Category Archives: America

This is Zuni Salt Lake

Posted on December 6, 2011 by | 24 comments


It’s about forty miles south of the Zuni Rez, almost in AZ.

There’s a ghost town you can barely see in the pic…. used to be a considerable community down in there when it was private land, from the mid-1800s until the 1950s, evaporating salt from the huge concrete beds.  Most of the buildings are still intact, though they’re going away rapidly.

Today it belongs to the Zuni tribe, one section of land, but it’s not in the national trust as part of the Rez.  Tribes have been acquiring a lot of land from casino monies and other ways during the past decades, making the lands acquired ‘tribal’, but not Rez, which puts them into an interestingly ambiguous position insofar as road maintenance and county taxes.

Salt Lake was acquired as a piece of a lawsuit against the US government involving an airplane with a hydrogen bomb aboard that crashed on the Rez, with first responders being Zunis, but which the feds didn’t bother telling them about the bomb, leaving emergency workers exposed to hazardous materials without knowing it.  The tribe got a few million out of that, which they used to purchase 60k acres of land to the south of the Rez, but Salt Lake was thrown in as a bonus.

Salt Lake’s a sacred place for the Zunis, home of Salt Mother.  If you are willing to risk hopping the fence and wandering around down there ….. it’s a volcano crater with a hollow secondary plug you can climb, then a spiral trail leading back down inside … that’s where most of the rituals for Salt Mother are held… but all over that section you’ll pass over various religious items from recent times you’d be well advised to leave untouched.

Salt Lake used to be the place all the warring tribes got their salt throughout history.  A place where a constant truce between enemy tribes existed.

It’s also part of what the power companies would love to strip mine.   The great percentage of the desert surrounding it, from north of Springerville, and Saint Johns, Arizona is government land with shallow coal deposits comparatively inexpensive to ‘recover’.  They’ve already converted the desert on the Arizona side to a wasteland.  Still desert, but more in the moonscape vein than the usual, regular arid country mode.

The people in El Paso and Phoenix need electricity so they can fire up their hair dryers every morning, and keep their homes refrigerated.   Those places have climates uncomfortable to the human skin most of the time and they’d rather savage a few million acres of country they’ve never visited and never will than suffer a few degrees of discomfort and use a towel to dry their hair.

Which the Zuni believe would thoroughly piss off Salt Mother, with considerable resulting pain for the Zunis, and all the rest of us.

They might be right.

The Zuni and a few commie-pinko-obstructionist greenie environmentalists are the only people who give a damn, and the other desert-dwellers in the area would welcome the jobs helping ravage the country around them would bring to the area.  The last time I looked the Zuni tribe was burning up a lot of tribal money trying to stop the mine expansion into New Mexico.  The prospects didn’t appear promising because the New Mexico government, the feds, and the mining interests were stacked up singing songs of human progress and greater good.

Heck, it’s been a few years now.  Maybe they’re already mining it.  Probably easier to ask someone in Phoenix or El Paso whether the hair dryer worked this morning and if it did, assume that desert has gone to the moon.

Old Jules

 

24 Comments

Posted in 1990's, 2011, America, Human Behavior, Music, Native Americans, NM, Outdoors, Politics, Solitude, Wildlife

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December 1, 2011 – The Best Laid Plans

Posted on December 1, 2011 by | 7 comments

Good morning to you readers. I’m obliged you came by for a visit and read. I went to sleep last night with the thought on my mind to try a run into Kerrville today.  I figured I’d wander around in the AutoZone store for a while to see if I could locate some Chinese engineered tool designed to outsmart Japanese mechanical engineers.

But it turned out to be one of those nights when a lot goes on.  A high wind rose for a while and started dropping dead tree branches, I assume it was, with a lot of fanfare and drama, on things probably didn’t need any trees falling on them.  I recently got that fuel-line bulb replacement for the chainsaw For Want of a Nail – Something Worth Knowing Chainsaw-wise and at that point my middle of the night thinking changed my plans for the day. 

Seemed everything was stacking up for me to spend the day bringing down dead oaks and cutting firewood.   I settled back to sleep peacefully dreaming of a fire in the woodstove and a few layers less clothing on my agingly fragile bod.

Daylight was still a long way off when I was awakened by a ruckus on the front porch I interpreted as the cats telegraphing me there was a coon out there bothering them, so I got the .22 and the spotlight and went out to unravel whatever was happening.  Turned out it was the invader-cat crosswise with Hydrox, second-in-command around here.

I adopted my mean-evil-ugly persona, put down the .22 and started yelling and waving my arms around to break up the spitting growling party, then chased the invader-cat off the porch and across the meadow keeping it lit up in the spotlight.  Hydrox was playing point-man, but chasing with no intention of catching.  The invader-cat has me figured out, I reckons, and kept turning around hoping I’d say something friendly and we could come to an agreement, adding a cat to the local population.

But that ain’t going to happen.  You can’t stop a man who knows he’s right and keeps coming.  Hydrox and I chased that cat clean into the woods to the east, me breathing steam and gutsy language.

When I got back to the porch with Hydrox the other three were waiting and demanded a prayer-meeting.  They all saw me put down that .22 and interpreted it as an ominous sign I might be sneaking around wondering if we couldn’t fit another cat into the equation.  The consensus was that we can’t.

So one of the jobs today is puzzling out how to get the invader-cat into the live-trap and deliver it to one of the herd of wildlife-rescue women springing up like weeds all over the Texas Hill Country.

It looks like a pretty good cat and I’ve got to tip my hat to the fact it’s awfully well groomed for a stray.  But it’s a long way from anyone likely to be grooming it.  Just the fact it’s survived out in the woods a while, though, has me thinking it mightn’t be easy to lure into the live trap.

Anyway, after daybreak I went out for a perusal of whatever damage the trees might have accomplished and found things are normal, though one’s a lot nearer the ground than it was yesterday.  It’s foggy, cold and feels like rain.  Maybe I’ll cut wood, and maybe I won’t.

But what I originally intended to tell you this morning was that last night I came across a blog where someone’s discovered an identical replication in nature between a beetle and a parasite duplicating the relationship between government and high-finance interests, multi-national corporations, almost every facet of human organizational structure.  I think it might be where we learned how to do all the stuff we do.

Mind-controlling beetle parasite.

Instead of studying cats, chickens, deer and other critters to puzzle out what’s going on with us humans I think I need me one-each of those beetles and parasites.  I’ll keep you updated on whether I find one.

Maybe old Franz Kafka wasn’t too far wrong.

Old Jules

7 Comments

Posted in 2011, America, Current Issues, Homesteading, Politics, Senior Citizens, Texas

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Rattus Rattus vs Foreigners – The Universal Soldier

Posted on November 30, 2011 by | 12 comments

This was written before I realized the rats are just a diversion and Chinese containerized cargo-boxes are the real invaders.

“Trouble!” says you.  “What trouble?”

“The Ruskies went home a decade ago,” You say.  “Berlin wall came down and no one even remembers it.  The Germans are all running around hugging one another worrying about mad cows and leaving everyone else alone.

“We kicked the holy bejesus out of Samdam Hoooosane and his royal guards,” you say, “And might do it again if he doesn’t behave,” you say, “And we’re all safe and sound here in the land of milk and honey…..Ain’t gonna war no more,” you say, “Except the occasional invasion of a minor third rate Middle Eastern or Balkan country,” you say…..”All safe and sound, swords into plowshares, all that.” 

And you really believe that, do you?

Well, if you believe that, you’d better prepare yourself for a shock down to your carefully manicured and polished toenails……’cause the real challenge is still out there, the real challenge is happening right there in your back yard even as we speak, in your attic, in the sewer under your squeaky clean porcelain commode;  in the trees behind your quiet complacent little hidey hole you’ve made for yourself to stick your soft American head into.

You kept your guard up all those years because one of the Marx brothers talked about lulling the West into a false sense of security, and of course he was right.  Of course he was.

Only the time-skid was slower than anticipated and all the Marx brothers died.

Yeah, Groucho and Harpo sleep with the fishes, but it’s still going on.

The fifth column is here, now, at work near you, near your home.

“Rats.” I say.

“Rats?” You say.

Yeah. Rattus Rattus, the good American rat, the roof rat, is the only real American who knows, and he ain’t saying much. 

Old Rattus Rattus suffers silently in his simple Christian American way; fighting quietly for his homeland with American know-how.  Sure, it sounds silly and pointy headed, Rattus Rattus, but that’s his damned name, same as yours is Homo Sexian or some such thing.

Rattus Rattus struggles without complaint for his tiny children, while slowly, the habitat and other lousy habits, recede every year.  You ought to know by the name; Rattus Norvegicus, the Norwegian rat, the dreaded wharf rat:  the foreign rat the communist pinko athiest moslem heathen yellowjapaneseinvader super rat of the future is bullying him back.

While you sleep there in your complacent soft pillowland, it’s going on outside and up in your attic, in the streets, the alleys, the sewerplants, the amber grainfields, the feedlots, the silos, Rattus Rattus battles for you against the silent invaders. Rattus Rattus draws his lines in the sand, digs his little burrows, fortifies, and retreats as the highly mechanized divisions of Norwegian rats advance, house by house, burrow by burrow……Every year the Rattus Rattus line moves inward a few miles, seven miles in along the whole perimeter.

Yeah.  There are bulges, enclaves of encirclement.  Enclaves of resistance, but Norvegicus takes no prisoners, spares no one.  And you sleep silently, peacefully while your own good American rats are diminished, you who gutsylike bomb the bejesus out of other commie pinko foreign middleastern terrorist muslim and Balkans, sleep while your own brother-rats in your own back yard die without your help.

And what do you think, you sleeping bastards, will happen when the final conquest is complete?  Do you think you will be left alone, when the last fighters have all fought on your behalf, when the silent armies of Rattus Rattus are all destroyed, all the food for ravens scattered on the battlefields of America?  Don’t bet on it.  The sound of scratching in the ceiling, inside the walls has barely begun.

Time to join the battle, fellow Americans, time to get out the cyanide, the 1080, the pellet guns and the mousetraps, time to stock up on cheese, and warfrin, and time to prepare for the big battle for America in the American way.  Time to begin the manufacture of tiny tanks, (maybe Tonka and some of those can help) and artillery pieces, and scatterguns and nervegas and miniaturized nuclear weapons…..time to join in the real battle for America here at home.

If you aren’t with us, you are against us, behind enemy lines, already under the areas controlled by the foreign devils, and you won’t be spared, unless you form an underground, a fifth column of your own…..

They’ve already got all the other countries, the other continents, and as has happened so often in history, America stands alone against them, a tiny host of good American rats, behind the scenes, fighting against all odds for you, to the end……

And that doesn’t even touch on the imported fire ants killing our domestic fireants, the imported Africanized bees killing our good American queen bees and selfishly taking over the hives, the Russian Thistles (tumbleweeds) cluttering up our prairies, the imported hares (jackrabbits), the English Sparrows (that battle’s already lost), the tamaracs (salt cedars stealing our precious water for their foreign interests),  and the imported fruitflies…….it’s all there, all in black and white, been written down, so it’s true …..a multi-pronged attack against all that’s good in America…..while you sleep…….

And now the foreign weathermen, the Canadians and Mexicans, are predicting our weather, keeping the good stuff for themselves……

Old Jules

 

 

12 Comments

Posted in 2011, America, Human Behavior, Politics, Survival, Trains

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The Great Tick Migration – Occupy Texas

Posted on November 25, 2011 by | 37 comments

I wrote this when I lived in Socorro, New Mexico, but I’d guess it’s as timely and germane today as it was then.

http://insects.tamu.edu/images/insects/common/images/cd-43-c-txt/cimg370.html

It’s sad, but they have to migrate: there’s no good water in the Rio Grande anymore.  It’s all sewage passed downstream from Albuquerque and other towns. 
 
This was almost home to them. Their ancestors arrived with the first cattle drives from Texas in the 1880s. But finally they’ve had enough. Lemming-like they’ve decided as one to return home, Lone Star Ticks to the Lone Star State, same as those invading Confederate Texas humans had to finally stagger and stumble home when things took a turn for the worst..
 
This far south they’ve just begun to gather; just started to come out from under the grassleaves, the treebark, stragglers still coming out of the brush. The main migration gathering is further north in the Isleta lands, Lost Lunas, and up by Belen. 
 
There they’ve mostly already grouped. They’ve dropped off the rats, cows, deer, dogs and coyotes. The earliest ones are drifting south ahead of the others. They’re the lucky ones. Those got far enough south yesterday to find a stray muskrats along the river and get a little something to eat. The stragglers will find it hard going.
 
It’s sad, but hopeful: tiny seed ticks huddling close to their mamas at night, the great herd constricting in the cold dark, mama and daddy ticks worrying about the great crossing of the Jornada del Muerto, about the dearth of animals on the Jornada. But also knowing in their tiny network of neurons passing for a brain, that once further south, things will still not be easy……the migration there, the gathering will have already emptied the countryside of hosts, bloodmeals will be a rarity.
 
When those Isleta and Lost Lunas ticks get as far south as Socorro, the southern ticks will have eaten away everything available. Fishermen will know something’s up by then; they’ll be staying away from the river bottom country sensing some new thing, some change in the atmosphere near the river, hectored by the early gathering; the dogs, the feral cats, the rodents, all driven away from the river bottom by the strange new presence of so many tiny pests. 
 
The animals left will be sucked dry. Probably when the latecomers reach Socorro they’ll have to take their chances in town. Maybe they’ll find pets or townspeople for a last meal before they try to cross the dreaded Jornada del Muerto.
 
Some of them will drift up onto the freeway to find broken-down motorists with flat tires or dead batteries. Truck drivers stopped to urinate by the road or unsuspecting drunks sleeping with the window opened a crack to release the foul tobacco smoke from inside the car will save a few. Maybe an unlucky hitchhiker sleeping under a bridge or one of the frequent escapees from the prison or jail; some hapless hobo along the railroad, waiting for the next train.
 
If the motorist doesn’t get bitten by too many at once there’ll be a chance for a jump south by vehicle across the Jornada and avoiding the hard crossing….a quick ride to Cruces, or Truth or Consequences, or El Paso for a small group if they don’t get greedy and just take it easy on the driver. But so many of these younger ticks want everything now. 
 
It might be hard going for them when they get down toward Cruces. That’s where they’ll first meet the newly arrived fire ants. Also, those deep southern ticks will resent their presence, nudging their little fat grey bodies aside as they scramble in a fold of flesh for a foothold and a meal. And ahead, Texas.

The ancestral homeland.
Renewal.
 
Yes, it’s sad, of the hundreds of millions of ticks starting home; tens of millions won’t make it. There’ll be stained smudges on the freeway where they try to cross, but many run over by recklessly speeding cars.

Thousands clogging the river with their tiny carcasses where the water rose unexpectedly during a crossing, catching many unaware, the long march, the trail of tears, the trek home; so many dead, so many lost, the seed ticks, the mama ticks, the large swollen soft ticks shriveled and wrinkled with hardship….so many friends left back there along the trail, so many loved ones, lost, so many seed ticks lying there in the massive killing fields along the route. 
 
But they’ll do as they can, do as they are able, do as they must, heading south on that lonely migration that long dusty trek, always knowing they won’t be welcomed by their distant kinsmen.

The plethora of ticks in Texas, those hungry, selfish younger generation ticks will push and shove on the hosts, fighting for the best positions in and behind the ears, high on the necks where teeth can’t reach, tiny skirmishes and struggles for position everywhere; on cows, on dogs, on rodents, in the thick hair of women and unreconstructed hippy men in cowboy hats..
 
As always, those selfish Texas ticks will not agree to share their bounty. They’ll fight despite the sad happiness of the return of their distant relations. 

 Old Jules
 

37 Comments

Posted in America, NM, Texas, Wildlife

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Old Sol and Songs of Innocence and Experience – William Blake

Posted on November 24, 2011 by | 17 comments

Old Sol coughed up a pretty good hairball yesterday.  You can see a nice video of it here:  http://spaceweather.com/  He’s evidently still got some internal issues to deal with, as well.

Astrophysicists speculate one of the planets might have sassed him, but renaissance theologians believe it’s something to do with counting tiny beings dancing on the head of a pin. 

The attempted partial Solar eclipse in Antarctica was evidently successful and went without incident.

Down here at the Center of the Universe it’s stacking up to be a pretty good day.  I’m thinking I might get the starter replaced on the 4-Runner and finally know whether that’s why it won’t crank. 

I’ve promised the chickens they’ll have some Purina Cat Food soaked in the juice off some Elgin Sausage I’m having for lunch.  The felines are settling for a can of Special Dinner.

All’s well here in the Center of the Universe.

Tipping my hat to the literati and music lovers among you readers I’m offering this today:

I was actually planning to use the Greg Brown version of this, but couldn’t find it.  The cats and chickens are unanimous in thinking the Brown version is better but they agreed this one will do while Brown’s off hiding from the law or whatever he’s doing these days:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Old Jules

17 Comments

Posted in 2011, America, Astronomy, Chickens, Country Life, Poetry, Poultry, Senior Citizens, Solitude

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Feral Hog Plague

Posted on November 21, 2011 by | 19 comments

One thing that happens when you get a group of country people hanging around without a lot going on involves a mysterious sorting and filtering process.  Small groups of strangers with similar interests are drawn into intense exchanges of arcane esoterica.

Saturday a few old guys including me got talking about chickens, coons, skunks and feral hogs none of us would have ever learned if we hadn’t been to the auction.

The wild hogs seem to be concentrated, we found, in some locations and absent in others.  A guy from a few miles east of town seems to have the worst problem of any in the group, and despite the fact he’s killed a hundred hogs this year he says it hasn’t made a dent in the population. 

He’s devised an ingenious trap with several interior rooms the hogs can get into but can’t get out, allowing him to capture a dozen at a time.  He kills them in the traps and drags them down to a remote corner of the property with the previous hauls.

That guy knew some hog catching tricks I’ll probably use here next time they come in here or up and Gale’s tearing things up.  He uses boxes of Jello as bait.  Says they can’t resist it and they’ll choose going into a trap after Jello over breaking into a feed bin or tearing the walls off a storage shed for chicken feed.

But everyone agreed the hog population in Central Texas is out of control something awful.

Then, this morning, my old bud Rich sent me a link to this Yahoo News story:

Mexico to cull 50,000 wild boars from US invasion

http://tinyurl.com/7qrtwng

Mexican officials have unveiled plans to slaughter some 50,000 wild boars that have crossed the border from the United States and now threaten agriculture in Mexico.

The Ministry of Environment in Chihauha state said some 1,500 hectares (3,700 acres) of farmland in the border town of Ojinaga have been affected by the large number of feral pigs that have come from Presidio County, Texas.

“We must get rid of these European wild boars because they sleep overnight on US soil during the day and cross over to the Mexican side to feed,” Ignacio Legarreta, a state official, told local media.

The boars of European origin, which were imported to Texas as pets and then replicated in the wild, have caused serious damage to the flora and fauna of the area, officials said.

“They have reproduced to reach more than 50,000 animals that threaten the area,” said Legarreta.

The authorities intend to use cages with food inside to trap the animals.

But back at the auction.  I asked whether any of them had ever tried bringing the hogs in and selling them at auction.  None had, and at first everyone’s reaction was a guffaw.  Nobody likes getting close to a critter capable of ripping you in two and eating you.  Probably the auction folks wouldn’t take them despite the fact they handle a lot of dangerous animals.

But then someone mentioned there’s a place in Ingram always advertising they want to buy swine on the hoof.  Sausage place, one thought.  Which got us thinking how a person might build a trap on a trailer so’s to not have to deal with them more than dragging the trailer to Ingram, letting them inspect them and kill them in the trap, drag them out, weigh them, and pay up.

I allowed if I’d considered that and thought of it earlier this year I’d be a lot better off financially today than I am.  There was a lot of muttering and thinking going on among all of us before the conversation changed to coons.

Old Jules

19 Comments

Posted in 2011, America, Communication, Country Life, Mexico, Senior Citizens, Solitude, Survival

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Occupy Utopia

Posted on October 12, 2011 by | 43 comments

Chaos just isn't all that rare

I’ve been reading a lot of blogs about the ‘Occupy [fill in blank] phenomenon.  The hints of panic from the powerful, the ambiguous hopes of the demonstrators, the near-certainty what’s happening is both the beginnings of a time of public expression about dissatisfaction, and a manifestion of unsatisfied expectations.

Seeing all that brings insistently to mind how intrusive the illusions of a utopian ideal penetrate and embed themselves in the tiny fragment of humanity where chaos took a break long enough for non-chaos to become the expectation.  Mainly in Europe, Japan, the US, Australia and Canada post-WWII.

For the remainder of the world chaos never went to sleep and never expected it to slumber.  Africa, the Middle East, much of South America, Cambodia, Vietnam, the former USSR and other Eastern Block countries, Pakistan and Afghanistan have all experienced so much chaos within living memory there’s probably no danger of them occupying Wall Street.

It might be worth noting it’s an illusion being protested.  Copshops and politicians have never ceased being corrupt in the US, Europe, Japan, anywhere.  The super-wealthy were never not-greedy, never unwilling to sell their countries and their souls to become wealthier.  Religious zealots have never ceased being willing to slaughter disbelievers, rob them, enslave them, though they’ve briefly been restrained somewhat inside defined boundaries since WWII. 

The protests are against the entire history of human behavior.

It might also be worth shaking the head in horror and awe that this comes as a surprise to anyone.  Where have these people been for the past half-century while populations were slaughtering themselves and one another all over the planet except where  they lived?  How could they have come to live inside some bubble of belief that the venal aren’t venal, the greedy aren’t greedy and the corrupt aren’t corrupt?

The bubble is probably an artifact of improved communications, television, public education turning a blind eye to anything outside the sphere being brainwashed into the malleable brain tissue of those vulnerable to it.

Suddenly the bubble bursts.  Chaos yawns, stretches and begins to reawaken.

Old Jules

43 Comments

Posted in Adventure, America, Communication, Current Issues, History, Human Behavior, Relationships, Solitude, Survival

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Pack Goats for the Elderly and a Youngish Hermit

Posted on October 12, 2011 by | 6 comments

I didn’t know I was joking when I composed this post a couple of days ago.  But even though Jeanne’s visited me here and knows me better than anyone else, when she read it she thought it was so outrageous I must be joking.  After I explained I was serious and consider it a viable alternative she thought about it a day and just told me again she likes the blog entry as a joke.  But she’s really uncomfortable about the concept as a serious possibility I might try living this way.

So I suppose I must be joking unless I decide it’s the right way to go.  But I’m concerned about the bearings on bicycle wheels.  I’m thinking maybe light motorcycle wheels might hold up better:

The financial constraints involved in trying to get the old F350 capable of pulling a travel trailer and the unknowns involved in why it was left on this place when Gale and Kay bought the property are seeming a bit overwhelming at the moment.  That, combined with the uncertainties of whether I can find an old travel trailer I can fix adequately got me thinking about this.

A couple of years ago when I thought my life might proceed differently than it has, there was a middling possibility I might have an extended trip into the high mountains left in me.  My thought at the time was to spend a month or two in the Gila Wilderness in the immediate vicinity of the Continental Divide.

But at that altitude and the years creeping up on me, combined with the length of the stay that would be required, caused me to think I didn’t want to do it carrying a backpack the way I’ve always done in the past.  My initial thought was a burro, but the fact is hauling a burro’s a bit of a problem.

A few times in the mountains, decades ago, I encountered packers with llamas and talked with them about it, but those animals are as difficult in the size department as donkeys.

However, I ran into someone once in the Gila with a string of goats doing the packing.  Goats, to my way of thinking, have a lot of advantages over the larger animals insofar as transport.  Considering it led me to join some Yahoo Goat Packing groups:

packgoat · All Things Packgoat
 
I began doing some shopping around looking for a couple of young goats I might train, but intervening events led me to see that another long trip into the mountains isn’t in the cards for me in the immediate future.  And further consideration about that particular use for them in that area also mightn’t be the best.  They’d be a magnet for large predators, risky to leave unattended, and they’d need a lot of attention.
 
But thinking about pack goats during the years since has caused me to think there might be a role for them to play in a more urban setting.  Namely, for older folks who could hike to the store for groceries, but have difficulties carrying them home without a vehicle.  Maybe a goat cart, for that matter.
Feeding them would be no problem because goats will eat just about anything and thrive on it.
 
But a pack goat would provide a lot more mobility than a shopping cart for people living on the streets and under bridges, as well.  A goat can go almost anywhere a person can, climb into places where a person would have a lof of problems climbing into.   The ability to easily move residency out of the clusters of street people living under bridges would keep the owner out of police sweeps, out of reach predatory humans preying on the people living under those conditions.
 
In fact, I’ve been acquainted over the years with several people living in small house-wagons traveling around pulled by burro-power as a lifestyle and talked with them about it at some length.  It strikes me a person with a willingness to walk alongside the contraption instead of riding in it might actually be able to construct a small, light house on an aluminum frame with bicycle wheels sturdy enough to carry everything it took to live, move without buying gasoline, big enough for four cats.
Maybe something along these lines only larger
 Something large enough to haul some luxuries such as a camp stove, some groceries, a place out of the weather, but small enough to get out-of-sight come nightfall.
 Nothing as big, or elaborate at this, but something a lot lighter a couple, or four goats, maximum, could pull.
 Maybe about that size, but constructed with bicycle wheels, ball bearing axles, built on an aluminum frame from salvage aluminum rails and door frames.  Actually aluminum mightn’t be durable enough as the frame.  Maybe steel bed frame angle iron frame as a base for everything above aluminum.
 
Equipped with photovoltaic charged LED lawn lights to allow night reading, cooking, etc, a chuck box and a small gas fridge.  Maybe a guy would have to move up to a pair of donkeys to pull it.  But maybe not.
 
I’m thinking maybe two bicycles welded outside a steel bed frame with a tie-rod between the handle-bars behind a yoke might serve, and a swiveling tail-wheel [bicycle wheel] to stabilize the weight and balance on the overhang behind the two rear bicycle wheels might be a good starting place visualizing the possibility.
 
I’m going to have to puzzle about this more as a potential way to keep living without going under a bridge if circumstances demand I have an escape route.
But here are a few other concept pics from the Practical Action website, Cabelas, and elsewhere, just to remind myself of the directions my mind’s going on all this:
 
 
Old Jules
Frankie Laine, Mule Train

6 Comments

Posted in 2011, Adventure, America, Senior Citizens, Solitude, Survival, Texas, Uncategorized, White Trash Repairs, Wildlife

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Occupy Your Local Appliance Repair Shop [Limericks]

Posted on October 11, 2011 by | 3 comments

It’s the only job left.

Being on top was such fun!
The products were cheap, and the gun
Assured they’d keep coming
Velocities numbing
Til ammo we’d spang out of run.

Those multi-national boys
Didn’t make you buy all of those toys.
You bought them not thinking
From China, though shrinking
Your dollars without so much noise.

It’s jobs that you want, and you’re right
But you’ve got to be part of the fight.
Throw out all your plastic
incumbents and spastic
Buying and crying and spite.

The CEOs bankers and pols
Helped you do it but aren’t Commie moles
It’s true they’re just like you
Their coppers will strike you
While your coppers strike at the doles.

Stopping a train just ain’t easy
The methods are bloody and sleazy
But changing direction
Requires a correction
More solid than whiney and breezy.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2011, America, Communication, Human Behavior, Poetry, Politics, Uncategorized

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Stereotyping by Pointy-Headed Psychologists

Posted on October 11, 2011 by | 10 comments


There’s something mildly annoying and intrusive about having ourselves tagged and numbered by some damned academian somewhere as a particular personality type.  But when my good friend, Rich, sent me this link along with the question, “Does this remind you of anyone you know?” I clicked it.

“INTJs are strong individualists who seek new angles or novel ways of looking at things. They enjoy coming to new understandings. They tend to be insightful and mentally quick; however, this mental quickness may not always be outwardly apparent to others since they keep a great deal to themselves. They are very determined people who trust their vision of the possibilities, regardless of what others think. They may even be considered the most independent of all of the sixteen personality types. INTJs are at their best in quietly and firmly developing their ideas, theories, and principles.”
  —Sandra Krebs Hirsch[15]

If I were the kind of person who allowed himself to get pissed off about things other people do and say this would really piss me off.  In the first place, I don’t even believe in psychologists and psychology.  What the hell do they know about anything?

Secondly, wrapping people up into a nice little package and putting a colorful bow on it, sending it out as though it were a gift for anyone who wants to claim he knows something about people and the way they think is an invitation for more of that sort of insufferable thinking-behavior disguised as learning.

Thirdly, the way institutional science is forever confusing itself with engineering without ever pondering the consequences, next thing you know there’ll be all manner of psychologists getting themselves government grants to devise ways to profile their homespun stereotypes so’s some branch of government with an opinion about a particular type can identify them for their own purposes.

For instance, every day you can read about physicists at CERN and other labs patting themselves on the back and saying, “Oh yeah, we’re creating baby black holes. They just vanish.  No danger of  one of them getting away and gulping up the planet earth.”    As though they know what the hell a microscopic black hole is doing, or likely to do in orbit.  Heck, maybe it was just in a slower orbit and got left behind until the next time earth comes around Old Sol to pass through and grow a little every pass.

Think about it.  Those Manhattan Project guys developing the atomic bomb consisted of a significant portion of whom thought testing that device might set fire to the atmosphere.  They got out-voted, not because anyone knew it wouldn’t, but because most believed it was a low probability.

How’s that for some exercise in risk-taking judgement?  “Hey, let’s put it to a vote.  How many think there’s a big chance if we detonate this thing it will destroy all life on the planet by setting fire to the atmosphere?”

40 PhD physicists raise their hands.

“Okay, how many don’t think there’s a very big chance it will?

60 PhD physicists raise their hands.

“Cool!  Let’s run with it!”

And the majority turned out to be right.  Whoopee!  Now, generations of scientists later all over the world consortium of pointee-heads in laboratories and behind desks at universities can hold that up as an example of how to measure risks they’re taking without ever getting outside their closed circles of wisdom and knowledge.

But I’ve digressed.  Back to these grant-prostitutes calling themselves psychologists.

You and everyone else can be assured there are graduate students somewhere creating a box to hold all your personality traits, figuring out the buttons to push to produce a particular behavior from you.  What words, images, sounds will inspire you to buy a particular type of product, vote a particular way, choose a direction for your life.  The grad students just do the work, but some hotshot pointee-headed prof will give a paper about it when the National Association of Prostitute Psychologists meets next spring and position himself for more grant money.

But you can be equally assured that cop shops and the ilk have hired them out to help them see what else is in the box they have you in.  Yeah, you’re all these things, so you’re also probably a serial killer, terrorist, baby-raper, or someone who just doesn’t have any damned use for authority figures.

You’ll be damned lucky if they don’t outlaw you sometime because some hired-hand grad student working for a grant-hack prof put the wrong thing in your box.

Here’s an example.  A gentle, harmless personality box.  But just listen to what else is in there to light up the eyes of the cop shops.  But I suppose old John Denver’s probably not concerned about it. 

Old Jules

The John Denver Show (BBC), 1973 – Poems, Prayers and Promises

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Posted in 2011, America, Ethnic Supremacy, Human Behavior, Politics, Solitude, Survival

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