Occupation of Independence

...to poisonous media. I was long overdue at finding a new way to put a filter between my own mind and the repetitious poison of the media. For some reason I have always underestimated or overlooked podcasts. I bumbled onto a website that I really love: historyofenglishpodcast.com   . It aims at explaining how the spoken language has changed. How refreshing! (Previously I have made the mistake of stepping into dry, technical, linguistic explanations on the written language. Dreadful stuff.) It is pleasant to listen to these podcasts at night, when my eyes are too tired to read, but my brain isn't quite ready to sleep. I could listen to more music, but I don't want to overdo that, and become insensitive to music. Somebody please stop me from flaring up with excessive expectations! Otherwise I will tear into the world of audio books and podcasts, and download as many goodies as possible!

In case I wasn't clear enough in the last post, you might really get something from Bergman's movie, "The Seventh Seal." It is entertaining, not just a typically depressing "art" film. The movie may have a strong impact if you are seduced by analogies, as I am. Several aspects of the Black Death in the 1300's remind a person of what the world is going through today. Of course the casualties were drastically higher back then, but populations were tougher, too. At any rate, think of how rare it is to watch a film that makes you think about Life, instead of merely titillating you with the usual fluff. This is indeed a rare opportunity to blend Art and Life. I own the disc, and can't really help on the least expensive way to stream the movie. By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23256490

I got into the "Settings" of my phone yesterday to turn off the alerts. If "they" want the alerts to be noticed, then they certainly succeeded. But my reaction wasn't what they wanted. I find this continual alarmism obnoxious and cowardly. The Alert was offensive, too. It came a day before Easter, and warned people not to go to church. Why is that? Couldn't people take precautions in church, as they do at Walmart or the grocery store? I think something else is going on. Although I am not a Christian, one part of me would like to see Christians defy the Alert, and show the world that their Faith is still alive -- and that their Faith isn't just "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism" as some critics claim. There was a time in history when Christians were courageous. The persecution and ridicule they suffered the first couple centuries (before Constantine) must have been a great help in making their Faith survive.  But by 1750 or so, European Civi

Look carefully at the center of the photo, where you see the latching mechanism of a gate on a forest trail. What's so great about that?, you say.    It is the best gate design I have ever seen, and I've seen a lot of them. Most times they are hard to close, stuck, depend on a broken wire or tangled chain, etc. And if you touch your expensive lycra/spandex shorts to barbed wire, they are destroyed. This latch only depends on gravity. Nothing can go wrong. It is so elegant! Why didn't they start designing gates like this, years ago? Ahh, now I see the problem. The latch mechanism has a digitally sexual design to it. So it is politically incorrect. And government agencies like the Forest Service and the BLM must be absolutely PC. There are several gates like this, locally. Every time I go through one, I have to smirk a little. _____________________________________  If you make the mistake of getting up in the morning, only to turn on television or internet

Frankly, the lower Colorado River desert is a disgrace to planet Earth. But d on't get me wrong: I like visiting the desert along the lower Colorado River in December and January. The temperature is moderate, and usually there are just a few days of soft rain. With all the rubble and desert "pavement," muddy roads are not the problem they are in other parts of the country. Still, by February, I am eager to leave that ghastly rubble and head towards southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico. Coffee Girl loves to run on dirt as much as I love to mountain bike on it. Besides the comfort, something seems wholesome about land that has vegetation and soil. The ancients had their goddess, Ceres, for grain. But was there a god for rubble, spines, and stickers?  It might sound slightly comical, but the term "anthropologically-correct" seems fitting to describe grasslands. What good are deserts and mountains, except as postcard fodder?