Occupation of Independence

It is so nice to be easy to please! Give me excellent scenery in uncrowded places, rather than freakishly spectacular scenery in crowded places, and I will be happy.  I am at one of those favorite places now. It goes a long way to camping-satisfaction to be camped on a deadend road, free from motorheads. Just as last year, I got to visit with some locals who ride their pretty horses in my neighborhood. About 5 of them. near Willcox, AZ.  

I keep thinking of that Canadian RVer that I knew a decade ago and who I wrote about a couple days ago. He was the guy who held the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corp.) in such high esteem that waiting for the nightly news was the highlight of his day. At the time I was skeptical of CBC, figuring that it was susceptible to the same diseases as NPR in the USA. But today, the trust in the media that that man had seems naive to the point of being ridiculous.  Recall Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence: "that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." This was no new insight of Jefferson. He wrote some essay explaining that he avoided original ideas in composing the Declaration -- and that he tried to gather up and condense the ideas that were believed by most people in his era.  So 'consent of the governed' was an idea that floated around in the European Enlightenment. I'll bet Rou

  Much to my surprise, yesterday's mountain bike ride (on a forest road) was turning into a loop. That is always nice, although it is helpful to overcome the exaggerated desire for 'loops' instead of 'out and backs'. I just had to walk the bike down a steep connector trail. Its head was mistakable. A large pit bull was just ahead of me. The hiker reassured me that everything was under control. So I proceeded. It turned out that the big monster was quite a sweetheart. They had a second dog who was disporting down the trail a ways. She was a 7 pound Chihuahua, who turned out to be completely yap-free. The owner said that the Chihuahua pushed the pit bull away from the food bowl. What a combination. I had to laugh. I gave up on animal shelters a few weeks ago because they had nothing but pit bull mixes and Chihuahua mixes. (Then I went to the Phoenix Craigslist>Community>Pets to find my new miniature poodle.) And I told the owner of these dogs on the trail about

I have a vague memory of watching some wildlife/nature show years ago that showed the bull of a herd getting older and weaker. The young bucks notice it. Eventually something happens to the bull or one of the young bucks sees an opportunity. And he seizes that opportunity. It starts to work a little. Then another young buck jumps in...and another.  That seems to be the perfect metaphor for what is happening on the geopolitical scheme. It wasn't Russia's self-assertiveness that brought this idea home. Nor was it China's, as important as these two are. It was India's and the Gulf States' and Syria's and Brazil's and Africa's... Anyway, if anybody knows the perfect video that expresses this metaphor, let me know. 

The recent miracle of 0.25" of rain in Arizona was enjoyable, of course. What I like most about it is the chance to focus on what is most important to the world. When you do so, the secondary stuff recedes into the background. Such as temperature. It wouldn't surprise me if people who like downsizing their physical junk also carry this over to their mental habits. A full time RVer is a pretty good example of a physical downsizer. Truly, I dislike giant piles of just about anything. This inclination has always undermined my interest in books. They are the best example of how ridiculous a giant pile of unnecessary crap can be.  Walking around in the mud makes you appreciate what an inch of gravel can do on a dirt road. So who needs a pile of words or a pile of books about, say, the history of technology?  I usually have mountains to look at. So what? They are just gigantic piles of useless rubble.