Cathy has been spinning using a spindle for about two years now, so her new spinning wheel (made in New Zealand) was able to go right into service. Check out her crafts on her own Flickr site:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cathycrafter/
I’ve always had a keen interest in history, but there’s nothing like a big old empty mansion down the street to get you thinking about who might have lived in it and why it’s empty now. Ken Spooner used to live right next to one such old house, and he’s spent a lot of time compiling information about the Knapps, a family from the town of Mastic where he grew up, their neighbors and friends, their work and personal interests. He intends (according to a couple emails I’ve had from him) to turn the accumulated information into a book someday, but in the meantime you can enjoy reading his stories of old Mastic of the turn of the last century up until the early 1960s online. He’s got a lot of awesome pictures that readers have donated toward the cause over the years, and his pages are laid out to be easy on the eyes as you scroll back through time.
One of the problems with maintaining this blog is that I have so many other online things I like to do that taking time to write here every day robs time from these other pursuits. I try to take pictures of my real-world projects and post them either in my private galleries (not all are public), or on Flickr. When I post stuff on Flickr, I always try to add some text description to the images and they really become blog entries of their own. This is pretty time consuming, so I try to only post stuff there when I’m willing to take the time to comment on them. Not to mention taking time to contribute a couple stories on Non_Prophet while he was away. I also spend a goodly amount of time on the care and feeding of several other websites - each having it’s own unique focus. Some are sites I maintain for clients (mostly small business ventures), but they don’t require much time except once in a while. 
The Celtic re-enactment site I maintain is a massive beast with over 85 members and I’ve been spending a lot more blogging time there lately. Also, I’ve been doing a lot of software development at home for my employer’s website as we’ve been planning to add some new features and haven’t decided which direction to go in yet. I haven’t made any new Youtube videos available in months, though I’m still getting lots of views and comments on them. I’d really like to commit to writing here again every day because keeping a journal is something I’ve been doing since 1980 and it’s rewarding in a narcissistic way. I’m just virtually out of time!
My New Years resolution, now nearly abandoned, wasn’t to lose weight (already did that last year!) or to exercise more (I’ve got the serious mountain biking jones now), or eat better (not difficult when your wife is a great cook). Rather, for this year I decided I was going to pimp my website and spend this year writing something every day, submitting comments on other sites, making contacts, etc. in order increase traffic on my main site with the goal of eventually starting to advertise, or sell through the site. Gah! This made running my blog so much like a day job I quickly tired of it all. January was pretty successful in that I wrote some interesting stories, had some good conversations on other sites and drew lots more eyeballs on my pages. But I can’t seriously keep up that amount of output for the rest of the year! Since this site is only one of about 12 that I maintain, it’s just too crazy. For those of you who lurkers out there (and bless my logs I know you’re out there!) who have been following my posts over the last 5 years - I’m not giving up, but I’m going to have to find some kind of more realistic balance here 
More on this as I decide what I’m going to do.
If this next election will be all about the economy, I thought it was time I read something about it. Economics was not a required class when I went to school (though I hear it is today), so I had a lot of catching up to do. Unfortunately, the subject is so dull that I couldn’t stay awake long enough to learn very much. I did notice that I am not alone, however, it seems the majority of Americans are fairly ignorant of some of the basics too. So much so, in fact that Bush and friends have been able to repeat the mantra of supply-side economics (aka “trickle-down economics”, “reaganomics”, and Voodoo economics) as the answer to all our fiscal woes, and not be laughed off the political stage. When I was younger, I remember the same promises being made by Reagan and his cronies, only to find that it didn’t work! The huge deficits of the Reagan era were then explained as a “tactic” that Reagan used to bankrupt the Ruskies. Oh that wily Gipper!
The news from Colorado is that our friend Non Prophet is leaving for the Peruvian Amazon with his bride. I had to brush up on my geography a little to discover that the mountains of Peru are only along the coast, the interior is Amazon basin. They’re going in with two journalists to Iquitos [see Google Map below] to spend some time with the Matses tribe. 
The Matses wear very distinctive facial decorations resembling whiskers which proffer upon them a cat-like aspect. Add to that their penchant for spotted tattoos over their entire body, and you realize they are emulating the fearsome Jaguar.
The Matses supposedly have the distinction of owning their own land and living traditionally (although recently Peru apparently sold off the oil rights of their land to a Candian company). Almost none of the Matses have ‘day jobs’, instead they subsist by hunting and gathering. They practice traditional herbal medicine, the importance of which reportedly is only now being recognized by western medicine. Unfortunately, this knowledge hasn’t helped them fight diseases like malaria and hepatitus which ravage their tribe. The population of the Matses stands at only around 2200 individuals, so there is some thought in my mind that we may be just in time to witness their extinction as a people, since 2000 is the lower end of a viable (perhaps, healthy) population if I remember correctly from ecology class.
There are no regular tours organized to visit the Matses, but you can usually find adventurous souls to bring you in (and hopefully, bring you out again). I’m assuming NP has hooked up with Peter Gorman, or that Peter has arranged his trip somehow. How much of this trip will truly be a trip in the shamanic sense I will leave for others to debate. In the meantime, I was one of several folks given the keys to NP’s site, so I may be posting some stuff that might be of interest to his normal readership in his absence. I wish them a safe trip and I look forward to reading all about it upon his return!
Its very rare that I bother with these little internet quizzes, but I’ve always had a particular interest in the wide variety of American accents, so this one sucked me in good. I grew up on Long Island, but I’m from what used to be called ‘the sticks’ which means not far enough in to be a city kid and not far enough out to be fashionable. The quiz is very simple, but surprisingly accurate, I think.
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