OT-Boston Community Thread

[31to6]

Best piece of C's stuff I have

AWESOME. TERRIFYING.

[kevinpsj]

I am a hairy, overweight, balding and too quickly approaching middle age, exotic male dancer.

Over the summer, I had farmed in Barbados. Sold the land and returned to the States. Fiancee and I are planning on getting married but there is no rush. I am currently looking for 30-40 acres to set up shop. I plan on building an earth-sheltered, solar-heated home with my brothers. Currently splitting time between NYC and New England.

I eat seafood, fish, non-RBst dairy and organic eggs but otherwise avoid industrially farmed goods. I am really into sustainability, renewable energy and living frugally. I make and sell handmade soaps, body wash and shampoos. I also build solar arrays and have been working on a self-designed, low-impact, affordable wind generation project. I also dabble in aquaponics.

I speak passable Mandarin Chinese (mostly self-taught) and spent about a year teaching mathematics in Harbin, Heilongjiang (PRC.)

我喜欢看篮球的波士顿凯尔特人。

I am a crazy celtics fan in china and I am so excited to see chinese here.Amazing!

[Pogue Mahone]

I am a crazy celtics fan in china and I am so excited to see chinese here.Amazing!

你好，Kevin。 你好吗？

是你的家乡在哪里？号我叫亚历山大我来自美国的东北方。我故乡是80公里北方的波士顿我来自新罕布什尔。我的故乡什么著名的龙虾和海鲜。 我喜欢元吃泡菜，锅贴，和米饭。我爱阅读李白的唐诗，我也很喜欢李商隐，杜甫的诗歌，特别是欧阳修。

我道歉，我可怜的语法。普通话是很难的！

床前明月光，疑是地上霜，举头望明月，低头思故乡。

再见。 波士顿凯尔特人加油！

Quick translation:

Greeted him.

Asked where he was from. Told him where I was from. Explained where in relation to Boston (most Chinese don't know New Hampshire aka "xin han bu shi er".) Quick frivolities about favorite dishes. Told him that I enjoy Li Bai's poetry (8th century Tang poet, perhaps the most famous of all Chinese poets.) Added that I liked other famous Chinese poets, in particular the "Old Drunkard" Ouyang Xiu.

Apologized for my poor grammar but Mandarin (Putonghua) is difficult for me.

Wrote my favorite poem in the old style. (It is called "Jing Ye Si", a poem about homesickness. Most Chinese move away from their hometown first to study and later to work. It is just part of their culture.)

Told him goodbye and "Go Celtics!".

[exculpatory]

^^^Pogue,

Tu eres un hombre muy interesante. Estudie el espanol para diez anos cuando yo fue joven en la escuela superior y la universidad. Sin embargo, yo he olvidado muchisimo porque no he practicado con gente que habla espanol. Me gusta aprender el espanol otra vez. No puedo recuerdar muchas palabras y declinaciones de verbios.

Una vez hace quince anos, cuando yo fue "hitting on a chick" en Miami, nosotros fuimos hablando circa de nosotros ninos, y I mistakenly used the verb "impregnar" instead of the correct verb "embarasar". The former apparently is an insult and means "knocked up". LOL.

And our Spanish-speaking posters will probably find numerous errors in what I just typed. LOL.

[kevinpsj]

I am a crazy celtics fan in china and I am so excited to see chinese here.Amazing!

你好，Kevin。 你好吗？

是你的家乡在哪里？号我叫亚历山大我来自美国的东北方。我故乡是80公里北方的波士顿我来自新罕布什尔。我的故乡什么著名的龙虾和海鲜。 我喜欢元吃泡菜，锅贴，和米饭。我爱阅读李白的唐诗，我也很喜欢李商隐，杜甫的诗歌，特别是欧阳修。

我道歉，我可怜的语法。普通话是很难的！

床前明月光，疑是地上霜，举头望明月，低头思故乡。

再见。 波士顿凯尔特人加油！

Quick translation:

Greeted him.

Asked where he was from. Told him where I was from. Explained where in relation to Boston (most Chinese don't know New Hampshire aka "xin han bu shi er".) Quick frivolities about favorite dishes. Told him that I enjoy Li Bai's poetry (8th century Tang poet, perhaps the most famous of all Chinese poets.) Added that I liked other famous Chinese poets, in particular the "Old Drunkard" Ouyang Xiu.

Apologized for my poor grammar but Mandarin (Putonghua) is difficult for me.

Wrote my favorite poem in the old style. (It is called "Jing Ye Si", a poem about homesickness. Most Chinese move away from their hometown first to study and later to work. It is just part of their culture.)

Told him goodbye and "Go Celtics!".

Hi Alexander,

Have you heared of one of LiBai's famous poetry(望庐山瀑布）? The magnificant waterfall he described is in my hometown Mount Lu.It is a famous scenic spot in center china and not only has beautiful landscape but rich culture.Many poets created their masterpiece here.I think maybe you will like it..And now I work in shanghai which you may know.(woo...that's the real example for you mentioned.)

I've never been to USA and I want to boston and see a game in TD garden.now I am planning for this.I am so surprised about what you know about our culture and your chinese.That's so amazing.

Welcome to China.

Go Celtics go!

[Pogue Mahone]

Hi Alexander,

Have you heared of one of LiBai's famous poetry(望庐山瀑布）? The magnificant waterfall he described is in my hometown Mount Lu.It is a famous scenic spot in center china and not only has beautiful landscape but rich culture.Many poets created their masterpiece here.I think maybe you will like it..And now I work in shanghai which you may know.(woo...that's the real example for you mentioned.)

I've never been to USA and I want to boston and see a game in TD garden.now I am planning for this.I am so surprised about what you know about our culture and your chinese.That's so amazing.

Welcome to China.

Go Celtics go!

Lu Shan is a very famous mountain. I didn't get to see it, unfortunately. I did see qinshihuangbingmayong and actually ate huizu qingdu niurou mian (I don't eat meat so it was a big deal to me.)

My fiancee and I traveled to changjiangsanjiaozhou but it was so we could head west from there. We went to Chongqing, Three Rivers area (Giant Buddha at Leshan) and jiuzhaiguo (the water is so blue!) When we were still in Heilongjiang (Haerbin), we also went to DaLian and to see the Manchu capital in Liaoning.

Do you know the English word "pun"? You made a pun when you said "And now I work in shanghai which you may know.(woo..." Are you asking if I know Wu Dialect (aka Shanghaiese)? Are you asking if I am crying? Are you asking if I like number wu (#5, Kevin Garnett)

I didn't like Shanghai very much. I prefer being able to see nature. Plus it was very hot when I was there .. qi da huolu.

If I could travel there again, I would like to go to Kunming, Guilin and perhaps to do some more free teaching like we did in Gansu, Lanzhou. On our two week break, my fiancee and I volunteered at an orphanage there and gave free English-speaking lessons. It was a lot of fun and the kids were wonderful.

I would also like to study and learn about the ancient Shu culture. A hobby of mine is to learn about the ancient cultures of the world. A few years before I went to China, I drew positive correlation between the Grooved Ware civilization of the British Isles and red-headed mummies that were found near Urumqi. Unfortunately, the furthest west I was able to go was to Gansu.

Furthermore, Emperor Qin and his successors, until the Taoist influence, believed in a single god. It is fascinating to me that the ancient Chinese pictograms for the word "devil" and "tempter" tell the story of biblical story of the Garden of Eden. I am not religious but I find the instances of the old stories appearing in many cultures to be fascinating.

[edit]I know the poem by Li Bai. Jing Ye Si is my favorite but I also like "Sitting Alone on Jingting Shan Hill". I also like the goose poem written by the seven year old Luo Binwang and his other bianwen style poems.

[Pogue Mahone]

^^^Pogue,

Tu eres un hombre muy interesante. Estudie el espanol para diez anos cuando yo fue joven en la escuela superior y la universidad. Sin embargo, yo he olvidado muchisimo porque no he practicado con gente que habla espanol. Me gusta aprender el espanol otra vez. No puedo recuerdar muchas palabras y declinaciones de verbios.

Una vez hace quince anos, cuando yo fue "hitting on a chick" en Miami, nosotros fuimos hablando circa de nosotros ninos, y I mistakenly used the verb "impregnar" instead of the correct verb "embarasar". The former apparently is an insult and means "knocked up". LOL.

And our Spanish-speaking posters will probably find numerous errors in what I just typed. LOL.

I think they will find more errors in what I am going to write but I will give it a shot. Apologies in advance.

No hablo espanol pero yo escribo y leo un poco. Tengo muchas problemas con los verbos tenso. Me olvido de las pruebas cuando hablando espanol, tambien.

Cuando yo en la "army", yo tengo "co-workers" donde esta Mexico, Puerto Rico, El Salvador y Belize (pero ello hablas espanol, tambien.) Ellos diceme Alejandro (mi nombre) es "pronounced" para que "Alley Hand Job". Cuando yo hablando espanol y dice "me llamo Alley Hand Job", ellos muy grande chiste. Mi cerebro se cambio del lingue ingles a espanol, pero mi lengua tiene su propio pensamiento.

Yo intento pero yo tengo mal resultado.

Tu "anecdote" es muy chiste.

[Stunnaboy2K11]

Me no like Lakers. Me hate the Lakers. Me post here because they are always on TV and I no get league pass and misery loves company.

We understood.

[exculpatory]

^^^Pogue,

Tu eres un hombre muy interesante. Estudie el espanol para diez anos cuando yo fue joven en la escuela superior y la universidad. Sin embargo, yo he olvidado muchisimo porque no he practicado con gente que habla espanol. Me gusta aprender el espanol otra vez. No puedo recuerdar muchas palabras y declinaciones de verbios.

Una vez hace quince anos, cuando yo fue "hitting on a chick" en Miami, nosotros fuimos hablando circa de nosotros ninos, y I mistakenly used the verb "impregnar" instead of the correct verb "embarasar". The former apparently is an insult and means "knocked up". LOL.

And our Spanish-speaking posters will probably find numerous errors in what I just typed. LOL.

I think they will find more errors in what I am going to write but I will give it a shot. Apologies in advance.

No hablo espanol pero yo escribo y leo un poco. Tengo muchas problemas con los verbos tenso. Me olvido de las pruebas cuando hablando espanol, tambien.

Cuando yo en la "army", yo tengo "co-workers" donde esta Mexico, Puerto Rico, El Salvador y Belize (pero ello hablas espanol, tambien.) Ellos diceme Alejandro (mi nombre) es "pronounced" para que "Alley Hand Job". Cuando yo hablando espanol y dice "me llamo Alley Hand Job", ellos muy grande
chiste. Mi cerebro se cambio del lingue ingles a espanol, pero mi lengua tiene su propio pensamiento.

Yo intento pero yo tengo mal resultado.

Tu "anecdote" es muy chiste.

I understood what you wrote, Alley Hand Job. LOL. I thought your anecdote was funny also. LOL.

[LarryBirdsFingr]

Pouge, I am a certified organic farmer in Maine, the organic farming business demographic is BOOMING up here. Land is cheap, and fertile if you find the right spot. A lot of land owners here are "organic" without even realizing it...so much of the land is ready to certify.

However, you have been SPOILED by farming in tropical weather so I doubt Maine is a destination for you. Were looking at our best season here yet, with record low snowfall I should be above to get in the fields way earlier.

Also, you should look into Holistic Fruit growing. It's a step above just buying certified organic pesticides/fungicides. I brew my own compost tea, and algae tea, and spray that on my trees to boost "effective microbes" and encourage "competitive colonization" on the leaf surface. If those microbes YOU introduce to the leaf surface colonize, there isn't any room for scab, blight, mildew, to colonize on the leaf surface. It's very new concept, but at least for your own family, plant some fruit and grow it this way. Get michael Phillips' The Apple Grower' book. Will vastly advance your Outlook of holistic or "beyond organic" farming as a whole, not just for fruit trees.

I harvest algae that comes from the underside of lettuce when washed. Leave out a big barrel of water in the sun that you washed your lettuce in, I guarantee you'll grow a substantial amount of algae to use in your garden. Get a compost tea brewer. Google it.

[Pogue Mahone]

Pouge, I am a certified organic farmer in Maine, the organic farming business demographic is BOOMING up here. Land is cheap, and fertile if you find the right spot. A lot of land owners here are "organic" without even realizing it...so much of the land is ready to certify.

However, you have been SPOILED by farming in tropical weather so I doubt Maine is a destination for you. Were looking at our best season here yet, with record low snowfall I should be above to get in the fields way earlier.

Also, you should look into Holistic Fruit growing. It's a step above just buying certified organic pesticides/fungicides. I brew my own compost tea, and algae tea, and spray that on my trees to boost "effective microbes" and encourage "competitive colonization" on the leaf surface. If those microbes YOU introduce to the leaf surface colonize, there isn't any room for scab, blight, mildew, to colonize on the leaf surface. It's very new concept, but at least for your own family, plant some fruit and grow it this way. Get michael Phillips' The Apple Grower' book. Will vastly advance your Outlook of holistic or "beyond organic" farming as a whole, not just for fruit trees.

I harvest algae that comes from the underside of lettuce when washed. Leave out a big barrel of water in the sun that you washed your lettuce in, I guarantee you'll grow a substantial amount of algae to use in your garden. Get a compost tea brewer. Google it.

Great stuff!

One thing I did in Barbados was to introduce baby ducks into my rice paddy. It was only after I had bloomed duckweed. The symbiotic relationship unfolded in a such a way that baby ducks fed off of the duckweed (16% protein by volume, on average) and baby snails that had moved into my paddy (African snails are everywhere in Bim.) The ducks webbed feet where perfect for tamping down the muck at the base of the rice shoots. The duckweed fed the ducks and was excellent as a weed suppression. The ducks and duckweed removed the natural predators, the quacking kept the crows, seagulls away and the stupid jankrows away from my property.

All in all, I was quite happy with the experiment.

Link to slideshow of some pics in Barbados

You can see pics of the African snails, the Barbados black belly sheep, the remnant of the rice paddy after the fact, the old lady grabbing some "cherries" and limes, etc.

I had looked at some land in Northern Maine, actually. I had found 30 acres with 275' of water frontage on a 38 acre lake (max depth 45'.) I am still considering it, actually.

There are a couple issues with being so remote, though, and I haven't decided exactly how I am going to tackle those.

1. I craft handmade soaps, body wash, etc. One particular body wash I make (one of my best sellers) uses African black soap (made from the skins of plantains and doesn't use chemical lye like that used in most other saponification processes) as the base. I can buy 25 lbs of black soap in NYC for about $100 through one of my contacts. Conversely, ordering a 5-lb block online would run me anywhere from $35-60 with the better quality stuff at the high end and the lower quality stuff that I wouldn't even use to wash my dog at the lower end. That just isn't profitable for me once I factor in shipping and handling because most of my orders come online and I, in turn, already have to charge for shipping. I don't want to lose any of my client base because I wouldn't be able to offer a safe, cheap, alternative to mass-produced, chemically imbalanced soap.

2. I would like to sell farm fresh produce from my excess. I would also eventually like to raise Angora goats and Angora rabbits for their wool (Mohair and Angora, respectively.) In such a sparsely populated area, I would be hard-pressed to develop a market, I think. I suppose if I focus on self-sustainability first and foremost, the rest would work itself out.

Anyway, thanks for sharing your insight. It is greatly appreciated!

[LarryBirdsFingr]

Angora market is big here. We should definitly talk more. For example, I'm only 15 minutes from a major city, which is good for sales avenues and for the "remoteness" factor. Has all modern stores etc. But I'm still remote enough and in the "real farm country" of the kennebeck valley.

Something to think about: buy your raw soap materials in bulk, and make trips to nyc....and keep your Maine farming business a seasonal enterprise. Spend your summers in new England, and slang soap all year long. There's a huge market for those soaps here. Not as professional sounding as you either...you could probably do much better than them. You could literally direct market soap to the dozens and dozens of small natural food/product stores, and fairs/farmers markets.
The common ground fair in unity,me is held the last weekend in September every year. There is over 60,000 people go through there in one weekend. All of the fairgoers are our Target demographic. I've seen people sell out of a whole pickup truck of "maine made" soap.

Edit: duckweed is considered one of the worst invasive weeds here in Maine for us organic folk. It's funny how every plant has a purpose, and can be a perfect "companion plant" with another crop. The symbiotic relationship between beneficial plants and crops is SUPER important for organic orchards. I'll have over 40 different companions among my orchard/farm. We use "trap trees" to guide the pests to the un-treated trees of our choice. Chestnut crab apples are a perfect trap tree. Spray your whole orchard, and leave the crab Apple alone and burn/ feed the infected fruits to the chicken mob. Your Angora goats would be a perfect way of destroying bug infested fruit. It won't hurt them, I press cider from bug damaged apples and drink it unpasturized. Best natural medicine you can get is RAW Apple cider.

[Geoffrey P]

lol making me look like a newb. I grow peas, green beans, tomatoes and cucumbers for the most part. I've tried a few others like broccoli, corn, squash, carrots and watermelon but those take far too long to grow from a single seed. Usually it ends up snowing before they're done and we don't have a greenhouse or anything. Just got a little 10x20 box type thing

[LarryBirdsFingr]

lol making me look like a newb. I grow peas, green beans, tomatoes and cucumbers for the most part. I've tried a few others like broccoli, corn, squash, carrots and watermelon but those take far too long to grow from a single seed. Usually it ends up snowing before they're done and we don't have a greenhouse or anything. Just got a little 10x20 box type thing

I've had a 35 pound watermelon here at 45' latitude. Just start your seeds in your GH in a few weeks bro, you'll be fine. Trust me you can grow melons. My seedlings only had two leaf sets when I planted them in may.

[Geoffrey P]

Somehow only one of them grew. It was the size of my fist but somehow my dad ended up cutting the vine or whatever when he was mowing grass. RIP mini melon.

[greenmaker]

Hello everybody!
I follow your board from sometime... as a big C's fun living currently in Dresden, Germany. I turned 30 last year and I quite hate it. I'm an IT guy specialized in database technologies, love long bike trips and jogging through some wild places... countryside, forest or whatever .
I really enjoy your chats, thou sometimes I'm totally fed up with talks about trading a whole team :/. As a matter of fact I love to watch this guys (I mean especially Rondo, Ray, PP, KG) playin even if they lose games one after another and would hate to see any of them on another team's roster. Besides I still have faith in them and I'm sure they will shock some contenders in playoffs... with a little Danny's help . Oh, one more thing... I envy all of you who can watch games live in TD Garden...hope I'll join you some day... I'd love to breathe that air of Pride

[exculpatory]

^^^I am glad you share our fanatic sense of green pride!

[greenmaker]

^^^I am glad you share our fanatic sense of green pride!

Oh yes, I'm green & swagger... and happy I'm not the only one

[StojkoVrankovic]

This is slightly OT, but I guess that is what this thread is for.

I am not a Springsteen fan in the least, just not my cup of tea. However, this week on Jimmy Fallon has been Bruce Springsteen week. Every night a different group has done a cover of a Bruce song.

Monday-was actually Springsteen, Tuesday-Kenny Chesney, Wed-John Legend, Thursday-Elvis costello & the greatest band in the Late Night..The Roots, Tonight-Bruce is the Guest and Musical act.

Figure some folks might appreciate it
http://www.latenightwithjimmyfallon.com/blogs/music/

[bendyone]

This is slightly OT, but I guess that is what this thread is for.

I am not a Springsteen fan in the least, just not my cup of tea. However, this week on Jimmy Fallon has been Bruce Springsteen week. Every night a different group has done a cover of a Bruce song.

Monday-was actually Springsteen, Tuesday-Kenny Chesney, Wed-John Legend, Thursday-Elvis costello & the greatest band in the Late Night..The Roots, Tonight-Bruce is the Guest and Musical act.

Figure some folks might appreciate it
http://www.latenightwithjimmyfallon.com/blogs/music/

Early Springsteen gets my juices flowing...... nothing suss though