It was one of those days where my mind took me off in a different direction. I had this desire for a PB&J sandwich.
OK - nothing unusual about that.
Except I had this urge for blackberry jam.
Fresh blackberry jam. Real fresh blackberry jam.
Maybe it had something to do with it being blackberry season.
Nope - not going to the grocery store.
Nope - not going to a blackberry farm.
I'm going to get me some fresh wild uncaged, free-range blackberries.
So ... anybody that knows the Virginia Tidewater country ... I lived in Williamsburg and decided to pick blackberries at Battery Winslow* on the Eastern Shore.

So off I go.

Not sure what the ratio of eat-on-site and take home is/was ... something more than 1:1 ... but eventually I had enough blackberries in a pail to take back with me.

Well - more than enough as it turned out; I didn't bother looking at a recipe until I was ready to get down to some serious cooking.

Not paying attention, I used a full recipe.

4 cups blackberries
1-2 cups sugar
Tablespoon cornstarch
dash of lemon juice

Mash the berries with a masher.
The recipe didn't say anything about cleaning the berries ... they were clean enough to eat off the vine ...
I did wash them.
Stir in sugar
Mix in cornstarch
Boil the mixture for about 15 minutes.
Let cool ½ hour then refrigerate until stiff - maybe another ½ hour.

Construct sandwich in usual manner.

Enjoy your sandwich.

(eechhh, spit. what is in this?)
Oh. Sticks and seeds that we don't needs.
Oh-h-h ... CLEAN the berries.

But it was a fun day anyway. And that's what counts.
I made another PB&J with store-bought jam ...

*Battery Winslow was part of the WWII coastal defense system on the US east coast. It had two 16" guns and was built in the 1940s and active 1943 - 1948. Another source tells me that the site was built in 1917 for WWI. Anyway, built of earth-covered concrete and steel, the battery is now overgrown - or was when I was there - but the concrete foundations are still in place. It's now part of the "Eastern Shore of Virginia National Wild Life Refuge"

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submitted bt SK via comments

So we talk a lot about big things on this site. High mountains, long roads, wide open spaces, big buildings. Nothing wrong with that, but sometimes we need to put our heads down and look at small things that can delight us. Especially as spring is not far off.

As I walked around the farm this past week dreaming of warmer weather, looking down, I saw first only layers of leaves and hundreds of downed branches and twigs to be collected. The aftermath of winter’s high winds cleaning the trees of their debris and dead bits.

The soil is still frozen hard in most places but I know it is teaming with life. Millions and millions of micro organisms, creepy crawlers and worms ready to get to work when the sun warms them.

I found some small signs of life, green shoots here and there, hiding under leaves, and began to think about spring flowers. Daffodils in temperate parts are sometimes called Lenten Lillies because they begin to appear around the the time of Ash Wednesday and disappear around Easter Sunday.

My old farm is not in what anyone would call a temperate climate. It is susceptible to the dreaded Albert Clippers that hurl themselves down from the northern prairies bringing frigid winds, sub zero temperatures and snow. The local TV weatherman years ago used to refer to them as Alberta Hookers. I never knew if he was joking around or if that was another scientifically accepted name for them.

Still despite the bitter cold, there are very small parts of the garden that are sunny and sheltered. In one of those little spots, protected from wind and cold they arrived, like clockwork, last week. A tiny, shiny, cluster of happy daffodils. They had burst into flower on Pancake Tuesday and brightened an otherwise grey February day. They reminded me of the first line of a poem: “The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here.” For it is indeed still winter and yet there they are. Brave little flowers, planted many decades ago my mother, reaching for the winter sun. They may yet come to regret their precocity as temperatures have plunged again this week.

Daffodils have inspired so many poems.
Housman wrote:

“Tis spring; come out to ramble
The hilly brakes around,
For under thorn and bramble
About the hollow ground
The primroses are found.
And there’s the windflower chilly
With all the winds at play,
And there’s the Lenten lily
That has not long to stay
And dies on Easter day.”

Wordsworth wrote probably the best loved one

“I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.”

So here below my first little daffodils to cheer a Lenten week for those in a cold grey climate

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Taken on the east side of Moffat Tunnel near Tolland, west of Denver on the former Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad, these 6 (or more) west-bound locomotives appear to be EMD SD70s ("Electro-Motive Diesel", once a division of General Motors). First built in 1992, close to 6000 units were built. Depending on the specific model, each unit generates 4000 - 4500hp. These being intended for western mountain use, it is likely they are 4500hp units.

These locomotives are actually driven by electric motors; the diesel engines drive generators that drive the motors.

The yellow patches on the black Southern Pacific locos date this photo to circa 1998/99 when the Southern Pacific was merged into the Union Pacific (yellow locos).

Elevation here just east of the tunnel is about 9000 ft; heading west, they'll hit an elevation of 9200 ft inside Moffat Tunnel within a few miles. Rollins Pass, which the tunnel bores beneath, crosses the Continental Divide at 11,670ft. The west side of the tunnel is at Winter Park, a popular ski resort. The tunnel was built to replace the rails that went over Rollins Pass. Peaks in the immediate area top 12,200ft.

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I guess it might be in the nature of mankind to look back after certain events to try and find a "cause"; something that if changed, would have prevented or allowed certain events that did or did not happen.

Going back to kill Hitler early in his life is a common example.


So now in the apparent collapse of the US, we tend to look at some turning point: 9/11, Obama. Reagan, Kennedy's assassination ...

Has anyone ever thought that looking back, it was perhaps the admission of Alaska and Hawaii as states that led to the situation in which we now find ourselves?

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UPDATE AGAIN: Upon consideration and comments, I've put this back up.
OK, now come out fighting - no hitting below the belt.
I made the link live: www.anonymousconservative.com/news-briefs-02-15-2026/ for February 15, 2026.
You need to scroll down a bit.
There may be other locations but it did seem to disappear from some sites I had noticed it.

I still don't post copyrighted material ...
PS: It might have helped if I had put the proper site address up ... :(

Kei Pritsker responded to a post by Cenk Uygur regarding the 9/11 story.
The closest I could come (albeit on short notice and limited search effort) I come up with this link to a site I'd never heard of.
https://piclur.com/profile/KeiPritsker/status/2022761835720774020

There are follow-on comments on this site.

Now I'll note that both Kei Pritsker and Cenk Uyger are known as far-left writers. That puts them both on my "Verify before Trust" list ... but then, the official side of the story comes from the Baby George administration - who ranks quite high on my "verify-first, then doubt anyway" list.

Kei/Cenk bring up some interesting tidbits to chew on ...

I'll mention I've doubted the official story since that day - too much just didn't make sense. For one thing, given the time and place, it seems not enough people died. I suspect it was a planned "black flag" event with the sole purpose of implementing the so-called (Un)"Patriot Act".

Here is a link from yesterday that discusses the article Joe suggested:
https://www.mediaite.com/media/news/so-pathetic-left-and-right-join-together-to-slam-cenk-uygur-going-full-9-11-truther/

I suspect we'd have to read history books from 2100 to find any semblance of what really happened.

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