Occupation of Independence

I wasn't expecting it, but there it was. A long aluminum ladder slid out of a pickup truck in front of me on I-15 near St. George, UT. It slid fast on the pavement, so there would be several seconds before I could run over it. But what if it flipped up onto the windshield! With any luck, it would stay one lane to my left, and I wouldn't run over it at all. But pavement isn't completely uniform, so the sliding ladder was moving over towards my lane. I slowed down and moved to the right. No disaster occurred. How fitting and proper it was that this near-accident involved construction equipment near St. George, where half the economy is in the building trades. Everything I will say about St. George is colored by the fact that I knew the town before the population explosion started in the first years of the new millennium. Today, only the landscape is still recognizable. I doubt that it is much of a housing bargain anymore, unless you are retiring from a giant city, pro

Recall the question I once posed to a couple RVers at a laundromat: which is the worst form of hell, 1) spending eternity using or working at an RV dump, or 2) using a public laundromat. It was unanimous that #2 would be the ultimate hell. In recent years a third option has crept in: receiving a package from Amazon. The difficulty arises from Amazon not letting you choose to have your package shipped to a General Delivery address at a post office. Most of the time they use UPS, but you can't count on it.  Once they were on a "hot streak" with the UPS, so I addressed the package to the poorly manned service counter at the local UPS warehouse. Amazon saw their opportunity, so they sent the package via the US Postal Service. Hence it was rejected at the UPS warehouse. I bring you good news! I just got back from GNC, the vitamin/nutrition/health fad store at a local mall. Just last week they began the service of being an official "Amazon Hub Counter." D

Aren't "blue northers" supposed to happen in Texas? Wow, we had one come through last night. No wonder this town is called "Hurricane." Perhaps we should adopt the Spanish word for storm, 'la tormenta.' Experiencing this thing at 10 p.m. reminds me to stop complaining about howling winds on a typical afternoon in the Southwest.  Last night, the wind noise and trailer-rocking made it difficult to sleep. Even a little scary. It was humbling, too.  Lately I have gotten hooked on Bernard Cornwell's "Saxon Tales" series of historical fiction, taking place at the time of Alfred the Great, when the island of Britain was torn between Christian Anglo-Saxons and pagan Danes. Every now and then, the main character is forced by circumstances to backslide into "Viking mode." Sea adventures and daring-do tend to make me flutter my eyelashes. This is a bit exaggerated with me because my grandfather came from a Baltic island of Sweden, s

How many people around the world saw the video of Syrian civilians pelting the (withdrawing) American vehicles with rocks and vegetables? Did those viewers have the same reaction I did? At first, it was pure schadenfreude. I wondered if that video would be looked back on, someday, as iconic, the 'moment' when Earth started rebelling against the American Empire.  What was it that Emerson said about the Americans at Concord bridge, 'here once embattled farmers stood, and fired the shot heard 'round the world?'  The Syrians were doing something better than firing at the American "heroes", which would have been counter-productive. The Syrians were expressing disdain and mockery. Much of the world may feel the same way about American "heroes" immured in their expensive military toys -- there is something cowardly and bullying about interfering in the affairs of small countries that are none of America's business.   There have been iconic pho