I first noticed DailyKos about the time that Senator Kerry was robbed of the Presidency in Ohio. I first thought to register and say something here in the spring of 2006, but I wandered off after the election. I came again in 2007 and got 'troll hunted'; how dare I suggest that fathers deserve equal time with their children?
Now it's exactly one year since the announcement of the Stranded Wind Initiative here. I've posted 223 diaries with a grand total of about 223,000 words and containing 606 photos, a few under the name One Brave Kossack during the depths of my spring health crisis, and the rest as Stranded Wind. Those diaries received 13,741 comments, thirty two of them were rescued, and eleven made the recommend list. I know these things because I started a piece of software intended to help turn a collection of diaries into book(s).
New Years Eve is a time for tidying up from the previous year, getting dressed in your best, and going out on the town. This is, bloggishly speaking, my efforts along those lines.
The Stranded Wind Initiative domain was registered on December 15th. My StrandedWind YouTube account came December 24th and this account was registered the same day. The first diary, entitled Stranded Wind: This Is The Hydrogen Economy came out the evening of the 31st of December.
Three weeks later I was in the Palo Alto County hospital emergency room displaying signs of a stroke. I could still move normally and I was able to write a bit but I'd lost the ability to speak and I had this horrible pressure in my head. The long story made short? I'd picked up a Lyme infested Lone Star tick somewhere in the Sandias in the summer of 2007 and gotten dangerously dehydrated on a hike.
The dehydration set me up for a kidney stone that completely blocked my left kidney, this jacked with my blood pressure, a previously unnoticed aneurysm in my speech center swelled, but did not burst, and the Lyme slowly chewed away at me. This is mostly under control now but I need to beat some sense into Iowa Care and the Infectious Disease Specialists Association. If you read One Brave Kossack you'll see mention of a parathyroid tumor, a wrong diagnosis that cost me many months and perhaps some permanent damage from the Lyme disease.
Surviving this episode but not yet thriving, still mentally foggy, and looking for what to do as a career since my telecom consulting business had collapses, I went walkabout. I traveled and met AlanfromBigEasy and nh3 from The Oil Drum, I visited Kossacks A.Siegel, plf515, AnotherMassachusettsLiberal, mataliandy, and I attended a party in the Boston area with many from this site including Bill in Portland Maine. I recall mem from somerville, brillig, Sardonyx, and I believe sobermom came, too. I'm sure I've forgotten some of the others.
I stayed with a Massachusetts Kossack for two months, lending a hand on his farm while he worked on his outdoor boiler business. I learned a good bit about biomass and another lesson about not investing time and energy into proprietorships other than my own.
I got my Lyme diagnosis on June 15th and then on the 19th I got reinfected hiking at Chapel Falls. I finally got antibiotics on June 28th. When the Lyme spirochetes die they release all sorts of toxins – it's called a Herxheimer reaction. I spent the next day delirious with a fever of 105, then the next day down to 103, then a day of merely 101, then ... I began to feel better.
Feeling better put me in the mood to move so I started another series I called Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. I spent twenty seven days looking for a way to use mass transit and the best we could do was checking out the Strasburg Railroad, the nation's oldest surviving shortline.
Someone had said that my walkabout series reminded them of Into The Wild. I made the terrible mistake of renting it. Then I got the sound track. Then I bought the book. And four days later I was out the door and down the road, writing a series I called Into The West.
Chris McCandless went west, abandoned his car, burned his money, and two years later made a tiny error in the Alaskan bush that killed him. I, on the other hand, went to present at a conference. I stayed in the Midwest for a month, sometimes camped by the side of the road, but mostly hanging with my baby brother in Missouri, not far from Calamity Jane's birthplace. I did finally wander in to Iowa and score some time on a combine, completing that part of McCandless' journey, but I was thwarted regarding my desire to visit Deadwood.
One of the side effects of attending the 2008 Ammonia Fuel Network conference was a real writing gig. One of the other presenters at the conference was Edwin Black who was there to talk about his book The Plan. We talked a bit, one thing lead to another, and now I'm writing fairly regularly for the Sci-Tech and Energy sections on The Cutting Edge News.
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Another effect of the trip is that I got to know South Dakota agronomist Bryan Lutter. I'd been worried about peak oil since the summer of 2007 and that had a lot to do with my career change, albeit assisted by the health related issues that wiped out my consulting business. Talking with Bryan turned the intensity up a notch on making a change.
Thanksgiving day I published a diary entitled The Famine Of 2009 that spent an amazing twenty three hours on the rec list. I followed it up with a solution oriented diary entitled Food Without Fossil Fuel. What Byran had conveyed was this: we've already goofed on fertilizer application in 2008. There are likely going to be both wheat shortages and crop quality (protein) issues. This is deadly serious, as there have already been food riots all over the planet last year.
I've been writing here about stranded wind, renewable ammonia, ammonia as a fuel for the last year, but I'd never pulled it all together. What Bryan had to say prompted me to finish a 2,500 word exposition on a National Renewable Ammonia Architecture that was expressly written for The Oil Drum. The research standards there are as rigorous as the editorial standards for The Cutting Edge News; my improving health coupled with the discipline of writing here an average of four to five diaries a week here has propelled me into new realms.
Another part of my restored focus is Third Mode Energy, a company started by myself and two of the other Stranded Wind contributors, Dave Bradley and Larry Bruce. We've got projects moving in several states now and hopefully we'll see a renewable ammonia facility plan actually taken to full funding some time in 2009.
What's in the queue for 2009?
A Kossack got me connected with a major law firm in Boston and the Stranded Wind Initiative is going to get to 501c3 status. Another Kossack is helping me get the organization ready to approach the Tides Center, a 501c3 incubator, about funding.
We've got more paying work lined up for Third Mode Energy and due to our outreach we've got two serious investment groups that want to take a look at the projects we represent. I anticipate this sector going off like a bomb as soon as the Obama administration takes office.
Diaries for me are like Doritos – can't do just one, but I'm going to be spreading out a bit and may be here just a little less. Writing for The Cutting Edge News is quite a bit like doing a diary in terms of time but the 2,500 word research piece on a National Renewable Ammonia Architecture took as much time as five to ten thousand words for DailyKos takes – about a week.
I received for Christmas this year a copy of Granta 102: The New Nature Writing. My stuff is as good as some of the offerings found in this quarterly. I've got the material here for a book, but I'm not sure how to proceed. I think I'll try to get into a publication or two like this one first.
Oh, and I'm now out on FaceBook and I've been on LinkedIn for a while. If you're using either of these services I'd like to expand my professional network.
2008 has been a long, tough year for me personally and I think for most of the rest of the nation as well. 2009 promises to be an even harder road, but I've mostly got my health back and we're going to have a grownup in the Oval Office instead of a reckless, petulant adolescent. Today, in spite of everything I see going on in the world, I have a bit of HOPE.
(CODA: I drafted this over Christmas. As I prepare to click publish I must report that today I received the packet of paperwork from the law firm that will be representing the Stranded Wind Initiative and my phone rang around lunch time. The person on the other end of the call is someone well known to some of the other contributors of the Stranded Wind Initiative and is currently employed by a very big name in the energy field – someone you've probably seen on TV. We've got our marching orders now; get an executive description of our projects together, polish the National Renewable Ammonia Architecture, and prepare to perhaps be very, very busy. It's about time ... )