THE ROAD RISES FROM BELOW

A MOUNTAIN TO CLIMB

In a maze walled in doubt
Eye’s of light shining through
I am said the message
The wordless word
Straight and true

Sometimes the world must change
And this is the only power in the need of the hour

“I know this much is true”

LOVE IS ONLY TRUTH
AND TRUTH IS LIGHT
IN THE DARK GREY OF DOUBT
LOVE BORN OF TRUTH
IS THE ONLY WEAPON OF HOPE,
HOPE BORN FEARLESS BY NATURE
TO SHINE THE WHOLE OF A HEART
THROUGH THE WALLS OF DESPAIR
“IS THERE ANYBODY OUT THERE?”
TRUTH
BRIDGING THE SPACE BETWEEN US
TRUTH
FLYING UP
WITHOUT  REASON FOR RESTRAINT
TRUTH
SHATTERING THE WINDOWS DEVISED
AND CONSTRUCTED
OF OUR LISTLESS LIE’S
RELEASING
AN EXPANDING FAITH
CHASING AWAY THE FEAR
UNTIL IT SEEMS SAFE TO BEGAN
FALLING BACK IN
DOWN
WELLS OF THE EMPTY DISTANCE
TOWARD THE LIGHT WE HIDE WITHIN
DOWN
BREAKING CHAINS OF FEARFUL ILLUSION
FALLING
PAST ALL THAT CUT IN THE SPIRIT DEEP
ALL THAT FALSELY CONVICTED
AND CRUELLY RESTRAINED US
DOWN AND FURTHER DOWN
TO THE WELL PROTECTED
WELL HIDDEN  SOUL
WHERE STIRS AND IS BORN AGAIN
SOMETHING ALWAYS AS NEW
IN THE RISE OF ANCIENT ALTARS  FLAME
BORN IN THE BLAZE OF THE ONLY TRUTH
TRANSCENDING TIME
SOMETHING FOR WHICH NO PRICE IS TO HIGH
THE GIFT BEYOND MEASURE

SOMETHING NO MAN WILL EVER EARN
THOUGH HE KNOWS BY THEN
HE SHOULD DIE TRYING

AND THAT’S

WHEN I’M LOOKING
WHAT I’M LOOKING  FOR

But the soul is hard to find
And the melons are all blind

But I’ll keep on looking anyway
Because I really don’t mind
At least I know what to find
Theirs only only one thing to believe in
The rest adds up to one big excuse
It’s always there
It’s not going anywhere
you just have to learn to let it go

So

Take it easy on yourself
It’s the sound of your soul
It’s so hard to ignore
It’s so hard to control

Closing the distance

Summer project small hydro window garden

Well here’s my latest hydro project working out quit well I’d say considering I haven’t ph balanced the solution and the tap waters here’s not great. Yup bubblers rock. I made this bubbler out of the smallest tote I could find at Freddy’s and cut out a hole and put in one of the cheap disposable Tupperware like containers you find at the grocery store. I drilled it full of as many holes as I thought I could get away with. I got the floral foam I’m using at Joe Ann’s fabric believe it are not they have this green stuff for flower arranging that works perfect. cheaper than at the hydro store. I used a stainless steel rod I busted out of an old printer to hold the air hose to the bottom of the container. Just a few zip ties to hold the hose on and it works better than anything else I have tried to keep that air hose on the bottom. Hydroponic fertilizer is a must in these systems . Urea nitrogen is almost useless in these bubblers they don’t have the soil microbes to break down urea nitrogen . Use only hydro fertilizer. I give you a link to the ebay ferts I use. But the company is not listing anymore sorry, this stuff works great and was very cheap. Your on you own as far as the hydro ferts go. Golf coarse fertilizer is always an option I here. heres the pic at a little over two months.

The Moments Plight

STARTING A NEW HYDROPONIC TOMATO PROJECT MUCH SMALLER AND SPACE SAVING RESULTS ARE EXCELLENT SO FAR WILL SEE IF ITS BIG ENOUGH TO PRODUCE TOMATO’S

THE PICTURE SHOWS A LARGE SEEDLING NEXT TO A SMALL ON IN SOIL THE SEEDLINGS WERE THE SAME SIZE A WEEK AND A HALF AGO THIS GIVE YOU SOME IDEA HOW FAST THE BUBBLER GARDEN GROWS

GARDEN

 

 

Hydroponic air pumps for bubblers

Thought I’d pass along a tip on setting up a hydroponics system for cheap. I have already discussed how to set up bubblers and bubbler systems fairly cheap except for two things that set you back a bit. That is the air pumps to aerate the water you can never pump to much air into bubblers the more the better that and a lighting system for indoor growing are going to dig into the beer money the deapest , unavoidable unfortunately. Unless that is you are as dedicated a  cheap skate as me. I have scoward thrift stores for air pumps and lights and have been very successful at it. I found a 150 watt high pressure sodium light at the Starvation Army “probably just dumb luck as that’s what I depend on to get me through the day” have’nt seen another one since but you can always look. The Sal Army in my town still has a 1000 watt sodium street light for sale though. I didn’t want nothing to do with it though as it is probably 220 volt and to much of a project for me “wonder what could be the story behind this light somebody ripped down a light pole and stoled the light to donate to the thrift store hmmm a conscientious Vandal what’da ya know”. It could work for somebody else though so thrift stores are still worth checking out for lights. Now as to finding air pumps I have found two to very heavy duty ones at thrift stores and they were’nt aquarium pumps. These were pumps are called nebulizers. They are used by asthmatics and old folks with respiratory problems. I call’m geezer de wheezers “thats just plain wrong and I know it”. I don’t know how to describe them to you as they all come in different styles the two I have are white and rectangular and about 3/4 the size and shape of a shoe box “theirs a picture at the top of the article”. These things end up in thrift stores allot and they are very powerful air-pumps. If you bought the equivalent aquarium pump it would probably set you back a hundred bucks. I got both of them at the Starvation Army for 4.50$ a piece and they work great. Another tip on aerating your bubblers is to use one pump a tote or only have one pump do a maximum of two 5 gallon buckets. If you don’t do this one container will get lower than the others or just plug up more and quit bubbling and your plants will die as the other one in the system will bubble away with all the air as it has less resistance. One pump to a contains make things much more reliable and that’s what you should shoot for. That’s it for today I hope somebody gets some use out of these tips………..later

Hydro garden update 4 Kill Kill Kill Die Die Die commie Aphids

Well my hydro garden has been going almost three month’s now and everything was going great until I found the aphids. They are tearing thing up pretty bad now. The tobacco tea and soap bug spray kills them pretty good but they keep coming back as there are no natural predators to control them in this indoor environment. I know about a insecticide that works and have used it before to control spider mites. Spider mites make aphids look like pikers the tear plants up like crazy and breed in the indoor environment like you would not believe. I had these spider mites for a while in me previous garden and I must have tried 20 insecticides before I found one that worked. And boy did it work took those suckers out and I never saw another one again. It’s called Avid and it is with a few precautions supposed to be very nontoxic. You are not supposed to get it in your eye’s and that is the number one precaution but other than that it’s not very toxic and you can eat the stuff your growing after a couple weeks. It’s fairly expensive and hard to find so you have to asked at a green house or order it on-line. I found a supplier down in Florida that sold it in small amounts instead of by the gallon witch would cost you over a hundred bucks. Cant remember the name of the place but it was a store that sold supply’s for growing orchids so if your looking for the stuff research some on orchid growing and you should find someone to steer you in the right direction. I guess the number one piece of advice I could give to indoor grower’s is never take cuttings from a green house. The number one advantage of indoor growing is the lack of pest in the environment. When you bring bugs in they have no natural predators and will get out of control very quick. Only grow from seed or get cuttings from another indoor grower that has no pests in his garden. That’s the best advice I can give you on the subject I’m going to try to find me some avid and will keep you posted if I find a supplier.

Public Enemy #1

Windows Media player crapped out on me today it wont play Dvd’s no more Window X P..uke is a piece of putrid crap. I can only imagine what horror’s of hair pulling screeching system crash’s Vista has in store for us. I wonder if it would be possible to create a worse operating system than X P..uke I have had to do a complete reinstall of X P..uke three time losing loads a personal files “mostly porn witch I hold very dear to my heart I miss it so sniff”. I don’t think Meir humans could wright code this bad no matter how hard they tried. I personally think it would require a trip down to the zoo. There you would place a laptop running C++ programing language in the monkey cage and let the monkey’s program an O.S buy throwing poo at it. I still beleive the monkeys would come up with a smoother running more intuitive and reliable operating system then X P..uke. That’s my Microsoftinthehead rave for today I’m sure you have all been there yourselves.

Attack of the Ipod people

I’ve been working on this theory that Ipod’s are are in truth a secrete government mind control project spearheaded by Dick Cheney. Here’s how it works. As soon as enough people have purchased Ipod’s Dick will press a big red button in an ultra secrete lab buried deep beneath the Nevada desert. This will zap precisely aimed z beta waves into the unsuspecting skulls of millions of copyright infringing MP3 listeners. In the first phase of the experiment Ipod’ers will be turned into rabid zombies with a ravonues hunger for the tiny brains”you can never eat just one” of liberal’s, pinko’s, greeny’s and all those commie f@gg#t hippy vegan hemp rug weavers. Then he’l send out the order for them to wreak havoc across the landscape. After all the political opposition is eliminated, with a flick of a switch Cheney will unleash his minions upon those god@am squeeling munchkin b^s#erds that wont stay off the fu#k%@ng lawn for fifteen minutes. Next up comes those co#c&su#k*ing little as#w&pes driving around in the middle of the m^th^rfu#*ing night blasting their god&*m hipitty hopitty sh#tbag music. On and on will the gleeful slaughter continue unabated until all that is left to rule the world will be a bunch of grumpy inflamed hemorrhoid ridden, prostate plugged, life time card carring  John Bircher society member old gun nut balls and maybe just to liven things up, a few nubile senate pages.

hard to believe?

maybe

but remember the old saying

“Truth is stranger then Nixon”

Hydro garden at day 60

Just wanted to post a picture of my garden at two months brocally is out of control didn’t know it was such a big plant. Got those filthy little aphids though. They came in on some cuttings I took from a greenhouse wont be doing this again from now on only growing from seedlings and taken cuttings off them when they are old enough . Going to nuke the little buggers with some home maid bug spray I read about. Its a combination of tobacco tea and ivory dish soap. wrap about a table spoon of chewing tobacco in a piece of cloth making a small tea bag type thingy. Boil it in two cups water four 10 or fifteen minutes. then mix the tea in with a gallon of regular water. put this mixture in a spray bottle and combine it with a couple drops Ivory dish soap. When your garden lights are off give the plants a good soaking with this stuff and make sure you get both the tops and the bottoms of the leaves. Let the plants sit a few days and then rince them off with plan water. This tobacco tea is supposed to be hell on those little free lunch aphid commies and other soft skinned insect pests. Will keep you posted as to how it works out.

Beach bum mining

I’m in the mood tonight to right another article on gold mining specifically beach gold mining. Don’t know that much about it but that has never stopped me from writing about things in the past so why start or stop now. I been reading some tips in the Alaska gold forum “hours fun here for the weekend miner and lots of good advice from the pro’s here’s the link just go to the prospecting section, http://bb.bbboy.net/alaskagoldforum” from the guys that mine the Nome beach’s here in Alaska and I thought I’d convey them. If their are gold bearing streams that dump into the ocean in your area theirs a very good chance that you have some area’s on the beach that will contain workable gold deposits. So its worth going down and at least giving it a try hey and if things don’t pan out at least your down at the beach right? Finding beach gold deposits is a bit of an art form But here’s some tips as to where to look. Beach gold is generally very fine and very adventurous that is to say it really gets around and can be found miles from the streams that deposit it. gold can also be worn out of the bluffs buy wave action all around the coast line in gold bearing area’s these bluff deposits come from old glacial moraines that is to say hills of dirt that were pushed around buy ancient glaciers also high and dry steam beds and some comes from mineralized veins in the coastal bedrock itself. Most decent beach gold deposits are generally closer to gold bearing streams though, so this is the first area you should check. Beach gold tends to form into what miners call lenses witch I believe are round or oval type deposits . It is usually associated with black sand witch looks like you guessed it black sand. In Nome gold is also found in what they call ruby sand witch is red colored I guess but even then their is always black sand along with It. So it follows that if you are looking for gold deposits on beach’s look for black sand in the area as wave action will likely expose it in places. Don’t let coal deposits fool you as black sand is made from very heavy elements such as tin magnetite and garnet. Coal is much lighter and once you have seen and dealt with both you will not confuse them. Pristine white sand beach’s are not likely place’s to find good gold “unless its lost gold rings” you want a beach with lots of boulders and cobble size rocks so shop accordingly. Once you find a likely area start panning and sampling around and if you find any sign of gold start looking in specific area’s. Gold is heavy and it sinks as far down as it can go before it is stopped by something through witch it can not pass like Gandolf the wizard “sorry that one was for me”. On beach’s and streams the stuff that stops the gold and their by the area with the greatest concentration of gold is either on on what is called bedrock or false bedrock. Bedrock is fairly self explanatory its solid rock, false bedrock is dense hard packed clay and when you run into it you will know as it is very hard to dig. Ok so you have to dig down to one of the two kinds of bedrock what else to look for. You should according to the experts dig around boulders and the sides of the cobble stones and dig small trench’s and look for concentration’s of black sand to pan. Also if you see any rap stars sunning on the beach they usually contain high consecrations of gold and platinum their very tricky and difficult to mine though. OK I have slapped myself several times and am now over my attack of the silly’s lets get back on track. Gold concentration on the beach will be in leopard spot type patterns on so you will have to search for the best spots and move on when the deposit play’s out. You can gold pan but you are going to have bring a tub to pan out of . Running back and forth down to the surf will get real old real quick. Don’t try to work the overburden only the black sands on the bedrock as this is where the gold is. If you really want to have fun and you have the aptitude why not build yourself a small recirculating sluice system. I plan on doing that this winter here’s what I plan to build. Above is a picture of a recirculating sluice its called the gold buddy and if you want something pre built this will probably get the job done. If you are as cheap and impoverished as I why not try your hand at constructing a recirculating system. Its not to complicated and unit above should give you the gist of how these things operate. Years ago I read an article on the construction of a cheap system for recovering the ultra fine gold from left over in your concentrates. I had kept some concentrates from a few of my gold dredging foray’s so I decided to build one and try it out . I made it out of a piece pvc pipe cut in half lengthwise and glued a one foot section of ridged vinly mat ten inch’s down from the top inside of the pipe thus making myself a small sluice. You propped this thing up at the appropriate angle trickled some water from a garden hose in it and fed in your concentrates a table spoonful at a time. worked great at recovering the ultra fine gold I couldn’t even see when I’ first panned the concentrates . The secrete to this system is their is very little obstruction as you have in the large riffles in regular sluices just the tiny ridges on the mat and their only maybe a 64th on an inch high. what this allows you to do is to run your concentrates down this sluice at a very slow smooth pace without it plugging up. This be the secrete to ultra fine gold recovery and for my recirculating beach unit I plan to use a larger version of this system. Heres than plan. I’ll go to home depot and purchase the largest PVC pipe I can find the black stuff as it is tougher than the white. As I said cut it almost in half lengthwise leave about three inch’s of one end of the pipe hole to make a sturdy mount for an end cap more on why later. This stuff is thick so you are going to need a good cutting tool I like to use my razor sharp toenail. Serousely I have a reciprocating saw and it works fine. I like fine gold sluice’s to be as long as practical because the longer they are the more fine gold you can recover. The inside of the pipe is going to be set up with several small gold recovery areas / sluice ridges. I”ll build my system with a six foot section of PVC pipe a bit cumbersome and maybe a little over kill but I can always shorten it if I want to. The first foot and a half of the pipe will be left bare so there is a area for the gold to settle to the bottom before it hits the recovery area just like in a regular sluice. At one and a half feet I’ll put my first 6 inch piece of ridged vinyl mat. You find this stuff at the hardware store in the flooring section I think people use it for non slip areas. Mount the ridges of the mat cross ways in the pipe and I like to cover inside of the half pipe all the way up to the edge’s don’t know if that’s necessary though. Then I will leave another two foot bare and the next gold recover area will be made up of two things. First another 6 inch piece of ridged vinyl then a bare area of about one inch this will make another little gold trap then I’ll put in a six inch piece of corduroy. Corduroy is suppose to be very good at recovering fine gold and I think I will try to mount it in with double sided tape so I can take it out, burn it and pan it out at the end of the season. I’ll leave the last section of the pipe bare you cant have to much obstruction in this thing or it wont be able to get that slow flow for the fine gold recovery as this is the hole idea of this system. Don’t use thick corduroy use the thinnest you can find and don’t try stuff like miner moss its to bulky and will mess things up. If my theory holds this thing will rock at fine gold recovery once you get the angle and flow right all systems require some fine tuning. the little inch space between the mat and the corduroy should trap a few small nuggets if you should get that lucky but you don’t run in to them much when your beach mining. the other stuff you will need will include A good sized roughneck tote, 12 volt battery a builge pump witch should be mounted about three inch’s off the bottom of the tote as a little sand always finds its way down there when your mining. A valve to control the flow a hose coming from the bilge pump to the head of the sluice I think the easy way to mount it is to get a end cap for the PVC pipe glue it on with some PVC glue or some epoxy might be stronger, Drill a hole to mount a plastic ninety fitting or elbow if you prefer I don’t think I need to tell you to point the ninety toward the bottom of the sluice but if you want to use this thing as a water pick go ahead and point it at your face. Another thing your gona need is a bucket that fits inside the tote you point the end of your sluice at so the rocks and sand dump into it instead of the tote . Your let the water overflow out of the bucket into the tote and this acts as a seperater. When the bucket gets about three quarters full of material pick it up dump out as much water as you can without spilling the rocks or sand into the tote and dump the sludge and rock left in the bucket some where away from your work area. Thats how recirculating systems work. The only other thing you are going to need to do is to figure out how to mount the pipe on legs and make it adjustable so you can adjust the angle to get it flowing just right I’ll leave that up to you as theirs many ways to accomplish that. Another great thing about recirculating system is in regular sluice fine gold can be suspended on to of the water and flow right out of the sluice. that is because of the surface tension on water the same reason those water bugs don’t sink. You can counteract the surface tension of water with common dish soap such as dawn. Put a few drops in your tote and your in business you cant do this with a none recirculating system as the soap just wash’s away aint that handy. If your in Alaska there are several areas in the Cook inlet area around Anchorage were you can mine beach gold. The beach out behind the international airport a place called point Warenzof supposabely has beach gold never had much luck there myself only tried a couple times though. Anchor point and Ninilchik area beach’s are suppose to have some very good gold. The truth of the matter is that their are so many rivers and streams dumping fine gold into Cook inlet that beach deposits are found at virtually any likely looking spot, that is stony or bolder strewn beach’s. So look around the hope area Nikiski beach’s north of Kenai along Turnagain arm, very muddy here but their is exposed bedrock in the bird creek area where their was once a hard rock gold mine down on the beach that was given up on as high tide kept flooding it. Got to check that out someday. What a view you get along that Turnagain highway one of the most scenic drives in America and if you hit the time right such as in mid to late August you can watch Beluga whales munching on silver salmon. In some area’s their only twenty yards off shore from the highway. A must see if you are around that time of year. thats it for me today hope this info helps you find some good gold ” is their any other kind” so get out an have some fun I plan to when all this snow melts brrrrrrrr.

Gold Panning in Alaska

Today I thought I’d wright a small article about gold panning. Specifically gold panning in Alaska but the tips I point out can be used most anywhere theirs gold. This article is aimed mostly at people that have never panned before and are just looking to have some fun and not a anyone attempting to do any serious mining. The first thing you will need to know is how to go about gold panning and the #1 thing you need to know about gold panning is? Do not try to gold pan with a gold pan they are slow overly complicated hard to learn and master and not the prospecting tool for someone just starting out. Or anyone for that matter people just stubbornly hold on to the old style pans as thats what they have used since the old day’s. But theirs always been much room for improvement. I used the old style gold pans for years and got fairly good at using them but if you expect to learn how to use one competently in a weekend you are in for an awaking. I don’t no how many people I’ve watched gold panning at some of the recreational panning sites around here and complaining that they cant find any gold. I have tried to show people how to pan but they still cant get the hang of it and become quickly discouraged. The point is gold pans are crap don’t bother with them when I discovered the le trap gold pan it was a revelation. Finally an pan that worked easily and quickly. Ever since I have had this pan I can not stand using the old style pans and will avoid doing so at all costs the are just are to slow and not much fun. For me the le trap makes panning fun and easy. I don’t sell these things this is not a infomercial I’m just trying to save beginners a lot of frustration and disappointment and help people new to the game have some fun panning for gold instead of pulling their hair out. The le trap gold pan is infinitely better the the standard pie pan looking pans. I have included a picture of the le trap pan at the top of this article. Along with the sniffer bottle and a shovel that is all you need to find gold. Heres how you use the pan. The first part of the process is put your dirt in the pan about three quarters full you then scoop some water into the pan and stir the dirt around making a nice soupy muddy mess. After you’ve got it stirred up a bit hold the pan level and start shaking it back and forth try not to shake to hard and spill any dirt or water out of the pan. Continue shaking the pan for about 30 seconds. Gold is very heavy and will sink very quickly to the bottom of the pan. Once you have done the shaking its time to start throwing dirt out of the pan to get down to the concentrates. concentrates are the heaviest particles in the dirt and can be made up of many things the most important to you is the gold. Now to start getting rid of the useless dirt. what you do with the le trap pan is to fill it to the brim with water and tilt it froward thats it. Keep loading it with water shake it a little and dump it forward spilling out the top layers gradually until you get down to about three table spoons of consintrates left. Heres the only tricky part but its not very hard at all once you get the hang of it. You tilt the pan slightly forward and shake it from side to side this will put the gold all the way forward and under the bottom edge of the first ridge on the pan. Now you poor out all the water except for a very small amount just enough to cover the bottom of the pan. Pivot rock the pan forward and back this will create a small tidal wave that will run to the front of the pan bounce back and take off a top layer of the concentrates once you get the idea of what your doing it will be easy. After you’ve done this awhile if you got a good bit of dirt you will see some small flakes start to appear from the consintrates up at the head of the pan use the sniffer bottle to suck them out and their you have your gold. As to where to go Crow Creek mine just outside of Anchorage in Girdwood is probably your best bet, as their is very good gold their along with a lot of fellow miners to give you good advice on where to dig. Also check out Steve Herschbach wed site at Alaska Mining and Diving he has a great article on mining at crow creek a must read, its also a great place to get mining supply’s if your in Anchorage. If your more adventurous their are innumerable places to mine along the road rightaway all over Alaska just pull over and give it a try you never Know. The best tip on where to mine is to get a book or do some research theirs an old saying that go’s “gold is where you find it” witch basically means it can be anywhere witch is true but if you want to be successful you should go with the phrase “gold is where others have found it” if a lot of gold was found in an area before theirs likely plenty left for you to find so do some research and good luck. That’s it for me I’m outy here goodnight.