Occupation of Independence

Notice to readers: to find the information that used to be in the margin of my old layout, click on the three parallel lines in the upper right of this page. ______________________________________ I did a double-take when I biked by that van this morning. The lady of the house was resting in her bed, with the van's rear doors open to the glorious morning sun. Rightly or wrongly, I tend to open conversations with mock-scolding about something that the other person is quite proud of. (On "paper" this approach would create an instant enemy. But in person, they can tell you are just funnin' them.)  In this case, the entire roof of a huge Mercedes Sprinter van was covered with solar panels. She got the joke, so we ended up with a nice conversation about their converted van. It was a marvelous piece of D-I-Y work that they deserve to be proud of.  But, several times in the conversation, a yellow light started blinking in the back of my head. I wondered how many of

Is it good or bad to declare solidarity with an animal species other than the one everybody says you belong to? That question is unavoidable as I look out my trailer's door to see a half dozen trekkers per day on their way north on the 800 mile Arizona Trail. Of course I can't know whether they are doing the entire course. How do you explain these people? Is it simply an ego-achievement sort of thing, like running a marathon? Or are they reinventing a religious experience in a post-Christian, secular age? If so, we should call them ' los peregrinos, ' the pilgrims. Or are they actually having fun? If they consider 800 miles of water-less, hot, blistering trudging -- plodding! -- to be fun... well, they aren't the same animal species as me! It is so easy to understand the fun of my dog as we start off in the morning, biking slightly downhill. Soon she is blasting away at 20 mph, even though she is going on 12 years old. We have to run the gauntlet along yard

Guns are in the news, again. There is a way to put that to constructive use, while avoiding the stuff that has been talked to death already. This is easier to do if you have no real interest in the issue of guns or their control, and that is the case with me. Think of how alien gun culture is to the average soccer mom in the big city. Think of how out-of-date gun culture is to modern, city-centered culture, where all the money and votes are. And yet gun ownership is still alive! How do you explain the success of the gun lobby in defending their hobby? There has got to be a lesson in their success for anybody in any organization which wants to succeed. Somebody should write a book on this.  I do not want to talk about 'gun control.' I want to talk about how a lobby can succeed when everything seems stacked against it.

My first year with a smartphone is coming to a close. It has confirmed what I've believed for years: wait, wait, and wait some more with new technology and then give in. You win on everything. As impressive as smartphone technology is, there is another new 'gadget' in my house that impresses me more. My new toothbrush. I am not being facetious. I actually look forward to brushing my teeth.  It's not electric. It's the Oral B brand, and appears made with a good design and materials. You can actually notice the improvement. This is the first premium toothbrush I have ever bought. I used to get freebies from American dentists. Maybe they just weren't that good. But Mexican dentists don't do the promotional thing, so I had to buy my own toothbrush. It was such an odd experience to be so impressed by such a humble tool that it provoked me into thinking about Progress in general.  ___________________________________ During my lifetime (born in the Fift

You gotta give humans credit for being resourceful and inventive, especially when they are rationalizing their own sinful weakness. (5 extra credit points for finding the quote in Ben Franklin's autobiography about his deviation from his youthful vegetarianism.) I actually have an electric heater warming the inside of my trailer. The Kill-a-Watt device says that it is using only 860 Watts. I wonder if it will be running continuously at 7 tomorrow morning.  How have the mighty fallen! Last year my unheated trailer set a personal record for hitting 28 F inside. But tonight I keep looking at the heater and telling myself that it isn't really cheating because I am mooch-docking on a friend's driveway. Normally I mock (good-naturedly) the eremitic virtues of the hook-up-free camper, and then turn around and scold any camper who is using heat. Strange. Not so long ago, I played with the freezing point, as if it were an unattainable achievement. I used to flirt ever so c