Occupation of Independence

We can all admire people who suffer in silence -- but only if the suffering is unavoidable. When a snowbird/camper is too warm in Arizona in mid-winter, it is because they are following the calendar, rather than the thermometer. But I'm proud of myself for surviving through January. Fare ye well, Desert. It's off to grassland and oaks for me. There may be a smart-a&& commenter who wonders how this agrees with my praise of Suffering, when camping. Remember that there are two distinct types of suffering: 1) noble and voluntary suffering, and 2) the merely disgusting kind.  Type 1 ennobles Man. He can visualize it in a way that inspires him to crawl out of the banal routines of daily existence. Type 2 is meaningless. And I would put Heat in the second kind.  

Once again I have been wasting my time shopping for a new van or pickup truck to serve as my tow vehicle. The best news is that one of the salesmen and I had a good chuckle over the list of "options": intermittent windshield wipers, clock, leather wrap for steering wheel...'fine Corinthian leather' presumably. Alas I cannot find a Chevy Express van with a locking differential, denoted by a code, G80, on the sticker of codes in the glovebox. This confuses the salespeople to no end: it is doubtful they even know what a 'differential' is. Think of the insanity of the automobile industry: the locking differential is a $350 option. Most of the customers would pay that much for the  #05 Premium Cupholder Convenience package, featuring simulated imported Italian marble. But it is a rare used van that will have the G80 option. Model year 2017 is the last year for the venerable GM Vortec engine in the van.  If you are the kind of person who thinks that used truck

From time to time I revisit the metaphor in the original "Star Trek". The guest star was Joan Collins. The Enterprise boys encounter a "Time Portal", that showed images of the Past in quick succession. If they jumped through at just the right second, they would be transported back to the time and place of the images. When fantasizing about that sort of transportation, it is easy to choose a time and place: I would go back to the very beginning of any significant mass-movement in history. They would all be fascinating. Imagine traveling with St. Paul, Mohammed, Joseph Smith, France in 1789, Lenin, or Hitler before they showed up on historians' radar screen. (I suppose Gandhi's early career is known best.) What makes this timely enough to write about is my involvement with a couple new organizations. Real world experience may easily be more informative than a shelf of historical lumber.  As an example consider the 1200 page book I am currently reading a

Is this a new trend or did I just notice it for the first time, perhaps because of my biases? I noticed so many motorsports people running around the Arizona desert with American flags on the back of their machine. Sometimes they go to quite a bit of work erecting a flagpole back at camp. Doesn't that seem strange to you? What is the point of adorning sports equipment with the American flag? Maybe fishermen should tape a little American flag to the end of their poles. That might be kind of fun to watch if they are fly fishermen. What are the 'motos' trying to say -- that their sport is more patriotic than others? And what does any sport have to do with patriotism? Perhaps in their febrile imaginations, their Polaris Ranger -- blasting around in the Arizona desert -- is like a military Humvee, blasting around in the desert of some Mideastern country. Therefore they are 'supporting the troops, who are protecting our freedom.' A strange game is going on in the mi