Thanksgiving Blessing

Thank you, Earth, for your abundant bounty.
I gratefully receive your blessings.
For the air I breathe, I thank the plants and trees.
The air, the fire, the water, and the earth.
Thank you for sustaining my life and nourishing me.
For the blessings of loved ones who help me along life’s path, I am thankful.
My life is full to overflowing with gifts of ancestors.
Courageous souls who survived, and made my life possible.
Thank you great spirits of the cosmos, for the lessons I sometimes try to avoid, but which I need.
And for the joys and pains which open my spirit and expand my heart.
I am grateful for health, abundance, and challenges, each unique.
Thank you all who have touched my life’s journey.
Each new day is a gift, to which I pledge the best of myself.
For the blessings of life’s great circle continue in me.
From the cave to the stars, I have always been and will always be.
I am rich in the things that matter.
With my deepest gratitude, I offer my blessings to all on this day.

~ from Llewellyn's "Witches' Spell-A-Day Almanac,"

Tale of an Orange

Some thing to consider in this time of high fuel prices is how these cost translate into the cost of our food in the grocery store. My husband and I have been in the tranportation industry for over 13 years. The majority of the loads that we have been paid to haul were food items, either produce or livestock.

A few years back we hauled a load of oranges (48,000 pounds) from California to Florida. It seemed strange to us that Florida would need more oranges, since a majority of oranges already grown in that state. But that was not the suprising and mind-blowing part of the story.

After we delivered our load of oranges to the Sunkiss Plant we picked up new load of oranges at the same plant to be delivered back to California! This seemed even odder than bringing California oranges to Florida now we were take them back. So my husbands asked the dock workers what was the story, what did they do at this plant?

We were told by the dock foreman that all this plant did was stick the little Sunkiss label on the oranges. We were shocked, to say the least. We would be using 600 gallons of fuel to bring these oranges to Florida and 600 gallons to take them back to California.

Back in those days we were paid about $1.05 per mile, so that added to about $6,300 added to the cost of those California oranges just so they could have a little Sunkiss label stuck on them. That translates to about 13 cents per pound. This was the practice for millions of pounds oranges per year.

I would think that the company would want to build another label sticking plant in California near where the oranges are grown, instead of shipping them across the country and then shipping back so they could be shipped out to the grocery stores.

So let us fast forward to the present, just suppose that this practice is still continuing, which I have no knowledge that it is, but just for the sake of argument let us pretend that it is, the cost would look something like this.

6000 miles @ $1.35 per mile with a fuel service charge of 28 cents per mile, equals $9,780.
$9,780 divided by 48,000 pounds equals 20 cents per pound added cost to oranges.

It seems to me that this is a very wasteful use of diesel fuel just so a company can have a "branded product". As a small company that depends on the transportation of goods from one point to another, some would say we should be grateful for the work, however we look at it from a different point of view.

Yes, it is nice to have work now, but my husband and I have a little longer point of view. What will happen to everyone when prices of fuel go higher than they already are, right after Katrina hit we were paying as much as $3.95 per gallon for our truck fuel. You will be seeing the impact of those price we were paying in the supermarket in about 3 to 6 months, especially hard hit will be your budget for meat, including chicken and pork.

We would like to see a more logical use of our resources, that insures that the food distribution chain can be maintained for as long as possible. Making a quick buck today at the expense of our ablity to survive tomarrow is not a prudent way to care for our fellow citizens.

Walmart goes Pagan

Just in time for Samhaim

Wal-mart has now made it possible for the low-income and rural witchs to have access to quaility reading and instructional material. They no longer have to hide out in the back row of a big city book store or get their insturctional guides in plain brown packages from Amazon.

Witches are cool and mainstream with this wink and a nod from the world's largest retailer-- so come out of your broom closet and fly down to your local walmart to get the latest in hexs and spells.

Look for these fine titles:
The Wicca Bible; The Difinitive Guide to Magic and the Craft
Wicca & Witchcraft for Dummies
The Witch Next Door; Seperating Fact from Fiction about Witchcraft, Wicca, Goddess Worship and Neo-Paganism.
The Witch Book; The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft, Wicca and Neo-Paganism
The Everything Wica and Witchcraft Book; Unlock the Secrets of Ancient Rituals, Spells, Blessings and Sacred Objects.

But the best part is sitting in the parking lot watching confussed ravid fundies trying to figure out were they can buy cheap plastic crap.

MERRY SAMHAIM!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Welcome to Peak Oil

In the last year I have recieved a number of e-mails concering gas prices, these range form petitions to the president to lower the gas price to boycotting "American Oil Companies" that import Middle East oil.

In my opinion some of these ideas are just plain silly at best and delusional at worst. So I would like to share my thoughts as to why I feel this way and some of the information I have gathered that has made me come to this point of view.

• Petition the president to bring down the price of gas.
  You have got to be kidding, GW is not nor will ever be inclined to cap potentional profits of any of his oil contributors. If you want the price of gas to come down, STOP BUYING THE STUFF!!
  Especially if you want to keep the trucks running that bring the food to your local grocery store. FYI, Even the health food stores and farmers markets have to use trucks to get their goods, maybe smaller ones, but they still run on some kind of fuel.
  
  
• Boycott US Oil Companies that import Middle East Oil.
  The US companies import oil because the Americian public demands it. If we didn't import oil from the Middle East we would have less than half of the oil we use daily. That works out to be about $12 per gallon gas.

• Petition the government to release oil from the Stratigic Reserve so that gas prices will be lower at the pump.
  Well I guess that would work, if you don't mind paying higher prices in the form of taxes to replace it, so our first responders have fuel when we have a real gas crisis.
  
  

• Why GW's release of reserves in response to Katrina was doublly dumb!!--
  
• 1.) The reason prices went up so high right after the hurricane was that our REFINING CAPASITY was impacted. On a good day our refineries are runing at maximun capasity, when the storm hit that capasity was REDUCED hence the PRICE went UP. What GW released to help bring prices down was CRUDE!!! It still needed to be REFINED!!!
  
  2.) The largest stratigic reserve tank farm in the US is near New Orleans! So, where was all this crude we were suppose to get come from exactly??? That is a question I keep asking and looking for an answer. The reason this is important is: if the oil that was to be released was to come from the LA depot, then in effect, NO OIL COULD HAVE BEEN RELEASED because the pipeline from the tank farm to the refineries was damaged!!

• Welcome to PEAK OIL, and this is just the beginning. If you don't know about PEAK OIL I have included a few links. There are tons more on the internet, these are just some of my favorites. You should just get use to the high prices and start weaning yourself off the stuff now, before you are forced to.

Websites:
Life After the Oil Crash
Peak Oil ORG
Peak Oil NET
Peak Oil COM
Hubbert Peak
Surviving Peak Oil
From the Wilderness; Comprehensive overview of Politics>Oil>The American Empire.

Web Articles:

The Olduvai Theory
The Long Emergency (From Rolling Stone)
The Long Emergency (From Common Dreams ORG)
International Oil Production by Nation

Books:

The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight : Waking Up to Personal and Global Transformation, By Thom Hartman (low key, not too frightening)

The Party's Over : Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies, by Richard Heinberg

The End of Oil : On the Edge of a Perilous New World, by Paul Roberts

Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil, by Mike Rupert (this is a hard read, will keep you awake at night)

The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of the Oil Age, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-first Century, by James Howard Kunstler (makes you question everything you think you know about "The American Dream".)

An argument for owning a Diesel F250 Ford Pickup

I am like many people that don’t have a large income and want to live in the least impacting way on this planet as possible. So you may ask, why I would argue that one should own “the bad boy” of personal transportation? The answer is simple, I think that this pickup truck may hold the answer to living very close to “oil free” at the most reasonable cost. Now you may think I have been sucking in excessive amounts of exhaust from these monsters and begun to hallucinate, but that is not the case at all, let me explain.

In the last few years there have been more car manufacturers producing electric and electric-hybrid cars. This is a positive step forward but it means that you basically have to buy a NEW car because not many are in the used car market at this time. You may even have a hard time test-driving one because almost all US car dealers have a waiting list for new hybrid cars that are delivered. In some cases you may have to put down a $500 deposit just to get on the waiting list. When all is said and done hybrids still need gasoline, granted less but you still caught in the oil addiction cycle.

On the other hand, with fuel cost on the rise, used diesel pickups are easy to find and in some cases relatively inexpensive. In a search on autotrader.com I was able to find 20, 1997 to 1993 diesel pickups for sale within 50 miles of my home in western Idaho, in the price range of $6,000 to $10,000. I am sure that most people can find similar prices in their area if they do a little looking.

I know that $6,000 to $10,000 is a lot of money, however it is quite a bit less than the $23,000 to $32,000 charged for a new hybrid car or SUV. There are other money saving advantages to owning these pickups, the first is that most states have a flat tag fee for registering a vehicle that is more than 7 years old, in Idaho it is $35. Secondly, if you have a clean driving record, no DUI’s, and then the insurance can be less, especially if you don’t have to borrow money to purchase the pickup. Finally, diesel engines can last a very long time if properly maintained, you shouldn’t have to many engine worries with a pickup that has over 100,000 miles if you can get the service records when you buy one.

How can a diesel pickup be environmentally friendly and “oil-free”?

I must first ask you a few things, if you can answer “yes” to all of them then you should keep reading, if not then I would recommend that you keep saving your money or you go buy the highest MPG car you can afford and wait till used hybrids are in a price range you can afford.

1. Do you have one day a week available that you are willing to spend towards oil independence?
2. Do you have $5,000 over a down payment on the pickup you can invest towards your oil independence?
3. Are you a creative problem solver, and don’t mind living outside conventional norms?
4. Would you like to have 70 cents a gallon vehicle fuel available all the time?
5. Do you have a garage or shed?
6. Would you like never having to take your auto in for an oil change again?
7. Would you like to be able to travel 1,000 miles and not have to stop for fuel?
8. (Optional) Do you have fuel oil heaters in your house, which are No. 2 diesel compatible?
9. (Optional) Would you like to have cheap fuel for a back-up generator for times of power blackouts?

If you answered yes to these questions or are just curious let me explain the solution.

BIODIESEL and GULF COST OIL FILTRATION SYSTEM

If you don’t know about biodiesel, then it is basically recycled fry grease from your favorite restaurant, such as Micky D’s or Bu’ger King. There are many good information sites on the web about biodiesel if you want more information. There are a few terms you will run across in your information search that you should be aware of that I will explain here.

• SVO (straight vegetable oil)- this is basically filtered fry grease or new vegetable oil that is used in autos and other things that use oil-base fuel. This is not what I am referring to in this article.
• B100- 100% high-grade refined vegetable oil, made from either used fry grease or new vegetable oil, used in diesel engines and other equipment that would normally use petroleum diesel. This is the fuel discussed in this article.
• B50- Mix of 50% B100 and 50% petroleum diesel fuel.
• B20- Mix of 20% B100 and 80% petroleum diesel fuel.

It is possible according to all the information I researched that any diesel car or truck made after 1990 can run on B100 without modifications to the engine, the only modification that I found mentioned for pre-1990 diesel engines is the replacement of the natural rubber fuel lines and o-rings. As I understand, vegetable based oils are corrosive to natural rubber, but don’t affect synthetic rubber.

Department of Energy has published studies that state:

"B100 is a less polluting alternative to petroleum diesel with greatly reduced greenhouse emissions and sulfates that cause acid rain."

The one big draw back to wide use of B100 is that it is hard to find and secondly, if you can find it at a local filling station it is often up to a dollar a gallon more than petroleum diesel. I am the kind of person that wants to do what is good for the planet but I also hate lining the pockets of big corporations. When I see the cost of B100 locally, I get the feeling that some big money interest is involved and I don’t want to put my hard earned dollars in their bank account.

With continued search I found a small company, I like small companies, Biodiesel Solutions that makes a B100 refining system you can set up in your garage. The basic system cost about $3,000 plus shipping, there are basic supply costs that you will have to get but for around $3,500 you can own your own B100 refinery.

According to Biodiesel Solutions, you can make a 40-gallon batch in about 12 hours with only 1 hour of hands-on time. I early mentioned that it would require about a day per week to declare your oil independence, I allotted a couple of hours spent picking up your fry grease from the restaurants.

Costs for making a gallon of B100, assuming that you are getting your fry grease for free, are about 70 cents per gallon for other supplies that you need. All the B100 made in this system can be used in any engine that uses No. 2 diesel, including heaters, generators, tractors, semi-trucks, buses and heavy equipment. The amount of cheap fuel you have available is only limited to the amount of fry grease you can collect.

For those if us that live in colder climates, you need to take extra steps in the winter to prevent B100 from gelling. In your pickup or equipment engines you can use a 50% mix or 20% mix with No. 1 winterized diesel. Having a heated garage would also be helpful, that is not too hard to solve visit the Clean Burn site for a shop heater that can use both used motor oil and B100. There is also a B100 anti-gel additive available (I have yet to find good source information) that can be used to prevent cold weather gelling problems.

You may have recognized that one is still not oil free with just running B100 in your fuel tank; the motor oil still needs changing. There is a company that sells oil filtration systems that are installed on diesel engines that allows you to never change your oil again, just the filters. After installation you will need to change the oil one time after the break-in period, but after that you only need to change the filters and add a little to top the system off.

These systems have been used by the US Army on tanks and by the navy in submarines. They have even been tested on over the road trucks. The test truck has been in service for 9 years and driven over a million miles with only two oil changes, the first for the break-in and the second for a ruptured oil pan gasket. This system doesn’t need special oil, just the regular oil that your equipment manufacturer recommends and Gulf Coast Filters. These systems cost between $900 and $2,800 for semi-trucks and heavy equipment.

To complete this rig, install a 50-gallon bed fuel tank that connects directly to the fuel system. These fuel tanks cost about $900 plus installation or you can install it yourself for free.

This fuel tank addition will give your pickup about a 1,000-mile travel distance when you have all your tanks full, provided that your pickup has fuel mileage of about 10 to 12 MPG. Most rural commuters would be able to go two weeks to a month on this amount of travel distance.

There you have it, an alternative powered vehicle that cost about 7-cents per mile to operate, and needs very little petroleum product input, that costs less then a new hybrid car. You also gain the added advantage of being able to pull a boat or camper or if you are looking for a little extra cash, hire out to friends and family to haul their big loads on the weekend.

It sure is something to think about.