Occupation of Independence

 When you forget about the usual (visual) orientation of human visitors to the desert, and look at it from the viewpoint of shoes and tires and dog paws, you might appreciate the importance of different types of texture.  Eskimos are supposed to have many different words for snow .  And we have the same need in the desert for all the different forms of texture: round (alluvial) gravel , sharp volcanic rocks , coarse and packed sand in arroyos, powdery dust, hardpacked desert pavement , good or bad traction, and cholla segments . I saw a new form of texture yesterday that I never thought of before, in the desert.  It was a deja vu experience.  Way back when, I ran across the advertisements for some kind of landscaping service, called " Barefoot Lawn ."  What wonderful, nostalgic images that brought to mind!  It makes a person think of running across the lawn when you were a child, on summer vacation. That is what this image brought to mind: My little d...

Several times on this blog, I have quoted Samuel Johnson 's "...as I have gotten older, I have come to call a man a good man on easier terms than before." (not an exact quote.) A corollary is to have humbler expectations of the human condition.  And that approach certainly works with You Tube .  AI rubbish is ruining You Tube.  But what can a person do about it? It has helped me to focus on some of You Tube's successes, such as musical performances .  Although it really makes no sense to make a video of instrumental music or singing, it is still a good and free way to become acquainted with music you didn't know about.  And for opera , a video does make sense. Thanks to a few seconds of opera in a movie I was rewatching, the "noooo more Rice Krispies , they're all gone, the Riiiiice Kriiiiispies!" song was brought to my attention.  You Tube had several versions of the song available.  They are all wonderful.  My favorite  "Vesti la Giubba...

The wild burros -- maybe we should call them feral -- are entertaining me this winter.  The 'grass' is so green and thick, you'd think they would be getting fat.  Maybe it would be worth reading up on the burro lifestyle , but I am usually disappointed when I look something up on Wikipedia . Anyway, I am camped in a new area and the burros are back.  I hear them braying at night.  When do they sleep?  But none have walked up to my screen door to panhandle.

  I got an email from a financial website on Substack, entitled Pivot and Flow (J.L. Bernstein).  At first I was inclined to delete it, but held up for some reason.  Then the story hit me like a punch in the gut. "She Bought a Burrito on an Interest-Free Installment Plan She's 28, sitting in her car in the Chipotle parking lot, her thumb hovering over 'Pay in 4.' It's a $34 order.  Two burritos, chips, a drink.  Her son's inside with her mom.  He's seven and he asked for Chipotle because his friend's family gets Chipotle and he wanted to know what it tastes like. She knows she shouldn't.  But her checking account has $47 until Friday.  Rent took everything.  The light bill ate the rest.  She picked up an extra shift but that won't hit until next week.  She clicks 'Pay in 4.' Here's what we built: a system so elegant that a mother can finance her son's first burrito with no human interaction at all.  No bank teller to look her i...

 There certainly are real news events happening everyday that are worth paying attention to.  But from another point of view, specific events are not strategic.  The over-arching strategy of the Adelson-Trump-Netanyahu regime is to get Americans used to the idea that militarized goons working for Washington DC are entitled to use IDF (Israeli Defense Force) tactics and methods both outside and inside America. Once IDF methods come to be seen as normal law enforcement methods, then the genocide in Gaza will not even be news anymore.  That would be  the Promised Land  for Adelson-Trump-Netanyahu. In the meantime I need to think about something pleasant, like the wettest winter in years, in the Arizona desert: Here is a nice scene in central Utah that has nothing to do with this post:

 When following the news it is natural to become angry or discouraged.  There is nothing wrong in looking for comfort.  Human beings are not infinitely strong.  Once again I ran to the Battle of Midway as a way to keep from spiraling down into despair because of current news.      This is not an endorsement for permanent escapism.  Yes, the Battle of Midway.  You can find books, movies, and documentaries, sometimes for free on You Tube if you use the Brave browser . What would be a good visual representation of what I am saying above?  In Arizona , it would be winter rain and grass carpeting the desert : Or it might be clouds and shadows :

 Should I buy a weedwhacker or lawnmower?  The southwestern desert is filling in with so much green grass-like vegetation!  There is supposed to be a secondary rainy season in the desert southwest, but you don't get it every year. But we are getting it this year.  The wild burros must be fattening up and feeling their animal spirits, if you know what I mean.  The gestation period for a burro is about 12 months, so next winter there should be quite a baby-boom of little burritos. My skin just feels so good with the moister air.  There is a challenge with all this greenery: letting it impress the hell out of you, despite it not being spectacular tourist scenery. It is almost humorous to me to imagine the dissatisfaction that Canadian (and Puget Sound) snowbirds must be feeling right now.  They don't understand what I am ranting about.  They came here to sit in a folding chair, and to wear their shorts and sandals, with the sun hitting their face! (...

 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...