Category Archives: Outdoors

Perfect Man Shrine – Columbus, NM

Posted on September 12, 2012 by | 18 comments

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

Someone during the 1960s built this, put up a small RV park with water and electrical connections around it, evidently for potential pilgrims.  It’s on the boundary between desert and Columbus, New Mexico.  I used to go hang around there most times when I’d visit Columbus for other reasons.  Never saw anyone there, though the shrine did have palm leaves fresh every time during the early 1990s.

But the RV park is grown up with cactus and creosote, doesn’t appear to have ever been used.  The power boxes are full of mud-dobber nests.  I’ve been thinking for some while about the place as a winter refuge.  I gather the place changed hands after someone died, the new owners live across the street and aren’t followers of Meyar Baba.  They work for USFS in Arizona several months a year. 

I was talking to one of the cats about the place last night when I was trying to sleep and she was trying to keep me from it by kneading her claws on my chest.  She likes the thought of it being somewhat remote, while having the potential for desert mice and lizards.  Probably fairly warm, too.  Suggested, once I get footloose, if something else doesn’t get in the way, that I try chasing down the current owners.  Try to get a feel for whether they’d take kindly to having someone park in there occasionally.

I’m thinking that cat might be onto something.

Old Jules

18 Comments

Posted in 2012, Adventure, America, Animals, Country Life, Human Behavior, New Mexico, NM, Outdoors, Senior Citizens, Solitude

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Wyffie Mysteries, Trailer Possibilities and Nomad Farmers

Posted on September 7, 2012 by | 18 comments

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

Some matters, I’m finding, my mind believes it’s better if I don’t know and refuses to assimilate and process.  I’ve been hearing for years about fast Internet and more recently how a person can just pull his car up in front of someplace in town, turn on the computer and have fast Internet.  I just took things to be that simple without going into it further.

But I’ve been doing a lot of reading the archives of the Cheaprliving Forum, http://www.cheaprvlivingforum.com/, asking a few questions, and discovering a lot without having to ask questions.

For instance, I’ve quickly ridded myself of the popup camper notion by asking one question about it, getting two helpful answers, realizing it was an abysmally lousy option.

I’ve got this laptop computer here and it’s got things on wires to plug into the USB port on the comp.   I’d assumed I could drive into town, plug one of these into the laptop and whatever it is takes a person online with wifie happens.  Now I’m finding these pre-date Wyfie and are for some other kind of fast Internet the world outgrew and left behind while I was sleeping under a tree. 

I’ve read on the forum what’s being said about their ways of connecting to wifi and the special antennae they use, all manner of doodads to amplify them.  And I don’t understand a word of it.  Don’t have a clue what it is I’m going to need to do to be able to get online.

One of the problems is that despite the CheapRLiving moniker, I gather most of these members are, either rich, or rich enough to be able to afford to go out and buy things they want.  So when they talk about solutions they’re actually talking about cavalierly forking out a $100 bill, or several of them, and calling it a solution.

Today I’m going to town for groceries and I’m going to try to find someone who’ll tell me in simple terms what I need to park my truck outside the library and go on line.  Then I’m going on Yahoo Fredericksburg Freecycle and Yahoo Kerrville Freecycle groups and find out if someone’s got one collecting dust in a closet they’d sooner hand off to someone who’d use it.

Then, if that doesn’t work, at least I’ll have a list of the things I need to get it done.  Probably find something on Ebay.

Not much interest coming on the Nomad Farmer thing.  Only two folks expressed a firm interest and one an interest for a couple of weeks.  But it’s early times yet.  Maybe late-winter or early spring some people will be wondering what to do with themselves next summer.

Or maybe I’ll just have to settle for heading for Santa Fe and take in an opera.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2012, America, Communication, Country Life, Outdoors, Senior Citizens, Solitude, Texas

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New Mexico Farmer Nomads Circuit Community

Posted on September 3, 2012 by | 23 comments

Hi readers.  I posted this on the Intentional Communities website.  http://www.ic.org/

http://directory.ic.org/24101/New_Mexico_Farmer_Nomads_Circuit_Community

Figured I’d run it up on the flagpole and see if anyone salutes:

New Mexico Farmer Nomads Circuit Community

New Mexico Public Lands, New Mexico
 Proposed [forming]migratory community to occupy BLM and National Forest lands with water available capable of growing food crops. Members would occupy each site and tend gardens 14 days maximum to stay within BLM and USFS regulations, then rotate to another community site at least 25 miles away, replacing another rotatee[s] who’s been tending the garden there.
 
No permanent structures are allowed on these multi-use BLM or USFS public lands, though if, say, a mining claim is filed [a cheap, easy means of establishing certain legitimate, defined rights of occupation], a storage for ‘tools’ building is allowed.
 
Members will need to be willing to live in tents, RVs, campers, or converted school bus shelters while occupying the sites.
 
The only reason ‘community’ is an issue is to assure crops get planted and tended at each site through the growing season, and because of the 14 day occupation limit per site.
 
Some rules regarding wood cutting, site cleanup and maintenance, and waste disposal will be needed, along with a rotation schedule for each member unit.
 
My thought is that if there’s sufficient interest in this alternative lifestyle it should begin before spring planting, 2013.
 

You just never can tell until you try, I figures.

Old Jules

23 Comments

Posted in 2012, Adventure, America, Government, Homesteading, New Mexico, NM, Outdoors

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Silky Rooster’s Been Raptured Out

Posted on August 31, 2012 by | 8 comments

I told you that silky rooster was intelligent, but I thought he’d outsmarted himself by getting loose and left behind here.  All those hens he came up with as a chick, the surviving rooster.  Kay’s hens and rooster.  All now joined with a free ranging flock somewhere else.

And he was sorely depressed being alone here.

But he must have known faith would see him through.  A lady down the road with 17 hens and no roosters emailed me after I listed him on Kerrville FreeCycle.  We arranged to meet yesterday at a pullover midway between her and me.

“What a beautiful rooster!”  He preened.

“What’s his name?”

“I’ve never given him a name.”  She scowled and stroked him.

“I always name my chickens.”  Attractive pucker.

To which Mr. NoName Silky replied, “I’ve been to the wild wood, mither.  Mak my bed soon.”

All’s well that ends well.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2012, America, Animals, Chickens, Country Life, Free-ranging-chickens, Human Behavior, Outdoors, Texas

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Trip West Photos from Jeanne

Posted on August 26, 2012 by | 19 comments

Crater Lake was a new discovery for me this trip. I took hundreds of pictures there. Heck, have one more:
That’s Wizard Island, the secondary cone. Crater Lake is about six miles across and 2,000 feet deep.
Aw, shucks, here’s one more, ’cause you’ve got to see the Phantom Ship:

Now to the Willamette National Forest. Here’s the view coming in towards the resort town of Detroit:

Below is where I like to hike around Devil’s Creek:

Forest floor.


My family has been going to Mt. Rainier since the 1920’s.

Mt. Rainier the first evening at sunset.

Clear weather is not always a given at the mountain, which makes its own weather!

I love bracket fungus and the dew drops caught my attention.

This lake can be seen by the road if you travel towards Sunrise (east) at Mt. Rainier. I’ll put pictures up of the view at Sunrise some other time.

This great view of Myrtle Falls is only a 7 minute walk from the parking lot at Paradise.

Narada Falls is too big to fit into any camera view, so I just put it in the background for this shot.


Evening sun on the mountain.

I hope you enjoy these, it’s hard to choose favorites from 2600 photos! I’ll put more up some other time if you like.

Jeanne

19 Comments

Posted in 2012, Admin., Adventure, America, Jeanne Kasten, Outdoors

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Texas Romance With Secession and Rope-Dancing

Posted on August 12, 2012 by | 11 comments

Hi readers.

Probably a strong case can be made that the Texan love for the idea of secession is directly related to the long-term love affair so many Texans have with lynchings, beatings, bullyings, and executions.  Especially during the past 50-60 years the Federal Government’s been a terrible thorn in the side of folks who’d like to be able to drag accused offenders out of the jailhouse and hang them, as their ancestors were fond of doing.

The side of the Civil War in Texas a reader has to search deeply to find is the part involving Texas Homeland Security of the time.  Raping, burning, looting, confiscation of property, and indiscriminate lynching of anyone the forces of law decided might oppose secession or the Confederacy.

[Secession! Texas Makes Its Choice – Texas State Library and Archives Commission https://www.tsl.state.tx.us/exhibits/civilwar/secession.html]

According to the Texas Historical Commission, “Texas stands third among the states, after Mississippi and Georgia, in the total number of lynching victims. Of the 468 victims in Texas between 1885 and 1942, 339 were black, 77 white, 53 Hispanic, and 1 Indian. Half of the white victims died between 1885 and 1889, and 53 percent of the Hispanics died in the 1915 troubles. Between 1889 and 1942 charges of murder or attempted murder precipitated at least 40 percent of the mobs; rape or attempted rape accounted for 26 percent. Blacks were more likely to be lynched for rape than were members of other groups, although even among blacks murder-related charges accounted for 40 percent of the lynchings and rape for only 32 percent. All but 15 of the 322 lynching incidents that have a known locality occurred in the eastern half of the state. The heaviest concentration of mob activity was along the Brazos River from Waco to the Gulf of Mexico, where eleven counties accounted for 20 percent of all lynch mobs. Other concentrations were in Harrison and neighboring counties on the Louisiana border, adjacent to Caddo Parish, Louisiana, one of the most lynching-prone areas in the country, and in Lamar and surrounding counties in Northeast Texas.”

http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/jgl01

A couple of examples of Texas Cultural Lynchmen at work:

“Today in Texas History: Teenage boy lynched in Center

On this date in 1920, the body of Lige Daniels, an African-American teenager, hung in the main square of Center, a small town near the border between Texas and Louisiana.

Daniels was the victim of a lynching. In a 2001 story on Refdiff.com, columnist Dilip D’Souza described the scene: “Wearing a white shirt, torn pants and no shoes, his head tilted back sightlessly, this black teenager hung that day from the limb of a tree.”

D’Souza noted Daniels, imprisoned on allegations that he murdered a white woman, was taken from jail by a mob of nearly a thousand citizens, who carried him to the square where they hanged him.

D’Souza said the Daniels’ lynching garnered much attention but no local protests. Instead, there was so much fascination with the strung-up corpse that photographers turned the event into a postcard that was mailed to families and friends across the country. Daniels’ dead body became an article of trade.”

http://blog.chron.com/txpotomac/2010/08/today-in-texas-history-teenage-boy-lynched-in-center/

Or Jesse Washington, Waco.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_in_the_United_States

Texans have a legitimate pride in their history and their heritage.  Their heroes of the Alamo, of San Jacinto, of the wars with the Comanche, the Apache, the Civil War are, to Texans, reflections of what they are, themselves.  Their aspirations, their salutes, their strutting pride in a history they yearn to be a part of.

And being a part of the United States with its obstructive Supreme Court decisions, its attempts to stand between Texans and the act of being themselves, needs mending.

Needs another secession to open the doors to opportunities lost.

Old Jules

11 Comments

Posted in 2012, America, History, Human Behavior, Outdoors, Police, Politics, Texas

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Old Sol – August 10, 2012 – Praying Him Up

Posted on August 10, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Me:  HIYIPP big guy.  Time to get your honeybee ass in gear and start climbing.  Got no time for your backtalk and finger twiddling this morning.  I’ve got important things on my mind.

Old Sol:  Yeah, I’m awake over here.  Sometimes your cheek causes me to faint and have to revive myself, but it’s never kept me from doing my job.

Me:  What you’re calling cheek, amigo, is just proper perspective.  You don’t have one because you’re too preoccupied with insignificant happenings that take too long to make any difference.

Old Sol:  I wonder why I bother.

Me:  Lately I’ve wondered if you’d mind skipping a day-or-three.  You’ve been doing your job a bit too anal for my tastes.  I’m not saying today.  We’ve already got things planned for today.  But how about we schedule something later this week?

Old Sol:  I swear it would be a relief.  I could use the sleep.

Me:  Let’s do it then.  I’ll have my people talk to your people.

Old Sol:  Sure thing.  By the way, you are one weird duck.  Time was you used to pray me up.  How’d we get from there to here?

Me:  Other things just got more important.  A person can set his watch by what you’re going to do, but there’s stuff going on closer in requires hands-on attention.  There’s a popular movement to put you on a time-clock and forget about you.   My cup’s empty and I need to feed the cats.  Just try to get everything right and do things on time today.  I’ve got no time to mess with you.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2012, Astronomy, Human Behavior, Nature, Outdoors, Science

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The Fervent Hope of Climate Change Enthusiasts

Posted on August 2, 2012 by | 9 comments

Extent of surface melt over Greenland’s ice sheet on July 8 (left) and July 12 (right). Measurements from three satellites showed that on July 8, about 40 percent of the ice sheet had undergone thawing at or near the surface. In just a few days, the melting had dramatically accelerated and an estimated 97 percent of the ice sheet surface had thawed by July 12. In the image, the areas classified as “probable melt” (light pink) correspond to those sites where at least one satellite detected surface melting. The areas classified as “melt” (dark pink) correspond to sites where two or three satellites detected surface melting. The satellites are measuring different physical properties at different scales and are passing over Greenland at different times. As a whole, they provide a picture of an extreme melt event about which scientists are very confident. Credit: Nicolo E. DiGirolamo, SSAI/NASA GSFC, and Jesse Allen, NASA Earth Observatory
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/greenland-melt.html

Good morning readers. Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

The people for whom climate change is central to their countless grant and research applications, and the people for whom NO climate change is central to their business models are probably both grinding their teeth in frustration.

Sooooo. All the academians, school kids being trained to believe they can do something to ‘save the planet’, other people who just enjoy the feel of shrill proclamations, jeremiads and threats of doom briefly danced in the streets.  Whoopteedoo!  Everybody’s going to die!

And the people with business models demanding they fervently deny climate change looked around for buildings high enough to jump from.

However, core sampling of the Greenland ice soon revealed this happens occasionally, last time maybe 150 years ago at a time when nobody claims human beings were causing climate change.

Damn Damn Damn Damn Damn.  Cry the people desparately wanting the ice caps to melt, sea levels to rise and all the coastal cities of the world to drown.

Ohboyohboyohboy! Applaud the folks with the business models requiring a continuation of the kinds of behaviors the other folks think cause man made climate change.

Changing horses in mid-stream isn’t easy, but sometimes it’s necessary.  Fact is, whether climate change is happening, is man made, is going to result in a disaster is just too large an object of comprehension to convincingly argue.  Suggesting academians and school kids can do anything to influence it one way or another is too patently absurd to convince anyone besides a grant review committee from the US Department of Environment.

Besides, there’s Genetic Engineered corn out there growing hair inside the mouths of test hamsters.  The same corn those school kids and academians are having for lunch.  http://aaemonline.org/gmopost.html

There’s a middling potential for glow-in-the-dark halibut, salmon and whales swimming up out of the north Pacific with butcher knives clinched in their teeth doing a mutant invasion of Alaska to California coastlines.  Time will argue a lot more convincingly and rapidly whether those happen, and if they do they’ll render questions about man made climate change more-or-less moot.

As for business models, there’s a lot of new potential for speculation and investment in new inventions.  An inside-the-mouth electric shaver, for instance, might represent the wave of the future.  Live flashlights made from mullets caught off the Oregon coast, not requiring batteries.  No need to stamp them, MADE IN JAPAN.  That will be obvious enough.

[Insert, “It’s an ill wind that blows no good”, “It’s time to look on the bright side of things,” and other appropriate quotes here.]

Old Jules

9 Comments

Posted in 2012, Creative Writing, Current Issues, Education, Government, Grants, Human Behavior, Outdoors, Survival

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Spang Blew It!

Posted on July 31, 2012 by | 2 comments

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

Having a running vehicle I can just brush the cats off of, scare the chickens out from underneath and drive somewhere is surprisingly uplifting.  Not having to borrow Little Red wouldn’t seem to the disinterested observer to be that big a deal, but it is.

Got me feeling uppidy in ways I’m going to need to treat with circumspection and discipline so’s I don’t run myself dry buying gasoline for trips I wouldn’t have made in a borrowed machine.  But damn it feels good anyway.

Those trips to TimeWarpVille [Junction, Texas] trying to get something they’d accept at the courthouse as valid to transfer the title, trips to Kerrville trying to chase down the guy who sold it to me would have been frustrating teeth-grinding to me most of my life.  But they were pure joy, driving along looking at the country, looking at whatever, ignoring the 100+ F. wind blowing through the windows in favor of the freedom it represented.

So yesterday I thought of a reason to drive into Harper.  The day before I’d noticed a piece of the right front tire peeled back on the side, probably something on the driveway flipped up and cut it.  So I was being careful, occupying 30-35 MPH when it blew.  Got her stopped without ruining the rim.

Sweated blood and bullets getting the car up on the jack.  Crumpled a piece of the underbody before I found the secret, unlikely place the top of the jack has to go to lift it.  Discovered the spare is a wheelbarrow tire, which was under-inflated, but left part of an inch of inflated tire between the rim and the ground.  Inched that money-maker home at 2.5 miles per hour.

Gave me time to shoot gratitude affirmations for it all out to the Universe and Old Sol.  Because that blowout’s a major blessing.

When I pulled the tire off the brake disk rotor was exposed to me, badly eaten because there was nothing much like a pad.  Bare metal just grinding pleasant rings into the rotor.  A lot of people would probably replace that rotor, but I think I’ll try just buying pads.  No reason to get extreme, over-react, do anything dramatic. 

But if that tire hadn’t blown I’d never have noticed I had problem needed immediate attention, not to put off until the next Social Security pension check arrives to provide me a something for nothing entitlement [as these Texans are fond of calling it].

So today I’m going into Kerrville and buy me a spanking new tire, buy a set of brake pads, and even let the guys who sell me the tire put the new one on the ground.

Christmas.  It just don’t get much better than this.

Old Jules

2 Comments

Posted in 2012, Country Life, Kerrville, Outdoors, Social Security, Solitude, Texas

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The Illusion of Urgency

Posted on July 25, 2012 by | 16 comments

Lying in bed last night distracted from sleep by gallons of sweat pouring off my body I found myself wondering just why the hell the Coincidence Coordinators seem to be throwing so many obstacles in front of me and the cats getting the hell out of here, one way or another.  It just oughtn’t be this difficult if I’m not chasing a wrong path, or am avoiding one I ought to be chasing.

I take this stuff seriously [and honestly don’t give a damn whether anyone else believes it’s insane for me to do so].  Seems clear to me in moments of insight the function the cats serve in my life is that of an anchor.  The weight of my contracts with them keep me from taking the easy way out and living in a tent, a cave, somewhere I’d rather be.  Somewhere the humidity’s not so high and the heat’s more bearable.

On the other hand, I’m not certain I’d find life worth living at all without these damned cats.  That’s another feature of my life a lot of people might find insane, and another feature of it I don’t need to explain, even to myself.  It’s good enough just riding the satisfaction I get sharing my life with them without demanding sanity out of it.

I think I’d do just fine without them if they exited my life without my having violated my contracts with them.  But violating the contracts as a means to drive my life somewhere I’d rather be would cut just about everything I value in myself off at the knees.

Of course, there’s this damned project over there dancing around in the wings waving its arms around demanding a particular uncertainty principle be dismantled, provided the Coincidence Coordinators continue providing the means to pursue it.  Which, thus far, they’ve continued to do.

So where’s the urgency in it all, thinks I?  Where’s the source of the fire I’m building under myself to provide a driving ‘need’ to be in a tent or under a bridge?

Physical discomfort, thinks I, must be a big piece of it.  Cripes, I think of myself as immune to allowing that to influence my life, but there it is. 

And of course, I allowed a number of expectations to creep into my mind, demands on a future I’ve no reason at all to believe will come to pass.  Things involving smelling pinon burning beside a stream, looking at rocks through a magnifier.

Enough of all that was still lingering in my mind this morning to get me asking the I Ching about it.  He ain’t always all that helpful, but “any port in a storm,” eh?

Consultation on Wednesday, July 25, 2012 at 8:04 AM.

Present: Hexagram 61 Centering in Truth

Question:  What about just blowing it off and going to live in a cave or under a bridge somewhere?

Truth involves establishing an aware relationship between your inner core and the circumstances in your life.  Centering in truth involves the ability to perceive a fundamental wisdom, reflected within yourself – and also in others.

Truth is transformed into power when you disperse all prejudice and make yourself receptive to the world as it really is.  This power can be a remarkable force indeed – yet is rarer than generally imagined.  It can be maintained only by cultivating a genuine openness to things as they are – a willingness to see, rather than merely look.

Whenever your inner life is clouded, your influence in the world is under a shadow.  If you are fearful, you will be attacked; if you cloak genuine mysteries in dogma, opportunities for new insight will be lost.  If you vacillate in upholding your principles, you will be tested.  Yet, when you are firm and strong, the power of truth can break through even the most stubborn minds.

In any debate, the power to perceive the truth in the other side’s argument is essential to achieving success.  It is possible to influence even the most difficult people, or improve the most difficult circumstance, through the power of universal truth – for truth is something to which all things naturally respond.  Get in touch with that part of yourself that is aware of this universal force of truth.  Cultivate this inner resource, and you will become adept at using it to bind others to a common purpose.

The condition of things in the present is fairly stable. There are no specific changes indicated right now.

———————-

Guess I’d better dig out John Richard Lynn and read the judgements on Hexagram 61.  Otherwise I might get thinking it matters whether I’m crazy.

Old Jules

16 Comments

Posted in 2012, Adventure, Animals, Country Life, Free, Human Behavior, New Mexico, NM, Outdoors, Survival, Texas

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