#green county

[gensearchdeb]

An AI created image of my 2nd great-grandfather

I have decided to dip my toe into the Artificial Intelligence (AI) world and see how many ways I can use it with my genealogy research. One of my long researched ancestors is my 2nd great-grandfather William Lewis DeSpain, who I have written about before found here. Among all of the sources and records I have found on him is a 18 September 1872 Chicago Evening Post newspaper article submitted by…

View On WordPress

[bulletinwave]

Lawmakers and doctors concerned about anti-vaccination signs in Greene County

Lawmakers and doctors concerned about anti-vaccination signs in Greene County

GREENE COUNTY, Pennsylvania (KDKA) – Signs are popping up along Route 19 in Greene County with messages like “The vaccine will kill you.” Amy Wadas of KDKA tried to ask homeowners why they posted signs on their property, but they refused to comment on Friday. READ MORE: The eighth edition of the music festival Raise your voice returns to Monessen Matt Badali, a county contractor, lives…

View On WordPress

[dontaylor50-blog]

John Parsons, Jr., & the 1810 Census

John Parsons, Jr., & the 1810 Census

Census Sunday Brown-Sanford-Parsons By Don Taylor Following families in the early census records is always tricky. Sometimes, it becomes a rabbit hole without a successful resolution. John Parsons lived in Sandisfield, Mass., during the 1790[i] and 1800 Censuses.[ii]  He then removed to Windham, Greene County, in 1802.[iii] John died in 1813, which means the only other Census he could be in is…

View On WordPress

[kimzplace]

Jennings Creek Falls, Greeneville, Tennessee - July 27, 2020

[cowonaverse]

Everything is so happy outside, of course this is how it needed to be.  Here are some recent images from this morning.  

From left to right and top to bottom:

Cherry Tomato Town, so burly and vigorous, it’s going to claw over the house any moment now.

Then a bag with snap peas that has really started taking off, the curly tendrils are so cute and curiously seeking.

Cabbage Town is nestled in with some Kale Town residents.  It was recovered and regrown from a stump, the kale are from seeds.

Basil Town, recovered from a previous indoor sickness, happily thriving next to Pigeon Pea Town, one of the original week one beans and is finally booming, also our feet.

Broccoli Town, that is still waiting to move into bigger space, next to Cherry Tomato City in the back and Oregano Town in front that has also decided to stop being shy and growwww.

Potatoes! These things are incredibly hearty and urgent, stalks like fat fingers pushing up and up and up. I’m curious to see how it will go with them.

Mustard Town is down to 1.5 residents.  This one is sharing a bag with new residents to Chick Pea Town that just went in last week and are already jumping up from the soil.  The plan was to keep them together until the mustard finishes blooming and putting out pods and dies, and by then space out the chick peas. But as it turns out the mustard plant is doing really really well and doesn’t seem done anytime soon.  It is now plumping up seed pods and it’s such a treat to see them get lumpy.

Other things are growing and thriving, here’s a sort of overall visual summary of the lovely green mess:

[cowonaverse]

Old Green County

I took some pictures before moving things Outside.  Here we go, for the record:

First of all, the big green leafy points are(were) all residents of Black Bean Town.  Sadly, as big and lush as they are here, and as seasoned survivors of life Indoors, they all died upon moving Outdoors.  It was the very same big beautiful leaves that compromised them since they didn’t have good roots to match and all broke or literally blew away out of their pots. 

At the moment, only the smallest black bean plants are still alive and hopefully developing good roots to support growth in the windy wilds.

I’m not going to go through the plants one by one, it’s enough to show the set up here and point out how twee and bitty things are.

I will note that the tall trio in the middle of the bottom shelf are the surviving members of Mustard Town.  I thought this was a good bit of growth and thriving, considering what they went through.  But as you will see, when then went Outside, they became capable of much more.

Also, most of the little boxy paper pots hold individual cherry tomatoes.  More on that later.

Above is the top shelf. Black Bean Town, to the far left is Lettuce Town, the low grouping in the center is Basil Town in recovery from root rot and doing well.

Above, left to right, Oregano Town, Cilantro Town, two glass jars of Carrot Town and a tub of the lost, twisted Black Bean Town tribe just a little sprout here.  Then the ill-fated big leaf members of Black Bean Town.  The two row pots on the right are Cherry Tomato Town.

Left to right again, scraggly Cabbage Town, behind it the last photo of Celery Town before it bust, a jar of Carrot Town, more small, twisted Black Bean Town, Cherry Tomato and a jar cap full of Onion Town.  Peeking in are more doomed big leaf Black Bean Town.

The bottom shelf, Kale Town struggling on the left, a few Cherry Tomato Town in the back, Mustard Town in the middle, Broccoli Town on the right.  There’s a grim little paper pot in the back with the last dead member of Garlic Town, but the rest of the pot has Cherry Town Hobos so it stuck around.

Turning the right is another self system I emptied out to make room for Chick Pea Town.  It had just started putting out bean pods.

You can’t seem them clearly because they are small, but there are a couple bean pods up near the window.  This is also the view of how I set up the string trellis.  Later this same day Freddie would come in and trash this whole set up.  This is elevated maybe four feet off the ground so he had no idea what he was jumping into.  All the string and dirt probably surprised him, which was a good thing because he only ruined the back row area before turning around and hopping back out.  He didn’t reach deeper to the new buds and bean pods in the middle onwards.

So orderly and wound neatly onto their rising strings.  I felt rather proud of this.

Another angle on the front few plants, I was trying to show the bean pods and tiny flower buds.  It’s still not that visible, but you can also see in the background art by Thomas Blue, along with Asajj Ventress guarding the window sill. One of the reasons the flower buds aren’t that obvious is because they were facing the sun, not me.

Above is Carrot Town in buckets.  They keep going well out of frame above. I harvested these greens after Freddie attacked and I decided to move everything outside.  These greens made the best tabouli and helped assuage the hard decisions.  After the Flood recently, the full carrots were harvested and skinned and are now sitting in the fridge to be eaten.  It’s just carrot tops now.

Lastly, left to right, Chili Town, Pigeon Pea Town and more Carrot Town. All set up in grow bags with bottle drip irrigation and doing rather well.  With the windows already committed, these were just sitting on the couch and not getting enough light.  They had good dirt and water, but weren’t ever going to really thrive and I knew it.  I felt guilty about this, along with the calamity, this helped me finally decide to move the project.

Whatever this looks like, things are better now outside.

[cowonaverse]

The Great Outdoors

Been thinking about this for a while, needed to process what’s happened.

Initially, like months ago when corona first reared up as a Thing to Contend With - the fear and panic was so strong that it pushed aside my depression and background anxiety completely.  I had something very tangible and concrete to Worry About.  Not only that, there was so much unknown that it seemed conceivably cataclysmic, like... it’s all over and done.  That is still in the mix of possibilities, but it’s much more of a mix these days and not so prominent a conclusion.  But still there.  

Anyway, in a home with another person freaking out who isn’t used to freaking out means managing his reactions first.  Securing the food supply seemed primary.  Starting to grow things at home seemed Important.  What I understand is that this is just seeking agency and control in a time of chaos.  But gestures matter, even to myself.  I am not afraid to do for myself if needed.  I grew up on my Grandma’s farm as a young teen.  I spent a summer as an intern preparing and maintaining bean cultivars for study at Tuskegee University.  I majored in Biology as an undergraduate at the University of Maryland Baltimore County.  I have graduate training within a laboratory setting and can pay attention to such needed details that establish and maintain living systems.

This is what I told myself, at least.  All this experience was well over 25 years ago and I’ve since lived as an artist, teacher and illustrator - basically another lifetime.  But I’m confident in my abilities to make - and make do - with my hands.  On the other hand, Saul is an architect.   He is a designer, not an implementer.   His training produces systems that others then render.  He knows how things should work and why things might fail, but it’s mediated through contractors and clients, and according to building code given to him.  There isn’t much tolerance for the scientific method of inquiry and curiosity, or artistic process.  The buildings have to stand and function, the first time, and every time.

So when confronted with chaos and systemic failures, Saul freaks out.  He was having regular, full-on panic attacks at first.  We fought and argued out of fear and then came back together, clinging again out that same fear.  

What I first recalled was my seventh grade science class, when we germinated beans in damp folded paper towels and then grew them to demonstrate basic botanical processes.  I suggested we go through the house for all whole seeds and try this to see what we can grow ourselves.  In retrospect, this is ludicrous.  Farming a few things from the spice rack is not going to sustain anybody, not to mention a household of two people and three cats.

But you have to recall the upheaval and urgency of those first few days.  Hunkering down and keeping busy with anything that seemed to suggest growth and tomorrow was vital, at least to me.  In some ways it was a relief to have to set aside my own neurotic issues to attend to these little mustard seeds and my partner and my cats.  And as the project grew and developed, this was the initial reward: Doing Something Intentional Towards Tomorrow was useful because it modelled the behavior of resilience and hope.  Even if it wasn’t actually practical, it was a rehearsal for a worldview concerned with survival.

I was still teaching students via online classes and it was useful to tell them what we were doing.  The narrative of growing things in the back bedroom was a good story, for the moment - for that very specific moment.

In the end, now, months later: we are participating in a local farm share with actual farmers who know what they are actually doing to produce actual food.  But by now I’ve learned to can and pickle and preserve things, I can bake and sew my own mask.  Here’s the thing: I dabbled in using my art to address my anxieties and it led me to gaining some small set of skills in a variety of projects.  Skills that now I can use For Real.  But what was always in question was who is it all for.  

What I’ve noticed, at least with Saul, is that he doesn’t initiate and get his hands dirty.  But.  Only at first, once I model behavior and demonstrate that there can be a pattern at work, a way of doing and understanding - then he is able to apply his considerable experience with systems and practicality to get it done right and better.  He saw me making and painting, fumbling around with my works and insights.  Then he tried it, made a body of work, participated in open studios, sold some pieces and was able to articulate his artistry in his own words.  I helped him with that, at first directly, then backing off and continuing on my own things but visibly now with him as a peer.

I started growing things and he looked at me doing that, saw it was possible and started doing it himself.  His plants are thriving and doing much, much better than mine.  I helped him with that when he finally wanted to try, he hasn’t done anything like this before in his life.  My earliest memory is reaching out to eat a cherry tomato in the community garden my parents participated in.  We talked about this while working together to sow some radishes he wants to grow. He said he thought he didn’t have a “green thumb” and avoided trying to grow anything.  His radishes are already out of the ground and happily thriving while mine have long since died off.

I have my accomplishments, but I have just as many failures.  I’m trying to be self-aware about what I’m doing and get help and training as I can.  It does help me feel better, day to day - but what I’m seeing is that it is helping Saul feel like he can do it too.  And when he does, he is actually really good at it.  He saw me sewing my fursuit and trying to apply that understanding to sewing my mask for covid.  A few weeks later, I’m helping him make them and his designs are better and neater and fit.  But I sat with him to go over the different options and we looked at the scientific papers about materials and filters and what covid is and how it works and what a filter is and how they work.  Like, we dug for the primary research.  He wouldn’t think to do that, but I’m not afraid of scientific papers and untangling technical things like that.  But he took all that understanding and made a better system of implementation than what I was able to do.  His masks are the ones we use, mine is an interesting sculptural piece and memento of this time.

My efforts to bake and can things worked at first, but the real success is that it prompted him to get involved and do it better.  What I made in the beginning functioned symbolically as self-sustaining, forward looking effort.  What he is doing now puts actual calories into the body better.

We fight over nuance that doesn’t matter, but the broad rhythm of collaboration has been that I do it first: I show that it’s possible which addresses his fear and pessimism, but then he gains confidence and does it better which addresses my impracticality and romanticism.

I am reminded of what I know to be the great biological divide between human beings: those able to tolerate ambiguity and those who can’t.  This is more fundamental than any other means of sorting and categorizing people.  Certain people have brains that light up for clarity and some light up for vagary.

This is the tension between staying in the cave and leaving the cave.  Speaking in prehistoric terms, the basic tension the human animal first knows upon becoming self-aware is how to deal with it’s own mortality.  Staying in the cave is the known quantity: it’s safe because there are no surprises, all issues are obvious and manageable and contained.  The problem of course is that the cave doesn’t have all the things you need to thrive.  Leaving the cave is the unknown quanity: it’s safe because you can be nimble and adjust freely, taking advantage of chance resources and opportunity.  The problem of course is that outside the cave are predators and dangers and the whole chaotic universe out to kill you.

My first inclination to grow food inside the house was basically Chris falling back to staying in the cave.  But as it turns out, plants still fail, the cat still gets in and trashes the crops, not enough light gets in, seeds are limited, resources run out, all manner of chaos still creeps in and undermines the effort.  So many stories have already been told about this.  Eden does not work, the perfect bubble world does not work.  The Island of Dr. Moreau is a horror story.  It is not particularly insightful for me to realize that locking things down to a controlled interior system is impossible or festering and that some tolerance for calamity has to happen for life to thrive.  I was worried about the New England weather wrecking things outside, but our radiator kicking on too high did the same thing.  I was worried about squirrels getting at our food, but our cat did the same.  I’m worried about advertising resources in a racist malignant society during the end times of social collapse and mass hunger, but our neighbors are also properly growing crops in their backyard as are many other houses on our street (and have for years), and our home is right up against an elementary school that also has a happy garden in view from our kitchen.

I was worried so much about the chaos outside that I was blind to the obvious truth that there is chaos inside as well.  The point is that it’s all part of the same messy thing.  Inside the cave and outside the cave are the same.  There is no inside or outside, and that is the point.  At least outside, the plants can get much more sun and so can I, the rain and weather are cooperating.  I had to learn that I don’t actually grow anything, the plants grow themselves, I just have to witness and shepherd that activity, but it’s already gonna do what it needs to do if I let it.

So much about art making seems to be about demonstrating control: over technique, over materials or concept, over a viewer or critic, over a political narrative.  But once you exhaust the resources in the cave, you have to go out and risk and be surprised and find new caves and new vistas and so on.  And it’s not because you know you’ll be safe, but because that is never possible to know.  What I’m learning is to go with another and to sincerely make that effort important and sufficiently rewarding itself.

It is just nicer now outside on the back porch.  The plants that were struggling inside are all booming now.  The wind is nice.  Seeing Saul’s plants pop up and surpass mine are nice.  It’s heading into summer and everything is warm and radiant.  I can hear sirens in the distance and the news is still the news and autumn and winter are right there on calendar, but I’m making my art, learning as I go.  I’m also aware that I’m not unique in any of this, other people have been doing this exact stuff and that’s comforting when I need to feel aligned with others and social.  When I need to look into myself and address my particular quirks I can do that too.  

 The food is better these days.  

[cowonaverse]

Green County Morning Report

Hurtling along, not sure what will happen next.  This morning I checked in on things and found the following:

- Brussels Sprout Town is in shambles.  Half the sprouts are soft and yellow, half are still fine green little nuggets.  I suspect it has to do with sunlight, since they are getting decent water and soil now.  I plucked out the deadbeats, so their numbers are dwindling.  I could consolidate the remainders into one plot, but I’m reluctant to fuss with the ones that are doing okay because I know it stresses the plants.  If there is any significant development and signs of growth and strength, then maybe later.

- Chili Town and Oregano Town have the first wee little sprouts - finally! I was concerned that I had botched the sowing somehow.  I know in terms of relationships “limerence” is the window of time between one person realizing attraction and the other person being made aware of it.  So you exist in this odd emotional limbo, such that it would even be preferable to be rejected just for the clarity it would provide.

I think something similar must be known by all who sow and wait to nurture growth.  Maybe not if you’ve done it before - but I haven’t.  I’m feeling pressure to not waste resources on bought seeds and soil and other such investments of time and concern.

So it was with great relief to finally see little fresh green bends of chili and oregano sprouts pushing up this morning.  If you’re not growing, you’re dying - and now I can finally see which one is the case.  Constant small triumphs and disasters; any meaningful harvest seems so far, far away.  But this is the good part of the morning.