Occupation of Independence

There is a great deal of supposedly practical information out there, for RV camping. But I think it misses the point. The lifestyle is not greatly challenged by physical or material difficulties. Most of the struggle is psychological. It is largely concerned with reconstructing habits. This struggle comes to the foreground in the winter, when too many hours of darkness chase you into your tiny den. I have tried to use those hours beneficially by reading, but an answer like that can be spit out too easily.  Reading has never seemed like a very natural activity. Too many hours of it can lead to grimness and sullenness. That is why I posted recently about my efforts to change my reading (and other habits of the evening) into something more light-hearted. It would help if writers used a multi-media approach, instead of relying purely on the written word. So, let's praise photographs and other images that tell a story, or represent a visualization of the ideas being posted about.

Change is happening in the world, and it ain't all bad. For instance you see more bicycles and solar panels near Quartzsite, AZ. And there is a new bakery in town, with a decent parking lot. Unaccustomed as I am to squandering time and money at such places, I did make an exception today. Here is what I saw:  That's a sleepy three-month-old miniature Australian shepherd in there. Let's hope the owner was not exploiting her as a chick-magnet. I let the little darlin' chew on my finger with those sharp puppy teeth. My goodness, was her fur soft! He says that the dog didn't need a leash to hold her in the basket. And I believe it. It is a good sign that you see eBikes popping up more and more, and hopefully coming down in price. I refuse to feel embarrassed by my increasing tendency to gush over pretty little girls, young women, or puppies. It is a nice trend in old age. To honor the occasion I will pop on my new headphones and listen to Gilbert & Sulliv

After finishing a do-it-yourself (DIY) project yesterday, I felt a perverse desire to actually count up the number of tools it took to finish this project. It would be nice to put a number on it, but I have never actually done that. No matter how trivial the project, it seems to require half the tools I own.  I had just spent half a day building a holder for my Kobo eBook reader, in order to read in bed without tiring the arms. They sell tablet holders on Amazon for $20. So I pay myself $5 per hour, apparently. Just look at my mighty creation. It looks like something done by a grade schooler: a furring strip, a few bolts and screws, an eye-hook, hinge, and of course, a bungee cord. But it was all repurposed stuff! Not a single 40 mile round trip to town was needed. It is fun to laugh at the DIY syndrome. There are blogs and vlogs on the internet that have virtually made a moral sickness out of it. I least I won't imply that you are saving yourself a vast fortune, whi

I already confessed my surrender to Verizon. I was being de-prioritized so often on my cheaper pre-pay plan that the internet was becoming useless. So I went over to a more expensive unlimited plan in order to escape this problem. As a result I am watching more videos, sometimes from news sites. I am shocked at how verbose they are! The people who make these videos would be failures in the movie industry. They haven't even learned that videos should convey information visually, rather than through talking. shutterstock.com And if you must yak away, don't use written-English. Don't they understand that written-English is not the same as spoken-English? Use short declarative sentences. Avoid commas and parenthetical clauses. Clauses might be OK as a prefix or suffix to the main clause, but they must not be in the middle of the sentence. Some writer, who has read too many books, must be putting written-English on the teleprompter, and then the talking head must