Occupation of Independence

Every year I become more interested in how animals 'make a living' in a land that is nothing but rock, aridity, bark, and pine needles.  There are lots of rodents to eat -- maybe that keeps the food chain going. If a city-slicker lands in a small town, and sees none of the big box retailers they are used to, they probably think they can't survive.  But then they discover there are more possibilities than they thought, initially.  Besides, these days all you need is a post office and you can buy so many things online. One thing that rural areas are good at is welding/repair shops.  Recall from a couple posts ago, how my van had a hinge/door bond fail.   Without too much trouble I found a welder.  He thought that hinge was glued to the door; was he being facetious?  Although I strengthened the bond by screwing through the hinge into a wooden block installed inside the door, something more permanent seemed desirable. Here is the welded door hinge.  Not too pretty.  If it is st

It is pretty easy to get tired of hearing talking heads on You Tube discussing world events, even if you respect and appreciate the talking heads.  I wish I could pull a video clip into this blog from the old TV western, "The Virginian."  A chatty cowboy tells his friend that talking is one of the great pleasures in life.  The friend jumps back with, "Yea well, listening ain't."   Maybe that is why a new channel needs to be found every now and then.  Recently I have done so.  "Useful Idiots" is a great channel, with Katie Halper and Aaron  Maté. They don't discuss world events so much as the mainstream media's spin/propaganda.  Caitlin Johnstone repeats often 'that propaganda is only effective if you don't know it is happening.'  And that is why Useful Idiots is important.  They show clips from mainstream media broadcasts and then break the words down that contain the deception. The most common giveaway of propaganda is the use of

I get tires from Walmart, not just for the low price, but because a traveler likes to get tires rotated and flats fixed for free, so the tire store needs the geographical reach of your travel habits.  But of course it takes some luck to have a Walmart tire department close to your flat tire.  How far are you going to drive to save $10 on getting a flat fixed? $10?  Who am I kidding?   Actually I expected $25 as the new price.   There was a Les Schwab in this eastern Oregon agricultural community, but didn't they stop fixing flat tires for free, several years ago? I sprayed soapy water on the tire valve and saw bubbles, and told the tire guy about it.   They did fix my leaking tire valve for free, even though it was "somebody else's" tire.  I was shocked.   Outside the grocery store, at an Oregon Trail visitor kiosk, a fellow was panhandling.  But he understood his customer: it was a rural town after all.  So his sign said, "Need Work."  I gave him the money

What a luxury it is to look at wide open spaces, covered by green grass or herbaceous plants!   Locally there aren't too many woody-stemmed plants such as sagebrush.   My little dog can run wild and free, without impaling herself on a cactus or cholla.  If only there was a herd of wild horses rampaging across this rolling landscape!  It's too bad that cameras are unimpressed by gently rolling land. Here is a video of my little monster playing on some sand dunes along the Oregon Trail: Not so many miles away, the Oregon Trail cuts away from the Snake River.  A few miles later, it rejoins the Snake.  And then it says "farewell" forever to the Snake. Of course the pioneers went through this area in late summer when it was parched and barren.  And they described it as such, in their diaries.  How many times do I have to say it?  Get to the northwest by the first of May!

In the early days of the internet, blogs were the modern equivalent of the morning newspaper.  But ever since You Tube got big, the internet has become the television set.   The smartphone can convert your voice to text.  Presumably this capability will improve over time. Audiobooks are starting to replace paper books for me.  I have no idea how general this trend is. Taken together, these trends almost imply that writing and reading are becoming obsolete.  I have mixed feelings about that.  Do any of us have the same loyalty to the written word that we have to our spoken language? It might be true that the development of writing was one of the big steps in civilization.  (It's odd that I have never read a history book dedicated to the single topic of writing.)   Writing had advantages: it added permanence to our thoughts and communications, and it eliminated the need for face-to-face communication. There are other ways to provide these advantages.  Even before the age of modern el