Chelone, this thread has stirred up so many memories. To begin with...my first love of music came when I was a child. I spent hours listening to 78 RPM records on my mother's old wind-up Victrola. One favorite record was "Tales From the Vienna Woods". I still have that record !( I just dug out those old records, and found so many treasures). "Tales From the Vienna Woods" is by George Hall and His Arcadians. On the flip side is "The Skater's Waltz", another one of my favorites. I have at least 100 of those oldies, many are waltzes, fox trots,polkas, one steps, and at least one of marches ( "Lights out March" by the Arthur Pryor's Band,and "National Emblem March" by the United States Marine Band) and some are comedies , " No News" or " What Killed the Dog" by Nat M. Wills. I found " Where the River Shannon Flows" by Harry Macdonough; "Side By Side" by Aileen Stanley-Johnny Marvin; "My Blue Heaven" by Jimmie Davis,with Charles Mitchell And His Texans; "The Old Swiss Chalet In The Rockies",and " Little Mother Of The Hills" by Carson Robinson and his Buckeroos;"Lindbergh"(The Eagle of the U.S.A.)and "Lucky Lindy" by Vernon Dalhart;"Golden Slippers" and " My Blue Ridge Mountain Home" by Dalhart and Robinson;"Chiribiribin Waltz" and "West Lawn Polka" by Guido Gialdini; " Beautiful Ohio" and "Til We Meet Again" by Gennett Orchestra ( waltzes);Beautiful Isle of Somewhere" by Evan Williams ( a favorite);and "At Dawning" by Victor Herbert's Orchestra ( another favorite).These are among my favorites but there are many many more..... Of course your question was about albums, but back then, it was single songs/tunes... only one on each side of the record, and in some cases...blank on the flip side. These were my 1930-40s introduction to music. When I became a teen, and in my early 20s, my songs were on 45 R.P.M. records. The little ones with the big hole in the middle. I had ( and still have ) the player. I don't have the records. A foster daughter "borrowed' them, and they never were returned. Most of them were by western artists, mostly the "Hanks"...Hank Snow, Hank Thompson, Hank Williams, LOL . A lot were aso by popular artists; Patti Page and others. Okie-doakie. I think that is enough to bore you all to death. There is lots more, but I will spare you ...for now...:-)

Tom: Let me give you a few more of my thoughts/observations about growing Norway spruce stands. As for provenance/variability. In addition to the general differences in the adaptation of various strains/provenances to different parts of the country, another thing I have observed in the 15 or so substantial NS stands I have seen and collected seed from in the nearby MD, WV, VA, and PA area, there is also a distinct variation in the amount of variability from tree to tree in each stand. In some stands, the trees look more like each other than in others. As luck would have it, in my own two older stands I see more variation than I have seen in any of the others I have visited--I have no idea why this should be so. The trees were planted between 1962 and 1966. But the variation is such that I can sit now and picture in my mind dozens and dozens of individual trees and the color and weeping character of their foliage, branching angles, bark color. I have quite a few special favorites. This may seem strange, but you have to understand that in addition to walking through my NS stands very often, I have pruned each individual tree in several phases up to at least 25 feet, and in some cases well over 30 feet. Anyway, one of the things I especially like about NS is this variability--with the possible exception of red maple, I have never seen another species of tree like it. For me, the effect in a forest stand of NS is glorious. Next, if you plant 6 X 6, or even 8 X 8, in about 12 to 15 years what you will have is a really dense "thicket" of NS trunks and branches that you will not be able to walk through. If at that point you want to thin and prune, you will need loping shears just to work your way into the stand, unless you have long arms, a good pruning saw, and dont mind getting scratched. I would recommend not doing anything for about 30 years, and then if you prune and thin, do it yourself by hand and leave all the wood to compost the soil and be taken up by the remaining trees. But if for aesthetic reasons you want to do some early pruning and thinning, that can do no harm. But for the long term magnificence of the forest, you dont really need to do anything. Norway spruce trees express dominance as well or better than any conifer I know. A couple years ago I called Professor Edwin White at SUNY Syracuse with a few questions that followed up on the studies he directed a few years before, and in the conversation I marveled about the stand at Glady, WV, which I had visited again shortly before--marveled at the strength and beauty of the trees that had continued to express dominance since I first saw the stand almost 20 years before. And he said he was not surprised that I was so impressed, and that if one wants to have the most magnificent stand of NS, and white pine for that matter, there was no need to do any thinning (or pruning) at all. He emphasized that both species expressed dominance over the long run very efficiently. My own observations make me think that NS is even better than white pine in this regard, but I dont have any data--just my informal observations--to back that up. One of the studies that Professor White directed was a site factors study. I will look that up for you and give you the reference--it was published in the SAF Northern Journal of Applied Forestry. If you are near the U of WI you can find it there (they do have a school of forestry?), but if you call SUNY Syracuse I would guess they would send you a copy. I am not sure how useful this would be to you in selecting a site for your planting, but I found the study fascinating. It is an observational rather than an experimental study, so it is not easy to understand exactly what it all means in practical silvicultural terms. But I can suggest that NS will grow well in soils with a pH above 4.8, and maybe 4.4 or a bit lower, but pH above 5 with some good amount of magnesium is probably best. I have soils in the 4.8 range and I experimented by broadcasting some high mag crushed limestone around a few groups of trees. No dramatic results, but perhaps some improvement--the kind of measurements really needed to determine exactly what the effects have been, were too difficult for me to do with any accuracy. One surprising finding of the study was that slope position and aspect were apparently unrelated to NS growth. For many species the lower east and north facing slopes are best. When I remarked about this to Professor White, he said that since I am so much further south, that may not be true for NS grown here. Anyway--interesting! Well, if I can think of anything else, I will come back and post it. In the meantime I will look up the site factors study and give the specific reference. Oh, I just thought--about larch. There is a professor at SUNY Syracuse who has dome some work with larch--I cant remember his name now, and he told me that larch does best where the soil is fairly deep--he gave me a number like an "A" and "B" horizon (or rooting zone) of at least 18 inches, or something like that. But then he added that if growing on a slope they can do well with less soil depth. I dont know if you have any slopes on your new land. Anyway, for what its worth --Spruce

Not much you can do. The critters recognize the natives, I think. The only solution is to have so many plants that no matter how much they eat it doesn't matter, and to spread things around so they don't find all of a species. They love boltonia, so I don't put it all in one place, and they always miss some. Same for NE and sky-blue asters and coneflowers. Every time I put in just one or two of something I hold my breath, because I know if the rabbits like it, it probably won't make it (having that problem with Ruellia right now). For other things, there are so many seedlings and established plants they can eat to their little hearts' content. Also, they sometimes eat certain plants down to the ground in spring, but once there's lots to eat, they sample other things, and the plants recover.

Maybe it is my technical training but in this topic and so many others what I notice first is a failure to look at the big picture. A few observations: Many posters have said that the cat should have been trapped and turned over to an animal shelter. Lets get one thing straight. This already happens with countless cats, who frequently get euthanized because no one claims or adopts them. Yes there is a system in place to capture and place stray cats but like every other system devised by man it has its limits and unfortunately due to the fecundity of cats and the irresponsibility of many so called pet owners there are more cats than can be dealt with. The existence of shelters does not mean the cats won't die. The only thing that has any realistic hope of ensuring the safety of a domestic cat in the US is a comitted and competent owner who shelters and feeds the cat, provides medical care including spaying or neutering, and doesn't ever let the cat roam outside or reproduce at will. Consistancy is important. Logic doesn't work without it. If animal shelters could handle the feral cat population then there would be no argument for Trap, Neuter, and Release (TNR) programs that maintain feral cat colonies. The hypothesis is that if you removed the existing feral cats they would only be replaced by other feral cats moving in so it is better to maintain sterile cats in these available urban niches. The logic of this is totally lost on me because if there are other feral cats out there in the shadows, then THEY are starving and pushed around by the comparatively well fed and healthy TNR colony cats. If on the other hand there aren't that many feral cats out there on the fringes then it would be better to trap them, find homes for all that you can, and do what needs to be done with the rest. As for the fools who suggest "relocating" cats, you mean dumping them on someone else? Where they have to violently reestablish their place in the pecking order all over again, in an environment that all groups agree is overcrouded? Would any of us like to be "relocated"? Perhaps to some of the more colorful areas of LA, NY City, Detroit? Who thinks it would be any better for a cat? The people on the front lines know there aren't enough beds in the shelters. As much as I think the TNR programs are dodging the issue, I don't think they are making things worse as long as they do what they claim, sterilize the cats and feed them. Feeding them makes them somewhat less likely to hunt and makes them able to out compete the non-sterile cats. Not what cat lovers would like to hear, I'm sure. People should obey gun laws. Did this guy break any gun laws? Probably. It is hard to shoot a gun these days without breaking a law. Was he 500 feet from the nearest road? No. His target was under a road. Prosecute him for that. Did he break any wildlife laws? One post said it was legal to shoot cats at that time. Don't prosecute him for that. The guard claimed ownership of the cat, which was completely outside of his control. The moment the guard claimed ownership he should have been nailed for cruelty to animals, letting his cat live like that, and for property damage done by the feral cats in that area including his cat. I say his cat although that is a joke, but he claims it is true. Personally I don't see any difference between cats and rats. My brother's kids have some pet rats and they are sweet little things, totally unlike wild rats. Same with cats. This unfortunately is almost entirely a battle for hearts and minds without any logic to it. If cat lovers really want to secure the high ground they should be the ones insisting that that guard be prosecuted. People are the greatest invasive species, depending on your point of view. I personally want to have adequate food, water, shelter, safety, etc. If any other organism threatens to interfere with that it is in my opinion a pest. Here's where it gets complicated. According to this definition most of the "pests" in the world are other people. I can not justify defining other people as pests. If you want to be consistant and logical you just can't call people pests, in the grand scheme of things. Sure, it would be a load off of the world if half the population died. Who? Half my family, determined by lottery? Or perhaps we could decide by skin color or religion, like the Nazis did? You see where I am going. Don't waste any time talkng about how people are the problem, even though they are. There is nowhere useful to go with this argument. Now that that is off the table, understand that while habitat preservation is desireable, it is linked to population. Personally I think we ultimately need to talk about population but not in a polite forum like this. That belongs in a knock down drag out forum on doomsday scenarios, which this isn't. If we go there we would be talking about poisoning feral animals wholesale like we do rats. I have read alot about the pressure that feral cats put on bird populations. I think that it may be true that they prey more on rodents than birds because rodents can't fly and are easier prey. I imagine that some birds are much more vulnerable than others. To do this right we would have to evaluate each prey species individually. I'll bet that the seabirds that the ornithologist was allegedly protecting are among the more vulnerable species. My take is that I can see why a sane person would do what this ornithologist did. He had a vested interest in the welfare of these particular birds just as a farmer does in his livestock He would have understood the particular threat that feral cats would pose to a threatened population. He would understand population dynamics. He would have seen that the population of feral cats was doomed to remain at dangerously high levels due to the inability of society to come to grips with the problem, as is shown by how many posters naiively propose ineffective alternatives even as overwhelmed local health authorities throw up their hands and cave in to assorted cat fanatics who were feeding the cats anyway. Prosecute the guy for any gun violations if you must, but to do any more is fiddling while Rome burns.