Data Centers

The Utah Data Center, operated by the United States National Security Agency (NSA), is dedicated to data storage and cybersecurity for national intelligence. As a result, this government facility is one of the most secure data centers in the world, built with a focus on storing vast amounts of information securely. It’s designed to manage and process large datasets, supporting national security initiatives. The project requires up to 9 gigawatts of electricity, which is more than double the entire state’s current annual usage. Instead of using renewable energy or standard grid power, the center plans to burn natural gas directly from the Ruby Pipeline. Scientists and environmental groups warn this could increase Utah’s carbon emissions by 55% to 75%. *Image http://www.businessinsider.com*

Chapter 5, Artificial Intelligence: A Pandora’s Box

Short of the end of human life as we know it, and in addition to the problems including loss of purchasing power and job satisfaction with the advancement of AI, there are the so-called “data centers” as the rush toward an AI world accelerates. Considered critical infrastructure for the computer age, data centers serve as the backbone of the modern digital economy by storing, processing, and managing massive amounts of data. They enable daily digital activities, including internet usage, cloud computing, streaming services, and AI technologies. These facilities ensure business continuity, security, and high-speed connectivity while driving significant regional economic growth and tax revenue.

China has roughly 350 to 450 commercial data centers, ranking as the fourth largest in the world behind the United States (4,000 to 4,300), Germany (514 to 529), and the United Kingdom (515 and 560). But is it AI alone driving an exponential surge in U.S. data center construction, with projections indicating an estimated $5.2 trillion in global investment by 2030 to meet AI compute demand?

No. In fact, the first “data centers” were built in the 1940s-1950s, the dedicated rooms housing bulky, vacuum-tube computers like ENIAC. In the 1960s-1970s, the mainframe era saw companies developing dedicated, climate-controlled environments (machine rooms) to manage massive computing systems. In the 1980s, the rise of desktop computers led to increased demand for centralized data storage, with early, efficient computer room air conditioners being developed. Then in the 1990s, the internet boom drove a surge in data center construction, leading to modern colocation and, eventually, cloud-based facilities.

This new surge of data center building in the U.S. follows the exploding power and compute requirements of generative AI, cloud computing, and modern digital infrastructure. These facilities act as the foundational factories of the digital economy, processing everything from banking and medical records to advanced AI models and defense systems. Several primary factors drive this extensive build-out including the Artificial Intelligence Boom. Training and operating Large Language Models (LLMs) requires immense parallel processing power and specialized hardware. To meet this demand, tech giants are constructing hyperscale clusters that use millions of high-power GPUs. Also, virtually every aspect of modern life—including GPS logistics, online streaming, video conferencing, and smartphone backups—relies on centralized servers distributed across the country to keep latency low.

National security and geopolitics serve as additional justification for the U.S. data center boom. Federal and defense agencies need highly secure, localized facilities to process real-time intelligence, protect classified information, and maintain a competitive edge in emerging tech. And, as critics point out, these centers are key to mass surveillance programs.

What data centers existed in past decades was all a drop in the bucket compared to now when AI-related data center demand is expected to add 125 gigawatts of capacity between 2025 and 2030, with U.S. data centers consuming up to 12% of national electricity by 2028. These huge centers present significant local drawbacks, including massive electricity and water consumption that can drive up utility bills for residents. They require immense water for cooling and power, impacting local resources and potentially depleting water tables. They drain the local power grid, often forcing utilities to raise rates for residents and increasing reliance on fossil fuels.

Residents often complain about a constant ”hum” from cooling equipment and industrial lighting, which can affect quality of life. Backup generators, often running for maintenance or emergencies, can emit harmful pollutants including nitrogen oxides and fine particulate matter, increasing rates of respiratory diseases, cardiovascular conditions, and elevating cancer risk in nearby communities, according to environmental health studies. And in addition to noise and pollution, the sheer size of the buildings (often equaling multiple football fields) can alter rural or residential landscapes.

Data centers primarily consume water through evaporation in cooling towers and compromise local water quality through chemical-heavy wastewater discharge (blowdown), often consuming 1–5 million gallons of potable water daily. High-density AI servers exacerbate this, with one AI chat session of 20 queries using roughly one 16-ounce bottle of water.

Water consumption vs. water withdrawal: It’s crucial to distinguish these terms. When a data center withdraws water, that’s the amount taken from the source (e.g. pumping from the city water line). “Consumption” means water that’s actually used up (not returned) – primarily through evaporation. The difference (withdrawal minus consumption) is the water returned, usually as wastewater (warm water or “blowdown” drained from cooling systems). In a data center cooling context, most of the water that is withdrawn ends up consumed.

Typically, 70–80% of the water in evaporative cooling is lost as evaporation into the air. The remaining 20–30% is discharged as liquid wastewater (which goes to a sewer or treatment plant). For example, if a site draws 1000 gallons, roughly 700–800 gallons might evaporate through the cooling towers (this portion is gone from the local water system until it falls again as rain), while 200–300 gallons exit as effluent that can potentially be treated and reused downstream. This means not every gallon taken is a gallon gone – but a large fraction is effectively consumed.

Data centers pose human health risks primarily to nearby communities and employees through air pollution, noise, and chemical exposure. Key issues include respiratory and cardiovascular diseases from diesel generator exhaust, high stress levels due to constant noise (up to 96 decibels), and potential exposure to toxic PFAS chemicals used in cooling. Ninety-six decibels is very loud and can cause hearing damage within 30 minutes to an hour of exposure. Examples at that sound level include power mowers, weed whackers, motorcycles, industrial alarms, and some construction equipment.

You have to wonder what will happen as climate change advances leading to increased cooling costs, reduced energy efficiency, and risks of physical damage from extreme weather. Rising temperatures and increased drought frequency create a vicious cycle, straining water-based cooling systems, forcing higher electricity consumption and increasing the risk of service disruptions or shutdowns.

Gee, imagine what could happen when the entire power grid, government systems including our military, financial transactions, healthcare administration, and transportation logistics are all dependent on AI controls, and global warming shuts it all down. Who could have seen that coming?

Without AI, the demand for data centers would still exist to support traditional internet, cloud services, and digitalization, but without the “voracious” electricity demand driven by AI, which could power 28 million homes.

Of the over 4,000 data centers in the continental United States, Virginia takes the lead with 600 of them, followed by Texas with 440. Vermont has the least, with three.[1] Data centers in Arkansas are concentrated around Little Rock, Conway, and West Memphis, with major developments expanding in early 2026. Key facilities include a $6 billion AVAIO Digital hub near Little Rock, a Google project in West Memphis, and TierPoint in Little Rock. As of June 3, 2026, Bloomberg NEF says Americans are building 831 new data centers.

Arkansas passed laws preventing local governments from banning data centers (via Act 851 of 2023) in order to attract multibillion-dollar technology and AI infrastructure investments. Lawmakers aimed to prevent cities and counties from using restrictive zoning or moratoriums to block large-scale projects, establishing a business-friendly environment supported by state tax exemptions. Local opposition to this law is growing.

In sum, the immediate rush involves lots of construction projects and huge amounts of money spent to build them, and as data centers prepare to go live, they quickly fill up with AI chips, server racks, motherboards, graphics processing units, cooling systems, CPUs, and the like. The world’s largest centers for production of these parts are the three Science Park complexes Taiwan launched in the 1970s—Hsinchu, Southern Taiwan, Central Taiwan—which now serve as home bases for semiconductor and IT hardware manufacturers of the TSMC, UMC, MediaTek, Foxconn, etc. type. For the past two years, they have been sending a torrent of this stuff from Taiwan – a recent Air Cargo News report suggests likely 1,500 tons of semiconductors and AI server racks arrive by plane daily, along with ships loaded with power distribution units, heavy cooling systems, and fiber-optics—to the new data centers Bloomberg describes. No wonder China has renewed its insistence of returning Taiwan to Chinese control.

The good news, for now, is that public reaction to data center construction has shifted dramatically from welcoming to deeply skeptical. Nearly 70% of Americans now oppose having AI data centers built in their communities, with environmental and resource concerns driving widespread resistance. Nearly half of planned 2026 data centers have reportedly been delayed or canceled amid growing outrage over energy use, water demand, and local impact.

But don’t get too excited about the perceived tech response to local protest. They’re not really paying much attention to mere people. The primary blockage is a severe shortage of critical electrical equipment—such as step-up transformers, batteries, and switchgear—now grinding construction to a halt. Because U.S. manufacturing is struggling to keep pace, builders have been forced to rely heavily on foreign imports, introducing massive supply chain risks.

Also, traditional power grids are buckling under AI’s massive energy demands. Out of roughly 140 planned projects targeting 16 gigawatts of new capacity, only about 5 gigawatts have actually started physical construction.

[1] A map of these centers is found at https://www.datacentermap. com/usa/.

From Artificial Intelligence: A Pandora’s Box

Fire

Over a period of weeks, sometimes months, my dad would collect bits of debris to burn in the big garden beside their house in town. At the edge of the dormant garden, he would back up to his growing stack of brush, the bed of his rusted blue Ford Ranger piled high with dead limbs and old fence posts and oddly shaped pieces of wood that he might find alongside the road. The truck unloading was ceremonial, it seemed to me one day when I watched him, a kind of ritualistic process where he lifted each piece from the truck, carried it slowly in his now-halting pace across the soft, plowed dirt, and strategically placed it on the rising, unruly mound. Even the very last, tiny pieces merited his attention, scraped from the truck bed with his worn-out broom and thrown in fistfuls onto the top of the pile.

Sometimes I watched my father with his fires. Early into the process, he studied the future shape of it, how high it would blaze, whether the base would attract a good draft, whether unwanted combustibles had been suitably removed from the perimeter. He stacked his fuel accordingly, bits of wood and old lumber and limbs broken in winter storms, piled akimbo with large against small, thick against thin in a perfect formula for flame.

He would light it in the morning, when his footsteps tracked rich green across the silvery coat of dew on the lawn. His time at the donut shop for six a.m. coffee with the old liars, as he called them, would be cut short for the fire.

Usually he stood to the side of the shimmering heat, shovel in hand. After one of the last fires, my mother complained that he stood so close that the skin on his forehead turned red and later peeled. Standing in the dining room with them, I looked at my dad as she pointed out the damaged skin. He raised his eyebrows and smiled, offering no excuse except to agreeably remark that it had been hot.

I know his mind traveled to his past while he watched the fire. The flames would dance and reflect in his eyes while he talked about fields they had burned when he was growing up, his dad, his brothers, and how the mules had to plow a line around the field to keep the fire from jumping the fence. He remembered his mother and how she burned off her garden in the winter, leaving the ground filmed in ash for the early planting of onion, cabbage, and potato. He talked about the cold of the night, when the feather bed kept him warm until his father got up to build a fire the stove and his mother would mix biscuits.

A friend once remarked on the task of clearing out the old family house after his grandmother died, particularly the basement. It seems during her waning years, she had stockpiled kindling carefully gleaned from her wooded yard. Grocery sacks and cardboard boxes, each one stuffed with dried twigs and broken limbs, filled the space like so many sockets in a wasp’s nest. She had prepared a hive of future warmth. He said it took seven pickup truck loads to remove her cache of carefully prepared comfort.

At first, I discounted my friend’s grandmother’s collection of kindling as some kind of mental or emotional disorder. But today, as I picked up fallen oak twigs in my own yard, the wind tearing through the woods glowing orange with autumn, I thought about this wealth of fuel and one of the more opportune swaps in my life—my old refrigerator for a wood cookstove.

Neighbors had inherited the stove when they bought the old house down the road from me. A “Royal” brand, its heavy cast iron top features six burner plates and a water warming bin on the right. There’s a small firebox and ash bin on the left and an oven in the middle. The sides and front are white enamel, and a glass-covered chromed dial on the oven door features a double-ended needle which simultaneously points to a number and a description of the temperature: slow, warm, medium, hot, and very hot, the intervals also marked at the other end of the needle at 100, 200, up to 600.

I pick up more dead wood and stack it by the door, worrying that my bundles of twigs will be similarly disparaged someday, a burden requiring disposal by patient descendants. But I must plan for future winters when ice coats the electric lines and snow piles up on the roads and I end up with several days of splendid isolation, maybe without running water or the benefit of electricity. Then the old cookstove will spring to life, its grate glowing in a steady bed of coals, lids jiggling as food simmers on its top, the rocked chimney a beacon of warmth into the gray sky outside my window where wind will whip streams of smoke into the icy mist. In a bad winter, a person might need a basement full of kindling.

But I suspect it is not completely the need for fire that pushed my friend’s grandmother or my father in their almost religious attendance to the needs of fire. As much as they might have needed the bodily comfort the fire would assure, they had a greater, more present need—the need to accomplish. In my father’s later years, he could not show much to account for the hours of his days. But he could still build a superior fire.

When he was eighty-five and suffering mini-strokes that, he said, was like hearing distant music, we had taken away his truck keys and he couldn’t go for donuts with the old liars or gather wood for a fire. I found him one day by an old wood pile at the side of his house. He had the sledge hammer in one hand, gripped up close to the head, and a foot-diameter length of oak sitting upright on a nearby stump. He had driven a splitting wedge into the center of the oak, sweat pouring off his forehead, his slight frame bent to the task.

In response to my concerned questioning, he replied: “The ole dad is still worth something.”

I turned away so he couldn’t see my tears.

~~~

Back when his neighbor Cotton was still alive, my dad would call out to him on the morning of a fire.

“Come on over,” he’d wave his arm.

And Cotton would bring over a few limbs he’d been saving or anything wooden he wanted to get rid of, set up his lawn chair next to Dad’s, and they’d tend the fire together. Dad would stick his cigarette lighter down to the bits of paper and cardboard he had crumpled at the base of the heap, and then light a fresh Winston and draw on the cigarette strong and deep while the blaze flared into the brush and started working its way up the near side of the pile.

The fire merited their full attention. Orange-red flames would tear through the heap of wood, picking up speed. They listened to the snapping and popping of it, smelled the scent of wood smoke. Dad would take another drag off the Winston and then launch into one or another of his stories.

In one of his tales, he recalled high school at Morrow. Among his buddies there, he joined with three friends in a quartet that performed on the Fayetteville radio station. They were late one day, racing down the road in a Model T. As they approached the railroad crossing between Cane Hill and Prairie Grove, the freight train whistle sounded loud and long. In those days, the trains were endless. The quarter didn’t have time to wait. So the driver floored that old car, and they barreled through the turn on two left wheels and a cloud of dust seconds before the steam engines roared across the road, whistles blaring and the engineer shaking his fist at them.

He’d have to stop and laugh about that, full of renewed vigor.

On occasion, my dad would muse over his adventures teaching singing school. The shaped note method simplified the more arcane aspects of reading music, and folks would flock to these gatherings, although the popularity had as much to do with socializing as it did with music. He liked to reminisce about the time he forded the White River at Goshen to teach singing school there. Mid-river, he fell off the mule and wore wet clothes the rest of the day.

His father’s job with the railroad gave way to the Depression, and after trying to make his way with blacksmithing, in 1933 the family moved to West Memphis. Dad was in his last year of high school, so he stayed at Morrow in an arrangement with the folks who owned the general store. He would live at the store and keep the fire going in the wood stove overnight so the canned goods didn’t freeze. After a few months, he got word his mother was sick, and he had to hitchhike to West Memphis. He had nothing but an apple in his pocket.

When he told his stories, Dad didn’t have to look at Cotton to know he was paying attention. Cotton came from the same times.

The flames would leap high in the air, twice as high as the shimmering cone of wood, twisting into the air like a curling orange hand with only a faint grey vapor of smoke rushing from the top of it. Periodically Dad or Cotton would walk around to the side or back of the pile and pick up ends of logs or still-burning sticks that had fallen out of the path of the flame and throw them back onto the fire. Each thrown piece caused a great cavalcade of sparks to explode into the air, a celebration of new fuel, of longer life to the fire.

Cotton would stay with my dad while the fire burned down, sometimes for the rest of the afternoon, poking at it, throwing on newly discovered fallen twigs or dead weeds to keep it alive. By that time, there was little talking. Dad would use the shovel to drag the last few little unburned pieces over to the center of the ash circle where the coals ate them up in quick yellow blazes.

Finally Cotton’s wife would call him home to dinner. Mom could have called Dad too, but he wouldn’t have come. He would lean on the shovel, watching the red embers swell and throb in the slight breeze of dusk, until the last bit of fire had died.

My friend’s grandmother probably labored slowly, moving from place to place in her yard to collect the fallen twigs, carrying the brown paper grocery bag in her stiffened hand. Breezes would have lifted the tendrils of white hair that had escaped her tidy braid, and she would have stopped on occasion to stare off in memory of past times, when young she might have run laughing through green spring fields chased by a lover, perhaps examined in close intensity the phosphorescent emerald glow of new moss at the base of a big tree. Each time she bent to a fallen twig, a fresh scene spilled into her mind and she was transported to a better time. Later, she may have sat on her porch to review the tidied yard and the merits of her life.

That hasn’t happened to me yet but I expect it. For now, gathering fallen twigs is a practical exercise when I have come outside to put scraps in the compost or rake a few more leaves. But gathering twigs and preparing for fire leads me to examine the purpose of my existence. In the long tradition of humans and fire, I seek proper reverence for the knowledge I carry forward, the experience of my father, of all the grandmothers, who depended on fire for survival. We are removed from that now. My children in their comfortable homes have no need to build fire.

Yet there is ceremony in every fire. When I begin to clear a brush pile or dispose of too many fallen leaves, I think of composition, how the tiny start of flame will need room and air to burn upward, where larger limbs should be placed to catch early and burn long. After all the fires of my life, each new one is still an experiment testing whether I can prove my worth.

The flames of my success warm me and encourage me. My success is the fire. Its flames live on my arrangement of wood and air, orange and red, leaping and cracking. Embers fall to the ground and glow in the gathering bed of hot ash. My thoughts and life rush outwards in a vision of times more than my own, more than my father’s.

The ancient tribe has gathered and their shadows circle my fire.

From I Met a Goat on the Road

Woodstoves!

Bought a new wood stove lately? Who knew my longtime desire to buy one would bring me to the brink of despair. Let me tell you, my friend. This is not a step you should take without proper warning.

The old stove, fortunately still in my possession in case I give up this fight, was a Big Box model I inherited when my new husband and I moved into an old cabin. That was in 1974. Local lore claimed an old man named “Ringo” died in that cabin, tired of life, sick, and unable to gather wood. Reportedly, he froze to death.

Fire in the Big Box was simple. Two logs with space enough between them for some crumpled newspaper, a handful of twigs and other flammable bits gathered from the surrounding woods, and then another log across the top, positioned so that when the kindling burned up, the third member would not collapse into the middle but rather perch over the coals to burn freely. Air intake open and the damper open, a match set it off. It was safe to walk away to return a half hour later to shut the air intake and let that baby burn. Whenever fresh wood was needed, simply open the damper to let the smoke escape up the chimney, open the stove door to add wood as needed, and there you go! No smoke pouring into the room.

The problem with the Big Box was that by midnight, fast asleep, one started to sense the cold creeping in. Even the most magnificent fat cut of oak or hickory burned up in only 3-4 hours. That’s because any seal that might once have lined the top edges and front door was long gone and so even with all moveable parts closed, air still moved through the stove. Such things as seals or firebrick probably never existed as part of the stove—at least, in my fifty years with it, no such trace remains. So as my knees got worse with advancing age, trekking up and down the five steps to the living room where the Big Box held pride of place became a more troublesome issue especially at two a.m. when I slept past the life of the fire and only a few coals remained.

I lusted after those fabled wood stoves like Jøtul which held fire overnight. Not only would that solve my overnight heat problem, but it also offered a glass door so I would watch the flames leap and glow. Watching fire can lead to trance-like relaxation effects. These effects have been backed by research that shows that watching an open flame can decrease blood pressure. The longer you sit by the fire, the more relaxed you’ll feel. So when I finally had sufficient funds, I visited the local wood stove store and considered my options.

Admittedly, I failed utterly in the research-before-you-buy department. I’m here to share what I’ve learned.

News flash: Woodstoves now must meet new EPA standards, passed sometime in the 1990s, that specify several aspects of the device. Not only did this drive up the prices to absurd levels, but also led to the admonition by my two-man installation team who warned me that the stove would probably smoke. The Jøtul stoves meet EPA requirements with the use of a catalytic device that serves as a kind of filter, but as the EPA guidelines admit, the ‘catalyst’ can burn out within a couple of years.

In catalytic combustion, the smoky exhaust is passed through a coated ceramic honeycomb inside the stove where the smoke gases and particles ignite and burn. Catalytic stoves are capable of producing a long, even heat output.
All catalytic stoves have a lever-operated catalyst bypass damper which is opened for starting and reloading. The catalytic honeycomb degrades over time and must be replaced, but its durability is largely in the hands of the stove user. The catalyst can last more than six seasons if the stove is used properly; but if the stove is over-fired, inappropriate fuel (like garbage and treated wood) is burned, and if regular cleaning and maintenance are not done, the catalyst may break down in as little as 2 years.

Not that I would ever burn garbage or treated wood, but spending $300 every couple of years wasn’t on my list of things to do. And as I approach 80 years of age, I have little patience with machines that require “regular cleaning and maintenance.” So for nearly a month I lost sleep worrying about using the stove. It was still summer, so I had time to fret. Finally, after speaking with the store manager, they agreed to allow me to trade my unused Jøtul for a non-catalyst stove manufactured by Pacific Energy.

Beware! The store staff failed utterly to inform me that in many ways, the non-catalyst stove created more problems than the catalyst version.

But I didn’t know that yet. My decision narrowed to the model that allowed for 18” firewood, of which I already had over four ricks of seasoned wood. This model is Pacific Energy’s Alderlea T6. It’s a handsome stove, although several aspects of its construction are big problems.

One of the Alderlea’s many shortcomings is that while the manual states that maximum wood length is 20 inches, the only way to fit a log that size into the stove is on a diagonal from front corner to back corner. Even the owner’s manual phrase “Ideal Wood Length” of 16 to 18 inches placed “endwise” [does this mean end to end sideways or end to end from door to back of stove? No diagram.] leaves zero clearance between the burning wood and the door/firebrick, which means that the glass door quickly becomes coated with soot. So much for watching the fire. The fire box is exactly 18 inches square.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

After multiple readings of the product manual, I began to break in the stove setting fires meant to burn off the ‘paint’ fumes with house windows open. Right away I noticed what is now a major problem: there is no way to manually vent the stove. Once wood starts burning, if I need to open the stove door to add more wood, or reposition wood, the only option is to open the door and do the task as fast as possible while smoke pours into the room.

Apparently Pacific Energy’s engineers believe the price of making the outside air ‘cleaner’ is to pollute my inside air. The manual fails utterly to address this issue. The instructions for ‘Lighting a Fire’ are:

Adjust air control to “High” position (all the way to the left) and open door.
Place crumpled newspaper in the center of the heater and crisscross with several pieces of dry kindling. Add a few small pieces of dry wood on top.
Ignite the paper and leave the door ajar approximately ½” until the wood kindling is fully engulfed in flame.
After the kindling is fully engulfed, [open the door while smoke pours into the room] add a few small logs. Close door.
Begin normal operation after a good coal base exists and wood has charred. [In other words, spend a half hour watching the stove or make repeated trips to check on it.]

Further instructions follow for Normal Operation:

Set air control to a desired setting. If smoke pours down across the glass, this indicates you have shut the control down too soon or you are using too low a setting. [Wrong. Smoke pours down across the glass with the air control wide open, max setting.]
For extended or overnight burns, unsplit logs are preferred. Remember to char the wood completely on maximum setting before adjusting air control for overnight burn. [“Char” is defined as partially burn wood so that the surface is black.]
Use wood of different shape, diameter and length (up to 18”). Load your wood endwise and try to place the logs so that the air can flow between them [while smoke pours into the room].
Do not load fuel to a height or in such a manner that would be hazardous when opening the door [while smoke pours into the room].

The instructions continue with information about restarting after an overnight or extended burn:

Open door and rake hot embers toward the front of the heater. Add a couple of dry, split logs on top of the embers [This assumes that you need to load wood ONLY when the previous load has burned to embers. What if you want to go to bed and the current load has only burned 75%? Even 90% burned wood smokes. You have to load while smoke pours into the room], close door.
Adjust air control to high and in just a few minutes, logs should begin burning. [If they don’t start burning, open door to add kindling or reposition wood while smoke pours into the room.]
After wood has charred, reset air control to desired setting.
To achieve maximum firing rate, set control to high “H”. Do not use this setting other than for starting or preheating fresh fuel loads.

Nowhere in the manual does one find a drawing showing the “H” and “L” positions. The lever which moves left to right for this function goes a half inch past the H and L lettering, leaving one to wonder if maximum left or maximum right are the correct positions, or if the lever must be positioned exactly under the H or L.

More instructions follow, including how to use the ash clean out system which proposes one use the tiny opening in the bottom of the stove to dump ash into the ash pan that sits underneath the firebox. One is cautioned not to leave the ash dump door open afterwards. One is not shown the location of the ash dump handle, just informed that the handle is located under the ash lip [also not identified in any drawing] on the left hand side. This is a total waste of owner manual space and engineering salary, and a stupid idea to start with. Just shovel it out, for god’s sake.

An entire page of the manual (27 pages in all) is devoted to the door glass. The #1 instruction regards the potential [unavoidable] darkening of the glass:

If glass becomes darkened through slow burning or poor wood, it can readily be cleaned with fireplace glass cleaner when stove is cold. Never scrape with an object that might scratch the glass. The type and amount of deposit on the glass is a good indication of the flue pipe and chimney buildup. A light brown dusty deposit in that is easily wiped off usually indicates good combustion and dry, well-seasoned wood and therefore relatively clean pipes and chimney. On the other hand, a black greasy deposit that is difficult to remove is a result of wet and green wood and too slow burning rate.
1. WRONG! My wood is well seasoned hardwood (12-18 months) and I don’t adjust the control lever to “L” until the fire is fully engaged, but every morning I must clean the glass, especially the lower side corners where the ‘black greasy deposit’ requires a single-edge razor blade to remove in addition to several applications of glass cleaner. Is this a malfunction of the stove? Queries to the manufacturer are met with advice to contact the dealer! Does this mean that two months into using the stove, I need to have my chimney cleaned?!

Further warnings on that page caution that “excessive ash buildup” should be kept clear of the front of the firebox because it will block air flow. Here’s the problem: Where exactly is this mysterious air intake? It is not shown on any drawing. There are two stair-stepped lips along the front where air might enter, so “excessive” ash remains undefined. Consequently, I keep the fronts of both steps clear. Once again, would a diagram be so hard?

Item #8 on this page is especially informative:

Be aware that the hotter the fire, the less creosote is deposited. Weekly cleaning may be necessary in mild weather, even though monthly cleaning is usually enough in the coldest months when burning rates are higher. When wood is burned slowly, it produces tar and other organic vapours, which combine with expelled…

And there the text ends. But apparently the conclusion is that closing the air intake completely is not recommended even though an overnight burn would seem to call for minimal air flow. If the best fire method for this stove is a ‘hot burn’ in order the keep the glass clear, how is that compatible with overnight heat?

Not that it actually matters. There is an ugly creosote buildup on the glass in both lower corners even with ‘hot’ fires, with any level of air control, and if I want to watch the fire through the glass, I have to ignore the creosote or clean it daily, which doesn’t last until the end of the day.

The next page of the manual is about maintenance. Monthly, I’m supposed to check:

Brick rail tabs and brick rails
Air riser tube in the back of the firebox
Back slide of airwash chamber
Baffle locking pin
Boost tube cover

Not only are there NO DRAWINGS showing the location of these various important maintenance parts, my knees don’t work well enough to crawl around peering inside or under the stove. This would also require that no fire exist in the stove at the time of inspection, meaning my house would have NO HEAT except for little electric heaters in the bathrooms. The last few days have bottomed at sub-zero temps, at no time without fire. That would be a summer job, so I can only hope that the brick rail tabs and airwash chamber are OK for fire throughout the winter.

Genius.

Further, the maintenance instructions continue with “Cleaning the Chimney System”:

Top baffle board/blanket
Baffle
Top heat shield and mountain bolt
Baffle gasket
Brick rails
Manifold

Again, no drawings, diagrams, or other user aid.

I can only hope that I can keep my fires going until warm weather without having something fall apart and/or a chimney fire. Not exactly the peace of mind I had hoped for.

I’m refraining, with difficulty, from speaking of the overall worth of the owner’s manual. After all, I’m a writer and wordsmith dedicated to communicating clearly–not a stove engineer. Somebody apparently did their best with this booklet, sadly. The lack of drawings illustrating the key components of the stove is enough of a failure that the countless other shortcoming hardly bear mention. Pages 11 through 20 detail installation methods. Page 25 is blank. Hint to manual editor: PLENTY OF ROOM FOR DRAWINGS.

There is, however, a full page breakout drawing of the stove PARTS, as if the manufacturer was more interested in selling parts than in adequately explaining the stove’s functions.

At the moment, I’m not sorry I bought it. It does a better job than the old Big Box in keeping heat all night–with luck and holding my mouth right, coals are left in the morning ready for fresh wood. I do have to live with smoke pouring into the room while I try to load in wood and kindling, at which point I’m reminded that I could have stuck with the Jøtul. At least its Norwegian inventors/manufacturers figured out how to create a more environmentally-friendly wood stove without any need to allow smoke to pour into the room.

Note: Look for future updates on this saga once I try to find a person who can service this stove, the possible need for parts replacements, and the status of creosote buildup in the chimney.

Another note: I failed to mention that I still have the Big Box in use at the back of the house and also have this jewel of an old wood cookstove in my dining room complete with hot water reservoir.

NEW RELEASE!

Today, mail seems almost quaint, often referred to as “snail mail” as we become more dependent on the easy flow of electronic email, texts, and messages. But in earlier times, as recently as 1900, communication beyond the in-person conversation or perhaps a written message sent across town by courier, mail was the only means of contact. The faithful transit of mail from place to place became an almost sacred duty for the people who established post offices.

Rural delivery to homes was not made available by the U.S. Postal Service until 1890. Even then, in the rugged landscape of parts of Washington County, mail delivery came by horse or mule to remote post offices into the early years of the 20^th century. These post offices were gathering places, usually housed in small stores where a person might pick up mail and trade eggs for a fresh batch of crackers while catching up on news. As such, post offices served more than mail, also forging interpersonal connections and a sense of community.

A total of 104 post offices were established in Washington County, of which only fifteen survive today. The other 85 came and then vanished along with the community they served. The men (and a few women) who took the responsibility to provide mail service often became leaders in the county, holding the public trust, letter by letter, at their station at a dusty crossroads.

Nab your copy today! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DJJDD5M4

Another NEW Release: Winslow–Before & After

Most folks who live around these parts know the story of Winslow, Arkansas, a tiny village perched in the highest elevations of the Boston Mountains. They know about the railroad tunnel built back in 1881 that blasted through 1,700 feet of stubborn rock and shale. They know about the all-female city council, the so-called Petticoat Government, back in 1925. And most of them know about the pre-air conditioning turn-of-the-century influx of wealthy summer visitors eager to live in the cooler air found at that elevation.

But what most folks don’t know is what came before the railroad. And what came after the boom years ended in the 1930s. Winslow today is, in many ways, just as interesting and vital as it was in those boom years between 1881 and 1930. Its population remains steady at around 365 people, not counting the hundreds residing in the rugged hills and hollers surrounding the place, both groups peppered with eccentrics, artists, and others typical of the Arkansas Ozarks reputation. Sit a spell and visit.

Great companion read to the new WINFEST book! Check it out at Amazon!

Sammie

In the wake of Sammie’s death, aside from the grief, I am swamped with guilty feelings, that I should have known something was wrong, should have noticed his decline sooner. I was responsible, and he died on my watch.

My mother would say, oh, for crying out loud, it was just a cat. Then I remembered an incident when I was 12 or 13, when I came home from school and noticed my pet chicken was not in her pen. Now this chicken was named Gemma, my name, because her feathers were the same auburn color as my hair. I’d had her since she was a tiny ball of yellow fluff, when I was, I think, about five. Unlike my first cat pet, Pinkie Tiptoes, who broke my heart when he couldn’t be found when we moved from Ft. Smith to Miami, Gemma had been crated up with a couple of other hens, and joined us in our new home. I don’t remember her accommodations at the first two rent houses where we lived that first year in Miami (4^th and part of 5^th grade) but at the last rent house on “B Northwest,” the pen was about 10’ x 12’ and the ‘barn’ was an upside-down enamel washing machine tub propped up on one side so the hens could get inside.

I would sit in the sunshine with Gemma, stroking her warm smooth feathers, making chicken noises just to be friendly. She knew me, would come to me and huddle next to my legs. I imagined she was lonely and bored in that tiny pen without a blade of grass left standing. Now she was gone.

Without Sammie’s help, the chair would float away

After growing increasingly panicked in my fruitless search for Gemma, I raced inside the house to ask my mother. She confirmed that she hadn’t seen Gemma and said I should look for her, that maybe she got out of the pen. She stated further that maybe I hadn’t given her water and that was the reason she got out of the pen.

I spent an hour wandering the neighborhood, especially the overgrown vacant lot across the street, swallowing down tears and calling “Here, chickey chickey chickey” until I was hoarse.

I don’t remember anything further from that day, but the guilt assigned to me by my mother has remained part of my psyche. It was years before I thought about that and asked my mother if she knew what had happened to Gemma. She had no memory of the event, only faintly remembered the chicken.

But I know what happened. My mother lied to me. She knew that Gemma had died and had been part of the parental decision to remove the dead body. I doubt my dad would have made up some story about her escaping her pen, much less assigning blame on me for her disappearance. But Mom never missed a chance to assign blame. For her, life was about assigning blame; this is still her default reaction to anything she judges to be problematic. Someone must be blamed.

It’s useless for me to attempt any further discussion of the issue with her, as her memory by now has disintegrated into a five-second attention span, if that. Now I mostly feel sorry for her, that her life as the middle child of nine had been so fraught that she could only adopt her mother’s habit of judging and negativity. I think I understand—to a mother or a child of the Depression, a person couldn’t afford to invest much emotion into the welfare of an animal when deprivation constantly lurked at the kitchen door.

What’s left for me to do is always remember, especially with my pets now, that I must go out of my way to take care of them—cats, primarily, as my medium and spirit animal. What happened to Sammie was a function of undiagnosed feline leukemia and feline immunodeficiency virus (cat AIDS). How or when he was infected with those viruses I have no idea. My neighbor, who obtained Sammie from an older man down the road, who more or less fed a feral female cat and generations of her kittens without a fucking care in the world that he should have had her spayed or at least vaccinated, belatedly confirmed to me that when he got the kitten, he did not have him vaccinated for anything.

Somehow, Sammie knew early on that he wanted to be here instead of next door with the neighbor, whose immaturity meant that Sammie might or might not get fed. I first saw him here when he’d been treed by Cu and Weezy, watching me call off the dogs from his perch high in an oak tree just outside my yard fence. After that he appeared at the edge of the yard, uneasy about the dogs but clearly very hungry. I started putting out food, talking to him. It was months later that finally I asked if I could ‘adopt’ Sammie.

The neighbor agreed, even though I could see the young man felt affection for the cat. But he knew he wasn’t being a good pet owner and, I think, was relieved. The first thing I did was have Sammie neutered, as the evidence of his masculine pursuit of females had begun to scar his face. I should have asked about vaccinations then, but I didn’t.

Guilt.

So began a little more than two years of Sammie at my house, well fed and slowly being accepted by the existing cattery of four other cats. Hellion considered it her duty as top cat around here to run him off, while Esmerelda and Nali tolerated him, even came to play with him and respond to his polite throaty trilled greeting seeking permission to join their company. Finnegan was a different kind of adversary, being male (neutered) and seeing his duty to eliminate another male. But slowly they too settled into a benign tolerance, thanks to careful work by myself and whichever adult child of mine was spending time here as the two males often ended up in that part of the house.

It occurred to me sometime over the past summer that Sammie had not been as active as usual but I put it off to the terrible heat. About a month ago, I noticed that he wasn’t always showing up for dinner, and I put that off as maybe another neighbor was feeding him. I didn’t notice that he was losing weight; it was subtle and over a long period of time. BUT, guilt, even if I had noticed sooner that he was struggling, there was nothing I could have done. He might have had these viruses since birth.

I’m trying not to linger over my failures, as I have no clear evidence of any role I might have played in his death. I loved that damn cat. He was full of personality. A true gentleman, he never bullied the other cats, always took the submissive role, and just wanted to have a good time. Like other ginger cats, he was easy-going, a laid back cat, just wanna have fun. And eat whatever I might offer. And snuggle, get petted. His purr came readily, sometimes before a hand actually touched him.

As I watched the vet sedate him and then return a short time later with the slender hypodermic of bright pink death, I thought of so many other cats that need rescue, and tried not to cry.

But I did cry. I hardly made it out of the clinic before ugly sobs racked my throat. Hot tears ran down my cheeks and even though I’m an old woman worn with the losses in my life, I felt like my heart was breaking. I brought him home, wrapped him in a soft towel as his still-warm body lolled loosely in my arms, and laid him to rest in the hole I had already dug in my garden.

Sammie will be missed. He had a special talent for making me and my kids feel good, and that’s what pets are for. I will keep trying not to feel guilty, but when you take someone into your care, it’s part of the contract that you are responsible for his life. I’ll never escape that no matter what my mom might have said oh so many years ago.

It’s Here! AROUND THE COUNTY: Histories of Washington County, Arkansas

This collection of articles covers an eclectic range of subjects from the earliest settlers (and their contribution to the development of the county and the nation) to the 20th century enigma of a former carnie known as White River Red. What about UFOs? What about the Old Wire Road and its storied history in south Washington County? Or the county’s 4 Riverside Parks, 12 skating rinks, and 8 flour mills are among the stories found here (umm, butter melting on hot BREAD!), each selection delving into some fascinating aspect of Washington County life. It’s a joyful and sometimes heartrending read, perfect for a home library or as a gift. Don’t miss this latest contribution to the archives of local history!

Paperback, $19.99, at Amazon.com

The Spectacular ‘White River Red

Coming April 2 — AROUND THE COUNTY: Histories of Washington County, Arkansas

As the legend goes, by 1931 when Forrestina Magdalene (Bradley) Campbell settled in Washington County, Arkansas, she had run away from her “well-to-do” family as a teen, joined the circus, married “Big Broad Tosser” Keyes, and lost a pregnancy after falling from a trapeze. Local historian Phillip Steele described her as “a beautiful woman…with long gorgeous red hair.”

Beauty or not, her husband Keyes abandoned her when medical complications of her miscarriage cost her the ability to ever bear children. Maybe he would have left her anyway. No records of him have been found.

This was just the beginning of Forrestina’s fascinating life story which would continue into the 1970s from Head’s Ford and Springdale to the West Fork area along Highway 71 as she forged her unique path in local lore.

This article won the 2022 Washington County Historical Society’s Walter J. Lemke Award for the best article on Washington County History outside of Fayetteville and was published in the Spring issue of the WCHS quarterly journal Flashback. [This image of her appeared on the cover of Philip Steele’s booklet about her, circa 1970.]

UFOs in Washington County

Coming April 2 — AROUND THE COUNTY: Histories of Washington County, Arkansas

The people of Arkansas have reported UFO (Unidentified Flying Object) sightings since the late 19th century. In the 20th century, a cluster of sightings in Washington County occurred in 1965, when Bill Estep of Viney Grove reported his experience to the local newspaper:

“An unidentified flying object (UFO) “the size of a car” was reported at tree-top level eight miles north of Viney Grove last night. The Bill Estep family said they were seated in their living room around 10 p.m. when a flashing light outside attracted their attention. Mrs. Estep said when they went outside they saw a ‘long narrow, silver object with lighted windows and revolving light on top hovering in the air just above the trees.’”

More sightings have been reported, but it was a pilot’s 1952 observation of a ‘saucer-shaped’ UFO over Skylight Mountain that captured the attention of J. Allen Hynek, scientific observer for the U. S. Air Force and Project Blue Book. In recent years since the CIA released images and reports verifying such sightings, UFO incidents have become more accepted by a skeptical public. This article includes current reporting methods and sightings in our area.

May be an image of tree, sky, nature and text that says 'ব Photoshopped image'

Odell, Arkansas

Another article in the forthcoming AROUND The COUNTY: Histories of Washington County, Arkansas

Long forgotten villages dot the maps of Washington County, places like Floss, Sugar Hill, Clyde, and Arnett. Odell is another, no longer existing as more than a place name. For a time in the 19th century, this village was a tiny but important commercial center in that vicinity the southwest county. School No. 69, Shady Grove, was located there as well as a blacksmith shop, general store, and post office, all along a long established roadway mostly following the ridge tops in this western edge of the Boston Mountains.

Both Confederate and Union troops used this road, now County Road 295, as an alternative to the more heavily traveled routes like the Old Wire Road up the middle of the county, or the route later to become Highway 59 along the state’s boundary with Indian Territory, or the newly marked-out Cove Creek Road which rose from the depths of Crawford County and led directly to Prairie Grove.

Noah West, the owner of the Odell general store circa 1900, stands proudly at its entry with his extended family, a moment and place captured for all time.

May be an image of 12 people, people standing and outdoors