Nature – Kensho Homestead

What’s Been Lost?

You don’t know, because it was taken long before you were born.
Your father, your grandfather, ditto.
Your child will know less, her child lesser still, what’s been lost.

Someday she might try to dig it up, maybe because life no longer makes sense to her.

So hideously ugly, there’s got to be a better way!

In confusion and rejection of the dystopian present she senses roots calling from the past, something deeper was once here, something grander, was it an alignment, a race, an epoch, antiquitech, infrastructure, what?

What’s been lost? Where has it gone? Who took it?
Who continues to take it?

A new series for Kensho,
Starting now . . .

What does ancient Persia and modern Texas have in common? The Ice House.

If I said that to a Texan they’d think I meant the popular outdoor beer gardens, and their version of history would go back to the early 1900s and they’d think that was old. Perhaps they’d offer some local trivia or home-spun yarns, like the original Texas Ice House was the first ice manufacturing company, which is now claimed to be have been merely an ice storage facility, which later became the modern day 7-11 francise. There is, like most home-spun yarns, some truth in that story. And much redirection and fabrication as well. Perhaps to keep your eyes of our own ancient history.

More from Wiki:
In some parts of Texas, especially from San Antonio and the Texas Hill Country down to the Mexican border, ice houses functioned as open-air bars, with the word “icehouse” becoming a colloquialism for an establishment that derives the majority of its income from the sale of cold beer.[24] The distinction between South Texas ice houses and ice houses of other parts of the state and the South has been connected to the Catholicism of the region, a deeper-rooted Mexican culture, and the influence of German immigrants.

A nice find from a local antique shop. I believe some of the old buildings in the nearby small city of Palestine once used this radiative cooling system.

On radiative cooling

I believe it begins in Persia, still home to many ice houses, called Yakhchal. Alternative energy in the modern Western sense is really ugly, cumbersome, expensive, destructive, in comparison. Yet, there is evidence that the Yakhchal was once more widespread than just in the ancient, or modern, middle east.

The yakhchal is used for preserving and storing food, cooling structures, even making icy sweets. It works through radiative cooling, which existed in ancient times, still is in existence in remote areas today, and yet, it’s not the norm here, in the modern and advanced industrial West. Why?

That they propose it now to cool the entire planet with this line of tech means they think they can scale it that far up, yet they can’t manage to scale it back down, again. How can that be?

Geoengineering the planet with ‘lost’ radiative cooling technology, Science Direct. And ‘global radiative sky cooling’.

What is the difference between the common springhouse and an icehouse, which is the Yakhchal? My neighbors once had a springhouse, but I’d only know that because he told me himself, before he died, at over 90 years old.

Where else would such useful information be kept, I wonder? How will the next owners know there was once a springhouse there, one that might even be restored to a functioning status, when I see on their real estate listing that not even the grandchildren seem to know or care about this old feature? Who cares now, right, because we have the water co-op and the electric company we can pay each month.

I believe a case could be made that the very common structures once known as springhouses were the vernacular equivalent of the ice house.

Much is written about ancient Persian architecture in this work from 1887 by “Madame” . I can’t help but wonder, similar to how the meaning of Ice House changed in Texas, did the meaning of Madame also change? ‘Cause Dude does NOT look like a lady!

Three main types of Yakhchals exist: vaulted, underground, and roofless, each adapted to different climatic conditions.

Passive cooling so common and effortless that even poor people could afford ice:
(PDF) Yakhchal; Climate Responsive Persian Traditional Architecture

Mehdipour, Armin. Yakhchal; Climate Responsive Persian Traditional Architecture.

Yakhchāl – Wikipedia
The Mughal emperors also recorded to adopt the technology of Yakchal. Humayun (r. 1530–1540, 1555–1556) expanded ice imports from Kashmir to Delhi and Agra, insulating blocks with straw and saltpetre to slow melting, a Persian technique. Early Baraf Khana (underground pits) stored ice, adapted from ‘yakhchāl’ for preservation.[4] Akbar (r. 1556–1605) organized ice transport from Kashmir to Delhi, Agra, and Lahore via a 14-stage relay system, delivering ice in two days using saltpetre. The ab-dar khana at Fatehpur Sikri used sandstone cisterns and qanats, resembling yakhchāl, to cool water and make sherbets and early desserts.[5] During the era of Jahangir (r. 1605–1627), Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri describes baraf khana as insulated cellars storing ice for palace cooling, food preservation, and kulfi, a frozen milk dessert with pistachios and saffron. Ice was harvested in Lahore from shallow ice pans and stored in straw-lined pits.Shah Jahan (r. 1628–1658).[6] Shah Jahan built a baraf khana in Sirmaur to supply Agra and Delhi’s Red Fort. These underground structures with thick walls stored ice for drinks, food, and kulfi, symbolizing imperial luxury.[7]
Although many have deteriorated over the years due to widespread commercial refrigeration technology, some interest in them has been revived as a source of inspiration in low-energy housing design and sustainable architecture.[8] And some, like a yakhchāl in Kerman (over a mile above sea level), have been well-preserved. These still have their cone-shaped, eighteen meter high building, massive insulation, and continuous cooling waters that spiral down its side and keep the ice frozen throughout the summer.

What we see as far as typical architectural features of the Yakhchal are domes, sometimes occuring with minerets, or spires, and sometimes with bells associated as well. Underground gardens are also a feature in the more elaborate designs.

Interestingly, Dallas has such an architectural gem, though I’ve not found any mention of the yakhchal or ice house technology mentioned in the literature.

The celebrated architect of the famous underground Dallas square.

From Wiki:
Thanks-Giving Square – Wikipedia

The Square is set fifteen feet below ground level with a four-foot wall blocking the sight of automobiles to create a serene, green island. Water plays a prominent role in the landscape, with active fountains masking city noise.

Sitting amid the steel and glass skyscrapers of the Dallas business district, Thanks-Giving Chapel’s white spiral building is a beautiful—and unusual—sight. A curvilinear chapel resembling the 9th century Al-Malwia (snail shell) freestanding minaret of the Great Mosque of Samarra, Iraq, built by the Abbasid caliph Al-Mutawakkil, is not a building a visitor to Dallas expects to see. Another pleasant surprise is the Qur’anic verse “Grateful praise is due to God alone, the Lord and Nourisher of the worlds” engraved on a granite column at the entrance to Thanks-Giving Square. A portion of Psalms 100 appears on the Wall of Praise, also at the square’s entrance.

In 1971, the Dallas-based nonsectarian Thanks-Giving Foundation hired renowned American architect Philip Johnson to design a chapel that would celebrate the value and spirit of the institution of thanksgiving. Completed in 1976, Johnson’s white marble aggregate building dominates the three-acre triangular site that is dedicated to spiritual reflection. A sloping bridge built over a cascading waterfall connects the courtyard to the chapel. From his study of art history, Johnson was inspired by the spiral form of the Samarra minaret—which is similarly connected to the Great Mosque by a bridge.

“The spiral design perfectly conveys the foundation’s dual mission of offering a place for all people to give thanks to our creator and celebrating the value and spirit of thanksgiving for both sacred and secular cultures throughout the world,” Tatiana Androsov, Thanks-Giving Square’s president and executive director, told the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

Inside the chapel, a visitor’s attention is immediately drawn to the Glory Window (above), a multi-colored stained glass ceiling created by Gabriel Loire. This striking creation was memorialized in a United Nations stamp in 2000, the International Year of Thanksgiving. In one area of the room is a large white Carrara marble cube mounted on a sandstone circle made of local Austin stone. The cube is symbolic of the unification of mankind; the circle symbolizes eternity.

During the week, the chapel is a convenient and tranquil location in an otherwise busy city for Muslims working in the downtown business district to pray. “Although there are 22 mosques in the Dallas area, many Muslims working in this part of town like to come here, especially for Friday prayers,” Androsov explained.
Visitors from Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Africa come to the chapel as part of the U.S. State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program, she added. The Thanks-Giving Foundation is a Department of Public Information NGO with the United Nations. For more information, visit www.thanksgiving.org.

Thanks for joining me on this little journey through time and space!

One last deep speculation–could this ancient architectural tech also relate to the so-called Mound Builder indigenous tribes all over the Americas?

More on that next ‘What’s Been Lost’ post.

So. Much. Cheese

Just some happy snaps with minimal commentary this post, because it’s been too long. With more coming very shortly, as soon as my new keyboard arrives, because I loathe the hunt and peck method of the digital keyboard.

Some aged cheeses and winter herbs: smoked cheese on lees, kenshobert, pepper havarti, dill havarti and cheddar, with some fresh sage, cilantro and rosemary.

My biggest cheese this season from 9 gallons, caraway cheddar aged in a poke-tinted tallow coating. Unfortunately, it’s not my favorite. Fortunately, others like it fine so I happily gave the whole thing away.

My personal favorite, my signature Kenshobert, a local take on Camembert.

A large dill havarti and variety of experiments, most quite good!

Sharing a charcuterie board of cheeses and cured lamb.

A winter harvest of romaine, onions, herbs, radishes and even an orange from our little shrub and some cherry tomatoes because it’s been so unseasonably (and unnaturally) warm.
Plus a pot of today’s milk becoming clabber for tomorrow’s cheese.

Unusual winter roses turning strange colors.

A few more happy snaps . . .

A darling bird of prey I watched right off our balcony from our recent quick roadtrip to Gruene in the Hill Country.

Also in Gruene, a so-called ‘mud-flooded’ building, more coming soon on that conspiracy theory in the new year.

They have preserved some gorgeous trees there from the ever-encroaching urban sprawl, and more power to ’em!

Merry Christmas from the wee homestead!

Thanks for stopping by!

Surveillance Capitalism Comes With a Side of Atmospheric Tampering

“Papers, please!” was a running joke among Western expats living in Eastern Europe. I wonder how many of them now carry a permanent spying device with great pleasure or perhaps even cheerfully signed on to the digital passport program, first in line, buying into the ploys of safety and convenience.

The Globe was supposed to move in the other direction entirely! We won the Cold War, supposedly, in order to NOT be treated like the perpetual citizen-criminals of Kafka’s stories.

Eastern Europe in 1989 was a surreal place for a young university sophmore voyaging long distances by train alone for the first time. It was at once charming and derelict, welcoming and suspicious, familiar and mysterious.

On the one hand I never felt physically threatened, not even as flaneuse on the city streets at night. On the other hand the decrepid state of the infrastructure whispered danger somehow, because neglect itself is a dark force.

On the one hand the relative poverty was palpable, though my midwest suburban upbringing was middle class, great food variety and consumer goods were far more available. On the other hand their resourcefullness has had a lifelong impact on me and was my first critical look at the innate and corrupting consumerism of my little world.

I didn’t speak the languages and there were very few English speakers. I got by, barely, with French, rudimentary German and smiling, mostly. Americans were considered automatically suspect, so some travelers would claim to be Canadian at any venue not requiring their passports.

Already on the issue of passports I was laughingly naive.

A variety of stamp collecting, or paving the way for the Global digital gulag? It was an especially exciting moment in the expats life when your passport got so full of stamps you had to go pronto to the nearest embassy to get new blank pages stapled into the back of the official document.

Interestingly, while Americans were considered automatically suspect, there was still a sort of cult following that adored America and those who were positively thrilled to meet one, and I made it a point of meeting those unique sorts.

I went on to be a Peace Corps volunteer there a few years later precisely because of my immediate attraction to this region. I felt compelled to know it better and the fact I had the opportunity to spend three more years there, mostly in Czech Republic, but traveling the region extensively, was in fulfillment of my deepest desires and longings at that time.

For all that I loved it, there I also felt my greatest repulsions.

The dystopian Kafkaesque bureaucrocy I experienced was not just fiction. The general acceptance of the populace, while not exactly Stolkholm Sydrome toward their Soviet occupiers, was still a quiet resignation which struck me as particularly pathetic considering their far more astute knowledge of history.

My old passports are the best symbol with which I can try to express my current level of despair seeing my greatest repulsions come to fruition all around me, even as we ‘the Capitalist West’ were the supposed winners of the Cold War.

What did we win? A military industrial complex acting against the best interests of its people. A Corporatocracy run by corrupt public-private partnerships which pretends not to be a fascistic system. Progress that is defined entirely by blind acceptance of anything stamped with the Technocrat seal of approval. Endless paving over of the countryside for roads and minimalls and condos and tourist traps in the ugliest construction ever known to ‘civilized’ man.

Civilization itself has morphed into something totally uncivil, hideous and expanding entirely out of control.

I, like many other intrepid travelers, thought of the passport merely as the modern equivalent of the old travel trunks stamped fashionably with destinations. We thought of them as a collection of strange signs and symbols we’d forever associate with our new memories of far-off places. They were the paper images of our wanderlust we planned to show one day to the grandkids, not knowing they would be holding a digital scrolling device we’d rarely be able to pry from their clutches.

Just a decade ago this was all ranch land

“Once traditional farming systems have been destabilised by the debt-trap of subsidised loans, structural adjustment policies, corporate input regimes, global supply chains, patented seeds and monocultural production, mass migration to cities becomes an inevitability engineered from above. The city thus absorbs the displaced because the countryside has been systematically stripped of opportunities or carved up for infrastructure or real estate schemes.”

What if we’d been given the actual choice, not the strategically invented one, between our current paradigm of progress as a global militarized surveillance state and the ‘stagnation’ where the Eastern Bloc resided for half a century?

This, or this?

Electric prison bars or progress?

Do folks really think WHEN this whole shitshow goes tits-up there will be government funding for the clean-up and restoration of this once beautiful land?

That I don’t want this EVER, for ANYONE makes me some kind of bitter-clinger communist?

“ALA’s annual State of the Air report found that 156.1 million people—46 percent of the population—now live in counties with failing grades for ozone or particle pollution, nearly 25 million higher than last year. Previously less-affected areas, such as Minneapolis, saw significant spikes in unhealthy air days tied to climate-exacerbated wildfires and particle pollution, such as dust.”

Universities funded by public-private partnerships clandestinely tamper with our atmosphere using euphemistically-named scientific jargon like ‘Plume dispersions’ as if this is not mass poisoning?

https://open.substack.com/pub/mellowkat/p/simons-foundation-international-gave?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

A fairy tale of citizen safety in the form of acoustic weapons for
city-wide crisis alerts?

https://newbraunfels.gov/m/newsflash/Home/Detail/3762

A hellscape of ‘progress’ in the form of the most ugly, extractive and intrusive landscapes imaginable?

How did ‘WE’ win in this global game that began long before I was born?

What kind of twisted minds call this progress? We have 70 years of documented atmospheric tampering while officialdom continues in denying its impact, which is now going into overdrive while the voices of the livid citizenry, especially those losing their livliehoods in the rural regions, get squashed. Same as it always was.

“Similarly, Gerard Winstanley, writing in the 17th century, envisioned a society in which land and labour were shared as a common good, not commodities to be exploited. His insistence on communal responsibility and ecological justice underscores the radical, enduring potential of agrarian ethics against the logic of extraction and profit.

In this light, the critique of urban-centric development becomes more than an economic critique. It represents a challenge to the very definition of progress. The rejection of the celebratory narrative of neoliberal modernity is a philosophical insistence that a society cannot be judged by its technological prowess while its ecological foundations crumble and its people are alienated from the sources of life.

The modern city, therefore, becomes a battleground where two visions of civilisation confront one another: the dominant model of corporate-led, centrally managed growth and the fragile but persistent ethic of stewardship, locality and shared responsibility. As made clear in my new open access book, The Agrarian Imagination: Development and the Art of the Impossible (available here), genuine human development cannot be measured by urban skylines or GDP figures but by the survival of relationships between people, land and community that give meaning to life.”

https://figshare.com/articles/book/The_Agrarian_Imagination_Development_and_the_Art_of_the_Impossible/30589238?file=59624783

Beneath the Concrete, the Soil Still Whispers – OffGuardian

Beneath the Concrete, the Soil Still Whispers

Texas Weather Modification Report–1964 – Zero Geoengineering

Texas Weather Modification Report–1964

On Germ Theory & Cheesemaking Reality

I taught my Beginners Cheesemaking Workshop at the Senior Center and as always when teaching, I learned SO much.

Beyond the barely controlled kitchen chaos, of which I fully approve, there were the usual sort of mistakes to learn from, like why a random rennet failure for one participant, and why another’s curd did not want to separate from its whey. Those issues were fixed, total failure averted, which is the very best way to teach cheesemaking.

Lots can go wrong but most likely you’ll still have good cheese, that’s my primary teaching goal. It may not be the cheese you were going for, but that’s ok.

Do first, talk later, that’s how it should be with cheesemaking, according to me. There really is a method to my madness, and it’s staunchly ‘anti-science’. This is totally logical, because folks were making cheese LONG before anyone understood the science behind it. In fact, much of the science behind it is still disputed.

You don’t need to know what rennet is, or study a recipe first, or have all your ducks in a row before diving in. In fact, like with many new skills, too much information is actually an impediment to just getting started.

I like to allow the alchemical magic to lure the potential future cheesemaker into the process all on its own. Their desire for more knowledge, more structure, more understanding is a far more powerful teacher than I could ever be prattling on about all the minutea on the science of cheesemaking.

Which is more fascinating, the art or the science of cheesemaking? That will depend on the individual, but let’s face it, for most of us, art is far more fun.

So my moto is, let’s get in and get dirty! And we did, wow, did we make an impressive mess. A deep bow to the very kind ladies who did all the cleanup, I definitely scored there. I should’ve calculated better how much mess there would be, but what fun is there in that?

In my personal debriefing session once home and reflecting on the experience, I had a few ‘room for improvement’ points to make, but not around the mess or the chaos. (Note to self: bring extra cheese for the ones who get stuck washing up.)

Those details are important, but not nearly as important as the most important thing I learned, which is–folks out here don’t actually believe in germ theory. This is something of a revelation for me.

Despite the 5 extra bottles of hand sanitizer in the back room, and the chemically-scented dish soaps by the sink, and the properly clean kitchen that demonstrated good hygienic practices, once the ball got rolling, not a peep about bad bacteria was overheard.

We did eventually talk a bit about bacteria, and so-called germs and my disdain for anti-bacterial products and chemically-laden scents and their detriment to the cheesemaking process, not to mention general good health.

But in practice it was pretty clear the bad germs propaganda was not fully instilled in this clever group of girl and ladies (and our one token man who chivalrously helped me with all the heavy lifting).

Right into the cheese pot went many pairs of bare hands to stir the curd without a moment’s hesitation. I was immediately and very pleasantly surprised.

Then, because of mistakes in one group, and excesses in another, the curds of many pots became communal. A dozen pair of hands, not one that had been scientifically anti-bacterialized (I brought my own soap, which they all used, and several raved about) salting and pouring and forming and pressing.

And while I could see in my mind’s eye my mother’s face pinching into a look of mounting disgust, all I could think was, “This is so awesome!”

Teaching beginning cheesemaking has one crucial thing in common with teaching adults beginning a foreign language: The biggest hindrance to success is fear of failure. And, constant failure is the only way to learn how to do it.

Our education system, in addition to forcing on children such complete nonsense as germ theory, instills in them very early on to harbor a fear of failure.

If I could re-educate around one axiom the entirity of the Western schooling system it would be to learn to fail first, so you get good and used to it.

Take the shame out of failure and watch as the love of learning soars.

Here’s my ‘All you need to know about learning in 3 easy lessons’:

Lesson 1: Fail.
Lesson 2: Learn from those failures!
Lesson 3: Rinse & Repeat!!

And now, let’s learn a thing or two about the failure of the modern pseudoscience known as germ theory from Dr. Nancy Appleton in her book “The Curse of Louis Pasteur: Why Medicine is not healing a diseased world” as reported in the interview/synopsis by:
Lies Are Unbekoming Substack.
https://open.substack.com/pub/unbekoming/p/the-curse-of-louis-pasteur?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

“You’ve spent your entire life believing a story about disease that simply isn’t true. Every time you’ve reached for antibiotics, every time you’ve worried about “catching” something, every time you’ve surrendered your health to medical authority, you’ve been operating under a fundamental misconception that has shaped Western medicine for over a century. Louis Pasteur’s germ theory – the idea that we’re sterile beings under constant attack from external microbes – didn’t just become medical dogma by accident. It triumphed through a combination of political connections, self-promotion, and what we now know from Pasteur’s own hidden notebooks was scientific fraud. The theory promised simple solutions: identify the germ, develop the drug, conquer the disease. But here’s the thing about simple stories – they’re usually wrong.”

This isn’t just an academic dispute between dead scientists. Right now, your body is maintaining thousands of delicate balances – pH, blood sugar, mineral ratios, temperature – through feedback loops of staggering complexity. Walter Cannon called this state homeostasis, building on Claude Bernard’s revelation that we don’t actually live in the external world but in our own internal fluid environment. When this internal environment stays balanced, you have energy, clarity, resistance to disease. But modern life assaults this balance relentlessly: 150 pounds of sugar per year disrupting blood glucose, chronic stress flooding your system with hormones meant for brief emergencies, thousands of chemicals your liver was never designed to process, processed foods that can’t be properly digested. Your digestive enzymes fail, partially digested food leaks into your bloodstream, your immune system exhausts itself fighting food particles instead of threats, and those helpful microorganisms in your body start changing into forms associated with disease. The symptoms you develop – the arthritis, diabetes, chronic fatigue, cancer – aren’t random attacks by germs. They’re the predictable result of your internal environment breaking down.

And this is where the curse becomes clear: by convincing us that disease comes from outside, that our health is beyond our control, that only medical experts with their drugs can save us, the germ theory has robbed us of our power. We’ve become a society spending over a trillion dollars yearly on healthcare while ranking dead last among developed nations in health outcomes. We’re first in infant mortality, cancer rates, chronic disease, and pharmaceutical consumption. The medical system excels at crisis intervention but has completely failed at prevention because it’s been looking in the wrong direction for over a century.”

I have not read this particular book, but these quotes repeat what a great many experts have been publishing for as long as Pasteur has been relentlessly promoted in their stead. They have been, and continue to be, buried beneath pseudoscientific propaganda in order to sell a lot of chemical crap to the public.

It’s been through reading some of these works combined with nearly 15 years of cheesemaking I’ve come to realize a few crucial truths:

*Air-born ‘viruses’ have never been scientifically proven to exist.*

*Trying to abolish bacteria to create a ‘sterile’ environment does more harm than good.*

*Fear of contagion is FAR more contagious than the so-called contagious diseases.*

I’ll let the experts argue amongst themselves all the fine details of the various theories which were buried so that Pasteur could dominate public health for over a century.

I know enough from my limited research what is necessary to lead a happier, healthier life and I’m so pleased to know that while the general public may go through the motions to pay some lipservice to germ theory, in all practicality, a lot of them don’t really believe it either.

The modern-day experts trying to unbury Pasteur’s contemporary critics and practices are pushing through the censorship and making life happier and healthier for a lot of folks. If you want to learn more, check out some of their work, loads of it is available for free.

An easy place to start would be with Mike Stone:
“In the past—even as recently as 2017, when I first began investigating—there was very little material available for those questioning the mainstream narrative, and what did exist was often difficult to find or access. Today, however, there is an abundance of resources—dedicated websites, books, podcasts, documentaries, Substacks, and more. As I noted three years ago, this growing community of independent thinkers has been reexamining long-held scientific assumptions—not only in virology, but also in bacteriology, immunology, genetics, and even vitamins/nutrition. By critically analyzing old research and questioning foundational claims, people are rediscovering logic and genuine inquiry in place of rote belief. This movement reflects a collective return to critical thinking, open discussion, and the pursuit of truth through shared investigation—a modern renaissance of independent science.”

https://viroliegy.com/2025/10/02/antiviral-ep-1-virology-a-critique-of-its-foundations

https://open.substack.com/pub/unstabbinated/p/the-annual-flu-as-an-example-of-ai?r=apljy&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

https://open.substack.com/pub/christinemasseyfois/p/environment-and-climate-change-canada?r=apljy&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false

And many more . . .

So. Much. Milk

A sudden mini-miracle has occured and has turned the month I completely intended to be an exceptionally lazy one into a whole big mess of work.

What’s in your cheese cave?
A portion of the cheeses I’ve made in the last two weeks, the largest was from 9 gallons, which was transformed into a Caraway Gouda. The smallest was made right in the half-gallon Mason jar with milk directly from the cow, never cooled and ‘backslopped’ from our own homemade goat rennet. Backslopping was a traditional method used on the farm to carry the culture and rennet combination from day-to-day, similar to keeping a fresh starter culture for sourdough bread.

While it’s work I love, the problem-solving has been endless and my shoulder is an on-going issue. After such a long search, this was so unexpected and has caught me off-guard, unprepared and re-injured. Why am I not surprised?

My milk-quest for cheesemaking has been a decade-long challenge. For the briefest of run-downs I’ve watched raw milk prices double in that time, tried and failed at goat rearing, and for the past couple of years I’ve been herdshare hopping, with prices far too high for cheesemaking.

A few weeks ago I tried another herdshare–closer, nicer, and so much cheaper. Finally, I can make cheese to my heart’s content, to hell with my aching shoulder! And thanks to Hubby on early retirement, who is willing and available for all the heavy lifting.

And who also helps with the redneck innovations–having just made me a new collapsible cheese-hanger unit and also made my cheese-press.

I’ve even been able to experiment again it’s so reasonable, at just $3.50/gallon. Not since the goats have I managed to pay so little for such cheese pleasures. My new milk lady is short on customers, half her milk is going to her neighbor’s pigs every day.

All I can think is, how crazy is that? That precious milk goes to the pigs, because it’s illegal to sell it anywhere but at her farm and to process it into cheese to sell is also illegal. While I can imagine those are some very happy pigs, I still wish I could sell cheese.

Actually, not so much the selling part, just the making part. I do often give it away as gifts and I get rave reviews. I’m often asked why I don’t sell it at the Farmer’s Market, because so few know how illegal it actually is. The requirements for licensing are very strict, not a chance a home kitchen would pass, (Great Dane not included!) and even with all the proper paperwork and a professional kitchen, many cheeses are still illegal to sell.

Various whey beneficiaries on the homestead:

I don’t want to run a cheese business anyway. I want a HWB (Hobby with Benefits) with those benefits being financial as well as delicious.

For now, I’m already out of room in my mini-aging fridge. I bought a second one, but once I got all the cheeses in it I had an impossible time getting a steady temperature. I gave up after 3 days of trying, to a mess of 70 degree cheeses sweating and dripping and starting to smell bad. The fridge regularly swings by 30 degrees, a cheesemaking nightmare.

I can work with a steady 50-55, and control humidity using plastic bins, not exactly a cave in the Loire Valley, but I can make it work well enough for a short Redneck affinage.

The non-existent affinage fridge of my dreams would be humidity controlled. The one that’s close enough costs a mere $700 and has temperature control in two sections (nice!). It’s technically for wine but home cheesemakers who can afford it often convert them with great success, or so I’ve read.

Let me just put that up on my vision board and see if it arrives in a timely fashion!

Also on my wishlist, David Asher’s latest book. His first book is my go-to resource and changed everything I was doing in making cheese, “The Art of Natural Cheesemaking: Using Traditional, Non-Industrial Methods and Raw Ingredients to Make the World’s Best Cheeses.”

Despite the struggle for a reliable raw milk source I have come to the wonderful place in my cheesemaking skills that I no longer follow recipes. I still read plenty of recipes, of course. But I read them to glean new techniques, learn cultural differences and especially pre-industrial methods, and imagine new combinations, in order to try them in my own way, like the rest of our cooking here. Hubby works the same way with his culinary craftiness.

It is the key to turning cooking from drudgery to joy, imo. It’s ‘the zone’ like they talk about in sports, or artists in their creative flow. Who wants to do that in their sterile industrial kitchen rather than in the comfort of their own home? Some, I know, but definitely not me.

Some previous cheeses “Kenshobert” in my territoire version of Camembert.

Turning a favorite hobby into a business is the joy-killer. Being well-rewarded for a favorite hobby is the goal. That’s magical like milk transforming into 1,000 cheeses is magical. Some call it alchemy, but really it’s just fermentation, maybe the most ordinary and natural process in the world.

Cheesemaking is also economical and beneficial to more than just our health and palette. The dogs and the pigs get all the whey after the ricotta is made–whey ricotta is a delicious ‘by-product’ from making hard cheeses. So from each gallon we get the heavy cream for coffee and ice cream, milk for cheeses, and whey for other recipes and very contended critters.

Ricotta pressed overnight then soaked 3 days in homemade hard pear cider. Eaten fresh, with fruit or crackers, it’s mild, slightly sweet and tangy.

The critics of course think it a lot of wasted work when cheese from the grocery store is cheap and plentiful, and there’s a growing network of artisanal cheesemakers who craft excellent cheeses (for a hefty price). I’ve had plenty of such cheeses and they are indeed delicious and worth the money.

A Tomme-style wash-rined cheese with goat cheese crottin-style draining

But, they are all subject to the laws, which usually means: pasteurization, medicated animals, artificial lab-produced rennet (brought to you by Pfizer!), and freeze-dried cultures, also lab-made.

All that is exactly what I’m trying to get away from, in order to craft the most natural, local cheeses as possible. It’s an impossible task while remaining inside the laws.

Yet, there are folks still alive today who can remember when the laws weren’t so intolerably squashing to taste, creativity and economy. Just as there are old-timers here in Texas who can remember the days when they were allowed to raise, kill, process and sell their own livestock to the public, there are cheesemakers up north (no traditional cheese country in the south, too hot) who can still remember a time they could sell their handmade cheeses produced on farm in their own kitchens. Now most cheeses sold in this country are essentially fake, already lab grown, like the ‘meat’ they keep trying to push on the public.

Somehow there are still the majority who continue to call this freedom and progress.

Cheese! (Brought to you by Pfizer)

Landowners Everywhere Beware!

About 5 or so years ago an old timer whose land borders our own gave me a brochure with an enthusiastic smile and said–“Y’all should do this, too!”

I grimaced as I took the materials he offered. As much as I respected this neighbor, bless his heart and rest his soul, as he has since passed, I just knew there had to be a con behind these legal conservation agreements property owners are signing in an effort at protecting their land for future generations.

He thought he’d done good, of course. While his property was entirely recreational, and his full-time home in Houston, he worked very hard on it for many decades. He has a beautiful 2-story cabin there he built himself, as well as fruit trees and grapes, and his children and many grandchildren filled the home on weekends and holidays, often practicing his favorite sport–shooting. He was a good man and he meant well.

No one in the family has been back to enjoy the cabin since his death, about 3 years ago. This is not unsual with inherited property, and our own property was another case in point. Siblings disagree, feelings get hurt, attorneys get hired, acreage gets split and the decades of hard work slowly go back to nature, if the internal conflict continues long enough.

This is a common enough scenario that it makes perfect sense an old patriarch would do all he can to avoid such mess. Now I can’t say if his family inheritors are aware of any potential issue with his decision to legally protect some of his land ‘forever’ or if that’s the reason they have not returned. Maybe a family feud alone is the issue there and the government hasn’t yet involved themselves.

Nature Preserves or Confiscation Scheme?

But that’s exactly the point I’m getting at. These ‘permanent conservation easements’ that are being created by well-meaning landowners are not without risk. And absentee landowners, or those embroiled in inheritance issues, are especially vulnerable.

Because the Globalists want the land, and if they can find a proverbial broken link in your private property chain, they will worm their way in, legally, through the fine print.

https://substack.com/redirect/f2975f0d-0481-47d8-8adf-9fb2b939aa8b?j=eyJ1IjoiYXBsankifQ.vij_GSi8NAkTixijJIkYbmIMsSylddJaDImehSkL3TQ

It’s all part of the Total Human Ecosystem (THE) scheme. From escapekey’s Substack:

“Conservation Easements as Confiscation: Across rural America, landowners are being offered attractive deals for ‘conservation easements‘ that sound like simple land protection agreements. But buried in the contracts are ecosystem performance requirements tied to financing. Miss the biodiversity targets and operational control transfers to environmental organisations. The land becomes theirs while you keep the tax liability.”

Long gone are the days when Americans could glibly repeat, “But that would never happen here. We have laws.”

The ‘laws’ for every ‘country’ on Earth will be Uniform. This is the Agenda, and all private property is threatened. The very concept of private property will be demonized through the Government schools so thoroughly that children will be indoctrinated to be afraid of it.

“The Total Human Ecosystem framework treats private property as an outdated concept that threatens ecosystem integrity. Increasingly, local zoning laws incorporate ‘ecosystem service’ requirements that can trigger automatic seizure clauses. When satellite data shows your land use conflicts with ecosystem targets, your property can be transferred to ‘ecosystem management’ organisations. You might own the deed, but the ecosystem owns the seizure authority.”

Agricultural Land Seizure: Farmers are being offered attractive financing tied to ‘regenerative agriculture‘ and ‘carbon sequestration‘ targets. But when weather, pests, or market conditions make those targets impossible to hit, the financing agreements trigger land transfer clauses. Family farms that have operated for generations are being seized by international organisations through algorithmic enforcement of impossible environmental standards.

The Domestic Blueprint: What’s happening in Belize and Ecuador is the beta test for comprehensive land confiscation in developed countries. THE provides the philosophical justification (individual property rights threaten ecosystem health), the ecosystem approach provides the governance framework (decisions must be made at ‘appropriate’ ecosystem scales), and the financial instruments provide the seizure mechanism (miss your targets, lose your land).”

https://substack.com/redirect/f2975f0d-0481-47d8-8adf-9fb2b939aa8b?j=eyJ1IjoiYXBsankifQ.vij_GSi8NAkTixijJIkYbmIMsSylddJaDImehSkL3TQ

A few more choice quotes from esc:

“Once you see this pattern, you cannot unsee it: every expansion of control comes wrapped in moral imperatives, every loss of freedom is packaged as virtuous necessity, every dissent is reframed as a moral failing. Healthcare workers fired for “ethics violations,” companies forced into ESG compliance, scientists silenced for challenging consensus—all manifestations of the same ethical control architecture that esc has systematically documented.”

https://substack.com/redirect/6953039b-71f0-4d19-a87a-f42fb1fe1f94?j=eyJ1IjoiYXBsankifQ.vij_GSi8NAkTixijJIkYbmIMsSylddJaDImehSkL3TQ

“Yet appearances deceive. The result is a global Soviet: the Party is gone, but the apparatus remains — cloaked in sustainability, cooperation, and humanitarianism, with a web of NGOs functioning as the modern fronts for its operational machinery.

The ideologies of peace, sustainability, and rights have been merged with the infrastructure of surveillance, algorithmic governance, and moral programming. The old flags have been lowered — but the new system flies under a different banner: expertise, ethics, and emergency.”

https://open.substack.com/pub/escapekey/p/asymmetric-recursion?r=apljy&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

Homestead Happenings

It’s Shoulder Season on the wee homestead, and by that I mean a few things.

Tomatoes on their way out, eggplant just coming in

Shoulder season, for those who maybe new to the phrase, has a specific meaning in tourist trades, meaning between high season and low season. Savvy travelers and those who dislike crowds or who are just cheap or nearly broke try to travel in the shoulder season.

As far as I know it doesn’t have a parallel meaning in the gardening world.

But for me it does. It’s the time we move between seasons in the garden and since we garden all year, it happens twice, once in Swelter Season (now) and once in YoYo Season (formerly known as winter).

The key summer crops in the garden are either long gone–onions, garlic, crucifers, or mostly dead–tomatoes, squash, melons. And normally the cucumbers too, except those are, so far, successfully secession planted, with the new generation just coming up as the last one is dying. Good timing there, tiny bow to me!

Old cucs on left, dying fast, on right a couple of tomatillos in the back, also dying and a volunteer datura, doing great.

New cucumber plants looking good, but will they produce?

And big bow to Handy Hubby for growing this 27 pound beauty!

A nice variety of melons and squashes, we are quite pleased.

While it could be Vacation Season for some more sane types, for us it’s the work of Shoulder Season. We keep the minimum that will survive our high heat for the next two months and baby most of them best we can.

But under lights inside the fall/winter garden is on its way. There’s already another crop of tomatoes coming up, as well as broccoli, cauliflower and arugula.

In the ‘babying’ bed I continue my lettuce experiment, starting romaine indoors under lights and moving under double shade cloth to transplant, then removing one level of shade cloth after a few days to adjust. They are still alive, yay!

Also in the ‘baby’ bed under shade cloth: some parsley barely hanging on, some dill trying to seed, 2 peppers, 2 dying tomatoes and lots of very happy basil.

Tomatoes, peppers and basil for marinara. And in back left is cured lamb.

There’s processing to be done still, the marinara stockpile is done thanks to Hubby, but there’s still ketchup and bar-b-que sauce. And we still call this a bad tomato year!

Ah, the gifts and curses of relativity. And surplus.

The pears are looking promising, and the grapes–which will be the next big project–wine and cider-making season. Blackberries and pears are our easiest fruits here; everything else seems to struggle. Though we have had years of good figs, and some neighbors still do. The grapes are looking good too, but there’s no guarantee.

And I think I finally got the trick for strawberries. It seems most everything that is most delicious is high-maintenance. What can -we do, if we like high maintenance produce but to contend with the high costs of creating them?

Many years of failed strawberries, but this year was a great success in comparison. Now the runners are going crazy and taking over this bed, so next year promises to be better still.

I’m planning for more low-maintenance in future, but those might be high hopes.

Because, my choice would be to spend my dwindling number of pain-free hours working with the flowers!

I’ve seen a few butterflies and bees on the pink ‘Obedience plant’, such a welcome sight!

Which brings up my other meaning for Shoulder Season.
So much shoulder pain! And I am not good at staying stationary, it drives me nuts actually. So it’s between physical anquish, or mental, and I do far better with the former.

It’s as unwelcome a kinked, knotted, crippling invasion as this mystery fruit I posted about last year. I unknowingly caused quite a crisis in the garden and lost almost all the melons I planted.

What is this imposter which choked out all my melons?!

Just when I was insisting to Hubby we need to be thinking about reducing our garden plots in order to reduce our workload and water usage, I stand corrected. The orchard squash didn’t produce well at all, for some unknown reason; the garden melons were choked out by the wild cucumber; so without the third space we’d have no watermelons or honeydews, which would mean a mostly melonless summer after lots of work and wait, as the main garden produced about half a dozen sub-par cantaloupe.

A sweet, cold watermelon is the best morale booster in the hot, humid Texas summer garden jungle!

Two wheelbarrows full of vines and fruit the pigs don’t even like.

Wild cucumber vs melons and the melons lost bad. I have still not been able to figure out what these things are, which I brought into the garden under false pretenses. I have heard suggested they may be lemon cucumbers or mouse melons, but they are not the right size, shape or color for either of those.

I really get the frustration of invasive species now. I realize I’ve been a bit cavalier on that front in the past, for good reason, but I have definitely been humbled this time as these bitter, seedy imposters are still popping up everywhere.

Please, give me an invasion of the supposedy invasive Mimosa trees, and I’d be thrilled!

You have my permission to invade my gorgeous Mimosa!

The plants that thrive here in the long high heat and humidity are so impressive, even when invasive, but it helps my morale considerably to consider the non-invasive ones as often as possible.

A couple of young zuccini with the sweet potatoes

The sweet potatoes are almost effortless. Once they get established and as long as they get a good head start over the bindweed (another ‘invasive’ relative) they are pretty reliable. Eggplant and okra are others, and we’re learning to like eggplant. Maybe even a lot.

Eggplant, peppers, tomatoes, green beans and tonnato sauce over rice noodles, delish!

The bountiful basil takes center stage as the parsley, dill and cilantro take early retirement and don’t even bother to seed, it’s so damn hot.

Whether and which tomatoes will survive, or thrive, from one year to another is anyone’s guess.

Gavin’s seeds, the Scarlet Runnerbean (barely) and Black Hopi Sunflower, are hanging on still, very impressive.

The black Hopi sunflower behind a mystery weed that smells medicinal. Any idea what it is, anyone?

The two out of three citrus planted last spring are doing well–they look healthy and their growth has more than doubled since spring.

The poke weed, the datura, don’t get me started, such beautiful and amazing plants!

But, the mystery weeds, what are these?

Thanks for stopping by!

Agri-Capture, Psy-Style

“Agriculture is a major contributor to climate change and the devastation of the planet… The only way to fix this, the necessary step, is knowing what food is.”

Converting Food Tradition Into Science With The Periodic Table Of Food

https://www.forbes.com/sites/daphneewingchow/2024/05/21/converting-food-tradition-into-science-with-the-periodic-table-of-food/

This was an infuriating propaganda piece on behalf of the Rockefeller Cartel by Forbes magazine, sent by a friend who likes it when I’m infuriated. Bless her heart!

The article is the perfect example of the methods of ideological subversion being used on the public by the corporatocracy through the institutions.

The single quote above I take from the article, rather than quoting it further, is in order to not subject the reader to further mind poison. But rather instead, to offer an antedote.

How does it work? Why are they doing this?

While the excellent article below is a good means of demonstration, it’s first important to notice the labels themselves are meant to be flexible while still garnering a knee-jerk reaction: Communism, Capitalism, two opposing worldviews, that’s the framing.

Except it’s fake, a false dichotomy. These are economic views posing as worldviews for political purposes.

Often political purposes and religious ones overlap, which is why I avoid religion as well as politics when I’m trying to think logically!

The above quote works a similar frame: Science must know what food IS so that agriculture will no longer destroy the planet.

Except the only reason argriculture is destroying the planet is because it was taken over by BigAg MANY decades ago. Before I was born, actually, and I’m getting up there.

They fail to mention this piece of the puzzle, no surprise there. Many societies have thrived and still thrive on non-industrial agriculture to survive. Industry has ruined agriculture in this country, and many others.

Our brainwashing that it is our job to feed and police the world is the actual problem causing the devastion. The industrial-military global order is the problem causing the devastion.

95% of average folks are just pawns in this game.

Leave the terms ‘communism’ and ‘capitalism’ to the side for a moment and consider this:

“What Marx and Engels pioneered wasn’t specifically a political revolution — it was the rewriting of the moral code itself. The Manifesto operates as a systematic inversion of the fundamental value and structures that underpin social organisation. Every principle that helped stabilise bourgeois society — property rights, family inheritance, religious authority, national sovereignty — was methodically reframed through inversion; consciousness programming designed to make the existing moral operating system feel not just wrong, but obsolete.

Programming Permissible Thought
Control the language and you control the range of permissible thought. The Communist Manifesto introduced this tactic with rhetorical inversions; ESG and global ethics continue it by redefining terms like ‘freedom’, ‘equity’, and ‘justice’ so that dissent itself becomes linguistically unspeakable. When ‘inclusive’ becomes the only acceptable alternative to ‘extractive’, when ‘sustainable’ becomes synonymous with ‘moral’, and when ‘science-based’ becomes code for ‘unchallengeable’, we’re witnessing linguistic capture similar to that Marx pioneered.

The genius lies not just in changing what words mean, but in making certain combinations of words feel impossible. Try arguing against ‘inclusive prosperity’, ‘women’s rights’, or ‘science-based sustainability targets’ without sounding backwards. The linguistic terrain has been so thoroughly mapped that opposition requires either accepting the loaded framework — or appearing to reject progress itself. It’s a steep uphill struggle, almost guaranteed to waste enormous amounts of time — even though these terms typically function to insert ideological blind spots ripe for later exploitation by full intent.”

Like the quote says–to solve the problem, we must know what food is. Imagine, we don’t even know what food is! We must have science explain food to us in order to not destroy the planet by eating.

esc continues . . .

“Inclusive Capitalism as Semantic Cover for Stakeholder Feudalism
‘Inclusive capitalism’ — promoted by coalitions involving the Vatican, the World Economic Forum, and major central banks — promises to ‘make capitalism work for everyone’. The manipulative techniques are identical to the Manifesto: binary framing where ‘inclusive capitalism’ opposes ‘neoliberal greed’ with no middle ground allowed; euphemistic coercion where investors are ‘guided’ to ESG portfolios and non-compliance means exclusion from financial markets; sacred authority through alignment with religious institutions that sanctifies technocratic control; and guilt transfer where individual consumers — not megacorporations, nor central banks — bear responsibility for systemic problems.
You get to keep the word ‘capitalism’… while losing actual market freedom. It’s semantic cover for stakeholder feudalism — the Financial Stability Board and the BIS become moral arbiters of capital allocation, yet you never voted for them.”

This ‘guy’ knows what he’s talking about, read him, not Forbes!

“Recognition and Resistance
What we witness is the emergence of something historically unprecedented: soft totalitarianism with global reach, implemented not through revolutionary violence but through institutional coordination and moral manipulation. The most disturbing aspect is how voluntary compliance is manufactured through psychological techniques that make resistance feel not just futile but morally reprehensible.
Unlike crude twentieth-century totalitarianism, this system preserves the language of freedom while altering its substance, claims scientific and moral authority rather than raw power, operates through persuasion and micro-incentives rather than force, and presents itself as evolution rather than revolution. Koestler⁶² warned that disembodied rational systems could turn pathological when disconnected from human meaning — today’s ESG frameworks automate that disconnection at global scale.”

https://substack.com/@escapekey/note/p-166520975?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=apljy

https://substack.com/@escapekey?utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-page

Geoengineering Update

Just a couple of vids to share today. I have not (yet) done any sort of deep dive on the Hill Country flooding. I have heard some of the speculation and I’m sure readers could guess my opinion to any question of whether this was a ‘natural’ disaster.

I was confused by this first video showing how quickly the flooding happened in an area that was getting no rain at the time. It looks like something from an amusement park. But, I did hear they opened certain dams in some areas to divert the intense water flow, so maybe that could help explain it. I’m going to look into this part of the operation in future.

What’s far easier to see is the current government propaganda drive, and it’s thick and multi-layered. We’ve got promises of disclosure coming from stooges and patsies being played as blame gets shifted and terminology gets altered.

We will not be led into their narrative spin cycle. That’s why I’ve included the 2nd video. The Spinners want the public blaming small, local cloud-seeding operations, not the global military operations.

NOLAButterfly is the researcher of the 2nd video and has been active for a very long time. Notice how few views she gets, how little exposure. I’ve seen her kicked off multiple channels over the years and get in heated arguments with top researchers like Jim Lee, who definitely looks to me like he’s joined the dark side.

I cannot say if her theories are correct. I can say her silencing speaks volumes to me. From what I’ve experienced and seen myself, I believe she has some very plausible ideas backed by research. She explains clearly in the vid what she sees happening and it’s worth a listen.

Click on the link for the 2nd video, because the embed doesn’t work properly with Rumble videos.

NOLAButterfly Texas Hill Country flooding, radar explanationhttps://rumble.com/v6vzs4m-radar-analysis-leading-up-to-the-texas-flood-massacre.html

Disenchanting Enchanted Rock

I was so excited when I found ‘an expert’ on Enchanted Rock, who had written an entire book on the monument and its surroundings and has a website too, with lots of details. I was sure to have found a great source, I thought.

Click pic for my previous post about Enchanted Rock called “My favorite Enchanting photo”

And with a name like Kennedy, it’s gotta be good, right?

In the spirit of disobedience, in a word, no. Two words: Hell, no! Three words: Big, Fat, Disappointment!!

Wow, I didn’t realize anyone can just throw any piece of nonsense together and call it history. Or anthropology. Or pretty much any ‘science’.

Way to spoil a miraculous destination, Kennedy, thanks bunches.

But I can’t really blame him alone, it’s more than a trend. The dumbing down of the public has been documented for decades, and this sort of material that is supposed to pass as educational is a perfect case in point. So, let’s take a few pokes at it from a few of those many angles.

The History of Enchanted Rock in the Texas Hill Country by Ira Kennedy self-published in 2010 naming it https://www.amazon.com/HISTORY-ENCHANTED-ROCK-TEXAS-COUNTRY/dp/1456818783
“The Sacred Landmark of Central Texas”.

It is not sold as a children’s book and costs $21.99. According to the the Amazon page Ira Kennedy is:

“Considered as the state’s leading authority on Enchanted Rock, the sacred mountain of Central Texas, Ira has assisted the author’s of several published books, articles and the Thomas Evans mural of Enchanted Rock in the Austin-Bergstorm International Airport. IN 1992, Ira was awarded a Certificate of Appreciation from the Texas Parks and & Wildlife Department for providing numerous educational talks at Enchanted Rock Natural Area.” And it goes on.

The first Amazon review looked promising.
“Ira Kennedy is the world expert, in the opinion of many, of this beautiful Texas natural treasure. His knowledge comes from spending a great deal of his life on or near the rock. Ira is a creative genius and humble man who has written this amazing book, sure to answer all your questions about this geological wonder. Beautifully illustrated by Ira, you will keep this book among your special collections.”

The ‘book’ itself looks more like a coloring book. There are no references or citations, no bibliography or notes. While the author states he did multi-disciplinary research and himself has an advanced degree and was employed in Naval intelligence as a cryptographer, he must seriously understand what an ‘expert’ text would look like, and this one is the polar opposite of scholarly.

I can only assume ‘expert’ has taken on a new meaning sometime around the year 1999.

Let’s set the tone with his “Brief Historical Timeline” which begins his story in 12,000 B.C. and ends in 1978. With only a smattering of centuries missing, bless his heart!

We learn of a dubious-looking character named Jack Hays who was ‘an enigma’. We learn about a William Kennedy and his ‘flower-spangled’ landscape and ‘lost mines’ the ‘fueled the imaginagtion’. We learn about some immigrants from Germany in the 1840s.

We have the ‘First People’ myths and ‘The Imaginary Frontier’ of the Spanish explorer Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, who passed right through Mason County in the sixteenth century. And some childish stick figure drawings, some arrowheads and feather headdresses.

Later in the book are some drawings of angry indians who we learn may or may not have practiced human sacrifice.

And that about sums up my waste of money and time! Alas, the journey of discovery continues.

Poor, misunderstood ‘Enchanted Rock’ — I don’t even like your name anymore, so I think I’ll find a new one. And a new history to go with it. It would surely be better footnoted than this toilet paper, and good bit more entertaining I expect too!

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Converting Food Tradition Into Science With The Periodic Table Of Food

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