Open Thread - Homesteading in France
While waiting for our US house to sell we were able to explore central France: Bourgogne is a superb wine area with many cities, villages, heritage sites, Castles and Cobbles to visit. We also had many visitors while we were renting and once we moved into our house. Family and friends all very much welcome.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burgundy
Our family included a Tekel, named Teddy and a stray orange Tabby named Kiki, who has since left us.
We started small remodeling, making two of four bedrooms on the upstairs into a Living Room (Salon a Vie) as there wasn't one, and it was easy.
Initial Remodel
By late winter 2018, we realised we had an unseen problem which affected our health. With the help of our department an agency, CMEI, Saône et Loire, identified a mold problem so great, our doctors labeled it uninhabitable.
The first thing we did was decamp for a week in Genoa to see if we felt better, and we sure did.
Not wanting to incur debt, we tried to stay on, but had to move out late in the year. By February 2018 we had an apartment nearby and found a builder capable of many building trades. So began our demolition, rehab and rebuild. Sixty percent of the house was removed and a proper drainage in back of the first floor extension was built.
Mold (Moissisure)
As we excavated we found our extension was a dry laid wall and its roof incredibly bad and wet. We tried to design around leaving the extension out, but all of our utilities, laundry and storage were there. So remove and rebuild was ahead.
Drainage and Extension
Essentially we demolished and built a 1200 square foot house, thanks to our builder and his son. They worked hard to find good solutions at lower prices. They have largely succeeded.
One of these came for a visit:
What is it?
Gilbert Mercier's opinion of Macron in News Junkie Post
The crescendo of assaults on personals liberties eased up for a few months, but governments are now using, because of the spread of the Delta variant, the threats of reinstating their coercion as an insidious blackmail to force people to get vaccinated. In other words, if one has the temerity to refuse the salvation brought by Big Pharma’s vaccines, life shall be so extremely problematic and isolated as almost to make one a social pariah. In France President Macron is defining a new ideology that could be called semi-authoritarian neoliberalism, while in the Philippines neofascist Duarte is entirely blunt in his approach. Regardless, both politicians have the same goal: to get their entire population vaccinated. They use a strategy of psychological warfare based on reward and punishment, a bit similar to that used on lab mice.
In the case of Macron, the reward for the good and fully vaccinated French citizens is that they will carry, as a badge of honor, a Pass Sanitaire. The misfits, refuseniks, pesky bad citizens who still refuse to see the light and comply will receive punishments. These bad French apples will be deprived from travel except in their own vehicles, and from cultural events like concerts, movies and museum exhibits.
In The Connexion...
Privatization moves along:
SNCF in ‘historic’ loss of Marseille-Nice route to private competitor
French train company SNCF looks set to lose a TER train line for the first time ever, after officials in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region voted to offer the Marseille-Nice line to transport firm Transdev.
Officials in the Paca region first made the proposal on September 7, but the move will not be final unless it is approved in a final meeting on October 29.
The contract will last 10 years and is estimated to be worth €870million.
Problems for Lavender growers:
Growers in France say EU’s labelling plans may destroy lavender fields
Purple swathes of lavender flowers growing naturally in France could be a thing of the past if new EU laws go ahead, producers have claimed.
A draft European Commission regulation which aims to create “an environment free from toxic substances” will change the legislation on certain molecules present in essential oils.
Under the EU regulation, all chemical molecules – including the 600-plus found in lavender – will be quantified and qualified, and potentially relabelled as dangerous.
Comments
Good morning, DM ~~
I didn't realize the danger in lavender. I better rid my house of all lavender - hmmmmm - that might take some time.....
Guess I won't be visiting France anytime soon - very draconian!
Loved the remodel photos. I remodeled a house once.
Enjoy the day!
"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11
Like other natural plants, Lavender is full of oils, some of
which cause reactions in some people. We have native Datura growing in our field, and all of it is shown as extremely toxic, but so are Poinsettias and many other plants.
It's a matter of knowing which plants any of us can live with. I do well with Lavender, but have girlfriends who can't be near it without an allergic reaction.
About the draconian France: it's Macron and his few buddies. The protesters have been drawing the familiar mustache on his picture.
What is very clear are two reactions to US culture: 1) many French have become afraid of the gun culture and perceived dangers of going to anywhere because of universal guns. 2) Many, especially UK expats won't travel to any state allowing the death penalty.
America is losing out on contact with people from many countries who have become frightened or object to our laws.
Good to see you RA!
A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit. Allegedly Greek, but more possibly fairly modern quote.
Consider helping by donating using the button in the upper left hand corner. Thank you.
Good morning good people
Quite an amazing journey your homestead has taken you.
Have been renovating our dwelling for about 30 years now.
The fun never ends
Thanks for the OT!
Hey, it's a journey whether you're standing still or not.
Working in stone is such a different animal from wood, that we have a whole different sense of what a house is.
One thing that is an improvement is that solid stone doesn't move or shake in micro bursts and severe thunderstorms. Not sure my US house would have handled the weather as it becomes more extreme.
A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit. Allegedly Greek, but more possibly fairly modern quote.
Consider helping by donating using the button in the upper left hand corner. Thank you.
Old houses are a never ending project...
...but so are new ones. Maintaining any home is pretty constant. A 98 YO friend passed away this week. He was fond of saying, "take care of the little things, and the big things will take care of themselves". None the less, we find things big and small we must tend. It has been road repair this week.
I'm enjoying your homesteading journey. Challenges become rewarding when you deal with them successfully (and always seem better in retrospect!). Thanks for sharing!
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
What rotten luck with that mold, crummy construction, etc. :-( !
Home I grew up in in Hawai‘i got et up but good by termites. Costly retrofit later, replacing all the wood that had been eaten hollow.
House and fee-simple lot 70 years ago: ~ $16,000. Of course in the temperate zone our “house” might have been seen more as a “shack” — as in, walls = single layer of tongue-in-groove wooden boards.
We look at 'charming' old stone houses with a far different
eye these days. What's lurking in those stones? Did someone try to update with wallboard, which is nothing more than a tasty meal for mold if it traps moisture in between it and the stones it's set against?
Is that liming hiding loose stones or block? Is that structure sound? Oh and how about electrics in the stone? Will two lamps trip the breaker? All possibilities.
A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit. Allegedly Greek, but more possibly fairly modern quote.
Consider helping by donating using the button in the upper left hand corner. Thank you.
Orange Marmalade
Enjoyed a French jam on an English muffin this morning with cheese. Yum
Bonne Maman (grandma) was founded in 1971 in Biars-sur-Cère, a little village in the heart of the Lot, a beautiful region filled with fruit trees at the confluence point of the Cère and Dordogne rivers.
Marmalade is commonly defined as a fruit preserve that includes pieces of rind in the jelly base. Although historically made from quinces ("marmalade" comes from the Portuguese word marmalada, meaning “quince jam”), most marmalade today is made from citrus fruits, especially oranges. Because of the sour tang derived from both the rind and the flesh of the Seville oranges customarily used as the base fruit, good orange marmalade should have a complexity and depth not associated with sweeter jams and jellies.
A Holocaust survivor tells a fellow shopper she only eats that jam because company’s owners saved her family from the Nazis, but the secretive French family isn’t commenting.
Hey QMS, we have that brand (marque) here.
We call jam with fruit in it, confiture. Pectin is not used here: just sugar, fruit and time.
Lovely story.
Still hoping someone can tell me what kind of Butterfly came to visit yesterday. It is one of the prettiest we have ever seen.
A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit. Allegedly Greek, but more possibly fairly modern quote.
Consider helping by donating using the button in the upper left hand corner. Thank you.
Send a message to Dysto about the butterfly, also check
online bugguide.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Bonne Maman!
Dawn--- A favorite of mine. Looking at the label now: It says "Cherry Preserves." It's an expensive, treat, however. So, sometimes I get American versions which are not as good but 1/2 the price.
Your remodel journey is fascinating and I hope we get to see photos of the finished house. If you've already posted those, I missed it, so please repost if you can.
1,200 square feet in France sounds like a dream come true.
NYCVG
Holocaust heroes!!!
forget the expense, in that case.
NYCVG
Good morning DM. Wonderful column (and adventure).
Bailing out to Genoa seems like one of those "oh damn, have to go live in Tahoe/Palm Springs for a couple of weeks" kind of things. Disruptive, but things could easily be worse.
Remodels never go smoothly, there is always something. I have done but little to places I've rented or owned, but have participated in many others as a hireling. Life would be so much easier if starting from day one all plans and drawings plus appropriate notes for the initial construction and each and every subsequent modification were preserved and passed down fro owner to owner to owner. It would at least save a lot of "where does this go/what is this connected to/who knew that was there?" type of grief.
I'd try to pitch in on the lepidoptera puzzle, though I'm terrible at it, but we have to make a quick 100 mile trip on a deadline, spend about an hour at our appointment, then have lunch, make another stop, and high tail it back here before the afternoon/evening commute begins. Packing lunch to have in car, etc., so short on time.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
We love Genoa. Just down the coast are little
versions of Cinqua (?) Terra. Pebble beaches with pastel colored cliff-side houses. Broad promenades in town with lovely restaurants and bistros. Real waves.
Our apartment rental was a roof-top so we had warm sun and a view. There was a big Russian yacht in the harbour. Much speculation.
We want to go back when it's possible. The North African influences are visible in stone color patterns and architecture.
A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit. Allegedly Greek, but more possibly fairly modern quote.
Consider helping by donating using the button in the upper left hand corner. Thank you.
It’s a premium fruit-preserves brand in Germany too
along with Wilkins & Sons / Tiptree from Essex, England, which I suppose will be harder to get now because of Brexit.
Whistleblower on banks’ money laundering begins prison sentence
https://wallstreetonparade.com/2021/09/natalie-edwards-was-imprisoned-th...
An addition to the WSOP article
Although that exposures appears not to have been instrumental in the Wirecard collapse. Wirecade was a mega-2020 Fin Tech scandal that was essentially buried within a couple of months of being exposed. Buried because FinTech is the latest growth darling of banksters. (Softbank took a billion dollar hit on Wirecard, but there's always some bank that takes a large hit when the music stops.)
More: FinCen Files: How Turkey's Aktif Bank helped Wirecard and the Porn Industry
WireCard scandal should be an issue in the German election, but
it isn’t, thanks to the ever-subservient mainstream media here.
Even if the Social Democrats do win this time around as all the polls seem to indicate, the coalition that comes out will probably be so hamstrung with compromises that “nothing will fundamentally change” à la Biden.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Laconic/StatusQuoIsGod
Yes, it should have.
However, we can't eliminate the possibility that it contributed to the softening of Merkel's support.
France's problem is just like ours.
This rant was my reaction to an what I grok as an unusually sleazy piece of media spin/propaganda in the NYT which is bending over backwards to deceive us all about a bunch of important ongoing long planned thefts. I hope you can see what they are doing and why and how stupid we're being to fall for it. And how we have been manipulated. It really is a shameful and ruthless global grab.
French people realized this and started demonstrating. They realized that all the political parties there had been captured and made politics a trap that was legitimating a crime against all the people of their country..
France's problem isn't just Macron, not by a long shot, its their elites who have the deepect contempt for anything resembling democracy. its been the creation of a system to take over the world by the rich, agreed to in advance, a long time ago, 15-20 September, 1986, in Punta Del Este, Uruguay. Kicking up the negotiations that led to the creation of the WTO and the Marrakesh Agreement creating the WTO as well as GATS, TRIPS, TRIMS, and so on. And the losing of our right to regulate.. i.e. Democracy.
They rigged the system so very deeply. A theft which is not negotiable for them. They stole it. The people of France and the US just dont matter any more. Being relatively poor we have no real power, to kep us trapped in the sam deep rut they are exporting the jobs via a treaty. without jobs we will find lives falling apart. People will be displaced from their homes by the millions. Without homes they will lose their entitlement to vote. Where do they live? Like in the past the poor will have to gove up all their rights to receive any help. They will become like the dinosaurs with a similar endpoint. really, already potentially hundreds of millions of jobs have been traded away. have traded away our jobs and our futures. Its a war on the very idea of a middle class. The media has been taken over by propaganda and corporate agendas. Its a war on public services of all kinds.
(NYT is) no longer committed to accuracy or printing all the news either. Instead its flushed down the memory hole. I just saw an article in New York Times that is a perfect example of how we're being lied to. Except this time their lying is easy to show. What they want isn't scarce workers. People want work, they just cant perform work for so much less than they need to survive.
Could you beat the Indian engineer who makes $3000 a year with your bid?
Its a takeover of the world for the rich, They want lower wages. If you stand in the way you will be excised like a cancer.
I'll try to explain whats going on here. Its the biggest global theft, Making the vast majority of the countries of the world subject to illegitimate undemocratic trade rules which cant be changed or voted on making the world and all national policies to varying amounts policy a corporate entitlement.
This couldn't be more dishonest.
At a meeting way back in 1986 we and a bunch of other countries agreed to share any job in dozens of service sectors between each other with the work going to the lowest bidders. Preferences are given top what I cann the "most unequal" countries, the official LDCS. Least Developed Countries. TTIP would also obligate us to give signatory countries including the Eastern European countries where wages are very low a preference, allowing them to bid a bit lower and a bit higher than other WTO members and still be given the jobs. So how do foreign corporations win the jobs to broker and skim off the profits from? They only are entitled to this is they are subsidized by tax money. Private jobs are not. They are not under these treaties control. The treaties apply to federal, state, or local entities and a number of other entities. Basically tax money has to be involved.
See UNCTAD's Course 31 which explains the very wide scope of the changes.
We've been subjected to the biggest con ever, its a classic control fraud. A confidence scam.
[Image:https://www.welcomeuruguay.com/paseos/la_mano/mano1.jpg]
La Mano de Punta del Este.
Anti-democracy "agreements" that no voters would ever agree with are taking our planet.
-------- Its a global grab, a Second Enclosure.. Much like the enclosures of the past. Its a theft of the commons. And all our futures. A massive redistruibution of wealth upward. To the rich. Forever. I brought that up a number of times on Common Dreams and I guess they couldnt take the truth. That the Commons was being stolen and they had drunk the poisonous Kool Aid.
No the WEF is not your friend. No Biden and Obama and Trump and golfing buddies the Clintons are not our friends. They are part of a huge theft.
They ALL should have been arrested for taking our country and hijacking the will of the people.
They are in serious denial over there. hey have been captured b y the liars. This is the mess we were handed, America. Our young people and working people are ours, they are this country and we are ALL in it together. Thats our strength and our nations enemies cant stand the fect that all of us have a good nose for stinking rottng flesh of deceit. Our people are being screwed out of our futures. Its an intentional global theft of democracy.
We owe nothing to the Least Equal Nations. The mess they are in is because of the odious thefts of the odious oligarchs.
Any President who deliberately fucks up his own Administration is a thief.
Look what else happened in 1998. The Understanding on Commitments in Financial Services. Look that up.
Thye Annex on Financial Services. Searchy on the word social security in there.
If this isnt a setup - a giant CON I dont know what is.
There is a lot more if people arent sick about hearing about it. What pisses me off is how dishonest and shamelessly evil these schemes and media and politicians are. The people of France have realized now that their government is totally captured. That means its not democracy. It is not their friend nor is it what they voted for. What is it? Its a cult. Quinn Slobodian recently wrote a book on neoliberalism that explains this cult in a way that everybody seems to agree is better than nothing. I think everybody should investigate it, and ask yourself, is this what we expect of politicians? To take over government with a cult that rigs the system for the very rich and calls that democracy. Its also trading the whole country's jobs away. Why do I say that? Because big changes are coming and we could easy lose the better paying half of our jobs according to a series of studies, the numbers at risk are astronomical. UNless we cut our wages to way below the $9 or so an hour which is considered as wage parity now. See how dishonest they are every single time?
We have lost the minute we let this giant global CON GAME go unchallenged.
What about the so called Fake Green New Deal?
The entire Old New Deal has basically been dismantled by the slave trade agreements. (thats what they really are. Read up on slavery in history.)
Without except[tion it seems the entire New Deal legacy is either already demolished with us just not knowing its on the way out or at major risk of privatization. Because this cult has basically outlawed what we had that used to be public services, including Medicare and Scial Security - they are both at great risk. Its likely they wont last much longer as they are against the apocalyptic cult's extremist right wing ideology. This is what we were tolod, we were voting against a fascist. But look at the fact that lots of Trumps Administrations wrote tell-all books and didnt disapper in the middle of the night into the night and fog. We traded our freedom for GATS and TRIPS and insanely expensive murderous drug patents and our jobs.
Public Education is in serious danger. Even primary education is despuite it currently being carved out. Look at the US-Gambling case which shows how, since the default is that public services cant be public unless totally noncommercial the fct tht we have charter schools or sell insurance or healthcare makes public provision of those things potentially FTA-illegal
This critical concept is the key theft that shows what huge liars politicians are now. Read GATS Article I:3 c. Even the ones we think we should trust. They are actually the worst liers for helping with their big cover up.
While at the same time a global digital totalitarianism is being set up which plants to make the world cashless and totally under corporate control, whether we want that or not. A total loss ot privacy of all kinds. Also read "Autoimating Inequality" These digital systems will inser themselves into the lives of the growing numbers of disenfranchised and displaced, setting people up for lives of failure. Because like the indigenous victimes of genocides the world over we having lost the power we once have will all become superfluous and will likely be pushed out, no longer being able to afford life in America any more, others will be brought here to take our places because they will make our ownership class richer. Also, read the book Late Victorian Holocausts by Mike Davis. Millions die every few years because of these wild swings in the weather. They are setting us up for another massive disaster by making public services FTA illegal. Thats what we now stand for my friends. Is that what you want, what you voted fo9r? I dont think so. But thats whats being said. Its all a big setup.
I see a future like that driven by the ENSO the El Nino and Southern Oscillation, driven by food scarcity. And quite possibly this may lead to mass starvation. Yes, In America, its happened all around the world. If you, like I read a lot of history and how we have failed to fully grok the lesons of the past.
Democracy i being pushed out because elites worry that the "middle class" is in the way of the profits they claim entitlement top. Democracy is in the way. Read up on the Punta Del Este sellout in 1986, its intent was to make services (Everything you cannot drop on your foot) tradable. Make "your" jobs tradable. Foreign oligarchs will literally pay for them. Their children, desperate for precious entry level jobs ("training") will do US jobs for free. They will and do pay, cash, to be placed in the US. Can you? Will you buy your young college grad a job? THis is the NYT article thats so deceptive. We've been conned by the like of all these.
"Skilled Workers Are Scarce, Posing a Challenge for Biden’s Infrastructure Plan" (Ha!)
URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/09/us/politics/biden-infrastructure-plan...
Article conceals all the treaty provisios funneling tax money and jobs to repressive 3erd world countries who bid lowest j jobs engineering , construction, rural broadband , environmental goods and services subsidized with tax money in ny way if it exceeds a modest threshold, as low as $400k
The goal is lowering wages and increasing corporate profits globally. Propping uyp the most inequal nations.
One estimate says the bill would add $1.4 trillion to the U.S. economy (that money wont go to US communities or US workers, they want wages much higher than the people from the labor suplying countries. Read up on the WTO global services liberalization agenda and the new government procurement rules. WE cant discriminate by countries in jobs. We cant shut bid winning firms out. We may not even be able to demand they pay a legal US wage. (Starting ion 2017 a little known USCIS policy (see "Matter of i-corp" ) changed demanding foreign firms and their workers state their intent to pay at least a legal US wage for that area when applying for guest worker visas.. . This made the firms of some of the labor exporting countries angry because they said it made their business unprofitable and nullified or impaired the benefits we owe them under the 1995 GATS treaty.
The handwriting should be on the wall, It will be like NAFTA for the rest of the jobs. Shed your debt, we're heading into a bad time where the very idea of having a middle class or a decent job will be under attack.
-over eight years, but without enough workers, (people all around thye world are having fewer children because they cannot afford to have children under the neoliberalism..; Look at the French since the article pointed to them.
efforts to strengthen roads and public transit "could be set back" Crocodile tears.
NYT article URL, is conspicuous for what it doesnt say and for how it tries to deceive us away from the truth, hiding the new government procurement rules to make Americans think our tax money will pay for jobs here. It cant. Read up on the GPA and TTIP procurement rules. Also see Public Citizen's "Prosperity Undermined" essay from a few years back. Thats what I am trying to tell you about. They wont tell us because its a war on the very existence of a middle class. It cant exist under neoliberalism, ikts just too good of a dal. Like the entire 20th century's changes, they all are being rolled back, to the Gilded Age.
that
How stupid people are now. We're being bred for stupidity and naivete.
Its a shameless deception to pretend that expansions in public healthcare are coming or "green jobs" that is a shameless deception. Public services' definition has been narrowed so only the totally noncommercial entities can be public. Period.
Everything else liike Social Security is on the fast track to mandatory permanent privatization. Because they compete with corporations and stand in the way of the vast race to the bottom.
Watch this video all the way through.
This is a very
comprehensive look at where we are and where we are heading. What struck me most was this idea that "the commons" have been stolen out from under us. Feudalism, the Middle Ages redux.
I have no quibble with your analysis. But it is difficult going, and many readers may not get through it.
Maybe you will consider some editing and spell checks?
NYCVG
Excellent comment ~
~ more of an essay, which you should turn it into. This is what we are facing.
"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11
The EPA has a test for
The EPA has a test for relative moldiness index, RMI - its a PCR test.
you need to run it with negative air pressure (box fans in wondows blowing out) in your new house. Also use an air sampler, pump kind and it your lab sees even one stachybotrys chartarum spore thats a problem its a finding as they say.
That stuff will ruin your health for years if you leave it there. Most of it is in very small particles smaller that spores. A polysaccharide matrix.
Aspergillus type especially if it grown on latex painted wood contains abundant ampunts of psychotropic chemicals closely related to LSD. It can destroy your ability to get decent rest and cause havoc with your immune system.;
You can do a lot to help getting rid of it from your body with the anion exchange resin cholestyramine, or something similar like welchol. Then eat fat and maybe take taurine to stimulate bile production. The cholestyramine will SUCK the trichothecene mycotoxins out of your bile. It may be like The Exorcism for mold. Otherwise that nasty nasty stuff can and will stay in your body for years, hiding in your fat. Thy can be detected in your blood. Also if you leave it in your alls it will mak successive families sick It can last 100 years. We have only recently realized this.
Activated charcoal may help you clean it out too. Do you follow me? Read up on enterohepatic recirculation. Ask your toxicologist. You should be on a first name basis with experts.Seek them out.
That stuff will coat everything you own with a yellow green slimy film just a few molecules thick. I endured all that and I have the scars to prove it.; (literally) It was like a horror movie. At the end two labs the best in my area and the best in the world were helping us for free. They were great people. They told us what they told you. But our landlord would never in a million years do what was required. To them we were the problem for complaining. In the end they sold that apartment as a condo for a seven figure sum.. (Yup, well over $1M) by changing its address and hiding its records. They probably paid people off.
That stuff changes brains. I know it. There are some interesting things in that mold. But its not something you'd ever in a million years want to experience. Mold kills people. Lots of people. Its being hidden by the medical examiners. For the real estate industry. . It certainly ruined my health for a long time. I used to hang out with some of the smartest people in the country but the mold made me withdraw into a shell. I didnt want to be seen the way it made me. Really it took me a decade to recover. Most of the people impacted by it end up homeless. Entire cities are messed up by it. Ask any NOLA Katrina survivor about Katrina Brain. Its a lot like Chemo Brain. People should fear it and respect it. Extreme weather is going to create a huge number of people who cant function for years. All around the wold. We should stop building with gypsum wallboard. Now.
We will pay a high price as a country for allowing them to get away with it so often.. The French officials you describe get it. .
Your'e lucky you had help. That stuff ruins so many lives.
your mold brain theories are interesting
if you want to see what the AMA is up against when it comes to describing
treatment of known maladies .. see ticks (aka Lyme) --sorry not covered
it would piss off the CIA
mold is the same deal .. what, challenge the gypsum lobby? No go.
lead in the water? prove it
forever chemical in the water table? isolated occurrences
industrial gasses? yeah, but no liability
cancer alley and leaking pipelines
offshore oil blow outs
ruination of seabeds
saltwater marsh
dying shrimp and fish stock
no liability
superfund me!
We are not done, but the mold is normal. It's cost
was very high, and we couldn't prove the former owner knew there were problems, so we bear the detective work and solving the fixes.
We will die broke, but hopefully in a healthier house.
We are thinking mold makes L. Borreliosis much worse than whatever it would be as a background infection. Inflammation has certainly been our biggest battle.
Take care.
A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit. Allegedly Greek, but more possibly fairly modern quote.
Consider helping by donating using the button in the upper left hand corner. Thank you.
butterfly
Hi D.M. What a story! Heart-wrenching! Gadzooks! I sure hope you and the Mr. are well and get all the work done. Sounds like it was buying a boat.
Did ya see 'The Money Pit'? 
I am reasonably sure the butterfly is a European Peacock. Sorry I did not check comments to see if ID'd already. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aglais_io
We have an Io moth here in America. Methinks Io was a daughter of a Greek God or Goddess.
Be well, take care, see more Hoopoes.
We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein
Thank you so much. You have it. Iooked
up your ID and there it was. It is for us most impressive. We have many small Butterflies of the tan/carmel colors. Working on them as well. Our small patch isn't much, but the numbers of insects coming to our yard is amazing and wonderful. It is so worth the effort.
A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit. Allegedly Greek, but more possibly fairly modern quote.
Consider helping by donating using the button in the upper left hand corner. Thank you.
I have a huge collection of
I have a huge collection of stuff on mold illness. I'd be happy to share my collected information with you. I probably am one of the more knowledgeable people around on it. Fighting for your health and your life in a powerful motivator.
I realized fairly early on that a big cover up was going on on it and made contact with a bunch of the people who were dong investigations of it. Some of them are no longer with us, so I suspect that its not about to become public knowledge. Ive also been through a very harrowing experience that made me very ill and miraculously managed to pull myself out of it. I refused to let theat happen. But as I said I lost a big chunk of my life, what should have been my prime earning years.
There is a real disaster in the making if the millions of houses that are sitting vacant are sold to families without being adequately remediated. High humidity for an extended period of time or from leaks can make a house a sick building by being trapped in wall cavities.
and they refuse to recognize the danger posed.If people cannot afford prompt repairs their homes could easily become become impossibly costly to remediate.
One tip that I have been trying to get newspapers to write about is the exponential relationship of toxin production to wall cavity interior relative humidity. Suppose that a convntianally constructed US home is subjected to a flood which sturates gypsum wallboard mold fiid and makes the wet walls swell up because of water wicking. Because of the wall relative humidity=toxins its essential to go around with s ledgehapper and try to knock at least two air holes in every wall cavity before much time has elapsed with them in that condition. Can you see why? A mycologist maybe the worlds best expert on toxic black mold told me this, I think. I cannot overestimate how important it is for anybody who lives in the midwest to know this becuase that area is subject toflkash flooding and virually all not mobil homes are built using the conventional type consruction. I used to0 knpw a few people at NTP and I think I should call them and ask them if they see this the way I do. Lots and lots of people have their homes flooded and dont realize that this simple intervention of knocking the air holes could make all the difference between their home although moldy going to not be dangerously moldy and being a toxic mold nightmare. Because its the difference between 99% RH at the wall cavity interior and it being perhaps 75% RH. Which would probably mean the difference between exclusively toxinogenic molds growing (stachybotrys, because its 99% RH, and aspergillus/penicillium type mold because its 75% RH. Also assuming two wall cavities are both eclosed by water saturated paper covered gypsum wall board but one has sealed itself in completely and the other has had tghe two holes knocked in it. Both are literally furry, covered with abundant greasy stachybotrys.spores, so abundant that an attempt at collecting tape lift is going to seem futile because there is so much of it. But the closed cavith is going to be dangerously ToXIC and the one with at least one hole preferably two is going to be much less so. This is because its metobolically expensive for the mold to produce those toxins. So expensive it only does in a battle to the death for dominance, meaning in the most moist and humid situations possible. Otherwise it may produce mycotoxins but not the very worst kind. Additionally the worst situation is when there is a leak which over a very long time, like seasonally makes that closed wall cavity wet for extended periods and then it dries out, over a very long period, lets say 100 years. A very old building. The result is that the molds concentrate toxinogenicity by consuming thge old toxic mold and producing new toxic mold out of the old mold. Mold growing on mold. Thats how the mold inside of the walls of my old apartment became so toxic I suspect. It was more than 400 times stronger than a refence (roridin A equivalents, which is the toxicity standard when it comes to macrocyclic trichothecene mycotoxins, which according to the Army Blue Book is one of the most toxic substances (around 60th) known to man and officially a biologic and chemical weapon. This stuff will make people very very sick, it can even kill you.
It also lasts as long as its there, its toxicity doesnt wear out or fade away as far as they can tell. It is so strong that5 if there is a bunch of it in any wall cavity in a building it will find a way out and even that tny exposure will do an immense damage to all the occupants health for all intents and purposes forever until its remediated.
Stachybotrys was discovered when families in a number of Midwestern cities infant children started coughing up blood and some even died, and they could not figure out the cause. Also its sometimes found in domestic animals such as horses who became very ill when few mold contaminated fodder. Trichothecenes cause necrosis of living tissue and these horses mouths became bloody swollen and red, and shortly thereafter the horses themselves went away to the Great Thereafter. In other words after a period of experiencing great distress, they died.
This is a very good video on this discovery.
[Video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhvPBtFUSTA]