I thought I'd posted something on this, but I hadn't.

If you spend quite a bit of time in the outback, you should pack along an FRS/GMRS capable radio, or at least a FRS one. I.e., a "walkie talkie".

I like radios, and it's really easy to geek people out on the topic, or for that matter to get arrogant in regard to them, which is a frequent problem in radio communities. What I'm going to start off noting is something that goes down the rabbit hole in GMRS communities, but its easy to set yourself up with these sorts of small handheld radios. Midland in particular makes good sets for regular people.

Everyone has seen these sorts of radios, and a lot of children actually use them, particularly the FRS ones. When you buy a "bubble pack" radio set at the sporting goods store, that's what you are getting.

Okay, for some technicalities. From the FCC website:

The Family Radio Service (FRS) is a private, two-way, short-distance voice and data communications service for facilitating family and group activities. The most common use for FRS channels is short-distance, two-way voice communications using small hand-held radios that are similar to walkie-talkies. The service is licensed-by-rule so the general public can use the devices without having to obtain a license and channel sharing is achieved through a listen-before-talk etiquette.
Other services that allow similar communications include the CB Radio Service, General Mobile Radio Service (GMRS) and the Multi-Use Radio Service (MURS).
The FRS is authorized 22 channels in the 462 MHz and 467 MHz range, all of which are shared with General Mobile Radio Service (GMRS) which requires an individual license for use.

That's frankly a little deceptive, for reasons we'll discuss in a moment.

A lot of the the radios you buy now have the GMRS bands on them, and lots of people, as we'll see, buy GMRS radios intentionally, which require a license, as noted. Regarding GMRS;

The General Mobile Radio Service (GMRS) is a licensed radio service that uses channels around 462 MHz and 467 MHz. The most common use of GMRS channels is for short-distance, two-way voice communications using hand-held radios, mobile radios and repeater systems. In 2017, the FCC expanded GMRS to also allow short data messaging applications including text messaging and GPS location information.
Services that provide functionality similar to GMRS include the Citizens Band Radio Service (CBRS), the Family Radio Service (FRS) and the Multi-Use Radio Service (MURS).
The GMRS is available to an individual for short-distance two-way communications to facilitate the activities of licensees and their immediate family members. Each licensee manages a system consisting of one or more transmitting units (stations.) The rules for GMRS limit eligibility for new GMRS system licenses to individuals in order to make the service available to personal users. (Some previously licensed non-individual systems are allowed to continue using GMRS.)
In 2017, the FCC updated the GMRS by allotting additional interstitial channels in the 467 MHz band, increased the license term from 5 to 10 years, allowed transmission of limited data applications such as text messaging and GPS location information and made other updates to the GMRS rules to reflect modern application of the service.

I"m not going to bother with MURS, which you don't run into that often.

GMRS is a far more capable two-way radio system than CB is. If CB's are down in their legally restricted power range, they really only have a about a three-mile range, which is also pretty common range wise for FRS. GMRS varies by terrain and is line of site, so it can be quite short as well, although it can be quite long. I've hit a hand held gmrs from a 5 Watt gmrs radio from a distance of 20 miles away, and the other day I was picking up the local repeater from over 30 miles away when I actually quite listening to it.

Channel 3 is a FRS channel that doesn't require the GMRS license, and it's the channel that seems to be getting adopted for emergency radio use. Colorado Search and Rescue has adopted it:

You can read more about that here:

FRS3 For Colorado Backcountry

Wyoming Search and Rescue has as well, but there's an added wrinkle with them. Riffing off of the widely held weird belief in Wyoming that the area code is somehow cool, they've added the suggestion that people program in privacy code 7.

Colorado specifically asks that people not program in a privacy code.

Privacy codes are really easy to program into any of these radios. It's just done with the keys. What a privacy code does is filter out all the radio traffic not using it, so if you have it programmed in, you'll only hear transmissions using it. People not using the code can hear everything, but they can't talk to you.

As noted, I like radios and I carry a hand held Midland GMRS radio (usually a Midland) out in the sticks all the time. Both of my regular 4x4s have vehicle mounted GMRS radios as well. One of those is the most powerful one you can have by law, which means it should be able to broadcast at distance, and it also allows the user to program in "split tones", which are useful for privately maintained repeaters. Northern Colorado is jam packed with a really good repeater system, and it now extends as far north as Cheyenne which is linked into it. The Torrington area has a repeater as well, but I've never been able to hit it. Casper has a very good repeater which is part of the GMRS Live system, so through net linkage, you can hit all the way up into Montana on it.

Not that most people want to do any of that. But the recommendations are really good ones. The hand held radios can be bought fairly inexpensively (although you can get a really expensive one if you wish) and if you are lost, or hurt yourself out in the sticks, and much of the sticks in Wyoming is without cell service, it could be a life saver.

Going Feral: Report dead wild rabbits to Game and Fish

Going Feral: Report dead wild rabbits to Game and Fish:

Report dead wild rabbits to Game and Fish

POSTED:

JULY 20, 2020

CHEYENNE REGION

NEWS

NEWS

Wyomingites are being asked to keep a lookout for dead rabbits in their yards, rural property and other outdoor areas. The Wyoming Game and Fish Department is collecting wild rabbit carcasses for Rabbit Hemorrhagic Disease Virus2 testing, known as RHDV2. While not found in Wyoming yet, the disease has been identified in neighboring states. Testing rabbits is key to monitoring the disease spread.

RHDV2 is a fatal disease of rabbits and hares. An estimated 35-50% of infected wild rabbits succumb to the disease.

Samantha Allen, Game and Fish state wildlife veterinarian, said all of Wyoming’s rabbits and hares are susceptible — that includes game and nongame species like cottontail rabbits, jack rabbits and potentially, pygmy rabbits. Domestic rabbits are also at risk; however, other domestic pets and livestock are not at risk from the disease.

The first indication of RHDV2 infection in rabbits is dead animals.

“Any rabbit could become infected with the disease - so it could be a cottontail living in your yard or the one you see while hiking,” said Allen. “Please report any dead rabbits you find. Testing these carcasses is the only way to know if the disease is in Wyoming.”

The disease has been confirmed in California, Nevada, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Colorado.

RHDV2 does not pose a threat to humans, but rabbits carry other diseases which can — like tularemia and plague. The public is advised not to touch or pick up any dead wild rabbits. Rather, note the location and call the Game and Fish Wildlife Health Lab at (307) 745-5865 or the nearest regional office. Game and Fish personnel will evaluate the situation, and make plans to collect the rabbit.

Lex Anteinternet: i nolunt

Lex Anteinternet: i nolunt:

i nolunt

Radical refusal to consent.

More specifically, radical refusal to consent to the spirit of the times. It's part of what I admire in them, but it didn't strike me until recently.

John Pondoro Taylor, in his memoirs, recalled having seen Maasai walking through Nairobi as if it simply wasn't there, as they had always done, dressed in their traditional fashion, and carrying spears. On their way from one place to another, refusing to consent that the development of the city meant anything in real terms.

I was recently waiting in the Church for the confession line to form. One of the Mantilla Girls walked in. I've seen this one once or twice before, but not at this Church. She not only wears the mantilla, and is very pretty, but she carries herself with pride.

They don't all do that. Some of the younger women who wear chapel veils do so very naturally. Some sort of timidly, or uncomfortably. With at least one, and I could be massively off the mark, it's almost sort of an affectation. But here, you see something quite different.

Or so it seems.

I don't know her. I could be wrong. But it's clear she isn't timid and it's not an affectation.

It is, it seems to me, a radical rejection of the modern secular world in favor of existential nature.

For those who believe in the modern world, in modernism, or the spirit of the times, or who are hostile to religion, that may seem like a shocking statement. But the essence of our modern lives (or post-modern, if you insist) is a radical rejection of nature, most particularly our own natures. Wearing a chapel veil indicates that the person deeply believes in a set of beliefs that are enormously grounded in nature. The wearer is a woman, in radical alignment with biology in every sense, and accepting everything that means, including what the modern world, left and right, detest. I nolunt. She's accepting of the derision, and ironically, or in actuality not ironically, probably vastly happier than those who have accommodated modernity.

Moreover, those who think they're reaching out for a radical inclusion of the natural, who don't take the same approach, never can quite reach authenticity. There can always be a slight feeling that something isn't authentic, and there isn't. Reserving an element of modernity defeats it.

Related Thread:

We like everything to be all natural. . . . except for us.

Labels: Agrarianism, Agriculture, An hoc pertinet ad naturam?, Commentary, Daily Living, Food, Friday Farming, Medicine, Men, nature, The roles of men and women, transgenderism, trends, Women

Lex Anteinternet: Wednesday, June 21, 1944. Ox Cart on Saipan.

Lex Anteinternet: Wednesday, June 21, 1944. Operation Bagration com...:

The US 2nd Marine Division captured Mount Tipo Pole and then started fighting for Mount Tapotchau on Saipan. The 4th Marine Division progressed east on the Kagman Peninsula.

Marines in ox cart, Saipan, June 21, 1944.

Lex Anteinternet: Subsidiarity Economics 2024. The times more or les...

Lex Anteinternet: Subsidiarity Economics 2024. The times more or les...:

Subsidiarity Economics 2024. Electronic eartags Edition.

From CattleTags.com

In other news which will impact a Wyoming industry that isn't going a way, new electronic ear tags are coming to the cattle industry:

Press Release
Contact:
APHISpress@usda.gov

Requires electronic ID for Certain Cattle and Bison Moving Interstate
WASHINGTON, April 26, 2024 – Today, by amending and strengthening its animal disease traceability regulations for certain cattle and bison, the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) is putting in place the technology, tools, and processes to help quickly pinpoint and respond to costly foreign animal diseases.
“Rapid traceability in a disease outbreak will not only limit how long farms are quarantined, keep more animals from getting sick, and help ranchers and farmers get back to selling their products more quickly – but will help keep our markets open,” said Dr. Michael Watson, APHIS Administrator.
One of the most significant benefits of the rule for farmers and ranchers will be the enhanced ability of the United States to limit impacts of animal disease outbreaks to certain regions, which is the key to maintaining our foreign markets. By being able to readily prove disease-free status in non-affected regions of the United States, we will be able to request foreign trading partners recognize disease-free regions or zones instead of cutting off trade for the entire country. Traceability of animals is necessary to establish these disease-free zones and facilitate reestablishment of foreign and domestic market access with minimum delay in the wake of an animal disease event.
This rule is the culmination of goals established by USDA to increase traceability, one of the best protections against disease outbreaks, and enhances a rule finalized in 2013 for the official identification of livestock and documentation for certain interstate movements of livestock.
USDA is committed to implementing a modern animal disease traceability system that tracks animals from birth to slaughter using affordable technology that allows for quick tracing of sick and exposed animals to stop disease spread. USDA will continue to provide tags to producers free of charge to jumpstart efforts to enable the fastest possible response to a foreign animal disease. For information on how to obtain these free tags, please see APHIS’ Animal Disease Traceability webpage.
The final rule applies to all sexually intact cattle and bison 18 months of age or older, all dairy cattle, cattle and bison of any age used for rodeo or recreation events, and cattle or bison of any age used for shows or exhibitions.
The rule requires official eartags to be visually and electronically readable for official use for interstate movement of certain cattle and bison, and revises and clarifies certain record requirements related to cattle.
A copy of this rule may be viewed today, and the rule will be published in the Federal Register in the coming weeks. This rule will be effective 180 days after publication in the Federal Register.
To learn more about animal disease traceability and how APHIS responds to animal disease outbreaks, visit www.aphis.usda.gov.
#
USDA touches the lives of all Americans each day in so many positive ways. In the Biden-Harris Administration, USDA is transforming America’s food system with a greater focus on more resilient local and regional food production, ensuring access to healthy and nutritious food in all communities, building new markets and streams of income for farmers and producers using climate smart food and forestry practices, making historic investments in infrastructure and clean energy capabilities in rural America, and committing to equity across the Department by removing systemic barriers and building a workforce more representative of America. To learn more, visit www.usda.gov.
Frequently Asked Questions: Animal Disease Traceability Rule
USDA touches the lives of all Americans each day in so many positive ways. In the Biden-Harris Administration, USDA is transforming America’s food system with a greater focus on more resilient local and regional food production, fairer markets for all producers, ensuring access to safe, healthy and nutritious food in all communities, building new markets and streams of income for farmers and producers using climate smart food and forestry practices, making historic investments in infrastructure and clean energy capabilities in rural America, and committing to equity across the Department by removing systemic barriers and building a workforce more representative of America. To learn more, visit www.usda.gov.

Lex Anteinternet: Carpetbaggers and Becoming Native To This Place.

Lex Anteinternet: Carpetbaggers and Becoming Native To Ths Place.:

Carpetbaggers and Becoming Native To This Place.

His life will grow out of the ground like the other lives of the place, and take its place among them. He will be with them - neither ignorant of them, nor indifferent to them, nor against them - and so at last he will grow to be native-born. That is, he must reenter the silence and the darkness, and be born again.

Wendell Berry, A Native Hill.

From the Cowboy State Daily:

Now Other People Are “Pissed” At The “We The People Are Pissed” Billboard On I-80 in Wyoming

Probably the most revealing thing in the article:

The Kahlers moved to Wyoming from Colorado about three years ago. Jeanette Kahler said they moved to Wyoming for the state’s “conservative values.”

In other words, they're carpetbaggers.

Wyoming has always had a very high transient population. Right from the onset, a lot of the people we associate with the state, actually weren't from here, and more significantly weren't from the region. Francis E. Warren, for example, the famous early Senator, wasn't. Joseph M. Carey wasn't. A person might note that they arrived sufficiently early that they hardly could have been, but this carries on to this very day. Sen. John Barrasso is a Pennsylvanian. Secretary of State Chuck Gray is a Californian.

This does matter, as you can't really ever be a native of the Northern Plains or the Plains if you weren't born and raised here. You might be able to convince yourself, and buy a big hat like Foster Freiss, but you aren't from here and more importantly aren't of here. If you came from Montana, or Nebraska, or rural Colorado, that's different. Or if you came in your early years, before you were out of school.

But earlier arrivals did try. They appreciated what they found, took the effort to grasp what it was, and sought to become native to this place.

The recent arrivals don't. They brought their homes and their attitudes with them.

They were fooling themselves that they were "Wyoming" anything.

Or were.

Recently, however, something else has been going on. Just as the Plains were invaded by European Americans in the 18th and 19th Centuries, Wyoming is enduring it again with an invasion of Southerners, Rust Belt denizens, and Californians, who image they have Wyoming's values while destroying them. One prominent Freedom Caucuser is really an Illinoisan with values so different from the native ones it's amazing she was elected, but then her district elected Chuck Gray as well, whose only connection with Wyoming is thin. They do represent, however, the values of recent immigrants.

Whether you like it or not, Wyomingites have not traditionally been hostile to the Federal Government, and we knew we depended upon it. Indeed, while one Wyoming politician may emphasize a narrative of being a fourth generation Wyomingite, and is, whose agricultural family pulled themselves up from the mule ears on their cowboy boots, and they did work hard, we can't get around the fact that the state was founded by the Federal Government which sent the Army in to kill or corral the original inhabitants and then gave a lot of the land away on a government assistance program.

Wyoming was formed, in part, by welfare.

The government helped bring in the railroads, helped support agriculture, built the roads, kept soldiers and later airmen and their paychecks at various places, funded the airports, and helped make leasing oil rights cheap so that they could be exploited.

No real Wyomingite hates the government, no matter how much they may pretend they do.

Populist do, as they're ignorant.

Wyoming's cultural ethos was, traditionally, "I don't care what the @#$#$ you do, as long as you leave me alone". The fables about Matthew Shepherd aside, people didn't really care much about what you did behind closed doors, but expected that you wouldn't try to force acceptance of it at a societal level. Wyoming was, and remains, for good or ill the least religious state in the United States. You could always find some devout members of various Protestant faiths, and devout and observant Catholics and Mormons have always been here. But the rise of the Protestant Evangelical churches is wholly new, and come in with Southerners. When I was growing up, a good friend of mine was a Baptist, the only one I knew, as the church was close to his house (now he's a Lutheran). I knew one of my friends was Lutheran, and there were some Mormon kids in school. There was one Jehovah's Witness. In junior high, one of my friends was sort of kind of Episcopalian, and I knew the son of the Orthodox Priest. By high school I knew the daughter of the Methodist minister. But outside of Mormon kids and Catholic kids, the religion of my colleagues was often a mystery.

I'm not saying the unchurched nature of the state was a good thing, but I am saying that by and large there was a dedicated effort to educate children and tolerance was a widely held value. It was a tolerance, as noted, that required people to keep their deviations from a societal norm to themselves. People who cheated on spouses, who were homosexuals, or any other number of things could carry on doing it, but not if they were going to demand you accepted it.

And frankly, that was a better way to approach things.

Now, that's being fought over.

The Freedom Caucus group might as well have Sweet Home Alabama as their theme song, and that's not a good thing.

Labels: 2020s, Blog Mirror, Carpetbaggers, Catholic, Culture, Education, Francis Warren, Government, Joseph M. Carey, Mormon, Music, Politics, Populism, Protestant, religion, Wendell Berry, Wyoming

Lex Anteinternet: Going to the hardware store. A note on taxes.

Lex Anteinternet: Going to the hardware store. A note on taxes.:

Going to the hardware store. A note on taxes.

Socialism is when the government does stuff. And it's more socialism the more stuff it does. And if it does a real lot of stuff, it's communism.

Richard D. Wolff.¹

I saw them there when I went into the hardware store, but they were talking to somebody and I didn't have to engage them. I was not so lucky on the way out. I glanced over as there oddly enough were cookies at the table and I thought for a moment it might be an effort to raise money for something like the Girl Scouts, but there were no girls there. Only two women, whom I'd guess were in their 70s.

Them: Excuse me sir, are you a registered voter?

I'll be frank, I really hate the initiative and referendum process. I figure most people sign the petitions to get something on the ballot, as they are polite and don't really want to offend the signature takers. Eons ago, I was like that myself.

I've long since being that way. Most of the time I refuse to sign the petitions, but I don't engage the petitioners in debate.

And I didn't this time. I wish I had.

The rest of the brief conversation:

Me: Yes (said in an irritated tone).

Them: Would you like to sign our petition? If passed, it would drop property taxes 50%.

Me: No (said in an even more irritated tone).

By the time I got home, I was irritated with myself. I wish I had engaged them in conversation. If I had, what I would have said is this?

Oh? Property taxes in Wyoming, which has no income tax, pay for police, fire departments, basic city sevices and education. Why do you hate policemen, firemen and teachers?

That's brutal, but that's the truth. If we don't tax property for these things, we have to tax something else, or go without.

This city has had two reported teenage murders in the last month, and a lot of killings here just go unreported. We have a developing violent gang problem. I'm not even going to bother with the drug problem that comes with living in a city that's on an Interstate Highway. We have a homeless problem due to other municipalities busing their homeless to our city. All of these ties right into what I just noted.

Badly educated people are a major social problem that ends up being a burden on emergency services.

The "I don't want to be taxed" movement really came about, no matter how it is thinly intellectually justified, as property taxes have risen significantly in the state in recent years. The reasons are several fold, one simply being that county assessors falsely suppressed raising them, as property values raised, as they're elected officers and they were chicken about it. The State, which has the duty to distribute the taxes, finally got after them to do t heir jobs, and they've been having to do them. That's raised taxes.

Another is that a certain attitude in the state has encouraged people to move in, although a large number move right back out. Those who move in are largely older, having made their lives elsewhere, and having educated their children elsewhere. They sold their houses high in those places, where they should have stayed, and don't want to pay for anything here. Additionally, a lot of these people have real populist views, and would be just fine with not educating anyone in their declining years as they'll be dead as a door nail when current children become ignorant voters themselves.

For that matter, some of the recent imports have washed up from regions where education in particular is lacking. This is particularly the case for people who have come up from the South. Steeped in a sort of ignorance themselves, they aren't thinking things through, and regard education as some sort of left wing conspiracy. This has unfortunately seeped into American conservatism itself, and is now sort of a rallying cry.

Property taxes are rising just because of people like this. They sell out their homes for a pile, and then come here and buy new ones at inflated prices.

I'd really like to know what these people would propose to cut, if we didn't have the property taxes. They likely have no idea. The same people who would cut property taxes would go to a city council meeting and complain about a pothole, which is filled, basically, with money from property taxes.

Property taxes are, moreover, more fair than people suppose. If you have property, you have means. It's telling that these complaints come from old people, not young couples. Renters aren't paying property taxes. And if the property taxes are too high, it may mean you exceeded your means, or you have multiple properties. In the latter case, sell one, that will reduce property values and help distribute the scarce resource.

Footnotes.

1. A relative of mine uses this quote frequently, which is where I heard the first part of it.

I looked Wolff up, and he is an academic Marxist, which I'm not in any sense. Marxism is proven murderous crap. But the quote is not without merit. Every democratic society has governments which do a lot of stuff, and by and large the public really likes the stuff it does if it benefits from it, and doesn't if somebody else does. Some of the most subsidized industries in the US completely fail to realize that and their members loudly complain about the government. Trucking is, for example, a prime example.

Labels: 2020s, 2024, 2024 Election, Distributism, Economics, Education, Politics, Subsidiarity, Taxes, Wyoming

The Agrarian's Lament

Going Feral: Emergency FRS/GMRS Channels

Emergency FRS/GMRS Channels