Occupation of Independence

It has been quite an eye-opener to shop for cameras. It seems that if you hate on-screen menus as much as me, and you desire a rotary "mode dial" that allows you to select things like Aperture-priority shooting, you will soon be in the $400 price range. I'll bet the mode dial itself only raises the manufacturing cost by a dollar or two. But the business model says,"Soak the bastard" if he thinks of himself as photographer enough to want manual control over the camera. Sometimes the website won't even let you know whether there is a mode dial or not. It will make you dig through all their verbiage. This has been educational. It reminded me of the frustration I usually feel when drowning in the digital menus of just about any gadget these days. Remember the first time I walked into a McDonald's that used an ordering-kiosk? I started mouthing off, right in the store. But if you really want a scary thought, just imagine the "information co

Reading history books is not for sissies; nor for people who demand instant gratification. In fact one must expect to endure a great deal of drudgery before finally getting onto a winning streak. I have done just that, recently. How refreshing it is to escape the cloistered writing of scholarly bookworms who have spent their entire lives with their noses buried in other people's books. Contrast that with the chapter on Jacob Burckhardt in Michael Dirda's "Classics for Pleasure:" In those days, many scholars refused to confine their efforts to some narrow field of specialization; in fact, they ranged across subjects with the swagger of adventurers, soldiers of fortune, condottieri. For Burckhardt, the Renaissance in Italy is essentially an age of energy and charisma, when a man was "forced to be either hammer or anvil." Contrast that with overly verbose historians, who drown you in microscopic details that never add up to anything. So many of t

I certainly looked twice when I saw this off-road classic sitting in the downtown plaza in Ajo, AZ. I sighed with pleasure, and fluttered my eyelashes at the car. This seemed odd because antique car festivals do not interest me in the least.   What was it about this off-road classic? Why was I mooning and swooning over it? It is hard to imagine the owner of a modern "off-roader" jumping into this classic. (This refers to crossover-utility-vehicles, CUV.) There aren't eight air bags in the classic. And no 8" information display in the center of the dash. Actually dozens of modern "necessities" are missing.  Something about the classic vehicle and its owner smacks of moral integrity. Those were the days when family campers went to 'the lake' on the weekend, or maybe to a state park. They didn't blast around on dirt roads, making noise and traffic, where dispersed campers are trying to 'get away from it all,' and where I woul

Has another warm winter made me soft? Apparently it has. Last night I finally used the warmer sleeping bag, purchased recently. (It's nominal rating is -25 F.) In the morning I deigned to heat up water for a bladder, and to insert it into my parka. But it wasn't that cold inside the camper -- 38 F is nothing extreme. (I refuse to use propane heat.) But once the sun came up, I was lured into another mountain bike ride -- this time to town for a visit to the coffee shop, and a few errands. Later in the afternoon I sat in a chair on the south side of the trailer and faced the sun. Sunlight was reflecting off a small piece of broken glass lying on the desert pavement. It was so bright that I could only look at it with my eyes mostly closed. Normally this would be unpleasant. But under the circumstances it felt wonderful. I moved my chair closer to the leeward side of the white trailer. It felt like a warm oven. How utterly perfect it was to balance the recent cold air