Occupation of Independence

Once again I have been wasting my time shopping for a new van or pickup truck to serve as my tow vehicle. The best news is that one of the salesmen and I had a good chuckle over the list of "options": intermittent windshield wipers, clock, leather wrap for steering wheel...'fine Corinthian leather' presumably. Alas I cannot find a Chevy Express van with a locking differential, denoted by a code, G80, on the sticker of codes in the glovebox. This confuses the salespeople to no end: it is doubtful they even know what a 'differential' is. Think of the insanity of the automobile industry: the locking differential is a $350 option. Most of the customers would pay that much for the  #05 Premium Cupholder Convenience package, featuring simulated imported Italian marble. But it is a rare used van that will have the G80 option. Model year 2017 is the last year for the venerable GM Vortec engine in the van.  If you are the kind of person who thinks that used truck

From time to time I revisit the metaphor in the original "Star Trek". The guest star was Joan Collins. The Enterprise boys encounter a "Time Portal", that showed images of the Past in quick succession. If they jumped through at just the right second, they would be transported back to the time and place of the images. When fantasizing about that sort of transportation, it is easy to choose a time and place: I would go back to the very beginning of any significant mass-movement in history. They would all be fascinating. Imagine traveling with St. Paul, Mohammed, Joseph Smith, France in 1789, Lenin, or Hitler before they showed up on historians' radar screen. (I suppose Gandhi's early career is known best.) What makes this timely enough to write about is my involvement with a couple new organizations. Real world experience may easily be more informative than a shelf of historical lumber.  As an example consider the 1200 page book I am currently reading a

Is this a new trend or did I just notice it for the first time, perhaps because of my biases? I noticed so many motorsports people running around the Arizona desert with American flags on the back of their machine. Sometimes they go to quite a bit of work erecting a flagpole back at camp. Doesn't that seem strange to you? What is the point of adorning sports equipment with the American flag? Maybe fishermen should tape a little American flag to the end of their poles. That might be kind of fun to watch if they are fly fishermen. What are the 'motos' trying to say -- that their sport is more patriotic than others? And what does any sport have to do with patriotism? Perhaps in their febrile imaginations, their Polaris Ranger -- blasting around in the Arizona desert -- is like a military Humvee, blasting around in the desert of some Mideastern country. Therefore they are 'supporting the troops, who are protecting our freedom.' A strange game is going on in the mi

The old adage about 'god is in the details' applies to so many things. Nowhere is it better illustrated than in camping. The vast majority of campgrounds are terrible places to camp. Please don't tempt me to illustrate. In America (and maybe a couple other countries?) we have been fortunate enough to have the option of "dispersed camping" outside established campgrounds, and by yourself. This is probably the best outdoor experience you could have. But for years dispersed camping (and other types of access to public lands) has been under persistent and relentless attack by the land control organizations. But they may simply be the Effect. The Cause is likely to be laws passed by Congress, trying to burnish their environmental credentials, as well as rich lawsuit machines (aka, environmental lobbies) and their fellow-travelers sitting on the bench as federal judges. And yet the RV industry and the RV blogosphere have done next to nothing to protect quality cam