December 30, 2007 - Oh dear, it was very cold in the living room this morning
-- it was a little warmer than yesterday's 0° Centigrade -- but the avocado was
bent over and exhausted
looking. I slept late,
till after 9 a.m. That
made up for yesterday
when I couldn't sleep
because I was so
cold. I had foolishly
turned around my
duvet before I went
to sleep, so that the
most duck feathers
would be over me. I
forgot that the warm
part of the duvet was
the part that had been
over me all evening
long and that had been warmed by my body heat.
wasn't notified about, and that's when I started to feel so chilled to the bone.
His Brief had so many lies in it. I'm so sick and tired of the lies. People tell lies
to get what they want, like Cheney and Bush wanting all the war profits. I'm
just so sick and tired of greedy lies. I don't know if I'd be this sick of them if
that wasn't how they took my condo, but I think the death rate in Iraq as a
result of lies is absolutely sickening in and of itself.
What are the lies in the Brief? One is that my condo was an investment
property, as if that means I didn't need it. But anyway, I bought it to live in
and I was living in it until the privy pit made so many health problems for me,
and the Condo Association was even more toxic. The worst lie, that sucks the
most heat out of me, is that Tennessee v. Lane addresses only the rights of
physically disabled people, not mentally disabled ones like me, and that I have
no rights under it to accommodation. Reading that is where I got really cold. I
found a footnote in Tennessee v. Lane that talks about mental disability. So I
have something to cite. But the sheer audacity to lie like that. I'm just so sick
and tired of it.
When I saw my avocado so worn out looking from the cold, then I stopped
having fun trying to take care of it and save it and I got angry that the poor
thing has to struggle because someone wanted my condo by lying to get it. But
before I found the cites I was just so cold. That makes me angry. That lawyers
can lie and get away with it, repeatedly.
New Year's Eve - It's still 40°
in the living room. I had to get
it as warm as I could this
afternoon so that I could print
my Reply in my appeal. My
printer requires more heat than
I do. So this evening around
five I lit six saint votives for
the avocado, so all the heat of
the afternoon wouldn't entirely
disappear and leave the avocado
shivering. I didn't want it to get
too cold before I lit them. I
took this picture just before
midnight. It's 11° outside.
Despite the fact that the avocado's best leaves have brown spots in them now,
I'm hoping it perks up once it realizes I'm going to try to keep it warmer.
I'm hopeful because the poinsettia whose leaves drooped like cocker spaniel
ears when it felt the cold in here, is now undrooped in many places and I think
it's because it's consistently been warmer than the first night it was here; I've
moved it closer to the main candle in my bedroom.
If it weren't for the poinsettia, though, I'd be really worried about the avocado
because the avocado looked really cold-weather wilted.
January 1, 2008 - Well, it certainly makes it more of a cliff hanger now that
the avocado is also battling the cold and its affects. I cut the dead branches and
leaves from the top of the avocado today, and I moved the hottest pot of water
from near the printer to near the avocado. On Thursday the two new pots I
ordered from Macy's should arrive. Then I will have enough pots to place
them all around the living room -- that's an exaggeration, but there will be more
of them.
I'm wondering if I should try the little votive candles to keep the new pots hot
longer. Only what to put over them to hold the pots? I had thought it would be
so easy to find more wrought iron stands like those I now have. But... no.
I added some apple peels, dried night blooming cereus leaves, dried aloe leaves
and some left over black eyed peas from the other day to the compost. I'm
thinking of how it's supposed to be good luck to have black eyed peas on New
Years... so I'm hoping that they will add just the right something to the
compost mix. I also added a lot more coffee grounds, brunt matches and earth
from my other potted plants.
I feel as if the compost and nutrients from it are going to be the deciding
factor. Warmth of course is vital, but for the plant to live and become healthy
again it's going to need a way of rising above the cadmium, so to speak. If the
compost works, then the nutrients will allow the avocado to grow and replace
its parts that were damaged by the toxins. That's what I'm thinking and hoping.
(At least it isn't totally dead and brown today.)
Later - It felt really cold in the living room today, even after I heated water
with solar electric and put it in the variety of pots I have placed around the
room. The avocado looks so deflated.
I thought about how over the years I've sometimes had trouble when I throw
things into my compost heap because they revive. Like limp, turning-brown
celery, or broccoli or cauliflower... those are some of the things that I've
thrown out and weeks later when I'm digging in my compost find looking fresh
and lovely.
I began to wonder today if I should bury the avocado for a couple of weeks...
but that seemed a bit risky because I might hurt its leaves when it came time to
uncover it.
I thought maybe if I had something to cover
it, like a cloche, that it would get a bit of
added benefit from the would-be compost.
Which gave me the idea that if I did find
something to cover it with, it would keep it
warmer at night and maybe the leaves would
start looking less deflated -- not only are the
leaves droopy, they are thinner looking now,
as if they are drying out from the cold.
I began to rather covet the fish bowl for the
avocado... but I pushed that idea aside. The
fish are such sweethearts. It occurred to me
that maybe I could invert the Brita water
pitcher over the avocado. I have a new
pitcher that I've put off using because I
rather like the algae in the old one. I have
this feeling the algae sweetens the water a
bit. It seemed to make it taste less like plastic
when I was drinking the water Bobbette
brought me when my water was off.
The inverted pitcher didn't work because
of the thick algae dimming any light that
tried to penetrate. However, as luck
would have it, the new pitcher came in a
clear plastic tray inside its box and the tray
was just about the right size. So I'm hoping that tomorrow the leaves are a little
plumper and healthier looking. I'm really REALLY hoping. (Nope. See
above.)
I just noticed the green Am Jur books in the picture where I was starting the
tinfoil wainscotting. They are three old bankruptcy volumes that I got from the
law library when I happened to be there the day the new volumes were put out
and these were being thrown away. I love them and they make me feel happy
because they are the volumes I used when I was doing my Chapter 11, which
was successful. Gosh. (I think I also like them because they are the color of
plants.)
The red volumes are old Rule books. The thing that surprised me about them,
is that the least friendly librarian who always seemed to want to make things
difficult for me gave them to me. Again, I was there on the right day. But I
was so surprised because he usually made me feel as if he wanted to set up
hurdles or trip me up, so the books were such a nice change. Again, gosh.
And the black frame above the bookcase contains my something or the other
for being in the Working Group on Self-Represented litigants. I was the only
pro se person there, mostly they were lawyers, administrators and judges. As
long as I didn't talk I didn't say anything wrong. That was before I lived in the
condo and I didn't stammer the way I do now, only it was after I had the B12
deficiency and I would say things wrong because I wouldn't remember enough
of what was involved.
January 2, 2008 - I'm cold and I'm tired or I'd take a picture of the avocado
which also looks cold and tired under its shelter. It's after 10 a.m. and it's still
only 17° outside, and there's no sun to heat water using my solar.
I did take a picture after it warmed up some. I put it up above where I started
to talk about putting something over the avocado to shield it from the cold. (I
sure wish I'd thought of covering it sooner. It takes me a long time to think of
things, now. I saw a joke over the weekend about automatic answering
machine messages for people with different mental problems, the one for
traumatic brain injury had to do with "slow"... I should find it. It was funny.
But living with being slow is neither funny nor easy.
I have to do exactly one thing at a time or I get confused and make mistakes. I
tried to save some time on Saturday and I spilled water from one of the heating
containers because I failed to hold it level when I wasn't totally concentrating
on what I was doing. That's just one example of the many I confront every
day. I makes everything take so much longer.
8:46 p.m. It's amazing how warm 21° feels. I have to find out what it is that
allows them so say on the weather channel that, for instance, it's 10° but "feels
like" -3°. It's been saying -3° on and off for a couple of days now. And it really
has felt numbingly cold. I was so cold today that I just stayed in my tent,
which was warmer than anywhere else. Well, happiness that it's getting
warmer.
January 3, 2008 - I warmed some water, put a higher grade of probiotics in it
and watered the avocado late this afternoon. Now, there's not much to do but
wait the rest of the 50 days for the composting to take place (there are about
40 days to go) and see if it shows signs of new, more healthy life. I hope so.
January 4, 2008 - Oh dear, I don't feel at all well today. With the cold I've
been forgetting my Methylcobalamin lozenges, and now it's all hit me today.
Plus, I have this underlying fear that they will turn off my water again, and I'm
already struggling. Every time I hear a noise I go tense. Still, I'll try to do a few
things I have in mind for the avocado, and post later.
January 13, 2008 - At this point the avocado is not looking even remotely
happy. And, I fear for it. Before the cold wilted it so badly I used to love going
activity. I took a long handled dessert spoon and began to carefully dig in,
careful so as not to spill the materials onto the floor. I immediately noticed that
the leaves were not in distinct, clear layers anymore, instead a lot of the
material was black and looked well on its way to becoming rich humus.
The next thing I noticed
was that it smelled like the
tangerine peels I'd put in,
and there was no hint of the
smell of the salmon skin. In
fact, as I turned the materials
I couldn't find the salmon
skin. There were two spots
which had something a little
white, somewhat dense and
easily broken up, so that may
have been the salmon skin.
Overall, I am quite encouraged.
I think that if there's any hope
at all for the avocado, it lies in the compost.
I am pretty sure that the cadmium in the pot's glaze is what made the avocado
leaves curl. The curl to the leaves was reminiscent of the valleys in my thumb
nails when I was living in the hydrogen sulfide, so to me the curls in the leaves
look like my nails. Plus, I had a plant for ten years that I transplanted into a
smaller cadmium red pot, and it died.
I hope the compost approach works, because otherwise my three cadmium red
pots represent a huge amount of money wasted on unhealthy pots.
January 13, 2008 Later - My candle experiment has turned out really well. I'd
been wondering how to use all the candle wax that pours out and never gets
but the bottom of the jar stood up a bit in the middle, so the candle listed to
one side. (And how lucky that was!)
I got all the old bits and pieces of wax, breaking the bigger bits into smaller
pieces, and placed them all around the candle till it stood up straight. Then I lit
it and hoped for the best. That was on January 7. So when it burned out
today, it had been going for six days, that's twice as long as a three inch
diameter, six inch tall column candle usually lasts. And all the bits of other
candles were burned. It's so great. Happiness. I don't need to get wicks or a
pot... I'm all set. I love it! (What is that affirmation about, "I now have
everything I need."
January 18, 2008 - I was just going to order velvet drapes from Overstock, to
keep out the cold air and keep in the candle-warm air, when my MPPT
controller screen went blank. The MPPT is the solar component that shows
how many amps are coming from your solar panels, and how much that
amount is being augmented by the clever technology of the MPPT thing itself.
By looking at the numbers on it you can get an idea of how much charge your
batteries have. Anyway, without it I was up creek. Solar Wise, who did my
installation, did not call me or reply to my emails. But since they had done
several things wrong that damaged my batteries, which are pretty costly, I
wasn't any more keen to talk to them than they were to talk to me, I suppose.
BZ Products, the MPPT manufacturer, was great. Frank Lewon replied to my
email right away, saying that if the batteries were still charging, he'd replace my
MPPT immediately. Which was so nice to hear, no quibbling.
use as little energy as I was. (Guys at a forum had said I shouldn't use energy
once the batteries were at 75% charge. So that left me in the dark without telly
at night, and also required that I get off the computer around 11p.m.)
He said my system was well designed, as it came from Gaiam, in that the
batteries were about right to go with my panels. I have four 120 panels, and
four 183 amp hour batteries, that got damaged when I used them down to the
inverter beeping when I was relying on the monitor which was improperly
installed. (I'm going to have to copy this to my Solar page.)
I think Mark took pity on me when I was walking around to stay warm, and he
could see all my candles, because he didn't charge me as much as I was afraid
it was going to be. So I linked to Positive Energy's site, which someone just
emailed me to say was a good thing for the site's Google rank. Mark is with
Positive Energy.
Okay... so today I ordered the drapes.
After I read "Composting Miracles" which talked at length about bacteria, I
began to wonder if the reason the cow horns work so well is that they contain
all the basic and essential bacteria.
Although I've added many bags of manure to my garden soil over the years,
I've tended to feel as if the manure contained antibiotics used on the animals,
and possibly growth hormones so that my efforts at soil "enrichment" were
probably a double edged sword.
For that reason I released many tubs of Canadian Night Crawlers into my
garden to enrich where the manure might be failing. I wish I had a video of the
time a robin and I were squaring off over the worms. The robin was
determined to get a worm, and I was determined to protect the worms till they
got acclimated to freedom and took cover. Well, the robin won. It got a worm
that was so big I didn't think the robin was going to be able to clear the fence
as it flew away, many inches of worm dangling from its beak. I was shouting
at it, "You've got to give them a fighting chance!" I was chagrined that I'd lost
and the worm was tasted rather than tasting freedom. A few days later I saw
four large robins together in a group and I was about to start yelling at them
about their heartless ways when I realized that one was a parent and three
were enormous babies. Not enormous in terms of robins, I suppose, but
enormous in comparison to most other birds that frequent my garden. Now I
understood why the robin had been willing to dart so close to me to get the
worm... and given what the robin was feeding, the worm probably wasn't that
big at all.
In any case, the whole time I was placing the leaves around the avocado I was
wishing there were worms in the pot. But I fear that if the cadmium causes the
leaves to grow so crinkled, that probably it kills the worms.
I so hope the bacteria in the Probiotics
can fix the cadmium into the soil so that
it becomes harmless.
Want to know how much I'm trusting
the composting will work? I spread earth
mixed with coffee grounds over the layer
of leaves, then put the salmon skin from
my Christmas dinner on the earth, covered it with herbal tea leaves, added a
full layer of outdoor leaves with a spattering of tangerine peel and covered the
whole with more coffee grounds and earth. It's a lot of trust, to trust the fish
won't smell.
So far, so good!
December 27, 2007 - Bringing the big pots in now that it's already so cold and
they are frozen and caked with icy snow on their tops... was probably a
mistake. I had thought they would thaw in about the same time a turkey thaws
in the refrigerator -- basically, a couple of days. But now I'm not so sure and
have an image in my mind of the hill of snow in our Wisconsin yard still
dwindling away in June. I had wanted them in months ago but then I was too
sick after my water was turned off for a day to do much. Now, rather than
being good heat sinks as I had thought... they are little ice ponds... so to speak.
Darn it. I had hoped to heat the living room enough to print today... but now I
don't see how I will be able to do that. (I have another appeal reply to do.)
I took two of the big pots outside, one because it had eggs laid neatly on one
of the small branches of a plant in it. I didn't want them to hatch early and have
heat. I'm actually surprised. If I had six working that well along the bottom of
a wall, I think it would equal an oil filled radiator. (Of course I used to think oil
filled radiators were inadequate to cold weather.) But still, fact is, I think
they'd be about equal. So, the trick is going to be to figure out what makes that
one function so well.
Also, I've discovered that a little copper cache pot of mine works really
REALLY well. It too sends out a good deal of heat, especially in comparison
to other pots and pans.
I'm very keen to see how the coffee cans work, in comparison to the inverted
clay flower pots. The clay flower pots look pretty neat, but the coffee cans are
cheap, I could have had three cans of coffee for what I paid for the clay pots,
and had the coffee cans as a bonus, for free... so to speak.
I hope they work well enough to make last night the worst night of cold the
avocado has to put up with... and I hope it continues to survive.
I'll add a picture that shows both sides of the fireplace with tinfoil, but only the
one side with the trim. You can see how much difference the trim makes.
I've been thinking about adding tiny strips of trim vertically at the edges of the
sheets, but I wondered if that would make it look more like a cottage, or more
like a trailer.
(Once a long time ago I previewed an adobe home for customers I was
working with and was amazed to find that the owners had decorated to make it
look like a double wide... the wall coverings had that folded over look at the
edges, suggesting panels rather than wallpaper.)
This image shows both
sides of the fireplace.
Doesn't the side with
trim look better?
Maybe the trim should
have been placed so
that its top was level
with the top of the
mantel... but I needed to
balance it on something
in order to put it up.
Now, I'm eager to see
how the avocado is in a month. I sure hope it's still alive! And, I hope it will be
looking happier.
December 24, 2007 - I'm going to keep a bit of a record of the temperatures
here in the house since I've added the slow burning candles with tiny flames...
I haven't posted pictures of that yet.
Basically, I decided the avocado was probably not going to thrive in the very
low temperatures in the living room. Last year I had an electric oil filled
radiator in my room and another in the hallway, and I often left the electric
oven on for a boost for the living room, adjacent to the kitchen.
This year, none of that and the avocado was looking extremely stressed even
before the temperatures dropped.
Having candles under pots of water in the living room helps keep the
temperature from descending into low freezing... but I don't have enough
things to support pots over candles, so the method had fast reached its peak
until I began to wonder if there were a way I could use my plant trolleys.
Admittedly, way too low to get a candle under them... but... what if...
When Del's daughter
filed my Reply to
Appellee's Brief, she
also went to Wal*Mart
for Guadalupe votives
for me, the kind that
stay lit for days.
My plan is to see if a
votive set atop a trolley,
lit, then covered with a
claypot (on which I
place a pot of water)
willheat the pot and
water thereby creating
a bit of radiant heat.
I cannot tell you how
much fun this is, to see
if it works, and how well. (Every since I was young I used to picture myself
living in a garret, writing. When Dee Drake and I moved to Santa Fe there was
a window in our rented house on Houghton Street that made me think "garret;"
in London the derelict building had a garret quality to it and quite honestly I
loved it. Now, this ground floor adobe has a garret quality and it makes me
smile.)
My Avocado is not happy. December 23, 2007
This is how my
avocado "Don Gillogly"
looks today, Dec. 23,
2007
Last winter my
avocado looked really
good. It had huge,
avocado leaves and
was basically thriving.
So, I decided to move
it to a larger pot,
where I thought it
would flourish for
many more years than
if I left it in the smaller
pot.
After I transplanted it I
saw that it had a lot of tiny avocados on eachsmall branch on one of its two
major branches. At first I thought they were flower buds, but later I saw that
they were minuscule avocados.
After I transplanted it, all the little avocados turned black and died. But I was
still thinking that in the long run, I'd done the right thing: it would be able to get
stronger in the larger pot, and next year it would be easier for it to have so
many avocados.
Then, come spring, I discovered that all my bulbs that I had planted in similar
cadmium red pots, had rotted and died -- every single one.
But . . . I thought maybe it was the potting soil, not the pot, since the potting
soil had those little pellets that absorb water. (It had been more costly, but I
thought the plants would like it, since it's quite arid here in Santa Fe.)
It was round about this same time that I took the avocado outside and
positioned it on my deck where it would get the most sunlight.
It seemed pretty happy to be out of the relatively dark living room, but it didn't
get any big leaves, all the leaves it produced were a fraction of the size of
normal avocado leaves. Still, I thought it was building up strength... till the
leaves began turning black, and many of them died.
Despite having little money, I went to see if I could find a pot like the one it
had been flourishing in, an unglazed stoneware pot. But there was none to be
found.
The little fig I had given the avocado's pot to was looking quite happy, if small.
Much as the avocado had looked happy, but large. So I didn't think I'd be
doing the plants a favor to transplant them yet again. Plus, maybe the avocado
was simply having a bad reaction to being transplanted.
I asked about danger from cadmium on the Treehugger forum where Aida
Cornelius used to do such a superb job of adding information, and learned that
yes, cadmium glaze on pots can affect the contents. So I felt really bad and so
sorry that I'd hurt my avocado that had been such a great plant.
This has been a worry for many months now and there seemed no hope in
sight until quite by lovely accident I "Stumbled Upon" Composting
Miracles which says, "Compost microorganisms not only convert organic
material into humus, but they also degrade toxic chemicals into simpler,
benign, organic molecules."
"In one experiment in which compost piles were laced with insecticides
and herbicides, the insecticide (carbofuran) was completely degraded, and
the herbicide (triazine) was 98.6% degraded after 50 days of composting.
Soil contaminated with diesel fuel and gasoline was composted, and after
70 days in the compost pile, the total petroleum hydrocarbons were
reduced approximately 93%. Soil contaminated with Dicamba herbicide at
a level of 3,000 parts per million showed no detectable levels of the toxic
contaminant after only 50 days of composting. In the absence of
composting, this biodegradation process normally takes years."
Because the article says composting binds lead to soil so that it isn't
absorbed by plants, I wondered, hopefully, if it would also bind cadmium.
When I had researched cadmium in pottery for the Treehugger forum, I
found some articles which suggested that fruit producing plants tended to
concentrate the toxins in the lower portions of the plant with the result
that less toxins were in the fruit.
So, when I saw that while my avocado's upper leaves were
small, its lower leaves were curled and deformed I felt as if it
was indeed concentrating the toxins in its parts closest to the
contaminated earth in the cadmium glazed pot. I felt so bad for
the avocado.
Now, reading this about the compost,
and seeing that a shallow layer on top
of soil is said to help, I gathered some
leaves that were blown into a pile by
my front door, crumbled them thickly
onto the soil in my avocado's pot,
covered them with coffee grounds
and earth scavenged from my other
plants, gave them a bit of a soaking with gold fish bowl dredge,
covered the lot with tinfoil, and took pictures so that I can
clearly see what changes take place. (Hopefully there will be
Great changes.)
I should have explained the tinfoil to start but I don't organize
well, and changing this whole page now would take a lot of time
and it's already after 10 p.m.
As I said, last spring my avocado was looking the worse for months of relative
darkness in my living room where the only windows are in the narrow
clerestory. So, during the summer when I read that tinfoil around a plant in
dim light could improve its growth, I tried tinfoil in my garden with results that
astonished me.
When I still had money
I was going to get Shoji
screens and put tinfoil
in them so that it would
look a bit like a decor
choice. However, the
need to conserve arrived
and I decided to simply
staple the tinfoil to the
wall. Ah yes, HORRORS!
To fend off comments
about crazies who wear
tinfoil hats or line their
homes with tinfoil for protection from, I'm not sure what it's supposed to
protect from, I put a finishing board along the top, to make it look like an
approximation of wainscotting. (I don't have quite enough of the trim, nor do I
have a wood cutting tool... shall we say
"saw", and Del doesn't have a battery
operated saw... So the picture at left is
cropped to show only the relatively complete
"wainscotting.")
You can see how extra light is reflecting off
the tinfoil onto the fireplace. I wonder if I
should put a pointer in, since it's a little less
obvious than I thought.
I'm hoping there's enough extra light so that
the avocado is happy. I've got the wall on the
far side of the fireplace almost done now and
I must say that it seems as if my camera's
shutter snaps quite a lot more quickly which
would appear to mean there's more light.
12/24/07 - 8 a.m.
17° outside
35° living room
40° hallway
42° my bedroom
13° overnight low
12/25/07 - 9:15 a.m.
32° outside
38° living room
40° hallway
48° my bedroom
13° overnight low
12/26/07 - 8:15 a.m.
10° outside
35° living room
38° hallway
47° my bedroom
10° overnight low
12/27/07 - 8:15 a.m.
16° outside
33° living room
35° hallway
45° my bedroom
9° overnight low
12/28/07 - 8:30 a.m.
13° outside
32° living room 0° C
37° hallway
40° my bedroom
9° overnight low
12/29/07 - 8:15 a.m.
15° outside
32° livingroom 0° C
37° hallway
40° my bedroom
6° overnight low
12/30/07 - 9:30 a.m.
31° outside
34° living room
38° hallway
40° bedroom
11° overnight low
12/31/07 - 8:00 a.m.
26° outside
38° living room
40° hallway
48° my bedroom
12° overnight low
1/1/08 - 9:30 a.m.
17° outside
39° living room
38° hallway
39° my bedroom
6° overnight low
1/2/08 - 8:30 a.m.
11° outside
34° living room
36° hallway
40° my bedroom
6° overnight low
1/3/08 - 9:00 a.m.
20° outside
38° living room
39° hallway
45° my bedroom
7° overnight low
1/4/08 - 10:00 a.m.
35° outside
42° living room
42° hallway
46° my bedrom
16° overnight low
Tinfoil: Related Research
Aluminum foil lamps outshine incandescent lights
6/4/07 - “Built of aluminum foil, sapphire and small amounts of gas, the
panels are less than 1 millimeter thick, and can hang on a wall like picture
frames,” said Gary Eden, computer and electrical engineering professor at
University of Illinois.
Like fluorescent lights, microcavity plasma lamps use atoms of a gas excited
by electrons to radiate light. Unlike fluorescent lights, microcavity plasma
lamps produce the plasma in microscopic pockets and
require no ballast, reflector or heavy metal housing.
The panels are lighter, brighter and more efficient than
incandescent lights and are expected, with further
engineering, to approach or surpass the efficiency of
fluorescent lighting.
A plasma panel consists of a sandwich of two sheets of
aluminum foil separated by a thin dielectric layer of clear
aluminum oxide (sapphire). At the heart of each lamp is a
small cavity, which penetrates the upper sheet of aluminum foil and the
sapphire.
“Each lamp is approximately the diameter of a human hair,” said visiting
research scientist Sung-Jin Park, lead author of the paper. “We can pack an
array of more than 250,000 lamps into a single panel.”
Completing the panel assembly is a glass window 500 microns (0.5
millimeters) thick. The window’s inner surface is coated with a phosphor film
10 microns thick, bringing the overall thickness of the lamp structure to 800
microns.
The researchers also demonstrated flexible plasma arrays sealed in polymeric
packaging. These could be mounted onto curved surfaces – on the insides of
windshields, for example.
The flexible arrays also could be used as photo-therapeutic bandages to treat
certain diseases – such as psoriasis – that can be driven into remission by
narrow-spectrum ultraviolet light, Eden said.
Funding was provided by the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research and
the Office of Naval Research.
So far, so good. It's staying lit with the clay pot over it, so it
must be able to draw enough air up through the grate of the
trolley to support combustion. Happiness!
But, will it be able to do that once I cover the top with a pot?
Nope. The smoke of extinction rose almost immediately --
dainty tendrils of smoke, but smoke none the less. And in
this case, where the smoke was, there wasn't fire.
One ongoing challenge with candle heating, is finding things
of incremental height to use to raise the candles as they burn
down. Now, I am going to have to find three things that were
all the same height.
Happily, in a box of shoe care items, I found
three jars of shoe polish, all the same height,
and about the right height, at that.
But, would they work? Would an air inlet
under the rim of the pot really make that
much difference when the whole of the
grate-like trolley had been an inlet?
I sure hoped so!
Of all the pots I tried, the deep skillet from Farberware with its
aluminum core base heated up the best. So the avocado now
has a little heater by its side.
From having had baseboard hot water heat, as well as electric
baseboard heat, I know that this is not the kind of heat that
makes an immediate difference.
Forced air heating heats the air, and makes a rapid difference to
the feeling of warmth in a room. But it turns off when it reaches
the thermostatic setting, and equally quickly the room cools
back down.
In order to keep rooms at the desired feeling of warmth the
thermostat is often turned higher with forced air, with the
unintended side affect of more blowing of hot air, sinus drying air.
Baseboard heat, on the other hand, heats the objects in a room, rather than the
air. It always took quite awhile to change the warmth of a room, but once it
did, it didn't take very much energy to keep the room feeling relatively warm.
The feeling of warmth is important to understand. With forced air, we (that is,
our bodies) are warmer than the things in a room, it is only the air that is
warmer, not the things. So the things absorb the heat from us more quickly
than from the air with the result that we feel cold.
In radiant heat, the source of the heat is a warm or hot object that radiates
heat. The radiated heat primarily warms things. Things hold heat better than air
does, so the heat lasts longer, and, it feels warmer because when we walk into
a room with radiant heat the things in that room are already warm and don't
attract our heat away from us.
December 26, 2007 - Last night I started to get cold here in my bedroom,
inside my tent. I didn't think much of it because it's quite cold outside. But,
when I went into the living room, the candle under the pot of water had gone
out -- the pot was cold. It took me twenty minutes to get a new candle in
place: I had to find something to elevate it since the shoe polish jars I was
using are now under the votive heating candles. An hour after I had it going
again my room began to feel warmer. So, the candles make a lot of difference.
I want to add three more, when Del has a chance to go
to Wal*Mart for me. I hope soon. I'm eager to see how
this will change things.
Later - He was able to go this afternoon. He also put
tinfoil on the ledge in front of the clerestory, and he
bought the rest of the trim for the "wainscotting."
I'm pretty sure the avocado is looking better. It doesn't
look as if it's going to die anymore. The real test will be
to see how it looks in a month.
One other thing I did, was to put a couple of my probiotic capsules into some
warm water. I opened one and poured its contents into the water, the other I
just dropped in. I did that because I was thinking that probably one of the
things that makes manure so healthy for plants is the bacteria from the cow's
I took this picture
of my avocado
shortly after I
transplanted it into
the cadmium red
pot. When it
arrived it had one,
tall, central stem.
It grew another
but I didn't bring it
in early enough in
the fall and the
leaves on the
second stem got
frost bitten.
digestive system. That's probably what releases the nutrients in the
compost.
I don't know if you've ever read, "Secrets of the Soil", but it's quite
esoteric... and tests the limits of ones beliefs, or maybe I should say, "my
beliefs." My friend Linda, who had been involved in some Rudolf Steiner
groups when she lived in England, gave it to me. (I'm a lot more staid in
my beliefs than she was.) So when I was reading about them packing cow
dung into cow horns and burying them, I was major skeptical. I believed
the dung turned into rich humus, I just didn't see the necessity of the cow
horns.
However, I believed it when they described roots packing themselves into
the horns as they devoured all of the humus if horns were left near any
roots.
Some warmer days are coming up, so maybe I can regain the
heat I lost when I had those big, frozen pots brought in.
I have another part of my appeal to do today. I would have
done it Friday but it was too cold for my printer. It is because
of the problem I am appealing that I don't have the money to
buy a wood stove or propane heater. I'm not impressed with
the corruption of the court in my district of New Mexico.
Well, that's not true, I'm extremely impressed, just not
favorably.
December 30, 2007 4:52 p.m. - I'm really tired and my eyes
burn. I'm pretty sure I'm feeling what the avocado is feeling.
December 31, 2007 - I've been trying to figure out why I got
so cold today when it was actually slightly warmer than a few
days ago. I think that seeing my avocado looking so limp
made me depressed and cold. And too, I was reading the
Brief from Rick Green who bought my condo at the auction I
1/02/08
1/5/08 - I forgot to
do the readings after
I saw the avocado
looking bad. Plus I
don't feel well from
forgetting
Methylcobalamin
for so many days.
1/6/08 - 11:30 a.m.
43° outside
43° living room
45° hallway
48° my bedroom
26° overnight low
(I took readings
when I got up but
failed to enter them.
So these are for this
time, not earlier.)
1/7/08 - I didn't
have enough
electricity to do this.
1/8/08 - 9:15 a.m.
27° outside
38° living room
42° hallway
48° my bedroom
25° overnight low
1/9/08 - 8:00 a.m.
20° outside
38° living room
39° hallway
45° my bedroom
18° overnight low
1/10/08 - I took all
the readings but it's
so sad to see the
avocado that I kept
thinking about it,
not as getting better,
and I therefore
didn't remember to
post here on the
getting better page.
1/11/08 - 8:30 a.m.
20° outside
37° living room
39° hallway
44° my bedroom
17° overnight low
1/12/08 - 9:30 a.m.
26° outside
39° living room
40° hallway
44° my bedroom
20° overnight low
1/13/08 - 9:30 a.m.
23° outside
38° living room
39° hallway
41° my bedroom
19° overnight low
1/14/08 - 10:30 a.m.
25° outside
37° living room
38° hallway
44° my bedroom
23° overnight low
1/15/08 - 8:00 a.m.
15° outside
37° living room
37° hallway
43° my bedroom
14° overnight low
1/16/08 - 9:00 a.m.
17° outside
36° living room
39° hallway
40° my bedroom
14° overnight low
1/17/08 - 9:30 a.m.
12° outside
34° living room
35° hallway
42° my bedroom
0° overnight low
1/18/08 - 9:00 a.m.
13° outside
34° living room
36° hallway
42° my bedroom
6° overnight low
1/19/08 - 10:30 a.m.
22° outside
33° living room
36° hallway
37° my bedroom
8° overnight low
(I went to sleep early
last night, so there
was less time with a
candle lit to keep
the heat up.
1/20/08 - 9:30 a.m.
23° outside
33° living room
35° hallway
37° my bedroom
12° overnight low
1/21/08 - 9:15 a.m.
33° outside
37° living room
38° hallway
43° my bedroom
13° overnight low
in to see it, now when I go to look
at it, it is with heavy heart because
of how sad it looks, if not dead or
dying.
Still, there may be hope for the
avocado if the compost is as
potent as the composting article
says.
Today is ten days since I watered
the avocado and its surrounding
compost materials with probiotics.
While I was going to wait a whole
50 days to see if the compost was
composting, I decided today that I
should turn what is there in an
effort to speed up composting (and
possibly to encourage me to not
give up hope).
I was very curious to see if there
appeared to be any composting
burned. I was thinking I'd have to
get some kind of pot I didn't mind
ruining with wax, and melt it all
and get some wicks... and it was
a lot to think about.
Then I began to wonder if I put
one of the large candles into a
glass jar or some kind, if the
candle would burn longer, like the
tall votive candles. I expected it
would. So I looked for a jar, and
none of mine had large enough
mouths to get the candle in. Then
I remembered my apothecary jar,
that I got to hold cotton balls and
look cute. I got it and sure
enough the candle fit in just fine,
an abnormal life cycle because of being brought indoors. I
should see if I can find a picture on the net of them, and see
what most likely laid them. (Oh, found them! They are
katydid eggs. There was a huge katydid in the house one
day last fall, and I took it back outside. I'm glad there will
be more of them. The site I found, What's That Bug, says
the eggs have to remain cool or they hatch too early.)
December 28, 2007 - My poor little avocado, it was
freezing in the living room this morning, literally. It's little
leaves were all drooping and I'm pretty sure it was shivering
internally.
My big living room candle had gone out during the early
hours of the morning, and the two saint votives I'd tried to
add under coffee cans had refused to stay lit. Still, it was six
degrees outside during the night, so thirty-two inside is
pretty good.
Of the five votive-candle heaters, the one I photographed
while I was making it, shown above, is putting out a lot of
So I had to wait a day till the sun was at the point where the
FLOAT LED light comes on and I get FLOAT energy, which
is the amount that is more than my batteries can hold. When
that time of day rolled around and the sun was high, there was
no blinking of my inverter lights to tell me there was a lot of
energy. (Sorry the image is unclear. But, see my reflection?)
I emailed Frank with what I observed and he suggested that it
could be the fuse. The fuse had been installed in a really
wonky way... so that seemed like a possibility.
I called around and finally found Mark whose office is not far
from here, and he agreed to come over and take a look.
Whew, what a great thing that was, since he corrected a few
things, so now I have fewer worries about my system, my
battery monitor works (and I LOVE it) and I don't have to
1/22/08 - 8:30 a.m.
18° outside
37° living room
39° hallway
43° my bedroom
14° overnight low
1/23/08 - 10:00 a.m.
32° outside
38° living rom
40° hallway
45° my bedroom
20° overnight low
I didn't use candles
in my bedroom
yesterday, though I
did heat three pots
of water for it.
1/24/08 - 10:00 a.m.
28° outside
39° living room
40° hallway
45° my bedroom
24° overnight low
1/25/08 - 8:30 a.m.
30° outside
40° living room
42° hallway
47° my bedroom
29° overnight low
I had a candle on in
my bedroom
because I was going
to wash my hair.
1/26/08 - 11:00 a.m.
An insult at a help
forum kept me
awake last night. A
programmer was
demeaning about
SiteBuilder, which I
used to make this
site, and me. I
could not have
done this without
SiteBuilder.
1/27/08 - 9:00 a.m.
30° outside
39° living room
41° hallway
47° my bedroom
27° overnight low
1/28/08 - 10:30 a.m.
39° outside
42° living room
44° hallway
50° my bedroom
35° overnight low
1/29/08 - 9:30 a.m.
23° outside
38° living room
40° hallway
43° my bedroom
19° overnight low
1/30/08 - 9:30 a.m.
28° outside
36° living room
38° hall way
45° my bedroom
17° overnight low
1/31/08 - 8:30 a.m.
23° outside
36° living room
37° hallway
39° my bedroom
14° overnight low
2/1/08 - 9:30 a.m.
28° outside
36° livingroom
38° hallway
45° my bedroom
19° overnight low
I had a candle on in
my bedroom most
of yesterday
because I was so
cold from the Bar
and Disciplinary
Board refusing to
answer my
questions re my
complaint about the
two lawyers' lies.
2/3/08 - 8:45 a.m.
22° outside
40° living room
41° hallway
47° my bedroom
19° overnight low
2/8/08 - 8:30 a.m.
37° outside
37° living room
39° hallway
43° my bedroom
26° overnight low
April 20, 2008 - I stopped writing here when my avocado began to look so
very dead. There may be life in its roots, but so far there's nary a shoot of
green emerging from the compost.
However, the fig is doing extremely well. That is, the fig by the tin foil. The fig
that's in front of the fireplace screen is not nearly as leafed out at the fig by the
tin foil. There's a fig on the left and right in this picture, see for yourself the
difference the tin foil has made.
Look at how many large leaves there are on the fig on the left, that's the plant
in the shiny stoneware pot, as compared to the fig on the right hand edge of
the photo, where a leaf is yet to unfurl from its bud.
I think I better try some larger images, to really show what has taken place.
Clearly tinfoil
helps in low light
areas.
This is almost
exactly the kind
of difference I
was able to show
in my garden.
Health Boundaries Bite
February 5, 2009 - My candle heating has gone through some big changes. I
think that if I can keep my home that next year I can happily have an avocado
without fear of it dying of the cold.
I've abandoned the use of terra cota flower pots to support my pots of water
over candles. The terra cota seemed to soak up the heat without radiating it
very well. I switched to coffee cans with holes to allow in air to assist the
combustion. You can see six of them, below.
This worked so well that I didn't have to live in my tent this year, at all. This is
not to say that my home was so warm I didn't need to wear warm clothes. In
fact I wore fleece, which I have come to love. For people struggling to make
ends meet, fleece may be less costly than paying for energy to heat individual
rooms or a whole house. Plus, I think it's healthy for our bodies to rev
themselves up and heat us, rather than primarily relying on an outside heat
source.
The candles are totally charming and beautiful at night, much more so than my
photography skills are able to show.
This image does not
do justice to the
flickering glow. It
does give some idea
of how the candles
look at night,
though. It is
incredibly relaxing to
sit and watch the
candles, and I've
slept so much better since I moved my bed into my living room. I think I have
a picture on my WorkingWell page of the quilt I chose to make it look a bit
more like a poet's loft than old person's bed. I can't tell you how much I love
this room, now.
But, I'm not sure that next year I will have a similar series of coffee cans and
candles. That's because when I was trying to keep my seedlings warm I
discovered that using a broiler tray over a few candles produces a lot of heat,
apparently more than the pots of water over the coffee cans and candles.
I'll have to take a picture this evening, so I can show you what it looks like. It's
a lot like a fire in a fireplace. (My fireplace isn't usable because it was built
with the studs too close to the firebox.)
I keep thinking about how a fireplace fire supplies a room with about 5% of
the heat from the burning logs. The rest goes up the chimney.
With my candles 100% of the heat stays in the room. (Obviously there would
be some point at which available air would become an issue, since I'm relying
on drafts from windows and doors, rather than a chimney for smoke
removal... which makes me wonder, does fresh air come in the chimney while
a fire is burning in a fireplace?)
Next year, (I hope I still have my home) I think I will use bricks to build little
piers to support the trays... I've already purchased two more trays. It appears
that I can get about the same degree of heat from three or four candles under a
tray as I had from my oil filled radiators when they were on High.
I'm so stoked! (I'm old and can remember old days when men went down to
the basement to stoke the fire so that the central heating radiators would be
warm for their family.)
