Occupation of Independence

It's probably time to explain why I am so resentful about being clumped in with the itinerant nature-monks and desert ascetics who are not so rare in the RV blogosphere. At times it seems that they belong in the Canterbury Tales. Most of them were young adults who were influenced by Earth Day 1970, and are now retirement age. The irruption of nature-romanticism circa 1970 is one of those recurring fantasies that our civilization is susceptible to. Before Earth Day 1970, nature-romanticism had been in abeyance since the publication of Thoreau's Walden . Naturally young hippies, with little interest in old folks' history, thought they were on to something novel and exciting with their recycled sentiments of the Romantic age. They painted up the VW bus and headed back to the Garden of Eden with just a plastic sheet and some bean and squash seeds, back to an age of innocence and peace when man lived in Harmony with Nature, and shared everything equally. In its 1970 reincarna

So now I learn that a commenter thinks I watch too many movies. Hmmpf. Anyone who subscribes to Netflix watches a lot of movies of course. Some people watch their Netflix movies instead of watching boob toob sitcoms, soaps, "news", etc. Actually the case could be made that I watch few movies if "watching" refers to paying attention to a story. The stories are usually pretty uninteresting. If you've seen one adulterous love triangle, with its psycho-sexual obsessions, you've seen them all. Then there's rags to riches, revenge, who dunnit, poor boy meets rich girl, honest poor guy versus evil pol/priest/businessman, etc. I'll bet that a discriminating movie junkie could count on his fingers the movies that had good scripts, such as Network, All About Eve, Twelve Angry Men, Bridge over the River Kwai, Ikiru, The Manchurian Candidate (1962), Shakespeare in Love, The Mission, and Traitor . In addition to good soundtracks and cinematography, the real rea