To Fatten Up

Katrinka is such a good cook that sometimes I accuse her of trying to fatten me up for market and suggest that she might be in some secret cult of cannibalism. Then I think about the phrase "to fatten up." I've seen cattle at stock shows in hometown Fort Worth, also known as Cowtown, that are huge and they don't look huge with fat. They look huge with muscle. Giant shoulder and thigh and rump muscles come to mind. But then I talked to a cattle man about it. He said they fatten them up before they're going to market because if they start doing it early, they have to spend more on feed for their whole lives. And he said that they do have lots more muscle but they have more fat too and that's what makes their meat good to eat. And how do they build muscle when they're just standing around? Beef cattle have been bread, he said, to put on muscle and they're given feed that encourages that as well. So remembering back on that, since I have not been bred to gain more muscle, the more I eat, I wonder if I'd taste better bigger or not. I know where I could get an opinion. Cannibalism has about vanished in Papua here in Indonesia, but a woman who's been there for decades as a Christian missionary said that you can get stories from some of the seniors about the good old days. One told her and her husband how he'd prepare them, demonstrated with an air knife how he'd slice the meat off their arms and legs and so forth. 

One of My Disorders

I don't have dyslexia, a reading disorder. I have dysgraphia, a writing disorder. I frequently switch letters when writing on a keyboard and have to go back and correct. I esek a dsygrahpia ideniyt rgoup os ew cna demadn speical treatmetn. 

Gaia Purging

US Gov fighting against, muzzling climate science - and they're winning.

Climate change - very big and fast moving - Tim Flannery, chief councillor of Climate Council Australia 

In short, the human race is doing what it can on many fronts to hasten our demise and devastate the biosphere. World suicide on the march. But it's only our world which is a small one. Maybe it's just mother Gaia deciding to fast and purge this contamination so she can get well and flower again which she can do - over and over. We're working on impeding that with WSC plans to leave massive amounts of unchecked radition  behind.

Nuclear Arms race with Russia - the engines are reving up

A disaasterous decision to back out of the landmark agreement between Reagan and Gorbochof. Presidents should not be able to tear up treaties so easily that needed 2/3 vote to pass. The World Suicide Club celebrates.

Noam Chomsky

Republican Party dedicated to destroying the earth - Youtube. Obviously from before the 2016 election. This is a snippet from a longer talk. - thanks Noe Anna Bonas - I've long held that the dedication to destroying the biosphere for humans and much other life is a the main goal of the human race, far more inclusive than the Republican Party in the US. They've just been more gung ho. 

Wildfires in the Arctice etc

Unprecidented on this scale

Scientific concensus - no doubt human activity have been the cause - Jonathan Watts

Climate change: 12 years to save the planet? Make that 18 months

Galungan review

(following up from yeterday's post) I walked over to the temple with my pejati offering and there were hardly any people there and no one in the dunking pouring water over me area.

Galungan

Today is Galungan, day when dharma defeats anti or not dharma and the spirits of ancestors come to stay ten days till Kuningan. It comes every 210 days. Landlord's son, Wayan made a penjur for our house. See photo of a fancy one off the Internet. Hindus here in Bali go to their temple for a brief Melukat ceremony of purification and cleansing. It's done in groups or individually all day. I'll go at three thirty, walk to Pura Mertasari with a Pejati offering basket with flowers, fruit, a candy bar. Nyoman got it for me. Cost 50,000 rupiah - $3.50. He told me to be sure to put a 50,000 bill in the offering and hand it to the helper at the temple. Then sit and wait till I'm told then go remove my sarong and udeng headband, take the steps into the murky mangrove water (and it's the coldest time of year - low 80s today), submerge, stand before the manku priest who will chant while pouring buckets of water over me, get dressed, go over to in front of the offerings, kneel, offer incense,  get rice stuck on my forehead above my nose, get water sprinkled over my head, tip some that's poured into my hand, get a tridupa three color string tied to my wrist, and walk home drying in the July breeze. 

A New Threat from Climate Change

Bacteria and virus in ice are waking up as the ice thaws. - BBC - thanks Gregory

But don't worry - you're destined to become a Buddha.

Bees and other Insects rapid decline

Russian bees disappearing

The importance of bees

Insects decline (video) - bees, ants, beetles at 8x the rate of vertibrates.

Science and Religion - again

Regarding Maria Popova's https://www.brainpickings.org/2019/07/17/stephen-hawking-brief-answers-to-the-big-questions/   -   thanks JR

The following is what came to mind when I read that piece.

Fools Together

Here's a little tune from the dungeons of Defuser Music, dedicated today to Bliss Fool to remind her that she may even become a hermit, but she's not alone.

Fools Together - mp3

Page for Fools Togethre on Defuser Music dot com

At the cremation of dear friend Peter

Spent yesterday with Peter Zipser's cremation in Singaraja. There were about fifty people, more locals than foreigners which were mainly Germanic (He was Austrian, she'd Swiss, they are students of Richard Baker and have spent a good deal of time at his Johanneshof retreat in the Black Forest.

Got to the crematorium early and sat our front listening to the gamelan and watching through the open entrance a ceremony going on. People coming and going in colorful, traditional attire. Behind me the ocean and beach littered with the remains of offerings and some discarded food and drink containers.

Voting

She asked me who I voted for last time and I said it was a secret ballot so I didn't look.

What Kills Birds

Compared to other other causes, Wind Farm bird deaths are negligable and when Climate change is brought into the equation, are a plus for bird populations. - BBC

Bad News and Good News

Climate change speeding up - irreversible if... - Attenborough - BBC - not really new

Device could bring both solar power and clean water

Weather or not

Teddy was driving his mate Kim and mine Katrinka to the Denpasar airport today to fly off to Adelaide. Talk was about the cool front that's spending the winter months here though no one uses the word winter - June through August. Katrinka asked should we expect a cool rainy season? Kim, who's been here forever said she no longer knows what to expect with the weather here. "It used to be so predictable - like clockwork. On the way back Teddy, who was born here, said the weather is just crazy. My condolences to the biosphere and sincere apologies for what we've foisted on it.

And I thought Indonesia was bad

US top of the garbage pile in global waste crisis

Another Local Rip-off

Our housekeeper's husband is a driver we used when we first came here, an honest sincere person. He told me back then never to loan people here money. When his daughter went into the hospital I asked him if he needed any help and he said no, they'd get by fine. Chris is an Aussie who started coming here to surf in the seventies and has lived here forty years or so, has a nearby excellent place to stay, the Kolonial House, owns the Power of Now Yoga nearby, said he lost money to unscrupulous locals a number of times till he finally found an honest lawyer who's helped him steer clear of that and does pro bono work for his charitable endeavors - the proceeds from his busy yoga studio go to support an orphanage. When our US born monk friend paid to have a hermitage built on his driver's land, Chris and I crossed our fingers that he'd not get screwed. Chris said that over and over he's seen foreigners do that and get locked out and told to go away. Stories like that in Bali are legion.

Skeletons with dog tags

We had dinner with a couple we've been close to since soon after we arrived here in Bali and a couple which we didn't know that well. They were married 45 years ago and came here the next year. I love to ask people who were here that long ago what it was like. The furthest back for a foreigner was a woman who came as a little girl with her father on a military plane in 1962 - they had to shoo the water buffalo off the field of the airport before they landed and needed a parachute to open behind the plane to the runway was so short. But the couple tonight were here in 1975. The crowded party capital of Kuta was a little village.

Local Climate Report

Nice weather these days in Bali. Just learned we're experiencing a cold front that is supposed to last through August. Down to mid seventies in the morning! Long sleeve shirts at night.

Meanwhile, June was the hottest month ever recorded on earth

Climate change made European heatwave at least five times likelier - Searing heat shows crisis is ‘here and now’, say scientists, and worse than predicted

Scientists warn Antarctic Peninsula 'can still avoid irreversible change if we keep temp down

50 States, 50 Climate Change stories

from Weather do com

Less white ice to reflect the sun the size of Mexico in 3 years

Arctic Sea Ice rapid loss in recent three years unprecedented in the record

Canine and Man Together Against Waste

Sometimes I use dogette Bandi to clean out an oily pan. She'll keep licking at it long after it seems to me that there's anything left to lick. If some types of food go bad she can help by thoroughly disposing of them for us. She's excellent for having around the kitchen or dinner table to help clean up any crumb that falls, drips, or spills on the floor. She patrols the entire area floor area daily for any spec of something edible. Katrinka uses me in the same way, knowing my obsession with not wasting. She's away for meetings a lot and will let me know what leftovers in the fridge are oldest. Some fruit or vegetables that are getting unappetizing looking she places on top of the compost container knowing I'll consume whatever won't consume me. Soy milk or juice containers or a blender jar that had just been used will be left on the counter for me to add a bit of drinking water and shake to get the last bit before washing or disposing. Same with peanut or sesame butter jars that are apparently all used up. Bandi and I are proud to do our share of house chores.

More Law Enforcement Needed

I read about how the federal government is going to give Alaska funds to hire more Law Enforcement for the outlying areas.  That is such a contrast to here in Bali where the banjar, the neighborhoods, have their own administration and security force in addition to the local police and federal troops when called for. Mainly the local security, the pecalang, keep an eye out and make sure all is okay and help out in many ways. It's just nonsalaried neighborhood men. There were other forms of local security before, but the pecalang is a rather recent thing. We go to the nearby island of Lembongan sometimes where everyone knows everything and there's very low crime and I remember concerns when a police building was put up. Police are often associated with needing to bribe them. But we've been back since they arrived and they don't seem to be causing any trouble. The Gili Islands have no police. They're small, without cars and dogs either which is a relief. Some tourists were caught stealing on one of them and had to walk around the island with signs around their necks announcing they were thieves. Better than jail.

Read about it here: https://www.boombastis.com/pecalang-polisi-adat-bali/97493