Occupation of Independence

Soon after most people become acquainted with the RV travel blogosphere, they start to see patterns, enough so that they might classify them like this: RV 101 blogs. How to. Chock full of useful information for newbies. They work pretty hard for their nickels and dimes of Google ad income. Too bad there are so many minute details, which are intended to be practical but really aren't, since the reader's circumstances are different than the blogger's. Readers can feel insulted when such blogs appear to offer friendly advice to a "fellow" RVer, but then the reader learns he is just a chump being hit with a thinly-disguised ad. (The Linkbait Syndrome; it gets 'em every time.) Ah dear, the sordid topic of coin... RV travelogues. Where are Fred and Mildred today ? Aimed at armchair travelers and RV wannabees, these blogs offer pleasant entertainment as long as you live life purely through your eyeballs; mentally you will leave the blog completely starved. Final

Once again it's time for the annual Valentine's Day peroration. Hopefully this version won't make me as unpopular as the last one . It would be nice to have the advantage of my boondocking neighbor: she nonchalantly dismisses RV wives as "all needing mansions on wheels" or being afraid to dry camp and preferring to stay in RV parks with hookups. Nobody is offended when she says it. I should be so lucky. I probably wouldn't be writing any of this if an ad during the Super Bowl hadn't outraged me. Yes, outraged -- somebody who isn't a part of TV culture can retain the ability to be outraged at cultural depravity. The ad featured a half-nude "ho" giving a pitch for some kind of Valentine's Day goodie that men were supposed to remember to buy for their honeys. Her punchline went something like, "It's simple, guys. Give and ye shall receive. (wink, wink.)" Try to imagine the male analogue of that trashy ad. I can't come

Small flowers are popping up everywhere right now in the Sonoran Desert, courtesy of the rain last November and December, presumably. Nothing seemed extreme when I took this photograph, but now I have to wonder whether the camera was malfunctioning, perhaps because I was aiming too close to the sun. No, the camera seems OK. The backlighting is bringing out the yellow in the desert flower that ordinarily is not noticeable. It's strange that our notion about "color" in nature is usually aimed at reflective colors rather than transmitted colors. We hardly ever think about it. This suggests some idea of wider applicability. But what is it?

Fred Reed is one of my favorite writers. I don't know how many venues he uses; LewRockwell dotcom is the one I'm used to using to read him. Yesterday he really outdid himself . It seemed worthy of a long quote: I wonder whether something else is not involved. Today most of us live in profound isolation from the natural world. People in large cities can go for decades without seeing the stars. Should they drive through the countryside, it will be in a closed automobile with the air-conditioning running. On a trip to the beach, the sand will be overrun by hordes of people, half of them on whining jet skis. We exist utterly in a manmade cocoon, as much as desert termites in their mud towers. This, I think, profoundly alters our inner landscapes. Live in the rolling hills around Austin, say, as they were before they were turned

It's so much easier to find political opinions on the internet these days, compared to the dead tree era. Remember how you could travel from one end of the country to the other and buy newspapers that featured the same six pundits on the editorial page? But even though there are more choices today, dualism gets in the way of enjoying political essays. You're either on my side or the other side, Good versus Evil, left versus right, big government versus small, blue versus red states, etc. That's why the ideal political essay should try to stay away from this trap. It should reach out to opinions and values that aren't necessarily "political" in the normal sense of the word. Besides avoiding simplistic and divisive dualisms, we should also avoid excessive consistency and predictability. For instance Eric Peters writes about automobile regulations from a libertarian point of view. At times I agree with him; at other times, he irritates me with his gearhead cu