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martinpodt

Waterfalls along the Way

© riverwindphotography, May 2022

Art by Hayapi

Damnit Damnit

I just got given probably some of the sweetest birthday presents I've ever got, but I can't love them. No one in my family knows I'm Non-binary, and it hurt.

It hurt so much, knowing they don't know. Knowing I might never work up the strength to tell them. Knowing the day I do tell them is the day I finally snap under the pressure of everything.

It took so much energy to even smile when I saw the gifts, they're beautiful and it would've cost so much... it makes me want to cry, how much it hurts.

hello all i am back on my child ballad bullshit

and a playlist with all the available results here:

Kvkgjfhddu uhhhhh. I feel guilty now :(

I stayed home today bc I did a covid test yesterday (negative) and my friend had to go to the office by himself and now I feel really bad because he doesn't like going by himself and now I feel really bad. He texted me like he was actually mad/upset but I can't tell

The Ancient Library by Hilary Purnamasari

A quick introduction to mead making:

Terminology:

Metheglin = Herbed mead

Melomel = mead made with fruit

Carboy = glass container for brewing

Must = yeast sediment that accumulates during brewing

Sodium Metabisulphite = sanitizing powder

green mead = fresh non-aged mead (it’s not literally green)

Rack/Racking = the process of storing and aging finished meads

Equipment/ingredients:

Carboy

Airlock

funnel 

sanitizing agent such as sodium metabisulphite 

(depending on recipe and method) wine/champagne yeast

honey 

non-chlorinated fluoride free water such as spring water or distilled

lemon

fruit/herbs if desired

(optional but recommended) auto-syphon and hose

My basic recipe (for about a gallon):

about 3lbs honey* 

1 gallon spring or distilled water

the juice from half a fresh lemon

about ½ to 2/3 of a 5gram package of blanc wine yeast

*Selecting honey: The kind of honey you use depends on the kind of mead you want, if you use fresh raw honey (i.e. straight from the hive) it will have natural wild yeast in it that can be used in place of added wine yeast. 

Pros of using wild yeast: its free and you could strike gold on flavor.

Cons of using wild yeast: unpredictable flavor, can take longer or even need help to start fermenting process. 

For first time brewers it’s probably a good idea to play it safe and stick with wine yeast, at least until you get the process down and a feel for how things work. You can still use raw honey if you want, just make sure you heat it thoroughly to kill the wild yeast. 

There are other things to keep in mind when choosing honey, the different flowers the bees might collect from effect honey flavor, time of year can also have an effect especially if you’re buying local honey, but there’s no hard or fast rules for choosing honey just go with a flavor you like or even just whatever’s cheap.

Method:

1) sanitize all your equipment especially the carboy

2) If using wine yeast: add all the honey to a large pot and dilute with a bit of your spring/distilled water and heat on low until the honey dissolves and is liquid DO NOT BOIL. (If using wild yeast) mix honey and water but do not heat.

3) pour your honey mixture into the carboy and add the rest of the water making sure to leave at least 6 to 8ins of head space to avoid overflow (the yeast will bubble up a lot in the first week or so of fermenting)

4) add in the yeast and lemon juice and gentle shake the whole thing for about 2 minutes 

5) put the cork and airlock in place, label it with the date, and leave it be, usually bubbling starts within 24hrs but may take longer depending on temperature and yeast.

the length of time needed for fermentation varies by batch, things like temperature, altitude, and sugar content factor into the amount of time needed. It’s important to pay attention to your mead, it will bubble profusely through the airlock early on in fermentation do to the yeast gobbling up sugar and producing gas, this will slow down as the process continues until it stops. Once the fermentation/bubbling stops and the mead looks fairly clear -usually after about a month and a week or so- its ready to be separated from the must.

6) Using an auto-syphon / a small hose and gravity (you can also just pour it very carefully if you have too) separate the clear mead from the must into a clean vessel like a sanitized pot. Note: once again make sure all your equipment/bottles are sanitized  

7) Now you have choices, you should have about a gallon of green mead on your hands it’s technically done and can be enjoyed right away, or you can bottle and rack it for a 1 - 4 months more to achieve a superior tasting aged mead, it’s up to you.

If you are storing your mead in latch-top bottles its best to only fill them up to about where the neck of the bottle meets the wide part, leaving a few inches of headspace in the neck.

Tips/notes:

whether or not you decide to use wine yeast or wild yeast use local farm fresh honey for the best flavor (it also supports your local farmers)

if you decide to rack and age your mead make damn well sure its completely done fermenting, if its not it may continue in the bottle and built up pressure until the bottle explodes.

mead is best drank within about a year of making it but can last up to at least 2 years

if you are planning on making batches one after another make sure to label your bottles so you don’t mix up old and new mead or different flavors

experiment with different types of honey and water to honey ratios to achieve different flavors/alcohol levels

I intentionally left out adding any kinds of fruits or herbs because this is just a basic recipe and depending on what you use there can be different processes, it’s best to do your own research.

There so many different methods and recipes for mead making, if anyone wants to add impute or recipes please do!

@pinetreesandhoneybees @cat-a-holic

Please make a post about the story of the RMS Carpathia, because it's something that's almost beyond belief and more people should know about it.

Carpathia received Titanic’s distress signal at 12:20am, April 15th, 1912. She was 58 miles away, a distance that absolutely could not be covered in less than four hours.

(Californian’s exact position at the time is…controversial. She was close enough to have helped. By all accounts she was close enough to see Titanic’s distress rockets. It’s uncertain to this day why her crew did not respond, or how many might not have been lost if she had been there. This is not the place for what-ifs. This is about what was done.)

Carpathia’s Captain Rostron had, yes, rolled out of bed instantly when woken by his radio operator, ordered his ship to Titanic’s aid and confirmed the signal before he was fully dressed. The man had never in his life responded to an emergency call. His goal tonight was to make sure nobody who heard that fact would ever believe it.

All of Carpathia’s lifeboats were swung out ready for deployment. Oil was set up to be poured off the side of the ship in case the sea turned choppy; oil would coat and calm the water near Carpathia if that happened, making it safer for lifeboats to draw up alongside her. He ordered lights to be rigged along the side of the ship so survivors could see it better, and had nets and ladders rigged along her sides ready to be dropped when they arrived, in order to let as many survivors as possible climb aboard at once.

I don’t know if his making provisions for there still being survivors in the water was optimism or not. I think he knew they were never going to get there in time for that. I think he did it anyway because, god, you have to hope.

Carpathia had three dining rooms, which were immediately converted into triage and first aid stations. Each had a doctor assigned to it. Hot soup, coffee, and tea were prepared in bulk in each dining room, and blankets and warm clothes were collected to be ready to hand out. By this time, many of the passengers were awake–prepping a ship for disaster relief isn’t quiet–and all of them stepped up to help, many donating their own clothes and blankets.

And then he did something I tend to refer to as diverting all power from life support.

Here’s the thing about steamships: They run on steam. Shocking, I know; but that steam powers everything on the ship, and right now, Carpathia needed power. So Rostron turned off hot water and central heating, which bled valuable steam power, to everywhere but the dining rooms–which, of course, were being used to make hot drinks and receive survivors. He woke up all the engineers, all the stokers and firemen, diverted all that steam back into the engines, and asked his ship to go as fast as she possibly could. And when she’d done that, he asked her to go faster.

I need you to understand that you simply can’t push a ship very far past its top speed. Pushing that much sheer tonnage through the water becomes harder with each extra knot past the speed it was designed for. Pushing a ship past its rated speed is not only reckless–it’s difficult to maneuver–but it puts an incredible amount of strain on the engines. Ships are not designed to exceed their top speed by even one knot. They can’t do it. It can’t be done.

Carpathia’s absolute do-or-die, the-engines-can’t-take-this-forever top speed was fourteen knots. Dodging icebergs, in the dark and the cold, surrounded by mist, she sustained a speed of almost seventeen and a half.

No one would have asked this of them. It wasn’t expected. They were almost sixty miles away, with icebergs in their path. They had a respondibility to respond; they did not have a responsibility to do the impossible and do it well. No one would have faulted them for taking more time to confirm the severity of the issue. No one would have blamed them for a slow and cautious approach. No one but themselves.

They damn near broke the laws of physics, galloping north headlong into the dark in the desperate hope that if they could shave an hour, half an hour, five minutes off their arrival time, maybe for one more person those five minutes would make the difference. I say: three people had died by the time they were lifted from the lifeboats. For all we know, in another hour it might have been more. I say they made all the difference in the world.

This ship and her crew received a message from a location they could not hope to reach in under four hours. Just barely over three hours later, they arrived at Titanic’s last known coordinates. Half an hour after that, at 4am, they would finally find the first of the lifeboats. it would take until 8:30 in the morning for the last survivor to be brought onboard. Passengers from Carpathia universally gave up their berths, staterooms, and clothing to the survivors, assisting the crew at every turn and sitting with the sobbing rescuees to offer whatever comfort they could.

In total, 705 people of Titanic’s original 2208 were brought onto Carpathia alive. No other ship would find survivors.

At 12:20am April 15th, 1912, there was a miracle on the North Atlantic. And it happened because a group of humans, some of them strangers, many of them only passengers on a small and unimpressive steam liner, looked at each other and decided: I cannot live with myself if I do anything less.

I think the least we can do is remember them for it.