Occupation of Independence

One thing that I've learned about being cold is that you reach a point where you just can't put on enough clothes to help. You must move. The only thing possible in a small RV is doing push-ups. I tried that, and with good results. Normally I use closed-cell foam pads underneath my hands for comfort's sake; on this minus 2 F morning, the foam took on a compression-set that recorded an impression of my wrists and palms. I couldn't do push-ups for the next five hours until sunrise, so I popped Lawrence of Arabia into the DVD player, hoping that the desert scenery would warm me up, at least psychologically. It didn't work. There was only one more card to play: going into the campground's shower room and taking a 30 minute, scalding hot shower at their expense. But this seemed unsporting and unmanly, so I declined. What is the appeal of "cold survival" stories? Is it in our DNA? It has been a big part of living for much of the history of our species. R

I woke up at 1 a.m. last week. Something was different. I was just too cold to sleep, despite wearing a winter parka to bed, as well as boots, polartec pants, and a warm skull cap, all underneath two layers of warm sleeping bags. The catalytic propane heater was set on high; those things are fine for a mobile RVer who chases the warmth in winter, but in a real winter they must be supplemented with an electric heater that blows the air around a little. For the first time the electrical heater also needed to be clicked on high. I made breakfast, not because I was hungry, but just for the heat from the stove and for an excuse to stand and stomp my feet. The water pump wouldn't turn on of course. (I never use water hoses from the campsite spigot in winter.) But tonight was a first: the toilet froze. It was necessary to boil water on the stove and then pour it into the toilet to thaw the trap door. The water that I spilled on the bathroom floor soon froze. The thermometer said it w

It's probably true that a blogger is getting lazy and isn't adding that much value if he slips into being a mere retailer of other people's original content. Still, sometimes I can't resist. Finding a needle in the internet haystack does have a certain amount of value. Here is an audio clip by Eric Margolis, a writer who actually knows something about America's Raj in southwest Asia and the Middle East. You won't hear about him in the mainstream media. You can just push the play button to hear the audio clip on your computer. You don't have to have some gadget like an iPod.

You probably wouldn't believe me if I claimed there was already a movie about the Egyptian uprising. OK, that would be an exaggeration. But movies can sometimes express the nature of political maneuvering better than thick, scholarly books that bury the essence of things under a mountain of extraneous details. There is no excuse to do so, because politics is not terribly intellectual or complex. It is irritating to wade through 500 pages of verbiage to get at the point of the whole thing. For instance, in Braveheart a rebellion starts up in Scotland, against the English king. The lairds of Scotland had lands and titles in both Scotland and England. They played a duplicitous game regarding the rebellion, and it came across so clearly in the movie. I have no particular criticism to aim at the current president regarding his handling of the Egyptian uprising, since if the other party was in the White House they might have already sent in the Marines while they gave speeches promisi

Most of my grocery shopping is done at an Albertson's that is a five minute walk from my RV park. They made quite a fuss out of rearranging the store recently, moving things from one aisle to the next. It wasn't a remodeling or an improvement; just a reshuffling. Over the years I've memorized the prices pretty well. The store actually has great loss-leader sales, which are the only things I buy. It has always surprised me that a security guard doesn't block my entrance into the store. During all the commotion of the great reshuffling I noticed that some of the prices had gone up 25%. Or had I noticed them? Maybe my memory was playing tricks on me. Say, wait a minute, I still have a good memory. Something else was going on, and it smelled fishy. The last few days the news media has actually done a little honest-to-goodness investigative reporting about repackaging at the grocery store. For example the food company can reduce the size of the product from 16 ounces to 14