predicted. Surprises need not all be bad but it sometimes seems like more of them are bad.

Like I said before being self-reliant means you have the functioning body and mind and just as importantly the time to do something yourself. Right now I don't feel so self-reliant. That will certainly change in the next few weeks but for now some people wearing hospital garb who believe in Lesson #1 and don't believe me telling them I should be getting out of here yesterday are coming into the room to bug me so I must silence.  

Tom Sawyer's fence -- 21st century version

Anyone who grew up on a family farm knows how much unpaid work it took from the kids to make ends meet. But now some innovative farmers have joined together to get people from the city to help paint the farmer's version of the fence.  People can pay to go work (without pay) on a farm and call it a vacation. See http://www.wwoofusa.org/ for details. 


The picture from the web site is pasted below:      

Kasson, MN Only members have access to farm contact details and the complete farm description. Login here or become a member here. The land has a wide open space for gardens and many beautiful trees for shade and fruit. Our land is beautiful and is only a short walk to a lovely river with rocky overhangs. Restoration gardens was founded in 2004 as a way for us to put down roots and develop a genuine connection to the land. We grow a wide variety of vegetable, grain, small fruit and tree fruit crops, including strawberries, raspberries, sweet ...

Thanks to the BANANAS

for bringing  in some firewood so Mrs. TWW can have a warm Christmas. 

How dare she say "Christmas" but apology accepted

Something to remember when your local NPR station begs for money

Marrying your cousin now causes terrorism - didn't it used to be global warming?

http://bigpeace.com/nmay/2010/12/20/the-connection-between-muslim-inbreeding-and-terrorism/

Red morning

Moon the moon and it won't moon you back on December 21st

This is a picture created by your  tax dollars (at this NASA link)

For more details see: No moon link

The naughty corner

TWW showed one of Mrs. TWW's assistants the heated bench on the masonry stove and she said it reminded her of a time-out area for kids.  Another one of the assistants heard the term and labelled it the naughty corner and started to dream up ways to be naughty to get rewarded by sitting in the corner. 

Government warning

Bells

After numerous  requests by adoring fans Mrs. TWW finally relented and is going to allow a picture of all of her cabana bells to appear on this blog. She has two more on order for TWW to make on his lathe. 

Oddity of the day

Since coming back from sleeping through his vision quest TWW has been bombarded with spam selling Viagra. Did hackers get into the hospital records??

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This will help you! Soon holidays!

Thursday, December 16, 2010 6:25 AM

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