Occupation of Independence

 I rewatched the movie, " Gandhi ," recently.  It certainly was an uplifting movie, even if a bit too hagiographic for my tastes.  After watching the movie and perhaps reading Tolstoy  or Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience," you might be tempted to wonder why such ideas have not been tried more often in human history. But we should not forget that Gandhi's methods were partly successful because they were employed against the British Empire , and Britain had a culture of late Victorian idealists and moralists.  What if his methods had been used against Hitler ?  Hitler has been quoted as wondering why the Brits simply didn't kill Gandhi.  Or imagine Gandhi's methods being used against the Roman Empire, etc. Gandhi's Salt March How successful would a Palestinian Gandhi be against the murderous Zionist regime of Netanyahu?  That gets to the point of today's post: what is going to happen to the Gaza Aid Flotilla , currently near Tunisia , I believe?...

  Southeastern Idaho .  Once again I want to write about other outdoorsmen being charming.  They deserve the compliment.  My little dog and I were biking towards another celltower mountain.  We were surrounded by grand ridges of sagebrush, volcanic rocks, and isolated copses of yellowing aspens.   I noticed a familiar pickup truck parked along the side of a dirt road that was becoming so steep that I needed to rest, anyway.  So we looked around for a man.  There he was, on the sagebrush ridge, with a beautiful young German Short-haired Pointer .  He had her half-trained for hunting birds: Hungarian partridges in their case.  Her name was "Spud", appropriately enough for an Idaho dog with an agronomist owner. We must have chatted for 20 minutes.  He looked like he walked off a Cabela's catalog .  I told him how much I admired the " GSP " and had even considered getting one before I got my current miniature poodle mix....

 An avalanche of seasonal pleasure poured down on my head today.  Yesterday it rained a little, which is no small miracle.  It was chilly enough that night to switch over to the winter sleeping bag , for the first time since June.  Then, in the morning, my little dog climbed up into bed and snuggled with me, for warmth presumably, for the first time in months. A bit of dampness to the soil is great for mountain biking .  My little dog and I had a rematch with the ridge we are camping on.  Last time, I pedaled up 60% of it and pushed 40%.  Today I pedaled 100%, with no standing up.  I needed a windbreaker the whole way. Here is a panning video of a gently descending,  neighboring ridge , even grander and more noble than the one we biked up.  Long-suffering readers know that I was fluttering my eyelashes over this ridge: Coming back to camp I had occasion to bask in southern Idaho sunlight outside my trailer door -- normally I dread fa...

 Were people even surprised by how Trump 2.0 reacted to the murder of Charlie Kirk?  Think back to the aftermath of 9/11.  It has become a predictable formula. Political maneuvers after a crisis or emergency show what government is all about.  It is an opportunity to live through an educational episode.  And it shows you how unnecessary complex theories of government are. Think of that quote from H.L. Mencken about "the whole aim of practical politics..."   Never is the wisdom of that quote better illustrated than after some tragic incident brings on a flood of Fear and thirst for Revenge.  Shrewd political operators know how to not let a crisis go to waste.