OB Electricity emergency

First, I want you to realize how lucky we are in the U.S., that is, in most places.

In Syria, even before the attacks from their own government for speaking out, and the starvation of the besieged, people had to put up with rolling brownouts because the gov't was stock-piling WMDs instead of building power stations.

Second, since my power system is the most reviled company in the U.S., I could count on the power going out when it was too humid, as well as during storms, because the transformers would blow and not be able to reset.  This happened once in the middle of a dental appointment.  That's because the company was claiming profits by not spending the right amount of money on maintenance and upgrades.

So I was already prepared for electricity outages.
1.  Combo radio, clock, and flashlight with both A/C and hand-crank recharge.  It also has a solar panel but it's not clear that has ever helped keep the charge from dropping.  You need to have it set either to NOAA weather or to a radio station with regular and frequent weather announcements.  You need to know if a tornado is coming even if the power is off.  Link your smart phone, pad or tablet to accuweather.com or wunderground.com and hope that the storm doesn't cut service.
2.  Emergency blankets made of Mylar, as well as lots of other coverings.  That's because my heat is all electric.  You may have an electric starter on your oil heater or your heat pump or whatever so electricity is important to you.
3.  No-cook food and a hand-operated can opener.  This includes baking my own bread and freezing the extra loaf of each batch; oven-dried beef in the freezer as well as home-cured turkey, corned beef and pastrami; canned fish; canned vegetables; nuts and dried fruit.
4.  Emergency heat.  I have a small hibachi grill that I bought at the grocery story.  I've never used it because about the time I bought it, the power company got denied a rate increase to encourage them to make up for previous neglect.
5.  Alternate water pump.  This is not my problem because I am on city water and don't rely on a well with an electrical pump but I already talked about this.
6.  Alternate entertainment.  I have a Yamaha electronic keyboard that runs off batteries as well as a large quantity of books.  I like to write, as you can tell, and I can do that by hand, then type it up when the power comes back.  Long walks, quilting and other handicrafts, etc.
7.  Alternate clothing.  One recommendation I heard was have enough clothing to go three weeks without doing a wash/dry load.  That's 21 sets of underwear and socks, as well as tops and bottoms.  Face it, if the power's off, your dry-cleaner will be out of business too.  But if your water is working, there are things you can hand-wash.  So adjust the number of things in your closet accordingly.
8.  Paper products.  Now look, there is no excuse for having to rush out and buy toilet paper within 24 hours before a storm.  There's no expiration date on toilet paper, unlike milk and bread.  It ought to be automatic that you buy a new package every two weeks, oftener depending on how many people are in your house.  If you run your household right, you have a piece of paper on the fridge where people put things that have been used up, and the day you go to the store, you should check the toilet paper supply and put it on the list if you're low.
9.  Generator.  Somebody I know has a generator.  So far it seems more trouble than it's worth.  They are expensive.  He has to keep it in a shed, but it could get stolen -- there are people who will steal anything that isn't red-hot or nailed down and some of them will bring oven mits and crowbars -- because the HOA rules for sheds don't lend themselves to securing it.  He has to drain the gasoline every so often because if the generator isn't used regularly, the gas gells up just like the oil in a car that isn't used regularly.  He has to keep it a specific distance from the house to avoid carbon monoxide poisoning, so if he wants to turn it on he has to go out in the cold or storm to turn it on.  His yard is larger than mine and a shed to house a generator would cut way back on how many veggies and flowers I have room to plant.

Now, you might think that if you start going into withdrawal because your Internet is down, you can go to a Starbucks or other Internet café venue but I tried that once after a hurricane.  Three days later.  Everything within a mile of my house was still out of power.  After a snowstorm, the streets will be clogged with snow for some days -- been there done that -- and if the streets are clogged, the parking lots won't be shoveled unless the mall has its own plow truck.

Look at it this way.  Every time you flip that switch, a little miracle happens. Appreciate the hell out of it.  And be ready for when the miracle ceases.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

Fact-Checking the Torah -- Witness reliability

We’re working on when Jewish law allows judicial execution and we got to the point of hatraah, in which a person cannot serve as a witness in court unless he tried to stop whatever sin was about to be committed.  But you had an objection and I know what it is.

You know that in case after case, with eyewitnesses who swore in court that they saw the crime happen, DNA evidence is showing that people now in jail did not commit the crime.

Eyewitness evidence is wrong as much as 50% of the time. 

Then Jewish law is wrong to require witness testimony?

Not quite.  In American law there is a set of features that the police are supposed to use to evaluate “eyewitness” evidence.  They include how long the witness had known the criminal, how close they were standing, how long they were standing there, how long a continuous look the witness got at what was happening, how good the lighting was, how long a time passed between the event and the testimony, what was the mental state of the witness (sleepy, drugged, drunk, scared for the victim, scared for his own life, etc.), and other details.  Prejudice and other attitudes affect what people “see” and what they remember.  How the police conduct the identification of the criminal plays a role: how many sample suspects are in the lineup; how the police instructed them to behave; instructions the police gave the witness.  It’s complicated.

Jewish law sets requirements that eliminate a lot of these variables.  The witnesses not only have to see the attempt, they have to stop it and get in the criminal’s face.  They have to keep the criminal there long enough to say “what you’re doing violates commandment number xxx and you can be punished for it.”  They keep the criminal with them until the criminal responds and literally says “I’m going to do it anyway.”  And in that case the witness can take the criminal to court.  Once cooler heads get involved, the whole thing might be avoided.

Now think of the differences between American society and how Jews lived while their law developed.  We are mostly transients.   We sometimes don’t know our neighbors’ names.  We are busy and try to avoid distractions from whatever we are doing.

Jewish communities had possibly 120 adult males, their wives, parents, children, cousins, all of whom lived fairly close to each other.  A large house, according to Mishnah, was 12 feet by 15 feet by 13.5 feet high.  My living/dining room is that large, and I have 4 other rooms and a number of closets in my house, but it’s still on the tiny end for an American house.  Three of these houses would be clustered around a court where the animals lived, the stove was operated, and the agricultural tools were stored.  It was next to impossible not to know your neighbors.

The exact conditions required to qualify as a witness in Jewish law are the conditions that increase the reliability of eyewitness testimony in modern American law. 

The eyewitness requirement for a death penalty case in Jewish law cannot use circumstantial evidence like DNA, but the rules for being an eyewitness are just the ones that make eyewitness evidence reliable in an American court.

For the next time, read Deuteronomy 17:4, 17:9, 19:18 because that’s the next step in the process.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

Bit at a Time Bible Hebrew -- Genesis 1:7

Genesis 1:7

ז וַיַּעַשׂ אֱלֹהִים אֶת־הָרָקִיעַ וַיַּבְדֵּל בֵּין הַמַּיִם אֲשֶׁר מִתַּחַת לָרָקִיעַ וּבֵין הַמַּיִם אֲשֶׁר מֵעַל לָרָקִיעַ וַיְהִי־כֵן:

 

Transliteration: Va-yaas elohim et-haraqia vayavdel ben ha-maim asher mitachat laraqia uven ha-maim asher me-al laraqia va-y’hi khen.

Translation:    Gd made the raqia and separated the water that is under the raqia from the water that is above the cover and it was so.

Letters in this lesson:  שׂ

 

Vocabulary in this lesson:

 

יַּעַשׂ	make, do
מִ, מֵ	from, away from, toward
אֲשֶׁר	that, which
תַּחַת	under
מֵעַל	above
כֵן	thus, true

 

Here’s that word yaas that I told you about.

 

Notice that tav of mitachat has a dagesh and the letter before it has hiriq under it.

 

Here is vav with dagesh and in this case, it’s pronounced “oo”.  with a patach under it. 

 

Notice that mi seems to have contradictory meanings. In this verse, you have to translate it as “from” because the idea is that the raqia is a dividing line and there is water both above and below it.  That is another disagreement with Aristotelianism, making “firmament” a bad translation.  There is nothing solid above the raqia in Jewish scripture.

 

We have another idiom using the lamed, and now it becomes obvious that adverbs like “below” and “above” take the lamed between them and the noun which is in the phrase.

 

Notice that the hah “the” before raqia is spelled with qamats, not with patach.  This goes along with the qamats with the lamed. 

 

Notice that Gd makes the raqia but in the case of light, He said “let it exist” and it did.  I looked at two sets of aggadah or moralistic/folkloristic commentaries on Torah and neither one addresses that issue. 

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

OB -- Water emergency

I already wrote about this once.
The point of writing about it now is two things you might not have thought about.
One issue is flushing.
When there's a water emergency you CANNOT afford to be dainty.  You have to let the liquids build up and flush only about every 4th use or when there are solids.
1.  You need a bucket that holds at least 2 gallons of water.
2.  You need a bathtub full of water.
3.  You need to dip the bucket and get at least a gallon of water to flush the toilet.
See the video.
Even if you're on water restrictions, it should be possible to fill the tub once.  During the whole emergency. 
One emergency in my area lasted five days; it was a 64 inch water main.
The other issue is pumping.
A number of people moved into big properties in the country where the water was on an electric pump. 
Their water mains didn't break.
Their electricity broke.
They didn't have emergency drinking water.
They didn't have emergency flushing water.
The electricity was out for a week because they were way out in the country, with few people on a given line, and the electric company worked from most populated to least populated.
When I was growing up we lived on a farm for a while and it had a hand-powered artesian pump.
If you move out where you rely on well water, make sure that you have an artesian pump for your well besides the electric pump.  That's the only way you can deal with a power emergency.  Unless you have solar power for your pump or can hook it up to a generator.
And that gets me to the next subject.
© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

Fair Isle Knitting -- Double Contrast Stitches

Last week I pointed you toward the video showing how to do two background stitches and then a contrast stitch.
This week, if you feel ready, watch how Ann does two contrast stitches in a row.
https://www.philosopherswool.com/Pages/Twohandedvideo.htm

Basically, what she does is knit the first background stitch.
Then she does a contrast stitch.
Then she starts a background stitch BUT
Before she pulls the background yarn through, she starts a contrast stitch.
THEN she unloops the background color.
SO THAT when she finally pulls yarn through, it's the contrast color.
The background color is woven in on the back but doesn't show in front.

Practice this X-O-O for a row or two, then do a row of only background, and then we'll try a typical motif, a diamond with a hole in the middle.
© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

Outdoors -- the Next Step

It snowed yesterday but at the same time the next sign of spring is out there.
If you have trees in your neighborhood, look at them.  This works on the Mall in DC so it ought to work in most cities, even if it's only in the parks.
One month ago, all the branches and twigs of the trees were clean cut against the sky.
Now they are starting to look fuzzy from a distance.
That fuzziness is the buds starting to swell as the sap rises.
The flower buds on my neighbor's sassafrass tree are also swelling. 
The forecast for this week is cold, but not nearly as cold as in January.
© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

DIY -- Basic Cooking V: Baking

All the recipes I've given you up to now you can make cheaper and healthier from scratch at home compared to either buying them pre-made or getting them at a restaurant.  (Some of them you can't get at a restaurant.)  The real payoff, however, is when you get to baking bread.

Bread is one of the most forgiving things you can bake, just as soup is one of the most forgiving things you can make for yourself without baking.  I've made all kinds of mistakes making bread, and the only one that really ruined things was using flour that was way too old.  The bread turned out like concrete.

It wasn't this easy in the past but now we have domesticated yeast packaged in exactly the right amount to make a single batch of bread.  We also have ovens with internal thermostats that heat to exactly the right temperature and stay at that temperature, whether they use gas or electricity.

Baking your own bread uses an average of three to five ingredients, instead of a dozen or twenty that you see listed on the plastic wrappers in the store.  It avoids all those chemicals.  You can use unbleached flour and avoid the bleaching agent that Subway is just now eliminating from its rolls.  (That chemical is still in the buns used by McDonald's and Burger King.) 

Baking your own bread can save you between $1 and $3 per loaf.  For me, that's up to $150 a year and I'm single, no kids.  The savings depend on how many loaves you use a week.  Make your kids do it when they get home from school and you'll have fresh bread for dinner, almost fresh bread for breakfast and lunch the next day, and eventually you can make French toast from the stale bread, which is how French toast originated anyway.

Even if you buy a breadmaker -- and your kids will love messing with that! -- you will make back its price in the first 52 weeks.

If you don't want to spend the money on a bread-maker, I can tell you from experience that making bread by hand is a zen-like experience and also a great upper-body workout.

There are bread recipes all over the internet. Next week I'll give you my favorite, which my nieces like better than cookies.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved