Now if I can Just Get it to Cast Itself into the Sea

God has given me another productive day. The trick is to pray, curse your problems, and bless your efforts, in the name of Jesus Christ, BEFORE the problems pop up.

I’ve been working on three stubborn stumps in my front yard. I got one out this weekend, and then yesterday, I went after another one, and I got a bonus. I located a huge rock near a stump, and I managed to get it out of the ground and move it out of the area. I also succeeded in removing the second stump.

Today I went after the third stump. I prayed for help. I spoke the Lord’s opposition to the difficulty of removing it, and I spoke his help to me. After maybe 90 minutes’ work with the subsoiler, drill, sawzall, and Root Assassin, the stump surprised me by surrendering suddenly. It popped out of the ground for no obvious reason.

Here it is. I may have it bronzed.

I bent the tabs that connect the subsoiler to my hitch. I don’t know how I did that. My tractor is not big, so you would think it wouldn’t be able to bend what appears to be 7/16″ plate. I don’t care, however, because the subsoiler still works, and even if it didn’t, the amount I paid for it is a lot lower than the cost of having people come in and remove stumps and rocks. I don’t care if I break three of these a year.

Now there are no stumps in the area where I was working, and a big rock which would have caused problems is gone. I have three little blackberry plants ready to go in the ground. I just have to get more soil. When I began this project, I didn’t know I’d have four huge holes to fill.

I’m wondering if I should put clay or some kind of waterproof material in the bottoms of the holes, to retain water. The dirt here drains way too fast.

The Internet, which never lies, says blackberry roots don’t go deeper than 10″. I could put pieces of tarp down about 15″ and then put soil and plants over them. I wonder if anyone has tried this.

I also finished sewing my second knife sheath. I bought a Lionsteel M4 with olive wood handles, and the sheath that came with it wasn’t right for my jeans. This sheath was harder to sew than the first one. I don’t know why. Anyway, here’s a photo.

I still have to finish up the edges. Right now, the sheath is drying. I wet it down and molded it around the knife’s handle so it would hold the knife in place without a strap. I may have to add a strap later, though. That’s okay. The stitching is not great, and I may redo it. If I do that, I’ll have a good opportunity to add a strap with a snap.

I sharpened several knives. I bought a Cold Steel Swift with CTS-XHP steel. Cold Steel doesn’t use CTS-XHP any more because they can’t get a reliable supply, so it’s getting hard to find these knives. I found one on Ebay for something like $20 below the street price, so I had to buy it. Yesterday, I used it to trim a piece of leather, and it went dull right away. I had to do something.

My understanding is that manufacturers supply defective edges on knives. They sharpen them with belts, and they do it too quickly, softening the steel on the edges. This gives you a very sharp knife which gets dull fast. I think this is what happened to the Swift. Cutting the leather shouldn’t have affected it at all.

I got out my diamond hones and a weird ceramic hone, and I touched it up. Did I get rid of the soft steel? I don’t know. I’ll keep using it. If it gets dull fast, I’ll know the answer.

It’s so sharp now, it’s creepy. The fact that it sharpened up so fast may indicate that the edge is still soft.

The Swift is a very, very nice knife, but it’s an assisted-opening design. You open it part of the way with a little button on the blade, and then a spring slams it open the rest of the way. I don’t like that. I can open a knife just fine by flicking my wrist. Using a spring seems dangerous.

The whole point of buying a steel like CTS-XHP is to avoid frequent sharpening, so I hope the knife isn’t a dud. I have a Gerber Gator II with cheap steel, and it’s a great knife, but for the fast dulling. I paid $15 for it. If I’m going to get cheap-steel performance, I might as well pay cheap-steel prices. The Gator II is indestructible, and it has a very comfortable handle.

I also sharpened my Entrek sheath knife. I have seen the way Ray Ennis sharpens these knives when he makes them, and I don’t think it’s their best feature. Apart from the heating issue, the knife, as it came from the factory, didn’t seem to want to bite into things.

I have DMT diamond stones, but I didn’t use them. I like kitchen-style hones. I have them in two diamond grits, plus the ceramic one and two steels. They seem to work just as well as stones, and they’re easier to use. Also, you don’t have to use liquid.

On top of all this, got a lot of business done. Leases for rental properties and so on. And I stocked up on groceries. Breakfast was sub-optimal this morning because I was running low on things. I had three fried eggs with cheddar cheese, plus whole wheat toast. I had been planning to eat fresh vegetables, boiled eggs, pita, and so on.

Tomorrow, the sheath for the Lion Steel knife should be dry, and after a little finishing, I should be able to use it. I want to get used to going out in public with a sheath knife. I feel conspicuous, but open carry is 100% legal, and I prefer sheath knives to folding knives.

Time to shower up and spend time with the birds. Hope your day was as good as mine.

Stump Removal isn’t for Sissies

Today I would have to say the smug-o-meter is pretty much pinned. I just used the Kubota to yank a stump and a very big rock from my front yard.

My yard is full of oaks and large rocks. I believe it was last year that it occurred to me that I could remove them using a subsoiler attached to the tractor. A subsoiler is the same thing as a middle buster, but it has a narrow blade. I figured I could hook things from below and use the hydraulics to pull them up. It works a good percentage of the time.

I have some blackberry plants that have to be transplanted, and as of last Friday, there were three stubborn stumps in the area where I wanted to put them. Friends came to visit, and as city people often do when they visit farms, they got excited about outdoor work, and they volunteered to help me out.

Here’s a photo of my friend and his 13-year-old son working on the stump’s roots with a maul. Notice who is doing the work. I know it seems harsh to make a kid swing a maul in the sun, but we had to, because my friend’s wife was in the house.

We used the tractor, a maul, a drill with a 1″ bit, a sawzall, and a tool called a Root Assassin. This is a short shovel with weird features intended to make it useful for digging up roots. The tip is forked and sharpened to catch roots and cut them, and the sides of the shovel are serrated so they cut whatever they slide past. The blade is long and skinny so it goes deep without a lot of resistance.

It’s a pretty decent tool. It’s expensive, but I think it was a good buy. Obviously, it wasn’t going to cut 3″-thick oak roots, but it was a dandy tool for finding them and moving dirt away from them so they could be cut with other tools.

We worked for quite a while. Finally, I remembered an important step. I told everyone we had to use our supernatural tools. We prayed, and I spoke defeat to the difficulty of removing the stump. A little while later, it surprised me by yielding to the subsoiler. I was amazed. I had been expecting it to continue resisting for at least another day.

Today I decided to go out alone and work on the stumps. It has been raining a lot, so the dirt is wet. I figured that would give me a big advantage. Dry dirt holds onto things much better. This time, I was smart. I remembered to invoke God’s power before I started, and it paid off.

I took the tractor to a fresh stump and made passes beside it at various distances, figuring I would sever the roots where they were thinner. Right beside a stump, roots are thick and strong, but they taper off quickly as you move farther out. They’re easier to cut, and if you can pull them with the tractor, you get good leverage, and you may twist the stump loose.

The first stump I worked on today surprised me. I made a few passes beside it, and then I yanked on the stump itself. Up it came. I was thrilled. Nothing is more frustrating than a stump you can’t get rid of.

The second stump is still out there. It was a lot more determined to stay where it was. I kept moving around it, finding and popping roots. I moved so much dirt, I couldn’t see the stump clearly. Toward the end, I realized I had moved away from the stump, and I was actually pulling on a huge rock. It was coming loose from the ground. I would say it was a little smaller than a typical ottoman. Very heavy.

This was pretty exciting. I hadn’t realized there was a rock there. I hate underground rocks, and I was planning to put blackberries where this one was, so getting rid of it would be a major coup. I was surprised to see such a big rock coming loose. It dwarfed the biggest one I had already pulled.

The rock was too big to pull out of the hole with the subsoiler. When I really tried, I broke the shear pin. I decided to use a rope. I got myself some 5/8″ rope and tied it around the rock, which, fortunately for me, was peanut-shaped. The small waist allowed me to attach the rope so it wouldn’t slide off.

I put a loop in the other end of the rope and put it over one of my tractor’s forks. The tractor picked the rock right up. It wasn’t happy about it, but it did the job. The loader is rated for 1500 pounds, and the forks probably weigh 300, so I had 1200 pounds of capacity to play with.

I was ecstatic when the rock came off the ground. Just before it left the ground, I thought about the fact that it was going to be swinging on a rope. I tried to prevent it from swinging toward me, but it was too late. It whacked the tractor. The people at Kubota were way ahead of me, however. The heavy bumper took the hit with no damage at all.

Moving the rock to my rock collection area was interesting. I had to sort of roll it onto the forks, and then I tilted the forks back so it rolled toward the bucket. As I drove to the dumping area, the tractor pitched and rocked every time I hit a bump.

The rock is now resting safely among my other trophies. I need to start selling them to landscapers.

The stump is still in the yard, but I think it will yield readily now that it can’t rely on its friend the boulder for support. I may fill the voids with pricey potting soil instead of relocating dirt from the pasture. Might as well give the blackberries every advantage.

Man, it’s nice when tools do what they should.

I don’t know why the rock looks so small in the pictures. It’s a good three feet long. More, really. It must look small in the first picture because most of it is in a hole.

Maybe tomorrow I can get rid of the last stump, and then I can get the blackberry plants off my patio. That would be nice.

Because I Really Needed More Hobbies

In 2017, I started hunting. I did not accomplish a whole lot, but I did manage to kill a number of squirrels. I didn’t hunt much in 2018. My dad was declining, and I felt disinclined to kill things while he was approaching death. I can’t explain that. Killing squirrels and other pests is morally correct, so it wasn’t as though I felt it would be wrong. For some reason, I felt restrained.

When I started hunting, I knew I needed a sheath knife. A folding knife is a fine thing, but they’re less sturdy than sheath knives, and they’re impossible to clean well. If you use a folder to gut squirrels, it will always have a certain amount of filth trapped inside it.

I got myself a couple of very nice knives, but I was not happy. They came with sheaths made to go with belts, and I don’t like belts. They’re uncomfortable, they’re unhealthy (they raise blood pressure), and they don’t really hold pants up. They just slow the decline. You still have to pull your pants up many times every day.

Obviously, I needed sheaths that fit in the pockets of work jeans, but they don’t fall out of trees. If you want one, someone has to make it.

I got a kit so I could make myself a pocket sheath from Kydex. This is a tough plastic. You heat it and let it mold itself to your knife. In order to do this, you need a Kydex press, which is basically two thick sheets of foam mounted to boards. You put the knife and heated sheath in the press, you close it up, and when the plastic is cold, you have a sheath that fits your knife.

I haven’t gotten around to using the kit. Making a press is somehow unappealing to me, and I like leather better than plastic.

I looked into leatherworking, and I learned that it’s actually not significantly harder than using Kydex. You can get a world of leatherworking tools and materials for $150.00, and there isn’t much skill involved. I decided to try it.

To get going with leather, you need punches to make stitch holes, an awl to do the stitching, dye, appropriate thread for leather, and maybe a hole-punching tool and some Chicago screws. You can also get little tools for dressing the edges of leather and putting a shine on the edges of finished goods.

Chicago screws are screws that work like rivets. One end is a T-shaped nut, and the other end is a screw. When you screw the screw into the nut, you end up with a spool-shaped contraption. You run them through holes in leather and tighten them, and you get removable rivets.

Making leather knife sheaths takes very little time. A lot of the time it will take you to make your first sheath will be spent waiting on deliveries because you didn’t know what to get. Cut that excess out, and it takes around two days to make a sheath. It takes over a day because you will want to use water to mold your sheath to your knife, and water takes time to evaporate.

I decided I wanted sheaths with pocket clips. I found what is considered to be the best clip out there: the Ulticlip. You can look it up. They were created for gun holsters, but you can get models that fit smaller items. They lock very securely to waistbands and pockets. In fact, they’re a pain to fasten and remove, which means your knife is never going to fall out of your pocket.

I just finished the main body of work on my first sheath. I’ll post photos. The stitching is a little rough, so I think I’ll redo it, but it will work for now. I used a type of thread known as artificial sinew. It’s like tough, greasy dental floss.

The knife is an Entrek Beaver. I originally wanted a model called the Javalina, but they sent me the wrong blade shape, and I ended up returning it and getting a Beaver.

I have no idea what thought process led to that name. They no longer sell it. I guess I can rename it. I’ll give it a more masculine name. I’ll call it the Entrek Roid-raging Mega-Jaguar.

Entrek, as I understand it, is actually a man named Ray Ennis. He makes handmade knives and sells them at very reasonable prices. You can find him on Youtube. He has videos showing exactly how he makes his knives. Once you’ve seen the videos, you can pretty much make your own Entrek knives if you’re handy.

He seems like a great guy. He’s having health problems, so it’s not certain the company will continue to produce.

Ennis uses 440C in all his knives. This is a very corrosion-resistant stainless that became popular in the Eighties. It’s not 440A or 440B; those are loser steels. My first really good knife was a Gerber made from 440C, so I wanted a sheath knife made from the same material.

People complain that 440C chips when you get it really hard, but Ennis says he has his blades treated with super-low temperatures, and he believes this makes them chip-resistant.

In any case, the Bea…Roid-raging Mega-Jaguar is a very nice knife. The handles are rough Micarta, a material so tough it may well be the last thing God manages to destroy when he remakes the earth. It’s shaped so you can grip it very securely. It should serve me well.

I’m planning to start carrying a sheath knife everywhere. Florida allows open knife carry. You have to be careful about local ordinances, but they’re easy to look up.

I used to think I could carry a switchblade anywhere in Florida because Florida law allowed it, but it turns out I was mistaken. Snowflake officials in some areas have banned large classes of knives with ordinances, so it may be that back when I carried a switchblade, I committed a number of serious crimes. Sorry for the many, many felonies I may have committed before I looked the ordinances up.

I always say virtually everyone is a felon. If you look hard enough, you will almost surely find a stupid law you violated in the past.

Dade County’s ordinances seem to ban open carry of knives, but it’s not clear. I don’t care, because Dade is a tacky, festering hole of unhappiness and immorality, and I plan to avoid visiting for the rest of my life, except when forced.

The Roid-raging Mega Jaguar is fine for squirrels, but with a thick blade over 4 inches long, I think it’s a little cumbersome for everyday carry. I decided to try a smaller knife. I’m getting a Lionsteel M1, which is a shorter sheath knife in M390 steel. I don’t know a whole lot about M390, but it’s among the “super steels.” I think Superman uses it to make stays for his underpants. It’s supposed to be really great. I tipped my hat to the past with a 440C knife, so now I feel like I’m free to get into snob metal.

The M1 is something like three inches long, which should be very handy around the farm. For all I know, it will even be better for squirrels.

Believe it or not, fixed-blade knives really do work better than folders. I learned this the other day when I took my drill press and band saw out of my truck. I had to cut a lot of rope. I was taking my Cold Steel folder (CTS-XHP super steel!) out over and over, and because I’m too lazy to close it, I kept leaving it in various places, open, and then forgetting where it was. With a sheath knife, you just slap it back in the sheath every time you’re done with it.

I have a lot of hobbies, and sometimes I pick up hobbies that are useless, but I think I hit a home run with leather. It takes almost no skill, and it fills a gaping hole in my tool repertoire. Think of all the times you’ve needed a leather sheath, bag, belt or something, but you couldn’t get what you needed. Maybe you have a tool you use a lot, or maybe you have very specific ideas about a carry holster. If you can do basic leatherwork, you can get what you want without a lot of hassle or expense.

I know almost nothing about leathercrafting, but I can pass on a few tips. You don’t want Fiebing’s low-VOC dye. “VOC” means “volatile organic compound.” It refers to dangerous chemicals that give off fumes. It’s nice that Fiebing is trying to avoid killing customers, but the dangerous old dye works much better. Also, you want 7-8-ounce leather for knife sheaths. Lighter leather is flimsy, and heavier is hard to work with. The leather has to be vegetable-tanned, not chrome-tanned, because chrome-tanned leather rusts knives.

I don’t know what “vegetable-tanned” means. Maybe they take cowhide and rub it with salad.

My first sheath looks pretty good, even though I made a lot of errors. The second one should be as good as what’s available in stores. It’s just not that hard to do.

Miami Visit OVER! OVER! OVER! OVER!

If there is any man on earth who is happier than I am right now, I pity him, because I doubt his body and mind can stand the joy. I had to visit Miami, and now I am HOME.

I can’t describe my hatred of Miami. I don’t mean I hate the people, although I don’t want to live around people like them. I hate being there. I hate the thought of being there. Miami is disgusting. Every visit is an ordeal. Every departure is like being lifted out of a septic tank.

I had to go to Miami for business reasons. My dad died in March, and his real estate belonged to a corporation. For this reason, the estate was not supposed to go through formal probate, which is even worse than a visit to Miami. In order to prove the property belonged to a corporation, I needed recorded deeds. The recorder’s office rejected one deed over and over, incorrectly. I had to drive 600 miles, drive to the recorder’s office, and record the deed in person.

The lady who recorded it gave me no trouble at all, and the reason is that there was nothing wrong with the deed. I had submitted it multiple times electronically, and whoever looked at it had rejected it every time. Bureaucracy is always frustrating.

His estate now contains some used furniture worth approximately $200. I think it’s safe to say formal probate will not be needed.

I stayed in my dad’s old house. I don’t think I should do that next time. While I was in town, I picked up my vertical band saw and my Rockwell drill press, plus a bunch of other junk the movers left. I have been giving away and selling things worth considerable money, just to cut the stubborn cord. I would say there is still a pickup load left, plus my machine tools.

I prayed all the way down and all the way back. I asked God if he could arrange it so I only had to go to Miami one more time IN MY LIFE. I believe he granted that request.

My strategy for Miami visits is to go on Sundays. That way, I am less likely to face unbearable traffic on the way in. It’s terrible to get stuck in traffic while visiting Miami, because when you’re done, you don’t get a reward for your suffering. You’re punished…by arriving in Miami. I don’t mind traffic on the way out, because it feels so nice when I cross the Dade County line into Broward.

The drive down was very unpleasant. There was a traffic jam up here, on I-75. It added maybe 45 minutes to the trip. Then I discovered that my electronic toll pass had been stolen. I took my truck to a Firestone location for an alignment on Saturday, and since then, I’ve found that I no longer have the toll transponder or my phone charger, and 4 lug nuts are gone. I live alone in the woods, and no one would dare come to my house to steal a phone charger. No one else drives the car. Naturally, I suspect Firestone.

I stopped at a service plaza and bought a new transponder, and I tried to use their kiosk to activate it and kill the old one. That didn’t work out. Government computers aren’t set up by the best bidders. The jobs go to minority businesses or companies owned by transsexuals or companies that belong to political donors. It’s always social engineering or corruption, not meritocracy. The kiosk was, for practical purposes, useless, so my long visit to the service plaza was a waste of time.

It was dark when I hit town. What an experience. I felt as if I were in a simulation, like the Matrix. It didn’t seem real. It also felt repulsive. I felt the way a former convict would feel, visiting his old prison. Also, and I don’t know why, I felt as though I were driving through my sister’s heart.

My sister is full of hate. She lives in the past, embracing and caressing imagined offenses other people have committed. She is constantly embroiled in drama. When I write these things, I’m assuming she’s still alive. Anyway, I seemed to feel her energy all around me as I drove through the city.

Traffic is worse than ever. The city seems to be significantly more crowded every time I visit. It must be illegals and South American immigrants. I don’t call illegals “immigrants.” Immigration is something you can only do legally. Someone is filling up Miami, and it’s not people of American ancestry. We have been leaving since the Sixties.

While I drove, I rooted for the people who were moving to Miami and building things there. They’re increasing the value of my real estate. “Turn it into Hong Kong!”, I said, aloud. I don’t care if it’s a bad place to live. I don’t have to reside there. I just want to sell at high prices.

Miami is changing, but it’s looking more like Rio de Janeiro or some other South American pit of urban misery than Hong Kong. Very tall buildings with tacky architecture, jammed up against each other. It’s a very Latin thing. That’s fine. Keep it up, my friends. Build it to the sky. Then buy my properties. Cash me out!

My friend Travis is house-sitting for me. The house is peaceful because the only person there is a Christian. It’s not peaceful like Ocala, but it’s an oasis in Miami. Travis helped me load things up.

There are a few big photos and pictures in the house. I was thinking I would grab them on the next trip, but increasingly, I feel like putting them on the trash pile. Sentimental value is a funny thing when your family is highly dysfunctional. The china that reminds you of your mom may also remind you of the time your dad chased her with a butcher knife (fictional example).

Those pictures make me think of the times when I hid behind the bedroom door and listened to my dad abusing my mother. They make me think of the times my sister and I had to check into motels with her. They make me think of the many times my sister got other kids to exclude me from things and call me names she had made up. They even remind me of the times when she got very upset because I was allowed to ride in the front seat of the car. That kept happening well into my forties. Can you imagine a grown woman getting upset because her brother wouldn’t get in the backseat?

When I was about 6, my mom paid a photographer to take a couple of big pictures of my sister and me. I feel obligated to retrieve them, but in all honesty, they disgust me, and I have a strong desire to throw them out.

There are a couple of professional shots of my sister. She would love to have them, I’m sure. She and my dad had a break in their estrangement, and she used that opportunity to comb his house for family photos (and silver). The photos she wanted were all pictures of her. She talked of one particular photo she missed. She said, “I looked so beautiful in that picture.” No sign of awareness that this was an odd thing to say.

This is the person who let junk removers take her college and law school diplomas to the dump, even though they were set out for her so she would not forget them.

While I was loading the truck, part of her inheritance was destroyed. My dad’s mother was a very cold lady who had no interest in my sister and me, and when she died, my dad’s sisters and their families cleaned out her house. We received two objects they chose for us without consultation: a Baccara angel and a porcelain horse. My dad had bought them for her. I threw out the angel not long ago, because it’s wrong to have an idol in your house. In Miami, I set the horse aside so I could save it, but Travis knocked it over and broke it. I was upset for a minute, but then I remembered that it wasn’t mine anyway. And I didn’t really want it. I just felt obligated to take it.

The horse and the angel are all my sister and I inherited from my dad’s mother.

She sent us a couple of afghans long ago. One was a sort of olive drab green. It was depressing to look at. I threw it out before I moved to Ocala. I found the other one on this visit. Olive drab, dark green, and ivory white. Synthetic yarn. Probably flammable. I brought it with me, thinking I might offer it to my cousins, but it’s going to the dump. I don’t want it around me.

I don’t hate my dead grandmother, because I don’t know her well enough to be angry at her, but she had an air about her which was disturbing. Dismal. Empty. It seems to stick to things she owned. Can’t have that. Won’t.

I don’t think there was much to her. She was polite, and she didn’t cause problems for us, but I don’t think it would have meant anything to her if my family had disappeared into a crack in the earth.

The things I recall about her aren’t heartwarming. On one occasion, she called my dad and said she needed money. He sent her $3000. Someone asked her what was wrong, and she said, “He’s got all that money, and I love spending it.” She just called because she wanted to shop.

My dad’s older sister was cruel and sick. I found a framed family photo she sent my dad. It was very small and therefore not expensive. The sister, the husband, one daughter, the son-in-law, and I forget who else. I didn’t recognize my cousins, because I don’t know them well. I picked the picture up. I put it down. I thought. I wanted to take it because it’s natural to preserve things like that, but then I imagined this unwanted picture, sitting in my house on display, full of faces I will never see again. People who might as well be strangers.

I don’t know if I’ll retrieve it on my final visit.

I found a folder full of documents related to a car lease. A letter congratulated my mother on “buying” a Honda. I couldn’t figure it out. Did she have a car I didn’t know about? Not possible. Then I remembered: she got my sister a car to drive to law school. My sister used to park in the school’s handicapped spot, and my mother paid $250 each for the tickets. She paid a lot of money to keep my sister in an apartment, which my mother cleaned, including copious dog poop that littered the carpet.

Sometimes throwing something out can bring you more pleasure than getting something new.

My dad’s other sister died in April, one month and four days after he did. She was okay. I knew her a little bit. I don’t know what her surviving child looks like. She was a math major, so we had that inclination in common. She also created some artwork. I suppose she was a little like me. My dad used to have one of her pictures in his bedroom, on a desk across from the foot of his bed.

I hated that picture. It was a sort of silhouette. It was a young girl sitting on the ground with one knee up. It wasn’t badly done, but the girl was looking down, and the drawing was all black shapes. I thought it was like a demon that stared at my dad while he slept; a succubus. Lilith. I always told myself I would throw it out after my dad died.

I retrieved it on an earlier trip to Miami, and a week or so ago, I found it here in a box. I took a look at it. The only thing I had from her, other than some pictures. I took it to the dump. It was just too creepy.

I tried to pull it out of the frame, but it was glued in, so the frame is also in the landfill.

My aunt seemed to have a darkness inside her. Maybe she did. My dad said that when he was a kid, he and his older sister would fight, and the one who did the drawing would cry.

In the weeks before he died, he started asking about her, over and over. He called her by a nickname his father had made up. “Palsy.” He called her “Palsy-walsy Cat’s Paw.” Very odd. Before he became demented, he didn’t talk about his family much at all.

I found a porcelain owl my dad bought for my mother. I was very glad to find it. I had had a dream in which demons that looked like owls were dancing in my dad’s bedroom. I threw the owl out.

I didn’t know my aunt well enough to grieve when she died. I was a little sad, but it was about like finding out a neighbor had died. This is why I didn’t write about it.

I like her husband. He’s a former NASA engineer, so we’re both STEM guys. I always enjoyed his company. But I could only get so close to my dad’s people. I texted him after she passed, indicating I didn’t want to intrude with a call. He called a few days later. He said things making it clear that he understood that we probably would not see each other again.

I felt genuine sorrow and compassion for him, but that’s not the same thing as grieving for my aunt.

In addition to taking things from the house and recording the deed, I closed my safe deposit box in Miami. Glad to have that over with. One less reason to be there. When it’s time to get rid of the remaining bank accounts, which contain nearly nothing, I can do it from here.

On Monday night, Travis and I got together with a young lady we knew from our old churches, Trinity and New Dawn. That was great. It was nice to be with two young people who are doing things right. I’ll call her Condi. I hope she doesn’t read that. I may get an earful.

Condi is some sort of therapist. I can never get it straight. She’s a professional. Takes care of herself. Isn’t part of the BET/BLM/Kanye West culture. Loves God. Enjoys spending time with the Holy Spirit. She’s also fun to be around, even though she’s a vegetarian.

I know a number of women like Condi. Young, attractive, successful, connected to God, and still single. South Florida seems to be a terrible place for a young black woman to find a husband, especially if she’s a Christian. The culture is just too gross.

I was thinking about it this morning, and I felt like God told me the problem was that the best men had left South Florida. Men have to be leaders. It makes sense that good men would leave a hellhole like Miami before women, in order to set up their lives elsewhere. God can move men out to create Christian homes in other places, and women who are blessed enough to be delivered can then follow them.

Lots of men who love God have left the area. Look at me.

Maybe God wants Christian men to pull women out of cities. It makes sense, because he pulls men out of cities. A man’s behavior toward his wife is supposed to be like God’s behavior toward the man.

It’s very strange, seeing so many extremely eligible women becoming spinsters. It’s like a plague. It’s even worse when they settle and try to turn sows’ ears into silk purses. Missionary dating is like welding yourself to a sinking ship. One of my best friends has two kids now, and the father still hasn’t married her. That’s a terrible situation. Continuing in a sin can send you to hell, and it’s also a recipe for dysfunction.

Trinity Church had a lady who gave up a great deal to serve the pastors. She was a former Alvin Ailey dancer. She was very good-looking. She took care of herself. She was always impeccably groomed. She was pleasant. She was a hard worker. She was pleasant. She loved God. No suitable men in sight. She spent long hours creating costumes for Trinity’s plays. She was an armorbearer and unpaid assistant to the pastor’s son’s wife, whose ministry amounted to nothing. It was as if she had married the church.

She’s in her 50’s now.

It would have been nice if a husband had come along and led her into God’s blessed life. He could have freed her from the Wilkersons and their manipulation.

A man needs a woman to be a helper, and to have someone to practice God’s love on. A woman needs a man to be a leader.

Making it back to Ocala and my home…I can’t make you understand how wonderful it was. My beautiful farm. My beautiful Christian home. Cleanliness. Order. Peace. No traffic. My own shower. My big, clean bed. My tractor! My tools! My wonderful neighbors.

English!

I feel like going to Chick-fil-A for lunch, just to intensify the experience. If you don’t understand that, you haven’t been to Chick-fil-A.

I want to lie here and bask in the relief. I feel like I’m drinking cool water after a month drifting in a lifeboat in the burning sun, surrounded by salt water. But I have to get up and do things.

Ocala is phenomenal. If I move to Tennessee, it will be even better.

I’ll tell you what I think is happening. John the Baptist said Jesus would baptize us with fire and the Holy Spirit, but churches have failed to tell us what baptism with fire is. I believe I know how. Fire burns away impurity. It represents God’s anger. The fire of hell is God’s anger. Sacrifices were burned as though they were guilty people. I believe the baptism with fire is the gauntlet of bad experiences you have to go through in order to become like God.

Receiving salvation isn’t enough. You have to be filled with the Holy Spirit. You have to get rid of iniquity and give up sin. You have to set yourself apart from the world and be changed. Before you turn to God, you burrow into trouble and sin. Afterward, you have to dig out. God will tell you to give things up. He will tell you to take up new things. Do it quickly, or else he’ll bring chastisement.

I believe I have suffered because I was so deep in the world. Chastisement helped me burrow back out. I think my life is more pleasant now that it used to be, because there is much less burrowing left to do.

Miami was in the depths of filth. Ocala is much better. If God sends me to Tennessee, it will be because Tennessee is better than Ocala.

I’m a Fan of Workshop Cabinets

I got even more stuff done yesterday. The good Lord is still with me.

Because my woodworking tools were all over the place, I decided to get a cabinet to hold them. If you want to be cool, you’re supposed to build a cabinet from wood, using your woodworking tools. Luckily for me, I don’t want to be cool. Metal cabinets come prefabricated, and they work just fine. I bought one at Home Depot.

The cabinet I bought is 6 feet tall. Including the bottom, it has 4 shelves, each of which holds 150 pounds. The doors have pegboard, and each board holds 15 pounds. Each shelf has a cord hole so I can put battery chargers in the cabinet if I want. The cabinet fits plate casters, and a set just arrived on my doorstep. What’s not to love?

Here’s a photo. Isn’t she beautiful?

It was about 100 degrees in some parts of the county yesterday. It hit 95 in the shade in my workshop. How was I supposed to build a cabinet under those circumstances? Obviously, I was not. I bought myself a big fan.

I wasn’t sure what to get. There are some truly huge floor fans out there, but they can’t be tilted vertically. If horizontal isn’t the direction you want, you’re stuck. That wasn’t for me. I decided to get a fan on a pedestal. The one I bought moves 8400 CFM, and it oscillates over maybe 135 degrees.

I was disappointed to see that it didn’t have wheels or feet (China), but I can fix that easily enough.

I noticed something disturbing about it. When you work directly in front of a fan in hot weather, and then you walk outside of the air’s path, you feel very hot immediately. I guess that means I’ll have to stay in the air’s path at all times, which is what I planned to do anyway.

I disabled the oscillating feature. I don’t move much.

Once the fan was put together, it was time for the cabinet. I guess it took an hour. The folks at Husky were very thoughtful; they buried the manual and assembly instructions about 2/3 of the way down in the box, under a bunch of steel panels. They need to work on that.

Now I need a beverage fridge. I have a little Rockstar fridge, but it ices up because it’s a cheap design. I’m over it. I need something better. Sadly, beverage fridges are short, and I don’t want to bend over. Ever. I’m thinking I need to build a cart for one. I can put a couple of shelves in it (or drawers), and it will increase my storage capacity.

On a related note, I’ve come to believe that short tools don’t really save space, compared to floor tools. Say you buy a bench drill press. Are you going to use it on the floor? No. You’ll have to put something under it. You still lose floor space. I’m not sure anyone should ever buy a bench drill press, unless the plan is to put it on a cabinet and get shelf space. When you have short tools, you might as well put storage cabinets or carts under them.

Today I should be able to put wheels on the cabinet, position it where I want it, and anchor it to a wall. Not sure what I’ll put in it yet. I’ll put something heavy in the bottom to promote stability.

In other news, I am now a leatherworker. I have a couple of very nice sheath knives, but the sheaths don’t work with suspenders, and I don’t want to add a belt. I want to make pocket sheaths. I went on Youtube and saw people making sheaths. It’s very simple, and the tools are cheap. A company called Tandy Leather sells tools people trust, so I ordered from them. I got leather through Amazon. Of course.

I look forward to having decent sheaths I didn’t have to pay much for.

Leatherworking is not complicated. My friend Mike has a sister, and when she was young, she had a leather shop. It failed, so the tools were moved to her dad’s garage. Mike and I used to play with them, and we were perfectly capable of making simple things like keychains. Stitching is a hurdle you have to overcome, but it’s not hard. For $115, you can get a hand-cranked sewing machine that will do it, but you can also do it by hand. You buy little punches that look like forks. They put evenly spaced holes in the leather, and you put the thread in.

I am a bit tired of folding knives. Take it out. Open it. Use it. Close it. Put it away. Open it. Use it. Close it. Too many steps, and folders are not as strong as sheath knives. They’re also dirtier because they’re hard to clean. In Florida, I can legally carry a sheath knife (or a sword) in the open, so I see no reason not to do it.

In Florida, a concealed knife with a blade over 4″ in length is considered a concealed weapon, and you need a permit for it, but you can walk right into a bar with a samurai sword (or a 9″ switchblade) on your hip. Open carry can keep you out of trouble and give you more options, in addition to providing better ergonomics and a conversation piece.

I plan to make sheaths that are wide so they are held in my pockets by friction. I also plan to install clips on them to add more security. I could just cut bands from innertubes and put them around the sheaths. That would increase the friction. It works for gun holsters.

Making knife sheaths may sound like a wild excursion, but it’s just like buying a tool cabinet or fan. I need the cabinet and fan to make my existing tools work, and I need sheaths to make my knives work. It’s all about tying up loose ends.

Aside from that, it will prepare me for future problems that require leatherwork. I don’t want to pay someone every time I need something.

It will be nice to have functioning tools again.

Now I have to get to work on the oven. I used the self-clean cycle, and now it’s dead. I’ve already discovered the reason. It has a thermal breaker on the back, and sometimes they pop during cleaning. Of course, they put the breaker where I have to pull the 100+-pound oven out of the wall.

If only I could get the tractor into the kitchen.

Workshop Floor no Longer Bathed in Oil

It’s time to update the world on the things God is helping me get done.

I will probably repeat myself a little.

When I moved to the farm, I bought the seller’s machinery very cheaply. I got a Kubota tractor, a John Deere garden tractor, and an E-Z-GO gas cart with a dump bed. The mechanic who checked the machines out said the John Deere had a leak “around the rear PTO,” and he also said the Kubota was leaking from a hydraulic coupler. He felt both problems were easy and cheap to fix, and he seemed confident that I could do it myself.

After nearly two years of refilling the tractors with fluid and watching oil accumulate on the workshop floor, I tackled the jobs of fixing the leaks.

It turned out the garden tractor did not have a PTO leak. It has a hydraulic cylinder at the rear, and that cylinder raises and lowers the mower. It will also move a 3-point hitch. The rear seal was gone, and John Deere’s cylinder did not have removable end caps, so there was no way to change the seal. The ends of the cylinder were welded on. This is why I will avoid buying John Deere products in the future. There is no good reason for putting a welded cylinder on a $9200 tractor (1992 dollars). The only conceivable reason is to force customers to buy new cylinders.

I paid $180 for a new cylinder, and last week, I put it in. It was not a quick or easy job. Even if I had known what I was doing, and I had had help and proper tools, it would have been unpleasant.

The tractor has a steel pan that makes up the fenders, footboards, and seat area. The seat bolts to it. You have to remove it from the tractor in order to get at the front fitting on the cylinder. Of course, I found some guy on Youtube who removed his in 5 minutes. That always happens. Unfortunately, his tractor was not quite like mine.

To get his pan off, the Youtube guy undid 4 nuts, disconnected the seat kill switch (easily), popped the tail lamps out (easily), removed a shift lever (easily), and lifted the pan off. My seat kill switch had a fat cable that had to be fed through a hole in the pan. There was no way to part the cable with connectors. There was another panel on the side of the tractor that had to be removed in order to allow the pan to come off.

The shift lever was not fun to remove. It goes through a hole in the pan. The hole is way too small to admit a wrench, including a crowfoot wrench. The lever has a hex nut built into it at the bottom, so you can remove the upper part of the lever. The hex is below the steel pan, out of easy reach.

The Youtube guy had a lever which was already loose, so he twirled it off with his fingers. Mine was seized with rust.

Obviously, John Deere had no business putting a hex in a location where a wrench won’t go. The hex should have been near the top of the lever, or the lever should have had a T-handle to allow me to twist it. Stupid, stupid engineering.

I had to hold the pan up with one hand and turn the hex–literally–one tenth of a turn at a time. I was amazed. When I finally got it off, I coated it liberally with anti-seize. My plan is to weld a T-handle or a nut to the upper part, so it will come off quickly in the future. Alternatively, I can store the upper part of the lever in a drawer and go get it when I need to shift. I never really need to shift it. There are only two settings, and once you’re on the right one for your property, you can leave it there nearly all the time.

The seat kill switch is a very bad idea. The hope is that if you fall off the tractor, it will stop running. Problem: if you’re doing a job that requires you to get on and off a lot, you have to start the tractor over and over. It’s unbearable, and it can’t be good for the starter or battery.

The obvious solution is a pop-out kill switch on a lanyard. Boaters use these. The lanyard attaches to your wrist. When you fall off your boat, the lanyard pulls a stopper out of the switch, and the motor dies.

Right now, I have the kill switch disabled. I may add a switch to the tractor to bypass it on demand. I definitely need a quick disconnect in the cable.

My switch has a fat cable with a fat connector on the end, and to remove the pan, you have to stuff the connector through a grommeted hole in the steel. This is not bad when you’re doing it from above and have lots of room to work. When you have to shove it back in from below, you have to hold the pan up with one hand and shove with the other. The pan is very heavy. Very unpleasant.

I don’t know why my tractor has taillights. I know some people work around DWI’s by driving their lawnmowers on the road to get beer, but I have no reason to do that, and I’m pretty sure it would not be street legal anyway. The lamps on my tractor sit in rubber sockets that have to be jammed through holes in the seat pan. Very, very difficult. An intelligent engineer would have used twist-lock sockets, but this is John Deere we are talking about, so brute force is required.

I had to wrestle with each lamp for about 10 minutes to get it back in, and I used grease. Hello, John Deere! Have you heard of couplers? Put one on each wire, and you don’t have to pull the lamps. A 20-minute job becomes a 15-second job.

I apologize for bringing intelligence into the discussion.

The seat and pan must weigh 60 pounds. Lifting the assembly is like lifting an ironing board with a fat kid sitting on the far end. I really need to install my hoist in the workshop. I can’t blame John Deere for my lack of preparation. But I want to.

Very long story short: I got it done. Now I need to install the hoist and fix the tractor so it’s easier to take apart.

As for the Kubota, I was intimidated. I didn’t even know which fitting was leaking, and I knew it was coming from a block of fittings situated too close together for the application of wrenches. I figured I would have to take everything apart.

I will not say I got some ideas. I will say they came to me, presumably from God. I realized I needed to clean the block so I could see where the oil was coming out. I blasted it with a hose and wiped off as much oil and crud as I could, and then I parked the tractor over a sheet of newspaper. The next day, there was maybe an ounce of oil on the paper. I couldn’t tell where it had landed, but I could see oil under one fitting, so I figured I knew where the problem was. I had a female coupler facing up, and it was leaking from below, where it threaded into the tractor.

Of course, the fitting did not have a hex on it that would allow the use of a flare crowfoot wrench. It was round, with two flats. Incredibly stupid. I could not use a crowfoot wrench, and if I managed to get an open-end wrench on the flats, I would have fewer opportunities to get a grip on it. When you have a hex, there is a workable wrench position every 60 degrees. With two flats, not so much.

Looking at the fitting, I saw that someone from the MIT/NASA tractor team had already gouged it up with a pipe wrench or something, so I realized it didn’t matter what I did to it. I put Vise Grips on it, and it came out. Figuring I had nothing to lose, I applied Ace Hardware pipe dope to the threads, and I put it back in. I put paper under the tractor and waited a day. When I checked, it appeared that maybe one drop of oil had come out. That was an improvement.

For the heck of it, I tried to get a wrench on it, and it turned out to be in just the right position for me to do so. I was able to tighten it considerably. The leaking decreased even more. I’m not sure it’s leaking at all. I could be seeing drops from oil I was not able to clean off the tractor at the beginning.

I am told that there is a limit to how much you can improve such a leak by tightening the coupler. The answer, if there is one, is to apply more dope. I plan to try that, but in any case, I am done refilling my tractors with oil every week.

Whew.

The E-Z-GO needs work. It burns oil. The answer is a rebuild kit. Looks like I’m going to spend about $400, but I can do the work myself. That will be a relief.

The tractor problems hung over my head for a long time. I’m very grateful to get them over with.

Every day, I’m knocking off nagging jobs that stole my peace. I’m getting my business in order. It’s wonderful to have so much success in my life.

God gave me promises a few years back. He said things like, “I am ending frustration in your life.” I also got words saying the curses on my life were gone. I wondered why things weren’t perfect, after hearing those things.

I have realized that a life is like an oil tanker. When you make a steering correction on a huge ship, it doesn’t turn instantly. It takes a while to correct. If God tells you you have a blessing, or that a curse is gone, don’t be discouraged because it takes a while for you to see the result.

When you put fertilizer on a plant, you don’t stand over it waiting for it to turn green and grow.

I moved a lot of junk in the workshop. I also took the leaf blowers and cleaned it out. I realized I needed more tool storage. My woodworking stuff is everywhere. I looked around and prayed for guidance, and I bought a Husky vertical cabinet. It’s very nice. I looked at a lot of options, and Husky turned out to be the best. It’s almost 6 feet tall. It has 4 shelves, and each one holds 150 pounds. It has pegboard on the insides of the doors. The base is threaded so you can put wheels on it (ordered).

People say not to put wheels on tall cabinets, and I get it. Here is my response: I refuse to lift this thing every time I need to move it or clean behind it, and believe it or not, cabinets with feet can also fall when you move them. I don’t know what kind of final shop configuration I’m going to have, and I insist on being able to move the cabinet. It has a safety strap to fasten it to walls, so it will only be free to fall when I’m moving it, and I’m intelligent enough to roll it a few feet without killing anyone.

The vertical configuration is a blessing because it takes up so little floor space.

I’m planning on getting a big pedestal fan. I already have one picked out. The shop has a tiny ceiling fan, but its only real effect is to amuse. It’s like 12 feet up. You might be able to feel something if you stood directly under it, but basically, it’s useless. A pedestal fan will be very helpful when I’m trying to get things done in hot weather.

Last night, I came up with a plan for a wooden cart. I want to put my belt grinders on one, but I don’t want to spend a fortune on a storebought cart. I have them on a Northern Tool structural foam cart which will supposedly hold over 250 pounds per shelf, and the cart is slowly bending. Northern’s specs are way off.

I’ve seen people build plywood carts on Youtube. Not impressed. Lots of splinters, hard to cut on table saws, and plywood is expensive. For some reason, people here use hardwood (maybe oak) for fencing, and I have a bunch of boards lying around. I have a jointer, a planer, and some saws. I plan to clean up some boards and put a cart together using glue. As long as you glue long grain to long grain, glue joints are at least as strong as wood itself, so there is nothing to be afraid of. You can add a few screws as backup, in case a joint pops, but it shouldn’t happen. I don’t know why people are so afraid to use glue. Ignorance, probably.

I also ordered parts for my table saw’s base. When I moved, the moving company damaged some things, and the base was one of them. Of course, being a Miami businessman, the owner of the company failed to comply when I asked for help in filing a claim.

I believe they dragged the saw on concrete and asphalt. The base has 4 plastic feet, and they were all ruined. They also managed to break a spring in a part called a floor lock assembly. Because of this, the saw has been very hard to move, so I’ve used it as a place to pile junk (which will soon be in the new cabinet). In a few days, the new parts will arrive, and I’ll be able to use the saw again. If I get my generator fixed. I still don’t have 220 in the shop, and my generator is surging because of ethanol-scam gas. Thanks to God, I have the correct tools and knowledge to fix the carburetor.

Lots of good things are happening. My world is opening up, and stress is going away.

I keep trying to prophesy and interpret tongues, and I keep getting the same basic messages: “Don’t worry.” “I will never leave you.” “I am beside you.” I also got, “Your enemies will be cut down before you like wheat before the scythe.” If I understand him correctly, God has said he will teach me how to stop worrying. I need that. I can’t do it all by myself.

I have been troubled because of the overwhelmingly positive tone of the things I’ve heard. False prophets are known for being overly positive and refusing to correct. My last church had a “house prophet” (whom I will call Ernesto) who always told us it would rain puppies and silver dollars, and he was wrong, wrong, wrong over and over. No one ever called him on it, so the church loved lies and invited more deception.

He was honored with a permanent front row seat, even though he was often late to church, and the pastor used to hand him the mike and let him go off for 20 minutes. He would yell as hard as he could, predicting great things, and his predictions failed. Having Ernesto was much worse than having no prophet at all, because he led us into problems.

Actually, we had no prophet at all. At least no recognized prophet people listened to.

I don’t want to have the same problem.

Ernesto lost his job, and his family has serious financial problems. I found that out recently. I don’t know if he ever dropped his defenses and admitted he was not a prophet. Surely that would help.

Telling him would not have helped. I guarantee you that.

A false prophet is like a guy who goes around pulling stop signs out of the ground. Very dangerous. Not to be taken lightly. False prophets destroy lives. What they do is not okay, and it’s not something to be ignored or tolerated. It has to be exposed. The fact that a false prophet means well doesn’t matter.

Ernesto was a problem, because he had pride. He spoke to people with a sort of paternal tone, as though he had authority and knowledge, but he was making things up, and he didn’t hear from God. He didn’t have in-your-face, abrasive pride, but that doesn’t matter. Lots of nice, likable guys are proud and deluded.

Today God finally gave me something negative. He said something bad was going to happen, and I wouldn’t like it. I was highly disturbed. Suddenly the positive words looked a lot better to me. I kept questioning him, and if I have things right, I’m not the person the bad thing will happen to. I know a couple of people who have some spiritual kinks in their relationship, and I believe they are going to have a problem. They already are: medical issues that haven’t responded to treatment.

I am relieved because I’m not headed for a problem, but I don’t want people I care about to have problems, either. But I can see why it’s happening. They haven’t been listening as well as they should have. People worthy of respect have commented on it. When you stop your ears, you invite harder lessons. The more you know about God, the more dangerous it is to reject correction.

Part of me hopes I’m mistaken, but on the other hand, I don’t want to learn that my efforts to hear from God have failed.

It’s not like I’m causing the problem. I have to remember that. I hear what I hear. If I pick up the paper, and it says there was a nuclear accident in Burma, and I repeat the story, I’m not the one who caused the accident.

It has to be a good thing. The purpose of chastisement is to help and correct. God told a friend of mine that whether something was a punishment or a lesson depended on how it was received.

I have prayed for God to give them every possible help to come around and avoid the chastisement.

We will see what happens. Future events and other types of confirmation (or refutation) will tell me whether I heard from God. I’m not going to buy myself a T-shirt that says “Prophet of God,” and I’m not going to do Youtube videos where I go around telling fortunes, like some “prophets” do.

Jesus said to take the worst seat at the feast and wait to be called to a better one. I know a lot of people who took the best seats and defended their right to them and then got pitched into the street. I’m lucky I’ve never had a position of honor in a church. I was an armorbearer, which is one step up from a janitor, and I was a deacon, which meant absolutely nothing and gave me no authority at all, so I don’t have to worry about being flattered and put to sleep by pastors. It’s hard to fall when no one has ever lifted you up.

I have a lot of concerns about pride. I often feel like I have figured out things about the kingdom of heaven, even though it’s very obvious that I could not figure them out alone. It’s very obvious that God handed me whatever I know. I have to be careful not to be scornful of other people who are wrong about various things. I’m no better than any of them.

I should go buy that fan. October is a long way off.

I’m all About Progress

With God’s intensified help, I am continuing to get things done. I got new accounts set up with the Florida Department of Revenue, which is surprisingly hard. I removed more leaves from my yard; I now have an impressive pile of them out in the woods. I’ve also made real progress on stump removal.

I have several stumps in my front yard. The man who sold my dad this house made a huge blunder. He had stumps sawn off level with the ground. NEVER do this. In order to remove a stump using force, you need to be able to grip it, and you need leverage. The longer the trunk is, the easier it is to pull the stump.

I tried burning the stumps with charcoal. It will work, but it’s very slow. I tried lifting them with my tractor. I tried potassium nitrate. I still haven’t found a universal solution.

Potassium nitrate will dramatically accelerate the speed at which some stumps rot. You can rot a stump in a month or two with it, and because the chemical will penetrate down to the roots, you will end up with a stump that burns easily. Potassium nitrate helps wood burn. I used potassium nitrate to soften a stump near my front door, and it worked very well, but other stumps seem to ignore it.

A couple of days ago, I resumed work on a stubborn oak stump. It came from a tree about ten inches across. I figured it would be pretty easy. I would use the tractor and subsoiler to go around it and rip out all the roots holding it in, and then I could lift it out. When I started ripping and digging, I found that the 10″ tree had a solid ball of wood just under the ground, nearly 20″ across. It wasn’t going anywhere.

I dug so much, I created a moat around it. I used a sawzall to cut many of the roots, and then I got out a Remington electric pole saw. This is a weak electric chainsaw. I didn’t want to put my nice gas saws in the dirt. It dulls the blades quickly and might cause other problems. I didn’t care all that much about the Remington; it was already pretty beaten up. It did a wonderful job. Better than a sawzall.

After that, I got the feeling that God was telling me to get a long pry bar and twist the stump out. The idea was to lodge the bar in the stump, attach a strap to the far and, and pull with a tractor. I saw two problems with this: I figured the bar would snap, and I also thought it was too big to go in the largest hole I could make. I have a 1″ auger on a hammer drill, and the pry bar seemed bigger than that. Nonetheless, I did what I thought I was supposed to do.

While I was looking at the problem, I decided to get a real saw out and cut a slot in the top of the stump, like the slot in a screw. This was easy. I rested the bar in it and pulled with my garden tractor. The bar bent instantly. I wondered if the idea had really come from God.

While I was staring at it, I decided to lower the saw into the moat and cut horizontally. I went about halfway through. Because I had a vertical slot in the stump, I was able to put the prying end of the bar (not bent) into the slot and pry. Before long, I had a bunch of stump chunks out. Big ones. In a short time, I was able to cut the stump off flat, maybe 9″ below the surface of the yard.

I wasn’t done. My drill removes wood much faster than a chainsaw. I took it and drilled vertically through the stump’s remains. I guess I spent 15 minutes doing this. Most of the holes went all the way into the soil. I removed a big percentage of the stump. I can bury it now and not worry about it, or I can go out and beat it with a maul and see how much of it breaks off. If I bury it, it should rot a lot faster than it would have, had I not drilled it out.

I plan to try the maul and see what happens. Can’t hurt.

The pry bar worked out very well. It bent, but it motivated me to do things that led to a better solution, and the bent bar is still useful. It only cost $27, which is fine, considering how much stump grinding costs.

I’m hoping to get the new rockshaft cylinder installed in the lawn tractor. I need to mow this week, and I don’t want the old cylinder shooting fluid all over the yard and garage.

Installing a new hydraulic cylinder is intimidating, but it appears that it should not be hard. SHOULD not, I say. You know how these things go sometimes. The old shaft is held in with two cotter pins. After that, you remove two fluid fittings. You put the new cylinder in its place and start working the hydraulics. The pump will fill the cylinder with fluid. Then I top off the fluid, and everything should be fine. As Jeremy Clarkson likes to say, “How hard can it be?”

I’m not sure how to get the new cylinder to move so it’s the same length as the old one. It will have to be extended to the same degree as the old one in order to fit. If I can’t work it out, I’ll have to find a way to move the hydraulic stuff in the tractor so it fits the new shaft.

It’s not easy to expand or compress an empty hydraulic cylinder. I think it needs to be expanded. Maybe I can tie it to a tree and pull it with a tractor.

John Deere makes this cylinder with welded ends, so I can’t replace the seals. Really rotten thing to do to customers. Rebuilding hydraulic cylinders is easy and cheap, and welding the ends on one is probably not significantly cheaper than putting real end caps on it. John Deere is known for high prices and pushing people to dealerships for overpriced repairs.

This is one of the reasons why all small tractors made in America are made overseas. When a company acts like an ass, foreign competitors move in, and Americans lose jobs. I have no sympathy at all when an annoying company gets Asian competition. It’s like the Mac/PC thing; Apple had a better product, but they treated customers and other companies the way lampreys treat bass, so PC vendors crushed Apple for years. Pffft. Couldn’t happen to a nicer company.

I also conquered a decades-long problem which had never stopped nibbling at me: I bought a new Stetson.

When I was in college, I bought a nice beaver Stetson cowboy hat. I got it for fun, but it turned out to be a fantastic hat. I don’t know if cowboys really wore these things, but they should have. In hot weather, they’re too warm, but when it gets cold and wet, a Stetson is great. A Stetson will keep your head dry and warm, and you will also look sharp.

One day while I was working in the student grocery, a Japanese girl named Kana came up to me, pulled off my Stetson, took a black bandana off her neck, put it on the hat over the band, and put the hat back on my head. It looked very good, and the whole thing was flattering. Kana was very attractive. A bit on the sassy side for a Japanese girl, and she was friendly to me and my male friends. I don’t mean she slept with us.

I don’t know how Japanese Kana was, or if she had ever been to Japan. Seemed like she had a little bit of an accent, but you know how Asians are. Raise them here, and they still have accents for a couple of generations.

When I decided to travel after dropping out, I took the Stetson with me. While I was living on a kibbutz, an Israeli kid asked if he could borrow it, and that was the last I ever saw of it.

Recently, I felt bad about losing the hat, and I started looking for a new one. I keep thinking about moving north, and I pictured myself walking around in cold weather with the wrong hat. Of course, Stetson had discontinued it. I created an Ebay search with email alerts, and whenever a new item was listed, I checked it out. This week, a nice hat popped up. It was the right size and model. It seems to be a tiny bit darker than my old hat, but it was too good to pass up. I bought it for about 1/4 the price of a new hat, and it’s in new condition. Sweet.

Now I just need the right bandana.

I can’t wear it now; it’s too hot. When I move to Tennessee, I’ll be able to wear it maybe 7 months out of the year!

I also had a Stetson “Indiana Jones” hat I bought for fun. As I recall, it didn’t like the rain very much, even though it cost $57.50 in dollars that were much bigger than today’s. It may be that the movie hat was wool and not beaver felt. Wool hats don’t tolerate rain well.

It was probably of lower quality than the cowboy hat. After all, it was made to take advantage of a movie fad.

Today I plan to keep getting things done. I’m going to call the University of Florida and ask for a horticulturist to come out and tell me what to do with my yard. I’m going to get another peach tree, and I have realized I need a mulberry, too. I know just where to put it. Some day, people who visit this property will thank me for the shade.

I am Now a Destination for Christian Tourism

I should start keeping a running list of the things I get done. God’s joy keeps flowing through me, and walls keep coming down.

This weekend I bleached two of the workshop’s exterior walls. I treated some Spanish moss with sodium bicarbonate to kill it. I trimmed some hedges. I finally found out what was making my garden tractor leak, I researched the problem, and I found a new part for it. I treated the yard with weed and feed. I cleaned up a lot of the downstairs. I bought copper sulfate because the sodium bicarbonate didn’t satisfy me. I fixed the rickety ornamental fence my grapes grow on, and I fastened my blackberry briars to trellises.

I can’t recall everything else I did.

Today I listened to Derek Prince, and he taught about joy. He said something I’ve believed for years: Biblical joy is not happiness. It’s not an emotion. It’s a thing of the spirit.

I distinguish between the soul and spirit, and so does the Bible. For example, I believe anger is an emotion, which comes from the soul. I believe confidence and enthusiasm come from the spirit. I believe depression comes from the spirit. There are lots of other examples.

What I feel these days isn’t quite the same thing as happiness, although it seems to lead to it. I feel energetic and enthusiastic. I feel confident and optimistic. That’s joy. It’s strength. That’s why the Bible says the joy of the Lord is our strength.

Depression, discouragement, and laziness oppose joy. When you’re depressed, one of the symptoms is laziness. You find it hard to motivate yourself. You feel that whatever you do won’t be rewarding.

I love listening to Prince because, in addition to teaching me new things, he confirms things I already know. Most of what I hear from him is confirmation, not new knowledge. That tells me I’ve been hearing from God. God…tells…everyone…the…same…things. There is no such thing as “healthy” debate.

People in heaven don’t stand around arguing. They already know the truth about everything. God has told them.

Your opinion doesn’t mean squat in heaven. There are no opinions in heaven.

I devoted myself to Trinity Church in Miami, and then I plunged into now-defunct New Dawn Ministries. Both churches were cults. Most of what they taught was correct, but they taught enough garbage to render it ineffective. The pastors made slaves of people. They manipulated, which (according to sound doctrine) means they practiced a form of witchcraft. They squeezed us for money and free work. They got angry and defensive when people spoke the truth and exposed what they were getting wrong.

While I was pulling away at my oar in these galleys, God told me many things, and I got in trouble for repeating them. Now I listen to Derek Prince, and I watch videos made decades ago, in which he says the same things God was saying to me, and for which I was ostracized and disliked by my pastors.

Anyone who prays in tongues every day will hear from God, and God will tell you what he tells me. If I get something wrong, he will tell you I’m mistaken. You really need to hear from God himself.

I had a wonderful experience this weekend. I have a list of people I pray for, and I’m on it. Among other things, I pray that God will give us our own properties and that he will use them for his purposes. I ask him to make them places where the righteous gather for prayer and so on. A couple of days ago, I saw this prayer answered. Some friends who attended Trinity and New Dawn called, and they said they wanted to visit in order to fix their relationships with God.

Look how my life has changed. People want to to come see me so they can get to know God better.

I need names for these people, so I will call them Archie and Edith. Archie was an armorbearer at Trinity, and he also served at New Dawn. He and Edith have two children. One is a grown woman in her twenties. I will call her Gloria. They have a son who must be about 11 now. Let’s call him Mike.

Archie and Edith left Miami, which is a sign God is trying to help them. They moved to the Pompano area. They ended up at a Calvary Chapel church. Calvary Chapel is an organization which focuses on church growth without promoting the works of the Holy Spirit. They don’t ban things like tongues and prophesy, but they don’t promote them, either, which means they discourage them. You can’t be neutral.

Archie called, and we started talking about their walks with God. We got somewhat worked up, and he put me on speaker so Edith could talk. They both complained that they didn’t feel God’s presence at Calvary. Whatever the problems with Trinity and New Dawn were, the Holy Spirit was active. The pastors were off course, but there were people at both churches who did good work when the pastors weren’t around. I will admit that the pastors at New Dawn promoted the works of the Spirit. Their big problem was that they also promoted greed, pride, and manipulation.

Archie started expressing frustration with churches. I saw where he was going, and I told him God had been telling me that the age of the church was over. Organizations were failing him. The most powerful work was going to be done among individuals who were not assembled in churches.

I told them about the strange little ministries I had seen on Youtube. Individuals are going around healing and baptizing people and spreading good teaching. I told them about my trip to Clearwater, to be baptized at a Last Reformation event. I said they needed to have their own meetings at home; just the two of them.

Edith said she was depressed. This is a problem she has had for years. She said she couldn’t get herself going. I knew what the problem was: lack of prayer in tongues.

Long story short, I told them they were welcome to come up. I said I would show them the things I had been shown. We could redo their baptisms in my pool.

They’re planning to come up in June, for at least two days. I sent them Youtube links.

Gloria is an interesting case. Back in 2012, when she was in her late teens, she took the stage at New Dawn and started teaching. She spoke things that came straight from God’s heart, about how people needed to stop being hypocritical and seek God for real. I was amazed. For a long time after that, I thought she was destined for big things. Nothing happened, though. She didn’t continue. I didn’t understand it.

I shouldn’t have been surprised. I see that now. In the Bible, there were times when people who weren’t very close to God prophesied. It had more to do with the presence of God than their status as vessels. Gloria is very worldly. She is very much a part of the godless millennial culture. We just happened to catch her on a night when God took hold of her. I hope she improves. She has been a burden to her parents.

I’m going to pray for God to help Archie and Edith get here, and for him to help us do what he wants. Satan’s tricks are obvious. He will try to prevent them from coming, and he will try to cause problems if they make it, so it’s time to take preventative measures.

Always Accurate; Never Biased

I have been on a roll for weeks. God has been helping me break strongholds that used to drive me nuts. I had a lot of lingering tasks I could not seem to get done, and they keep falling before me.

Yesterday I installed a new moonroof motor in the SUV I inherited. This was a real problem. I need to go to Miami to get junk out of a house I own, so it can be sold. I don’t want to drive my pickup. Water was coming into the SUV because the moonroof drain holes got stopped up, and it killed the slide motor. In order to unplug the holes, I had to open the roof, so I needed the motor to work. I couldn’t drive the SUV to Miami with plugged drain holes. In order to go to Miami, I had to install the new motor.

The installation was a pain, but being me, I had all the tools I needed, and the most important tool was my knowledge of the supernatural. I prayed and spoke God’s help to myself.

I also got new insurance for a house I’m selling. I applied for an online account so I can pay my corporation’s taxes using my computer. I consulted with my realtor and chose a listing price for another house I’m selling. I established contact with a difficult condominium association which has apparently screwed my account up again, and I got them to commit to working it out with me. Things are moving right along.

I used to think worry was an important motivator. That’s true, IF you can’t get joy. Joy is the motivator you want. Worry is a stick; joy is a carrot. Joy is painless. It’s pleasant. It doesn’t give you ulcers, high blood pressure, strokes, gallstones, heart attacks, constipation, insomnia, obesity, or teeth that are worn out because you grind them at night.

The world is full of options. There are options that are available to God’s children, and there are inferior options for the carnal. Joy is for God’s children. If you can’t get God’s joy, you better get worry or some other source of drive, because if you don’t, you may fall way behind on your responsibilities.

God has been filling me with joy lately, and as the Bible says, the joy of the Lord is our strength. It’s not just a flowery saying that looks good on a greeting card. The joy of the Lord IS strength. It will help you get things done.

I’ve noticed that there are things that dull my joy. One of them is looking at the news. A while back, God told me to quit doing it. I canceled the newspapers my dad subscribed to, and I quit looking at news sites. I still see some stuff when I got to Yahoo to check a throwaway email account, however. I shouldn’t look at it. I need to be serious about it. When I look at the articles, I feel my joy slipping away, and I feel discouraged. The world is disgusting; it’s full of morbid tendencies. The world is failing, like a cancer patient, and when I read about it, I get caught up in the despair.

Generally, you go to a person’s side when he’s dying, and you sit it out. When a person is dying from a self-inflicted problem, and he refuses to change, it’s different. You shouldn’t take part in it. The world is going to succeed in destroying itself. I need to limit my participation in that.

I don’t actually need to read the news. I’m not endorsing ignorance, but right now, the news does me much more harm than good, and let’s face it: I am not going to change the world, or learn anything that will help me or those I love, by reading the news. God guides me every day. He’s not going to let me walk off a cliff just because I ignore the hysterical, biased squawking on Fox and CNN.

God keeps showing me how poisonous unequal yokings are. My dad, my worst unequal yoking, was a terrible weight to me until about two months before he died. He made me miserable for much of my life. Even though he changed tremendously shortly before he died, I am still recovering from the effects of my dealings with the pre-transformation Dad. I’m like a plant that was hidden in a closet; now I’m in the sun, and I’m growing and thriving.

When I was a kid, my sister and I used to push my mother to divorce my dad, and we were correct. He was that toxic. God supports marriage, and he hates divorce, but he permits divorce based on infidelity (and probably other things, under the new covenant), and my dad was unfaithful. We should have cut him loose and moved on. When I was older and had a choice, I chose to stay close to him and try to restore our relationship, and when I did that, I sentenced myself to years of needless conflict and waste.

You would think that when I turned back to God, over 10 years ago, he would have told me to dump my dad and make new connections. He did not. He was very clear. I believe I was sentenced to stick with my dad for a while, so I would get a bellyful and learn to hate unequal yokings. It worked. I absolutely hate them, and I will never permit myself to have another one.

When I sit and read news stories, I yoke myself with the secular world. I concern myself with problems that don’t apply to me. It does not matter what happens to the world; I am not part of it, so I will be fine. God has said, “A thousand shall fall at thy side and ten thousand at thy right hand, but it shall not come nigh thee. Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked.” He has also said, “Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge–even the most high–thy habitation, there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.”

You know what? Fox and CNN may be your news, but my newspaper is the word of God. I have a different source of news, and my news is different. Now I see why God doesn’t want me to read the news. It’s as if I were studying to be a pharmacist but instead of pharmacy classes, I went to history classes. It’s not the correct input for people on my path, with my future.

It’s crucial to know and accept your place in life, and your path. You can’t look at what other people are doing and insist that you be allowed to do the same.

On a related note, I watched a neat Derek Prince video the other day, about the gifts of the Spirit. The Bible makes it clear that we are expected to prophesy; it’s a universal gift, and we are told to “covet” it. It also lists interpretation of tongues as a gift. Prince led a group of people in prophecy and interpretation, and I started trying to do what they did.

It appears to work. My only concern is that the messages I’ve delivered seem to have very little critical content. The main criticism is this: he says I have to listen. If I am correct, he says my enemies will be cut down before me like wheat before a scythe. He says he will be with me forever. He says many others have come before him, but he is the only true God.

I wondered who he was talking about when me said others had come before him. He said that over and over. In the case of the Jews, he could be talking about the many false messiahs, such as Moses of Crete or Menachem Schneerson, a former Lubavitcher Rebbe who, though he is dead, is worshiped by many people. There was also a pretender named Jesus Bar-Kochba.

It’s interesting to note that Jews who worship Schneerson, who, by their own criteria, can’t be the Messiah, are still considered Jews. If you worship Jesus, you’re out. I wonder if anyone has considered the seeming hypocrisy.

I’m not Jewish. I never thought any Jewish pretender was divine, so if God talks of others who came before him, he can’t be talking about Jewish false messiahs. On the other hand, I have looked to certain human beings to teach me and save me.

When I was in high school, I used to read philosophy books and self-help books. I read people like Krishnamurti and Kierkegaard. I even read Fritz Perls. He was an old pervert who founded a school of psychology called gestalt. Later in life, I found a guy named Wayne Dyer, who taught a very effective (short-term) method of defeating depression. When you defeat depression, joy rebounds in you, and you can get things done. It changed my life.

I was given an anti-depressant when I was at Columbia University, and I had a psychiatrist. Didn’t help in the slightest. Complete waste of time. My psychiatrist, Dr. Anderson, was possibly the worst messiah of all. He just sat in a chair and asked me questions.

I’ve put my faith in a lot of people who were wrong. Some were able to help me dramatically for a short time, but they always failed in the end. Their teachings were carnal, which means they were divorced from the Holy Spirit and Jesus. They were secular false messiahs.

I even turned myself into a messiah. I thought self-esteem and optimism, which I generated, could save me. Big mistake.

Because I was ignorant about God, I thought depression and low self-esteem were my fundamental problems. I was depressed for most of the first 30 years of my life, and I also suffered depression when I went to graduate school in physics. I don’t get depression any more. It’s actually somewhat difficult to remember what it was like, and that’s fine with me. It just does not happen. I can have a couple of days during which I feel down, but that’s it. God doesn’t cure depression temporarily; he annihilates it and keeps it off of you permanently. It’s one of the benefits of prayer in tongues.

I believe my depression was a demon, or more than one demons. Whatever it was, it could only be removed by God’s power.

I hope I’m hearing from God correctly. I intend to keep trying. God has made it clear that we are expected to prophesy, and I want to do everything I’m supposed to do.

Jesus said this:

And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.

For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.

If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent?

Or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion?

I don’t believe God will allow me to be deceived if I ask for things he has told me I’m supposed to have. If he will, what hope is there for us?

The things I hear when I try to interpret and prophesy are far better than anything I would have expected God to give me, so I certainly hope they’re coming from God and not me.

We have to have God’s guidance. If he doesn’t inform us, we will walk into one defeat after another. The Bible isn’t enough. The Bible won’t tell you to avoid an airline flight that’s going to crash. It won’t tell you your neighbor is about to go on a shooting rampage. The Bible is great when it comes to generalities, but for specific, real-time information, you have to have the Holy Spirit.

Pre-Christian Jews inquired of God all the time, and he answered. The Holy Spirit spoke to Christians in the New Testament all the time. It’s abnormal to live without God’s timely, specific counsel, yet somehow, we think anyone who claims to hear from God is a nut and a heretic.

I think I’m going to be living in Tennessee at some point in 2020. I believe that will be my last move. I’ll say these things publicly, and we’ll see how they pan out. I think I’ll be looking for properties in earnest by the end of this year. I refuse to borrow (carnal and not the way you behave when you’re the head), so maybe that means all of my surplus property will be sold by then.

Many children of God are being moved to rural areas where they will live in greater safety and be less unequally yoked. On the other hand, most Christians I know don’t hear from God, and they plan to stay where they are. I can’t help them. I can tell them what I know, and after that, the burden is on them.

I think my black friends are in greater trouble than the others. They have been brainwashed to think they have to help “the community” at the expense of everything else. They think they have to live in urban black neighborhoods and hold onto black friends and relatives who pretend to be Christians yet are steeped in sin.

Their neighborhoods are going nowhere. They will not be fixed. They will continue to rot. Staying there is disobedient, and when bad times come, God’s help will be limited, because they should have known better than to stay.

White neighborhoods full of ungodly people are headed for trouble, and black neighborhoods are even worse off. That’s just how it is. As Lot’s wife could tell you, God won’t reward anyone for stubbornness. When he says “leave,” you have to leave.

I shudder when I consider the fate of Jews who live in or near big urban centers. Blacks and Hispanics, who tend to concentrate in cities, have major problems with anti-Semitism, and before long, they will be free to act on their urges. Muslims also accumulate in cities.

The Bible talks about enemies overrunning Israel and raping the women. When people from a certain area are dispersed, they tend to bring their curses with them to their new countries. It may be that many Jews in America will share the problems Israel faces. After all, Israel is a people, not a place.

Today I have to fix a hedge and work on state taxes. I should also put new gage wheels on the deck of my diesel mower. They just arrived. I might also add some stones to an area I mulched last week. Rain is disturbing the mulch.

Am I getting the property ready to live in or to sell? Looks like both. I hope so. As much as I love it here, I can’t stop thinking about Appalachia.

With an Anti-Semitic Pastor

A while back, I wrote about a Youtuber who calls himself ChuckE2009. He’s an interesting guy. He’s a young man who lives in Texas. He went to welding school, and then he got himself a farm. He makes very useful and entertaining videos about tools and farming.

He got in trouble recently by posting political videos. At first, he stood up for old-fashioned values, and that was nice. Later, he started talking about “precious European blood.” He expressed concern about the fact that white Caucasians were being displaced in America. A lot of people got off the ChuckE2009 bus at that point. Since then, people have been posting videos excoriating him and calling him a racist. To be fair to his critics, it looks like they’re right. He seems to believe that Caucasians of European descent are under attack, and although I haven’t seen him advocate violence, he clearly believes a response is in order.

It is certainly true that white people are under attack. It’s a sick new phenomenon. A big university had an event where white people were told to stay home, and they were clearly intimidated. A Jewish professor got in trouble for going to work. Leftists sided against him. When things like this happen in America, it’s obvious that white people are besieged. That, however, doesn’t mean some kind of carnal response is appropriate. It’s a manifestation of a supernatural movement, and exposure and prayer are the correct reactions.

The word “racist” is poorly defined. Generally, people define it so they can use it to condemn people they dislike or excuse people they favor. Leftists have lowered the bar so much, it’s no longer possible to be anything but a racist under their definition, unless you’re non-white. If you’re non-white, you can’t be a racist at all. A non-white person who murders white people while wearing a shirt that says, “I hate white people and believe they are inferior” is not racist, under the left’s criteria. This is literally true.

On the other side of the spectrum, there are people who say you’re not a racist as long as you’re nice to people of other races. You can join a Nazi group and support anti-non-white causes, but as long as you hold the door for black ladies at the mall, you’re okay.

Here is one type of racism: you condemn individuals without investigation, simply because they belong to certain groups. It’s not racist to choose not to live in a black neighborhood because you’re afraid of crime. That’s common sense, and even black people agree that black neighborhoods are dangerous for non-blacks. It’s racist, however, to assume your neighbor–an individual you have not evaluated–has a criminal mindset because he’s black.

Another type of bigotry is genocidal in nature. It involves slandering a group and refusing to give that group a hearing. For example, if you think Jews cause all the world’s problems, which is clearly far from true, you’re a racist. One of my best friends from high school told me black people were a cancer, and he said they should be taken out to sea and drowned. That’s about as racist as you can get. Obviously, I do not talk to this person now.

It’s wrong to say that every negative thought or feeling about people who are different is evil. For example, feeling nervous around crowds of rowdy members of another group which is known for violence toward whites doesn’t make you a racist. It’s a reasonable response to observed behavior. Believing that some racial groups have higher IQ’s is not racist. In fact, leftist scientists believe this, because it’s true. They are not happy about it, and they are very determined to prove that it’s not rooted in genetics. It surprised me to find out that it was true. I don’t know the reason for the disparity, but it definitely exists, and believing it exists isn’t racism. Denying it would be irrational.

It sure seems to me that ChuckE2009 is a racist. He seems to believe that Europeans are the source of all or most progress and harmony in the world. He appears to be against interracial marriage, too, and that suggests that he has problems with a person’s non-white status, per se, not just behaviors and attitudes that might be expected to go along with it. If you’re against all interracial marriage, you must be a racist, because you don’t make exceptions for the many excellent non-white marriage candidates everyone with any common sense knows are out there.

It’s easy for white people who don’t do their homework to get the idea that civilization was created by Europeans, but it’s not quite true. While Northern Europeans were eating each other and worshiping trees, other peoples were civilizing their parts of the world. Obvious examples are the Jews, various Asians, and the Indians of Central and South America. Apart from that, the Nazis and Soviets prove that blue-eyed white people can do a lot of damage.

I don’t deny that American and European culture are, objectively, superior to most others, but that has more to do with God’s favor than white blood.

When you watch ChuckE’s videos, you can see that he’s a Christian. He mentions religion a lot, and he’s upset about sexual sin and abortion.

When I became aware of his issues, I started wondering how he got where he is, and an obvious answer suggested itself: he had to be in the hands of a church that denied the Holy Spirit. Guess what? I was right. He recently posted a video that consisted mostly of footage from a church’s channel. The church’s pastor is one Steven Anderson, and he is against speaking in tongues.

Didn’t take long to figure that out. Churches that don’t deny the Holy Spirit are notable for their racial tolerance and favorable attitude toward interracial marriage, and ChuckE’s sentiments didn’t fit the profile.

Sanderson is a rabid anti-Semite. He has sermons in which he talks about “the real Jews.” Whenever you hear the phrase “the real Jews,” you know you’re about to hear anti-Semitic slander. He has two sermons titled, “The Jews and Their Lies.” He denies that the Holocaust happened. Charismatics, whatever our faults may be, are horrified by this kind of drivel.

ChuckE’s experience shows what happens when churches reject the Holy Spirit. Doctrine goes haywire. Only the Holy Spirit can limit the craziness of the things the mind of man can believe.

I feel bad for this young man. His pastor is controlled by the spirit of Antichrist, and no one has introduced him to the Holy Spirit, so he has no defense.

It always bothers me when people reject the baptism with the Spirit and prayer in tongues, and ChuckE2009’s experience should help you understand why. It doesn’t matter how nice you are, how smart, or how fair. If you aren’t hearing from the Holy Spirit every day, you are never going to develop as a Christian, and you will always be ignorant and deceived. It won’t help you to read the Bible every day. Many of the greatest religious scholars have been wrong about everything that matters.

The Holy Spirit is not an option, like a convertible roof or alloy wheels. You have to have him. Saying the Holy Spirit is optional is like saying legs are optional.

I’ve been wondering if other Youtube tool guys felt the way ChuckE did. His best Youtube buddy, Stephen Cox, just put out a video in which he clears the air. He says he disagrees with ChuckE, but he still chooses to be his best friend. It appears that he made this choice because he felt that virtuous people don’t abandon their friends just because they have kooky beliefs. Quite honestly, he comes across as self-righteous about it, as though we should admire him.

What Cox says may sound nice, and he clearly has good intentions, but it’s ignorant. The truth is this: unequal yokings are poisonous. Jesus fully expects us to abandon our friends, along with everyone else who pulls us away from him, except for children and spouses. He said he came to pit people against each other.

Paul said a Christian should avoid people who claim to be brothers yet persist in certain behaviors. He said we should not even eat with one who “is sexually immoral, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner.” When you start ranting about the Jewish Problem and the importance of European blood, you become a reviler. No question about it.

I would pray for ChuckE; in fact, I do. But I wouldn’t continue to associate with such a person. It’s too much. You shouldn’t have someone like that around your wife and kids. You shouldn’t let people see you with him. It will lend support to what he says.

ChuckE is a Christian, supposedly, and he supports anti-Semitic propaganda. Stephen Cox says he’s a Christian, but he doesn’t know he shouldn’t run around with anti-Semites. It’s remarkable what you can believe and still think you’re on board with God.

It’s amazing that a twisted individual like Steven Anderson could succeed as a pastor in America. His website features a photo of him surrounded by dozens of happy followers. They’re not ashamed to be seen with him. Where do people that deceived come from?

I decided to unsubscribe from ChuckE’s channel. It means nearly nothing; no one knew I had subscribed to him, and if they had, it wouldn’t have mattered. I just felt like disconnecting in whatever way I could. I don’t want to see his updates filling my screen when I sit down to relax with tool videos.

I am against the kook right. I am against the people who blindly defend people like Breitbart and Coulter. Andrew Breitbart was a snake who would have done anything for fame, and Ann Coulter has mental issues. I don’t believe in forming militias and daring the FBI to attack. I don’t believe in antagonizing the police on camera and posting the videos on the Internet. I want no part of violent rallies. Conservatives need to disclaim the small, nutty fringe that feeds the left’s straw man fantasies.

I remember how nuts came to my blog and ranted when I criticized pre-alt-right wackos. I was disloyal! I was a traitor! I’m so glad I said what I did. I would hate to be a friend of the kind of people who insulted me. It never bothered me in the slightest. I’m glad they don’t like me. I wouldn’t want them to. It would embarrass me. I hope I still offend them. I hope they change, but unless they do, I don’t want them on my side.

Conservatism is great, and God is conservative, but Christianity is the only answer to man’s problems. Conservatism is a by-product. When you pursue conservatism itself and ignore the Holy Spirit, you waste your time and make your problems worse. That’s true of any good thing. It’s true of wealth. It’s true of power. They’re not blessings unless they come from obeying the Holy Spirit. The essence of carnality is to pursue superficial blessings without pursuing the kingdom of heaven and God’s righteousness.

It seems like the world is being centrifuged rapidly, to separate a tiny Holy-Spirit-aware remnant from everyone else. The more time passes, the lonelier God’s true children will get. Even nominal Christians are generally against them, and the situation will only get worse.

Pour it On; I Can’t Get Enough

One of the strange things about being an effective Christian is that you have to love being told you’re wrong. You have to prize criticism. If you look for it, you can see this idea throughout the Bible. For example, Psalm 141 says, “Let the righteous smite me; it shall be a kindness: and let him reprove me; it shall be an excellent oil, which shall not break my head.”

Here on the demon-infested earth, we are taught to deny blame. Worse, we are taught to falsely accuse those who bring our faults to our attention. We learn to avoid accepting blame and taking responsibility. By dodging and lying, we avoid the blessing of improvement.

Jesus and the other martyrs were killed partly because they were critical. Leftist Christians like to portray Jesus as a Pillsbury Doughboy sort of person who went through life hugging people and giggling, but in reality, he was very critical and extremely rude. He knew what was wrong with us, and he wanted us to be saved from our faults, so he told us the unsweetened truth. Those who accepted his remarks were saved. Many or all of the rest continued to rot on earth and then ended up in hell.

When you develop a real prayer life, you will hear from God, and very often, what he says will be criticism. You have to take it the right way. When God criticizes you, it’s as if he were shoveling rubies into your pockets. He is giving you keys that unlock the doors that keep you undeveloped and weak.

You can’t say, “I can’t believe this. I’ve been at this so long, and I’ve been so patient, and now you’re telling me I’m still a mess.” That’s self-pity, and self-pity is a form of pride. God fights the proud; the Bible says so. Do you want God himself to fight with you? You’re guaranteed to lose. You have to say, “Thank you for showing me the way out!”

Yesterday I watched a Derek Prince video, and he talked about carnality. If I recall correctly, he connected it with a desire to be independent of God.

I didn’t think much about what he said when I heard it. I agreed with it, and I figured I was not in deep trouble. Last night I woke up and thought about it more, and I realized the desire to be free of God was in me. It shocked me.

Of course, I was hearing from God. I am not smart enough or good enough to figure things like this out without help.

The desire to be free of God is a characteristic of fallen angels and demons. Psalm 2 says this about them and their children:

Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?

The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against his anointed, saying,

Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.

He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision.

Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure.

I don’t want God to vex me or speak to me in wrath.

People who say they have visited hell commonly say the presence of God is not there. This is supposed to be one of the worst things about hell; it’s probably what makes hell what it is. Every good thing streams from God, so if he’s not around, life is agony and constant humiliation. I know this, but I have still had a desire to live in a world where I could lead a “normal” life without so many restrictions and without putting in so much work in prayer and so on. I have desired to be close to God, but at the same time, part of me missed the days of delusion in which I tried to get by on my own, without choosing God’s side and setting myself up as a target for Satan.

I knew there was no such thing as a “normal” world where people lived “normal” lives, but the concept still sounded good to me.

The desire to be free from the light burden and easy yoke of the Spirit-led life is related to the spirit of antichrist. As Prince taught, “anti” means “against,” but it also means, “instead of.” The Antichrist–the man–won’t just be against Christ. He’ll be a substitute Christ. He’ll preach what I call “the alternative righteousness.”

God is both love and judgment. The Antichrist will ignore judgment and push false love. He’ll tell us we have to be really nice to each other. He’ll say this is all that matters. He’ll say homosexuality and other forms of sexual sin are just fine, as long as we’re nice. He’ll say pride is fine, as long as we’re nice. The Bible says we should be kind, but it also says God himself puts people in hell, which he created, for disobedience. The Antichrist will teach that hell doesn’t exist, and he’ll tell us we can make the earth our heaven.

I always talk about the alternative righteousness, but I didn’t fully understand what it was until a few days ago.

When Jesus walked the earth, many of his followers expected him to put on a crown and kill the Romans. They thought he would lift Israel up above its enemies. In other words, they expected a political leader. He told them they were wrong, but they didn’t understand. He said, “My kingdom is not of this world.” He also said, “My kingdom is within you.” He was not a political agitator. He never complained about the Roman occupation, and he even advised his followers to pay taxes.

The Antichrist will be the kind of leader the Jews of Jesus’ time were hoping for. He will be very political. He will be a military leader. He will go after Christians and Jews. He will convince people he can create a false Eden here on earth.

He will be politically correct. There is more to that ugly phrase than we understand. “Political correctness” is synonymous with “alternative righteousness.”

We have strange ideas about righteousness. We think it means you’re supposed to walk around in a robe and be peaceful and effeminate, more or less. A righteous man, to us, is an asexual zealot who walks around staring up to heaven all day. That’s not righteousness. The word “righteous” simply means “correct.” When the Bible says God is righteous, it’s saying God is right about everything.

Correctness is righteousness, so political correctness is political righteousness. “Political” is nearly synonymous with “carnal.”

There have always been two kingdoms on earth: the political kingdom, and the kingdom of heaven. God discouraged the Jews from choosing a king, because he wanted them to be ruled through the kingdom of heaven, guided by priests and prophets. They rejected his advice and chose the curse of politics. They wanted a secular–carnal–leader.

The secular way is the carnal way. It means living without God’s counsel and commands. It means disobedience to God.

What does “carnal” mean? It means “of the flesh.” Animals are carnal. They can’t understand the things of God. They do their best with their natural abilities. When we choose carnal, political solutions, we become like animals. What does the King James Version call animals? “Beasts.”

Political correctness is carnal, and it’s the way of the Beast.

A few years back, God startled me by telling me I had a spirit of antichrist, so I fought it from time to time. I understood various aspects of it, but I don’t think I understood all of it. Now I see that wishing the universe were different and that we could live outside of the Christian paradigm is an antichristian mindset. It opens doors to spirits that hate God.

If anyone ever wishes to be free from the “burdens” of godly life, it has to be because he has forgotten how good that life is–how good and pleasing God is–and how horrible the alternative is.

Now that I have this revelation, I have something new to repent of, and that’s a tremendous gift. It’s always a relief to find out I’m doing something wrong, because it means there is a way to fix things and improve my situation.

The earth isn’t going to be fixed. Christians who push for that need to pray for correction. The Bible makes it very clear that we are going to lose in the short term. It also makes it clear that our path is not political. We are not going to repair the world by convincing everyone we’re nice, winning their hearts, and electing Christian governments. We are going to be persecuted and murdered, and weak Christians will participate in it. We will be demonized, and people who harm us will think they’re doing good deeds.

You can be repaired. The world can’t. Not until Jesus returns, kills his enemies, and rebuilds the planet.

I’m excited about the correction I received. I know my life will be better in the future because of it. I can’t permit myself to fantasize about a world where I can live “normally.” It gives the spirit of antichrist, which hates me, a foothold.

Today I prayed for God to make me more dependent on him. More, not less.

Things are still going well here. I’m tearing this place up. Yesterday was a slow day for home maintenance, but I mopped the back porch with pool chlorine nonetheless. I backwashed and shocked the pool and identified and bought a chemical for killing Spanish moss. I got keys made for my utility cart. I also got a ton of business matters fixed.

The cheap moss-killing chemical is baking soda. They say it really works. I plan to load it in the pressure washer and spray it on the trees near the house. It would be a dream come true to see that nasty stuff dry up and drop. I’m wondering if it will have any effect on algae. Hmm…a website says it kills algae in lawns. I may have a new treatment for my roof.

Today my new leaf blower arrived. It will be like strapping myself to an engine from an F15. Can’t wait to blow leaves and other junk across the farm. I’ve already done some work today, even though I feel like I’ve barely started. I mopped the back porch with pool chlorine again, before breakfast! It wasn’t clean enough to suit me, but before I’m done, it will be. I’ll pressure-wash it if I have to.

I guess I’ll mix the baking soda with Dawn, to make it stick and penetrate. I bought Simple Green for the first time in my life, and I tried using it in the pressure washer, but it seems weak and utterly useless. Hard to believe it’s this overrated. It doesn’t seem to do anything well.

The motor for my car’s moonroof arrived. I was dreading installing it, because of the hot weather. Even in the garage, it’s hot. Then I remembered that the car had an air conditioner. I can park in the shade and run the AC while I work. Not sure why this wasn’t obvious to me.

My advice is to keep asking for correction, because you’re even more wrong than you thought. Be glad you’re wrong, because if you were doing everything right, and your life was as it is now, you would have nothing better to look forward to.

Problems Dissolve Before Wave of Solutions

I’ve had another exciting two days.

The house I live in is wonderful, and the previous owners did a great job taking care of it. Unfortunately, they made a lot of bad landscaping choices. One example was the choice to leave a large oak tree standing 10 feet in front of the house. At some point, they cut it, and they didn’t have the stump ground. When I arrived here, I had a two-foot-wide stump taking up valuable landscaping space, and it had octopus-like roots extending in several directions.

I have fiddled with the stump for quite a while. I put drilled holes in it and filled them with saltpeter. That softened the wood so it was like a very tough cork. It didn’t get rid of the stump, however. Saltpeter is supposed to cause stumps to rot very quickly. Barring that, it’s supposed to make them very flammable, so you can apply kerosene, set them alight, and watch while they burn down into the ground. I didn’t get those results.

The saltpeter didn’t do everything it should have, but it made the stump vulnerable to conventional attack, so yesterday and the day before, I took a sawzall to it. I had come to understand that a lithium sawzall was a phenomenal landscaping tool. I cut a bunch of roots, and then yesterday, I got out a 4-foot prybar and a maul, and I went to town on the stump.

I would estimate that I worked an hour, spread out over two days. I tore out what must have been 150 pounds of oak, in big chunks. It was fantastic. Cutting and removing the roots gave me access to the stump itself, and it surrendered in a short time.

The stump is now gone. I loaded it in my cart and dumped the bits in the woods. Now I have an area where I can plant another peach tree. I don’t know if my first peach tree needs a pollination partner, but I would like to have two varieties, in case I don’t like the one I already have.

I also fixed the ground under the eave of my workshop. For some inexplicable reason, there is no gutter on the roof, so rainwater runs straight off the roof and down onto the lawn, digging a trench in the ground and splashing dirt onto the workshop porch. I learned about the virtues of melaleuca mulch this week, and I picked up 18 bags. I used several of them to fill in the trench the rain dug. Now when the rain pours off the roof, it will land on a bed of what is supposed to be the most stubborn plant-based mulch on earth. Melaleuca mulch binds together after you put it in place, and it’s also heavy, so it won’t float or wash away.

I may put some sort of plants in the mulch. Not sure yet. I put raspberry plants there in 2017, and the rain obliterated them. Weeds seem to grow really well there, though.

I have another area where the old pine mulch was nearly gone, so I blasted it with glyphosate, hacked out a flowering bush I never liked, and dumped a thick blanket of melaleuca mulch on it. It looks much–or mulch–better now. I also installed a hummingbird feeder hanging from a brand-new shepherd’s hook.

I finished trimming my hedges today. Oops…that’s not true. I finished one more side of the house. But it’s a big percentage of the total hedge burden. I can’t say the hedges look neat now, but at least they look like someone tried to put them in order. That’s a gigantic improvement.

I vacuumed and brushed the pool and got some liquid chlorine. Tomorrow I’ll backwash it and shock it. The pool is still recovering from my recent gutter-cleaning adventure. Lots of roof grit and leaf compost dust went into the water. I was starting to get a little algae, so today I nipped that problem in the bud.

I trimmed a couple of trees today. I have a tree with hanging branches, like a willow, and they interfere when I try to mow. I used to put up with it, figuring I wasn’t supposed to cut the limbs. I assumed the droopy effect was one of the tree’s features. Today I thought about it, and I remembered that I own the house now. I don’t care how the person who planted the tree feels. I can do what I want. I hacked out the limbs that were in my way. Now the tree looks much better. I have another tree with limbs that touched the pool enclosure. It occurred to me that a mouse could climb the tree and walk out onto the enclosure, providing him with roof access. I don’t need that headache, so I cut the tree back just to be sure.

My blackberry and grape plants live in an area bordered by a ludicrous ornamental rail fence, and the fence is not sturdy. The rails have a tendency to pop out and fall. Today I took a long 1/4″ drill bit and drilled holes through the posts and rails, and then I used an impact driver to run long hex screws through them to hold them together. I intend to keep running screws until the rails quit flopping. It’s a great solution. It’s unobtrusive, and the whole job of installing a screw takes 30 seconds.

The blackberries are doing very, very well. The bugs here just don’t like them. Today I bought trellises for them. They will be installed tomorrow.

I ordered more batteries for my 18-volt Makita toys. I figure a total of 6 batteries will be enough to make it highly unlikely I’ll ever have to quit work because I’m out of juice. I considered buying no-name Chinese batteries, but there is some question as to how long they last, and you can find great deals on real Makitas on Ebay, so I didn’t take a chance.

I researched strawberries. Someone suggested I put strawberry plants in the planter that used to house the annoying pygmy date palm I dismembered. It’s a great idea, because the planter is by the pool, screened in. The squirrels won’t be able to get near it, but they WILL be able to hang on the screen and stare at the berries they will never get, and that serves them right.

I put glue rat traps in my storage room. I hear funny noises coming from that area at night. I think it’s just the air conditioning moving doors around, but why gamble? If it’s mice, they will soon come to realize the folly of their decision to trespass in my realm.

I wish the day were longer. I want to kill everything in the poolside planter and dump it in the woods.

Getting rid of the stump is a huge blessing. It was like a Satanic stronghold, right in front of my door. It was as if it were taunting me. When I first came here, it was like cast iron, and I saw no hope of removing it without paying someone. Now it’s out in the woods in pieces, and the front yard has lost a major eyesore.

I’m just getting started. I’m going to kill and remove my citrus, which is all mortally ill. I’m going to get my garage wired up for machine tools, and I’m going to move my lathe and mill up here. I’m going to get my truck painted. I’m going to get the driveway resurfaced. This place is going to look like a civilized human being lives here.

Every morning, I keep asking God to help me fix this place so people who look at it will know there is a God in Israel. Christians shouldn’t do everything in a half-assed way. People shouldn’t be able to point their fingers at us and say, “Look at the third-rate care their imaginary God takes of his children.” Our lives should be in order. We should be examples to everyone else.

My hot rod leaf blower arrives Wednesday, God willing. The crud that has been sitting on my driveway since I pressure-washed it is about to be blown halfway to the property line. The leaves that have suffocated my yard will be lucky if they land before they reach Orlando.

Things are good. God is faithful. Christianity works. Don’t give up.

Barriers to Property Sale Collapse

Last year in May, God gave me this phrase: “Extremely effective.” I took it to mean he was going to change me so I got things done faster. It sure looks like that was correct. I have been getting things done right and left since my dad died.

Today I got my cattle lease signed. I drew it up a few days ago. A local man is going to put about 18 cows on my property. They will keep the weeds down, produce lots of useful manure, and kill my property tax bill. They will also make the place look less like Edward Scissorhands’ dad’s winter home. When a man lives alone on a big property, the atmosphere can get creepy.

Today my tenant Homer showed up and worked on the fences. He says the cattle will be here next week. Probably. I put new locks on all the gates he will be using, and when he shows up next week, I will hand him a key.

Yesterday and today, I solved some problems with the title on a property I’m selling. The person my dad bought it from had some little problems, and they popped up when the title insurance people did a search. The first three issues were unpaid fines relating to very stupid and untrained dogs that didn’t behave. That was no problem. A phone call fixed it. The fourth problem was bigger, and it involved a law firm that deals with debt.

At first, I was told I couldn’t resolve anything without consent from the person who was named in the documents, but I knew better than that, being a lawyer and all. I pointed out that I could make an offer to pay without poking my nose into the particulars of the matter, and of course, the attorney was fine with that. He didn’t go into his unsavory line of work because he hates money. Payment is payment, regardless of the source. We worked it out, which really means I agreed to pay him whatever he wants. There is no way to get a reduction in the time I have available. I will be paying on Monday. As it turns out, I am in a situation that will allow me to get reimbursement without making demands or suing anyone (or getting permission), so I won’t be out any money. It will cost the dog owner some cash. Nothing I can do about that, and the truth is, I don’t care.

I am getting the property I live on under control, fast. I fixed all the hedges in front of the house this week, and I will be doing the rest of the house shortly. I put a peach tree in the hole where my lightning-blasted maple used to stand. I ordered some Tupi blackberry plants. These are great warm-climate plants with thorns. Maybe they’ll discourage squirrels. If you buy blackberries in a grocery store, chances are they’re Tupis. They’re big, and the flavor is good. I’m thinking I should sow some in my pasture, to crowd out and kill the disappointing native berries.

I got some info on mulch. It appears that the best possible mulch comes from obnoxious melaleuca trees. These things were brought to Florida from Australia. They’re like eucalyptus trees, sort of. They’re the trees we get tea tree oil from; there is no such thing as a tea tree. They have overrun a lot of South Florida and destroyed much of the awful Everglades (as if I care). The mulch repels bugs and lasts a long time, and killing melaleucas is a mitzvah, so it’s a win-win kind of thing. Melaleuca mulch isn’t available everywhere, which is amazing because it’s such a great idea, but my local Lowe’s happens to have it, so I plan to load up. Much of my mulch is worn out, and I think melaleuca is just the ticket to cover my weeds.

I got a new blade for my lithium Sawzall. This is important because I have a big stump in front of my house, and it has long roots. You should never use a chainsaw on roots, because dirt dulls a chainsaw instantly. A Sawzall is a great tool for cutting roots and branches, especially if it’s cordless. I picked a 9″ wood blade. I can’t wait to get rid of the roots around the stump. The core should come out with the tractor after that.

I found out which extension agent I need to talk to, concerning yard maintenance. I have given up on getting advice from other sources. Forums are useless. I need someone with deep local knowledge because the climate here is so weird. It’s not tropical, and it’s not temperate. We have monstrous weeds, plus gophers, armadillos, and horrible oak trees with destructive leaves. We also have thick algae here that grows on driveways and houses. I have to have information in order to deal with this mess. On Monday, I will hook up and dominate.

My car had a problem. I inherited my dad’s Ford Explorer. It has a moonroof, which is one of the dumbest features a car can have. It gives you all the maintenance problems of a convertible, with none of the style or fun. It amazes me that people like these things. Moonroofs have drain tubes that get plugged, and when they get plugged, water rises in your roof and kills your moonroof motor. In order to unclog the tubes, you have to open the moonroof, so basically, you have to replace the motor before you can clear the drains.

This week I spent a very hard day lowering the headliner in the car. I found the motor, and I have a new one on the way. It’s actually easier to replace the motor than the moonroof fuse. Ford used to put fuses in a convenient panel near the door, but now they hide the indoor fuse box under the dashboard. To get to it, you have to remove a trim panel, lie on your back in the foot well, and twist to your right. It took me over an hour just to find it, and I had directions. Actually changing a fuse would be so hard, it would be physically dangerous. I could tear a muscle. Unbelievably bad engineering.

In any case, the damage to the car was limited to a motor and some dampness on the carpet by the passenger seat, so I’m happy. I would have had to pay hundreds to get a mechanic to fix it.

It’s annoying that car makers don’t warn people about moonroof problems. When you buy a car, you know you have to change the fluids, buy tires, fix the brakes periodically, and get things lubed. You know you have to get front end alignments. No normally aware person will just assume there is an easily blocked tube in the moonroof, which has to be blown out periodically with compressed air. People find out about it after their cars start to smell and their moonroofs stop working.

Some owners have problems much worse than mine. The gaskets around the rear moonroofs go bad, and then water pours into the well where the spare tire sits, filling it to the brim and taking out a stereo speaker in the process. The tire well doesn’t have a drain in it. Nice work, Ford. Good thinking.

I wish I could have my moonroof welded shut. It’s an idiotic product. People who like moonroofs must not know what real convertibles are like.

I’m pretty sure I disposed of some other lingering problems this week, but I can’t think of them offhand.

I hate to say it, but life without my dad is a thousand times better than life with him. Things are going better for me because he’s gone.

I have two dads to consider: the old one, and the new one who appeared 7 weeks before he died. I am still recovering from the damage the old one did, even as I am overwhelmed with gratitude for the new one. He was full of love and generosity. He blessed me every time I saw him. Unfortunately, he was just too ill to continue living.

I love my dad very much, and I can’t wait to be with him again, but that’s the new dad. The old dad was a radioactive weight that held me down.

It’s very odd, being glad to be rid of one version of my dad while missing and loving another version.

Every day, I pray for God to keep killing my old self and giving life and dominance to my new self. I learned that from watching God work on my dad.

I think I’ll get the Sawzall out before it gets completely dark.

Get the unequal yokings out of your life, give yourself completely to God, beg God for correction every day, and worship him physically when you talk to him. Don’t just sit there. Lift your hands and tell him you’re worshiping him. He expects you to make physical gestures of worship, it and pays off.

God will give you peace and victory, but you have to do things his way. Until you give in–as long as you insist on making God work within your own unfortunate version of Christianity–you won’t know how beautiful life can be.

Diabolical Leaves Yield to God’s Favor

God keeps helping me break through barriers.

Today I broke the oak leaf barrier.

My property contains thousands of useless oak trees. They’re not white oaks, red oaks, black oaks, or chestnut oaks; those species are useful. They’re live oaks and various scrubby, crappy oaks which produce bad lumber and drop horrible leaves that kill everything they land on.

Ever since I moved here, I’ve been trying to get rid of oak leaves. I bought a leaf blower, and when I aimed it at the leaves, they actually moved closer to the ground. They refused to be blown away. I bought a mulching kit for my 60″ mower deck, and the leaves ignored it. I bought a 50″ sweeper, and it only removed loose leaves. Leaves that were farther down in the crud column refused to move. Also, Spanish moss kept wrapping around the sweeper’s axles and immobilizing them.

Recently, I bought a harrow. This is a heavy steel thing you drag. It’s like a net made of 3/8″ steel rod, with tines protruding downward from it. It loosened leaves so the sweeper would actually pick them up.

This was a big development. It meant I had some hope of getting rid of packed-down leaves, as long as I was willing to stop the sweeper several times an hour and pull Spanish moss off the axles with pliers.

Today I ran the harrow and sweeper, and then I decided to get out one of my leaf blowers. Miracle of miracles…the leaves moved. The harrow had loosened them to the point where they could no longer grab the dirt and hold on. While laughing at me.

I blew a tremendous amount of leaves into the woods. I was able to see grass, or bare dirt where grass used to be, in many areas. I can see my driveway. I worked for about four hours.

The blower isn’t ideal. It’s a one-hand blower with a gas engine. It would be perfect for a 1/4-acre lot with reasonable leaves, but I need something more powerful. I have a much stronger electric blower, but the battery only runs 20 minutes, and a second battery is $200+.

I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to buy a gas-powered backpack blower that could knock a truck over. Echo makes one that puts out over 1000 cfm. That’s almost twice what my electric blower puts out.

They say the big Echo is so strong, you can dig holes with it. That’s what I’m talking about.

It’s amazing that my yard requires a tractor, a harrow, a sweeper, and a high-end blower to clean up the leaves, but that’s how it is when successive generations of landowners fail to cut undesirable trees and replace them with better ones. If I had hickories and pecans instead of oaks, I could get rid of my leaves with a rake. I’d also have valuable timber.

I may also buy a peach tree. The man who built my house made some bad plant decisions, and one bad choice was a maple tree 15 feet from the house. Here, maples grow maybe 80 feet tall, and sometimes we get tropical-storm-force winds. Hello? Fortunately, I guess, lightning hit the maple about 15 seconds after my dad closed on the house, and in March, it keeled over and landed in my driveway. I need something to replace it.

I will not even consider citrus. People who buy citrus are in denial. Citrus greening is going to kill every single citrus tree in North America, except for a few varieties. It’s a done deal. When you buy citrus, you’re investing in failure. Besides, I don’t want to be reminded that I’m in Florida. I want my property to look as much like Tennessee or Ohio as possible. The other day I cut a healthy pygmy date palm in pieces and put it on my burn pile.

I have considered buying a peach tree before, but the only varieties that work are strange creations that come from the University of Florida. I figured they had to taste bad. There had to be some sacrifice, in order to get a peach that will produce in hot weather. A friend tells me I’m wrong. He lives in Kissimmee, and he grows good peaches.

He got his tree at Home Depot, of all places. If he can do it, so can I.

I don’t know about the peach tree, but I’m definitely getting a blower, and if things work out, in a month, I may have a yard that looks like a yard. Maybe God will show me how to kill the awful weeds. Maybe he’ll help me find a type of grass that resembles a real lawn.

The interior of the house is very clean. I even got the bird cages clean, which was impossible in the past. Now the order is spreading to the yard, the pasture, and the woods. It’s too much. I love it.

I don’t know why I couldn’t get all these things together before. It must have been my unequal yoking with my then-non-Christian dad. I partnered with a person who chose to live under curses.

I’m on a roll. Thanks to God, every single day is good.

God is Relocating People

A few years back, I had a dream about my dad. At least I thought it was about my dad. Sitting here writing about it, I think it may have been about him AND the church.

I was in his bedroom. In front of me, a devil who resembled a young black man was dancing. He was short and frail. One punch would have rolled him up like a sock and shattered most of the bones in his upper body. Several spirits that looked like owls were dancing around him. They were suspended in the air. They were located precisely so their positions formed the corners of a rectangle around the devil. Each had an assigned place.

I took it to mean that these were the spirits that ruled my dad. I knew owls were symbolic of evil spirits.

I’ve been thinking about it over the last day, and I think the owls represented spirits of false wisdom. Athena was the false goddess of wisdom, and her symbol is an owl. Before he gave himself to Jesus, my dad was extremely conceited about his intellect, and he said he was too sophisticated to be a Christian.

When God cursed the world, he cursed women with difficult childbirth. One big reason childbirth is difficult is that human babies have very large heads. It makes sense, because confidence in our big brains makes it hard for us to enter the kingdom of heaven. God cursed humanity with problems that reflected the curses humanity had laid on him.

Jesus said, “Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.” The path into this world is tight, and so is the path into the next world.

Yesterday morning, I dreamed I was on a ship. I was looking for my dad. I found his quarters. It was a large apartment. The same devil was there, dancing. Instead of owls, he was surrounded by dancing roaches. I would say they were around eight inches long. They hovered in the air with their wings spread and their abdomens bent forward, in threatening postures. Other types of vermin crawled toward my feet, but they didn’t climb onto me.

I went into my dad’s bedroom. It stank. It was filthy. His sheets were green with fermented sweat, urine, and other things. He wasn’t there. I somehow knew that he liked to lie in the stinking bed and take drugs.

God talks about casting rebellious people into beds of harlotry.

For some reason, I needed clothing, so I went to the closet. I found a pair of pants that were clean, and I put them on. I fell on the bed briefly, but I managed to roll off without coming into contact with the filth.

I believe the ship was the church. In Genesis, God put his people in an ark and lifted it above the waters of the world. I believe the devil was the spirit that runs the church. He’s not Satan; he’s lower in the hierarchy. He’s black because Africa is the source of a great deal of demon worship. The roaches were spirits that turn preachers into spiritual roaches who destroy and spread spiritual disease instead of building people up. Think of Benny Hinn or John Gray.

My dad represented the preachers who let me down. They were like bad fathers. Never around when I needed them, and when they were around, they caused more problems than they solved. I could not respect them or rely on them. They were dangerous to me, like lepers.

I had a relatively brief engagement with churches. I got a little authority, but I was rejected, so I didn’t get covered in the filth that coated the preachers I served and listened to. Pants are clothing, and clothing is authority. Rolling off the bed without getting dirty represents me moving into churches and then being moved out by God before too much harm could be done. The worst thing that could have happened to me would have been to be honored and made comfortable, because I might have stopped seeking and exposing the truth.

I’ve been asking God to tell me and other people the future. The dream seems to have been about the past, but I suppose it also tells me not to expect or desire any kind of promotion from churches during the remainder of my life. That’s good, because I am fed up with churches. The last thing I want is some backward preacher’s bit between my teeth.

In other news, I just saw an interesting Perry Stone video. He uploaded it in August of 2016, and in it, he quoted an alleged prophecy that was given at one of his events in 2015. The title of the video is “What is About to Happen in the United States,” so I had to watch to see if he had been right or wrong.

Perry Stone has many amazing teachings, but he also wanders off into pride from time to time, and he associates with some unsavory people, such as Steve Munsey, so you can’t assume everything he says is right.

Here is what he said in 2015, as related in the 2016 video:

There is coming a sign in this country. There is coming a sign. It’s in the very near future, and the righteous will discern it, but the unrighteous will not. And you will know it when you see it, because it will be something that is so significant that it will grip your attention, because the Lord is going to do his best to wake up America one more time. And he does this because he loves this country.

Listen to me; I’m hearing it. The widow women have given for missions and for the gospel, and the little women have kept the rural churches alive by baking pies and cakes and the such. People with minimum wage incomes have given to help poor people. America is a giving country. If you don’t believe that, let a disaster happen anywhere in the world; who shows up first?

It doesn’t matter what the country is. If it’s a Muslim country, doesn’t matter. Indonesia? Doesn’t matter. Taiwan? Doesn’t matter. Japan? Doesn’t matter. Who shows up?

And I hear the Spirit of God saying this:

“I remember the good that my people have done, and I will give you another chance because of what you planted in the past. It now comes up before me. What you’ve planted in the past, it will come up before God one more time, and you’re going to see pockets.

As men speak of pockets of selective judgment, so, likewise, there are pockets of selective revival; areas where people will pray and pray and worship and pray until the glory is seen. And it will not be the type of meeting which will make attention from coast to coast, but in that region and with those people.

The town will know that there is a visitation from heaven going on here, and it will be known as the rural revival because people will begin to leave the large cities, not in droves or in masses, but they’ll begin to pull away and not know why into the mountain areas and into the smaller cities because of the danger and the fear of mobs and robbing and looting and stealing, and they’ll be drawn to where the good people are, where they hear people love each other and they care for one another.

And some will come, and they will have no background in the word–they’ll have no background in the things of the Spirit–but they’ll be drawn here because of the mercy of God, and he will draw them to places of mercy of the people of the Lord for his people, and the good people who know their Lord and know their God shall teach them the things of God one more time because the Lord says he still has more than a remnant in this nation.”

Of course, I find this interesting, because it describes exactly what happened to me. I was desperate to get away from Miami, but I couldn’t seem to get free. In 2016, I started looking for a new home in earnest, and in July of 2017, my dad bought the rural home in which I now live.

I’ve been writing about the danger of leftist mobs for years. I know Miami and other big cities will eventually be ruled by crowds of trashy, cruel, underdeveloped, grasping people who have decided to be no better than apes. This is where leftism and hatred of God lead. Perry Stone must have been hearing from the Holy Spirit, because he described my flight from Miami as well as my reasons for leaving.

He also says people are going to move to mountain areas, and he talks about Appalachia and specifically mentions West Virginia and Tennessee. Even though I’ve been here less than two years, I feel a tremendous drive to move to Tennessee. I keep talking about how much I miss Appalachia. I have sat and stared, with thirst, at Youtube videos and real estate websites, just to get a look at mountain properties.

When I decided to watch this video, I expected to be disappointed, but it looks like this was a real prophecy. I hope God sees fit to move me to Appalachia.

God has been helping me get on top of my responsibilities. He has used the revived pressure washer to change my life. The house is getting clean outside, to match the inside. Today I used the pressure washer to clean my birds’ cages. Those cages have frustrated me for years. They are impossible to clean well by hand, without extreme effort. Today I blew the crud off of each one in a few minutes. I was amazed. Anyway, this property is being whipped into shape, and I wonder if I’m getting it ready to live in, or to sell.

It appears that my farm has increased in value since I bought it. There is new construction going up in my area, so the appreciation will probably continue. I may be able to sell without losing anything.

Toward the end of the video, Stone started telling the young people around him about the passage in Joel that says young men will have visions and old men will dream dreams. He interpreted it to mean the kids should have the vision to help him build the ministry he had dreamed about. This is where he got off the Holy Spirit bus. God doesn’t want a bunch of young people to devote their lives to promoting Perry Stone. He wants them to be important in their own right. God didn’t put us here to serve Perry Stone. He put us here to serve God himself.

You can see why I’m a little cautious about Stone. He’ll do great for a while and then veer off into the bushes.

When Joel wrote of “visions,” he was talking about visions. A vision is a supernatural experience in which a person sees things that are not present in the natural realm. In 1984, I woke up in the middle of the night, and my bed had turned 90 degrees. An angel was standing at the foot of the bed with her hands up in worship, and she was bathed in a light that came down from heaven. That’s a vision. John saw visions which he recorded in the Revelation. Ezekiel saw visions. The kind of “vision” a preacher has for building something is a completely different thing. It not a vision at all. It’s just an idea.

I am concerned about people I know who are going to be trapped in cities when things get bad. They don’t listen, so they will have unnecessary problems. I wish I could help them.

Jews insist on living in big cities. They will be easy to find and attack.

I hope I get to visit Appalachia again soon. Maybe I’ll be able to find time.