Tim Carter lives on the west shore of Lake Winnisquam in central New Hampshire. A typical Saturday in the summer would have many many boats skittering about after lunch on a warm sunny day.
Look at how many you see.
This is the Old Tech building on the University of Cincinnati campus in its death throes. It's quite possible this photo was taken just as the excavator bucket was about to claw into the Fenneman Room on the first floor. It's such a sad photo but some bricks were salvaged by the Geology Department and offered for sale as mementos. I have no recollection, as an alumni, of hearing about the sale. I would have gladly paid $25 for one. But through the generosity and thoughtfulness of Drs. Huff and Kilinc we both received 4 x 2-1/2 x 3/4" slices of Old Tech brick. I assure you these tiny slices of history are now treasured possessions. Look below for a photo of this rare piece of history.
By: Tim Carter, BS-1974 and Phil Clymer, MS-1979
The Department of Geology at the University of Cincinnati (UC) used to have a magic room called the Fenneman Room. It was a room honoring the memory of Nevin Fenneman, a famous American geologist who taught for many years at UC. It was unique because it was a space set aside for undergraduate geology students. It was theirs alone and all graduate students and faculty crossed the threshold as guests.
The hallowed nondescript room met its dusty fate in 1990 when the high-strength steel talons of a giant yellow excavator machine transformed its plaster walls and ceiling into a pile of debris to be buried in an unmarked grave at a local landfill.
This is a slice of one of the bricks salvaged from the Old Tech building. Unfortunately, I believe the 1907 date is technically wrong. The building was built in 1901-02 and ready for occupancy in March of 1902. The full ownership of the building transferred to the College of Engineering at UC in 1907.
The Fenneman Room that was on the first floor of the Old Tech building has already transformed from history to legend because the now newer combined Geology/Physics building on the UC campus has no such gathering place for undergraduates.
This collaboration of memories between myself and Phil Clymer, a lifelong friend I met on my first geology field trip out West, is meant to preserve the memories created there and to inspire someone in the future to create a similar room at some college or university.
Here I am the summer of 1972. I was out West on my first geology field trip. Phil is the shadow in the passenger seat of Big Red, a beefy 4x4 International owned by the UC Geology department. I had met Phil for the first time just days before when about 20 of us went on a two-week Southwest field trip led by Dr. Len Larsen. Copyright 2022 Tim Carter
Phil and I spent countless hours in the room together along with many other geology students between 1972 and 1974. Other students got to enjoy the one-of-a-kind room for sixteen more years after we had graduated from UC. This article was created so the Fenneman Room doesn't become a myth.
The Fenneman Room was extraordinary as you’re about to discover. It quite possibly was the only room on the vast campus of UC that was set aside for undergraduates. Lifetime friendships were born and nourished in this room. Some students, like me, got to see the relaxed side of a few of the brilliant professors that spent time with us undergraduates in the room when they popped in to chit chat.
It’s hard to believe that a simple 12x14-foot space in a 70-year-old brick building with 12-foot ceilings could have such a profound and lasting effect on geology students, but trust us, it’s true as you’re about to discover.
Are you a geology major at the University of Cincinnati as you read this? Perhaps you’re pursuing a graduate degree or are a faculty member. You no doubt spend lots of your time in the combined Physics and Geology building who’s foundation roots penetrate into the clay soil of what used to be University Drive, a public road that once extended east from Clifton Avenue into Avondale.
When you exit the south doors under the dark and gloomy porte cochere of the combined Geology/Physics monolith, that valley in front of you used to be Snake Drive that slithered into the south end of Burnet Woods.
Time, under the guise of progress, has a tendency to erode important historical features, elements, and most of all, fond and pleasant memories.
It’s been a few years since I’ve been in the sterile cast-concrete building you now call home, and I can’t recall if in the wide main hallways there might be a framed photograph of Old Tech. If not, you should do whatever is necessary to find one, frame it, and place it in the main lobby in a place of honor.
Old Tech was my geology building. Thousands of students and faculty who preceded me and Phil also called it home. Imagine how many students and teachers gather in Old Tech from the early 1900s until the large rectangular two-story brick building met its doom in 1990. You can see a photo of this happening at the end of this article I devoted to the Old Tech building.
The red rectangle is the approximate location of the Old Tech building at the University of Cincinnati.
The Old Tech building came to be as a partnership between the University of Cincinnati and the Technical School of Cincinnati. You can read the entire history of the conception, construction, and renovation/expansion of Old Tech over the years here.
Phil and I attended UC from 1970-1974. At the time, Old Tech was the oldest standing building on the campus. Its grave is located due east of the landmark McMicken Hall College of Arts and Sciences in what is now the center of McMicken Commons. The red rectangle in the above satellite image of the UC campus shows the approximate location and size of Old Tech.
This is the south facade of Old Tech. You can see the wide sidewalk to the west that was a direct connection between the Physics building and bookstore and the Quadrangle just to the east of the Physics building.
Old Tech was a magnificent old solid brick building constructed between 1901 and 1902. I’d say the building was every bit of 50 feet wide and 200 feet long. Its foundation was built using hand-hammered pieces of the Bellevue Formation limestone probably harvested from the massive limestone quarry just 1/4 mile away that’s now Fairview Park.
The L-shaped green area is the old huge limestone quarry. The foundation stone of thousands of nearby buildings was harvested from here. Copyright 2022 Google, Inc.
You can travel on the floor of this quarry if you walk or drive on Fairview Park Drive and look out across the Mill Creek Valley. This quarry provided foundation stone for thousands of houses and small businesses as well as stones for local retaining walls.
Old Tech had a very structured layout. There was a center hall that ran north/south for the entire length of the building on both floors. When you entered the front door, you walked past a wide stairway that led to the second floor. There was a massive basement that had a huge darkroom where countless rolls of film were developed and black-and-white prints made for dissertations.
I spent many hours in this darkroom developing rolls of my own film as well as that of graduate students who had no darkroom skills. I also made hundreds and hundreds of black-and-white photographs of my own rock specimens and prints for graduate theses.
This is a photo I shot in the basement of Old Tech using the special light table and a macro lens. I then developed the film myself and made this 8x10 glossy print. Darkroom magic is now mythical. One wonders if you can even buy the chemicals used to develop film and prints. I still have the ruler used in this photo for scale!
The basement was also used for storage. The main pipe that provided the heat to the building entered into the basement. All the buildings on the UC campus got their heat and hot water from a central plant that was located at the north end of Nippert Stadium. All other mechanical aspects of the building could be found in the cavernous belly of this massive building.
Classrooms, administration offices, and faculty offices could be found on both floors. However, Old Tech had one special room that we are quite sure no other college department on campus had - The Fenneman Room.
This smallish room was on the first floor of Old Tech south of the center door and on the west side of the building. It was located between Dr. Paul Potter’s office and the fossil museum. He had the patience of Job and/or the plaster walls were so thick he never heard our hooting and hollering each day.
Dr. Potter could be heard in the early morning writing the outline of his day’s activity on his slate black board. He was famous for talking to himself while he wrote. On the other side of the room was the fossil museum, which was devoted to vast collections of Upper Ordovician fossils collected from the Cincinnati area.
The museum was also home to a skeleton that was rumored to be either a mammoth or perhaps a mastodon. In reality it was the skeleton of a circus elephant, named Old Chief, that had gone rogue while performing locally. He was a treasured guest, and the paleontology grad students who officed in the museum found that he made a dandy Christmas tree when adorned with some ornaments and colored lights.
There was an unverified rumor that Old Chief’s hide had been preserved and was in fact stored in the mysterious and off-limits attic space of Old Tech. Several student groups were thought to have attempted to breach the attic through the narrow and steep stairway located in one of the classrooms. Whether any succeeded in penetrating the space is unknown.
Thinking back on the furniture arrangement in the room, it was probably 14 x 12 feet. Its windows faced the wide sidewalk students used to get from the quadrangle to the Tangeman University Center (TUC) and all other buildings on the south side of the campus.
This concrete path was a superhighway of succulent eye candy for many of us male students overflowing with testosterone. Spring was the favorite time of year to open the large windows and admire the young lasses that would saunter by in halter tops, a clothing trend of the times.
In the 1970s and before, geology was primarily a male-dominated science. I could count on one hand the number of women undergrad and graduate students in our Geology Department between 1972-74. Over the next few years, that imbalance started to correct itself. Today, and it's a very good thing, there are many many women geologists, professors, and students. Someone needs to tamp down all the boisterous boys!
This is the west facing long wall of Old Tech. That sidewalk was alive with tasty eye candy each balmy spring day. The Fenneman Room windows were just below the fire escape platform you see at the second-story windows.
This room was named after Nevin Fenneman, a famous geologist who had a very long career at UC. For all we know, it could have been his office. This simple space was given to the undergrad geology students as an informal place to meet, chat, study, tell tall tales, and who knows, maybe even kiss your girlfriend when alone on a Friday night sitting on the worn-out couch.
Every other undergrad on campus had to find their friends in the boisterous and crowded TUC building, the library, or sitting outside on the grassy knolls spread out all over campus in warm weather.
We geology students had our own comfortable private room to hang out and forge bonds with our peers, grad students, and the faculty.
Getting a geology degree meant that the outdoors was also one of your classrooms. Local and long-distance field trips originating from the Fenneman Room were as common as cans of coveted Coors beer brought back from Colorado.
What better place to hunt for fossils than the exposed limestone and shale cliffs within miles of the Fenneman Room? These local rocks were part of the world-type section of the Upper Ordovician time period. That really didn't mean much to us undergrads, but the professors sure understood how lucky we were.
Who would think that humble Cincinnati, Ohio would also be one of the best places to study the enormous power of continental glaciers, the second-last one changing the course of the mighty Ohio River about 600,000 years ago.
Who would ever guess that Central Parkway was built on top of a glacial outwash plain created by ice-cold meltwater carrying untold tons of sand and gravel from the 3,000-foot-tall glacier just a few miles north of the present Mill Creek Valley? A field trip to the now abandoned Rack Sand and Gravel pit or the overlook at Alms Park on a crisp autumn Saturday morning to witness the power of Mother Nature is the stuff memories are made from.
This is the glacial geology map of the state of Ohio. It shows the different geologic evidence of the massive continental glaciers. Copyright 2022 State of Ohio
Few, if any, other majors at UC had these required field trips. When you went on one, you got to see a slightly different side of your professor. A typical professor would tend to be far more rigid in a classroom inside Old Tech. The field trips allowed students and faculty to relax and this fuzzy relationship extended into the Fenneman Room.
The Fenneman Room had at its center a 6 to 7-foot-long standard table. It was identical to the others we sat at in the Old Tech classrooms. The one end of the table was jammed up tight against the window wall. The table was the center of activity, allowing some of us to finish assignments and homework, drink coffee in the morning, eat lunch, host debates, brag about rock or fossil samples, etc.
As you walked into the room, there was a small closet on your right where a refrigerator chugged away. On the south wall to your left a frumpy old couch accepted us and our guests. On several occasions my future wife and I would spend time in it during a break in classes senior year. At least one overstuffed upholstered chair was across from the couch next to the windows in the corner of the room.
There were no whiteboards, laptops, nor Internet back in the 1970s. Several discussions made it crystal clear we needed a large writing surface. One day Phil and I went hunting in all the dark spaces of Old Tech. Soon we discovered an old neglected blackboard.
Knowing we’d never get permission to install the board in our room, Phil and I decided to install it ourselves on the wall across from the windows just south of the door. We honed our fledgling home improvement skills one evening when everyone else had gone home. I remember borrowing my dad’s drill to install anchors to hold up the heavy slate. Looking back, we were so lucky we didn’t drill into a pipe or a wire! There's no doubt the professors saw this new improvement, but never questioned how it came to be.
The room was cozy, it was comfortable, and it was ours. It was an oasis of friendship and comradery.
Dr. Lawrence Lattman was the head of the Geology Department in the early 1970s. He was a brilliant geomorphologist with an outgoing personality. I distinctly remember several days he’d saunter into the room, pull up a chair, and proceed to eat his bagged lunch.
He’d tell tales of past field trips and share life lessons about all sorts of non-geology topics. You’d think it was your uncle in the room, not a dry and authoritarian professor. Dr. Lattman was a gentleman and he understood how to communicate with undergraduates like me.
Phil and I became friends with Dr. Lattman and I recall he hired us to paint the kitchen at his home just a few miles away in the gaslight district of Clifton. He may have had us do other work, but I don’t recall it at this time.
Dr. Lattman taught me two survival lessons. One was to always stay hydrated when out West. He talked about how the humidity is so low that when you perspire it almost immediately evaporates. Dehydration and death are constant threats during the summer in the Southwest.
He also talked about flash floods. I had no clue about these although I had seen them on a very small scale after heavy rain in Cincinnati. The issue is, he said, the storm can be 10 or 20 miles away and all of a sudden a sunny and dry gulch or wash where you may be camping or mapping could become flooded without warning in minutes. He warned us you could never outrun a flash flood. To survive you must immediately start climbing up and out of the gulch as fast as you can getting as high as possible.
Dr. Lattman was one great man and he was surrounded by quite a few other professors who made for an all-star geology faculty. Among them were Dr. Kenneth Caster, Dr. Len Larsen, Dr. Pryor, Dr. Warren Huff, Dr. Attila Kilinc, Dr. Sunderman, Dr. Rueben Bullard, and Mr. Richard Durrell.
The other was my physical chemistry professor Dr. John Alexander.
As we worked on this article, Phil shared with me a single sentence that sums up how the Fenneman Room impacted my life. He said, “I can't imagine what our school lives would have been like without it.”
I can tell you what it would have been like. Empty.
I would have gone to class each day, walked out of each classroom to waste time somewhere in a very public noisy place on the UC campus. Or, I would have just gone home.
The Fenneman Room was like going into a toy shop with an ice cream stand in one corner and a penny candy case on another wall. It was a place of happiness.
Not all of my classmates spent time in the Fenneman Room. They missed out on so much in my opinion. They might not have memories of Lon Cooper's bravado.
They didn’t have to wear a winter jacket in the room senior year as did I when I was in the room at the same time as Lynn McClane. In the spring of our junior year we were an item but once we both went home for the summer I got back together with my high school sweetheart. When Lynn drove from Columbus one summer day as Phil and I were painting Dr. Larsen's stucco home, I didn't have the courage to come down the ladder and tell Lynn the truth. That was such a sad mistake. I regret to this day not giving her the respect she deserved. I doubt she'll ever forgive me and I fully understand.
They missed out on epic games of chess and tall tales of three young vivacious female entrepreneurs holding up a cardboard sign with $20 scrawled on it while cruising on I-40 at 75 mph in New Mexico.
The Fenneman Room, for those of us that recognized its power and allure, made my last three years of formal education the best I could ever imagine. I would never have thought a simple room could play such a big part in creating a family of lifetime friends, but it did.
If you didn’t have, nor don’t have now, a simple room dedicated to undergraduates, I feel sorry for you. If you’ve been financially successful and can make a room like this come to be in some future or existing college building, do it. Maybe one day a future student will write about the room named after you. What better way to add to your legacy!
The following content was provided by Phil Clymer:
My first entry into the world of Fenneman was in the fall quarter of 1972. I had completed the introductory course the previous year, and participated in the two-week summer field trip that had visited the Grand Canyon, including a memorable hike to the bottom, and numerous other National Parks.
Here's Phil with his trademark bandana on holding up a tired yucca tree inside the Grand Canyon. Photo by Dr. Len Larsen
Multiple friendships were initiated on this trip, and after classes started, the familiar faces from the trip were seen within the confines of the special room with a sign on the door – Fenneman Room Lounge for Undergraduate Geology Majors. Could this be a joke? I was not aware of any major-specific rooms anywhere else on campus set aside for undergraduates. I gutted it up and entered into a new world.
The room was largely a place to hang out between classes, but also served as a lunch room. There was ample table space for unpacking a sack lunch. There was an antique refrigerator in the closet that worked well enough to preserve said lunches from spoilage. There was a badly worn sofa against the south wall, and I believe a couple of overstuffed easy chairs. There was a gigantic repurposed coffee urn that was kept full of hot water for making instant coffee and tea. There was an unwritten law that the first to arrive would fill the urn from the water tap in the lecture room across the hall, and turn it on so the later arrivals would have hot water available. Few of the undergrads had keys to the building so there was another agreement to secretly keep one of the windows unlocked so that an early arrival could crawl through the window to commence the day’s activity. We pooled our resources and purchased an inexpensive chess set that was left on the table for any to make use of.
The Fenneman room had multiple uses throughout the school year. It was the meeting point for Saturday field trips.
This is a photo I shot of Phil while on a typical Saturday field trip. You can see the interbedded Upper Ordovician limestone and shale to his right. If I were a betting man, I believe this photo was taken alongside I-74 as it was being connected to I-75 next to Mt. Airy Park.
It was occasionally utilized as a class room, particularly for the Saturday lab sessions for Caster’s Historical Geology, and for Lattman’s Field Methods. It was, of course, a gathering place for lunch breaks and during the school year nearly all of the faculty graced us with their presence at least once, and several on a regular basis. The faculty freely shared stories of their professional experiences outside of the classroom. Many of the graduate students came to hang out with the undergrads occasionally!
In the winter quarter of the year, we revived the Geology Club. We put a committee together and applied for official recognition from the University. We were on a roll! We decided to upgrade our club house – The Fenneman Room. We wanted to repaint it to cover the institutional color, but when we asked permission to paint we were told to forget it. There was an official color scheme, enforced by a panel more ruthless than any homeowners’ association.
In addition the painting would have to be done by the unionized UC painters and charged toward the maintenance budget for the building. If we did a pirate painting, if and when discovered, it would be repainted with the same penalty.
So instead we purchased a tectonic map of North America and wall paper pasted it to the south wall. We located an ancient slate chalkboard in a store room, we refinished the badly pitted surface and hung it on the wall. We had a talented seamstress friend of the organization, Connie Truthan, who made curtains for the windows to replace the roller shades. A cheap indoor/outdoor carpet was installed to cover the barely painted concrete floor. Someone donated an upgrade to our ancient refrigerator, and we sold the old one to a faculty member for five bucks who converted it into a fish smoker.
There was one more use for the room that bears mention. It was occasionally literally a home away from home if someone got stranded at school without transport. I utilized this option on several occasions, two times with humorous outcomes, at least for me. Dr. Davis entered what he thought was an empty room only to nearly jump out of his socks when he saw me stretched out on the sofa. The unfortunate custodian had a similar reaction another time.
But now back to our main purpose. What did the Fenneman Room mean to me? It was a lounge for between classes, it was a lunch room, a dormitory, a class room, a game room, and many other things. It was unique perhaps in the context of the larger university, as we were aware of no other department that provided space specifically for undergrad majors.
It was widely believed that biology and chemistry were flunk-out courses for the pre-med program. Whether or not this was accurate, it would hardly foster an attitude of cooperation between majors of those sciences. What we had in Geology was a place where we may be competitors, but also colleagues, and most importantly, friends. I maintain that the Fenneman Room fostered an environment for the development and cementing of friendships, some of which have survived the passage of a half century.
I returned to Old Tech a few years after graduation and was disappointed to find that most or all of the changes we made to the room had been undone.
The tectonic map had been removed, as well as the blackboard. The carpet had been removed and the floor was once again a mixture of badly worn gray floor paint and concrete polished smooth by the passage of countless footsteps.
The sign was still on the door but the room was unoccupied. I was even more surprised when I first visited the new combined Geology/Physics building to find there was no similar space reserved for the undergrads. I was told there was a break room for coffee etc. but it was reserved for faculty and graduate students. I was profoundly disappointed that they had discarded what to me and my classmates was a deeply treasured experience.
A friend of mine sent me the following video. At first blush, it's extremely convincing. You have to be REALLY careful about opinions you might form after watching just one video.
Watch it and see what you think.
Then watch the others below.
Here's another video like the first one.
So what's the truth?
Homemade Weed Killer - Look at the dead weeds in between the brick. How long do you think it took to kill them and what did I use? It appears I happened to discover the strongest homemade weed killer! It's a homemade weed killer that really works as you can see from the photograph. Keep reading. Copyright 2022 Tim Carter - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
I love testing things. I also hate chemical weed killers that have names it's nearly impossible to pronounce.
My front sidewalk is immediately adjacent to my water well. I would never use regular weed killers on my lawn or the sidewalk for fear of poisoning my family and myself.
A few days ago, I decided to do a test. I had some leftover Goya Hot Sauce Salsa Picante that had been up in my daughter's room. There was a very small amount in the bottle. I took it outside and put some drops of the sauce directly on the weeds in between the brick in the sidewalk.
Keep reading to see what I did to get the results you see in the photo above and how fast it worked. After the hot sauce test, I did another test using a very common liquid you have in your home. The results were fascinating.
A very good friend of mine told me she uses a brew of salt, Dawn dish soap, and vinegar. Go online and there are as many different homemade weed and grass killer concoctions as there are ants and flies at a summer BBQ.
All of them may work, but how FAST do they work? Are they SAFE? Will they kill weeds and grass in hours?
Humans can eat hot sauce, well most of us can! Many vets recommend not feeding it to dogs. But I've got really great news for you because if you keep your dog in at night, Goya Hot Sauce is completely safe! Keep reading.
Here's what I did. As I said, I put the hot sauce directly on the weeds full strength. It soaked into the soil and sand in between the brick. I then just walked away hoping that I'd see results in a week.
This is a strong homemade weed killer. You don't have to mix it with water, but it's probably a good idea.
The weeds and grass died in less than twelve HOURS. That's not a typo. I think the only way you could get faster results would be to use a hand-held propane torch. That's really dangerous to do as you can set mulch on fire and you can ruin brick if it gets too hot too fast.
If you have dogs, cats, or other animals just apply the Goya sauce before it gets dark and leave your pets inside all night. In the morning go out and sprinkle some water where you sprayed the hot sauce. This will dilute any sauce on the surface. Overnight the weeds and grass died so the water is not going to interfere with the killing action.
Yes, since it killed the weeds so fast, I'd say you can mix it with water and still have a very strong weed killer. I'm going to mix it 50/50 with water to do my next test. I don't need it to kill in 12 hours for goodness sake and neither do you.
To save lots of money, you might try a weaker concentration to see what kind of results you get.
My son thought that the vinegar in the hot sauce was responsible for the fast-killing action. I decided to test that hypothesis with full-strength white vinegar. The photos show vinegar had little effect over 12 hours.
But after 24 hours it had the same result as the Goya hot sauce. Some other ingredient in the hot sauce makes it more toxic to the weeds and grass.
I shot this photo seconds after saturated the weeds and grass with full-strength white vinegar. I did the same exact procedure with the hot sauce.
This is what the weeds and grass looked like after 12 hours. There's very little change and most definitely NO brown dead grass/weeds as happened with the Goya hot sauce. Something else in the hot sauce was responsible for the FAST KILL.
The two lines on the left are the white vinegar. The two lines on the right are the original Goya hot sauce. This photo was shot 24 hours after applying the full-strength white vinegar.
How to Build a Wood Fence | This is a distinctive weathered wood privacy fence. It's simple to build using common tools. Look closely at the individual pieces. Copyright 2022 Tim Carter ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
You’ve heard the wise saying, “Good fences make good neighbors”, I’m sure. It’s been around in one form or the other for hundreds of years and Robert Frost immortalized it in one of his missives just over 100 years ago.
The advice is solid and you can take it one step further should you desire. Attractive and one-of-a-kind fences make great and appreciative neighbors. These special fences can also serve a secondary purpose of making your landscaping even more beautiful.
Stop and think about that for a moment. When was the last time you saw a fence that put your head on a swivel? You don’t give a second thought to a plain-vanilla chain-link fence. A split-rail wood fence might get an extra half-second glance from you. A picket fence with special posts and humped fence sections might get you to comment verbally about its grandeur.
Here's a simple wood fence. Now imagine one that's far more decorative like the one farther below.
But what happens if you take it to the next level? What happens if you invested the extra time to build a decorative fence using layered materials, simple geometric designs, and any other trim pieces to create a one-of-a-kind fence? You can do this using any number of materials such as wood, wrought iron, aluminum, or maybe vinyl.
I built this fence using a photograph my wife gave me. Look at the detail on the fence posts. I prestained all the parts before assembling the fence.
I can tell you from experience that fences like this do create years of pleasure both for you and those who live on the other side of the man-made barrier. Several times a year, I get the privilege to visit the Asticou Azalea Garden on Mount Desert Island in Downeast Maine and see such a fence.
Asticou is a magnificent collection of all sorts of outdoor plants, trees, a pond, and Japanese garden. Not only can you discover peace and serenity here, but you can view a stunning decorative wood fence that provides a gorgeous backdrop for some of the specimen plantings.
This is a tiny sliver of the plantings at Asticou Azalea Gardens on Mt. Desert Island in Maine.
Years ago you had to have a creative DNA within you to achieve stellar results or you may have paid an architect or designer to create a fence design. The Internet now makes this child’s play as you can view thousands of fence photos to get your inspiration. If you’ve not done this, I urge you to try. Be prepared to view tantalizing pieces of fence eye candy made from all sorts of material in a myriad of designs.
Wood is probably the best material to consider if you intend to build your own decorative fence. It’s easy to obtain, it’s easy to work with, and it might be the most affordable option you have.
There are quite a few basic things you should consider before you start your project. First and foremost check with your local town or city to see if there are restrictions when it comes to fencing. The community I last lived in had a height requirement for fences. The founders of the community wanted to preserve the open vistas and rural feel of the land and knew that tall fences would ruin this look. Fence heights were limited to 56 inches in height.
Once you determine if you can build a fence, you need to make sure the fence is on your land. If you don’t know the exact location of your property lines, it might be well worth it to have a surveyor come out and re-establish your lot boundaries. Many homeowners don’t realize a surveyor can install stakes or pins along a boundary line with speed and precision. These intermediary points will allow you to ensure your fence is on your property.
If you have buried utilities in your area, call 811 three days before you intend to start to use a post hole digger. The last thing you want to do is chop an electric line in half, damage a fiber-optic cable, pierce a gas line, or create a fountain cutting into a water line.
It pays to have deep respect for the power of wind. If you decide to build a fence that’s more solid than not, keep in mind when the wind blows against it, there can be hundreds, if not thousands, of pounds of force trying to blow it over. You may have to bury fence posts three, or more, feet into the ground to resist this force.
Think of the future. I’ve seen many other home improvement articles try to convince you to surround your fence posts with concrete. It’s not necessary and concrete will cause you tremendous pain in the future if you need to replace a fence post. Often the soil is strong enough on its own to support sideways movement of a fence. If you feel the need to add additional strength, then surround key fence posts with a 5-inch-wide ring of crushed gravel. Once this compacts, it will be just like concrete and far easier to remove should the need arise.
If you’re using wood, take whatever steps are necessary to precut and pre-stain or paint each individual piece of wood on all sides and edges before you assemble the pieces. If you layer wood pieces on top of one another and don’t do this, water will seep into the wood causing paint to peel prematurely and it will accelerate wood rot.
I’ve found over the years the best fence paint is not paint! Do what Tom Sawyer did and apply a coat of true whitewash. You can add dry pigments to real whitewash to achieve just about any color. I have a secret recipe for traditional whitewash here.
Column 1458
You might be my newest subscriber. Thanks for your trust. During the summer, my newsletter is similar to lite beer. It's thin on content calories because you might be outdoors enjoying the warm and balmy weather as I do in central NH.
You, though, might have been on my subscriber list long enough to remember the video I shot about why it pays to use high-quality paint brushes to carefully apply exterior stain or paint of any type. Click on the image below to watch the video.
Are you an electrician that installs steel conduit through wood studs in wood-frame buildings? If so, PLEASE CONTACT ME.
I try to keep my fingers on the pulse of all things home improvement. New products are fun to discover and test. But as you and I know we both need money to buy products and hire workers in case you're not a DIYr.
This is why one of the things I focus on is the economics swirling around the home building and remodeling industry.
In addition to spending an hour or two a day scouring and consuming as much trustworthy financial news as I can gather, I also read each of the new comments on my 800+ YouTube videos.
Peruse the comments under my videos and you'll discover more and more folks like you are talking about how much the prices of things have gone up. Lumber, shingles (oil is used to make them!), tile, paint, cabinets, faucets, countertops, etc. are just a few of the things people are complaining about.
Many things contribute to price increases. A price increase might be temporary if the law of supply and demand comes into play. You often see price-gouging segments on the news whenever a national disaster strikes that creates a huge increase in demand for builders, remodelers, and roofers.
For example, before a major hurricane pummels parts of the East Coast, that region may have only had a demand for 100 new roofs per day. The day after the storm, the demand rises to 1,000 or 2,000 new roofs per day until such time as all the damaged roofs are repaired or replaced.
The roofers and shingle suppliers are able to raise their prices because quite a few people are screaming, "TAKE MY MONEY WHATEVER THE COST IS!!!!!"
They don't want water streaming into what's left of their homes. The roofers and supply houses rarely refuse that extra money.
The prices stabilize and come down once the demand for new roofs vaporizes.
But the adage what goes up must come down does not come into play with what's happening in your world and mine at this time. The price increases you're seeing now in just about everything you purchase is inflation.
Inflation is not a temporary price increase. It's a guaranteed reaction to reckless monetary policy created by people higher up the food chain than you and I. While it's possible for prices to drop with deflation, it's quite rare. Don't hold your breath waiting for deflation to kick in.
Take something as simple and basic as energy. It's a basic building block of the economy because energy is required to get things done.
I'm sure you realize that diesel fuel is baked into the price of every building material and product you need in your home. This aromatic liquid hydrocarbon is perhaps the sole energy source that moves the things you need from mines, forests, and factories to your doorstep.
The entire USA trucking industry uses diesel fuel. Railroad locomotives consume vast quantities of diesel to move gypsum from mines to drywall plants. These same unit trains move copper and aluminum ore to smelting plants so you have electricity in your home. Lumber is transported from giant mills by train. The list of raw materials transported by train is endless.
I can't think of one building material that's not transported to you in some way using diesel fuel.
The retail price of diesel fuel is up 136 percent in the past twenty months.
A trucker buying diesel fuel in late October of 2020 paid just $2.35 per gallon. This past week that same trucker filling the giant tanks slung on either side of his truck cab might have paid $5.54, or more, per gallon.
The vertical line and box in the chart below is the late October, 2020 price point.
Several days ago, I had a rare breakfast treat. I stopped and got two smallish double chocolate doughnuts and a small bottle of chocolate milk. I know, too much sugar!
The cost was $5.07 at the New Hampton, NH Dunkin' Doughnuts. The price seemed high to me and I asked the employee about it. "Oh, we had a big price increase last week. You're the first customer to ask about it."
When I inquired about what the two doughnuts and milk cost before the increase, the nice young woman told me $4.04.
Do you remember your grade school math? My guess is Dunkin' is hoping you feel that 25% increase is innocuous because it's just another buck and a few pennies out of your pocket or debit/credit account. What's a buck after all?
Well, those extra bucks of yours ADD UP!
Are you aware of what causes inflation? I'm talking about the root cause. My guess is you might not.
That said, it's probably a wise decision to follow in Charlie's footsteps.
Charlie is one of my subscribers who has a deep interest in all things financial. He's been paying attention to my economic tips in past issues of this newsletter. Charlie's aware of what's going on and has his ear to the undulating ground.
He was kind enough to share a video series with me a few days ago. I BEG you to watch this video series to get up to speed about how you're going backwards.
I want to warn you ahead of time. Watching the video series is going to frighten you - that's a good thing - and it's probably going to infuriate you.
That's good too. You might wake up and start to make better decisions.
You've been played about lots of things in the recent past but you're about to discover you and I have been played like a fiddle about all things financial for hundreds of years. You simply can't believe how bad it is and what's about to happen.
I know the man who produced the videos has a dog in the fight and why he produced them. That said, the information he provides is rock solid.
If you think he's wrong about anything, share with me what it is and offer up credible sources supporting your statements. Trust me, I'm all about open discussion and you may teach me something new.
Do you know the difference between currency and money? My guess is you don't. Did you know that money is mentioned in the US Constitution?
Do you have one of these $20 bills in your wallet or purse? I doubt it. Do you know why the US Mint no longer prints these?
The tiny printing at the top and bottom of the piece of currency (IOU) tells you why. Here's what it says:
This certifies there has been deposited in the Treasury of the United States of America Twenty Dollars in gold coin payable to the bearer on demand.
Go look at what it says on the currency you have in your wallet or purse. Do you know what a note is?
GULP...
Then go here to watch all ten videos.
Look at this photo:
Do you see what's wrong? Do you know EXACTLY why it's wrong?
I didn't think so. Go here to see what I discovered when I looked behind my son's new LG dryer.
Two weeks ago, I mentioned in the P.S. section of my newsletter that the electricity you depend on in your home could be an issue in the coming months.
Bob reached out to me saying,
"What am I going to do? The sun is blocked too much over my home to use it as a power source; an expensive battery system is really just for short-term emergencies; there's not enough wind or space to use a noisy, bird-killing windmill; and natural gas is in danger under Biden's leadership; nor could I peddle fast enough to run my AC. I woke up long ago, but what should I be doing to figure this out? I'm feeling very un-self-sufficient."
Well, as the past two weeks unfolded, what I predicted is more and more in the news that I follow.
If you're not seeing these stories in your news sources, you should ponder why that is.
I'd love to share one story with you, but it's a premium article on the Epoch Times website. You need to be a paid subscriber to see it. Here's another article from a different source you should be able to read.
If the civil unrest develops as the author mentions, aside from not having electricity, what are your plans to defend yourself and your property on a pitch-black night when you hear one of your windows shatter or your door being broken down?
My answer to Bob is pretty simple. A standby generator would help you limp through an extended blackout. I have one that runs on propane and generates 17,000 watts. You can watch a video of it here.
A smaller gasoline-powered generator can power your refrigerator and a few lights. But keep in mind that the gasoline pumps at your local gas station use electricity to operate.
Do you know if the gas stations you visit have standby generators so they can pump gas during an area-wide electric outage?
Do you know how much gas a small generator consumes in 24, 36, 48 or 72 hours? Do you know how dangerous it is to store 20, 30, or 50 gallons of gasoline in your garage? Ask the shift commander at your local firehouse.
You could stock up on LED flashlights like I have. Look at these:
The Coast HP8R is an interesting one because it sports both a rechargeable battery AND an optional magazine that takes normal alkaline batteries.
You might want to have solar-powered storage batteries to recharge your cell phone. I have three of these.
You can stay somewhat cool taking cold baths if your AC doesn't work and you're getting overheated.
Sleep on a cool concrete floor imagining you're a POW like my dad was.
Stock up on food that doesn't require refrigeration.
If you're on a well like I am, think about stockpiling fresh water. I can go down to the lake next to my house to get water and then boil it.
Where's the closest natural spring or non-polluted water source near you? Have you scouted that out yet? Do you even have enough containers to store water? How many gallons of water do you use each day?
Get busy discovering how to be self-sufficient.
That's quite enough for an early June Sunday.
Go out and enjoy the WX as we call it in Morse.
Tim Carter
Founder - www.AsktheBuilder.com
Hilton Hotels Use - www.StainSolver.com
Field Day 3 Weeks - www.W3ATB.com I'll be 1B
Do It Right, Not Over!
P.S. You may have been one that scolded me in the past few days saying I must have been wearing a tin-foil hat when I mentioned psychotropic drugs in my Memorial Day message.
How many times have I shared with you that it pays to know the whole truth about all things?
Before you scold someone, perhaps you should have a respectful conversation with that person probing exactly what they know or don't know about the topic.
Electrical Conduit - This is typical electric conduit. It's steel pipe that's easy to bend. This conduit is in my garage and was added after my house was built. The steel tubes contain wires that connect my standby generator outside to the electric panels in my basement.
Before I jump into this topic about electric conduit, I feel you need to know a little history about how my media and influencer profession works.
Ask the Builder started out as a syndicated newspaper column in October of 1993. In fact, as of June 2022, it still runs in over 60 papers in the USA.
Within a few months of the birth of my new profession, I started to hear from public relations (PR) professionals. As I was a college-trained geologist then carpenter/plumber/builder, I had no idea about this profession nor how it worked.
It took a few years for me to wake up and realize what was happening. Much of it involves powerful psychology that's used to persuade and manipulate writers and influencers like me. Perhaps the best book you can read to discover how you're being played like a fiddle each day in your life about everything is Influence - The Psychology of Persuasion.
PR pros often offer up free products to writers and influencers so they can test the products. Writers and influencers are often invited on all-expenses-paid press junkets. Manufacturers who fund these editors conferences have a captive audience to share their message. The attendees are treated to great hotels, delicious food, liquid refreshment of all types, and often interesting entertainment.
I'll never forget eating dinner on white tablecloths inside a quiet Atlanta museum rented out just for us. Building a two-man boat out of cardboard with other home improvement editors in a competition at a Florida resort swimming pool is tattooed in my tiny gray cells. Yes, my team won going back and forth across the pool in record time without sinking because our leader, Larry Eisinger, happened to be an avid boater and expert model maker.
All of the above pushes the reciprocity button in writers, editors, and influencers. Once you accept a gift, accept a piece of cheese on a toothpick at a grocery store from a nice older woman in an apron, a neighbor lends you a tool, or a PR person gives you something you don't need to return, you automatically feel obligated to do something in return. It's basic human behavior. Read about this, and the even more powerful psychological buttons, in the above book.
Two of these PR pros became really good friends over my career and are the best I've ever met: Laura Bennett and Kathy Ziprik. Most PR people I've interacted with over the years couldn't lace Laura and Kathy's boots.
There's an old adage in the newspaper business: News is what people don't want you to print. Everything else is advertising (PR).
This column was inspired by a professional PR person tasked (paid) to get the word out about electrical conduit pipe and electrical conduit fittings. She was hired by the Steel Tube Institute (STI).
Why did this PR pro reach out to me? My guess is it was her hope I'd do what so many of my peers do. Many take a short cut and simply regurgitate the information contained in her well-written press release. The problem is her press release contained just part of the truth about metal conduit. The STI controlled what was in the press release as they're paying for the work.
My job as a columnist is to tell you the whole story about a topic. I've been an expert witness for over 23 years and we have a saying in our business: A half-truth is a whole lie.
Let's unpack the facts about electrical conduits, especially metal electrical conduit. Allow me to share with you everything I know about the cables and wires in your home and how they can be installed.
Electrical conduit is a tube through which electrical wires pass. Steel is cheap, it's strong, and it does an amazing job of protecting the energized conductors within the conduit. This is why the National Electrical Code (NEC) specifies that conduit must be used in just about all commercial, institutional, manufacturing, and non-residential electric installations. You don't want wires carrying current to get damaged easily. When this happens people can get electrocuted and fires can start.
This is a closeup of the metal electrical conduit in my garage. You can see the stamping on the tubing indicating it meets the NEC.
Conduit is required in residential homes in some areas. Local unions and building/electrical inspectors that have been co-opted by friends in the industry can dictate how electric cables and wires are installed in your home.
They can ignore safe and proven installation practices and products that are approved in the NEC.
If you live in Chicago, Illinois your electric wires will pass through conduit. The Steel Tube Institute would love to see it required in every home. They have a dog in the fight for goodness sake. The STI pays people to promote its products as do many many many manufacturers. Some manufacturers lobby the people who create the NEC as well as the building code.
Never forget that everything in your life and mine is a real-time mirror image of the Game of Thrones. Everything revolves around money, power, and sex for most people.
How many pieces of conduit would have to feed into this six-gang switch box to make all this magic happen? There are twelve Romex NM-B cables feeding into and out of this box to make the six 3 and 4-way switches work. Imagine what needs to be done so twelve different steel tubes don't interfere with one another. How much skill does that require?
Non-metallic sheathed cable is what is used instead of conduit. Most tradespeople and suppliers call it Romex or NM-B. This type of wiring is used in probably 99.995% of the homes built in the USA. I've installed many miles of it in my lifetime. When installed according to the guidelines in the NEC, Romex is exceedingly safe. The statistics provided by the National Fire Protection Agency (NFPA) support this fact.
This is non-metallic sheathed cable NM-B or Romex wiring. Its yellow plastic outer covering tells you the conductors inside are 12 gauge rated for 20 amps. The cables in the upper left of the photo lead to separate circuits in my daughter's new home. The writing on each cable allows you to identify each circuit breaker within the electric panel on the wall. Can you guess where the cable that says YUMMY COLD FOOD terminates inside the house? Copyright 2022 Tim Carter ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
The multi-billion-dollar insurance industry is behind the curtain of the NFPA who curates the National Electrical Code. If huge insurance companies thought that Romex was too great an insurable risk, rest assured Romex would be PROHIBITED in the NEC.
It's not prohibited. That should put your head on a swivel.
It costs much more money to install electrical conduit than Romex.
I asked the PR woman hired by the STI how much conduit is required in an average-sized home in the USA. She deferred to Dale Crawford, the executive director of the STI. His response was: "A 2,333 square foot home (average new construction in US in 2020) would need between 4,500 and 4,800 linear feet of conduit. "
I then asked, what is the added labor cost in the average home to install the steel tubing/conduit? Dale deftly replied, "This is highly variable, which makes it difficult to estimate. Skilled union labor can install conduit nearly as fast as installing NM-B. The union electricians in Chicago are especially skilled and impressive at this."
Unfortunately that's not the answer I was looking for. I'll explain below the extra labor that's required to install conduit vs Romex or NM-B cable.
I also asked, what is the price-per-foot of the three needed THHN conductors that would run in the steel tube? Dale was polite and quick to point out that my question contained an error. I had forgotten that the steel conduit takes the place of the bare ground wire that the NEC requires in NM-B cable. In other words, when you remove the plastic sheathing in NM-B cable, you'll discover three conductors: the white wire that's neutral, the black wire that's hot, and a bare wire that goes to ground.
This is what the wires look like inside Romex or NM-B cable. In this case, the extra red wire helps make it easy to connect 3 and 4-way switches. This special cable can also carry two separate circuits to one junction box. It can also be used to create a 240-volt circuit. It's all quite confusing if you're not up to speed with the NEC.
He said, "Here is where one of the big cost comparison adjustments comes in, especially given the benefits of protection of conduit. Only two conductors would be required for this installation in conduit, as a ground is not needed or required by code. The steel conduit acts as the equipment grounding conductor in this installation, saving about 33% of the cost of wiring. Two 14 AWG conductors would be $0.15/foot and 12 AWG would be $0.20/foot, roughly." (May 2022 pricing)
When you decide to use metal conduit in lieu of Romex or NM-B cable, you need the following:
That's pretty much what's required.
You need the following to install Romex or NMB cable to NEC standards:
Wire nuts are required in both installations so I left them out of both lists.
You might want to sit down for this.
Let's look at electric conduit first. This is not an all-inclusive cost analysis because each installation is different and requires a different number of parts. All prices were checked on June 5, 2022 at the Lowe's website.
Now let's look at the cost for Romex/NMB materials:
Summary: Each separate box where you might have a single outlet or wall switch will cost you $5.64 should you use conduit. Each separate single-gang box for Romex/NM-B will cost you about $1.11 including a cable staple or two. An average home could have at least 100 boxes. Thus, using conduit, you'll spend about $450.00 more just for the boxes.
The wire price is quite close as each conductor in the Romex roll is costing you $0.165.
The price of the conduit, based on Dale's estimate, is $3,245.70. You don't need any conduit with a Romex/NMB installation
Here are the extra steps required to install electrical conduit:
Installing the cables/wires in both methods is probably a wash. With Romex/NM-B you just pull the wires through the drilled holes. With conduit, the electrician needs to pull the wires through using a pull cord he blew threw the pipe or maybe he uses a fish tape.
What is the extra cost to do the extra steps for the steel conduit? You can bet it's thousands of dollars with the current labor rate (2022) of about $95 per hour for a master electrician.
BOTTOM LINE: If you decide to use electrical conduit in your new home, you can expect to pay a $6,000 - 7,000 premium for it in 2022 dollars. When I reached out to the NFPA PR contact about hard statistics that steel conduit will significantly reduce the amount of electrical fires in a home, she never got back with me.
Here's a fact: There are many millions of homes in the USA that have non-metallic sheathed wiring in them. These are decades and decades old some actually have first-generation knob and tube wiring. The vast majority of these homes have never had a fire caused by approved Romex or NM-B cable.
Home Depot dryer installation | This is my son's LG electric dryer after I corrected the dangerous Home Depot installation mistake.
On May 25, 2022, Home Depot delivered an LG dryer and washer to my son's house in Nashua, NH. My son had told them not to do the actual hookups because it cost $500 and he knew I could do it for nothing.
The installers must have not read the paperwork and proceeded to start to install the 240-volt electric cord my son had purchased with the appliances.
The installers connected the cord to the dryer without using a proper Romex connector. This grave error, over time, would have started an electrical fire because the vibrations of the rotating dryer would wear through the wire insulation. Look at the photos I shot:
This is the frightful thing I saw when I decided to check to see if the Home Depot installers did the right thing. Can you see the mistake? Can you imagine what happens when the dryer operates and vibrates?
What you see above is exactly how the Home Depot installers installed the cable. Look at the full-color diagram on the back of the dryer in the lower left corner of the photo. When I removed the steel plate on the rear of the dryer to access the electrical panel, this is what I saw. This is why you should get educated about how things work instead of trusting others. After all, it's just your life and that of your loved ones. After removing the cable above and installing the code-required Romex/NMB connector, I installed the wires CORRECTLY.
This is the inexpensive UL and NEC-approved connector that should have been installed by the Home Depot installers. It's unacceptable that they don't carry a box of these in their truck at all times.
This view of the connector shows how it works. See the thin nut? You remove that and put the connector through the hole in the back of the dryer. You then screw on the nut and tighten the connector so it can't vibrate loose. Then you turn the screws to move the clamp so the thick black cable can fit through the connector. You push enough of the cable through the connector so the black cable insulation shows on the other side of the romex connector. The final step is to tighten the clamp screws so the cable can't move within the connector.
This is the finished installation that I did. There's nothing hard about this and it's completely safe to do. You can install cables like this if you can fog a mirror and understand simple colored wiring diagrams.
I'd like you to look at the following photos.
They're beautiful.
This weekend here in the USA, we celebrate Memorial Day. It's the day set aside to honor all who gave their lives while in active military service to protect the US Constitution.
The US Constitution has been under assault for hundreds of years, but never so much as it is now in my opinion.
We're overrun with domestic enemies trying to reduce that hallowed document to shreds and erase it from the memory of all on the planet. You know what a foreign enemy is and their intentions, right? How much thought have you given to the term, domestic enemy?
If you're not aware of this, the US Constitution is the best blueprint for personal freedom and liberty that has ever been created on this planet.
Perhaps the best part of the Constitution is the Bill of Rights. When you read that part, you'll discover the rights given to you by God.
All too often many forget these rights are NOT TO BE infringed upon by any man or woman.
There have always been a segment of humans who think the concept of personal freedom and liberty is HATEFUL. We have millions of them now here in the USA. They want to control you. They want to tell you what to do, what to put into your body, and when to do it.
If my dad were alive today to see what's going on he'd be so angry he couldn't talk. He be more upset than the morning after I ruined a front tire and bent the wheel rim of his new Ford Custom 500.
It happened one sultry summer night within a few weeks of me getting my driver's license. I had hit a giant pothole up near St. X high school while out on a mission with a few of my buddies. We were out scouting some stunning XX chromosomes.
Some who gave the ultimate sacrifice ran towards withering gunfire. Some drowned exiting landing craft. Some were shot out of the sky at 30,000 feet. Some had just launched a torpedo or two.
The manner in which each one of the millions of military members met their Maker is as varied as leaves gently rustling in the trees outlining military cemeteries around the world.
Take my dad for example. He didn't die on the battlefield, but I can assure you his death was directly attributed to his service as a Medical Corpsman in the great WW II.
My dear friend Richard Anderson is another. His death was directly attributed to exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam.
Your soulmate, a member of your family, or a close friend may have offered up their life for you and the rest of us.
You have to ask yourself on this special weekend if you're cut from the same cloth, or are you a coward?
It's one or the other.
It's like day and night.
It's like good or bad.
It's like hot or cold.
It's like love or hate.
There's no gray area when it comes to bravery.
You're either BRAVE, or you're a chicken.
The events of the past few days have brought bravery into the spotlight. It's one thing to face hundreds of enemy soldiers in hardened pillboxes firing deadly 88's or 50-caliber machine guns at you.
It's almost impossible to compare that to a coward, quite possibly on evil psychotropic drugs, holed up in a classroom surrounded by death armed with a single .223 and maybe a handgun.
Over the past few days, I wondered what my Dad would have said about what happened in Texas. I have a distinct feeling he would have taken in a deep breath and pursed his lips.
One of his favorite words was chickenshit.
Those medals above are my dad's. I didn't show you his Good Conduct one because I felt it goes without saying he also got that one.
The medal at the top is his Bronze Star.
The Bronze Star Medal is a United States decoration awarded to members of the United States Armed Forces for either heroic achievement, heroic service, meritorious achievement, or meritorious service in a combat zone. Go here to see what my Dad did to earn it.
The medal below the Bronze Star is the WW II Victory decoration. Yes, to the victor go the spoils.
The next medal is my dad's POW decoration. He spent seven months in a POW camp in Poland.
Just below that is dad's Purple Heart. He was wounded twice so he has two of them. I love the one with his name on the back.
Each Memorial Day weekend, I spend lots of time pondering my dad's time in the US Army. I have all of his memorabilia and two giant scrapbooks my mom created. I have the grim telegram sent to my grandmother letting her know her son was Missing in Action.
I have another that lets her know he was alive and a POW. The best one announces he's back in the possession of the US Army and about to be shipped back home.
But what about you? What will you think about this weekend? Will you contemplate bravery? Will you think of what millions of soldiers both alive and dead did for you so that you can read this newsletter and I can write it with no fear of reprisal?
Would you have run away from the French farmhouse and abandon my dad as his buddies did on that October afternoon when they were overrun by the Huns? Or, would you have stayed helping him attend to the wounded and dying soldiers he was comforting?
Would you not given it a second thought and run into the Texas school with ten, twenty, or fifty of your buddies days ago or would you have made excuses to stay outside?
I'm so proud of my dad. That said, I'm sad that I didn't get to hear all about what happened all those years ago. Most didn't want to talk about it after they got back.
It makes sense when you think of it. Think about the men he was trying to bandage on the battlefield. Imagine sleeping night after night in his blood-stained uniform. Think of the screams of pain and anguish he heard while injecting his buddies with morphine.
That's the stuff nightmares are made from. That's what causes one to undergo hellish shock treatments to try to make the reruns of the memories go away.
Think of what it took for my dad and millions of others to wake up the next day and do it all over.
To march, walk, or run towards death.
Yes, the more I think about it I know exactly what my dad would say about what happened this past week.
My guess is my dad and a few of his buddies would have raced into that Texas school with just their unsheathed bayonet knives knowing that a madman was killing defenseless 4th graders and young teachers.
They would have known the coward's magazine would eventually run out of cartridges. A lucky few would get to see the wide-eyed fear on the coward's face as they rushed him knowing that at least one would make it before the coward could reload.
Then it would be all over.
Don't allow any chickenshit talking head on TV tell you otherwise.
And for the love of God don't allow anyone to convince you the GUNS caused the mayhem. Humans squeeze gun triggers just as they squeeze forceps inserted into a mother's body.
Lay the blame at the feet of the coward's psychiatrist if she/he wrote the prescription for a psychotropic drug.
I love you Dad. I can't wait to hug you up in Heaven. You too, Mom!
This is Brian Short with his family.
Author's Note: Be sure to look at a screenshot of a news story from June 8, 2022 that's at the end of this article. The night before a young man was arrested outside of Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh's home. The last line says it all.
Second Author's Note: On the evening of September 2, 2022 the author received a strange phone call from a young woman who refused to identify herself. She was agitated about the following story. She made a threat that something was going to happen and something was going to be published about what you're about to read. It could have been a scare tactic by drug companies to try to get me to remove this story from my website. Why? It's always about money, power, and sex as Queen Cersei said to Lord Stark in the infamous Game of Thrones book and TV series. Look at the video clip far below.
Brian Short was a smart and successful man. He was calm, had an amazing sense of humor, and never was cross. He was a loving husband and father.
Brian was a member of a very secret group of successful Internet entrepreneurs I helped found in 1999. Each of us had a website in a particular niche. His was AllNurses.com. It was the go-to place for nurses from all around the USA and world.
On or about September 7, 2015, Brian used a brand-new Remington 12-gauge shotgun to murder his three teenaged children and his wife. Brian then went to the garage, sat in a chair, and proceeded to blow off his own head.
Are you stunned?
Are you asking yourself, "What does it take to put the barrel of a shotgun at the head of your child while she/he is gently sleeping and PULL THE TRIGGER?"
Not once, not twice, but three times, then do the same with your frantic wife.
What would cause that sort of abnormal behavior in a person who had no past history of abuse or violence?
Brian shared his success within the secret group. We all did. But we also shared when headwinds or hurricanes hit.
Google aimed a firehose of money at Brian and several others in the group between 2004 and 2015. I was one of them.
But the winds of fortune can be fickle. The first to fall was a very good friend of mine who made significant money from affiliate revenue. Google sent all sorts of people to his website. Then one night, the traffic disappeared just like you'd turn off a water faucet.
The same thing happened to me on a dark and cold February night in 2011. I woke up to discover 95% of my traffic - and ad revenue - had disappeared like a puff of smoke in a windstorm.
Then it happened to Brian. The traffic to his AllNurses.com website vaporized a few years after mine. That traffic was responsible for creating the vast sums of money that flowed into his accounts each day.
All of a sudden he was making peanuts each day. Not nearly enough to get by.
This loss of income caused Brian, a smart upbeat registered nurse, to experience severe depression. He was in his mid-40s. How was he going to continue funding his lifestyle?
Would he have to go back to working on a hospital floor making 2% of what he had been making each day? How could he explain to his kids that he was now what he thought to be a failure?
He went to a doctor that most likely prescribed a cocktail of psychotropic drugs to help him cope with his depression. My mother was a registered pharmacist. It didn't take me long to discover that pharmacies are required to keep copies of the prescriptions doctors write. If you had access to Brian's pharmacy files, you'd have the list of drugs, and the dosage, he was taking. But unfortunately, HIPPA laws prevent this incursion of privacy.
Do you know the side effects of psychotropic drugs? You can go read about all the soft and fuzzy ones online but dig deep enough and you quickly discover these evil drugs cause a person to become uncoupled from reality. They also cause hallucinations and delusional behavior.
Go type side effects of psychotropic drugs into any search engine and see for yourself.
Do you think you get the whole truth from news reporters? You know a half-truth is a whole lie, right?
Sometimes it's not possible for a reporter to have access to the whole truth. Current HIPAA laws in the USA create this roadblock in cases like Brian's and that of every other mass shooter you read about or see on TV.
That said, how many times have you seen or heard a simple brief mention in a mass-shooter news story, "...the shooter was being treated for depression."
Then abruptly the reporter or writer moves on.
You don't hear the reporter/writer speculate on what the treatment might have been. Was the shooter on psychotropic drugs like Brian?
Was the shooter experiencing hallucinations? Was the shooter uncoupled from reality?
But now you know what might have been the ROOT CAUSE of the shooter's behavior.
Do you have a piece of graph paper? Do a small bit of research and chart the timeline of the introduction of the many varieties of psychotropic drugs and their use on the masses. Then chart when mass shootings started to happen.
I think you already know what you're going to discover, especially if you've had 60+ trips around the sun. If you're as old as I am, you know growing up you NEVER heard of mass shootings like we've experienced in the past 20 years or so.
Why is that?
Then ask yourself as you reach for the box of heavy-duty aluminum foil from your pantry, "Why in the HELL don't we hear about this on TV and in news stories?
Why don't news outlets make these connections?
Why wouldn't TV anchors they tell us the TRUTH about what probably is causing the mass shootings?"
WAKE UP!!!
STOP BEING PLAYED!!!
START ASKING QUESTIONS!!!!
STOP BEING LED BY THE NOSE BY YOUR NEWS SOURCES!!!!!
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