The Sweat Lodge

KENTUCKY BURGOO

2008-10-26T19:37:00.002-04:00

NOTE: I will post this here until my daughter brings her much better page on burgoo back up.

~oOo~

KENTUCKY BURGOO

This is a dish that is traditionally served at horse races, church picnics, political rallies, and other such out-of-door sporting events. Recipes will vary with the chef, as well as with his or her location in the state; with mutton replacing the veal in Western Kentucky, and with game (such as squirrel) being added to the pot any time and anywhere in the Commonwealth, when it is available. Speaking of the pot, it is best that it is big, black, and of iron, and is heated on a open hardwood fire suitable for the long, slow cooking that makes Burgoo unique.

This particular recipe is traditional for the Bluegrass area of Central Kentucky, and was taken from a collection of Woodford County recipes published some time ago by one of the Presbyterian churches there.

I have added some notes which are based on my experience, and the quantities are greatly reduced in this version of the recipe, in order to make it suitable for use in back yard cooking. However, for the best flavor, Burgoo should really be cooked over an open fire, and in a big iron pot!

INGREDIENTS

2 pounds lean beef, with bone
1 medium hen, dressed
1 pound veal, (replace with lamb for Western Kentucky flavor)
4 quarts water
6 ears of young corn
2 cups of diced raw potato
2 cups of diced raw onion
2 cups of lima beans
3 carrots, diced
2 cups of okra, sliced to the size of the other vegetables
1 clove of garlic, or more to taste
1 dried red pepper, or more to taste
1 cup of minced parsley
1 quart of chopped tomatoes, with juice
1 stalk of celery, diced
2 green peppers, diced

METHOD OF COOKING

Boil the meat until it is falling apart. de-bone it and return it to the pot (it can be pressure-cooked, if one is available, saving you about three hours). Sauté the onions in bacon fat and add to the pot. Add the potatoes, carrots, and celery, bring up to heat, and simmer for 15 minutes, then add the limas and cook for 2 hours. Add the okra, peppers, tomatoes, and the red pepper(s), and cook 1 hour longer. Add the corn and cook for 30 minutes. Stir in the parsley, add salt and pepper to taste, and serve 15 to 20 hungry people!!

NOTES:
1. I think that cabbage and pork are not happy in Burgoo.

2. Add up to 1/4 cup of Worcestershire sauce and a tablespoon or so of Tabasco sauce to this quantity, along with the lamb for a Western Kentucky flavor.

3, When the real cooking starts, after the limas have been added, constant attention and frequent stirring are necessary to prevent scorching; the thickness of the mixture, and the natural sugars that it contains make this easily possible. DO NOT LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOU!! Or your pot may be confiscated by a Squadron of the KENTUCKY STATE MILITIA, and your cooking spoons ceremoniously broken, to the beat of muffled drums!

4. If this recipe is increased 4 or 5 times, it will fit in a 25-gallon lard rendering pot or "wash kettle” as we call them back home and will serve over 100 people, with suitable side dishes.

5. Burgoo freezes well, and you can always send your guests home with roaders of it in plastic containers, if you have any leftovers. It has been my experience however, that usually one or two quarts are all that remains in the bottom of the pot after I had served about 100 people.

6. You may most easily define Burgoo as, "What Virginia’s Brunswick Stew wants to be when it grows up..."

Good Luck,

John E. McClure, Jr.
KENTUCKY COLONEL,
Commissioned by Albert Benjamin Chandler, Governor of
The COMMONWEALTH OF KENTUCKY in 1959 AD, and
The 168th YEAR of the COMMONWEALTH.

ON Fuel Cells & Hydrogen

2008-08-21T20:28:00.004-04:00

Hydrogen Blog

I have referenced biological hydrogen generators in Puss & Boots as being the main source of this gas for the highly efficient fuel cells in their time. I extrapolated this occurrence from my reading about microbiology and my direct experience with using the power of these “simple” single-celled organisms to perform difficult tasks.

I worked with a brilliant microbiologist on a trial of my method of cleaning hydrocarbon-contaminated soil in an old rail yard being turned into a Yuppy- paradise development.

We were able to take soil contaminated with 2,000 parts per million of hydrocarbons down to less than 50 ppm in 45 minutes using a soil-washing method with a rich mix of bacteria-enhanced water. The water was then recycled in a tank and we added more oxygen, nutrients and nitrogen as needed until the little bugs were raring to go again.

I learned during this trial that microbes can apparently share their learned or altered DNA, and so a whole culture in an environment as I had in my tank, can learn to eat new foods...

Now to Puss & Boots:
You will have noted, O Happy Readers that I have hydrogen fuel cell-powered machines all throughout the story, and that local bioreactors are everywhere (i.e. Molly’s cabin). This is because that the microbes that emit hydrogen are with us, and have been so for over 500 million years (pre-Pre-Cambrian).

Read below...
---
“Researchers in Oregon State University's Department of Bioengineering are spearheading efforts to develop sustained production of hydrogen fuel by harnessing photosynthetic microbes that use solar energy to split water molecules and make hydrogen.

OSU professors Roger Ely and Frank Chaplen were notified this week that they are receiving $900,000 over the next three years from a U.S. Department of Energy grant to bolster their efforts.

Hydrogen as a fuel source is a hot topic - hydrogen fuel is clean and energy-rich. Fossil fuels such as gasoline or coal generate greenhouse gasses, but burning hydrogen as fuel produces only water. To make hydrogen fuel takes energy, and current methods typically manufacture hydrogen from fossil fuels. To produce hydrogen fuel without emitting greenhouse gasses, a renewable form of energy would need to be used - from the sun, wind or from a biological process.

The technology to do this is not yet fully developed, but Ely and Chaplen hope to change this.

The two bioengineering researchers - who are faculty in both the College of Agricultural Sciences and the College of Engineering - are especially interested in the hydrogen-generating potential of a large group of photosynthetic microorganisms called cyanobacteria. These bacteria, formerly known as blue-green algae, naturally generate energy from sunlight and, under certain conditions, can make hydrogen rather than sugars.

Ely says cyanobacteria may be a perfect living source for a safe, efficient, and economical production of hydrogen for fuel.

"Imagine an ideal energy device," said Ely. "It wouldn't burn fossil fuels, and it wouldn't pollute. It would be made of low-cost, non-toxic materials, would run on the power of the sun, and would be safe, clean and economical.

"Nature has been conducting research and development on solar energy capture for about 3½ billion years and can teach us much," he said. "From looking to nature, we already know three key things: visible light constitutes most of the energy reaching the Earth; we know how organisms capture it; and we know how they convert it into chemical energy."

But the researchers must overcome a major hurdle: In natural systems, during photosynthesis, cyanobacteria stop making hydrogen when oxygen is present. "In the organism we are studying, oxygen interferes with the production of hydrogen by 'gumming up the works,' so to speak," explained Ely.

With the grant, Ely and Chaplen hope to develop, via "metabolic engineering," oxygen-tolerant strains of cyanobacteria that can produce hydrogen continuously in the light. After developing sun-harnessing, hydrogen-producing strains, the plan is to grow them by the millions in systems that could also store the generated hydrogen and, using fuel cells, convert it into electricity on demand. They call these proposed systems "solar bio-hydrogen energy systems."

"These systems can be designed to be relatively simple and economical, and could serve as decentralized sources of clean electrical energy," said Ely. "The process will have one input, sunlight, and two outputs, electricity and heat," he said. "It will be safe, will operate at relatively low temperatures, and could be made in a range of sizes - from home to industry scale - from abundant, inexpensive materials, mostly from carbon and silica."

"I want to make oil obsolete," said Ely. "As I like to say, the Stone Age didn't end because we ran out of rocks. We can do better."
---
As I say, I think I extrapolate from the present to the future pretty good...
Jack

Modern Major Funny!

2008-07-21T11:37:00.003-04:00

This was spotted by my sharp-eyed daughter, Clay.

"Jim C. Hines, author of Goblin Quest, has just written lyrics to go with the Gilbert and Sullivan perennial 'Modern Major General' AND he's released them under a Creative Commons license."

I am the Very Model of a Modern SF Novelist
http://jimhines.livejournal.com/382703.html

Go there for a real hoot!

Boer War Scout in The Transvaal in 1901

2008-07-07T16:18:00.006-04:00

Here we are now in the Transvaal in 1901, scouting and guiding the 300 or so men of the Irish Transvaal Brigade as they partake of yet another opportunity to fight the Bloody British...

APPROPIATE FOR THE FOURTH, DON’T YOU THINK?

2008-07-04T15:32:00.001-04:00

“IN FLANDER’S FIELDS”
By
Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae
Canadian Army Doctor
1872 - 1918.

*

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw the sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Boer War Scout

2008-06-17T12:24:00.003-04:00

From the Irish Transvaal Brigade circa 1901

The ITB was made up of some 300 Irish miners from the Transvaal gold fields (the real reason for the British fighting the Boers) and included about 30 Irish immigrants from Chicago. These latter boyos got to South Africa by volunteering as Red Cross ambulance drivers, then exchanging their arm bands for Mausers when they could cross the battle lines. Anything for a chance to shoot at the Brits!

I am portraying a Boer Scout with the ITB at a reenactment at the Potomac Celtic Festival in Leesburg, Virginia earlier this month. My horse's name is Molly, BTW.

JOHN RINGO SHOWS HIS CLASS

2008-05-26T13:28:00.002-04:00

A minor brouhaha erupted in the blog-verse when someone posted an attack on John Ringo, a Mil Sci-Fi author whom I admire. Here is a guy who can type 1,000 words an hour and can think them orders of magnitude faster. He has several dozen titles in print through Baen and more seem to be on the way.

Anyway the first blogger was apparently pretty vicious in displaying his dislike for one of John’s series. I don’t know whether the person was a liberal, but I’ll bet you Swiss Credits to greasy Chin chopsticks (as Puss would say) that he/she/it was. John is a guy who would not only help you bury your bodies but also show you the best place to do it; however he is not liked among the Quiche Crowd or by the pink team – thus the reason for my surmise. This initial nastiness was followed by another blogger defending John, but in a back-handed way and that person is the origin of the phrase, “OH JOHN RINGO NO!”

Go to http://www.cafepress.com/ohjohnringono for the rest of the story about John’s class way of handling this. Note also that Captain Tamara Long, USAF was married, and had a child. Her married name was Long-Archuleta. She died in 2003 in Afghanistan when her chopper crashed on a mission to medi-evac two Afghani girls.

Tamara showed her class as well…

Mission Accomplished! (So far anyway...)

2008-05-09T11:41:00.003-04:00

Well, P & B is now a real book and is up on Amazon.com. The price is now decent too. So what are you waiting for?

Go on and buy it!

Real Science Fiction

2008-01-26T14:40:00.000-05:00

I am trying to be a new voice writing Science Fiction, but I want to do in the old way because I honor that way - a way almost ignored today.

Classic science fiction essentially went into remission when Neil Armstrong planted his foot on the moon. When he took that step, Neil and NASA stripped all the mystery away from space travel. Not the glory, just the mystery.

Tolkin’s LOTR came at the right time soon thereafter (whether calculated or not) and captured the huge Sci fi reading audience that craved mystery over fact and felt empty (disenfranchised even) and floating in space. This audience, I submit, became disoriented by the new and harsh reality. The reality that space travel was here now and something they could never dream about, ever again…

Classic science fiction authors really wrote commentaries on the problems they saw in society by selecting one aspect that troubled them, and extrapolating its possible effects into a suggested future. Huxley did this in “Brave New World” and Orwell did it in “1984”, and Pohl and Kornbluth did in “Space Merchants”, to point out just three classic writers of what I call `real’ science fiction.

I have tried to do the same, by writing from the present and looking toward a possible future. I have observed today’s world and now I give you a frightening vision of what our children might face in two hundred and fifty years hence.

“Puss & Boots in The 23rd Century” is a dark tale of my vision – but also of what I see as our ultimate hope as well. Hang on to your straps Gang, because this is one hell of a read!

Jack McClure

On the European Origins of Eastern Woodland American Indians

2008-01-12T21:27:00.000-05:00

I have always been mildly fascinated with the culture of American Indians, first by those of the Western Plains because that is what Hollywood gave us (read “Noble Redskins”), but then as I got more into the subject I began looking at the Eastern Indians. Being from Kentucky, yclept “The Dark and Bloody Ground”, or “The Happy Hunting Ground”, (your choice), I sorta’ got interested.

The more I learned the more interested I became, because of factoids I found about them like:

When Daniel Boone came into Kentucky for the first time in the early 1780s, he visited an Indian town at a place in East-Central Kentucky now known as “Indian Old Fields”. Boone noted that it had over 2,000 inhabitants that were what we now as the Adena Culture of central Kentucky Amerinds;
When he came back to Kentucky on his second trip of exploration some twenty years later, he found that the town was deserted and the long houses were abandoned and falling apart, if they had not been burned.

I then learned that the distruction Dan Boone saw at Indian Old Fields was the result of an agreement between the Mohawks of Western New York and the Cherokees of North Georgia, to “ethnically cleanse” the indigenous Adena culture in Kentucky and so allow the land to be a joint hunting preserve for their two tribes. They then sent war parties to Kentucky in the interval between Boone’s first and second trips that were very effective in carrying out their mission of offing the Adena…

I was not interested in the origins of Amerinds when I was younger, since I believed the standard dictat of the Established Experts of a Mongolian origin for them. Then I found some years later about the real origins of the Eastern Woodland Indians, postulated by Dennis Stafford who has been studying the evidence for a number of years. Dr. Stafford is with the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian in Washington. He told me in a personal communication in 2001 that the prehistoric Indian populations on the East Coast have “a mitrochondrial DNA haplogroup known as X… which has not been found in Asia, but occurs in Western Europe, and has been found in some Algonkian speakers,” to paraphrase his words.

This finding seems to substantiate, or at least support the proposal of Farley Mowait’s book, “The Farfarrers” in which he postulates a settlement in Newfoundland by post-Cro-Magnons via a mechanism of following the retreating edge of the Wrum glacier across the northern edge of the North Atlantic some 5,000 years ago.

Based on this information, perhaps I may be allowed to suggest that Pocahontas felt puppy love for John Smith because he was her long-lost cousin, as well as the power dude of the new-coming English...

Some Photos

2007-12-11T10:10:00.001-05:00

A reproduction long house at Jamestown Festival Park

The Pamunkey name for the long house is yohacan.

A park reenactor displaying a pagwantun, the traditional dress (basically a small apron) worn by the Pamunkey women in the summer season. This was their Only garment, aside from shell beads...

Chapter 1

2007-11-25T13:17:00.000-05:00

Since I did some productive work on my novel both before and after the Thanksgiving ritual eating, you can now read a preview of Chapter 1 of "Puss & Boots in The 23rd Century". You may look upon this posting either as my pre-holiday gift to the world, or as a warning... :o)=)

(Download CH1_Preview.pdf - 614KB)

Map

2007-11-25T13:09:00.000-05:00

When I was a kid I always liked novels with maps. These were usually adventure tales of no redeeming social value ("trash" is what my mother called them), but I kept reading them anyway.

Having now written such a tale myself I felt honor bound to include a map, so here it is!
(download PB_Map.pdf - 83KB)

Puss & Boots In the 23rd Century

2007-10-13T21:02:00.000-04:00

"Puss & Boots in The 23rd Century”

By Jack McClure

My tale is set in 2276, after the end of thirty years of a war that began when the Chinese demanded that the United States and Canada evacuate their west coast areas.
Beijing announced that California, Oregon, Washington state, Alaska, and British Columbia should be ceded to them, because, “our superior culture requires more space in which to grow and flourish.”

Ottawa gave up British Columbia after a brief hesitation, because they had disbanded their army many years earlier as a gesture of peace to the world. The United States had not however, so the war began...

Puss and Boots are U S special forces veterans of this war, but now two years after it is over, they are bounty hunters for the studios of the omnipotent Network that is the world’s sole media provider. The Network broadcasts videos ranging from blandly sensual 1X shows to ones as violent as the bloody spectacles in the arena of ancient Rome, or more so. The Network rates these particular shows as 5X, and offers them as very expensive pay-per-views and this 5X sector is the most profitable one for the Network…
The governors of the four western states were forced to declare martial law when the Chinese invaded, and this condition still exists perforce. This allows their cynical Military Governors to continue ruling by fiat in support their patrons, the Network - and the White House.

Puss & Boots recognize the danger of martial law as well as the Network during the first ten days of May in 2276, when Boots finally awakens to and then accepts her mission, to restore the Constitution.
A clandestine network of US Army veterans has been waiting for Boots to accept the leadership of the Restoration and when she does, "The drums begin to roll and the bands begin to play!"

My tale closes at Puss’ home on her tribe’s reservation in Virginia. She is a Pamunkey Indian and the most proficient killer in the Army Special Forces but she also has other talents, that she is just beginning to realize.

Puss & Boots face a grim struggle in a totalitarian landscape but their story is full of grit and humor, and this lifts their story above its somber theme and takes the reader on an exciting, and often hilarious roller-coaster ride.

If all of the above sounds like the beginning of a series, it is and I am at work on Book 2 even as we speak!

Welcome

2007-10-02T10:15:00.000-04:00

Welcome to Iron Thumb Press, the home of an interesting cast of characters doing interesting things in The 23rd Century - mostly...

I hope they will amuse you while giving you some thrills as well, and perhaps an insight or two about man(and woman)kind - maybe...

Ber Thaq,
2th Century Barbarian Warrior wit' long dangly armses, no forehead an' big axe wid' lotsa' nicks

If

2007-10-01T14:59:00.001-04:00

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

--Rudyard Kipling