Black Eye Susans are out
Rhododendron
I was hoping to find some Rhododendrons at Bear Swamp Preserve, especially Little Bear Swamp but between the deer and beaver I think at they are all but gone.
Gated communities a quarter century later 🚧
I was thinking how many things have changed since I was a kid coming up here along Partridge Run Road with Grandpa in his AMC Eagle and later my Plymouth Sundance upon graduating High School and into college. More and more roads washed out, gated and closed, especially after Hurricane Irene.
I do miss driving back here though it makes for quieter walks and now with the mountain bike I can ride about as fast as you could ever drive the old road. And it’s a lot easier to stop wherever you want. Spent a lot of time reading and thinking by these waterfalls, some good times and bad getting my car and later my truck stuck up here. Days skiing and hiking, riding and exploring all there is to be found in the woods. Truth is this country is a lot of who I became.
Spent many of my younger years in the Plymouth Sundance and later the little Ford Ranger exploring these back roads. Some to spot burn barrels and rednecks burning their garbage but also to see what is out there. The old rundown trailers with the goats and hogs penned up out back, the junk cars and other debris. The deer hanging from the tree, the smell of silage and kerosene in the winter. Not too different than the neighborhood I grew up in. I don’t think there is a dirt or country road within twenty miles of Partridge Run that I didn’t drive seeking out that special place or flicker of a fire around dusk as those wrappers melted away with that pungent smell.
Truth is that I should get out to the hill towns a lot more then I do but my big jacked up truck is expensive to drive and I often prefer to go to the Adirondacks or other more remote country. I’ve certainly studied land and houses out this way to build my off-grid homestead as I like the country but it still seems a bit too urban and densely populated as, I’ve discovered more wild country Plus you all know my thoughts about the laws and policies of New York State. And the environmentalist culture that seems so distant from the actual wilderness.
Partridge Run and the Heldebergs really are a small part of a much larger world all around us.
A rather gray Fathers Day 🌥️
Very little sunshine to be seen today but at least it’s not raining. More sun for Monday but then rain returns. And possibly a half inch of rain for Juneteenth but fairly mild. I’ll have to consider my weekend plans as weekend gets closer, though Friday through Sunday looks warm and sunny but creek levels will be high.
Yesterday I was so ambitious until I wasn’t. Got up, cooked down the beans had breakfast, showered. And then I just collapsed with low-energy. I thought I had gotten enough sleep the previous night but I hadn’t. Truth is I’m not sure it’s Lyme disease as much as it’s a lack of sleep. 💤 The nicer weather has me staying out later most nights, then when I ride up, have a bite to eat and are still wound up a bit, I end up watching a video on my phone, 📱 Of course the web advertisers, thanks to my Mobile Advertising ID and clicking or making a stupid comment on some cancer advertisers ad are so sure I got cancer. ♋ Probably from all that weed and plastic I’ve burnt up in woods over the years. 🔥 I ended up taking a nap through mid-day, as the skies poured more most of the morning, ☔ and then it was cloudy and kind of cold. So no camping last night.
I did spend much of the afternoon reading Max Fraiser’s Hillbilly Highway 📖 well into night down at the Town Park. 🏞️ I ended up walking down there as I get tired of riding everywhere, even though my bike is working fine but my bike headlight isn’t charging 🔋 and I lost the second one I had up in the Adirondacks back in April. So I ordered two more of them, though it means in the mean time I have to be careful about sunset 🌇 if I’m going out to Five Rivers or the Town Park. Should arrive this week, though maybe not before the Juneteenth Weekend. Hillbilly Highway is fascinating, it’s the story of the migration two and from Appalachia to the factories in Midwest especially the great auto works in Indiana and Michigan in the 1930s through 1960s. The factories sought out cheap work, but what they got was a lot a conflict and new culture both good and bad. Cities of pigs and brothels as they say. 🐽 Pigs are great but they can be smelly.
Thing that sucks about Juneteenth is it looks like more rain, 🌧️ and then fairly cool and cloudy up north on Friday. I am thinking maybe I don’t head up to the Potholers on Juneteenth but instead skip taking off Friday, or only take part of the day off if I want to get bacon 🥓 and then go up after work and stay on Monday, when the heat wave is expected to push in. ☀️ Creek levels are going to be mad high, which isn’t great for floating nor cooling off on the Potholers with all the rain. 🏊 Things will drop though by Saturday I’m thinking if I go up after work on Friday. The thing is the following Friday I was planning to take off, because I have my dentist appointment at 11 AM and thought I could work from home in the morning, 🖥️ and then from there, head up to the wilderness. Maybe Vermont or Schoharie that weekend, but it depends on the weather. I really was looking forward to four solid days up at camp, hopefully nice and warm and sunny. ⛽Gas up my truck today at $3 a gallon but I doubt those prices will remain around long, with the Middle East going to all shit. Trump can demand lower gas prices and yell drill-baby-drill but there is no guarantee such things are even likely to work.
I thought about for a while truck camping up at Rensselearville State Forest 🏕️ but in the summer there is no guarantee that the campsite will be avaliable especially on a Saturday, and it was cool and gray yesterday. Certainly wouldn”t have been good for hammock camping but I wanted to have a fire. 🔥 It was decent at the park last night. This morning I stocked up on groceries. $15 for a 100-pack of nitrile which seemed pricy but they’ ll last for a while. I was concerned that nitrile produces cyanide when thrown way and burnt, but that’s not the truth with nitrile butanate and I’m sure there are other things that produce trace amounts of cyanide I’ve burnt over the years. Dairies incinerate lots of them with farm trash. Just stay up wind and hopefully they won’t stink not that I expect to use that many of them, just an occasional one when working on bike with the gears or chain, so my hands don’ t get that tough to remove bike chain grease all of them. 🍃
I was surprisingly low on groceries, and I thought about just getting a few maintance items like milk 🐮 and bananas 🍌 to keep the panty full until I could do a bigger shop on Wednesday in prep for the Juneteenth Weekend camping trip but with the weather it looks like I might just shop on Juneteenth for the weekend, work Friday and head up north on after work and enjoy the sun then. ☀️ I guess I don’t have to leave early and I don’t have to get more bacon at For the Love of Bacon 🥓 – indeed I actually have some left over from the Memorial Day Weekend trip but it’s all part of the experience. For somebody who doesn’t eat processed food I sure do like my bacon up at camp, cooked down with lots of spinach, onions and other goodies.
I was thinking about going down to Hannacroix Preserve and also the Coeymans Creek WMA but I’m leaning more towards Partridge Run and hiking some of the roads this afternoon. 🚶 I both want to drive to test out my truck and be a confidence building activity, as I’m still filled with driving and auto anxiety, and also get out into the country. Partridge Run is certainly much more country. Plus, it will be quieter up there, much less likely to run into other people. 🐦 I hate the road noise of the Thruway at both of the prior places, plus Berne and Westerlo are so much more rural. Maybe I should check out some land and houses that up for sale, but I still don’t want to build in New York nor do I want a long commute while I’m still working in the city. 🖥️ Gas is still cheap currently. And maybe I can check out that farm with the burn barrel out back that still burns shit. 🛢️ Don’t tell a liberal that.
I’m just surprised he’s not a so-called real cop 👮
That was my reaction upon reading on Fox News that Vance Luther Boelter, the accused man who heads the Praetorian Guard Security Services, a private security consulting group. The thing is the private sector and public sector security services are very inter-related, often with retired and even active duty police officers moonlighting in the private sector protection and loss-prevention sector.
The truth is that most police officers, outside of wealthy cities and states are pretty poorly paid. In wealthier areas, it’s true cops can make good money especially with overtime. But most police officers have fairly meager salaries, and many are actually quite poorly educated for all the power they have and the position of authority they hold, enforcing laws. It’s actually remarkable that a person who can arrest and detain a person over a technically-complex thing as the law, which spans millions of pages, in many cases is not required to have anything more then a high school diploma, and potentially an associates degree in criminal justice or a brief training course.
So it’s only logical for police officers to seek work in the private sector to make more money. And there is no requirements at all to work in the private sector protection and lost prevention sector, though many states have requirements for concealed carry of firearms and private investigations. Instead, people in the private security sector usually rely on other credentials to show their merits while marketing their services, such as police officer services, classes taken, experiences earned. But often the lines are blurred.
And because those lines are so blurry, private security consultants often have many of the same things are bonafide law enforcement officers. Many drive the same model automobiles are police do, indeed one of the local private investigators down the street is outfitted with a black Dodge Charger with steel wheels. Probably the persuit package, could even be a retired cop car, he either bought off the force he worked for or is currently employed by. He might even have a blue or black dress shirt and wear a badge. And he’s probably far better paid to many of the local cops, especially in small towns.
Many private sector security officers not only are cops retired or active, many also have very close relationships with politicians and actual serving policeman – scurrying favor by offering free security services at events – and personal defense and awareness training. Many enjoy cultivating their relationship at the local watering hole and elsewise. When you are in the private sector, and don’t have a public job, you can be a lot more loose with others. Many shoot at same ranges and hang out with real cops, they’re drinking buddies. And many meet at court and work together closely on law enforcement activities, such as prosecuting those accused of shoplifting and other crimes against businesses.
The truth is real cops probably should be closer to lawyers in their education, rather then tough men. District Attorneys have to be lawyers in most states, and certainly all higher-level judges and appeals judges are, though town justices often aren’t. The fact that police are so badly paid and often uneducated is a real problem and it only makes them more prone to getting caught up in ideological movements like the the III-percenters, who advocate using official positions to spark a political revolution. This is problematic on so many levels, when government enforcement officers – – the police — should be non-political and neutral enforcers of the law as written. It’s really messy.
Police should be paid more with a higher base salary, and work far less over time. At the same time, they should be much more strictly limited at what kind of outside income they can take and who they fratnize with. However, the private and public sector security and policing industries are closely linked, and both certainly have common interests and bonds that often are tightly linked.
