JLfromNH

Weird Places To Visit

At this time of year when the snow and cold have (finally!) settled around us, it doesn’t take long for cabin fever to set in. This is when many people plan vacations to far off (and hopefully politically stable) places that are warm and offer interesting things to see.

If I had the time and money to travel, there are any number of places I would like to see. The Hawaiian Islands, Great Britain, perhaps Italy. Rather than visit the usual tourist haunts, I might check out some off-the-beaten-path places where you don’t have to jostle with crowds of people.

Then there are the places where there are truly weird and wonderful things to see. However for various reasons, they are off limits or inaccessible due to distance, war, or extreme environments.

One of the odder places I might like to see is in Tanzania. It’s a very weird volcano called Ol Doinyo Langai volcano.

This curious creation of some rather bizarre geologic processes is associated with the East African Rift, an area that is slowly being torn in two by plate tectonics. Rather than erupting the silicate type of lavas we are familiar with, it spouts a natrocarbonatite lava, a gumbo of carbonate minerals, that makes for a very runny lava. National Geographic ran a story on this volcano an number of years ago and showed pictures of a bizarre landscape of carbonatite lava that makes intricate formations that quickly deteriorate and crumble away, once exposed to the air. Why go see this? Well, it’s one of a kind. Conventional volcanoes are a dime a dozen. This rare beast stands apart from them all and would definitely be worth a look.

Another weird place I’d like to see is a little harder to get to. It’s located deep underground in Mexico and is called Cave of the Crystals.

The crystals are made of gypsum and were deposited as the result of chemical action between ground water and water saturated with sulfide ions. Cooked over a long period of time by a magma chamber underneath, these enormous crystals, some nearly forty feet in length, are over 900 feet underground and were discovered by a Mexican mining company. As the temperatures in the cavern average a toasty 130 degrees Fahrenheit with over 90 percent humidity not surprisingly it remains largely unexplored. With my hot flashes this is definitely a deal breaker in terms of paying a visit, but still fascinating to think about all the same.

A little more tolerable is a place located in southern Libya. I happened to spot it on Google Earth when doing some arm chair exploring. A strange anomalous dark spot in the middle of an orange desert caught my eye and zooming in on it I discovered, much to my astonishment, a volcanic caldera. It is known by the charming name of Waw an Naumus which in English translates as the Oasis of the mosquitoes.

While it may look strangely anomalous, in fact it is part of the Haruj, a large field of ancient volcanoes that erupted periodically over the eons leaving a generous sprinkling of calderas and lava flows.

Though the caldera of Waw an Naumus looks very fresh, it is not known to have erupted in recorded history and is considered extinct. It has certainly been quiet long enough for water to collect in small lakes and vegetation grow undisturbed along their banks. It has been a stop for caravans going through the desert and its voracious mosquito population (however did they get there?) earned it its distinctive name. If Libya ever stabilizes, it certainly would be an interesting place to visit as long as you bring along a generous supply of insect repellant.

But perhaps the most unusual place I would like to see is also the most inaccessible, largely due to the fact it is located in orbit around the planet Jupiter. That would the moon Europa.

If ever there was a place with an ‘Earth monkeys keep out’ sign, it’s this distant little globe. Scientists have been salivating over this moon and what may lie under its icy crust, since Voyager and later Galileo sent back pictures. Current evidence suggests there is an enormous liquid ocean possibly as much as 60 miles deep beneath an icy covering ranging from 6 to 19 miles in thickness. Since life here on Earth got its start in the oceans, it’s not difficult to surmise that conditions suitable for life may very well exist in the mammoth depths of Europa’s ocean.

However a number of things stand in the way of scientists (and myself) satisfying their curiosity about this place. One is the sheer distance of Europa from Earth. It’s hard to convey to the average person the enormous scale of outer space as there is nothing in our mundane existence that would give us any meaningful context to grasp it (though Bill Nye gives it a pretty good try).

Conditions on Europa’s surface are not very congenial either. It’s a toss-up over whether you will be frozen or zapped to death. Temperatures are around -260 degrees Fahrenheit, not exactly on the balmy side. Unless you were really well insulated, you would likely freeze solid in seconds and become another chunk of the frigid landscape. Not only that, the radiation emitted by Jupiter is a lethal 540 rem per day (100 rem is usually fatal for most humans).

Europa may be an interesting place to visit but you wouldn’t really want to live there. Robot proxies are the only way we will get to see the surface of Europa. There’s an argument currently going on as to whether the crust is thin or thick. I don’t think it really matters. Given that ice at these low temperatures is as hard as iron, the proposal to try to drill into Europa to see what’s underneath is very likely undoable as well as prohibitively expensive.

However we humans are an incurably nosy lot, so I suppose eventually a multi-billion dollar lander may make its way to the surface of Europa to send back breath-taking vistas of this strange place. Sadly we will have to satisfy ourselves with staring longingly at photos and exercising our under-used imaginations to visualize what lies beneath.

Christmas Eve 2015

Today is December 24, 2015. Here in northern New Hampshire the average temperature for this month is usually 34 degree Fahrenheit. Today’s high (for southern NH at least) is projected to go into the 60’s exceeding the old record set in Concord back in 1871 of 57 degree Fahrenheit. Usually snowfall by this date is usually about six inches or more (it varies from year to year of course.). Today – nada. When I went for my morning walk today, I found one dinky little patch of snow by the side of the road (likely thrown up by a plow) in a shaded area which given how warm it felt will probably be gone by the afternoon.

After doing a bit of last minute grocery shopping (yes, I know, I’m crazy to go out there today), I drove through Main Street just before noon today. I stopped only long enough to snap this picture.

Fifty four degrees Fahrenheit is definitely above the norm for up here and since we tend to be about 5 to 10 degrees cooler than the rest of the state with the White Mountain range close by, it’s a safe bet the southern half of the state is pushing 60 easily.

My snowdrops are clearly confused by the gyrations in temperature. I snapped this picture today when the warm temperature prompted me to take a peek and see if they were doing anything.

I planted them a little too close to the foundation of the house so the warmth of the concrete makes some of them bravely poke up in early March or mid-February, depending on the weather. I have even seen them push the envelope in mid-January (usually the coldest month up here, followed by February). But never, NEVER have I seen them start to emerge in late December. They have been growing in this spot for nearly twenty years and this is a first.

Climate change deniers can huff and puff and bloviate all they want but the oscillations in temperature we have been seeing recently show no sign of going away. In fact some troubling reports indicate things may get worse in the near and far futures. The Climate Change Summit in Paris this past month with its “Paris Agreement” promising yet again to begin implementing reductions on green-house gas emissions ended with the usual rounds of praise, mutual back patting and other forms of congratulations on this ‘historic’ meeting. However as many of us are sadly aware, very little of what was agreed to will be implemented or amount to a hill of beans if it is.

John Michael Green pointed out in his latest blog posting that many of the changes the Paris Summit was supposed to address and find solutions for, are already occurring and will continue to accelerate while bureaucrats fumble and procrastinate as they have always done. Mother Nature feels no obligation to wait while we mill around trying to make up our minds what to do. Given this disheartening prospect, what are we to do?

Well, we do what living organisms have always done. We adapt. This won’t be easy of course given that the countless unknowns of climate change make it difficult to precisely anticipate what’s to come. However today’s living organisms (which includes us by the way) are the heirs to millions of years of perpetually adapting on the fly to unexpected circumstances such as previous climate changes, continental drift and the occasional asteroid strike or methane burp. All this was done without the benefit of large brains. Are we with our 1.5 kg brains really going to sit around wringing our hands because we don’t know what kind of future to plan for?

There is enough information out there to give us a rough idea of what to expect even if there is no real certainty. Human ingenuity, not in the form of high tech gimmicks that break when you look at them cross-eyed, but in the form of what our hands can build, our minds think up, is what will help us muddle through whatever Nature tosses at us. It will mean junking many of our treasured toys and simplifying our life style in a way a fair number of people might find hard to swallow. This does NOT mean going back to caves but it DOES mean living at a slower, lower-tech, less complex pace. One that, while it will not allow us to fly to the stars or zoom around wearing jet packs, will allow us to live in modest comfort, help us get the exercise we’ve always been meaning to get, eat locally produced food that, not having lost its nutritious qualities, has the surprising side-effect of producing better health. Oh, yes and rediscover the myriad benefits of direct social interaction that our current madcap life style has deprived us of.

Change is going to happen whether we do anything or not. To paraphrase a quote from All About Eve: Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy future. How bumpy it will be depends on how well we can adapt.

Soup – Plain and Simple

The weather has been unusually mild here in northern New Hampshire this month with temperatures in the forties and fifties instead of the low thirties. One can certainly welcome Old Man Winter holding off for a brief spell, though now and then he has sent a reminder he is not far off. Last week, several nights had heavy fog coupled with temperatures just below freezing. This triggered the formation of what is known as hoarfrost. The following mornings as I went walking, I was treated to the sight of branches, leaves, berries and other objects suddenly having what appeared to look like crystal thorns growing out of them.

It was quite a striking sight, not one you see very often. They melted quickly once the sun rose high enough to shine on them. On some mornings puddles that had collected during the day froze on their surfaces overnight and since the ground underneath was not frozen, the water would drain away leaving a shell of ice supported only at its edges. For years (starting when I was a child) I called this ‘krickle ice’ because that’s the noise it would make when I put my foot slowly down on top of it. I have since found out this type of ice formation is called cat ice. Personally I like krickle ice better.

With the onset (or not) of cold weather, thoughts turn to the making of soup to warm you on chilly winter days. Both cook books and the Internet abound with countless recipes of varying complexity. I avoid those with a long list of ingredients. The making of soup is not rocket science and shouldn’t require a dictionary to decipher what some of the items are. Soup can be hot or cold. It can be clear or thick. Meat and/or vegetables can be used to create the broth. Every region on the globe has its own variation of this ancient comfort food which some evidence suggests dates back to the Stone Age.

The latest food fad is the making of bone broth soup which advocates are touting as a cure-all for what ails us. While much of the claims for bone broth and its health benefits are fairly over-blown, broth made from animal bones or vegetables does deliver a nutritious boost to any diet. Elderly people who have difficulty chewing, sick people who don’t feel much like eating or even just picky kids all benefit from this easy-to-make food.

I don’t waste a moment of my time with the prepared or condensed soups sold in the grocery store. Their heavy load of sodium and overcooked ingredients makes a pretty feeble excuse for soup. They simply can’t compare with home-made soup using fresh ingredients. The easiest method is to collect left-over beef, chicken or turkey bones after dinner. If you aren’t going to use them right away, you can put them in the freezer to keep until you are ready.

Then using a stock pot, toss in the bones, fill with water, bring to a boil then turn immediately down to a simmer and leave for about an hour. Pull out the bones, clean off any meat (which should drop right off) and put the meat back into the broth. Chop up whatever vegetables you desire (I use carrots, celery and onions and occasionally add a chopped zucchini or summer squash). For turkey and chicken soups I add parsley and thyme. You can use whatever herbs or spices you prefer. I often toss in pasta. Then cook for an additional twenty minutes or until the vegetables are tender. Add salt and pepper to taste in the last five minutes or so of cooking. That’s it!

The nice thing about soup made this way, is that you can add leftovers, like peas or beans or rice, which you don’t quite have enough of to make a meal with, so they don’t go to waste. You can also freeze the soup to thaw out as needed for a meal or a side dish. I like to use mason jars, filling them about two thirds full to allow for expansion so the jars won’t crack. Plastic freezer containers tend to get a greasy feel to them if you use them to store soup and then want to reuse them afterwards.

Once your soup is ready, add a few crackers and enjoy!

Northern Pass – The Saga Continues

Several headlines made the front pages of the local newspapers over the past few weeks. The first; Northern Pass plan suffers a setback, reported that State environmental officials said the application filed by Northern Pass with the state Site Evaluation Committee is incomplete because the developers can’t prove they have the necessary property rights for the project. The Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests challenged that Northern Pass lacks the property rights to apply for this permit

Interestingly The New England Power Generators Association, a trade group representing independent power plant generators in the region advanced essentially the same argument in a November 10th letter to the SEC. While one can assume the Association is concerned about potential competition, the Society is more concerned about protecting the natural beauty of New Hampshire and duly filed a lawsuit in the Coos County Superior Court seeking to block the path of the line through a conservation area the society owns in Clarksville, near the Canadian border. Both groups have evoked wails of protest from Northern Pass.

You would think after five or so years of being consistently opposed that the proponents of Northern Pass would finally start listening and give in to the demands to bury the proposed line. At most they have thrown locals a bone by offering to bury about seven and a half miles of the line (out of the 100+ miles it wants to cover). It is perfectly doable to completely bury the line and eliminate the eye-sore towers they actually want to erect. So what’s the source of the resistance by Eversource?

Burynorthernpass blog has been documenting the controversy over Northern Pass and it’s clear money is a major factor, namely shareholder money. At a public hearing in Franconia November 18th, when asked if they made more money going down Routes 116 and 112 rather than Interstate 93, the lack of response was very telling. They all but took the fifth. One has to shake their head in amazement at the poorly concealed contempt these people seem to have for locals.

Eversource has certainly shown itself to be a very poor team player with its customers. Demanding deposits from customers, some of whom are good payers as well as some of who have trouble making ends meet, without bothering to distinguish between the two, is the unmistakable hallmark of a huge bureaucratic corporation. And these people are telling us about the bright new energy future their brobdingnagian project would bring? Excuse us for being a bit skeptical.

While we are on the downslope of peak oil , it’s past time we started looking at another option we don’t hear mentioned much these days. I’m talking of course about conservation. When was the last time you as an individual or business looked at your electrical usage and asked how much electricity do you really and truly need to have? When I drive home from work late in the evening, the road I am on is across the river from a large number of businesses which have a vast array of brilliantly glowing lights, mostly from box stores like Lowes, Home Depot and Walmart as well as a number of car dealerships. How much electricity is this gobbling up? Do they really need to have so many lights on and so late in the evening? When I drive along side streets at night, I see many houses which look like they have every room in the place lit. Now of course Christmas is nearing and the obligatory outside decorative lights are popping up. While they do look very pretty, is it really necessary to have so many? I’ve seen some places lit up like Broadway.

What about the electrical appliances you use? Will it really break your arm to use a spoon to mix with rather than an electrical mixer? Try line drying your laundry instead of using the electric dryer. Use a rake instead of a leaf blower. How about those hair dryers? Strange as it may sound, your hair has the power to dry on its own. How about going to bed a little earlier and turning out the lights half an hour or an hour sooner? You’ll be surprised at how rested you feel the next morning. Last but not least, given that the majority of TV programs are mindless drek, how about turning off the television (and the power strip it’s attached to)? You really won’t be missing anything.

If everyone makes an effort to cut back on electrical usage, utility bills will be reduced and firms like Eversource will have far less leverage when trying to push Northern Pass down our throats.

Mousecapades

Now that the weather is chilling down, a common problem for people (myself included) is the fall invasion of mice seeking warm places to hang out for the winter. This year has seen a lot more activity due to the heavy fall of acorns and other mast goodies (as reported in one of my earlier posts) which has led to a population boom. Already I have caught six mice and can still hear activity inside the walls or up in the ceilings. As this is an old house, there are plenty of spaces for them to sneak into and it’s not easy to find them or get at them to seal them up to keep the little pests out.

The enormous fecundity of mice is an adaptation to the unhappy fact that they are number one on the menu for a surprising number of creatures: cats, foxes, coyotes, weasels, hawks, owls, skunks, snakes, crows, blue jays, even occasionally herons, and oddly enough, squirrels. The mouse has out of necessity adopted a secretive life-style and it is possible to have mice in your house and not realize it. Of course if the population is large, a fair amount of scuffling ensues when they are moving in and begin competing for living space. There are a variety of signs that mice are sharing living space with you and it’s a good idea to learn what they are, if you are determined to make your home as mouse free as possible.

What kind of mice can you expect to find? There are a variety of species, but here in New Hampshire, the mostly commonly found in houses are the house mouse, white footed mouse, and deer mouse .

All are cause for concern as they can carry a variety of diseases such as Hanta virus, salmonellosis, Lyme Disease and a variety of less common diseases. So far bubonic plague, which is in the western US, has not made its way to the east coast (knock on wood…). While the likelihood of contracting some of these illnesses is fairly low, the risk is always there and needs to be kept in mind when dealing with these pests.

Which naturally brings us to the matter of getting rid of them. The search for a better mousetrap seems unending. Best avoided are the poisoned baits for mice. While they may get rid of the mice, it’s the kind of gift that keeps on giving as any predator (including the neighborhood cat) are likely to ingest these toxins themselves if they happen to catch and eat these mice before the mouse has been killed by the poison. I did try using poison bait once a very long time ago, but found that the mice often rather than immediately eating the bait would take and store it in various places, such as my clothing drawers, which I definitely did not appreciate. Also there’s a good chance the little creatures will expire in an inconvenient place (which of course you will not be able to reach) and create an unpleasant reek.

Glue boards and traps catch the mice but do not kill them. That apparently is left up to you. If you don’t mind bludgeoning mice to death, be my guest but don’t expect me to invite you to any parties. If you are too chicken to kill them, the alternative to let them die of thirst and starvation and… yeah I thought so. I guess there is a way to get them off the strip without killing them but it’s a bit of an operation that’s stressful for both the mouse and you. So unless you enjoy being exposed to mouse excreta ejected by panicky mice (and the diseases that go along with them) glue strips are definitely out.

Some people like to use humane traps which catch the mouse but do not kill it. They then can be taken away and dropped in an area far from your house, leaving you feeling virtuous but the mouse utterly terrified as it is now in a strange place it does not recognize. Now then, if a giant idiot grabbed you and dumped you off in a strange place, what’s the first thing you would do? Well, yeah, you’d tried to get home! Which is likely what the mouse will do. If you haven’t taken it far enough away, the mouse will eventually make its way back to your place. If not, it will probably get snagged by a predator somewhere along the way. The odds that the mouse will just shrug its shoulders and contentedly take up residence where you place it are pretty low. Even if it were inclined to do so, in all probability a mouse already resides there, and as they are very territorial, it will quickly give the intruder the heave-ho.

This leaves the old fashioned snap trap. The wooden ones made by Victor are still available along with a wide variety of plastic snap traps and electronic traps which zap the rodents. I have tried a good number of them as I have arthritis and find it impossible to set the wooden ones. Success varies quite a bit with a number of traps failing to trigger when the mouse comes along and blithely eats the bait. The single electronic trap I tried, killed one and only one mouse and never again caught anything. The Victor quick kill trap seems to work as well as any of them, provided you position it so the mouse has to come directly at it and not from the side.

I’ve read the various reviews people have given of the different traps available and get the impression success depends as much on luck and the ability of the user to follow instructions, as it does the trap itself. Of course there is one mouse trap that rarely fails and has yet to be improved on. It’s the one that likes to sit in your lap and purr. The only drawback to this one is that it will occasionally present one of its catches to you, sometimes still in wriggling condition. Oh, well….