Gravely 526 Snowblower

Gravely 5260 six lead snowblowing
Not Uniberp, but this operator has a happy, enthusiastic audience.
Uniberp deals with the snow:

I have a gravely 526 model L garden tractor, which was a perfect tool for clearing brush and snow here. I happened across it and took it home for a few hundred, and I've barely put a dime into it over the last 5 years.
It has a snowblower attachment, which works really well, and it has to. We occasionally get a couple feet of snow in a couple days an I have a 200 foot driveway to clear.
To be sure I was prepared for this winter, I had this part built, since it was badly designed to begin with, and was going to fail. It had one broken yoke when I bought it, which I was able to fix for a few bucks, but it is loose fitting.
It's bizarre, the preoccupation I had with getting this done. I couldn't stand the thought of buying a consumer model snowblower, Lisa has one and it is a horribly crude thing. Mine you can guide with one finger, at times.

Top: Original Gravely Double U-Joint
Bottom: New, Improved, Custom made unit.

It cost him a couple of hundred bucks to buy the necessary parts and pay the machinist for his time, but obsession knows no bounds. Or good tools are worth their weight in gold. Your choice.
Discussion on My Tractor Forum here.

Update March 2017 replaced character's name with handle.

The Po-Po versus the People

Windy Pundit has a post this morning about people black getting shot by the police, that prompted me to comment:

I don't want to focus on just this case, or any one case, because crucial details are inevitably obscure, and any time you start digging into them, someone's emotions inevitably get stirred up, which tends to make any available information suspect.

I think the sad state of the economy has a lot to do with it. People who want a good job, but don't have one, are resentful of people who do. And people who do have good jobs are deathly afraid of losing them. If you are a police officer with a family to support, you are going to be loathe to give up your job with it's salary and benefits, so much so, that you might be inclined to ignore any internal problems your gang might have.

On the other side, we have neighborhood communities who have developed their own culture. I don't know whether it is minorities, poor people, or maybe it's just people who have warm hearts and have not learned how to be cold hearted capitalists, but they care more about their gang than any nit-picky little laws 'the man' might be trying to enforce.

The War-On-Drugs is part of the problem. Because the profit margins are so high, it provides people with a way to make a living. Because it's illegal, it is a constant source of friction between the police and those communities who earn their living from it.

Long Ago & Far Away

Frank Leslie's
Popular Monthly
April, 1882
THE LIFE-SAVING SERVICE ON THE GREAT LAKES.
Found on a very long page of the Kenrick A. Claflin & Son catalog.

It would be nice to have a larger, higher resolution version of this image. You could get one by scanning the original, which can be yours for a mere $68.

Football

A Tale of Four Quarterbacks

Bram Kohlhausen, TCU

Trevone Boykin, TCU

Vernon Adams, Jr., Oregon

Jeff Lockie, Oregon

Watched a little football with my sweetie this afternoon. The University of Oregon Ducks were playing the Texas Christian University Horned Frogs (TCU) in the Alamo Bowl in San Antonio. It was kind of an interesting game. Trevone Boykin, TCU's star quarterback, got in brawl New Year's Eve, which led to his being suspended and not playing in today's game, so Oregon starts the game with a big advantage. They made the most of it, racking up 31 points by halftime. TCU meanwhile has not scored any points. But Vernon Adams gets hurt and sits out the second half of the game. Bram Kohlhausen is quarterbacking for TCU and Jeff Lockie takes over for Oregon. In the second half of the game, TCU scores 31 points and Oregon scores zip, leaving the game tied. So now the game goes into overtime, and by the end of the 3rd overtime period TCU scores and Oregon fails to answer and so TCU wins the game. Apparently who is quarterbacking your team is kind of important. But that's not why I am writing this.
      During one play in the second half Bram decides to hold onto the ball and run with it. He runs a few yards and then gets knocked down by a couple of big Oregon players. It's football, that's kind of expected. But he gets hit kind of hard and he sits out for a minute. One of the commentators says something to the effect that he has his whole life to recover from being hit, but this game is his chance at glory or something, so suck it up and play, mofo. What an effin' asshat.
      I've played some sports, just for fun, and then can be fun to play, but I never really got into this winning business. Didn't really understand why people made such a big deal about it. You go out, you play, you get some exercise, you might make some good moves, you might complete a complicated play (one guy throws the ball, another guy catches it!), and you can feel good about that, but winning or losing? I'm sorry, but I could care less. Well, getting hammered by a much better team can be a drag, but if you are reasonably well matched, then the play is what's important, not the score.
     So this announcer, making a big deal out of this bowl game like it's something special, is a moron. Criminently. The high point of this kid's life happens when he is 20 years old? That's pretty effin' sad.

Desperation

Faith, Hope & Charity (top to bottom, right to left)
RAF Typhoons over the Falkland Islands

Tam put up a post about RAF Flight 1435, originally from Malta, but now stationed in the Falkland Islands. Flight 1435 became famous in the early years of WW2 when they used their three Gloster Gladiator biplanes to repel Italian bombers. The three biplanes were called Faith, Hope and Charity. The Flight has lived on, the airplanes have been periodically replaced, and at some point it acquired a fourth aircraft which was christened Desperation. Desperation seems a bit incongruous for a name compared to the original three, but the situation in Malta did get a little desperate, so maybe the name is fitting.
    The Flight is now equipped with Typhoons, aka the Eurofighter. Could not find a photo of the four aircraft together, the best I could do was three (the ones in the photo above). But where's Desperation? Here's one.

Charity & Desperation (front to back, right to left)

A couple of the original Gloster Gladiator biplanes on Malta.
(Link goes to a history of the Royal Navy's fighters)

Why Thomas Aquinas Distrusted Islam

Saint Thomas Aquinas
An altarpiece in Ascoli Piceno, Italy, by Carlo Crivelli (15th century)

West Virginny Sharon sent me an article, Why Thomas Aquinas Distrusted Islam by Thomas D. Williams, originally posted on Breitbart dot com. Saint Thomas Aquinas, if you recall, was a 13th Century Italian friar, scholar and priest. Don't confuse this guy with Thomas More (A Man For All Seasons), a 16th Century Englishman, or Thomas Becket, a 12th Century English Archbishop. (Confused yet? I know I was.)
     Mohammed founded Islam in the 7th Century. By this point Christianity was well established in Europe and parts of Africa. Islam got started in the Arabian Peninsula, which is mostly desert, and hot, nasty desert at that.
    So why hadn't Christianity taken hold in Arabia? Perhaps because Christians need water? Maybe the harsh desert climate makes people a little crazy, and it took a crazed warlord to bring a semblance of civilization to that benighted land. So Saint Tom might be right about Islam, but Islam has managed to flourish where Christianity failed to make inroads.

The Breitbart article used a much more modern looking picture of Saint Thomas, though it appears to be from the same era.

P.S. I wonder if Friar Tuck invented Fried Chicken. I mean, have friars ever been employed as friers?

Books

Books I've read recently that were pretty good. The links go other places if you want to find out more about them. I have something to say about them, but my energy supply is a little low these days.
Flash at the Charge by George MacDonald Fraser
The Secret Place by Tana French
The Heist by Daniel Silva

Previous posts about books by the same author(s)
Broken Harbor by Tana French
In the Woods by Tana French