Occupation of Independence

When walking the dog this morning I chanced upon an unusually smooth section of gravel road. (Unlike New Mexico, Idaho puts gravel on its forest roads.) Skinny tracks criss-crossed this road 'all over the place.' It was earthworms. I can't even remember the last time I saw vermicular-Americans crawling out of the ground after a night of rain.  The loveable little app, Pocket Rain Gauge, says we got 0.27" of rain last night! Everybody has read that 'your skin is the largest organ in the human body.' Is it ever! My skin, nails, and hair are going through a resurrection these days. I am wearing a baseball cap! And I used to make fun of them as unmanly, nerdy, ugly, and ineffective. There really are some adjustments to camping with rain, but I am 'up' for the challenge. The most important issue is traction on dirt/gravel roads, or rather, right off of those roads.  It is important to camp by backing away uphill from those roads, thereby making an easy esc

  When most people read the title above they hear, "What is my favorite national park?" Well, there is no accounting for taste.  In fact, national parks are not beautiful at all -- and remember, you read that here! They are merely freakishly big, vertical, or red. "Beautiful" means variety, balance, harmony, and utility: the color green, productive agriculture, soft hills with womanly curves, spirited creeks, barns, wildlife and herds of domestic stock, not many people, and trees. A few rocks are tolerable. And that is what you see in the Palouse of eastern Washington, especially near its border with forest land. Driving through this land on a semi-rainy day, I lusted for a drone to photograph it. The three-dimensionality might get washed out if photographed from the highway. Sunrise or sunset, and partly stormy skies! from openstreetmaps I managed to camp in the national forest near Moscow, ID with my first ATT signal, as a newbie customer. Idaho actually puts gra

It is hard to believe but when  Q.t.𝞹 runs across the lawn, her feet come back soggy. The air feels so medicinal, moist, and gentle compared to that horrible dry air in the south. Water flows in the arroyos around here! I am just loving escaping the desert Southwest. For the rest of my life I will come north in the summer. But let's not oversell the Northwest. By mid-July, temperatures will be Phoenix-like, and you won't even be able to see the forests and mountains with all the forest fire smoke. The forests up here are just fuel bombs waiting for a match. This area has two summers. Early summer is wonderful. Late summer is ghastly.

  It is funny how some geographical features seem interesting despite being less than spectacular, visually. Arroyos in the Southwest are a great example of that. Here in the Northwest, river estuaries are interesting. As the river debouches into a lake, you sometimes get shallow lakes -- almost wetlands. It is a great place for wildlife. I was thinking about that this morning when a moose calmly walked along the shoreline, no more than 50 yards away from me. Q.t. 𝞹 was in the van with me. Finally she saw the moose. Surprisingly her reaction was mild.

  Early in my career as an RVer, I learned to avoid water: too many tourists, noisy boats, music noise, fees, bugs, etc. But I am happy to make an exception to that behavior now. I suppose parents go through things like this, when their child is the right age. Near Lake Coeur d'Alene I tried to look at the water as if I were a former Phoenix street urchin. Just imagine how soft and lush the green grass is, in this area, from her point of view! I wonder what would happen if I rented a canoe and took her out for a paddle? And she saw a moose?!

Q.t.𝞹, my newish miniature poodle, surprised me with her behavior on this high altitude sagebrush/grass/aspen land near Vernal, UT. Perhaps it shouldn't have been a surprise. She gamboled across the field literally by leaps and bounds. It was delightful to watch. The sagebrush was just the right height, and mixed with green grass so as to fit the stature of a 20 pound miniature poodle. Why was she going crazy? She had spend the first 4+ years of her life living in a hot urban hellhole (Phoenix), including some homeless street life, getting knocked up by a husky, having a litter of 'hoodles,' going to (good) second owners, and then finally to me. And now she was running on soil and green grass instead of hot pavement or rubble.  That must feel great to a dog; after all, they are pawed/padded creatures, not hooved creatures.  She chased white-tailed deer. I had brushed her the night before and had not yet reinstalled her collar, so she ran free and naked, a perfect little c

It is not satisfactory enough to keep saying 'I am astonished!' about events in the world today. Something better is needed. How much suffering will "Nato-stan" go through for such a dubious cause? But this won't be the first time that Rulers have been willing to virtually commit the suicide of their nation. I actually benefit by reading about some of the suicide-attempts of the past, if you are willing to admit that making sense of the world is a benefit. What suffering the average peasant is willing to go through just because they are afraid of their mighty Rulers! It is easy to explain. Rulers are a rather compact, semi-united nucleus of power, whereas the peasants are disunited. In olden times it was the churchmen who were screaming God, God!, GOD! at the masses, thus keeping them in line. And the King was appointed by GOD ALMIGHTY, so you'd better be willing to die for the king. Today it is the Media that brainwashes the peasants. Slogans such as Freedom,

  Interstate highways can mess up the road system that really matters: the dirt roads of the backcountry. So they put tunnels under the interstate highway to let vehicles cross under. I have always avoided these tunnels in the past. I didn't want an unpleasant surprise. But in this case I knew somebody and their rig that made it through the tunnel successfully. Still, I walked the tunnel first. The photo barely shows the top-line of the trailer behind the van. The trailer is about a foot and a half higher than the van. I had to remove its internet antenna. Anyway, for the first trip through a tunnel, it was kinda' fun. And let's not forget that tunnels screen out big rigs, especially toy-haulers! 

I don't like maudlin descriptions of somebody's dog's last days, because it might discourage would-be dog owners from adopting a dog. Besides, a melodrama about the human is not the point. I put Coffee Girl 'down' this morning, at age 15.5 years. She did not suffer. And her old age did not cost me much money. In a high meadow in New Mexico a few years ago. . What could a newbie dog owner learn from her marvelous career? 1. Don't be afraid of animal shelters. 2. Don't take 'dog breed' books literally. They will tell you that a herding dog needs 10 hours per day of chasing cows or sheep or it will come back into your house and chew the sofa into a million pieces. They will make you think a herding dog can't be a good household pet. 3. Herding dogs can have exemplary behavior off-lease. This adds a lot to the owner's and the dog's pleasure. 4. When adopting a dog, tune yourself out, especially your eyeballs. Choose a dog for their behavior,

I had to laugh at myself a couple days ago when I went through Cortez, CO. It seemed like a personal defeat. Silly, huh? I had implicitly cancelled the state of Colorado, and today it is time to make it explicit. Cancelling an entire state is something that sounds kind of sad or extreme. The first thing a person should probably do upon cancelling a state is to think of small exceptions to the general rule. I have even done that for California, the first state I cancelled. In fact cancellation occurred the first year of being a full-time RVer. But I have debauched myself by sometimes going into California for 5 miles or so.  

It was strange going through the Moab commotion and feeling completely indifferent. All I could think about was leaving town quickly and finding something nearby that seemed meaningful to me. (That means something other than scenery, of course.) So I went to my favorite cliff system. The foothills leading up to the cliffs proper have the look of Mancos shale. Harmless if dry, but barren and ugly. And yet the land had some bright red flowers from hedgehog cacti. Here are the girls checking out the flowers: So there was something meaningful. It won't be long before I have to put Coffee Girl down. She began her career at the foot of these cliffs. Here she is, the first day I got her: It has been a wonderful career. I got her because my first dog, a miniature poodle called Pancho, was frightened by gun-crazed yahoos sighting in their rifles, just before hunting season. He took off, into the cliffs. After a week I accepted the fact that he was dead. So I adopted Coffee Girl. Of course,

  Moab, UT. Believe it or not I gave a bit of thought to actually camping in the Moab area. It was pre-peak-season and also unusually chilly. So perhaps there was some hope. Much to my surprise Moab was quite busy. That makes sense I suppose: most of the tourists are locked into reservations made months ago -- so fluctuations in the weather shouldn't affect them very much. After a ten minute stop at the grocery store, I happily left town. If you have ever made sneering-comments about touristy places, your listeners probably wearied quickly, and you yourself got a bad taste in your mouth. Complaining about tourists is a cliche' that makes you sound like a sour, elitist misanthrope. But you might not be this at all.  Consider another explanation: the human imagination is prone to being sentimental, romantic, and escapist. That is what makes travel interesting in the first place.  When you see thousands of tourists in your area, you can't help but see mass-consumers of bar-cod

  Isn't it something how a long-time full-time RVer can still feel a lump in their throat when they head north in spring or south in winter! It quite amazes me. It is proof that a camper like that is doing something right. This summer will be different for me. I have decided not to campground host in Colorado, because the camping situation in that state has become hectic and congested. In fact I will try to avoid the state altogether except for some fringe areas that aren't popular with the masses. Which is prettier: Idaho or Iowa? Foolish question? Not really. During the fire season you can't really see Idaho -- there is no point in being there. I have decided to avoid the northwestern states during their wildfire season, 15 July -- 30 September. For the first time in many years I am going to the Northwest early in the summer --- like right now! In late July I will head south and hopefully find some monsoonal rain. The southwestern states are already having fires and smok

  I watched an interview of Glenn Greenwald on Tucker Carlson the other night. Greenwald made a powerful point about Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter as a real threat to the Deep State. Their ability to censor the internet is an awesome weapon. Why would the Deep State allow anybody to tinker with it? Greenwald went on to say that they will try to "destroy" Musk because of this. He said no more on the interview, and he didn't imply that "destroy" meant physical destruction. But why shouldn't it include physical destruction? Presumably Musk flies on private jets -- they can be made to fall out of the sky. Then the FAA comes to look for the 'black box' for some clue as to what caused the crash. And when they do, what if an official from the CIA or FBI has already been there first? Don't such organizations have the capability to fake a black box? If somebody raises questions about irregularities in the crash-investigation, the awesome power of in

It's easy to stay glued to war videos from the Ukraine, these days. For me, many of them are found on the Telegram platform. Sometimes BitChute. What has amazed me is how little information and understanding are actually conveyed in a video, at least when it is unprofessional or made under duress. I wonder: which side (Russian or Ukrainian) am I even looking at? What is the message or point that is being made by this video? So an unidentifiable jet plane just whizzed across the sky -- it barely shows on the screen. Can't they keep the camera from jerking around so much? Sometimes a caption does more good than a jumble of dancing pixels. Would it be too utopian to dream of a caption without military acronyms? Some of these videos lend themselves to radio more than television-style video. They are just talking heads in a studio -- there is nothing to look at, so why does it need to be a video? What a waste of bandwidth! For this type of video it would be an improvement to put a s

I ran into a relevant quote while reading Antony Beevor's "Stalingrad."  The context was new soldiers coming into the battle when things look bleakest. Once the new soldier had accepted that survival was relative rather than absolute, and he learned to live minute by minute, the strain eased.  This is something everybody has experienced, I suppose, during a car breakdown, automobile accident, health problem, or divorce. Take it one step at a time until you ratchet your way out of the disaster. It should help to keep this in mind during the economic destruction of the next few years.

  This is just a short post allowing me to practice using the Brave browser rather than the Firefox browser. Once again I am preaching to myself -- out loud and in public -- about becoming a more active investor. It is hard to be an active investor if you are uncertain about the Big Picture. Am I just in denial about the Big Picture? Why not be brave enough to face the grim reality that high inflation will dominate the financial world for years? The Federal Reserve doesn't have the balls to do anything about inflation. Oh sure, it might take weak stabs at raising interest rates to slightly less negative rates. But the first complaint from Wall Street will cause the Federal Reserve to warm up the "helicopter engines" for dropping free money on Wall Street. from zerohedge.com

  It used to be impossible to add a rack to a fully-suspended mountain bike. So if you wanted to bring your canine companion along, you needed to get a bike-trailer. Today there is at least one rack for a fully-suspended mountain bike from Old Man Mountain. I got their (American made) Divide Rack. Even a dog who is a bit of a cry-baby can easily take to a rack, since they are with their man. Almost touching him, actually. I won't go through the obvious details, but there is one thing that goes against common sense. It helps to move the rack/box as far to the rear (aft) as possible. For instance, the photo shows about 5 inches between the rear of the saddle and the front of the box. Sounds like plenty. But it would be nice to increase this distance so the bicyclist can scoot rearwards when descending hills. The magic in this rack is the fact that it doesn't need eyelets (that is, screw holes) built into the frame of the bike. Most of the weight of the rack rests on a customized

The world seems surprised by the effect that fanatical sanctions (against Russia) are having. What a shock this is for the West. People in the West have become almost completely detached from physical reality. They have forgotten that food is grown in the ground, after fertilizer and agri-chemicals have been dumped on the ground. And then the food is put in trucks that burn fuel. Where does the lumber come from?, that is needed to build their 4000 square foot house. Surely it doesn't come from cutting a tree? That would be so awful. They have forgotten what steel and stainless steel are. Does that require mining? Wouldn't that be bad for the environment? They heat and air condition their oversized homes at 72F all year long. Most of the crap in their house is made from petroleum. All of these comforts just magically appear to them. They don't know from where. Nor do they care. To the West, reality is just an assembly of pixels on an electronic screen. 'Work' consis

It is important to choose the right year to be born in. In Europe and North America, you have to give credit to so-called Baby Boomers for choosing to be born between the end of World War II and 1960. Today Baby Boomers might be fairly close to death but at least we really lived when the gettin' was good. In fact I think we experienced peak freedom, peak education, peak female attractiveness, peak mobility, and peak prosperity. There were some setbacks along the way. Case in point is the decade of the 1970s. Still, we caught the last decade or two of Good Times in America: lucrative corporate employment -- stability, pay, pensions, and benefits. We were even able to retire early. But with raging inflation, how will young people be able to retire early from now on? Look at the risks they will be running! My (Baby Boomer) age group could invest during a long bull market on Wall Street. Do you really expect a replay of 1980 -2020 on Wall Street?  We still could look forward to Social

If a dog is serious about her outdoor-lifestyle, she has to learn how to cross cattle-gates. My first dog, Pancho the miniature poodle, acted wary when he encountered his first cattle-guard. Then he walked right across on his first attempt. My second dog, Coffee Girl, is a Nervous Nellie, but she was fairly confidant in crossing cattle-guards.   I had an easy time with a friend's dog. I don't know if it was his first attempt:   So how was Q.t.𝞹 going to do on her first attempt, this morning. My goodness. She locked up and her feet were unwilling to touch the steel bars. I levitated/dragged her across the cattle guard. At least she didn't do that squeal thing of hers! It was oddly funny. Still, she does get credit for acting a little curious about the steel bars on her second effort. There is hope. Of course a dog can usually run around the cattle guardby crawling under a barbed wire fence. She is small enough to do that easily. But that requires training me to let go of th

When I thought about getting a new dog I completely overlooked how fun it would be to liberate a city-dog by turning her into Ms. Nature-dog. She is 4.5 years old but she reacts to rocky arroyos, open space, cows, horses, and wildlife like she is a puppy, seeing them for the first time. Of course there is some risk in that. There are rattlesnakes, raccoons, coatimundies, and skunks to be careful about. And city-dog or not, she wants to rub into cow poop! She can get me into such a mood watching her frolic. What a marvelous thing it is see the frantic intensity of the young at play! Think of all the hackneyed things that a nature-lover is supposed to moon and swoon over: sunsets, mountains, Lake Louise. What about Youth itself? It is redolent of the Gilbert & Sullivan song in The Mikado, "Three little maids from school are we."  Notice that I linked to a video that is just sound. When 30 year old singer/actresses try to act like little girls, it just doesn't work -- t

So what do you think? Is Europe serious about damaging their standard of living or are they just bluffing and virtue signaling? Maybe we shouldn't be so shocked about millions of people unnecessarily hurting their own standard of living. Look at all the centuries they turned over land and wealth to established churches. And the 20 years of slaughter during the Napoleonic era. And the world wars in the 20th century.  Of course the current mutual suicide pact seems to be based on such a lame excuse. Really now, 'democracy', the sovereignty of Ukraine, etc.?! Is there something about the European peasant that makes them naive about -- and blindly obedient toward --  their own elites? At any rate the people who should be happiest about the current suicide are the Environmental Elites. It won't be long before the European peasants start losing interest in Ukraine. But by then, a good test run has been done on them. The precedent has been set. They will be ready for a lower s

It is so nice to be easy to please! Give me excellent scenery in uncrowded places, rather than freakishly spectacular scenery in crowded places, and I will be happy.  I am at one of those favorite places now. It goes a long way to camping-satisfaction to be camped on a deadend road, free from motorheads. Just as last year, I got to visit with some locals who ride their pretty horses in my neighborhood. About 5 of them. near Willcox, AZ.  

I keep thinking of that Canadian RVer that I knew a decade ago and who I wrote about a couple days ago. He was the guy who held the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corp.) in such high esteem that waiting for the nightly news was the highlight of his day. At the time I was skeptical of CBC, figuring that it was susceptible to the same diseases as NPR in the USA. But today, the trust in the media that that man had seems naive to the point of being ridiculous.  Recall Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence: "that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." This was no new insight of Jefferson. He wrote some essay explaining that he avoided original ideas in composing the Declaration -- and that he tried to gather up and condense the ideas that were believed by most people in his era.  So 'consent of the governed' was an idea that floated around in the European Enlightenment. I'll bet Rou

  Much to my surprise, yesterday's mountain bike ride (on a forest road) was turning into a loop. That is always nice, although it is helpful to overcome the exaggerated desire for 'loops' instead of 'out and backs'. I just had to walk the bike down a steep connector trail. Its head was mistakable. A large pit bull was just ahead of me. The hiker reassured me that everything was under control. So I proceeded. It turned out that the big monster was quite a sweetheart. They had a second dog who was disporting down the trail a ways. She was a 7 pound Chihuahua, who turned out to be completely yap-free. The owner said that the Chihuahua pushed the pit bull away from the food bowl. What a combination. I had to laugh. I gave up on animal shelters a few weeks ago because they had nothing but pit bull mixes and Chihuahua mixes. (Then I went to the Phoenix Craigslist>Community>Pets to find my new miniature poodle.) And I told the owner of these dogs on the trail about

I have a vague memory of watching some wildlife/nature show years ago that showed the bull of a herd getting older and weaker. The young bucks notice it. Eventually something happens to the bull or one of the young bucks sees an opportunity. And he seizes that opportunity. It starts to work a little. Then another young buck jumps in...and another.  That seems to be the perfect metaphor for what is happening on the geopolitical scheme. It wasn't Russia's self-assertiveness that brought this idea home. Nor was it China's, as important as these two are. It was India's and the Gulf States' and Syria's and Brazil's and Africa's... Anyway, if anybody knows the perfect video that expresses this metaphor, let me know. 

The recent miracle of 0.25" of rain in Arizona was enjoyable, of course. What I like most about it is the chance to focus on what is most important to the world. When you do so, the secondary stuff recedes into the background. Such as temperature. It wouldn't surprise me if people who like downsizing their physical junk also carry this over to their mental habits. A full time RVer is a pretty good example of a physical downsizer. Truly, I dislike giant piles of just about anything. This inclination has always undermined my interest in books. They are the best example of how ridiculous a giant pile of unnecessary crap can be.  Walking around in the mud makes you appreciate what an inch of gravel can do on a dirt road. So who needs a pile of words or a pile of books about, say, the history of technology?  I usually have mountains to look at. So what? They are just gigantic piles of useless rubble. 

I found one more thing that wasn't disgusting or depressing: the boots-on-the-ground videos of Patrick Lancaster. (Just do a search for him on BitChute.com or even on YouTube, believe it or not.) I will give him the benefit of the doubt because I have a need to believe that there is still some courage and integrity left in the world. With most of the world, and with the lying media and scummy politicians of both parties, I have completely lost hope. It is simply impossible to live not believing anything.

How do you manage your media consumption during times of crisis? Either you manage it or the lie machine will manage it for you. I want to look at media that keeps me from getting beaten down, defeated, and turned indifferent. I want to stay light-hearted, as crazy as that sounds. It almost sounds disrespectful of all the serious suffering in the world. But a human being cannot stand too much earnestness or sententiousness. For instance I am rereading Robert Massie's "Peter the Great." All the news from Ukraine, grim as it is, makes this book more interesting. Peter's first military success was near the coast of the Sea of Azov, a body of water most Americans never heard of until a couple weeks ago. But then somebody threw a switch in the Lie Machine, and now, millions of info-peasants think the Sea of Azov is of crucial importance to them. Another example is this video of an Indian journalist talking back to a Western professor. Damn, this video made me feel good!  (

It is interesting to camp near an Arizona Trail trailhead. You can have interesting conversations with people. This morning -- or dawn actually -- the girls wanted to go out for a walk. I was flabbergasted by the size of the javelinas we saw. Both dogs barked of course. What was Q.t. 𝞹 thinking when she saw these big, ugly beasts? She is a city girl. Or was. And what is it with these big, dumb cow thingies that just stare at her? Is she supposed to do something about that? Later I let her scamper off-leash up a steep section of the Arizona Trail, on the way up to a ridgeline.  She went crazy. It is so nice to have a dog stay close to you, so you can still see them. Especially a small dog. 

Let's say it is your last day in an area you like. How can you end your stay in a pleasing way? It would be nice to honor it. So I took a walk with Q.t.𝞹 on a small forest road that doesn't get much motor-crazed yahoo traffic. On the drive in, there was a group of horse-people doing a dispersed camp. The road we walked on had an unusually large number of live oak trees.   The leaves are pretty humble compared to an oak leaf in the East but in the Western states, beggars can't be choosers when it comes to leaves or vegetation. On the drive in, we also saw a fine Arizona sycamore. People who haven't experienced the ghastly wasteland of the lower Colorado River just can't understand the relief a person feels when they start seeing a little earth-like normalcy return.  

Lately I have fallen into the habit of watching too many videos. It is good see a variety of world opinions offered on these videos. But sometimes I wonder why the video needs to be a video at all -- there is nothing to look at. It is just a talking head, and it talks with such a thick accent that it is hard work to listen to it. It is getting so that I simply turn off the video after 5 seconds if the accent is too strong. Australian accents barely count as 'English'. They are more than muddled -- they are painful to listen to. Even English accents can get annoying because of their inability to pronounce the letter r. We won't even talk about New Yawk accents. It is funny how some accents seem quaint and fun to listen to. For instance, Irish and Scottish accents work like that. Some southern USA accents are pleasant to listen to. I wonder if many of these terrible speakers can write and read English quite well? If so, then why shouldn't they write blogs instead of maki

As I get ready to leave Patagonia AZ, it is worth talking about the gravel-bicycle craze. This town has become a mecca for gravel bike riding. This is ironic to me because I was bicycling dirt roads in this area 20 years ago -- before it was 'cool'. Are gravel bicycles a passing fad? The case is pretty good that they are. Of course the bicycle industry is always looking for an excuse to trick their customers into buying one more bicycle.  From the looks of gravel cyclists here, they are really "roadies" who are perhaps accepting the grim reality of riding (paved) roads: too many cars, driven by people who are too distracted by electronic gadgets in the cabin of their cars. Drivers think their car is their living room. Do any drivers look out the windshield anymore? Thus they have switched to gravel riding with a bike that is 90% the same as a 'road' bike. But I wonder how many gravel bikers have come from the opposite end of the spectrum, that is, the single-

 first attempt at video

Whenever a blogger talks about the weather, it is natural for a reader to think that the blogger has nothing really to talk about today. So what is my excuse? I walked around yesterday in a state of mild euphoria. It had rained significantly overnight. The ground was slightly muddy. The air started off uncomfortably humid -- in Arizona?! As the day progressed, it cleared up but the air stayed moderately humid. I felt like I was walking through a thin medicinal unguent, rather than air. Imagine Neosporin turned into air. I actually liked seeing the sun! This sort of experience only happens four or five days per year in this part of North America, so nobody can accuse me of excess repetition. Can you imagine a weather-utopia better than getting 0.1" of slow rain overnight, say, once per week? Everything would smell good in the morning, everything would be so fresh and full of life.  

In case you haven't experienced it before: how nice it is to have a clean, lavender-shampooed, brushed, luvvie-duvvie poodle in your bed at night! She would snuggle right up against my face if I let her. Life doesn't get any better than this -- except when we are cycling. ( I do wish the bed was wider!) She is tied to my waist when cycling. It is counter-intuitive but the dog is safer when you shorten the leash so that she keeps the wheel in her peripheral vision. (5 feet is about right.) I have tried a basket that mounts to the handlebar. It is easy and quick to stuff the dog into the basket. But 20 pounds is quite a bit of weight on the handlebar. It feels clumsy, so I might give up on this idea. I am having no luck at getting her to stay in her K9 sport sack. It is hard to catch her on camera when she is happy and prancing. It is great that the dog gets to face forward and stick its forepaws out of the bag, but she is too nervous, so far.

An Arizona Trail hiker taught me something the other day. He had fair skin and reddish hair and had most of his skin covered. I complimented him on his silver parasol. He had walked several hundred miles with it and the wind hadn't destroyed it yet. Was he just lucky or does the vented design really work? From sun grubbies .com  It wouldn't cost much to find out. You don't think I would get laughed at? Nobody would have laughed at Eli Wallach, playing the Bandito in "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" when he used his parasol in the desert.  

It seems so naive and foolish to think that, for once, I found something on a medium as vile as YouTube that wasn't corporate media bullshit, propaganda, or show business. And I am afraid of being disappointed once more, so I won't look into it. I am referring to the sniper work of Deki in the Donbass. It was a bit like watching one of my favorite movies, "Enemy at the Gate," made about 15 years ago. Of course, here, you couldn't see the enemy soldier being hit by a bullet. You could hear the shot and then had to believe "Deki" that 'he got him.'  It certainly seemed real to me, but of course, 'seeing really isn't believing.' It is very easy to be fooled by the camera. It would be a miracle to experience something that isn't Fake News and show business.