Occupation of Independence

There was a time not so many generations ago when Americans actually made things for a living. Today we just shop for a living, either online or driving around in heavy traffic to stores. As hard as it is to believe, some people actually enjoy shopping. For my part, I haven't had a wonderful experience shopping more than a couple times in my lifetime. I had one today. It seemed like a good idea to put a metal dog tag on my new camera, since it is the most expensive camera I have ever owned. The machines that make these metal dog tags keep getting better. I made mine at Petsmart. Yes, it had a digital menu. Normally this would put me in an incendiary mood, but this menu was intelligently designed. You just slide the tag into the machine in an unambiguous way, and watch the laser-scribing through a glass window. Fascinating and beautiful! It could even scribe on both sides of the tag, so there was enough room to say, "Text" and then my phone number. I asked the sto

It has been so many years since I experienced a real winter -- rain, mud, and clouds -- that I have forgotten how dreary it can be. So it is hard to appreciate the desert as much as it deserves. Therefore the mind focuses on getting sick of cholla and rubble. But that is OK actually because it whips up an appetite for dirt again!    Just imagine:  the bike's wheels moving along smoothly, without smashing, bashing, and crashing on that damned desert rubble! Glorious grasslands and soil in southeastern Arizona. Soil really is the best geology.

Once again I am quite affected by the movie, "Paradise Now." It seems that I rewatch it every year that I revisit the Patagonia library. During my years of travel, there have been a handful of public libraries that stood out. They offered something of quality -- not just the usual mass market drivel. It feels good to see somebody "come through" for you, like that.  But why doesn't it happen more often? Isn't a high quality selection of books, music, and movies seen as part of the culture of society, and isn't culture important?  I could offer four of five bullet-points on possible answers to this question. But analyzing it would kill the mood I feel after watching this marvelous movie.  More generally it seems that most places are content to be like every place.

Pop quiz: what was the last movie you saw? What year did you last see a movie at the theatre? It is getting so I am not even sure which decade it was when I last went to a movie theatre. I guess you could say that movie DVD rentals still make the movie industry important. But isn't it strange that there is still so much hype and hoopla over the Academy Awards, when the movie industry is sinking into irrelevancy? Is so-and-so going to say something against Trump at the awards? Will Hottie Buns win an award, or expose 80% of her body during a speech, or will it be 82%? How earth-shaking! Stay tuned!!! Why not spew out vast amounts of publicity over who won the Pulitzer Prize, despite the fact that the newspaper industry is dying? Or why not glorify the hero who works for the United States Post Office and won this year's "Employee of the Year" award?  

If it is possible for the smirk to become seated permanently in the muscles and wrinkles of the human face, then I am running a risk right now. It is impossible to read a history of early Christianity and not see parallels with bloggers, vloggers, and self-proclaimed holy men of the winter camping scene. But my smirking is not mean-spirited. I just find the parallels amusing. After all, times are so different now than 400 A.D.; and yet certain psychological drives persist. Why I even know one blowhard on the internet who brags about not using any heat in his camper! (grin.) Should I give a list of quotes from the book? Maybe that would get too drawn-out. Perhaps it suffices to put in an endorsement for "The First Thousand Years," by Robert Milken (A Global History of Christianity.) Asceticism is only one parallel between early Christianity and modern desert camping. Consider: The growing pains in any movement; certain forms of decay. Fire-breathing rebellions agains