Occupation of Independence

Every now and then I read an editorial that makes me want to jump up and cheer. I saw one such piece by Eric Margolis today , "Fury at the American Raj." Recently Mish Shedlock made an astute comment on why Romney will lose the election: the GOP doesn't have enough appeal to independents, who hate Perma-War and the huge waste of national resources on "defense", which really means global empire of course. In fact the Republican party today stands for little else other than war against every country in the Mideast that hates Israel and has oil or other resources. It wasn't so long ago that foreign policy was seen as a strength of the Republican party. That was obliterated by George W. Bush and his neocon advisers. Rather than repudiate this recent perversion, Romney has embraced it.  What geniuses the Republicans are! Many Americans of all political stripes would love to see Wall Street bankers go to jail or at least get a firm smack-down. And who do the

Southwest of Monte Vista CO, national forest, over 9000 feet. The aspen were at their peak blaze. I enjoyed it for -- forgive me -- a few seconds, and then looked for more interesting things to think about. After slamming one of the holiest cliches of the tourism industry, I should propose an alternative. I'll do so shortly. Seriously, why do people waste time and money to go to look at yellow aspens? Sure, bright yellow is a fun color, but you could stay at home, close your eyes, and imagine the color yellow. It would be just as vivid. If your imagination needs help you could buy a blue-ray DVD travelogue put out by National Geographic, say, "America's Top Ten Fall Color Road Tours." Don't underestimate how good the modern big screen televisions have become. If you are still not satisfied because your retinas haven't yet registered all that they are physiologically capable of, then go to menu-setup and blast the contrast or saturation on the television scr

Hmmm....it looks like thermal collapse in a couple days in southern Colorado. Here I go again. After 15 years of full time RVing there is still a nervous drama to. I still feel anxiety about the fall migration, so much so in fact that it's a bit embarrassing. Or is it? Although I can't really explain it, it seems that I must be doing something right if I still have strong feelings about the migration, after all these years.  But why do I only get emotional about the autumn migration, and not the spring migration? You'd think that it would be symmetric. But there is something that I can explain: it is important to resist hitch-itch in migrating too far south too fast. It's not that the warmer desert locations aren't appealing. I like them well enough. But in migrating south, imagine pouring yourself and your rig into a conical funnel whose downstream tip is at Yuma, AZ. As you proceed "downstream", North America keeps shrinking. Your options become fe

Del Norte, CO. Considering what public land management has become these days, you have to envy the crony capitalist who gets the government contract for signage. This was the first time I ever saw a sign like this. A list of Do-s and Don'ts is on the bottom, too small to read in the photo. So we were cautious on our first mountain bike ride on the open range out here. But there was no sign of sheep or "livestock protection" dogs. Perhaps it's the wrong time of year. How grand it would be to run across a Basque shepherd and learn a little about the grazing racket. (So far, I'm only familiar with grazing at Costco on "open range Saturdays.") Better yet, I'd like to ride over a ridge, look across a sagebrush flat to a ridge on the other side, and see a white Great Pyrenees dog protecting his charge against the depredations of coyote, wolf, and cougar.

"Tawniness" is the perfect camouflage on BLM land, and yet the beast's tawny color was so bright in the morning light that I could see him more than a half mile away. The bright tawniness doesn't come through in the photograph, but let's hope the reader won't claim that he can't see the mountain lion in the photograph: its ears erect and alert, waiting and warming in the morning sun, perching on a ridge, ready to leap down on its unsuspecting prey and grab its neck. Soon this mountain biker would be on the trail right in front of nature's most magnificent predator, and below him.    But as it turned out, the morning was a little less disastrous than all of that. Nature's most magnificent predator turned out to be a broken tree, with prongs that made it look like ears. I claimed to be disappointed. How silly! This is what happens when you read Jack London's White Fang the night before an outing. Early in White Fang's puppyhood h