Occupation of Independence

Normally dust devils are mere curiosities.  On this warm spring day east of Reno NV,    I can see four dust devils at the same time.  The largest one is 50 feet in diameter.  One blew past my trailer a few minutes ago.  It was actually a little scary. Recently I have come close to getting smacked in more ways than one.  Have you ever thought about what would happen to you and other people if you were driving at high speeds in multi-lane traffic in some gawd-awful city, and your engine suddenly died electrically? I was in a safe place recently, when my van suddenly went electrically dead, but a few minutes earlier I had been on multi-lane Interstate 80 on the east side of Reno.  With no electricity in the van,  I would have started slowing down in a middle lane, with just enough strength to steer.  But where would I have steered to?!  After all, without electrical power you cannot  run the brake lights, emergency hazard lights, or blinkers.  And I was pulling a trailer!  A bad acciden

There is nothing in this old world of ours that beats chilly morning air, dry, sunny, and calm.   But wait!  There is something better: add basin-and-range scenery with snowy mountain tops and snow-free lowlands. That is what I am experiencing right now on this early spring trip through Nevada.  In the past I think I underestimated this state because the north-south mountain ranges are steep with poor road access.  That makes for poor camping and mountain biking, if you like biking on land where you get to use lots of gears. So just use the mountain ranges for eye-candy, and then camp and bike on the lowlands, which can be flattish.  Maybe this should have been obvious, but if you make the mistake of staying in the Southwest too long into spring, the lowlands (4500 feet altitude) of Nevada are too hot by the time you get to them. Prices are confiscatory away from the handful of Walmart towns.  So far, I haven't figured out how to beat the system in that regard.  Perhaps it is best

People on You Tube are raising the alarm about the unexplained disappearance of a unique traveler, named Hobo Shoestring.  He travels across North America by hopping freight trains.  Somebody else told me about him a year ago, and I became a fan of his. Let's hope his disappearance comes to a happy ending, and that all is well.  But even if the worst has happened, his travels can still be considered a success.  It helps to see it this way if you look at how other travel-styles have evolved over time. Hobo Shoestring tied into a piece of Americana.  There has long been a romance about trains.  The Coen brothers' movie, "O Brother, Where Are Thou?", featured a scene at the beginning of the movie about the main characters hopping a freight train.  They saw other hobos on the train.  What a collection of faces that was! In the 1960s, one of the episodes of the "Virginian" featured a humorous encounter between the Virginian and a young woman who was seeking adven

Caitlin Johnstone's writing on the slaughter of Palestinians by Israelis has been relentless and impressive.  If there were a Pulitzer Prize for alternative-media, she deserves it.  Anybody interested in accessing her work (at no charge) might want to go to substack.com  . It takes a bit of effort for me to praise her.  She is a Greenie socialist.  But there is something to be said -- actually, a lot to be said -- for dissolving pundits into their component parts.  If component X is too objectionable to read, then look at component Y or Z. This method keeps a reader from falling into their own echo chamber.  And it depolarizes public discourse.  The method might work for more than pundits. For instance, it is good to dissolve religions into component parts, and not 'throw out the baby with the bath water.'  This is Easter in Western Christianity.  You needn't be a Christian to admire the importance that Christians have attached to Hope. At the risk of turning Hope into