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Hope you don’t mind that I nicked your picture off of FaceBook, Mrs C. I figured since you use a head shot as your avatar (I can see it when I’m in the Admin page) that you wouldn’t mind if I ran with a likeness even smaller.

I’ll pull it at once if you want…

Anybody else remember the world-destroying hole in the ozone layer? Was right over Mount Erebus in Antarctica. Countdown to new ozone scare in 5, 4, 3, 2…

Oh noes, I love it!!! Thanks for sharing it with everyone!

I didn’t get to go to the tea party in Oklahoma City this year…working to support the looters.
Last year my sign said
“There’s always free cheese in a mousetrap”
I wish I could’ve gone this time. They had one last night that drew 2,000 at the state capital. Not a bad turnout considering there were others in the communities around OKC that drew their own crowds.
They were actually covered accurately by the media…then again, this is Oklahoma.
Luckily, we have no volcanoes in Oklahoma. Just tornadoes. Tornado season is upon us, hold on to your hat…and your ass.

That’s a great looking dog.

Iceland’s been having a rough time of it lately, but this current eruption is small scale When Tambora went up in 1815, the explosion could be heard 2,000 km away. And there are theories that the Dark Ages really were darker due to volcanic activity (specifically, an eruption in 535 big enough to blow Java in two, splitting off Sumatra in the process.)

I read David’s comment about Tambora, and stopped being grumpy about our lowering clouds.

Lower away, clouds. Pikes Peak, keep your hat on.

YAY Mrs. Compton! I love the picture. Beautiful dog, too.

5,000 of us, huh?

You mean I’m related to whoever came up with “spotted dick” as a name for a pudding?

Gah, I coulda gone all day without knowing that.

Lovely pitcher, Mrs. Compton!

You don’t know the half of it, EW1. just think of all the double entendre implied in “Bangers and Mash”…..

Not only that EW, you’re also related to Obama, Slow Joe, even (shudder) Nancy Pelosi.

But as they say, you can’t pick your relatives.

Well, we’re all related. I’m related to (inter alia) Uma Thurman, Roger Federer, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, Mrs. Compton, her canine companion, the lambs in the field out the back of Badger Cottage, jellyfish, oak trees, the salmon I’m having for dinner, the carrot I’m poaching it with, athlete’s foot and trilobites.

The Mighty Fart of Thor has brought back a lot of memories–and observations/lessons from when I lived in Seattle during the 18 May 80 eruption of Mt St Helens. I was a telephone operator for the now defunct Pacific Northwest Bell. We got a call at home: All Hands on Deck. PNB had us working double shifts, put us up in the hotel across the street, enticed us with extra pay incentives–the whole bit. Most dramatic moment? Clearing lines and setting up a conference call with about 20 people who needed to get some rare blood type supply across the Cascades and through the ash cloud. The ambulance made it through fine and the patient recovered.

We were all genuinely scairt. There wasn’t the knowledge that there is now. Were we going to be another version of Pompeii and be buried by nightfall? Would the gasses be poisonous? Would it wipe out the garden crops over in the eastern part of the State?

I woke up the next morning and there was a fine dusting of ash on the hood of my neon-orange Chevy Vega.

Afterwards. They ended up harvesting a bumper crop of Washington Delicious apples, although there was a little “puddle” of ash in the indentation of each one. Something in the ash made the ground extra fertile. The predicted re-growth around the devastated volcano area was astonishingly quicker than calculated. Turns out all the gophers and marmots and weasels 🙂 and critters ate all their seeds, went down in their holes to hibernate, and after the volcano blew and spring arrived, they came out, had a poo, and promptly re-seeded the entire area. All the grasses and most of the flora were back the very next year! Predictions that intra-state hauling and traffic would grind to a halt did just that–for about a week–and then, AGAINST the predictions (“it will never melt! It will be here for centuries!”) after the snow ploughs came out and got the junk off the roads, the ash formed a crust on itself, and then slowly leached back into the earth–and traffic was fine.

A friend of mine was travelling back across Snoqualmie Pass shortly after the ash had dropped. He scooped up a brown paper sackful of the stuff and gave it to me as a present. I put it in a cool clamp-down glass canning jar and kept it on my teacher-desk for years. When the kids would come up and ask “What’s that?” I would reply, “Grandma.” After a minute of them processing that, we’d then have a talk about volcanos. Also turns out the ash, when mixed with water and used as a glaze-paste, makes an incredibly beautiful dark blue/sea green streaky ceramic finish. The Pike Place jeweller arty-types went nuts with it. They still are.

The point of all of this: Mother Nature is awesome and formidable, but God is good, and man is resourceful. So the planes may be grounded for a few days. Go have tea at Claridges. If we’re plunged into the Dark Ages, turn your lights on and go read a book on hydroponics. This, too, shall pass.

Apologies for the long post. I love this site! I’m trying to worm my way into this Sweasel society nicely, and while a long, possibly overshadowing post might not be all that courteous, I at least hope it’s interesting.

Welcome Mark! Loved your story!! Reminds me I have a huge bucket of ash from mt st helens!!! When I was in potter’s school everyone wanted to use it, not the guy with grannies ashes!!!

That was a great read over coffee, Mark.

Hunh. A dark blue/deep green streaky ceramic finish when mixed with water, huh?

Mixed with motor oil it made about an inch of concrete lining the bottom of the oil pan in my truck.

Oh well.

The point of all of this: Mother Nature is awesome and formidable, but God is good, and man is resourceful.

Well, like they say, you got opposable thumbs. Deal with it.

“you can’t pick your relatives.”

No, but you can dismember them so they’ll pack in the trunk better, bury the parts in dozens of tiny shallow graves on the high plains… except for the heads, of course, which you can mummify and keep on shelves in your library.

/just sayin’

I always enjoy seeing the masses get a geology lesson.

“God help me, I love it so !”

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With HellCare now on the books, the shades and sunhat are a wise precautionary move, Mrs. C.

They’ll keep the IRS guessing, too…

Mrs. Compton, you are exactly as I pictured you in my fertile imagination. And your human is nice, too.

🙂

With HellCare now on the books, the shades and sunhat are a wise precautionary move, Mrs. C.

They’ll keep the IRS guessing, too…