Monthly Archives: November 2010

Wheels of Industry

A soupy mess

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That was a good description of the station today. We caught a cold front moving through to add more water to the mud we already had, so much of the site was under a layer of mud the consistency of cream gravy, about five inches deep.

But that didn’t stop us. At about 0900 we were ready for the first “bump” of the big motor to check for rotation. I figured it was backward because that’s just the way my luck runs 9n these things. So there I was, in the big building, watching the shaft of my motor, waiting for the first start. I heard the count-down: 3…2…1…BANG! and the lights went out.

I will admit to the liberal use of harsh language. I slogged through the mud to the switchgear building. All my breakers were still on, except for the motor. It was SUPPOSED to trip off if we lost power. But the breaker that brings power in? It was closed. The breaker to the little transformer that supplies all our lights and incidental stuff? It was on! I checked my metering: No incoming power from the utility. I slogged over to our breaker at the fenceline. It’s that first one that the line from the utility company hits. It was still closed. And the utility substation was DEAD.

From the timing of vents, I had enough data to determine where the utility company’s problem was, but since that wasn’t MY stuff, I had to wait for them to come out: First, the service guy, then he called supervision, and then they called engineering, and data was collected and at about 1530 I got a phone call from then, verifying what I surmised six hours earlier.

So, in the morning we’re going to try our motor again. The utility company is going to be out there, disabling the equipment that tripped THEM off, and we’re going to try to get our four hour test run in. And I hope that tomorrow evening I can post a smiley face.

History

Today in History – November 30

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1782 – American Revolutionary War: Treaty of Paris (1783) — In Paris, representatives from the United States and the Kingdom of Great Britain sign preliminary peace articles recognizing American independence. (later formalized as the 1783 Treaty of Paris).

1886 – First commercially successful AC electric power plant opens, Buffalo, New York.

1941 – Japanese Emperor Hirohito consults with admirals Shimada & Nagano and rubberstamps the Pearl Harbor attack plan.

1988 – UN General Assembly (151-2) censures US for refusing PLO’s Arafat visa. At this time we should have given then a two-week notice to vacate the premises.

1993 – U.S. President Bill Clinton signs the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act (the Brady Bill) into law. Thousands of criminals immediately turn in their handguns. Wait… They didn’t? You’re kidding, right?!?!?

Wheels of Industry

So Here I Am Again…

Did the four hundred mile drive again this morning with rain in varying amounts from the Louisiana-Mississippi line all the way into the station in lower Alabama. The construction site is a sea of mud.

I put on my rubber boots and slogged around poking my nose into several places that interest me, played with some testing, talked about tomorrow when we’ll do our first run on this motor and then at 1730, I left for the motel. And here I am again. And I am tired.

History

Today in History – November 29

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1910 – The first US patent for inventing the traffic lights system is issued to Ernest Sirrine. City council immediately sets a fine for running one.

1929 – U.S. Admiral Richard Byrd becomes the first person to fly over the South Pole.

1944 – John Hopkins hospital performs first open heart surgery. Today it’s almost a yawner.

1947 – UN Gen Assembly partitions Palestine between Arabs & Jews, leading to the legal formation of the nation of Israel, restoring a nation that was torn apart by the Romans in 70 AD. But skip forward to 1978…

1963 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson establishes the Warren Commission to investigate the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Let the cover-ups begin…

1978 – UN observes “international day of solidarity with Palestinian people,” boycotted by US & about 20 other countries. The UN has been dead useless for twenty years when this happens.

1972 – Nolan Bushnell (co-founder of Atari) releases Pong (the first commercially successful video game) in Andy Capp’s Tavern in Sunnyvale, California. And with this shot, a revolution begins.

Blogging, Current events - global, Current events - national, Current events - state & local

Sunday Morning Ruminations

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Woke up this morning and looked at the clock: 0600. But it’s Sunday and I have the opportunity to re-arrange a couple of bed cats, roll over, and doze back off. I did that, and ultimately I got up at 0800.

It was still in the forties when I walked out to pick up Sunday’s Paper. Front page is a story that somebody, a group, possibly, went around to all the “Toys for Tots” collection sites and after misrepresenting themselves, emptied all the collections except one. There’re candidates for cruel and unusual punishment and these people are in the crowd.

Rest of the paper? Normal stuff. North Korea is off the front page here. My personal opinion is that Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, is a good place to dust off a couple of those nukes we have sitting around. North Korea was doing murderous, crazy sh*t when I was on the DMZ there 1969-70, and they’re still up to it. It’s like having a wasp nest over your front door. You either step lightly and don’t disturb them, or you burn the suckers out. They need money. They have nukes. Wonder what will happen when they sell one and it shows up in New York Harbor? Of course, this isn’t the way our administration will handle it.

Oh, “The Name Game”… No announcements in the paper today. Maybe next week.

History

Today in History – November 28

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1520 – After navigating through the South American strait, three ships under the command of Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan reach the Pacific Ocean, becoming the first Europeans to sail from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific. And THAT’S why it’s called the “Straits of Magellan”. The other route is around Cape Horn through an unpleasant stretch of the Southern Ocean.

1811 – Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 73, was premiered at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig without a lightshow and backup dancers.

1907 – In Haverhill, Massachusetts, scrap-metal dealer Louis B. Mayer opens his first movie theater. He’s one of the “M’s” in MGM… A scrap metal dealer. Mean ol’ America, holding folks down and all that…

1942 – In Boston, Massachusetts, a fire in the Cocoanut Grove nightclub kills 491 people. The exact number of dead varies in different reports, but it’s a lot.

1994 – In Portage, Wisconsin, convicted serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer is clubbed to death by an inmate in the Columbia Correctional Institution gymnasium. Justice is served and for a brief moment harmony is found in the universe.

Cajun culture, Recipes and Food

Catfish Courtbouillon – A Recipe

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One of the sad things about life on the road is the that I don’t get good Cajun food. When I get home, I’m looking for Cajun staples: Rice and gravy. Gumbo. Sauce piquant. The stuff I used to find on Mom’s stove.

This is one of them.

First, let’s you and me have a talk. It’s pronounced “coo-be-yon”, light on the “n”. And a courtbouillon is a term used in classic French cuisine to denote a savory liquid in which one poaches mild-flavored meat, fowl or fish. Ah, the French and “classic cuisine”. The chef would go through all the trouble of making a savory (onions, garlic, herbs, etc.) broth and poach a fish in it, then toss out the liquid and serve the fish. Shades of “Let them eat cake!”

My ancestors, the Cajun part of me, haven’t been French since the 1600’s when they left those bozos behind for the New World. After leaving France, getting tossed out of Acadia (now Nova Scotia and thereabouts) by the British and deciding that the French who lived in New Orleans were the same people they left France to escape, my ancestors settled in the prairies of south central and southwest Louisiana. Those Cajuns were frugal people. So somewhere along the line a Cajun cook was poaching a fish in a courtbouillon made with tomatoes, onions, celery, garlic, and bell peppers and said, “Mais, I ain’t t’rowin’ dat stuff away! Make a pot of rice!” and Cajun Catfish Courtboullion was born.

The Recipe:

A couple of pounds of catfish. Or three. If you can get a wild-caught catfish for this, all the better. Mom made ours from catfish we wrested the same day from Black Bayou and Coulee Hippolyte. Wild catfish has a flavor not found in the farm-raised variety. You could make do with other fish, preferably something white.

A 15- ounce (or so) can of chopped tomatoes. Ro-Tel works well here, as does any other variety.  Canned tomatoes?  Any old Cajun cook worth her salt canned tomatoes.  Pantries were filled with jars of canned fruits and vegetables.

A little can of tomato sauce and a little can of tomato paste. Same thing. Or you could just use two cans of chopped tomatoes.

One onion the size of your fist. Chop this coarsely, like 1/4 to 3/8 chunks.

Five or six green onions. (Or scallions, if you must…) Chop these, too.

Celery. Chop a couple of stalks, maybe less.  Too much celery overpowers the dish.

Bell pepper. Chop a half of a big one.

Garlic.  A clove.  Or two.  Or three. Chop this finely.

Salt, black pepper, red pepper.

Oil or grease. I use saved bacon fat.  This is imminently authentic.

Procedure:

You’ve got everything chopped, right?  Cans opened, right?  Get your five quart stew pot, and if you’re serious, this will be cast iron.  Set it on a burner over medium-high heat and melt a couple tablespoons of bacon fat in the pot.  Just as it starts to smoke, dump in the onions, celery and bell pepper.  Saute this stuff until the onions are translucent.  Then add the garlic and stir it in for a minute or two.  Now dump in the tomato stuff.  Stir it in for a couple of minutes, then add enough water to make the mass fluid.  Bring it to a boil and then cut it back to a bare simmer.  Go do something else for the next couple of hours, passing by the pot every now and then to stir the sauce.  Salt and pepper it to taste, remembering that you can always add more, but you can’t take it back, especially with the red pepper.

Okay, a couple of hours has passed.  You now possess a slightly lumpy but still fluid courtbouillon.  At this point in time, start your pot of rice.  Then dip a couple of cups of your courtbouillon out of the pot and set aside for a minute.  Now take your catfish, cut into serving-sized pieces of course, and set it on top of the surface of your barely bubbling courtbouillon.  then take the courtbouillon you just dipped out and pour it over the catfish, covering the top.   And now you DON”T stir, because the catfish is going to poach and if you stir, you’ll break it up.

Okay.  Rice is ready?  Then grab a plate, dump a big scoop of rice in the middle of it, and ladle on a generous portion of the courtbouillon and a chunk of catfish on top.  Add a vegetable for a side dish, and you’re set.

A cold beer goes very well with this, and if you prepare it over an open fire on the bank of the bayou while you catch the catfish that goes in it, you get extra points.

History

Today in History – November 27

1826 – John Walker invents friction match in England.

1839 – In Boston, Massachusetts, the American Statistical Association is founded. “There are three kinds of lies: Lies, da*n lies, and statistics.”

1868 – Indian Wars: Battle of Washita River – United States Army Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer leads an attack on Cheyenne living on reservation land.

1895 – At the Swedish-Norwegian Club in Paris, Alfred Nobel signs his last will and testament, setting aside his estate to establish the Nobel Prize after he dies. He didn’t envision it becoming a propaganda tool, but parts of it have done just that.

1924 – In New York City, the first Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is held. They used animals from the zoo in the first couple of parades. In 1927, the first big balloon, Felix the Cat, made its debut.

1967 – Gold pool nations pledge support of $35 per ounce gold price. It’s at an all-time high of almost $1400 right now.

War Stories

Drifting

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So son and I were watching TV and a commercial came on showing some schlub working a little sporty car around a curve, the rear end sliding out, and the voice-over says “drifting.”

“Cool,” says son.

“Pfffttt!,” says I. “I’ve drifted freakin’ TANKS!”

So let us enter the wayback machine and revert to Fort Knox, Kentucky, spring of 1973. Two weeks of the eight-week training cycle for armor crewmen, “tankers” was, for us instructors, driver training. Fort Knox had a huge area set aside for the exercise of teaching young soldiers how to drive the M60A1 tank. It was a patchwork of trees, trails, open fields, water holes, rutted tracks and other things that are pure fun to drive a tank around.

Tanks mess up ground. Oh, sure, ONE tank can cross a field and not do too much damage if the driver (and commander) are careful. But this wasn’t ONE tank, this was TWELVE, and frankly, we didn’t give a hoot about care for the terrain. And there was another training company just like us (maybe not as delightfully staffed with young philosophers such as me) hitting the area every week. Accordingly, much of it was a perpetual muddy mess, Fort Knox being an area that received enough rain to keep the mud soft and gooey.

Driver training was fun for both us, the instructors, and our trainees. Each trainee got a couple of hours seat time in a real live tank, and we instructors guided them over every possible permutation of terrain at our disposal. We forded three feet of water. We crossed ditches six feet deep. the occasional tree fell, then we drove across the tree trunk. We drove down the raised road. We practiced driving under the control of a ground guide, a crewman standing on the ground using hand signals to safely and precisely position a tank.

And we played. There was one corner of the training area that was like twenty acres of flat land covered by a foot of soft red clay, and I don’t remember which of my compatriots discovered that you could, by careful manipulation of steering bar, throttle and transmission, throw a tank from twenty-odd miles per hour forward speed into a sliding sideways, tracks throwing mud twenty feet into the air, all the way through 360 plus degrees of spin-out.

The technique for this was quickly disseminated amongst our peer group and soon that acreage had a line of tanks, each with a trainee driver, sliding sideways across the field.

This being the army, of course, such mirth was soon discovered and the next thing you know, our field first sergeant was on the radio: “First one of you a**holes breaks something, there’s gonna be a court-martial.”

Yes, bunky, we stopped. And then somebody discovered a little hump, that if you hit it at over twenty-five, you’d get air. In a fifty-four ton tank.