Saturday, May 23, 2009

Eeyore's News and View

Bug Out! – Volcano! - The Prequel

“You sure you want to do this?” Sam asked his wife of two months.

“Yes, Sam,” Peggy replied. “When my parents died, they had nothing. No retirement, no home of their own, no resources. Nada. Even if they’d made it to retirement, trying to live on Social Security with the menial jobs they’d always had would have been a nightmare. I don’t want to wind up that way.”

“Going to be a few lean years, especially the first two, if we buy this property, on top of the new house,” Sam responded.

“We’re making good livings, Sam. Are you trying to talk me out of it?”

Sam smiled. “No, honey, I’m not. But I want to be sure. You know how my father is. Always second guessing me. And we agreed to discuss major decisions before we came to any final conclusion.”

Peggy leaned forward and gave Sam a quick kiss. “Yes, dear. And we have. I want this piece of property for when we retire and for the other reasons we discussed. I know you don’t want to push your preparedness beliefs on me, but you have already brought me around to your way of thinking.

“It wasn’t that hard, if you remember. My parents never prepared for anything. That’s why they ended up they way they did. Just so I can keep up one or two of my hobbies, too, and everything is fine.”


That had been eighteen years ago, Sam mused. He thought about that day just about every time a preparedness issue came up. Peggy had been so supportive of his efforts to keep them safe and happy. She’d resisted, at first, getting a firearm for herself and learning to shoot, but had come to enjoy the shooting sports. She was still uneasy with the idea of needing to defend themselves, but after Ralph was born that maternal instinct kicked in and she decided she could and would defend the children and herself with deadly force if need be.

“What do you think, Pop? Did I do okay?” Ralph asked his father, bringing Sam out of his reverie.

Sam took the Para Ordinance P14 when his son handed it to him, the slide locked open. Sam checked the chamber with his finger automatically, then inspected the pistol closely. It was the first time Ralph had completely stripped the weapon, cleaned it thoroughly, and reassembled it on his own.

It took only a few moments for Sam to disassemble the .45 and put it back together again. “Perfect,” he replied to his son’s question.

“How about me, Daddy?” Melissa asked. “I put the .380 barrel back in the HK-4”

Sam handed the P14 back to Ralph. And, just like his father, Ralph checked the action to be sure it was unloaded. It was an automatic action Sam had drilled all of them to do whenever they handled their small arsenal.

Taking the HK-4, Sam broke it down and put it back together as he’d done with the P14. “You did good, honey. Everything where it’s supposed to be.”

Melissa grinned at her brother. He was a year and a few months older than she, but she was doing just as well with the hardware, as she usually referred to it, as Ralph did. And she was almost as good of a shot with her Ruger 10/22 as Ralph was with his.

“Okay kids. Everything is cleaned, magazines reloaded, and ready to be put away. You two go help your mother with dinner. I’ll put everything away.”

“We can help,” Melissa replied.

Sam laughed and ruffled Ralph’s unruly hair. “No thanks. Don’t want the eating machine here to go too long between meals. You two go ahead.”

As the two headed for the basement stairs, Melissa hesitated for a moment, then asked her father, “Daddy, have you decided about the AUG?”

“No, not yet. I’ll talk to your mother and we’ll see.” Sam shook his head as the pair went upstairs to help their mother. Melissa wanted a Steyr AUG like her mother’s. It had already been decided that Ralph could graduate to an HK-91 like Sam’s. They could probably afford both the rifles and Melissa had handled Peggy’s AUG at the range today like it had been made for her.

Sam gathered up the weapons they’d taken to the range that day and headed for his and Peggy’s bedroom. It took two trips but he soon had everything back in the large gun safe in their walk-in closet.

After their supper, after watching the news and discussing it, Sam let his mind wonder a bit as the others watched a movie. For some reason he was in a reflective mood today.

“Sweetheart, you sound just like you did ten years ago when we bought the retirement property. We’ve discussed this and have come to the decision to build the quads.” Peggy looked at the perplexed expression on Sam’s face.

“I do?” he asked.

“You do.” Peggy turned around and looked at the large corner lot they were getting ready to buy. There was another very much like it on the other side of town that was also part of the deal.

“It’s going to tie up our savings for a few years. Our retirement savings, not the emergency savings.”

“I know, but you know what housing is getting like around here now. The retirement property is worth twice what it was, and single wide trailers are renting for more than we were paying for our first house.

“The bank has already okayed the mortgages. This is a good investment. We’ll have the savings rebuilt in a few years and the land and quadra-plexes will be paid for in fifteen years. And we got a terrific interest rate.”

“Well, I just wanted to be sure, before we signed today. It’s just… well… you know. I just like to give you the right of refusal, just in case.”

“I know. And I may take you up on the offer sometime. But this is another of those times when we’re definitely on the same wavelength.”

That had worked out as well as the retirement property. The two quads had been constructed and all eight units rented out almost immediately. They kept a local handy-man on retainer to take care of everything for them. There’d been one or two tenants over the years that had been less than perfect, but with the quality construction they had insisted on, maintenance had been minimal. The income was paying the mortgages and quite a bit more. The extra went into the retirement funds.

Over the years they’d picked up some investment property. It was dual use. Each of the places had caches with supplies and equipment to shelter and sustain them for some time if they ever had to evacuate and couldn’t immediately go to the retirement property. When they retired they’d sell the property to add to their retirement. Of course, they’d probably pick up a small parcel or two near the retirement property for the same reason they had these properties.

Sam’s attention was drawn to the movie when Peggy, Melissa, and Ralph all laughed. But it was only a few moments before Sam was lost in thought again.

As the world situation, and the weather, ebbed and flowed, with tensions being heightened then lessoning, Sam and Peggy continued their preparations. Sam smiled without thought when he first introduced Peggy to shooting. She’d wound up loving to shoot that first Ruger 10/22. When she was comfortable it, and they had the money from an especially nice tax refund, they’d bought a Steyr AUG. Peggy hadn’t liked the HK-91 he’d purchased when he’d first ran across them.

The compact form of the AUG fitted Peggy’s needs perfectly. She also liked the HK-4 Sam had run across at a gun show. The HK-4 had been complete with all four barrel and magazine assemblies. It would shoot .22 LR, .25 ACP, .32 ACP, and .380 ACP depending on which barrel was installed. Peggy shot all four calibers at the range, but when she carried it on their outdoor adventures, it was also set up to use the .380.

Sam had been lucky to find the second complete HK-4 package. They got scarce quickly when Heckler & Koch quit producing them. Melissa liked the medium sized pistol as much as her mother, though she usually shot it using the .32 barrel. The only drawback was they only had a total of 6 magazines for each caliber. Sam would have preferred to have a dozen.

Sam had picked up a pair of Para-Ordinance P14 .45 ACP when they had some spare money, along with plenty of spare parts for all the weapons they had. Over the years they’d added a few more. When the kids hit 12 years old they each got their own Ruger 10/22. Sam and Peggy counted themselves lucky that both their children enjoyed shooting, though neither really wanted to hunt. Peggy wasn’t big on it either, though she’d gone on a couple of deer hunts with him in the early days.

Sam had seen that they could hunt, but never pressed the matter. If they needed to, they would. He and Peggy were sure of that. And like the kids, Peggy could and would hunt if necessary.

Peggy and both kids looked at Sam strangely since he was smiling as the movie went into a sad part. Seeing his eyes focused elsewhere they paid no more attention. They were used to his introspective interludes.

As their job opportunities increased, and therefore their incomes, they’d continued to acquire preparedness equipment and supplies. By the time they moved here and built this home, they had canned and packaged food for a year, LTS (long term storage) food for five years, stored water for at least a month, and means to procure more.

Their camping equipment was excellent, partly due to the fact that it had to be, since they did most of their camping in the fall and winter months. Not only did they car camp at times, they backpacked at least once a year, minus the porta-pottie, privacy shelter, insulated chests, camp stove, and the rest of the niceties they used when they camped out of the truck.

Sam settled a little deeper in his chair. That had been another of the big decisions. They’d had a nice Subaru wagon for several years, but after the volcano started acting up they’d decided to get something more capable to evacuate with if things got bad.

They’d traded in the Subaru on the pickup and taken money out of the savings account to purchase the Suburban. Again Sam’s mouth twitched into a smile as he remembered the expression on the parts manager’s face when he ordered all the replacement parts for the Suburban the day he picked it up. They had enough spare parts for those items that might be likely to fail to rebuild the Suburban twice. There were two complete sets of system computers in metal cans to protect them from EMP.

They took a little more money out of savings to finish equipping the Suburban, and decided to do the same for the Ford Ranger. He’d found a welder willing to work with him and they’d come up with the receiver hitch mounted racks to carry extra fuel and water for both vehicles. The welder had also helped him install the heavy-duty full-length roof rack on the Suburban.

The front bumpers and hydraulic winches were a package deal. The welder had made the brackets, and a mechanic friend had helped Sam and Ralph install a second power steering pump on each vehicle to run the winches and some hydraulic tools.

While they stored much of the preparedness equipment in the basement disaster shelter, the stuff they would need for an evacuation was kept ready to load into the vehicle in the garage, except for the fuel. The fuel was in the yard shed with the lawn mower and grill.

When he’d started to buy some simple plastic storage boxes to keep their camping and emergency supplies in, Peggy had insisted they go ahead and get shipping containers and good storage racks.

It had been Melissa that suggested they get those “neat” streamlined cargo carriers for the roof rack. Then Ralph suggested they make a pulley system in the garage for the carriers so they could load and unload them easily.

One of the cargo carriers held the lighter camping equipment like the sleeping bags, the two large four-season tents, and privacy shelter, some lightweight folding chairs and a rollup camping table. The other held clothing for the four of them for all seasons. Though not light by any means, having them loaded with those items allowed for the heavier items to be carried inside the Suburban and in the bed of the Ranger.

The roof rack, besides the cargo carriers, also held, in special brackets, two shovels, a pick-mattock, a double bit axe, a Hi-Lift jack, and a pair of bridging planks. Of course there were auxiliary lights on all four sides of the rack.

Sam reviewed the shipping containers in his mind. One held a comprehensive mechanic’s tool set. Another field tools for working timber and rock to allow for construction of whatever they might need in the wild. The third case was carpentry tools and the fourth plumbing tools. Next was a longer case to hold long tools such as the cross-cut and rip saws for time work, along with a few other long tools. Another case held other specialty tools. Yet another held fasteners for use with the tool sets. One very large case held nothing but tarps and sheet goods. A companion to that case was one holding cordage, wire, extra awing/tent poles and stakes, and lots of duct tape.

Other cases held LTS food. Water was in squarish 5-gallon water containers. There was a kitchen case holding a field kitchen setup with tools and condiments and a water purifier. It also contained a fire ring, tripod and grate. Another case held the shower bags, supplies for the porta-pottie and other sanitation needs. The porta-pottie had a case that also included some supplies. There was an extensive first-aid/trauma kit.

One case lined with heavy-duty aluminum foil held communications equipment. Battery/AC/DC shortwave receiver, crank shortwave receiver, AM/FM/TV band radio, handheld public service band scanner, SAME weather radio, and antennas for everything. A companion case held compact solar panels, a deep cycle battery, a solar AAA/A/C/D/9 volt battery charger, and plenty of rechargeable batteries of different sizes.

Two smaller cases, due to the weight of the contents, held ammunition. One case held snaring equipment and fishing gear. Six cases held additional clothing. There were more, but Sam was beginning to doze and lost the train of thought. His last thought was that they were in pretty good shape.

Peggy had to shake him a second time to wake Sam. “Time for bed, sweetie. You were out like a light.”

“Yeah. Little tired.” He managed a grin. “Been thinkin’.”
“That’d do it,” Peggy joked back. After a moment she asked, “About what?”
“Oh, just how much I love you and the kids and how good we have it. And trying to figure out what else we might need to do to become better prepared. There always seems to be something bad happening every few days. Fortunately not right here, at the moment, but it keeps me thinking.”

“Well, get a good nights sleep. You’ll think of whatever it is that is bothering you. Melissa said something about an AUG. I think we should get it for her, along with the HK-91 we were planning for Ralph.”

“I’ll get on the internet tomorrow and see if I can find one for sale. The local gun shop doesn’t have one. I checked the other day, but Tommy said he’d be glad to receive one in for us if we found one. He still had that HK-91 he’s been trying to get rid of.”

“Don’t worry yourself too much, Sam,” Peggy said. “We’re sitting pretty good. We’ve got the equipped and stocked shelter here, a means to evacuate with equipment and supplies, and several places to go to if necessary. If there are some more details we’ll deal with them as we think of them.

“And by the way… I love you for caring about us enough to go to the pains you have to get and keep us prepared.”

“Wasn’t me alone. You’ve been there every step of the way. And I love you, too.” He gave her a hug and a long kiss to seal the words.

“I just wish that volcano would settle down,” he whispered as they headed for the bedroom, hand in hand.



Bug Out! – A Vignette

Sam was happy with his life. He was sure his wife, Peggy, and his two children, Ralph, 17, and Melissa, 16, were too. His job was going well and so was Peggy’s. Ralph and Melissa had annuities set up for their college educations. The two quadra-plexes in the town near their retirement property were paying for themselves and generating a nice supplemental income.

The retirement property was paid for and the well and septic system were installed. A large earth sheltered building that was pump house, garage, and shop was already built. It had a full bathroom and a work sink as part of the equipment. The foundation for the house was poured. The materials to build the house, a small earth sheltered concrete dome, were stored in the garage and shop. He and Peggy would live in the garage and shop until they finished construction of the house. That would be after Melissa graduated from high school and went off to college.

The house here in the city was in good condition and was appreciating in value. When they moved into the retirement house when it was completed, the sale of the current house would finish off the retirement package they’d set up over time. “Just three more years,” he muttered to himself, eyes going to the volcano in the distance as he drove in to the office where he worked. “Just keep your lid on three more years and we’ll be out of here.” The volcano didn’t respond. The cloud of steam just hung there like it had been doing for the last two years as he drove his four-wheel-drive Ford Ranger into the parking lot of the office building where he worked.

It was almost noon when the sirens sounded. Someone turned on the radio in the office. The volcano was making noises, and the city was being put on alert for a possible evacuation. Sam had found out everything he could about the volcano when they first moved to the area. It had been dormant then. The little activity the last few years had been considered only a minor danger. But he knew that if the volcano erupted, it was the type that could dump a pyroclastic flow onto the city in only minutes if it erupted big time. It wasn’t something you took a chance with.

He knocked on his boss’s door. “Mike,” he said, when he was motioned into the office. “from the report on the radio they haven’t ordered the evacuation yet, but I don’t plan on waiting. I hope you understand. I’m taking off now.”

Mike frowned. “Well, I can’t stop you, of course, but we’re going to have a serious talk about this when you get back. You’ve been a good employee for a long time, but I can’t let something like this just pass. See me when you come back after this scare is over.”

“Yes, sir.” Sam didn’t wait. He grabbed the small backpack he kept in the bottom right hand drawer of his desk. He wanted the items the small pack contained with him. There was one similar to it in the Ranger, but he wasn’t going to take any chances at all.

Sam kept the broadcast radio in the Ranger turned on. The station was giving announcements about the volcano. The authorities were encouraging people to get prepared to evacuate, but the order to actually leave had not yet been given. Apparently there was already a mob scene at several of the schools. People wanted their children with them.

Sam suddenly had to whip the truck to the right. Someone had cut into his lane to pass, speeding on the way to somewhere. Sam didn’t worry about his kids. At least not very much. They’d run drills for this before. As soon as the school dismissed them, they would meet up and head for the house in Ralph’s old Honda Civic. Taking a lot more care than some of those on the road right now, Sam was sure. They were responsible kids.

When he tried to get Peggy on her cell phone he got the rapid busy. Probably a third of the cell phones in the city were talking to another third. Sam checked the dashboard clock. If Peggy, or the kids, couldn’t make it home by two, which was just a little over two hours after the initial warning, they would all head for the first designated rendezvous point other than the house.

When he pulled into the drive at his house, his neighbor Harry was out watering the lawn. Harry called over to Sam, grinning. “You’re home early. This is just an alert, Sam. Like that drill they had last year. Just want to wake people up, just in case.”

Sam wouldn’t argue the point. When the ground shook just a little and the volcano belched a little more steam than usual, Harry looked a bit unsure of himself. “Of course, getting ready wouldn’t be a bad idea,” he said, heading for his garage.

“Right,” Sam muttered. “That’s just what I’m doing.” Sam opened both garage doors, then unsnapped and removed the bedcover of the Ranger pickup truck. The bed was empty.

Working quickly, Sam began loading shipping containers from the shelving system in the garage into the truck. The heavy-duty containers held equipment and supplies to support Sam and his family for at least a month. There was a years supply at the retirement property, cached, just in case of a break in.

He had the radio in the garage going. Still just the occasional update about the situation. And calls for the citizens of the city not to panic. Sam checked his watch again. High school students were being sent home. Students in lower grades were if the parents could be contacted. The rest would be cared for at the schools until the normal dismissal time or their parents came for them earlier. He glanced down the street. Ralph and Melissa should be getting here soon.

The truck bed loaded to capacity, he closed the tailgate. It didn’t take long to arrange a tarp over the load and fasten it in space with a tie down net. Going to a rack on the wall, Sam carried a custom built rack back to the Ranger and inserted the support tube into the receiver hitch under the step bumper and locked it into place.

Sam took out his set of keys for the four-wheel-drive Suburban that was in the other side of the garage and started it up. It took a couple of tries to get it centered under the two long, streamlined cargo containers suspended from the ceiling of the garage.

Once it was centered though, it took only a couple of minutes each to lower the containers onto the roof rack of the Suburban and latch them into place. They were already loaded with equipment and supplies, just as the shipping cases he’d loaded into the truck had been.

He pinned a removable cargo rack similar to the one for the Ranger onto the mount on the rear of the Suburban, then went to the small metal storage shed at the rear of the lot. He moved ten 5-gallon fuel cans and four 5-gallon water cans to the vehicles. Five cans of fuel and two of water went onto the racks he’d just installed on the vehicles.

Now for the inside stuff. The gun safe in the big walk-in closet of his and Peggy’s bedroom was quickly emptied of its few firearms, and a group of cases. The cases contained important papers, keepsakes, and valuables. Part went into the Suburban, the rest into a steel box that was installed behind the seats of the Ranger.

He’d been glancing at the street often the last few minutes. He breathed a sigh of relief when Ralph pulled up in the Civic and he and Melissa got out.

“We’ve got another thirty minutes to wait for Mom. Load your bug out bags, then take your time and pack up secondary items,” Sam told them.

“This isn’t just going to be a drill this time, is it?” Ralph asked.

“I don’t know, son. I don’t know. But we are not taking any chances.” Sam glanced up and down the street. There didn’t seem to be anyone else attempting to get ready to evacuate. Not even Harry.

Ralph and Melissa both had their bug out kits in the Suburban and were gathering up a few more things. He started to caution them about what to take and not take, but decided to leave them alone. Their choices might not be perfect, but they were taking pains to think about items before they loaded them up. He looked around himself and decided on a couple of not really required items and took them out to the Suburban.

“It’s almost time. We probably should have already suited up. Get your Tyvek suits on and keep your respirators with you.” With a bit of pride he noted that both of them had laid out the clothing and equipment, ready to don it in a hurry. It took them less than two minutes to be suited and booted, their respirator bags strapped to their thighs.

“Daddy?” Melissa said, giving Sam a quizzical look.

Sam suddenly looked down at himself and said, “Oh, Jeez!” He quickly went to the bedroom and donned his own white Tyvek suit and steel toed rubber boots. He handed Peggy’s hazmat equipment bag to Melissa to take to the Suburban. Peggy had a Tyvek suit in her daypack, but only a simple dust respirator and pair of safety goggles, not the full-face respirator in the hazmat bag. Peggy only had a pair of athletic shoes in her daypack to replace the pumps she wore to work.

“It’s been two hours and ten minutes since the alarm sounded,” Ralph said, looking at his watch.

“Yeah. We can’t wait here for Mom. We’ll pick her up at the rendezvous,” Sam said.

Peggy was carpooling with Elizabeth today, and Sam had suspected that Peggy wouldn’t be able to talk Elizabeth into leaving work early. It would be easier for her to catch a cab or some kind of ride, walk if necessary, to the fast food joint just on the edge of the city on their main route out.

“Okay, Ralph,” Sam said. “You’ve got the Suburban. You ride shotgun with him Melissa, until we pick up Mom. Melissa, you pull the Civic into the garage when Ralph pulls out.”

It was the work of only a few moments for the switch to be made and for them to hit the road, Sam in the lead in the Ranger. Sam didn’t realize he was so tense until he noticed his knuckles were white on the steering wheel of the truck. He made himself relax, reassuring himself that Peggy would be at the rendezvous. That worry wasn’t the only thing contributing to the tenseness. There was some really bad driving going on.

The traffic on the routes out of the city didn’t look that much heavier than the traffic into the city and on the city streets. The driving going all directions seemed equally poor.

Sam said a little prayer to himself when he saw the white Tyvek clad figure sitting on a sign support at the fast food restaurant. Peggy was swinging her legs back and forth, bouncing the rubber heels of her athletic shoes against the concrete. The dust mask was hanging down around her neck, the goggles projecting from a pocket.

“Been getting a few looks,” Peggy said with a smile as the family reunited. “due to my apparel, I think.”

The others laughed as they shared hugs. “You remember the new photo album?” she asked Sam after the quick reunion was over.

“Yep,” Sam said. “I added it to the others in the case from the safe. “Let’s get on the road before traffic gets any crazier than it is.”

“When I was inside people couldn’t make up their minds about whether to stay or go. I’m glad we’re going. Have you felt the temblors?” Suddenly the ground was shaking again. Enough to feel, but not that bad.

“Yes,” Sam said. “Let’s go.”

The traffic thinned out not long after they left the city limits and the little convoy pulled into a service station to refuel. They had plenty of spare fuel, but the plan called for refueling the first chance they could, every time the tanks dropped below half full. Only when they couldn’t get additional fuel would they use the extra fuel they carried.

When they got near a small town several miles from the city, Ralph called Sam on the Family Radio Band hand held radios each of them carried on their belt. “We doing plan Charlie? Mom wants to know.”

Melissa lifted her radio and looked at Sam. “I think not. Nothing seems to be happening. Let’s stop at that place up ahead and get rooms. Monitor things and find out what’s happening. The radio isn’t saying much about the situation right now.”

Melissa keyed the radio and relayed Sam’s remarks. Ralph held his radio so Peggy could hear it easily. When Peggy nodded, Ralph keyed up and said, “That’s a go.”

Melissa grinned. “Ralph loves these radios.”

Sam had to smile. They could only talk about a mile on the radios, maybe two under perfect conditions, but they got the job done and not too many people were likely to hear them with that short of a range. Still, Sam and Peggy had trained themselves and the children to use some code words for certain communications.

If they’d gone to Plan Charlie they would stop in the town they were passing now. They owned a quarter acre lot in an area that wasn’t going to be developed for some time. There was a good gravel road going past the lot at the moment. It would eventually be a street. The ground was kind of rolling so it had been easy to have a 40 foot connex shipping container delivered to the site, then mound it over with earth. If you didn’t know something was there, you’d just think that particular mound was part of the terrain.

The family had three places like that, spaced several miles from the city in three different directions. There were caches of equipment and supplies buried near the shelters. If need be, they could stop there and be quite comfortable. And safe. They were really only stops on the way to the final destination, which was the retirement property they’d bought so long ago, partly for this very reason.

The town lots would be sold, like the house in the city, and new properties acquired on routes out from the retirement property when they moved there.

It was still early afternoon when they found a good place to stop. Turned out they weren’t the only ones that had left the city before the evacuation had been called for. They’d heard the report just before they stopped. A full evacuation had been ordered for the city and areas surrounding the volcano. When Peggy was registering them in, she heard another couple talking about how glad they were they’d left early.

They got two rooms, one for Sam and Peggy and one with two queens for the kids. The vehicles were moved over by the rooms.

They ate an early supper at the restaurant next door to the motel, then went to Sam and Peggy’s room to watch the news. The evacuation was not going well. Even though it was still early, they all decided to go to bed. They would get up at six the next morning, breakfast, and get back on the road.

It was a well built motel. They neither felt nor heard the eruption when it took place that night shortly after midnight. They saw it on the news the next morning.

The city and surrounding area had a population of almost a million people. Many had left by the time the eruption took place. Most had not. Of the estimated 750,000 people left in the affected area, almost 400,000 were killed by the effects of the eruption. Most died when the massive pyroclastic flow spread out over much of the city. It took less than five minutes. There was some lava flow, but it was relatively minor. But many were killed directly by lava bombs, more by the fires they started. Ash and fumes got the rest.

White faces looked at one another as they sat in their pajamas in front of the television that morning. The news camera helicopters were already flying over the area. They didn’t see their house, but they did see several houses in the same area. They looked scorched, but were still standing. Their area had been at the furthest reaches of where the pyroclastic flow had traveled before it dissipated.

Sam thought for a long time before he spoke. “We need to make a decision,” he said. “I had fully intended to go up to the property, no matter what, until things calmed down. We’d be fine there.”

“But the danger is over now. People are going to need help aren’t they?” Peggy asked.

Sam nodded. Sam and Peggy both looked at their children. “Red Cross will need all the volunteers they can get,” Ralph said.

Melissa agreed. “As long as the house is okay, and the danger is over, I don’t mind going back to help.”

“There is no guarantee that all the danger is over, but you heard the scientists. They don’t think there’ll be another large scale eruption for a long time,” Sam replied.

“The way it stacks up,” he continued, “is that we can go back and stay at the bug out stop until things settle down. Or we can go on up to the property. We can stay there until things settle down, or we can go ahead and start building the house and stay permanently. Enroll you two in the school in town there. Or we can give it a day, then go back home and do what we can to help.”

The decision was affected by another news announcement. The city had been sealed off, except for rescue teams. No one was being allowed in at the moment.

“I think,” Peggy said, “in light of that, we should go on up to the property and set up for an extended stay. As soon as they start letting people back in, we go back and help where we can.”

“Kids?” Sam asked.

Melissa and Ralph looked at one another for a moment, then both looked at their parents and nodded.

“That’s the plan then. We’ll go back when the authorities say we can go back. They’re bound to have alternate arrangements for school. Whether Peggy and I have jobs when we go back is something of a moot point. If not, we’ll just find something else. The rebuilding is bound to take a lot of people.”

With the decision made, they got dressed, had breakfast, and were on their way to the retirement property. It was almost two weeks before the government began allowing people back into the city. Sam’s old firm no longer existed. He got a job with FEMA, working as an office manager in their assistance office. Peggy worked as a file clerk and data entry person in a similar office on the other side of the ruined city.

Their house had a quite a bit of damage, but they were able to make it livable, using their camping and emergency preparedness equipment. An alternate school was set up and Ralph and Melissa attended the abbreviated classes. They helped where they could, working with a youth brigade set up by the Red Cross when they weren’t in school.

The massive aid effort lasted for a year. Electrical power was restored the first month, but it was months before the water and sewer systems were restored in many areas. There were daily water deliveries and waste pickups conducted by the National Guard in the areas without those services, so they continued to stay in the house until it, like every other one in the area, was condemned.

It was going to be too expensive to restore full services to all areas. The housing wasn’t needed, anyway. It would be decades before the population ever grew to what it had been before the eruption, if it ever did. The volcano continued to vent vapors. Sam and Peggy took the compensation for their house and decided to retire early. They rented an apartment until Melissa graduated from high school the following year, then they headed for their property once again. During that summer before Melissa went off to college, she stayed with them on the property to help with the construction of the house. Ralph came in from college and did the same.

By the time their two children headed to college that fall, Sam and Peggy were ensconced in their new home. The garden plot was ready to absorb the winter snow moisture, and Sam had bought a Bobcat 5600T Toolcat with many of the available attachments to work the garden and do a little side work around the area to stay busy. There was a lot of new construction going on in the area.

Sam and Peggy started something of a trend with their near disaster proof place. Many more people moved into the area with the same idea. Sam bought a franchise to build dome homes like the one he’d built and supplemented their retirement income with one or two sales a year.

All in all, a good plan, proper equipment and supplies, the willingness to use them, and a little luck, had brought them through dangerous times.


End ********

Copyright 2004
Jerry D Young

Only going to post two stories today an neither are very new but both are import i think. Not that there are not a lot of important stuff out there, this is enough.

WHO chief warns H1N1 swine flu likely to worsen
22 May 2009 21:33:01 GMT Source: Reuters
VACCINE CASH U.S. officials reported 6,552 suspected and confirmed cases, 300 hospitalizations and nine deaths but said there were likely far more than that. The CDC's Dr. Anne Schuchat said only about one in 20 cases of influenza are reported, which would put the U.S. caseload at about 130,000. Beijing's municipal health bureau reported the second case in the Chinese capital, a 65-year-old Chinese-American man who flew to Beijing from New York on Thursday. * Chan says H1N1 could mutate in "unpredictable ways" * Japan relaxes flu measures, but prepares big aid project * U.S. gives companies $1 billion to start vaccine * Gene analysis shows virus lurked undetected(Updates with vaccine news and genetic studies) By Laura MacInnis and Stephanie Nebehay GENEVA, May 22 (Reuters) - The world must be ready for H1N1 swine flu to become more severe and kill more people, World Health Organization chief Dr. Margaret Chan said on Friday. A genetic analysis of the new virus showed it must have been circulating undetected for some time, in pigs or perhaps in other animals. The WHO is poised to declare a full pandemic of the virus, which has infected more than 11,000 people in 42 countries and killed 86. And U.S. health officials released $1 billion for companies to get started on a vaccine in case it is needed. The virus must be closely monitored in the southern hemisphere, as it could mix with ordinary seasonal influenza and change in unpredictable ways, Chan told the WHO annual congress in Geneva. [ID:nLM945575] "In cases where the H1N1 virus is widespread and circulating within the general community, countries must expect to see more cases of severe and fatal infections," she said. "This is a subtle, sneaky virus." An international team of researchers who analyzed all eight genes of the new virus confirmed its sneakiness, saying it was so different from its ancestral strains that it must have been circulating undetected for years. [ID:nN22387017] They confirmed it is a hybrid of two other mixtures -- one a so-called triple reassortant of pig, bird and human viruses, and another group of swine viruses from Europe and Asia. "The results of the study show the global need for more systematic surveillance of influenza viruses in pigs," Dr. Nancy Cox, chief of the influenza division at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told reporters. The researchers said it is likely that other odd mixtures are infecting pigs but simply have not yet been seen. "We do know that our veterinary colleagues at USDA (the U.S. Department of Agriculture) and elsewhere in the world are now looking to see if samples in freezers from pigs or other animals might provide the missing link," Cox said. The U.S. Health and Human Services Department said it was setting aside $1 billion to help companies develop a vaccine against the new strain. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said the money will be used for clinical studies over the summer and for production of vaccine ingredients for the government's stockpile of drugs and vaccines that is on hold in case of a pandemic of influenza. Companies approved to sell flu shots in the United States are Sanofi-Aventis SA , Novartis AG , GlaxoSmithKline PLC and CSL Ltd . AstraZeneca unit MedImmune also sells a nasal spray flu vaccine. Flu activity was calming in general across the United States, with a few exceptions, she said. "Today the situations in the New York City area and a few other parts of the country have led to more schools closing," she said. "We believe that there are 60 schools around the country that have dismissed students and that there are about 42,000 students out of schools because of this virus." Russia reported its first confirmed case of the disease and the WHO was testing two suspected cases in Democratic Republic of Congo, which would be Africa's first. [IDLM967383] STORING ANTIVIRALS Japan said it would launch a $31.85 million project to fight the virus in poorer Asian states.[ID:nSP476538] Under the initiative, Japan will store Roche AG's Tamiflu and GlaxoSmithKline's Relenza flu drugs as well as masks and gowns, at a warehouse in Singapore in case of a major outbreak. WHO officials say Asian nations, with young populations and endemic chronic illnesses, are particularly vulnerable to the spread of the new virus. [ID:nMAN91504] Most of Japan's 300 infections appear mild and officials relaxed preventive measures to allow some suspected patients to go to regular medical institutions rather than special "fever centres," and schools will not be automatically shut down. [ID:nSP476538] Robert Booy, who heads Sydney University's immune research and surveillance centre, said more people than usual in Southern Hemisphere countries could become infected this winter and die from the new flu because of its novelty. "Once you have enough virus out there, evolution is simple," Booy said, adding that the H1N1 virus could change to the point that it could get "nasty." In Australia, where cases have spread across several states, the government raised its flu alert level to mid-range "containment, which gives it authority to close schools.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N22387871.htm

PATH TO RADICAL ISLAM BEGAN IN JAILS
They were like a million other petty criminals -- until they embraced radical Islam behind bars, launching a terrifying march to a planned mass murder that ended only when authorities sabotaged their sinister plot.
"He was not born Muslim. He's an institutional Muslim," said Richard Williams, uncle of Onta Williams, one of the four Bronx terror suspects.
"He wasn't raised that way."
Richard Williams said that his 32-year-old nephew fell under the sway of dangerously radical Islamo-fascists while serving time on drug charges -- and that he became "brainwashed" after his mother died and his ex-wife fought him for custody of their child.
"They played on his weaknesses and what was going on with his family," Richard said. "He was brainwashed and manipulated in the system."
Authorities say Onta Williams fell in with his three alleged co-conspirators, James Cromitie, 45, David Williams, 28, and 37-year-old Laguerre Payen, at a Newburgh mosque, where they bonded when they discovered they were all ex-cons.
Relatives and friends of the other three men charged in the horrific plot to blow up two Bronx synagogues and shoot down an Air National Guard plane said the men never expressed any interest in terrorism. But they all quickly developed a deep interest in Islam in jail.
Williams' uncle -- who himself once served 10 years on a drug charge -- said he was familiar with prison converts to Islam. ... If you want to the read the rest go to the link provided
http://www.nypost.com/seven/05222009/news/regionalnews/path_to_radical_islam_began_in_jails_170478.htm

Friday, May 22, 2009

Eeyores News and view

NYC Police: Terror suspects wanted to commit 'jihad'
NEW YORK (AP) — The New York City police commissioner says four men arrested Thursday morning wanted to commit "jihad" when they plotted to bomb a Jewish temple and shoot down military planes in upstate New York.
At a news conference outside the Bronx temple Thursday, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly quoted one of the men as saying, "If Jews were killed in this attack ... that would be all right."
"Jihad" is an Arabic word generally translated as meaning "struggle" or "holy war." It was not clear if the four men who were arrested were Muslim, but one told an informant that his parents had lived in Afghanistan.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg warned against stereotypes. He stressed that the Riverdale Temple in the Bronx is open to people of all faiths, including a Muslim girl who sometimes prays there.
The city leaders met privately with congregants Thursday morning. Kelly said neighborhood security was heightened to improve residents' comfort level.
The defendants are due in federal court Thursday in White Plains.
Four men due in court Thursday to face charges of plotting to bomb Jewish sites and shoot down military planes were arrested after planting what they thought were explosive devices near a synagogue and community center, authorities say.
Officials told The Associated Press the arrests came after a nearly year-long undercover operation that began in Newburgh, N.Y., about 70 miles north of New York City.
James Cromitie, David Williams, Onta Williams and Laguerre Payen, all of Newburgh, were charged with conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction within the United States and conspiracy to acquire and use anti-aircraft missiles, the U.S. attorney's office said.
Three of the defendants are U.S. citizens and one is of Haitian descent, officials said.
The men had planned to detonate a car with plastic explosives outside the Riverdale Temple and shoot military planes at the New York Air National Guard base at Stewart Airport in Newburgh with Stinger surface-to-air guided missiles, authorities said.
The defendants planned to "destroy a synagogue and a Jewish community center with C-4 plastic explosives," Acting U.S. Attorney Lev L. Dassin said.
The religious targets were the Riverdale Temple, founded in 1947, and the Riverdale Jewish Center, authorities said.
"This latest attempt to attack our freedoms shows that the homeland security threats against New York City are sadly all too real and underscores why we must remain vigilant in our efforts to prevent terrorism," New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said earlier in a statement.
The defendants, in their efforts to acquire weapons, dealt with an informant acting under law enforcement supervision, authorities said. The FBI and other agencies monitored the men and provided an inactive missile and inert C-4 to the informant for the defendants, a federal complaint said.
In June 2008, the informant met Cromitie in Newburgh and Cromitie complained that his parents had lived in Afghanistan and he was upset about the war there and that many Muslim people were being killed in Afghanistan and Pakistan by U.S. military forces, officials said.
Cromitie also expressed an interest in doing "something to America," they said in the complaint.
In October 2008, the informant began meeting with the defendants at a Newburgh house equipped with concealed video and audio equipment, the complaint said.
Beginning in April 2009, the four men selected the synagogue and the community center they intended to hit, it said. They also conducted surveillance of military planes at the Air National Guard Base, it said.
The suspects were arrested Wednesday night, shortly after planting a mock explosive device in the trunk of a car outside the Riverdale Temple and two mock bombs in the backseat of a car outside the Jewish Center, authorities said.
Rep. Peter King, the senior Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, was briefed on the case following the arrests.
"This was a long, well-planned investigation, and it shows how real the threat is from homegrown terrorists," said King, of New York.
Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said if there can be any good news out of this case it's that "the group was relatively unsophisticated, penetrated early and not connected to any outside group."
"The shocking plan to blow up a Jewish house of prayer with what the jihadist terrorists thought were C-4 explosives is dramatic proof that the dangers from such fanaticism have not passed and that American Jews must maintain their vigilance," said a statement released by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights group.
The defendants were jailed Wednesday night and couldn't be contacted for comment. The FBI didn't immediately return a telephone message seeking information on whether the men had lawyers.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-05-21-bomb-plot_N.htm

Day of reckoning looms for the U.S. dollar
The U.S. dollar's day of reckoning may be inching closer as its status as a safe-haven currency fades with every uptick in stocks and commodities and its potential risks - debt and inflation - are brought under a harsher spotlight.
Ashraf Laidi, chief market strategist at CMC Markets, said Wednesday a "serious case of dollar damage" was underway.
"We long warned about the day of reckoning for the dollar emerging at the next economic recovery," Mr. Laidi said in a note.
Mr. Laidi said economic recovery would weigh on the greenback as real demand for commodities, coupled with improved risk appetite, caused investors to seek higher yields in emerging markets and commodity currencies. This would draw investment away from the U.S. dollar, which was dragged down by growing debt and the risk quantitative easing would eventually spark a surge in inflation.
The U.S. dollar slid against most major currencies Wednesday, hitting a five-month low of US$1.3775 against the euro and pushing the Canadian dollar up US1.21¢ to a seven-month high of US87.69¢.
John Curran, the senior corporate dealer at Canadian Forex, said the U.S. dollar would likely fall further in the next week, with the Canadian dollar likely reaching about US88.35¢, at which point it could break higher to test the US92.35¢ level.
"The U.S. dollar is continuing to slide as investor appetite is gaining momentum," Mr. Curran said. "People are getting comfortable about taking on a little more risk."
The rise in the Canadian dollar has moved in lock-step with the improvement in equity markets since March 9. Over this time, the S&P 500 has risen by 34%, the S&P/TSX composite index has gained 35% and the Canadian dollar has increased by 14%, equal to almost US11¢. Since Feb. 18, light-crude oil has risen by 46% to US$62.12.
But as risk appetite and equities improve, Mr. Curran said it was unlikely the U.S. dollar would embark on a long-term decline.
"While things are beginning to thaw, it doesn't mean it's full-on summertime just yet," he said. "A lot of people are looking for the Canadian dollar to strengthen dramatically again towards par. I'm not sure about that just yet."
Nevertheless, concern has been mounting that the increasing U.S. debt load, as well as a potential inflation time bomb in the form of the quantitative easing, could drag down the greenback. Garnering attention is the risk the United States could lose its triple-A sovereign credit rating, which reflects the chance of the borrower defaulting on its debt.
"By many measures, the U.S. appears just a few short steps away from losing its coveted triple-A status, unless the recovery turns out to be considerably stronger than expected and the fiscal repair is faster than commonly expected," said Douglas Porter, deputy chief economist at BMO Capital Markets. "A downgrade could boost the cost of funding U.S. debt at the margin, but underlying inflation and fiscal fundamentals will ultimately be the primary driver."
Despite the risk, Paul Ashworth, chief economist at Capital Economics, said the United States was unlikely to lose its rating. But, in the event of a downgrade, he said it would probably not have a lasting impact on the U.S. dollar.
However, he said a big threat lurked in the country's expanded monetary base, which now stands at about US$1.8-trillion. While the expanded monetary base was needed to feed economic growth and ward off deflation under the Fed's quantitative easing plan, Mr. Ashworth said such high levels could fuel rampant inflation once broader monetary conditions improved.
He said it remained to be seen how much success the Fed will have when it decides to end its quantitative-easing plan and shrink the monetary base.
http://www.financialpost.com/news-sectors/story.html?id=1612964

Teen beats mom over french fries
May 21, 2009 - 4:44am
PORT DEPOSIT, Md. (AP) - The Cecil County Sheriff's Office says a teenager beat his mother with an aluminum baseball bat because she wouldn't share her french fries with him.
Seventeen-year-old Dennis Hickman III is charged as an adult with first- and second-degree assault.
Lt. Bernard Chiominto, a spokesman for the sheriff's office, says Hickman "went berserk for a while."
The incident occurred Tuesday night. Deputies said Hickman, who lives with his mother, also slashed tires on her car and kicked the front door, knocking it off its hinges.
Hickman's 52-year-old mother, who was not identified, was treated at Union Hospital in Elkton for injuries to her head, wrist and leg.
Information from: Cecil Whig of Elkton, Md., http://www.cecilwhig.com

But check the underware of Sandy Beger sounds like something else the clintons needed to cover up, (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/20/AR2007022001344.html)
Disappearance of Disc With Clinton Data Investigated
By Edwin Chen
May 20 (Bloomberg) -- Federal authorities are investigating the disappearance of a computer disc from the National Archives containing Social Security numbers and Secret Service procedures from former President Bill Clinton’s administration, congressional officials said.
Among the files on the disc were 100,000 Social Security numbers, including that of one of former Vice President Al Gore’s daughters, contact information for officials who served in the Clinton administration, logs of events and “other highly sensitive information,” according to a statement from the office of Representative Darrell Issa, the ranking Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
Democratic Representative Edolphus Towns of New York, chairman of the committee, called it a “serious security breach.”
Mark McKenna, a spokesman for former President Bill Clinton said Clinton Foundation officials have asked the Archives for “a full accounting of what was on the drive.”
The disc was lost sometime between October 2008 and March 2009 and a criminal probe is underway by the Archives inspector general and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Susan Cooper, director of communications for the Archives, said the loss was confirmed in early April and the inspector general immediately began a criminal investigation.
The Archives also “immediately undertook a review of our internal controls and we have implemented improved security processes,” Cooper said in a statement.
Call for Investigation
Issa called for a congressional investigation.
“This egregious breach raises significant questions regarding the security protocols that are in place at the National Archives and Records Administration,” Issa said.
The disc, which contained one terabyte of data, is missing from the Archives facility in the Washington suburb of College Park, Maryland. The statement from Issa’s staff quoted the inspector general as saying that one terabyte of data is the approximate equivalent of “millions of books.”
“The full extent of the contents of the drive is still being investigated,” the statement said.
The hard drive was left unsecured in a work area while the records were being processed, according to Issa’s statement. At least 100 people with Archive badges had access to the area. In addition, the inspector general said janitors, visitors and interns passed through the area where the drive was being kept, the Republican statement said.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=washingtonstory&sid=aAINQhUs7Nxc

Swine Flu Arrives in Tokyo Area After Students’ New York Trip
May 21 (Bloomberg) -- Two high school students have been confirmed as the first cases of swine flu in the Tokyo area after they returned from a school trip to New York, local government officials said.
The 16-year-old girls, both from the same high school in Kawasaki, south of Tokyo, returned from a week-long trip to New York on May 19, officials said. Both are hospitalized with the H1N1 virus, which has sickened more than 10,000 people worldwide.
“The students are from Hachioji and Kawasaki and I was informed yesterday that tests showed that they had contracted the new flu,” Japan’s Health Minister Yoichi Masuzoe said in parliament today.
The cases around Tokyo, the world’s largest metropolitan area, come after the government yesterday shut 4,464 schools in western Japan after a swine flu outbreak around Osaka. Japan’s Health Ministry yesterday said 234 people have the virus, formally known as A/H1N1. Evidence of human-to-human transmission in a region outside North America, where a majority of the cases worldwide have occurred, may prompt the World Health Organization to raise its pandemic alert by one grade to the highest level, Hitoshi Oshitani, the former head of the agency’s Western Pacific region, said in a May 19 interview.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=awF_0oQDV9c0&refer=worldwide

Thursday, May 21, 2009

Eeyore's News and View

I saw this reported a little over a week ago and was going to blog it on Sunday. But it just sticks in my craw, that we go ther and our forces die for them and they can't put up with us just a little.
What do they think of us now, we hold no convictions, at all.
U.S. military destroys soldier's Bibles
The U.S. military is confirming that it has destroyed some Bibles belonging to an American soldier serving in Afghanistan.
Reuters News says the Bibles were confiscated and destroyed after Qatar-based Al Jazeer television showed soldiers at a Bible class on a base with a stack of Bibles translated into the local Pashto and Dari languages. The U.S. military forbids its members on active duty -- including those based in places like Afghanistan -- from trying to convert people to another religion.
Reuters quotes Maj. Jennifer Willis at the Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul, who said "I can now confirm that the Bibles shown on Al Jazeera's clip were, in fact, collected by the chaplains and later destroyed. They were never distributed."
According to the military officials, the Bibles were sent through private mail to an evangelical Christian soldier by his church back home. Reuters says the soldier brought them to the Bible study class where they were filmed.
The Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, told a Pentagon briefing Monday that the military's position is that it will never "push any specific religion."

http://www.wmal.com/UniversalSearch.asp?ZIPCODE=20015&index=t&WHERETOLOOK=web&LOOKFOR=military+burning+bibles

Bogus Trend of the Week: Raising Backyard Chickens
The press lays dozens and dozens of eggs.
In all of God's sweet aviary there exists no bird more diabolical and ruthless than the egg-laying chicken. Despite the darkness of this clucking beast's heart, our nation's press has gone on a rampage insisting that more and more citizens everywhere in the United States are choosing to board and feed these creatures in their urban and suburban backyards so they can harvest the eggs.
It is a trend, the press claims. But we know better, don't we? To begin with, keeping chickens is a filthy, time-consuming, and expensive way to keep the pantry filled with eggs. And as this continuing feature has taught its loyal readership, too many of the "trends" reported by the press are actually bogus trends, hyped up by a reporter or her editors to get a lame story into print.
See Jack Shafer's bogus trend stories about the booms in "ceco-migration," shoplifting, church attendance, kids with bombs, dudes with cats, Ivy League women, teenage hookers, teens shopping at the mall, obese teens, and online sales losing "steam." In a July 2008 grab bag, he attacked stories about the rise in locally grown food, the uptick in video conferencing, and an increase in motorcyclers. In 2008, L.E. Leone told the bloody truth about urban farming.Flaunty bogusity in this morning's (May 14) Washington Post Home section feature, "Hot Chicks: Legal or Not, Chickens Are the Chic New Backyard Addition," which claims to have discovered the "vanguard of a resurgent interest in backyard chicken keeping, especially in distinctly nonrural settings." But the closest the Post comes to actually counting chickens is reporting the press run of Backyard Poultry magazine, a bimonthly: It is 100,000. The Jan. 2 USA Today, which reports a "growing number of city dwellers across the country choosing chickens as pets," measures the hen-keeping renaissance by enumerating the size of the BackYardChickens.com community: It is 19,000 worldwide.
For more all-feather, no-bone journalism, see the May 10 Chicago Tribune Magazine, where "Chicken Chic: The Backyard Bird Is Back in Style" claims that chicken keeping is a "craze," is "[w]ay in," and is "a fresh fad." The piece insists that "[m]any an ordinary citizen of many an ordinary neighborhood owns an actual chicken," but never assigns a number to the "many." This is the paper's second example of crying chicken in recent months. The Dec. 15, 2008, Trib discovers "[s]igns of the burgeoning urban chick movement" in the mere publication of Backyard Poultry magazine, the existence of the urbanchickens.net blog, and the fact that a local workshop on raising your own birds sold out in 48 hours.
A bogus trend isn't a bogus trend unless the New York Times has signed on. The Dec. 7, 2008, Westchester Weekly section of the paper contributes "Chicken-Raising Trend Takes Hold in County." The well-to-do folks of that region have been sharing chicken-raising stories, the newspaper reports. It also publicizes the claim that a "growing number of people" are cultivating the birds as an easy way to connect with nature. Then, the story soberly acknowledges that "it is difficult to know just how many households are tapping into the chicken-raising trend." In other words, it's a trend for which there are no numbers. The May 9 Arizona Republic makes similar pumped-up claims about chicken mania in "Urban Chickens the Latest Healthful-Living Trend" before deflating the premise with the admission that it "is hard to know exactly how many people are raising urban chickens."
And so it continues throughout the land. "Urban Chicken Movement Taking Roost in KC Area" (May 11, Kansas City Star) compiles chicken-raising anecdotes and regulatory issues but never puts a number to the alleged trend. "Hot Chicks: More Raising Own Fowl" from the May 10 Providence Journal-Bulletin cites a growing demand for spring chicks but supplies no numbers. The Oregonian (May 14) backs the trend with a story that marvels at how quickly baby chicks are selling out all over town. But don't chick sellers manage their inventory to sell out quickly? If you're in the business of selling chicks, you don't want to over-order and end up with a bunch of unsold adolescent birds playing video games and smoking cigarettes in the store, right? An April 17 Associated Press story datelined Union, Mo., opens with an exciting scene-setter of 1,200 baby chicks peeping and cheeping at the Clearview Feed and Seed store. But the actual story—titled "More Suburbanites, Hobbyists Raise Chickens" on Nexis—undercuts the headline. "Mostly farm families wait to pick up the chicks," the story reports.
If backyard hen keeping is indeed a trend, it constitutes such a long-standing trend that it has ceased to be one. On March 29, 2002, the Wall Street Journal ran a piece about the "McMansion" coops some chicken owners were building for their birds. The April 5, 2004, Arizona Daily Star noted the high attendance drawn by Kim Fox at her chicken-raising speeches in Tucson: "About 50 people attended her last discussion," the Daily Star reported. The Sept. 14, 2003, Seattle Times explored the world of the city's backyard chicken farmers. In the summer of 2003, both USA Today and Newsday profiled the author of Keep Chickens! Tending Small Flocks in Cities, Suburbs, and Other Small Spaces. "We sold 2,000 laying hens last year," the owner of a downtown Houston feed store told the Houston Chronicle for its March 30, 1993, edition. Dialing the Nexis machine back even earlier, we find a syndicated Martha Stewart piece in the April 23, 1986, San Diego Union-Tribune oddly titled "Home-Grown Eggs—Can't Beat 'Em."
Before you place your Web order for chicks, consider the wisdom shared by experienced chicken-owner Jean Moore with the Albuquerque Journal for its July 26, 2003, article about the art of raising egg-layers in the city.
"On the warmth and entertainment scale," Moore said, "they're better than a snake, but not as good as a cat."
Don't raise chickens to save money, advises the Dec. 15, 2008, Chicago Tribune story "Chickens Earn Keep in Chicago Backyards: More Urbanites Have the Critters for Eggs—and Companionship." One chicken-lover says the coop, chicken wire, and feeders set him back $500. A 50-pound bag of organic feed costs $22. You have to secure the coop to keep out raccoons, dogs, and cats. A hawk or a teenager with a Wrist Rocket can waste a free-ranging chicken in a flash. Generally speaking, urban veterinarians don't know how to treat sick chickens. Hens don't start dropping eggs until about 20 weeks, the Denver Post reports, on average three hens will produce two eggs a day, and the birds reach their peak production at two years. There's no way around shoveling the chicken shit, and who the hell likes eggs, anyway? Twitter sounds like something a mutant chicken would say, right? Send poultry recipes via e-mail to slate.pressbox@gmail.com. (E-mail may be quoted by name in "The Fray," Slate's readers' forum; in a future article; or elsewhere unless the writer stipulates otherwise. Permanent disclosure: Slate is owned by the Washington Post Co.)
http://www.slate.com/id/2218390/?from=rss

H1N1 flu deaths and cases edge higher - WHO
H1N1 flu cases rise to 10,243, death toll rises to 80
* Number of new cases in Japan rises to 210
GENEVA, May 20 (Reuters) - The number of confirmed cases of the new Influenza A (H1N1) flu has risen to 10,243 and the death toll has edged up to 80, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Wednesday.
Most of the new cases are in the United States, which has seen 5,469 outbreaks of the virus so far, the WHO said as it focuses on the H1N1 virus that has brought the world to the brink of a pandemic.
Another 51 cases have also been reported in Japan, bringing the total number of cases there to 210 and potentially making it more likely that the WHO will declare a full pandemic after it raised its pandemic alert last month to 5 on a 6-level scale.
Health ministers and experts at this week's WHO annual assembly have been discussing how to fight the virus with vaccines and drugs as well as what criteria the WHO should consider when deciding whether to raise the alert level.
Under WHO rules, signs the disease is spreading in a sustained way in a second region of the world outside its North American epicentre would prompt a declaration that a full pandemic is under way.
Ministers have urged the WHO to consider other factors such as the severity of the virus before moving to the highest alert.
Forty countries have confirmed cases of the new strain and nearly all of those who have died were in Mexico, but most patients globally have had relatively mild symptoms.
http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUSLK94712420090520

This is the real danger behind the Swine Flu (at least at the present time)and it will only get worse, and when the services start to suffer for lack of attendance at work and the police, fire and water services start to fail, then you will see real panic.
Hospitals swamped amid flu fears
Reporting from Washington -- On Long Island, N.Y., hospitals are scrambling to bring extra workers in to handle a 50% surge in visitors to emergency rooms. In Galveston, Texas, the local hospital ran out of flu testing kits after being overwhelmed with patients worried about having contracted swine flu.
At Loma Linda University Medical Center near San Bernardino, emergency room workers have set up a tent in the parking lot to handle a crush of similar patients. In Chicago, ER visits at the city's biggest children's hospital are double normal levels, setting records at the 121-year-old institution.
So far, few of the anxious patients have had more than runny noses. But the widening outbreak of swine flu, also known as H1N1 flu, is exposing a potentially critical hole in the nation's defenses.
Across the country, emergency care facilities are straining at the seams even though the outbreak is relatively small and the federal government has launched a mammoth disease-control effort -- dispatching antiviral drugs to states, attempting to contain the limited number of cases and beginning to develop a vaccine against it.
"It is a major Achilles' heel in our state of readiness," said Dr. Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University. "If we get a situation that is really out of hand with large numbers of people affected, I fear that our hospital and healthcare facilities simply won't have the materials or even the staffing to respond," he said.
Redlener and others are quick to point out that the outbreak is still a long way from such a critical stage.
Of the 136 cases of H1N1 flu authorities had confirmed in the United States as of Thursday night, only a handful required hospitalization.
By contrast, the Department of Health and Human Services' moderate pandemic influenza model, based on the last flu pandemic in 1968, envisions 90 million Americans becoming infected and 865,000 requiring hospitalization.
"If the outbreak stays in what I would characterize as its present mild form, I think we're in great shape," said James Bentley, senior vice president at the American Hospital Assn. "The key question becomes how many people at any one time have the flu, and how many people have it severely."
Prompted by the global SARS and avian flu outbreaks this decade, federal health officials and hospitals nationwide have been working to beef up preparations for possible disease outbreaks, helped by more than $2 billion in federal grants.
Hospitals have increased their supplies of staples such as face masks, and many have trained employees to care for patients out in the field.
In the last three years, California has spent more than $400 million to upgrade its readiness, including purchasing three fully equipped mobile hospitals and nearly 7,200 ventilators to respond to an outbreak of respiratory illness.
... The rest of the story can be read at
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-swineflu-hospitals1-2009may01,0,6976867.story

Better tighten up you security, in good and bad times people will always steal for drugs, but as the economy gets worse it will get worse.
Man reportedly took school's solar panels to buy drugs
OROVILLE -- A man who took dozens of solar panels from the roof of a Chico school stole them to buy drugs, according to his attorney.
Christopher Bess, 32, of Chico entered into a surprise plea bargain in court Tuesday.
He pleaded no contest to a single charge of receiving stolen property. He admitted having a prior "strike" on his record relating to a 1999 assault conviction, which increases his maximum potential sentence to seven years in prison.
He was already awaiting sentencing on a drug charge at the time of the plea bargain.
Prosecutors agreed to dismiss six additional stolen-property counts against Bess related to other items recovered with some of the missing solar panels from a Chico storage shed in March.
It was learned Tuesday that Bess was initially identified on surveillance videos taken near Little Chico Creek School, where 46 roof-top solar panels valued at nearly $50,000 were removed in mid-February.
Prosecutors said Bess was being held in jail on the unrelated drug charge, when guards covertly recorded a telephone call he made to another man asking him to move the solar panels out of two rented storage units on Highway 32.
Chico police then recovered 17 of the panels from the storage facility, along with other stolen items, including more than $100,000 in property taken from a nonprofit veterans group in Chico, according to the prosecutor.
A second man, who was videotaped standing next to a truck with Bess near the elementary school, has reportedly been asked to help police recover the remaining solar panels, according to Bess' attorney, Tracy Tully-Davis.
She said Bess chose to accept the plea bargain rather than risk as much as 15 years in prison if convicted at trial on all counts.
The defense attorney agreed there was strong evidence linking Bess to the stolen solar panels.
Based on the school surveillance videos, police initially arrested Bess on a felony drug-transportation charge, to which he subsequently pleaded guilty, according to deputy district attorney Robert Thomas III.
Bess was being held on the drug charge in the Butte County Jail when he was recorded placing a telephone call to a man in Nevada and telling him to "empty out" the Highway 32 storage sheds, where slightly less than half of the solar panels were later recovered by police.
In the storage units, which were being rented under the name of Bess' girlfriend, were bicycles stolen from Chico State University and lawn-care equipment taken from a Nord Avenue apartment, according to Chico police reports.
Also recovered was miscellaneous property, much of it cold-weather gear, stolen in February from Caring Veterans, Inc. on Rio Lindo Avenue, a non-profit group in Chico that assists military veterans.
Tully-Davis said Bess was stealing to support a drug habit.
"What was found in the storage shed, his
behavior, is indicative of a drug addict going on a run," the suspect's lawyer observed.
http://www.chicoer.com/news/ci_12409050

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Eeyore's News and View

GPS system 'close to breakdown'
Network of satellites could begin to fail as early as 2010
It has become one of the staples of modern, hi-tech life: using satellite navigation tools built into your car or mobile phone to find your way from A to B. But experts have warned that the system may be close to breakdown.
US government officials are concerned that the quality of the Global Positioning System (GPS) could begin to deteriorate as early as next year, resulting in regular blackouts and failures – or even dishing out inaccurate directions to millions of people worldwide.
The warning centres on the network of GPS satellites that constantly orbit the planet and beam signals back to the ground that help pinpoint your position on the Earth's surface.
The satellites are overseen by the US Air Force, which has maintained the GPS network since the early 1990s. According to a study by the US government accountability office (GAO), mismanagement and a lack of investment means that some of the crucial GPS satellites could begin to fail as early as next year.
"It is uncertain whether the Air Force will be able to acquire new satellites in time to maintain current GPS service without interruption," said the report, presented to Congress. "If not, some military operations and some civilian users could be adversely affected."
The report says that Air Force officials have failed to execute the necessary steps to keep the system running smoothly.
Although it is currently spending nearly $2bn (£1.3bn) to bring the 20-year-old system up to date, the GAO – which is the equivalent of Britain's National Audit Office – says that delays and overspending are putting the entire system in jeopardy.
"In recent years, the Air Force has struggled to successfully build GPS satellites within cost and schedule goals," said the report. "It encountered significant technical problems … [and] struggled with a different contractor."
The first replacement GPS satellite was due to launch at the beginning of 2007, but has been delayed several times and is now scheduled to go into orbit in November this year – almost three years late.
The impact on ordinary users could be significant, with millions of satnav users potential victims of bad directions or failed services. There would also be similar side effects on the military, which uses GPS for mapping, reconnaissance and for tracking hostile targets.
Some suggest that it could also have an impact on the proliferation of so-called location applications on mobile handsets – just as applications on the iPhone and other GPS-enabled smartphones are starting to get more popular.
Tom Coates, the head of Yahoo's Fire Eagle system – which lets users share their location data from their mobile – said he was sceptical that US officials would let the system fall into total disrepair because it was important to so many people and companies.
"I'd be surprised if anyone in the US government was actually OK with letting it fail – it's too useful," he told the Guardian.
"It sounds like something that could be very serious in a whole range of areas if it were to actually happen. It probably wouldn't damage many locative services applications now, but potentially it would retard their development and mainstreaming if it were to come to pass."
The failings of GPS could also play into the hands of other countries – including opening the door to Galileo, the European-funded attempt to rival America's satellite navigation system, which is scheduled to start rolling out later next year.
Russia, India and China have developed their own satellite navigation technologies that are currently being expanded.
http://frc4u.org/phpbb/index.php?topic=1393.0;topicseen

What do we have here? Another evolutionary hoax in a long line of hoax's? Or just a deformed Lemur Monkey? Who knows but i think the last time a "find" like this was made and proclaimed it was found to be a made up "discovery" of made up put together pieces. Science does not do well in the truth department.
Fossil Discovery Is Heralded
n what could prove to be a landmark discovery, a leading paleontologist said scientists have dug up the 47 million-year-old fossil of an ancient primate whose features suggest it could be the common ancestor of all later monkeys, apes and humans.
Anthropologists have long believed that humans evolved from ancient ape-like ancestors. Some 50 million years ago, two ape-like groups walked the Earth. One is known as the tarsidae, a precursor of the tarsier, a tiny, large-eyed creature that lives in Asia. Another group is known as the adapidae, a precursor of today's lemurs in Madagascar.
Based on previously limited fossil evidence, one big debate had been whether the tarsidae or adapidae group gave rise to monkeys, apes and humans. The latest discovery bolsters the less common position that our ancient ape-like ancestor was an adapid, the believed precursor of lemurs.
[lemur] AP Photo/Karen Tam
A fossil discovery suggests humans may be descended from an animal that resembles present-day lemurs like this one.
Philip Gingerich, president-elect of the Paleontological Society in the U.S., has co-written a paper that will detail next week the latest fossil discovery in Public Library of Science, a peer-reviewed, online journal.
"This discovery brings a forgotten group into focus as a possible ancestor of higher primates," Mr. Gingerich, a professor of paleontology at the University of Michigan, said in an interview.
The discovery has little bearing on a separate paleontological debate centering on the identity of a common ancestor of chimps and humans, which could have lived about six million years ago and still hasn't been found. That gap in the evolution story is colloquially referred to as the "missing link" controversy. In reality, though, all gaps in the fossil record are technically "missing links" until filled in, and many scientists say the term is meaningless.
Nonetheless, the latest fossil find is likely to ignite further the debate between evolutionists who draw conclusions based on a limited fossil record, and creationists who don't believe that humans, monkeys and apes evolved from a common ancestor.
Scientists won't necessarily agree about the details either. "Lemur advocates will be delighted, but tarsier advocates will be underwhelmed" by the new evidence, says Tim White, a paleontologist at the University of California, Berkeley. "The debate will persist."
The skeleton will be unveiled at New York City's American Museum of Natural History next Tuesday by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and an international team involved in the discovery.
According to Prof. Gingerich, the fossilized remains are of a young female adapid. The skeleton was unearthed by collectors about two years ago and has been kept tightly under wraps since then, in an unusual feat of scientific secrecy.
Prof. Gingerich said he had twice examined the adapid skeleton, which was "a complete, spectacular fossil." The completeness of the preserved skeleton is crucial, because most previously found fossils of ancient primates were small finds, such as teeth and jawbones.
It was found in the Messel Shale Pit, a disused quarry near Frankfurt, Germany. The pit has long been a World Heritage Site and is the source of a number of well-preserved fossils from the middle Eocene epoch, some 50 million years ago.
Prof. Gingerich said several scientists, including Jorn Hurum of Norway's National History Museum, had inspected the fossil with computer tomography scanning, a sophisticated X-ray technique that can provide detailed, cross-sectional views. Dr. Hurum declined to comment.
lthough the creature looks like a lemur, there are some distinctive physical differences. Lemurs have a tooth comb (a tooth modified to help groom fur); a grooming claw; and a wet nose. Dr. Gingerich said that the adapid skeleton has neither a grooming claw nor a tooth comb. "We can't say whether it had a wet nose or not," he noted.
Since the fossilized creature found in Germany didn't have features like a tooth comb or grooming claw, it could be argued that it gave rise to monkeys, apes and humans, which don't have these features either.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124235632936122739.html

Brazil and China eye plan to axe dollar
Brazil and China will work towards using their own currencies in trade transactions rather than the US dollar, according to Brazil’s central bank and aides to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s president.
The move follows recent Chinese challenges to the status of the dollar as the world’s leading international currency.
Mr Lula da Silva, who is visiting Beijing this week, and Hu Jintao, China’s president, first discussed the idea of replacing the dollar with the renminbi and the real as trade currencies when they met at the G20 summit in London last month.
An official at Brazil’s central bank stressed that talks were at an early stage. He also said that what was under discussion was not a currency swap of the kind China recently agreed with Argentina and which the US had agreed with several countries, including Brazil.
“Currency swaps are not necessarily trade related,” the official said. “The funds can be drawn down for any use. What we are talking about now is Brazil paying for Chinese goods with reals and China paying for Brazilian goods with renminbi.”
Henrique Meirelles and Zhou Xiaochuan, governors of the two countries’ central banks, were expected to meet soon to discuss the matter, the official said.
Brazil: Exports to ChinaMr Zhou recently proposed replacing the US dollar as the world’s leading currency with a new international reserve currency, possibly in the form of special drawing rights (SDRs), a unit of account used by the International Monetary Fund.
In an essay posted on the People’s Bank of China’s website, Mr Zhou said the goal would be to create a reserve currency “that is disconnected from individual nations”.
In September, Brazil and Argentina signed an agreement under which importers and exporters in the two countries may make and receive payments in pesos and reals, although they may also continue to use the US dollar if they prefer.
An aide to Mr Lula da Silva on his visit to Beijing said the political will to enact a similar deal with China was clearly present. “Something that would have been unthinkable 10 years ago is a real possibility today,” he said. “Strong currencies like the real and the renminbi are perfectly capable of being used as trade currencies, as is the case between Brazil and Argentina.”
In what was interpreted as a sign of Chinese concern about the future of the dollar, the governor of China’s central bank proposed in March that the US dollar be replaced as the world’s de-facto reserve currency.
In an essay posted on the People’s Bank of China’s website, Zhou Xiaochuan, the central bank’s governor, said the goal would be to create a reserve currency ”that is disconnected from individual nations” and modelled on the International Monetary Fund’s special drawing rights, or SDRs.
Economists have argued that while the SDR plan is unfeasible now, bilateral deals between Beijing and its trading partners could act as pieces in a jigsaw designed to promote wider international use of the ­renminbi.
Any move to make the renminbi more acceptable for international trade, or to help establish it as a regional reserve currency in Asia, could enhance China’s political clout around the world.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/996b1af8-43ce-11de-a9be-00144feabdc0.html

Venezuela set to build first oil rig with China: report
Venezuela is poised to begin building the first joint Venezuelan-Chinese oil drilling platform in June, according to Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez.
"The oil drilling platform is at a very advanced stage in the (western) Orinoco Belt," Ramirez told the Panorama newspaper, from the northwestern city of Maracaibo, on Monday."In June ... Venezuela will assemble the first oil rig with Venezuelan labor."
Run through a joint venture between Venezuelan Petroleum (PDVSA) with a 60 percent stake, and China National Petroleum Company (CNPC) with a 40 percent stake, the oil rig will maintain 24 active teams equipped with "the latest technology," Ramirez said.
There are currently 276 active oil rigs in Venezuela, 51 of which are owned by PDVSA and the rest are run by contractors. Seventeen others are undergoing maintenance and four are inactive due to cuts agreed with the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), the newspaper said.
"We hope that in a few years, we can assume control of all oil rigs in the country," Ramirez said.
The planned oil rig assembly is the second stage of a 2007 deal under which China agreed to build 13 high-tech oil-drilling platforms that can drill 8,000 feet (2,400 meters) deep.
The third stage anticipates manufacturing and maintaining oil wells in Venezuela.
In 2007, PDVSA said it was investing 3.5 billion dollars in building and maintaining oil rigs through 2012.
During his last visit to Beijing in April, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez discussed the possibility of constructing a refinery in the country, capable of processing 400,000 barrels at day.
China buys 300,000 barrels of Venezuelan crude every day, and is eager for more from the Latin American country as part of its global quest for a diverse range of energy supplies.
The majority of Venezuela's vast oil reserves -- which PDVSA estimates at 3.01 million barrels a day, but the International Energy Agency places at 2.33 million barrels a day -- are destined for markets in the United States.
Venezuela has proven oil reserves of around 99 billion barrels and is the Western hemisphere's largest oil exporter.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.65dc69205fefac56a1edd540d2b1790b.321&show_article=1

St. Louis County man is Missouri's first swine flu fatality

A 44-year-old St. Louis County man is the first person in Missouri to die after becoming ill with swine flu.
According to the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, the man traveled last month to Mexico where the 2009 H1N1 flu virus first emerged. He returned on April 27 and became ill a week later.
The man went to an urgent care center on May 9 and was admitted to a hospital the same day. He died from medical complications related to the flu.
He was the eighth person in the United States to die with swine flu. Most of the more than 5,000 cases nationwide have been relatively mild, health officials have said.
The man’s family and medical personnel who treated him have received anti-viral medications.
An autopsy will be done on the man. State and county health officials and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are investigating the case.
“Our deepest condolences go out to this man’s family and his friends,” said Margaret Donnelly, director of the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services. “We are working hard to determine why this case of flu became so much more severe than other cases in Missouri.”
http://www.kansascity.com/news/breaking_news/story/1205608.html

Figures on government spending and debt

May 19, 2009 - 6:51pm
Total public debt subject to limit May 18 11,226,564
Statutory debt limit 12,104,000
Total public debt outstanding May 18 11,286,593
Operating balance May 18 254,539
Interest fiscal year 2009 thru April 193,439
Interest same period 2008 243,904
Deficit fiscal year 2009 thru April 802,294
Deficit same period 2008 153,471
Receipts fiscal year 2009 thru April 1,256,066
Receipts same period 2008 1,549,720
Outlays fiscal year 2009 thru April 2,058,360
Outlays same period 2008 1,703,191
Gold assets in April 11,041