Occupation of Independence

This summer, readers are likely to hear me rhapsodize over soft sagebrush hills and their shadows at dawn and dusk. And more times than they need. It didn't even take one day to start mooning and swooning. But shifting my view to the forested top of a high hill, it was easy to be almost troubled by it. The green forest seemed to be slowly sloughing off the top of the hill, causing it to invade my sagebrush hills. It is strange to think of a forest on the march. Oh sure, Macbeth reminds us, "Fear not, till Birnam Wood do come to Dunsinane." Or maybe it was the news and photos of the creeping malevolence of lava on the Big Island of Hawaii. It was certainly a reminder of how important it is for the observer to properly prepared, in order to be strongly affected by "beauty", which would in fact become boring rather quickly, otherwise.  Earlier in the day my dog and I had slowly seeped up that 1500 feet or so of hill, on the mountain bike. At sunset, some o...

Recently I wrote about James Howard Kunstler surprising me with some of his opinions. Another long-standing and well-known pundit is doing the same thing. Pat Buchanan recently wrote a post that makes him sound so disgusted with the current pope that he is searching for an alternative to Roman Catholicism. He rhetorically asks whether the pope has the power to change the eternal verities of the Catholic religion. My short answer is, yes, the pope does. When Buchanan talks about the eternal verities of the religion, doesn't he really mean the values and ideas that he got used to as a Catholic boy in the 1940s? Does he really think that his religion should be static? If so, he never belonged to the right religion in the first place. In fact he has overlooked a great advantage and strength of the Catholic church.  All religions say that they worship "God", but strictly speaking, they either worship 1) a church hierarchy, or 2) a holy book. Catholics, Orthodox, M...

One of the stump speeches on this blog is that Suffering is under-rated -- not so much for the sake of itself, but for what it can lead to. I ran into an extreme example of that recently. For instance, reading forums on the internet can be depended on to deliver exquisite suffering to anyone with half a brain. After reading them, one can only scream, "So this is what we get for hundreds of billions of dollars spent on public education in this country!" The younger and more macho the commenters are, the more idiotic. Try a mountain bike forum if you don't believe me. You don't need a list of their favorite instruments of torture. Let's be brave and face up to the suffering. In fact, let's even wallow in it a bit. And then, when you least expect it, you run into a comment like this: Reading this thread is like watching a toddler learn to walk- it keeps looking like it's going to fall flat on it's face and you start to wince and look away,...

There is an art to choosing which pundit to read.  A reader seeking comfort can read a pundit that they always agree with. Inevitably, this turns into disappointment. Soon you can anticipate everything the pundit will say, and you've heard it all before. On the other hand, if you disagree with everything they are about to say, you have the same problems as above, with the added benefit of being made angry. And so, the middle ground is best. You must be relieved and delighted when he agrees with you. These moments also predispose you to give him the benefit of the doubt when he disagrees with you. At least you stay good-natured about the disagreement.  That is why I have read James Howard Kunstler over the years. He has come a long way from his roots as a New York Jewish Democrat/Bolshevik (grin). His latest essay was mildly shocking -- and enjoyable.  For a moment there I thought the essay was written by Fred Reed.

I'll bet you know someone who has wanted to reach across the counter at a store and choke the employee, when they answered your "Have you got a..." question with a sweet smile and a response of, "I could order it for you..." You could order it for me? Well hell, man, I could order it myself off Amazon! What do I need you for? I came in here to look at the physical object itself, and then walk out with it today. Sigh. Shopping just isn't my favorite activity, be it brick-and-mortar or online. I'm not complaining so much as wondering how business works. Why shouldn't the photographers for online shopping be as professional as the graphic artist who drew this for the NY Times? For instance, the world tells us that online shopping is taking over everything. There is so much noise about it, and so much praise for internet 'technology.' Forgive me for not being impressed. The photographs are so bad when you shop online. I can't ...

Once upon a time in America long ago, inventors and famous businessmen were held up to schoolchildren as great benefactors of mankind. I wonder if that is still true today. Businesspersons still become celebrities today, but the nature of their success is different than in the past. Can you really compare Facebook to the Model T Ford? Industrializing agriculture, transforming electricity and magnetism into motion, building an electrical grid, inventing countless products out of petroleum -- all of these triumphs seem so much more important than the latest buzz in tech-fashions or social media trends. Even a great modern success like Amazon doesn't really contain much that is new compared to a Sears Roebuck wish-book, drooled over on the porch of a farmhouse in the 1890s. Surely there are still many innovative businesses being born today. But they may be small enough or mundane enough that they haven't become household words. I would like to suggest a mega-success th...

This time last year, I had a rather grisly encounter with the first snake of the season. I felt rather bad about killing one of the good guys, a bull snake. While mountain biking this morning, I got a momentary glimpse of something looking out of its hole in ground, but I laughed this off as excessive cowardice. Later in the day, a short 18" rattlesnake slithered his way across the dirt road in front of a couple campers. The rattles were clearly visible, but the snake didn't make any noise with them. Maybe it was too immature to rattle? At any rate, I called the campers over to have a look and take a photo.  As usual, my dog doesn't seem to even notice snakes.  Campground hosts get asked questions that I don't have a perfect answer for. Imagine a tourist from, say, Wichita Falls, Texas. They walk up to the host, and ask, "Do you got any buh-buh-b-b-b-bears here?" Meanwhile, back home in Wichita Falls, they had an F4 tornado rip through a trailer ...

Here is my first Craigslist ad ever! Nor have I ever bought anything through Craigslist, although I have looked plenty of times. Don't miss photo #2! They have me worried about the right way to accept payment. What is wrong with meeting the buyer, and going to his bank with him, if one is available in the area, and having the bank employee make out a cashier's check to me?