Monday, July 27, 2009 - Pittsfield MA
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Overhead water damage under storage box, July 19, 2009
Nasty
And a lousy picture to match my lousy mood...
I can't proceed with my big plans for the overhead until I have this leak fixed and know it's fixed for sure. I have to be able to crawl up in there to look and feel for dampness. That won't be so easy once I've built what I'm building. Very frustrating.
At least it rains every day this summer. Holy Cow does it ever rain! All the rain has been a mixed blessing. While it gets in the way of having a dry exterior for sealing the leaks, if it weren't for the ongoing torrential rains I never would have believed this spot leaks in the first place. I've been all over the roof and everything looks fine up there. Very frustrating indeed.
Night camp
Wal-Mart Supercenter in Pittsfield MA
Wal-Mart Store #2228, 555 Hubbard Ave./Suite 12, Pittsfield, MA 01201 - (413) 442-1971
- Good level parking lot
- Verizon cell phone service is good
- Verizon EVDO Broadband service is good
- Find other Wal-Marts in the area
- Check the weather here
Teosinte and the Improbability of Maize
The ancestors of wheat, rice, millet, and barley look like their domesticated descendants; because they are both edible and highly productive, one can easily imagine how the idea of planting them for food came up. Maize can't reproduce itself, because its kernals are securely wrapped in the husk, so Indians must have developed it from some other species. But there are no wild species that resemble maize. Its closest genetic relative is a mountain grass called teosinte that looks strikingly different - for one thing, it "ears" are smaller than baby corn served in Chinese restaurants. No one eats teosinte, because it produces too little grain to be worth harvesting. In creating modern maize from this unpromising plant, Indians performed a feat so improbable that archaeologists and biologists have argued for decades over how it was achieved. Coupled with squash, beans, and avocados, maize provided Mesoamerica with a balanced diet, one arguably more nutritious than its Middle Eastern or Asian equivalent.