Occupation of Independence

  For once I did my TurboTax without steam coming out my ears. They finally provided sidebars that explained things as you moved through the software. So they are getting better. Of course they took the opportunity to try to upsell their products to the sucker (me), using fear and anxiety in subtle ways.  Amazingly they wanted another $40 to do my state taxes. (My state prefers we use a free program to do our state taxes.) Most state's taxes just work from a certain line in your federal taxes, such as the adjusted gross income, and add one or two things, usually optional. Done. Simple. And TurboTax wants $40 for that! How stupid we must be to pay for tax software, when the IRS has essentially already written the software that calculates what you owe, and what you would be penalized for. Of course, somebody would have to make a simpler and more taxpayer-friendly version of the IRS software. But, really, the IRS should just do our taxes for free. Some people are in such a good busi

Valentine's Day, almost. My sweet old valentine is doing quite well, for a 14-year-old. I was interested in doing something special for her this year. Granted, she would probably prefer something edible to flowers. But the 'medium is the message.' Not so many years ago, when she was still in her prime, she posed in an alpine meadow near El Rito, NM. Shame on me for saying "when she was in her prime." She is still prime. She still loves her arroyo-walks and her mountain bike rides. But now let's switch media, and go to sound. Recently I was going a little crazy listening to songs from the movie, "Barry Lyndon." I was saving the "Love Theme", which is actually "Women of Ireland" by the Chieftains. It seemed like a good match on Valentine's Day for my beautiful girl.

Over the last year I have spent quite a bit of time listening to language podcasts and reading about the early history of Indo-European languages. Has it done me any practical good? Quite often I get the seditious thought that reading/listening/viewing media is a waste of time, and that thought was popping up again when I needed to improve passwords for my new computer. When you set up passwords, they can be be long and impossible to remember when the computer itself generates them. That is fine when they are stored in a password manager. But you still need to remember a couple passwords to gain access. You would think that all this amateur linguistics I've been playing with would actually help me choose and remember passwords better. For instance, they want you to use both upper and lower case letters. You can't remember randomness, so something better is needed. How about using upper case letters for the stressed sounds in words? Each person stresses words slightly different

It is popular with wildlife in this area to roam around in town, where I saw the biggest javelina I've ever seen. Apparently he has gotten quite good at foraging in town -- in fact, there might be a lot more to eat in town than in the desert. A couple times I have seen a half-grown coyote wandering the streets in town. He was so thin and bedraggled.  It doesn't look like he is having a successful career at panhandling in town. Perhaps town people know the threat he offers to their pets. What seemed odd was that I had to fight feeling sympathy for him. It seems as though the canids of the world have made a slave of me. And yet I haven't forgotten how my first dog, a miniature poodle, was attacked in the city limits of a town... From the archive: my little dog after I luckily fished him out of an arroyo, after he was attacked by a coyote. It seems ironic that this is happening near the Mexican border, where progressives make a humanitarian cause of helping illegal immigrant

Long-suffering readers have heard me yearn  (pine, moon&swoon, lust) for water and life and soil, for green plants and flowers, and for happy little creatures that gambol and frolic across the alpine meadow. After years of unfulfilled longing, I am finally getting what I wanted: a secondary rainy season in the desert Southwest. And I am wallowing in it. Let's put some color on that word 'wallowing.' It means doing more walking through arroyos. Slow walking, not gym workout crap. I sauntered and stopped at every occasion. Just stand there and visualize the air as an unguent, an analgesic. Allow yourself to heal. Long ago people might have celebrated rain in a rowdier fashion. Who knows what they did? Flop around naked in the mud, have orgies, perform animal or human sacrifices? It was justified. They had more at stake than us. I will put off some of the mountain biking until the air is warmer.                   (from maxresdefault) Thus I am giving it my best