Occupation of Independence

Sometimes it's hard to believe how much time an investor can spend reading business reports and opinions without finding anything of quality. Most of it is just news media fluff and cheerleading, performed by sex kittens; or Debt, Doom, and Gloom sermons performed by old bald white guys in bow ties. And yet, we are so much luckier than just a few years ago, thanks to the internet. The Mainstream never considers anything fundamental: it only cares about how quickly the country can get back on the wrong track, that is, Business as Usual. Outside the mainstream, fundamental issues do get questioned, but at the expense of a kooky element. By that I mean an outlook that is emotional, moralistic and scolding, and fixated. For instance, I sympathize philosophically with gold-bugs and the Debt & Doom types, but I seldom follow their financial advice. Still, I'm glad they're around to counter the conventional drivel and group-think of the narco-Keynesian mainstream. An indivi

When I settled into the Little Pueblo in southern New Mexico, a reader wanted to know how I selected it as my "retirement town." The short answer is outdoor lifestyle, climate, and altitude. But I like polemics like this, so let's look at the longer answer. Perhaps my opinions on this topic are of limited use to couples who care about how much house they can afford in any given area. I'm done with the house thing.  The basic decision is whether you want to look at a city as a grown-up or as an eyelash-fluttering Romanticist. The Romanticist is turned on by extremes: for instance they might choose a "vibrant" city that gets a lot of positive publicity, such as Portland OR. It's not exciting and romantic to consider the traffic, the anthill busyness, and the high cost of living in a big city. The Romanticist could just as easily flip to the other extreme by pining for a "quaint and charming" hamlet, while yawning about its lack of a doctor, g

For a second or two it felt like a real punch to my stomach when the waiter told me that the little cafe would be closing soon. I cherished stopping in on the way back from a standard summer bicycle ride. The food was surprisingly good here, just a few pedal kicks from the continental divide, on the edge of an old mining town.  To actually get pleasure from a restaurant is so rare for me that it is worth dwelling on this wonderful little cafe. Normally I consider food at restaurants to be mediocre, tasteless, and obscenely over-priced. Oh, and the background din. This year they had added a overhead shelter made of galvanized, corrugated steel, one of the building materials used in decaying New Mexican dumps, a great favorite of mine.  Red chiles hung dried in bunches next to my table. The rafters of the structure looked like de-barked pine logs, and made me think of the ponderosa forest I had just bicycled through. Off in the distance was a pair of mountain peaks which some frie

Arkansas River Valley, Colorado, a couple summers ago. Over the years I have learned how to turn some of my dislikes into advantages. Much to my surprise the result has been melodrama, performed on an outdoor stage. A melodrama needs a villain of course. The consummate outdoor-villains are forests, especially if they are dark, thick, and buggy. Going into a forest on foot or wheel takes some real effort; you have to imagine that the suffering will eventually turn productive. Just when I start to give up hope I see some brightness, some gap in the forest canopy opens up. The sun breaks into that gap and becomes the stage-lighting for a small performance stage on the forest floor where flowers and bugs run riot. The star of the show is that wing-artist, the butterfly. Sometimes a flutter in La Mariposa's dance coincides with a flutter of aspen leaves, as if they are applauding her performance.   One day there were at least eight different types of butterflies within a few ste

What a sound it is. It doesn't really belong in New Mexico. Sometimes it happens when I ride my bicycle between a pinch of large trees. The din is so loud that it startles me and I stop pedaling. It's like the whole world has developed tinnitus. But then I realize it's just those crazy (male) cicadas. I look for them in trees when I hear their racket, but never see them. This sound is worth dwelling on. (Wikipedia has an interesting article on the cidada.) You enjoy things more when you are surprised, and it's very difficult to be surprised visually since entire industries are aimed at visual images. That's why sounds, smells, are feelies are so important.

I resist showing cloud photos because I fear never stopping. But these clouds were so crisp at sunset tonight that I can't resist. With a closeup you can see the weird shadow on the top cloud:

After admiring the old hotel in town for the last two years, I finally got a chance to see the rooms, thanks to some visitors from out of town who stayed there. It was pleasing: old embossed metal tiles on the high ceilings; lots of wood and old photographs on the walls. But my heart skipped a beat when my friends pointed out the transoms above the doors. Without the transom you'd get no ventilation in an old hotel, but didn't they also ensure that the guests heard each step in the creepy interior hallway? They probably heard the goings-on in neighboring rooms, as well. The guests would have had to open the window to get a little air; just think of all the street noise. It was so stuffy in those old rooms that I would never pay to stay there. It reminds one of the hot stuffy hotel rooms in the Coen brothers' "Barton Fink." I didn't bring a camera, but perhaps it's just as well. Our fine old hotel wouldn't offer the camera-candy provided by more fam

While I was harrying a bird this morning my young kelpie, Coffee Girl, charged off toward the arroyo in one of her 'I saw it first' feints. Good work, Girl.

For the first time in years I've finished a novel: "Elmer Gantry" by Sinclair Lewis. I was inspired to read it by Burt Lancaster's performance in the movie as well as the supporting actor, Arthur Kennedy, who played the cynical and world-wise newspaper reporter, as he did a couple years later in "Lawrence of Arabia." I was surprised to enjoy the novel as much as I did, since I'm weary of secular intellectuals trying to out-voltaire Voltaire a century or two too late. Poor old Christianity has been beaten up so much since the 1700's, why do "bold" free- thinkers think they are so heroic in attacking it? It's a case of arrested development; they are perpetual adolescents who are rebelling against the religion of their parents' generation. What about people born in the 1960's? By the time they were adolescents, pseudo-Hindu-Buddhist fads were becoming pretty dated. Why didn't they rebel against them? They should be in their p

Upper Rio Grande valley, Colorado, a couple summers ago. Last episode we left our heroes staring right into a dense, miserable forest. There was no way to finish the hike to the mountain top with that hideous forest in the way, so I was resigned to retreat. But what was that barely noticeable lightness hiding behind the forest's black curtain? I must have been intrigued--what else would make me wade in through that junk? It was a small meadow, an island of light and air, surrounded by dreary, dark forest. I really didn't know that such islands existed. Sailors must feel like this when they discover a small, secret cove that isn't on the charts; it instantly becomes their own little paradise; the rest of the world becomes uninteresting to them. Rather than break out onto the grassy slope on the way home, I decided to walk along this shoreline of forest and grass, and plunge into the arboreal netherworld whenever there might be another of these little garden-mea

Can you imagine anything more boring to a young person than going to a so-called farmers' market on Saturday morning? It was even boring to me a couple years ago. But lately I have come away from them in a mood of satisfaction and appreciation. How strange.  In the past I might have been turned off by the high prices and the hippie-dippieness of small organic "farmers." (Gardeners, actually.) I expect to pay grocery-like prices for groceries, not boutique prices or art-gallery prices. But when you live in a state that is an agricultural nobody, you do start to appreciate the growing of food. This isn't the only example of how our tastes change as we get older. Maybe we come to the conclusion that the world, for the most part, is a lot of crap -- noise, useless busyness, and bother; and since we as individuals can't do much about it, we withdraw into a cocoon to enjoy a few quiet, honest pleasures that are available. Perhaps 'cocoon' isn't the r