Occupation of Independence

 Now that You Tube is flooded with fake (AI) videos, people have to make a decision.  Are they going to waste their lives watching crap produced by a computer algorithm, or will they go back to books, the written word.  Of course the world of books isn't perfect either. I don't know if we can reasonably expect any improvements in the world of books .  But there are possible improvements in how we read.  Do you feel guilty unless you read the lumber from cover to cover?  Do you really benefit from 400 pages of verbiage about a topic, no matter how potentially interesting and important the topic is?  For the most part, reading is an unnatural and tedious way to kill time. But it has advantages. Perhaps reading should imitate what I have recently advertised about walking: that we need to 'unclench the fists' while walking; we need to forget about 'how far? and how fast?'; that we need to frolic like a dog, investigating an arroyo. Thinking along these ...

Aren't you surprised by the alarmism that pervades the media coverage of winter storms ?  I envy the people in the High Sierra ( Donner Pass and Truckee ) for their glorious snowstorms.  Granted, difficulty with driving can create emergencies in some situations.   But there are a lot of false crises, resulting from driving too fast, driving without chains, and poor planning with household supplies.  These result from thinking that mother nature is not supposed to have an effect on human life, and that one day is supposed to be just like all the others. I have watched ten videos from the High Sierra and fluttered my eyelashes through all of them.  Yes, that could be simple hypocrisy.  Arizona in the winter provides great sleeping weather , no insects, hardly any mud, and sunny skies. But there is something ignoble about comfort.  The soul yearns for a rigorous test and challenge, something grander and nobler, such as they are getting in the Hi...

 The news from Britain is hard to believe: the Starmer regime is practicing censorship that seems completely un-British.  Think of how this turns its back on centuries of proud English traditions.  Maybe this is a good thing because it give the modern English a chance to show some of the heroism that their ancestors showed.  Or maybe the greatness shown by a country happens only once, and is never to be seen again. I have read quite a bit of history, but does it really help to judge modern England's chances to recover? A great decision also faces Americans.  Are they content to go the way of declining, bankrupt, overly militarized empires?  Will they reclaim at least some of the Constitution that is currently being flushed down the toilet by Trump?  My guess is that America is unredeemable.  Let's hope Britain at least produces some good news.

 The other day I was trying to make a loop out of a ride in a canyon area.   This caused me to return on a paved highway for a bit longer than I usually do, these days.  In fact, I usually avoid paved roads because there are too many cars driving too fast, with drivers who are too distracted. After returning home, I lapsed into the deep, mid-day trance that always happened during my road cycling years.  It had been so long that I had forgotten about it.  There is nothing in this old world of ours that beats a reverie or daydream after exercise, while hearing or imagining a musical score by John Barry , Bernard Herrmann , or Patrick Doyle .  It seems more restful than sleep itself, and better yet, you are conscious of it while it is happening. How common is this trait?  How would you even know?  It isn't exactly what most people would call an athletic talent, but it might be a talent that actually does more good.  Little is said about th...

 Put yourself in the shoes of an Israel-firster.  How would you go about selling war-crimes and slaughter to the world?  It would really need some creativity and persistence from you.  Perhaps, as with many difficult projects, it would be best to proceed indirectly.  For example, an army might choose to avoid a direct frontal attack on a fortified position by going  around the fortified obstacle. That point of view is useful in considering Trump/ Hegseth 's embarrassing and shameful approach to regime change in Venezuela.  Recall Hegseth's despicable speech condemning "stupid rules of engagement."  He actually let the cat out of the bag: oil, leftist government, and narco-terrorism are just noise and obfuscation.  It is a giant deception. What the Israel-first Trump regime really cares about is getting Americans used to the idea of their own military acting criminally and murderously -- that is, like the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces.)  ...

 Northwestern Arizona.  Years ago, I pretty much gave up on trying to talk to "fellow campers."  It didn't seem like we had much in common, my activities are unpopular, and I decided that dogs are better company.  So my dog and I went on a bike ride today and tried to find a connected loop.  The route worked quite well. But something strange and unexpected happened.  I had three high quality conversations on the route.  The other people seemed to enjoy hearing me and vica-versa.  One fellow was from Scotland.  In fact, the Hebrides.  When I started talking about the travel book by Johnson and Boswell to the Hebrides, he really lit up. How nice it would be if this sort of thing happened more often.  But I think it is right to not expect it to happen, and not try to make it happen .  When it wants to happen, it will.  Just accept it as a free gift of the gods. There was some sad news too.  The other day I saw an SUV pu...

 Occasionally I ridicule tourists on this blog.  Once in a great while.  So I felt pretty ashamed to surrender to panhandling burros , yesterday.  It wouldn't have happened if I hadn't been systematically victimized by those 'mother dog asks for help' meme-videos on You Tube.  So when the mother burro approached my camper with two cyootsie-wootsie offspring in tow, I finally succumbed.  Altogether the herd reached five burros. Had I just created a monster?  Would the moochers be back the next day, looking for their next welfare check? In the middle of night their noise woke me up.  It was more than braying and hee-hawing.  Perhaps they were fighting to get to the head of the line.  There were scratching or scuffing sounds.  They had knocked over my laundry bucket to get at the water.  The lid restricted the leakage of water, so the burro was trying to knock the lid loose, I guess.  Finally I got out of bed and shined a f...

 Everybody likes wild burros and so do I.  But they represent something more than cuteness.  Only a tough and admirable creature could make a living in such a gawd-forsaken place.  Maybe it isn't so far down to the Colorado River for water, but what is there to eat around here. Rubble?  Try to imagine their lives.  Every bit of effort you make in that direction pulls you one step above the average tourist. And yet, ironically, these noble creatures work the tourist trade shamelessly.   They virtually block traffic on the highway, and won't let you pass until you have "paid up."  The smartest ones are the mothers who bring their offspring into town and charm the socks off the Japanese tourists.  It's a living. But what is going through the burro's mind?  Are they degraded and humiliated?  Surely they must look off into the distance, and pine for something better, like Ferdinand the Duck in the movie, "Babe:" "...it eats away a...

 What a difference a cold north wind can make to Arizona .  It dissolves the horribleness of the state.  After a summer of only a small bit of walking, this cold wind makes hiking the best thing to do.  Sometimes, the wind even disappears because of the arroyo banks or canyon walls.  But I love the way the wind hits your skin and charges up your soul-battery.  As usual we walked on a loop through arroyos that I wasn't too sure of.   The little dog had an easy time running on the smoothed pebbles in an arroyo. There was a surprisingly large blotch of lichen on a north-facing wall along the little canyon.  Perhaps the strangest example I've ever seen.  There were more barrel cactuses around than I remembered.  What handsome plants they are! Plants can grow in the most unlikely places: This kind of hiking is unpopular.  Most people look up brand-name hikes on the apps, I guess.  They usually go to the top of a mountain --...

 Can you believe how congressional Republicans are just sitting there, doing nothing, while Trump 2.0 pulls the building down on their heads? There are lots of (usually) astute political commentators out there who are being naive about Trump 2.0's saber rattling in the Caribbean.  It is only partly about blocking Leftism , or defending the Monroe Doctrine , or getting the oil of Venezuela . Trump 2.0 is deliberately creating a distraction with Venezuela so that you won't pay attention to: 1.  Trump's war against Russia in the Ukraine is turning into a real defeat.  He will get the blame for this.  He won't be able to play the 'this is Biden's war' card. 2.  Israel is slaughtering people in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria and seizing their land.  On any given day, they can commit another atrocity that gets headline attention. Trump is happy as long as the American public is being fooled.  It doesn't matter what it takes.  Double-taps...

 Normally I don't post sunset photos on my blog.  But I do like to look at mountains that are getting more red sunset-light than usual.  I stepped outside my camper's door to see this: Very pleasing.  Only then did I turn to the west to see this: It was quite a shock, enough to make me break my own rule about not putting sunset photos on this blog.  Let it be known that no AI or even editing software was used.   Since AI can take a pile of dog crap and make it look like a beautiful sunset, will the world simply abandon sunset photos?  It might as well.  So that photo is my last hurrah.  Perhaps photography will begin to die when everything seems fake. Will You Tube find a way to filter out -- or at least label -- AI videos ?  I find myself steering clear of certain types of videos because they are obviously fake.  But it won't be so easy for You Tube to clarify the issue.  When does mere photo editing software become...

 One of the things that is good about old age is that you are forced to confront the brutal truth that the universe doesn't revolve around your own ego, which in fact, will soon be gone.  Freed of that delusion, you can pay more attention to other people in the world.  Sometimes these people have remarkable and admirable qualities that deserve more notice and praise. For instance, my camping neighbor .  Normally I am resentful towards camping neighbors.  I dreaded the coming conversation with this oldster.  You know how it goes: endless, long-winded anecdotes, told with irrelevant details.  Sometimes a single anecdote can turn into a 10 minute soliloquy that bores the listener to death.  Then they forget many of the details and hold things up even more. But this guy had none of those faults.  He had many anecdotes that fit into the topic of conversation  -- and it did feel like a conversation because his stories only lasted three senten...

 It seems like every "fall back" season, when Daylight Time goes back to Standard Time , I am traveling near the junctions of Utah , Arizona , and Nevada .  What a mess that makes! I start off with Mountain Daylight Time , then Mountain Standard , then Arizona Time , and finally Pacific Standard .  The only thing I miss is Pacific Daylight . I hate resetting the clock in the van.  Various electronic devices in my trailer do not adjust themselves -- perhaps they would if I spent an hour wading through the Settings menu.  The phone is the only gadget that is adjusted automatically, but I have always wondered if it uses the Time at the celltower or the time at the phone's location. And my poor little dog.  When do I feed her?  She only cares about the Tummy Time Zone. Still, this area makes for a nice visit.  Yes St. George Utah now has the traffic of Las Vegas .  What a skill it is to allow yourself to visit a place that used to b e good, and...

 Has it finally come to this?  The Traitor-in-Chief in the White House calls MTG a "traitor", despite his ambassador to Israel, Huckabee , having had a meeting with a convicted spy and traitor, Jonathan Pollard . Is there no limit to how craven the US government can be towards Israel? Anyway,  Kim Iversen deserves to be praised for her recent video on this topic. Maybe it is time to plant FBI agents in the congregations of Protestant Evangelical churches , make Christian Zionists register as foreign agents, and keep them on electronic bracelets in the mean time. The Wall of Shame for American politicians

  Israel's war of extermination in Gaza has radicalized me.  It has made me openly contemptuous of anything connected with the old Canaanite storm god, Jahweh. (Or El , if you prefer.)  This bumped my You Tube algorithm towards the " Cold Reason " channel.  Typically they beat up on Christianity, probably because it is an easy and obvious target.  I would rather see them go after other religions, for a change.  And they finally did:  They savaged Buddhism recently. Buddhism usually gets a lot of good press, but does it really deserve it?  Perhaps it gets off too easily, just because it is a non-Abrahamic religion  and because the European and American audience wants to rebel against the religion of its parents. Buddhism likes to promise tranquillity, coming from the extinction of desire  and pulling away from the world.  But we will all be peaceful enough when we are dead, so why brag up Quiescence while we are still alive? In ...

 I did a double-take when I saw the sign at the grocery cart corral: Was the grocery store bragging about not charging you for a grocery cart?  What the heck was going on? Next to this line of grocery carts was another: Now they are bragging about not needing an app to go grocery shopping?  Wait a minute: they had tablets built into the dashboard of the grocery cart! And fancy charging stations for the grocery cart tablets.  Can someone please explain how this lowers the price of groceries ? What is the purpose of the tablets, anyway?  Was it to encourage you to use digital coupons, something that I never use in stores?  Actually I never understood the purpose of coupons of any kind. Ahh, but wait.  The real purpose of electronic tablets attached to the grocery carts must be to force advertisements and obnoxious music on the shopper, like those damn videos and music at the gas pump. Recall that funny dialog in " The Mirror Has Two Faces ," when t...

 What's the official inflation rate these days?  2.9%?  And they wonder why ordinary people don't believe the government anymore.  I looked twice because I was so shocked.  The washer was a large one; it should have cost $5 or so. There weren't any customers there.  And I left too.  There was an old-fashioned laundromat a few blocks anyway that had good machines and reasonable prices. A long-suffering reader probably thinks, "Why should we listen to you?  You are just an old cheap-skate." But actually, I happily spend a little more at laundromats that have an attendant who keeps things clean and orderly.  I don't mind spending a little more if it is going to a real person. But the laundromat with the $11 washer had been redesigned to look like a Starbucks or something.  Let me guess: some giant Wall Street firm like Blackrock is buying up small, modestly priced, old-fashioned laundromats across American, and then "upscaling" them.  ...

 Most people born before 1980 have memories of the demise of the Soviet Union around 1990 and 1991.  Do you remember how unreal and sudden it seemed?  It seemed too good to be true.  At the time, I wondered most about how nuclear weapons were going to be divided up amongst the constituent parts of the old Soviet Union. Much to everyone's relief, the world made it through those times without any mushroom clouds.  Then Wall Street went to work on the Soviet carcass.  And NATO began expanding.  The military-security industry shifted its justification from the Cold War to the Global War on Terror . And now many Baby Boomers have lived to see another extraordinary political earthquake: the sudden dissolution of Zionist support in the USA.  Of course, I am only talking about public opinion.  How exactly will this trickle up to the institutions?  It is hard to imagine a tangible path.  The political elites in Europe and America have...

 It can take so many years to become a good walker , but it is worth the thought and effort.  I was camped in such a nice place and with such good weather that I fell easily into a slow, leisurely sauntering.  Perhaps the slowness helped me spot a pretty and rare orange flower , at the beginning of November.  At this time of year?  Flowers seemed completely out of place, here. A couple days later, the small handful of such flowers was gone. I have always appreciated autumn flowers .  They are, to the more voluptuous flowers of early summer, what a sturdy, dependable 35 year old wife is to a beautiful 19 year old girl. Having a good role model certainly helps one become a good walker, and you know who mine is: If you think I praise dogs too much, the photo above shows that humans can add something positive to the world.  What care somebody had gone to, in building this emergency shelter !  Still, dogs really do have the right attitude to being good...

' Wadi ' is an Arabic term that you might remember from the movie, " Lawrence of Arabia ."  It is a valley that is dry most of the year, and sees water flow a couple days per year.  My area in central Utah has a wadi with a lot of mud deposited on the floor.  But water concentrates and carves out steep-walled slots 10 to 20 feet deep, in this otherwise flat area. The edge of the slot is almost a perfect 90 degree corner.  I was reluctant to walk within 3 feet of this edge, out of fear of it crumbling away.  Looking along the mud slot I could see a lot of places where the walls had collapsed.  In the narrower slots, this would trap a man. But I poked at those 90 degree corners with my hiking pole, and found them surprisingly strong. My little sweetie pie walked along the edge, close enough to give her daddy a heart attack.  At one spot she stumbled when she was only a couple inches from the edge.  But she quickly recovered. She might not have been...

Central Utah .  Most scenery tourists go ga-ga over redrock cliffs , canyons , and arches .  After all these years, I still enjoy seeing such things and look forward to my October migration through Utah.   But once a 10,000 foot, sheer vertical, fire engine red cliff becomes a standard postcard, it loses its aura of mystique.  The human mind yearns for a sense of wonder, and that can only come from being  surprised.  Such as vertical arroyo walls in mud :  Yes, I laugh at myself for preferring this kind of scenery.  But I can't help it.  We will return to this "slot" canyon soon, unsnap the doggie, and enjoy a genuine exploration.  Free of the tourist industry .

 Most people probably know someone who has has gone off the deep end when it comes to religion.  They can't make it through the day without popping another religion-pill. Before feeling superior to that person, a non-religious person should admit that human beings need a certain amount of emotional comfort  -- perhaps coming from a violent catharsis --  and if there aren't constructive approaches to that issue, people will be find a bad approach. Let's back up a step and try to summarize the history of Christianity over the last 500 years, in just a few sentences.  The Protestant Reformation brought on a century of religious wars that discredited the whole idea of taking religion seriously.  At the same time, the Scientific Revolution happened. So, in the 1700s, European intellectuals outgrew their Christian traditions .  They had enough common sense not to throw out the 'baby with the bathwater.'  They just wanted to deemphasize sadistic not...

Last post I was up to my old tricks of denigrating intellectuals, theologians, and philosophers, while praising the cyn ical point of view, in the original sense of the word, meaning 'dog-like.'  So it is quite a contradiction to praise purpose in walking.  But how can I resist praising purpose when walking in the desert southwest ?  In the north, hiking trails wind their way to mountain tops.  The path seems random and pointless.  Actually, what good is a mountain peak?  It is just barren rock.  You can't eat it. If you walk in a rocky and jumbled desert landscape, without official trails, you feel lost initially.  But then you forget about yourself and start to melt into the land.  The natural highways are arroyos , dry washes.  Your walk latches onto the arroyo.  You soon become part of a larger purpose: winding and flowing down to the great southwestern Father of Waters, the Colorado River . Every autumn I look forward to these...