Occupation of Independence

There really is no need for generators when dry camping/boondocking in the Southwestern desert in the winter. And yet, they show up every winter, and lower the quality of the camping experience. Why should this be so?  If a camping neighbor shows up with a generator that looks like this, you might as well hitch up and leave. It is a reasonable hope that you'll get luckier in another campsite. 1. Do the "practical" bloggers and vloggers make solar panels sound so complex that they scare people off? What is so complex about buying a self-contained "solar suitcase," setting it out on the ground to track the sun, and attaching the alligator clips to your battery clips? 2. Even easier yet, most people could upgrade their converter/charger so that 45 minutes per day of generator usage would be good enough; they wouldn't need to run it for hours.  If their RV has a Progressive Dynamics converter/charger, they need only buy a "Charge Wizard" mo

The gods are playing tricks on me for adding a second pair of stabilizers to my trailer, so that I could tolerate more of the blue northers Utah was getting in October. The result of course was two weeks of freakishly calm weather here, near Lake Mead. I shake my head in disbelief, but 'not getting my money's worth' is a small price to pay for weather more perfect than I expect to ever see again, at this location. So I celebrate the occasion by taking my dog out to the edge of the canyon system at sunset every night. What do you do when you've seen it all before? Remember the progression of chapters in Thoreau's "Walden:" at some point he moved on to night-time experiences and sounds near the pond. Tonight I was walking back from the overlook when I heard the honking of an airborne platoon of geese, flying over the canyon system. That brought a poignant sigh to my face because it seemed to be the perfect sound at this place and time: the autumn migra

I was having breakfast at McDonald's. It was only 20 minutes after sunrise, but already, the sun was so bright that it was hard to read the smartphone. I had been doing a halfway decent job of ignoring the horrible sun.   Suddenly there was the quiet -- but affirmative -- hum of an electrical motor. I was shocked to see solar screens roll down the large expanse of tinted windows that ring the McDonald's. Down the solar screens came, while my jaw was dropped halfway to the floor. When the motors had accomplished their job, they shut down. It was like heaven behind those screens. If there is anything in the Southwest that epitomizes kindliness and mercy, it is a solar screen. Suddenly I was a disciple of Dr. Pangloss (aka, Leibniz) and believed we lived in the best of all possible worlds, and that a universal and benevolent Providence bestowed Divine Grace on each creature in the universe. Perhaps the reader has seen motorized solar screens before. But it was the first

This year, let's skip my typical oration for Veteran's Day, and instead, ask which (contemporary) veterans deserve to be honored the most. There are so many to choose from. Syrian and Yemeni veterans certainly belong at the top of the list. But I suppose Afghan veterans are the greatest heroes of all. They defeated the Soviet Empire, and have fought the American Empire to a standstill for 18 years. If anybody deserves to be honored, it is a fighter who takes on a foreign invader who has more expensive weapons and all the other advantages. How does an English-reader really appreciate what the heroes of Afghanistan have gone through? I am aware of a book by Eric Margolis about the interminable wars in that part of the world. But it would probably be nice to find something more contemporary. I suppose it is possible to come up with something, after a lot of digging on the internet, and maybe some unsuccessful purchases of eBooks.  If any reader has a suggestion, let me kn

Some people do get enjoyment from visiting Native American petroglyphs, but I am not one of them. You could say the fault is mine. But it would help if the whole subject was stripped of its sanctimoniousness, Noble Savage romanticism, and the pop-cultural baggage of the 1960s. Then I could look on it the way you look on other ancient writing systems. Wikipedia had a good article on the history of writing systems. By the way, don't be scared off of the topic because you confuse it with linguistics. Linguistics articles are horrendously technical and impossible to understand. It is easy to believe it was a huge step upward for civilization when written symbols went from picturing tangible things or numbers to conveying ideas or the sounds of a spoken language (which can then convey ideas.) So the topic is inherently interesting, given a chance. But rather than look backward, perhaps we should consider the significance of a new contemporary writing system, the emoji. My new