I get my hippie bands mixed up...

I dislike Neil Young. I much prefer The Ledge. Anyway, I been a bit under the weather and I finally watched this movie a friend loaned me a year ago. It has Townes Van Zandt singing, "Dead Flowers" which I thought he wrote.

I was wrong.
I like his cover much better than the Rolling Stones original ($5 says Gram Parsons really wrote it).
So I looked up some Townes Van Zandt (may he rest in peace) as I was looking for the song with the lyrics, "been on the job too long," and I thought he wrote "The Needle and the Damage Done," but all I can find is Neil Young's tuneless warble. There are some good covers but none by Van Zandt.

Turns out the song I want is the Ballad of Dunkan and Brady and is a traditional song covered by Lead Belly, Bob Dylan, and folkie Tom Rush recorded it in the 1960's. It is on a old 8-track somewhere. The tape is white and the next song is Ballad of Pancho and Lefty and I know Townes Van Zandt is singing that one.

The law has been laid down!

Something did not seem right in the house this morning. I woke up after a night of coughing and fitful sleep to a totally quiet house. No curious George on the TV, no cheerful morning prattle, no kitty tormenting. Judging from the gray light filtering through the blinds it was near 7 a.m. but very cloudy. I could hear wind or rain. I couldn't hear a sound, except for that annoying white noise sound in my right ear which is plugged tight.
Today is my day to take the kids to school so I knew I had to get up. I staggered into the kitchen where I found my daughter. She pointed me to a large sign which should have been the first thing I saw when I wandered out of the guest room. (I've been quarantined)
The sign read in large black letters, "GO BACK TO BED."
My daughter informed me that since I did not sleep well and was coughing all night, they had been extra quiet this morning and that Uncle 706 was taking them to school.  And I should go back to bed.
So I did.
Who am I to argue with an almost 10-year-old?
I've got my phone so I suppose it will start ringing soon.
I do have some medical advice for you all. Thera-Flu works really well. However, the words "daytime" actually mean what they say. Rationalizing that since the package is four years out of date it probably won't make me stay awake, is just "rationalizing."
I was able to sort of sleep as I was quite tired, but it was that strange half awake dozing sort of sleep that doesn't really do you much good.
MuddyValley thinks it was the sweet sounds of the Legendary Stardust Cowboy which carried a virus. Perhaps it damaged my immune system to some degree but on the other hand, why would it not work like chemotherapy where it would also kill the virus as well?
In order to find out I would have to drag myself some 10 feet to the record player. Perhaps I will try a knife against a glass window or fingernails on the chalkboard!

I went back to bed. $%^&*ing rain...

I am sick. I don't have the sort of symptoms that send me to a doctor. In other words, I'm not coughing up blood (not a lot anyway), no temp of 103, no spurting wounds, and I have a deep cough and I feel really tired. I usually am sick for a day or two and then I'm fine. I usually cure myself by just pretending it didn't happen and focusing on minutia. (I learned that from watching US national policy)
But, today I genuinely feel like crap.
I went out to the shop and discussed just what we are going to do with the offending sewer line and then excused myself and went home. I see that my father has in fact managed to fill the tank nearly full in two days. He has the whole ignore it and it will go away thing down to a "T". He simply does what he wants because he is 90 years old. I do sort of wish he would have worked at his iBook from home from the last few days or that my sister-in-law would have taken away his prunes...
But, I digress.
I found a Mickey Gilley album awhile back and I listened to it Sunday. But I was kind of annoying the family I think so I didn't go to the trouble of recording.
Here is "Room Full of Roses," which Mickey covered in the 1970's.

I suppose my musical tastes are a bit strange as we have gone from The Humans and Radio Birdmen, to sappy country via the Legendary Stardust Cowboy in two weeks.
Whatever...

A clever way to split a tractor

How to split a tractor with no chain hoist.

The fellow has made tracks from angle iron with the triangle point facing up. The wheels heavy rollers that look like two 4" round plates that have beveled edges and they are on an axle. Pretty simple little setup. You can mount the tracks on heavy wood beams for splitting something in the field. This is a much better idea than using the M670 to split  the G706.

A lesson in the undeniable virtue of the oppressed, which will not be understood...

I opened up my mail from WebPro News at lunch time and I was pretty much amazed at what I read.
Click here to view, don't think you have to be a member to read WebPro News.
I'm sure you have heard of video by now. A girl at UCLA had the lack of understanding to post what she really thinks. It was a touch insensitive but yet kind of funny as well.
The article title is amazing, "Racist YouTube Video Results in another Social Media Casualty." In what context is it racist? Well, obviously only as White Person Speach!
I plan showing this to my young daughter to illustrate the "Undeniable Virtue of the Oppressed." Or what happened to free speech in the USA. Or why UCLA is means thought control, or why it should not be on your list of intended colleges.
It is simple. If this was a rap song about annoying white people it would be ok.
Plus, it means nothing, it is just a kid talking. A kid who has not been indoctrinated yet. She is making humor based on exaggeration of real events. It is a freaking joke. Has anyone watched comedy central? The whole thing is kind of silly.
I find the comments pretty amazing. There is true hate and stupidity in this world and is often found on the internet.
Hate speech and racism is when you say a race should be killed or that they are descended from monkeys or basically anything you hear in a mosque. (That last comment was a little racist I suppose)
And, what she said about the tidal wave was insensitive but basically right. If you are going to call everyone in your address book to see if they are ok after a huge disaster you should not do it in the library.
Don't know why I devoted a whole mid-afternoon post to something this stupid but the people who think they are open-minded are such useful idiots. They were the sort that killed their families during the Cultural Revolution. (Which was ok as they were Moaists and people at UCLA think that is just allright.)

More rain and the frustrations of planting

Yesterday I got rained out. I did not get stuck.
I was planting wheat. The farmer said he had 200 acres for me to do. The first 70 acres were pretty wet with little ground cover. I'm planting into soybean ground. It doesn't look to me like soybeans will be the next big crop in Oregon.
I also think that no-tilling soybeans into prennial ryegrass sod is not the best way to go. While the large diameter seeds work well for no-till, I think the ground needs to be worked more after a 3-4 year grass seed crop. I should have tried digging up some roots to see how far the they penetrated into the ground but I suspect two trips with a covercrop disk and then the no-till drill would have helped the water infiltration and root growth quite a bit.
We did test plots of no-till vs minimum till and found the only thing that made a real difference was the rate of 10/34 fertilizer in the row. Of course after we planted out beans it rained for two weeks. I dug up a seed and the loose dirt in the no-till row just turned to pudding. I was amazed they even came up.
I finished the first field and we went to check out the second and third fields. Those turned out to be fields I no-tilled for him last fall. The field I'm in now looks like I set the population too low. (I didn't) The farmer said the rows looked good all fall but the mice, geese, and slugs ate it up. Some places there are missing plants, some areas it is mowed 1/2" above the ground, some areas are bare. West facing hillsides are lush and green, east facing are bare. I don't have my book with me but I think we planted at least 140lbs of wheat per acre in the fall. I think 160lbs actually. $50/acre for seed, $40 for fertilizer, $26 for planting, and now we are doing it again.
From a customer service point of view I feel like I should give him a discount. He didn't ask for one and I make it very clear I only do free planting if the screw-up was my fault. I would knock of 20% without a second thought-if I had my drill payment made! I will have to think about this. I know what I am entitled to and that is full rate, but what is the right thing to do? and/or What is the smart consumer oriented business thing to do? I'll probably give him a discount of some sort.

The sun was out and the ground was drying out. I was making pretty good time. I finally decided the ground was not going to be soft and I filled the drill completely full of fertilzer and wheat seed.
I got back to the field and it started raining. I kept going. It rained more. I kept going.
All of a sudden the tractor started pulling down. I was kind of half-asleep. I've got two monitors, a pressure gauge, GPS, A little screen that shows the bin level on the drill, the radio, and the strange imaginary world that inhabits my brain and sometimes I have a hard time concentrating.

Of course I pulled the wrong lever and lifted the drill instead of raising the front coulters. I didn't get stuck. I got it all adjusted right and it was fine for another hundred feet and then it really pulled down. I raised the drill a bit to put the lift wheels down on the ground and got out of there. I think the mud just built up so much on the drill wheels that it started pulling hard and made the wheels sink in.
So, I've got 90 acres out of 150-200 and the drill is completely full. At least I could park it in a barn. I have not decided if I will go back and try it this morning. I may have been going the same direction as an old tile line. I think if I move over a couple of passes and go by my A-B line I set at the beginning of the field I will be ok. If not, I'm screwed. The farmer took off last night on a spring break trip with his family. I'm on my own.

Ralph Mooney RIP

There is no point for me to write an article about Ralph Mooney when so many other people have (Click Here for article in Fretboard Journal).
I'm sitting in my lazyboy after a day of planting and I'm listening to Mr. Mooney play the pedal steel guitar with Hoyt Axton on "When the Morning Comes."
Mr. Mooney passed away at age 82.  He toured and recorded with Waylon Jennings for 20 years. He also appeared as a session musician on many albums and for many different artists. He is credited as one of the developers of the Bakersfield country sound, which was a step away from the over-produced, pop styled Nashville sound of the past 30 years.
You can find him on ablums by Merle Haggard, Neil Young, Buck Owens, Johnny Cash, Jessi Coulter, and even Wanda Jackson. Plus, he played as a studio musician on many 45's recorded by local artists.
Here is another interesting comment about him.
Everyone is dying, it must be the end of the world...