They were going to call it The Freedom Tower until Red China griped and now they will call it something else (imagine us being so indebted to them we changed the name for them). I think most New Yorkers always will refer to it as The World Trade Center because it is on the site where the WTC once towered above all other buildings in New York City. I call it that anyhow, so do my friends.
The pics shown are from about 2 weeks ago when I visited the area, with two good friends, to have lunch at Ho Yips on Liberty. These show the progress they have finally made on it. That it has taken over 10 years to get this far truly is shameful no matter any or all of the reasons for the delays but at least it is finally getting there. It is a pretty impressive sight. Not as impressive as were the Twin Towers of the WTC but close and I am sure that, once it has been completed, it will look even more impressive than it does now.
"Unexpected" is an understatement when it comes to finding a waterfall in New York City, right in there among the big buildings. The one pictured here was on the east side, somewhere close to Madison and 53rd, wish I had noted the location. It was a pretty neat sight to find in the Concrete Jungle even though some idiot planted a row of trees right down the middle instead of just planting the rows on either side to frame the fall. Still, a nice place to sit to rest, or a place to gather your thoughts, or a great spot at which to enjoy your lunch.
All the best,
Glenn B
...to pick up some paint and a brush. I hate going to that place but after my experience there last week, with the grill (wherein they were nice enough to deliver one to me on Fathers' Day to replace a defective one I had just bought) you can bet I will stick with them for awhile. I have a couple of painting jobs that need to be done in the house - both in the basement. One job is only about 4 feet square, the floor in the in-house. (It's not a bathroom, only has a toilet, is a small room, tiny, narrow and tall just like an outhouse but is inside, so I call it the in-house; after all, it is an in-house facility!) The thing that stinks (no pun intended) about that job is that I have to clean the floor first. It will require a good thorough cleaning, then a drying period, to make sure the new primer and then paint will adhere properly. Then a single coat of primer and probably three coats of paint. In all, the actual work, probably will take less than two hours.
Then, probably sometime this coming week or the following one, I will go back to Home Depot to pick up some paint for the basement walls in the front part of our cellar. That too will require a coat of primer, then a couple coats of paint. It is going to be a lot more work. Before I forget, I guess I'll have to paint the ceiling too. Perhaps, it will be better to do that first so that no paint from the ceiling splatters my newly painted walls. I'll have to ask them if a job like what I am doing requires primer or not. I am basically putting fresh paint, of the same color as the old, onto the walls. Maybe just a good cleaning off would do the trick. Then again, I don't often have good luck with things when I change how I have always done them, a coat of primer first is probably the best way to go.
Oh well, did I mention, I loathe going to Homer's!
All the best,
Glenn B
Blog pages of mine that seem to consistently get the most visits are now my home blog page and those that deal with certain guns. The write up that I did on the Marlin 336, with embedded disassembly and assembly videos is one that gets a lot of views.
For some reason though, over the past 2.5 to 3 weeks or so, I have noticed one of my pages, dealing with a very different subject (or at least I hope people think it very different from ones dealing with guns and ammo), has been getting a lot of attention primarily from Europe but some from Asia too. I figure it is getting at least 3 to 4 unique visits, and even more page views, per day and from at least 10 different countries by now. That may not seem like a lot to you but it certainly was noticeable to me because the page, while looked at in the past, has not been anywhere nearly as popular, as it has been of late, since I wrote it back in August 2010 almost 2 years ago.
About the only reasonable explanation I can give, for its increased popularity now, is that I suspect that the subject I wrote about has become an even more popular one abroad than it had been in the past. The subject was Bombina orientalis, commonly called the Fire Bellied Toad. Remember, I said above that I hope people are looking for something very different in it than even something remotely to do with guns and ammo. The reason I said that is because of the frog's scientific name. I am hopeful that the folks who have visited the site have not been looking for information on bombs or bombing plots and also hope they do not think that the word Bombina has something to do with that subject, a subject that could easily be associated with guns and ammo. As I also said though, the reasonable explanation would be that this frog is increasing in its popularity as a pet in Europe and parts of Asia and I'll leave it at that for now, at least until an exploding frog lands on my lily pad.
Well, there is one last thing. I would certainly appreciate it if one of the people in Europe who reads this post could confirm whether or not Bombina orientalis has risen in popularity as a pet in Europe this year. Thanks.
All the best,
Glenn B
This week, after a considerable amount of thought, I have decided that, after this post, I will no longer post (in this blog) or comment (on other blogs) about what I have done to prepare for TEOTWAWKI. (I will continue blogging about guns and ammo and tactics and emergency preparedness and such but not about anything specific as to what I have done to prepare myself and my family.)
With all due respect to this great and very informative site, and to the site's owner, that asks the weekly question "What did you do to prep this week?", and considering I only commented now and then about what I had done to prepare in the past, I see no good reason to continue doing so and every good reason to cease from doing so. My stopping to do so though, from after today on, is exactly what I have done to prep this week. Now that I have gotten that out, let me also say, this though is the last week I will discuss the matter, of specifically what I have done to prepare for hard times, openly on the Internet.
The reason I have arrived at this conclusion to my no longer commenting on or blogging about what I have done to prep is that I believe it foolish to advertise just what preparations I have made and in essence to put out a sign saying: "Glenn B--------- has stocks of this, that and other survival things. If you want them - come and get them once the SHTF". I believe that leaving comments about my disaster preparedness could well be my and my family's undoing should bad come to worse; it seems an open invitation to marauders.
Maybe this seems a bit overly cautious on my part but I would bet there are people out there who already have zeroed in on the locations of those who have prepared for TEOTWAWKI events. Furthermore, I would be willing to venture my reputation that some of those same folks are willing to go to those locations with the intent of taking what I or you have for ourselves in the event of an emergency. It is just like a burglar scoping out a potential target before attempting his burglary. It is not all that difficult, in my understanding, for anyone to go online and track down an Internet user by using their IP address. In addition, it is not difficult to find almost anyone if you know their name. So, if you know my name Glenn B---------- and you input it into an Internet search, you probably would come up with my home address, or at least the village in which I live. If you actually found my residence address, you could input that into something like Google Maps and or Zillow and see what my house looks like and maybe even see some of my vehicles. With an aerial view, on a mapping program, you could certainly see the area around my home and figure the best way to assault it if you so desired.
In addition to finding out about my home address and the like, an Internet search could also reveal several other things about me that I might not want to have known during a TEOTWAWKI situation, well at least not known by potential looters, robbers, thieves and the like. For example, you could easily discover several forums or other website to which I belong and which I use regularly. You then could easily find forums posts in which I have discussed survival issues including my preparations, my stocks of food, supplies, firearms and ammunition, my stay-put or bug-out plans, my abilities, photos of my family and so forth.
My biggest blunder in that regard has been that I rarely posted any of this information anonymously and almost always used my full name when I did post in forums and when I did so on social media sites. Even if you do not have my IP address, you could easily identify me by way of me leaving a comment on someone else's site about preparations I have made. How? Just click on my user name on that site and what comes up but my blog. My whole name is never used on my blog as far as I can remember but there are links to forums and other sites I frequent. Since I use my real name in forums, you could click on ones to which I am linked and search me out there using my first name and last initial. It might be a painstaking way to do it but sooner or later you could identify me and then locate me and you could do it long before you actually planned to come and get my goods and certainly without me knowing that you had located me and mine
What has happened, is that I , like so many others, have become too comfortable with the Internet and with living in our world (here in the USA) that has essentially been pretty much free of the things that I should be worried about that could and quite possibly would happen under a true TEOTWAWKI situation. I plan to correct as much of that as I can do. One way to start the corrective process is to stop being so open about what preparations I have been making. I will no longer advertise how many firearms I own, how much ammunition I have, what long term foodstuffs I have purchased, how much water I have at hand, medical supplies I have and so forth - or even if indeed I even have any of it. I see no reason to keep posting a large virtual glowing sign for all to see saying - "Hey, if you don't have it then Glenn B sure has more than enough for himself and his family and you can find it here".
Now others may think they are well hidden by anonymity but my bet is that a savvy Internet user could easily track you down though the methods I mentioned and through others unknown or little understood by me. I don't know about you but I truly believe that a major worldwide catastrophe possibly is coming to us soon, probably in the form of WWIII and I would like to be somewhat prepared for it if and when it arrives on our shores. I most definitely do not need to help someone who is not as well prepared to try to redistribute, against my will, what I have worked hard to have on hand.
In closing I will say this: If you know where I am and want what I have and are willing to try to take it away from me by force or other illegal means - beware - I will be quite ready and willing to legally protect myself and my family and what was meant to help me and my family survive from thieves, bandits, freebooters, looters, outlaws, thugs, plunderers, ravagers, marauders, robbers, and the like.
All the best,
Glenn B
...but something tells me that once he is incarcerated for having molested young boys, he will be on the receiving end and will be getting it from an older class of men. So, he may not want it so much anymore but I would bet he is going to get it nonetheless.
All the best,
GB
...to try to garner campaign contributions from the wacky leftists who love him so? I thought it was pretty ridiculous when both the Romney and Obama campaigns set up a sort of lottery whereby if you made a donation to their campaigns, you could win a dinner engagement with the one to whom you donated. To think - both of them have a campaign gimmick like that. It makes me sick, if for no other reason than it shows how miserably Obama-like is Romney. Perhaps, he is not quite as bad as Obama though - I don't think Romney's campaign has stooped quite as low as has the Obama campaign in its attempts to generate donations.
You see, the Obama campaign has done something that no other presidential election campaign apparently has even thought of before. It is asking supporters to forgo things like birthday, wedding and anniversary gifts and, that if you have a special day like that coming up, you ask those who would give you the gifts to make a campaign contribution to Obama instead. What a bunch of unmitigated arrogance. I guess it shows the true colors of the man - redistribution of wealth being his number one goal - so long as he is not giving up his wealth but is receiving that of everyone else.
If Romney falls to that deep murky depth and mimics Obama's seeming absolute lack of ethics and class, I will be voting for a write in candidate like Ron Paul.
All the best,
Glenn B
They were going to call it The Freedom Tower until Red China griped and now they will call it something else (imagine us being so indebted to them we changed the name for them). I think most New Yorkers always will refer to it as The World Trade Center because it is on the site where the WTC once towered above all other buildings in New York City. I call it that anyhow, so do my friends.
The pics shown are from about 2 weeks ago when I visited the area, with two good friends, to have lunch at Ho Yips on Liberty. These show the progress they have finally made on it. That it has taken over 10 years to get this far truly is shameful no matter any or all of the reasons for the delays but at least it is finally getting there. It is a pretty impressive sight. Not as impressive as were the Twin Towers of the WTC but close and I am sure that, once it has been completed, it will look even more impressive than it does now.
