We all know from history about the great Civil War. While it may not have started about slavery, it soon became the rallying cry from the Union soldiers and during the course of the war 750,000 people died, 58% from the North and 42% from the South.
But there is another aspect of the Civil War, and it was the spiritual side, led mostly by the slaves. They were often forbidden to pray by their slave owners, but prayer was their hope, and they met together at night where their owners could not hear their prayers and their singing. So they had their hideouts, and they communicated when and where their prayer meeting was to occur by humming the song “steal away”
A remarkably good rendition from Taiwan National University Choir. Enjoy!
Many years ago I led the singing once a month at the Wilmington Sunday Breakfast mission. Being brave I always asked them what they wanted to sing, and more than once they wanted to sing “steal away”. I had never heard of it, but by the time you are to the third verse you know it, and they helped me with the words. I leaned a lot from their singing vitality and exuberance. Their singing was not quite the quality of a university choir, but I loved it nevertheless. It went more like this:
Nobody knew what the second verse “Green trees are bending” meant. Today I found out why. When you meet in secret in the woods, regardless how well you hide it, that place is used up, so you have to find a new spot for the next secret prayer meeting. You had to make directions for the next meeting spot, so they took young tree saplings and bent them to the ground in the direction of the meeting. This is how they fond their way to the next meeting place, in total darkness and absolute quiet.
These prayer meeting with the slaves pouring out their hearts to Jesus was followed by prayer meetings in the cities. One such prayer meeting started in Charleston S.C. and a revival broke out reaching the whole Eastern Seaboard, reaching all the way to New York. This revival was maybe even more important, for now the battle was the Lord’s.
Now the Critical Race Theory is trying to undo all the hard fought freedoms won, from the founding fathers to the Civil war to the civil rights movement. Pray the Lord would send a great revival, this time world-wide, followed by an even greater awakening!
This passage in the Gospel according to Luke, chapter 5, is one that puzzled me for a long time: (Jesus speaking)
First, let ‘s dispense with the King James’ translation, the original Greek mentions wineskins, not bottles.
Wine is made from grapes, and the sugar content of grapes is about 16%. The wine making process is to convert the sugar into ethanol via fermentation, and grapes come replenished with their own yeast, so the fermentation starts whether you like it or not. If you leave the grapes out in the air they will ferment and the ethanol will oxidize into vinegar, so they must ferment in a vessel that locks out oxygen. The fermentation has two phases, the first phase is fairly fast, a little more than 10 days, where the sugar converts to ethanol. This process releases CO2; nearly half of the weight of the sugar goes up in the air in the form of CO2, the rest is ethanol. No wineskin can handle that, so fermentation was usually done in a clay vessel with a lid on to prevent air to enter. At the end of 10 to 15 days they had “new wine”.
Bur the fermentation was not over, the aging process began, and that lasted from a few weeks to a few months. During that time there is a slow release of CO2, but the vessel had to be air tight so no oxygen would spoil the wine and turn it into vinegar.
This is where newwineskins come in, they can handle this process by being ever so slightly permeable, if they are made from young goatskin, properly prepared.
Old wineskins on the other hand are hardened and can even be brittle, like an old leather glove that has been lost in the snow for the winter, and when it is found in the spring, it is ruined.
Jesus did not teach wine-making when he used that parable, in the parable the wine is the Holy Spirit and we are the wineskins.
Many people, me and my wife included have been praying for a great new, worldwide revival, and following that, a great worldwide awakening. Revivals usually start small and local, but with great intensity. The intensity will be greatest among young people, and they will celebrate with a new song in their heart. They are the new wineskins, they will be filled with new wine, and their new music will be less refined, raw and unpolished, or so it will seem to us old wineskins. We better prepare for the outpouring of the Holy spirit in our old wineskins by rejuvenate them with the oil of joy to make us ready to receive the old wine, aged to perfection with the full bouquet, like when Jesus turned water into wine. Then we who have been saved for many years can join with the young and appreciate each other, we appreciate their youthful enthusiasm and music, and they will appreciate the good wine that comes from lifelong experience.
There is a great passage in Isaiah 25, a song of praise coming right after the dreadful chapter 24. It speaks of aged wine being the finest of wines.
Revelation 7:17: For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd; ‘he will lead them to springs of living water.’ ‘And God will wipeaway every tear from their eyes.’”
Yes, there will be a great worldwide revival, and an even greater awakening.
I just checked the price of corn. On May 7, the May 21, 2021 contract closed at $ 7.72 a bushel. A year ago, the price was a little over three dollars per bushel. One bushel of corn makes 2.5 gallon of ethanol That makes the feedstock price to make ethanol $3.08 a gallon. Add to that 50 cents to make the stuff and distribute it and the price per gallon is $ 3.58. Since the heat content of ethanol is 67% of regular gasoline (no ethanol), the gasoline equivalent price of ethanol is $ 5.34 per gallon. Over five bucks a gallon for ethanol! And that is before profit, blending, selling and taxes! That’s the good news. For the people that are worried about CO2 the bad news is: To make corn you have to use 150 pounds of nitrogen fertilizer per acre. It takes the equivalent of 0.15 gallons of gasoline to produce one pound of nitrogen fertilizer. That comes to the equivalent of 22.5 gallons of gasoline to fertilize one acre. One acre of corn yields about 150 bushels of corn. The fuel spent to produce one bushel of corn is therefore more than 0.15 gallons of gasoline. Since it also involves sowing, preparing the soil, cultivating, pesticides, phosphate fertilizer and harvesting it takes 0.25 gallons of fuel to produce one bushel of corn. Here comes the kicker: When you ferment sugar into alcohol half the weight disappears as CO2! Let us examine the formula: C6H12O6 + Zymase → 2C2H5OH + 2CO2 The molecule weight of C2H5OH is 46 and the molecule weight of CO2 is 44. Well almost half anyway. Let us assume you have a car that gets 25 miles to the gallon and you drive 100 mile on pure gasoline. You have used 4 gallons of gasoline. Now take the same car and drive 100 miles with a 10% ethanol mix, mandated by the EPA. Remember, they are concerned about CO2. The ethanol has only 67% of the heat content of gasoline so the gas mileage will be lower. It will be consuming 0.04 x 0.9 +0.1 x 1.5 x 0.04 = 0.042 gallons per mile, 5% more or a total of 4.2 gallons for the 100 mile trip. So you consumed 3.78 gallons of gasoline and 0.42 gallons of ethanol, for a total of 4.2 gallons. We have all experienced this increase in gas consumption. And this is best case. What about CO2 up in the air? In the pure gasoline case we produced 4 gallons worth of CO2. In the ethanol mix case we produced 4.2 gallons worth of CO2. Add to that another .4 gallons equivalence of CO2 from the fermentation, and another .04 gallons worth of CO2 to produce the corn in the first place. The sum total is 4.64 gallons worth of CO2, or about 16% more than in the gasoline only case. But corn does absorb CO2 when it grows! Doesn’t that count? Corn is one of the worst crops for soil erosion and uses up other nourishments that will not be used if you make ethanol from it. Granted the cattle are happy for the cakes that are left when the sugar and oil is removed. In this age of looming food shortages nearly any other use of available tillable soil is to be preferred over ethanol production. Oh, and one more thing. Assume that pure gasoline is 3 dollars a gallon at the pump, which includes 50 cents in taxes. Unsubsidized ethanol blend should be $5.34 a gallon, before taxes But we subsidize the ethanol production so the price is still 3 dollars a gallon at the pump. If we used pure gasoline the hundred mile trip would cost twelve dollars. If we paid full price for the ethanol blend we would pay $ 13.79 for the trip and produce 16% more CO2. We are really paying $ 13.79 for the trip, produce 16% more CO2 and leave a bill of $1.79 for our grandchildren to pay, the subsidy of 0.42 gallons of ethanol. This is EPA legislation at work, trying to combat the coming “climate catastrophe.”
There is a better way. remove ethanol subsidy guarantees and let the corn be used to produce more chicken and pork, and use some of the acreage to produce grain for a hungry world. This will help to prevent food prices inflation.
Dutch Sheets in his “give me 15” daily message, always encouraging and well worth listening to on a daily basis, because of his deep understanding of scripture and vision of hope and encouragement yesterday broke from the normal and gave an urgent call to pray about the upcoming Maricopa County, AZ forensic 2020 election audit. Here it is:
Momentum is building for a once-in-a-generation opportunity to fix America’s election system. In response to mounting evidence of serious problems with the 2020 elections, legislators in 47 states are working to pass election integrity bills to protect voting operations.
God is answering our prayers and truth is coming out.
Tomorrow, what many are calling “the most important election audit” in our history will begin.
Hal and Cheryl Sacks, leaders of BridgeBuilders International, headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona, sent us this important update, the outcome of which will have a significant and immediate impact on our entire country!
The Arizona Senate has ordered the most comprehensive, large-scale, third-party forensic audit of the 2020 election to be performed to date.
This means that starting on April 22, all 2.1 million physical ballots and the voting equipment from Maricopa County (the fourth largest in the nation) will be examined by highly qualified, independent auditors!
While audits have occurred in some states, these have included only a limited number of votes from smaller jurisdictions, coming as a result of lawsuits or performed by election officials.
The start of the Arizona audit is a huge victory that comes after months of intense opposition, legal battles, and bureaucratic delay and resistance at every turn. It has taken tremendous perseverance by a remnant in the AZ Senate to get us to this point, and we are very thankful to them and to the Lord!
Independent Experts Chosen
After months of interviewing, vetting and soliciting advice from experts across the nation, the Arizona State Senate has hired Cyber Ninjas to lead the audit.
They are a respected cyber security company and will oversee three additional sub-contractors: Wake Technology Services Inc., CyFIR LLC, and Digital Discovery.
These firms are leading experts in computer forensics, election investigations, intelligence analysis, nation-state cyber activity threats, audits of voting machines and hand counts of ballots.
They have assisted the highest levels of government and private industry, including providing forensic support to the largest bank-fraud investigation in the history of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The Maricopa County audit will include:
Scanning all 2.1 million paper ballots
Doing a full manual recount
Investigating the registration rolls and votes cast to verify that only legal, registered voters participated
Checking the vote counts
Performing a cyber forensic audit on the electronic voting machines and systems used
It will be monitored by both Democrat and Republican observers and the entire process will be documented by video, with a detailed report of findings expected in about 60 days.
It’s Critical that We Continue to Pray for this Audit!
The auditors and legislators working on this are under immense pressure, including groundless lawsuits and attempts to discredit or intimidate them or derail the audit.
Even though state Senates have the sole authority to oversee elections, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors has time and again refused to submit to the Arizona Senate’s subpoena to turn over machines and ballots until a ruling by a judge enforced it.
They then refused to allow the audit to take place in the Maricopa Tabulation & Election Center where the voting machines and ballots are currently held, even though this would be the best facility to use.
Moving the ballots and machines to the new location, the Veterans Memorial Coliseum, entails massive effort and expense…
But more importantly, it opens the door to potential chain of custody problems thatwould give the Board plausible deniability in the event that ballots have gone missing!
In a cyber investigation, machines should stay connected to the original network and nest cams, modems, routers, and all the data in them should remain in place. Moving them could cause a loss of data and evidence.
The Senate ordered the audit to be performed after disturbing allegations were made during a 15-hour public hearing where voters, poll workers, and expert analysts testified under oath about serious violations of election laws and protocols that they had witnessed.
Among these allegations are that over 2,000 voters had an address registered to the same vacant lot and 14,362 votes were cast by dead people still on the rolls!
To put this in perspective, the presidential election in Arizona was decided by a little over 10,000 votes.
Restoring Trust
Under the Constitution, We the People peacefully accept the outcome of lawful elections – and grant officials the permission to govern us, if the majority of our fellow citizens have selected them fairly.
A newly released Rasmussen poll found over half of voters say cheating likely impacted the 2020 presidential election, which broke down into 74% of Republicans and 30% of Democrats who believed this.
This lack of trust in our system is a crisis that can only be resolved by honest and transparent investigation into what really happened.
This is why forensic audits are critical, not only in Arizona, but in every county with election irregularities.
InAntrim County, Michigan, there were 25.5% more registered voters than eligible residents for the 2020 elections! Attorney Matt DePerno filed suit on behalf of his client to investigate what occurred and has just released the long-awaited report of his forensic findings.
Among the manyshocking discoveries made were that 66,194 ballot voter IDs were from people not registered to vote, after examining just 9 of Michigan’s 83 counties!
In addition, his team found that some voting machines (used in 8 Michigan counties) had a modem chip installed on their computer motherboards, allowing them to be connected to the internet without anyone knowing.
This is a serious vulnerability which allows outside parties the ability to access them remotely! In other states, voting machines also were found to be connected to the internet which raises concerns that foreign or domestic hackers could penetrate the systems.
Election Integrity Bills Facing Fierce Opposition
361 new election integrity bills have been introduced by state legislatures around the country.
Many of these are much needed solutions, such as Georgia’s new voter ID law, which was fiercely attacked by celebrities and corporations using bully tactics, including the recent decision by Major League Baseball to boycott Georgia following Gov. Kemp’s signing of the bill.
This is in stark contrast to what the American public wants. According to a poll, 77% of Americans support requiring an ID to vote. This includes Biden voters (62% support to 24% opposed), black voters (64% support to 22% opposed), and Latino voters (78% to 16% opposed).
Nevertheless, nearly 100 CEOs from America’s largest companies, like Delta Air Lines, Coca-Cola, and Aflac Insurance, met a few days ago to strategize ways to combat efforts to pass new election integrity and voter ID laws, not only in Georgia but around the country.
Thankfully, many state legislators are pushing forward regardless of the intimidation and attacks.
The Arizona Senate recently passed several election bills that would ensure:
Increased identification for early ballots.
Better tools to remove dead voters from the rolls.
Requiring early ballots sent to the wrong address to be returned.
Stopping the use of any electronic voting equipment produced in another country, as well as the transfer or storage of any data overseas.
Making it a felony for ineligible voters to vote.
Paper receipts must be given to every voter confirming their ballot was tabulated and if not, giving the reason why the ballot was rejected.
Similar bills are being worked on in other states. Election integrity is paramount if we are to see our beloved Republic preserved!
Your governor and legislators may be the target of boycott threats from corporations and accusations by the media if they are part of the 47 states advancing these bills.
Please counter this by contacting them to show your support for laws that protect elections in your state!
The lasting impact of the 2020 elections could well be that we emerge with stronger, more righteous elections than ever before! If this happens, we all win!
Pray with me:
Father, we thank You that You have given Your church, Your Ekklesia, the power and authority in prayer to see truth and justice prevail in our elections. Thank You that You are resetting our election systems to be more honest, transparent, and accurate. We are grateful for state legislatures that are fighting to upgrade and protect our election process – even under threat of slander and boycott! We pray for them and pray that the effective election reform bills in 47 states would be passed and signed into law. Thank You for breakthrough, that despite opposition from all sides, Arizona is moving forward with its history-making audit! We ask for supernatural protection of all records, data, and physical evidence, including surveillance footage and audio recordings from the tabulation center, voting machines, routers, ballots, and images. We pray specifically for the companies hired to act as auditors: Digital Discovery, CyFIR, Wake Technology Services, overseen by Cyber Ninjas. We ask for You to watch over these teams, that their work would be unbiased, accurate and above reproach. We know that they are under extreme pressure from all sides and ask for Psalm 91 protection over them and their families.
Our decree:
As Your Ekklesia, we decree that no evidence, either physical or digital, will be lost, tampered with, or overlooked – and angels will safeguard the entire audit process, especially while the evidence is being moved to a new location!We take authority in Jesus’ name over any confusion, false accusation, misinformation, intimidation or threats that the enemy would seek to bring against those who are working on the Maricopa County audit and audit efforts in other states. We decree in Jesus’ name for truth to be revealed and an accurate accounting given to the public. We declare that according to Your Word “…there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open” (Luke 8:17).
The fascination for hyperinflation and its consequences has been with me since childhood. In third grade I went to a small school in Sweden with only two classrooms, one for grade 1 and 2, and one for grades 3 to 6. One boy had a very large stack of old German money, and we used to play with them. Many were hundred mark bills, stamped over with a cheap ink stamp 1ooooo Marks or 1 Million Marks. I collected stamps in those days also, from a 2 Pfennig stamp to 20 Milliarden Marks (That is 20 Billion Marks) stamp.
How did this hyperinflation happen? Germany lost the great war (WWI) and as a punishment were forced to pay large war reparation penalties. My own grandfather had a fishinf ketch, named Majblomma (Mayflower). They ysed to go fishing on Doggers Banks and land the catch in Aberdeen or Hull, then catch some more fish on the way home. One day a German u-boat came up and one officer informed them to go into the life boat, for they were ordered to torpedo the fishing boat. So they did. After the war my grandfather got compensated for his loss, and he bought a much larger schooner, and his team could aontinue fishing in the North Sea. These war reparations sank the German economy, and the Weimar Republic solved the problem by printing money. This worked for a whils, and then hyperinflation set in. This was in my opinion the major reason for Hitler’s rise. He got Germany back on strong economic footing, and being the Master Race, Germany was going to rule the world, after they had won the war. (WWII). With great sacrifice that didn’t happen.
Did it happen again? A few days ago, Nikki Haley sent a real 100 bolivar bill in the mail to my wife. There was probably a message in that, I for one grabbed the bill to see how much it is worth today. It was printed in August 2014, and was then worth on the official exchange 6,3 bolivars to the dollar, so the official value was over 15 dollars, but the real black market value was about one dollar. Then real inflation set in, and in 2018 they made a new bolívar soberano (sovereign bolívar) each worth 100,000 bolívar fuerte (strong bolívar), so the old 100 bolivar bill was then worth 0.1 cents. But it didn’t stop there. The March 7 exchange rate is 1,889,000 bolivars to the dollar, so the 100 Bolivar bill Nikki Haley gave my wife is now worth 0.000000053 cents
That is hyperinflation.
Could it happen here? I used to think never, but now i am not so sure. There are warning signs in the money supply, especially the M1 money supply. The Fed has stopped using it as an indicator of the nation’s fiscal state. Here is a chart of what is going on:
“As announced on March 15, 2020, the Board reduced reserve requirement ratios to zero percent effective March 26, 2020. This action eliminated reserve requirements for all depository institutions.“
If I understand this right, the FED reduced the denominator in the equation for the velocity of money, meaning that the gain in the system can now be infinite.
Before the English writer Rudyard Kipling in 1910 wrote the book “Rewards and Fairies,” he toured all over the United States. He spent time in Philadelphia and Lancaster, Pennsylvania. In “Brother Square-Toes,” a story in “Rewards and Fairies,” Kipling says this about Lancaster:
“It’s a kindly, softly country there, back of Philadelphia among the German towns, Lancaster way. Little houses and bursting big barns, fat cattle, fat women, and all as peaceful as Heaven might be if they farmed there.”
That was 1910. Lancaster Co teems with Amish and Mennonites. They stayed away from the evil ways of the English, shunned modernization, hated wars and immorality, and they didn’t vote. After Bill Clinton became President this all changed, and they started voting, pro-life.
This year there was a record participation in voting, even in Mail-in requests.
After the 2016 election Judicial Watch made an investigation of the California election. The Federal Government maintains a list of its citizens, the state governments don’t. Judicial watch made an investigation of the registered voters and found that eleven counties had more voters registered than the number of eligible voters. Here is a list of them:
County Vote Vote % eligible Clinton/ —————— Clinton Trump registered Trump Los Angeles 1,893,770 620,285 144 3.05 San Diego 567,243 386,807 138 1.47 San Francisco 312,445 34,493 114 9.06 San Mateo 192,035 47,627 111 4.03 Solano 94,622 48,712 111 1.94 Yolo 34,460 13,178 110 2.61 Santa Cruz 85,185 20,158 109 4.23 Monterey 64,733 26,378 104 2.45 Stanislaus 73,939 72,960 102 1.01 Imperial 23,887 9,318 102 2.56 Lassen 2,224 7,574 102 0.29 11 Co. Total 3,344,543 1,287,490 2.60
Rest of Calif 2,514,062 1,391,229 1.81 All Calif. 5,858,605 2,678,719 2.19
This compilation is remarkable in so many ways.
California has 3.4 million resident aliens (green card holders and special visas). They are not eligible to vote. They also have about 3 million illegal aliens (obviously not eligible to vote)
California has motor voter registration. They issue driver’s licenses to, not only resident aliens but also to illegal aliens. All they have to do to be registered to vote is to check a box indicating they are eligible. No check for its validity is performed.
Los Angeles County is the capital of illegal aliens, so it comes as no surprise that since they now have driver’s licenses and thereby by extension are made eligible to vote, the ratio of 1.44 between registered voters and lawfully eligible voters comes as no surprise.
Silicon valley has more resident aliens than other areas of California, so it is no surprise they have registered voters exceeding eligible voters.
There is one small county located way up in North East California, Lassen County which voted heavily for Trump. It has only two major employers, two state prisons and one federal prison. Could Lassen County have registered ineligible felons?
This calls for a thorough investigation if the integrity of voting means anything.
Los Angeles 2,609,329 984,383 37.8% 58.7% San Diego 933,468 577,573 64.6% 49.3% San Francisco 373,186 55,347 19.4% 60.5% San Mateo 225,185 54,456 17.2% 14.3% Solano 124,752 65,558 31,8% 34.6% Yolo 47,504 16,128 36,7% 22,4% Santa Cruz 109,745 25,485 28.8% 26.4%
Two Statistical Curiosities That Allowed Biden To Pull Ahead In PA:
A brief note. I’ve been asked to examine the Pennsylvania votes. That work is ongoing. Update See below for a serious critique of Benford’s law.
I’m showing here (with permission) the one analysis I found most curious.
This is official county-level timed voting data that started at 2020-11-04 11:00:00, a day after the election, to 2020-11-07 11:29:00 which is Saturday night. That is, these are all late vote counts. They start, county by county, where the vote left off on election night.
This is a picture of the running totals by the time the votes were added, summed across all counties, during those time periods. They do not start at 0, but at the totals given after election night.
The early gains for Biden are from, mainly, Philadelphia, Allegheny, Montgomery, Chester and Berks counties. A simple plot
shows the size of vote additions for both candidates, when new vote totals (greater than 0) were added by county (and not all counties added votes after election day).
All goes well for Trump until 2020-11-04 21:15:00 when he loses just under 10,000 votes, but curiously from three different counties simultaneously: -1,063 Allegheny; -2,972 Bucks; -7,135 Chester. Biden never lost any votes (at least, in this late voting).
Understand that this does not mean the decreases happened at this time, but that they were recorded in the official data as happening at that time. And the same is true for our next observation.
Biden’s next curiosity was the big increase of 27,396 votes at 2020-11-06 08:53:00 over one consecutive reporting period. This bump is just like the blue-red F-memes you have seen: this only seems more spread out because of the finer time scale used.
These two curiosities account for a 37,263 vote swing for Biden. Biden’s total, as of the end of this data, was 3,344,528, and Trump’s 3,310,326. Biden therefore “won”, in this dataset anyway, by 34,202 votes.
Biden could not have pulled ahead without the curiosities noted above.
There is more to come. Stick around.
Update Benford’s law is only useful in uncovering multiple and on-going instances of cheating. As in somebody consistently cooking financial books. As I showed above, assuming the curiosities are cheats, it only took two instances to tip the balance. Benford’s law will never pick this up: never.
I’m skeptical of what I’m seeing in other analyses, because if somebody turns something up with Benford, it implies that many, many vote totals were tampered with, which increases the possibilities of getting caught. And you don’t need to tamper with many. Only a few.
Did she secretively give a message with the pattern in her dress to promote blockchain?
Yes, there is a secure way to vote, if we will use the blockchain technology. It works for money transfers, so it should be possible to be used for the voting public. The results would be automatically collected and tabled and be available to the public within an hour of poll closings. One problem remains. It cuts out the power of corrupt politicians to manipulate the voting results, so it may never pass the different states’ legislatures. One can always hope though.
I may be wrong on this buggy. The campaigner may not be Amish after all. He may be an Old Order Mennonite. That Order is even more conservative than the Amish. But they used to have one thing in common. They did not mingle with the English, and they did not participate in politics, and they did not vote. You may have seen cute pictures like this, thinking they still live like in the 18th century.
Nothing could be further from the truth. It is true, they didn’t use to vote. But in the 2000 election they started voting, and they voted pro life. They were always law abiding, and were allowed to keep their one room school houses with 8 year education, were allowed to have their own pooled medical services, and maintained their religious exemption from military service and social security. Do they really shun electricity? The picture below shows a recently built Amish homestead with the telltale clothesline, but also a small wind turbine and four solar panels to provide
electricity. Contrary to popular opinion the Amish do not shun electricity, they just want to be left unconnected to the “English”, in other words, live off the grid. Their desire to be independent force them to be resourceful and innovative, since they also follow the law of the land whenever possible. So it was, when the farms were mandated to refrigerate the milk before pickup they installed electric coolers. The electricity was generated by diesel generators, so bingo, they could get electricity for their workshops as well, and turn from primitive hand work to fully modern wood workshops, I know, they provided a first class kitchen for our home in Intercourse. They had a problem, federal law mandated headlights on their buggies to be street legal. The propane lights with gas stockings burned well, but were too fragile to last the bumpy buggy rides so they installed car headlights running on car batteries. They had to be charged often, and it became quite expensive, so the Amish in 2003 made the first commercially available LED headlights for their buggies, thereby extending battery life more than ten–fold for a marine deep-charge lead-acid battery, from six hours to 100 hours.
Even at 120 dollars a piece it made economic sense. How do you charge batteries? This is where the solar panels come in, they are used to charge the batteries. When the sun doesn’t shine the wind may blow, a reasonable backup. Now they have 12 volt electric power. The next step was to wire the house and install 12 V LED lights and provide 12 volt DC or 24 volt AC outlets for small appliances. The lights are great, but many appliances are still run the hard way, diesel engines providing compressed air, which run their wells with jet-pumps and in their hand mixers they take out the motor and replace with a compressed air motor. The LED lights beat kerosene lamps any day for efficiency, and even a compressed air driven refrigerator is much more efficient than a kerosene refrigerator.
So if the grid goes down for an extended period of time, who is better off? The Amish are far ahead of us in preparation for catastrophes.
And the Amish do get together and fellowship for any reason, but mostly for their Sunday services, which are held in the upper room of their workshops, or in the kitchen for the women and the basement for the men. The horse-drawn pew-mobile is in the picture above, to the right. This is a tell-tale sign who hosts the service next time.
consequences has been with me since childhood. In third grade I went to a small school in Sweden with only two classrooms, one for grade 1 and 2, and one for grades 3 to 6. One boy had a very large stack of old German money, and we used to play with them. Many were hundred mark bills, stamped over with a cheap ink stamp 1ooooo Marks or 1 Million Marks. I collected stamps in those days also, from a 2 Pfennig stamp to 20 Milliarden Marks (That is 20 Billion Marks) stamp.
the mail to my wife. There was probably a message in that, I for one grabbed the bill to see how much it is worth today. It was printed in August 2014, and was then worth on the official exchange 6,3 bolivars to the dollar, so the official value was over 15 dollars, but the real black market value was about one dollar. Then real inflation set in, and in 2018 they made a new bolívar soberano (sovereign bolívar) each worth 100,000 bolívar fuerte (strong bolívar), so the old 100 bolivar bill was then worth 0.1 cents. But it didn’t stop there. The March 7 exchange rate is 1,889,000 bolivars to the dollar, so the 100 Bolivar bill Nikki Haley gave my wife is now worth 0.000000053 cents
Len Bilén's blog, a blog about faith, politics and the environment. 