respublica

Enough is enough of reproaching

The rise of the internet which allows for ease of communication and nearly instantaneous response, has become the place for more sniping than is good for us. Maybe sniping isn't a tough enough word for what goes on each day. We have become a nation of people who love reproaching others. And even more, we get an adrenaline rush reading responses to our reproaches. It's why it goes on in every facet of our daily life, be it politics, local news, crime reports, even religion. Read an online post from, say, your local congressman explaining why he/she voted for a bill and within seconds there comes angry responses. If you may want to disagree with the scorner, all his friends pile on disparaging you.

No one is above reproach or without sin. But too often we are like the man in Luke 18:11, "‘God, I thank You that I am not like the other men—swindlers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector."

Maybe we should all just go out and lay under the stars looking for falling meteors.

It's an addiction this constant reproaching. How we love it. It makes us feel like we know better than anyone else. How did this happen? Well, we never have to prove we what we can do or that we know better, we can just toss those disparaging words out there and feel good about ourselves.

Here is a the definition of Reproach and good list of synonyms for the word.

Reproach: Find fault with; dishonor

Censure, blame, chide, condemn, disapprove, discredit, reprimand, scorn, slur, shame, castigate, lambast, criticize, disparage, accuse, and on and on. 

 

Catch a falling star

Today is National Meteor Watch Day. Yes, it's true. It's touted in order to get us outside at night, with a picnic blanket and watch the skies for falling meteors. Oddly, the most prevalent time for meteors to fall is mid-July through the end of August. But probably some are visible now.

There is a DAY for everything.

The new Illinois Capitol Bill

There is a new spending bill being introduced beginning in East St. Louis today by Governor J.B. Pritzker. He will be "touting" a massive infrastructure program. He is going to sign the state’s $45 billion Rebuild Illinois Capital a six-year program aimed at fixing roads and state facilities, among other things, according to sources with knowledge of the governor’s tentative schedule.

And where is all this money going to be coming from? "In order to pay for the statewide capital and infrastructure investment, the General Assembly passed an increase in gas taxes, vehicle registration, the cigarette tax, and a gaming expansion which includes sports betting."

The gas tax is going to double beginning Sunday going from 19 cents a gallon to 38 cents. That is one big increase and look for more people to head over to Missouri or Indiana to buy gas whenever possible. The entire list of projects is here. But one of the more wasteful uses of this money is for urban farming in East St. Louis.

I mean, come on. My experience with urban farming, those neighborhood community gardens, is that they start off well in spring, but by mid-summer and beyond they have turned into a huge overgrown weed patch. No one bothers to tend them once it's done. Each year at the start of the seminary's school year we send out all the first year students and many staff people to clean up those gardens. It's a great experience really, and brings the new class together. I've gone each year and take pictures of before and after. But it still bugs the heck out of me that these urban gardens are left to rot in almost all cases.

So why allocate money for this.

Here are a couple of those gardens we worked.

Read more here: https://www.bnd.com/news/politics-government/article231975582.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: https://www.bnd.com/news/politics-government/article231975582.html#storylink=cpy

Getting around takes a lot of patience these days

I can't begin to describe how awful it is to get from one place to another in the area we live around the seminary. It seems every conceivable type of road work is being done on surface streets and not just the main arteries, but connecting neighborhood streets as swell. Whatever company has the contract for making orange cones is doing very well this summer.

I've never seen so many orange cones in my life and now they are making them bigger, some are taller than me. You cannot get around any of this stuff these days to even get to Schnucks. Big Bend is a horror and Clayton road is competing for that honor. Try to go another way and you're stopped by side streets filled with orange cones. And the traffic backs up as the traffic lights are not synced.

And then try to get onto the interstate and find ramps partially closed with more cones.

There must be a lot of road construction money out there these days.

How old is your vehicle?

A data provider company, IHS Markit, released their survey of the average age of cars and trucks and found a record high of 11.8 years. This is due they say because better quality and technology allows people to keep them on the road longer. It is believe this number will hit 12 years in the next year or so.

My truck, a Ford Explorer Sport Trac is a 2010 and still working well and looking good. Except of course, for the scratches from the tree falling on it. But that is being taken car of this week at A Rod's body shop in Collinsville. We've been pretty good about normal maintenance so hopefully it can keep going. Actually this truck is highly sought after because people seem to want this model and Ford stopped making them in 2010. I get personal handwritten letters and phone calls from local Ford dealers all the time offering me the world if I'd sell it.

So, I guess we are part of the people who keep their vehicles for a long time.

 

Saving the Garden

Attention Louis!

Yesterday Dale decided it was time to do something more effective with our vegetable garden and so drew up some plans to fence it in. He went to Home Depot and got several big rolls of chicken wire, sturdy fence posts and heavy bags of concrete. To say Dale does not do things simply or halfway is an understatement. He even hauled around ten foot long timbers for the base. Honestly I was pretty proud of him because this project was hard work and he did it because I was always grieving over the damage the local animals were doing to all the vegetable plants. They'd stripped every blossom and early fruit until we had nothing but leaves.

Also, we were very thankful that two of our students who work part time with maintenance and grounds came and were a huge help.

Here is what it looked like from our bedroom window this morning.

Pick that stuff up

There has been a ladder on the road on 364 since Friday.

Mattresses 62

Ladders 60

Asking the Road Crew again

Each Monday the Post Dispatch normally runs a column called, "Ask the Road Crew" in which readers can ask for answers about various issues on local roads. Today a question came from someone wanting to know if MoDOT will ever re-stripe the highway lanes so that they don't disappear in the dark or in rain.

I've been obsessed with this issue for some years and mentioned it on this blog. Here is the answer from Andrew Gates of MoDOT: "Our crews are currently working on re-striping around the area. The significant amount of rainfall that we have had prevents them from making much progress much progress as they might like as quickly as they would prefer. We place reflective beads in the paint to help them reflect lights at night. However, rain is often as reflective as those beads, so you can often lose the stripes in the rain. Plows and chemicals used during snow fighting an also have a damaging effect on beads and stripes. We do have reflective markers that we have inlaid into the pavement on several roadways that are intended to help improve seeing the lanes during inclement weather. We are continuing to add those around the region as we resurface roadways."

Ok. This does not make me optimistic that MoDOT's roads will have the lanes show up any better. This bead business seems like more problems. Why does MoDOT not check with other states which have brilliantly bright nighttime lane lines? In Illinois the lanes don't disappear even though they may not be as bright as places light Tennessee, Virginia, Maryland and other states we've driven through at night.

Here is Tennessee at night. Even the guard rails are illuminated with a great paint.

Here is a link to a short video I took out in Virginia near DC/Maryland. What are they doing that Missouri will not do? I am always so amazed at the states which use a bright lane paint that I take pictures. The difference compared to Missouri is shocking.

Growing Cucuzza

We haven't had much trouble getting things in the garden to grow this year, things are lush. Now, keeping the voracious rabbits and squirrels and possums etc from eating the produce is another issue. The lushest plant going is the Cucuzza Squash. If you've never seen this you're missing out. It can grow a foot or two a day and the leaves are huge. Cucuzza needs something to hang onto and can grow taller than a house and the squash that appears after some weeks hang down like baseball bats. They're huge. Long and somewhat thin, these squash are common in Italy and becoming fairly popular here. 

I tried this out last summer against our back fence and it got so huge and covered so much territory that it went into the back neighbors trees and yard. This year I started some from seed and planted a couple at the seminary and a couple in Collinsville. They're already taller than me as they grow up the back of the garage. At some point they'll be hanging on the roof of the garage. 

Here is a stock photo from somewhere of a typical Cucuzza.

The guy is holding a Cucuzza.

Here is what ours looks like so far

It's a fun plant to grow. 

Digging

I spent the past two days digging potatoes. Let me tell you, that is very hard work. The term, "back-breaking" must have originated by a potato farmer. But in the end, it's pretty darn satisfying to look at all the potatoes you planted, babied, and then harvested. I took them to the seminary food bank.

Now if we could just keep the rabbits and squirrels out of the other plantings in that garden. I have tried about every garden tip on the internet but the rabbits have eaten every bloom on the 3 types of squash plants we have and the squirrels just polished off all the green tomatoes. In both cases we have quite a few plants and they are now all bare of fruit. Dale thinks we should chicken wire the whole thing, but that would be a seriously hard and expensive job, this garden plot is pretty big.

I've tried spraying Repells-All around the perimeter and on the ground around the plants. I've shaken red pepper powder around as well as something "guaranteed" to work named, Rabbit Scram. Nothing works. Yesterday I put in a flowering pumpkin plant and am off to see if the blooms on that have been eaten. If so, I'm about to give up.

Where are the Hawks this year?