Occupation of Independence

  What was that squeaking sound? Was my side-by-side's brake squeaking? No, it was the large grey bird, perched on a stand at the campsite I had just driven by. It was an African grey parrot -- the first parrot I had ever met, in person. His name was Jake, which sounds more like a ranch dawg.    He wasn't that loquacious. He did perch on my shoulder for awhile. But the human partner said that he didn't like to be petted, and that he could bite pretty hard when annoyed. It would have been fun to be able to imitate a salty ol' sea captain or pirate, with a parrot on his shoulder. The human partner showed me a video of Jake when he was younger and his English vocabulary was up to 100 words. I couldn't believe the human-like intonations in his phrases. I tried to get the man to admit that he dubbed-in the talk, but he wouldn't confess. It is more fun to suspend disbelief and believe the video to be authentic. One of Jake's reputed skills is to wolf-whistle. La

Believe it or not, it wasn't the latest national holiday that made me look for an alternative to the Samsung or Google calendar. I think it was the Google calendar that had one day a month denoted as some Wokester fake holiday of one type or another. You know, "National LGQBT#6&;$ Day" or some such thing.  The best thing you can say about Woke holidays is that they are no more propagandist than traditional holidays like the Fourth, Veteran's Day, and Memorial Day.  These are the fake holidays when we are supposed to worship the Pentagon. Before we had Pentagon-worship holidays, there were religious holidays, be they pagan, half-Christian, or medieval. And they were all based on bullshit, superstition, and lies. So in a sense, Woke holidays are completely traditional. I found "Simple Calendar" on the Google Play Store. The "Settings" allow you to simply not show any holidays. Thank you, Simple Calendar. I want a calendar to remind me to pay a b

  I tried to come up with useful suggestions for dealing with the new era of camping. Here is one that I forgot to mention earlier: never look at your outside mirror when driving, except when changing lanes. I did once, and nearly had an accident. When you cross the state line, from New Mexico to Colorado, you notice the traffic tripling in just a couple minutes. Nobody in Colorado drives the speed limit. I do, so cars were piling up behind me. Well, why not be a nice guy and pull off onto the wide emergency lane while a couple people pass me, I thought.  About eight cars blasted by me, and they were still coming when the emergency lane started to disappear before an upcoming "bridge." No good deed goes unpunished. They wouldn't let me back into the normal driving lane. It was close. ____________________________________ But that is just one technique. More generally we need to visualize the animal personality of a camper in the new era. Did I guess right, or should I have

When campgrounds get noisy, the best thing for the host is to hitch up and leave, that is, move someplace a couple miles away. In just six hours or so, the noisemakers will settle down, or in a day or two, leave. (That might not seem fair to the campers who stay but some don't mind noise, and in any case it is their own fault for coming to these public campground ghettoes. What do they expect?)  That is what I did the other night. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise.  The roads in the area were sandy -- duh -- considering the local tourist trap, that was no surprise. But I was surprised by how much green vegetation was around. Not trees or shrubs. "Ground vegetation" you might call it. And it was green. That is a color I have almost forgotten. There were a few cactuses with red blooms, some yellow flowers, and my favorites, the white. When I look out at grazing land, I don't really know which plants the cows can eat. But they were finding something: the cows we