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:
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.
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:
A person used to hear young men say, “I’d give my left nut for [fill in the blank]” and everyone knew precisely what he was saying.
Sometime over the past few decades I filtered out allowing myself to precisely ‘want’ anything without consciously intending to do it. When I get the silly-assed notion I ‘need’ or ‘want’ something I just stuff it into a file folder in my mind marked, ‘tentative’, and go into a patience mode. That just involves waiting for the Universe to drop whatever it was, or the components to fabricate it into my life. Which the Universe consistently indulges eventually.
But yesterday in town I saw this and it stopped me in my tracks. “Wow!” thinks I. “That thing could wash a lot of clothes at once, and it has a wringer.”
I’ve been using the Thrift Store busted near-freebee 1947 Kenmore for some time and I’m generally tickled pea-green with it: Clean Underwear and Hard Times. But it has the decided disadvantage of not having a wringer. This results in not getting so much water out of the clothes, so they take a lot longer to dry on the line.
I tagged and numbered the concept of the washer above and sent an order for something along those lines out to the Universe. But as I thought about it driving away it dawned on me what I actually ‘need’ if I were going to do some needing is a carwash chamois wringer.
But the cheapest of those new runs almost $100, which doesn’t fit into any strong likelihoods of me ever forking out. Even on EBay they run that price and upward.
But those things appear to be built to last. I’m betting when car washes go out of business they end up in places nobody expected, taking up space and not getting much use. I’m going to watch for them at flea-markets, auctions and garage sales. And maybe I’ll post something on the Yahoo FreeCycle groups for Kerrville and Fredericksburg.
I wouldn’t give my left nut for one of those wringers, but if I wanted one I might.
Steve Goodman knew all about the trap of wanting dream things, though. In this song he just about says it all:
After the literary Mehitabel, the first namesake to enter my life was in 1967. She was a stray, moved in ahead of a hurricane reputed to be headed for Houston. My new wife and I took her in because she was hungry, pregnant, and a violent storm might be coming.
She was near to giving birth and decided my sock drawer was the best option, refused to be dissuaded. So I built her a cat house behind the apartment. She didn’t stay around long after the kittens died, evidently because of drinking her milk.
Mehitabel #2 was a bob-tailed calico. Amazing cat, a loyal companion for 17 years. I once watched her in horror and awe as she mauled a full grown German Shepherd and similarly sized mutt, though they intended it to be the other way around, then found themselves surrounded, blocked repeatedly in their attempts to escape by a feline seemed to prefer two at a time.
I could spend pages telling Mehitabel #2 stories, but I won’t, except to say she was the mother of Hydrox #1, Hydrox #2, Xerox #s 1 and 2, and The Great Rumpus Cat #1. I always figured she was reincarnated from Mehitabel #1.
Over the years I always kept the cat population contained in a set of names lying in wait for a cat to fit in them, Mehitabel, Hydrox, Xerox and The Great Rumpus Cat being the primary ones. The method always worked well for me, but cats needed to fit particular qualifications to seize a particular name. Hydrox and Xerox were always jellicle cats. Mehitabel had to qualify by meeting other standards, generally following the Don Marquis model.
Mehitabel #3 came in around 1996, me fresh out of cats, her being a pregnant bookstore cat in Socorro, New Mexico. When Mehitabel #3 emerged from sleep and demanded I pick her up I asked the lady-owner, “She’s close. When these kittens are weaned could I have one?”
“You can have HER.”
“I don’t want half-a-dozen cats.”
“I know. As soon as the kittens are weaned you can have her.”
The enthusiasm and insistence of the lady told me I had the right cat. Mehitabel and I hit it off beautifully. But I was on the road a lot, and despite the cat door she was able to use to go in and out, I sensed Mehitabel was lonely.
Mel, a good friend, had a pregnant jellical female, Electra, living in his garage, and when the kittens were born I picked out Hydrox #4, or maybe 5. Freshly weaned, I carried him home to introduce him to Mehitabel #3. She hated him.
Mehitabel showed no signs of accepting him, so I went back to Mel and borrowed the second-best of the litter, Niaid, on an indefinite loan to keep him company. I didn’t try to fit her into the name thing because she was just a loaner.
As the pair matured I’d frequently ask Mel, “You needing this cat back?”
“No,” he’d assure me, “I’m fine.” Then Mel partnered with me on the Y2K land, though he stayed in town except for a week leading up to January 1, 2000, so the Niaid issue wasn’t a concern.
But in the background, throughout her life, Mehitabel bullied both of them unmercifully. When we went to live in a single-room apartment in Grants, New Mexico, toward the end of 2000, she could lay down the law and they couldn’t get away from her. But eventually Mehitabel #3 went on permanent mouse patrol, relieving the household of a lot of tension.
That’s where the screw-up happened in the life-long cat naming procedures. A stray pregnant cat emerged from catdom at a motel Jeanne was staying in while visiting me in Grants, which she took back to Kansas with her. Named her Shiva, largely because of my lousy abilities at prognostication.
I had no idea the was going to eventually fill the Mehitabel #4 slot.
But she did and it’s screwed everything up from a cat naming perspective. I doubt I’ll live long enough to get it back on track. One of Shiva’s litter’s living with me, as well. Sheeze! Her name????
Salvaged wheelbarrow, salvaged nightstand and salvaged material stapled over door opening
Salvaged microwave stripped of components with the back cut off makes a great means of keeping the cat food dry
Heavy rain and the cool snap last got me scrambling to give the cats a way to get out of the weather and keep the food dry. Looks as though it will serve, but I’ve got to work on several more shelters. They’re there, but need upgrading a bit.
I’ll confess I’m behind the curve on a lot of things. I should have re-wrapped that electrical tape around the busted phone line before the rain hit. Internet’s back in tin-can telephone speeds this morning.
Gale and Kay were working the Mesquite Show in Fredericksburg this weekend, so I borrowed Little Red today and went into town for necessaries. But when I’m on the road I always shop the grader ditches and investigate any potentially useful items thrown or blown out of vehicles. Today was great insofar as upgrading cathouses:
The top was missing on this, but otherwise it's in good shape
The cats will be fighting over which gets to sleep inside this
I find a lot of these lids in the ditches and this one almost fits.
Also found these rubber bungie cords near another bunch of trash in the ditch
If you’re in the Northern hemisphere and you look to the south to the constellation Centaurus tonight you might view Alpha Centauri. 4.5 light years away. The nearest star to this one claiming ownership of us and our planet.
That’s right. About the time the light from Alpha Centauri was leaving home on the journey to your eye, all that clothing you see in the photo was sparkling new sitting on shelves in stores, racking up cash register numbers and causing people to have to frown at the bills at the end of the month. Now every item hanging there is worth less than a US dollar. Nobody likes products produced when the light from Alpha Centauri was just cranking up the engine, gunning the motor and heading here.
Weirdly, the value of everything around you reflects what I’m describing. Doesn’t matter whether it’s a toaster, a washing machine, an automobile, frequently even a marriage.
Face it. That stuff you’re buying won’t be worth squat when the light starting from Alpha Centauri today reaches here.
Maybe you’re humanocentric and think that’s lousy behavior on the part of a star, or maybe you’re one of those apologists who blame it on humanity, or Old Sol. But either way, you’re not looking at the worst case.
Consider Vega.
Northwest sky, bright, 25 light years. “Nothing wrong with Vega,” a person might think. But you’d be wrong. Almost everything people yearned and bankrupted themselves buying in 1986, when Vega was sending out the light you’ll see tonight, is in landfills and junkyards. Owning something manufactured when that light was leaving Vega’s worse than owning something manufactured in the USSR on Monday or Friday.
But there’s a lot more. When Vega was shooting that dot of light at your rods and cones writers were pounding away on typewriters and computers months at a time cranking out manuscripts, publishers running them up to the tops of the lists, creating tomes of gigantic lasting importance. But Vega took care of that, too:
New York Times Best Seller Number Ones Listing
Not one stayed around until that light from Vega reached here.
You can buy any one of them for a quarter, sometimes a dime at the Salvation Army Thrift Store.
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Computers? When Vega was spitting out that dot of light you see here’s what was happening:
Microsoft releases MS-DOS3.2. It adds support for 3.5-inch 720 kB floppy disk drives. [130] (December 1995 [146]) (March [346.254])
Apple Computer introduces the Macintosh Plus. It features a 8 MHz 68000 processor, 1 MB RAM, SCSI connector for hard drive support, a new keyboard with cursor keys and numeric keypad, and an 800 kB 3.5-inch floppy drive. Price is US$2600. It is the first personal computer to provide embedded SCSI support. [46] [75] [120] [140] [180.222] [203.68] [346.167] [346.268] [593.350] [597.94] [611.41] [750.49]
Lotus Development announces it would support Microsoft Windowswith future product releases. [1133.22]
Microsoft releases MS-DOS3.25. [346.268]
Two months after releasing Microsoft Windows, Microsoft has shipped 35,000 copies. [1133.22]
The first virus program for the IBM PC appears, called the Brain. It infects the boot sector of 360 kB floppy disks. [1230.56] [1805.23] (1987 [1260.193])
IBM announces the IBM RT Personal Computer, using RISC-based technology from IBM’s “801” project of the mid-70s. It is one of the first commercially-available 32-bit RISC-based computers. The base configuration has 1 MB RAM, a 1.2 MB floppy, and 40 MB hard drive, for US$11,700. (With performance of only 2 MIPS, it is doomed from the beginning.) [31] [116] [205.114] [329.129] [1311] [1391.D1]
Compaq Computer introduces the Compaq Portable II. [108]
Tandy debuts the Tandy Color Computer, with 64 kB RAM. It is the successor to the Color Computer 2. [1133.21]
AT&T creates the first silicon fabrication of its CRISP architecture CPU, incorporating 172,163 transistors, and operating at 16 MHz. [660.6]
Apple Computer introduces the Macintosh 512K Enhanced, for US$2000. It features an 8 MHz 68000 processor, 512 kB RAM, and 800 kB 3.5-inch floppy drive. [46] [75] [597.94]
Seen any of that stuff lately? No. It’s all deep in attics, closets, garages, or in the city dumps.
But when you look up there at Vega, that’s what you’re seeing. All that stuff shiny and new gleaming in the eyes of you back then, packaged up for birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas. Happy faces.
The erosion of human values following a straight line between Vega and your optic nerve. All that stuff listed above, the cars, the computers, the books, people worked their asses off to manufacture it and others worked their asses off to buy it all.
But that time lag between Vega and here screwed it all. Rendered it worthless.
I’m not partisan on this, not pointing fingers of blame at Vega. I don’t know whether it’s the fault of Vega, or whether it’s a conspiracy concocted by the same people who assassinated President Kennedy back when the light you see when you look at 19 Draconis or Alpha Cephei was leaving home.
A while back I was without music to confuse the owl-folk. I’d spang worn out my Kerrville FreeCycle-donated 200 CD Sony player and was scouting around for whatever the Universe had in mind to replace it. A couple of months had passed, to I figured the Universe was ripe.
Salvation Army Thrift Store in Kerrville was having a half-price off on electronics sale. I nosed around among the 8 track tape players, the television sets, the wires with all kinds of connections pretending not to pay any mind to a Sony 300 CD player staring at me as though I was the abyss. The door was open on it and it seemed a bit battered, but someone had taped, “WORKS” on it, along with a price of $65. $32.50 with the half-price on electronics.
The guy I think must be the store manager was at the register, and we’ve done enough business over time for him to know my ways and for me to know his. Between ringing up purchases he was watching me not lo0k at that CD player with a half-smile on his face. I moseyed over to it scowling, making sure in the corner of my eye he was looking, and tried to mess with the door to get it closed. Shook my head, then looked up and met his eye.
“If that thing has a door it doesn’t seem to close.”
“Bring it over here and we’ll talk about it.”
I put it on the counter and we both scowled at it. “That’s a lot of money to have to risk for something might not work. If I bought it could you write down something so I could bring it back if it doesn’t work?”
We both knew the answer to that one. It’s sold as is. “I can’t do that. But I’d sure hate for someone to buy it and get stuck with it not working. What do you think it’s worth risk-wise?”
He and I have been through this enough times before to know how we play the game. “I couldn’t pay more than $20 for it.”
“No,” shaking his head, “I’d rather give it to you free than let you pay that much.”
“I’m not taking that out of here free. I’m not begging. I’m just trying to find a price we can agree on. How about $15?”
“How about a buck?”
“$10? I’m not sure I can go any lower than 10. A man has to live with his conscience.” I feigned away from the counter as though about to walk off.
“Noo, no, no!” Him acting frantic. “How about $5? Could you go $5?”
“Sold.”
He carried it across the counter to the register and started figuring the tax. “It’s half-price for electronics today. But you probably don’t want to use that, do you?”
“Naw. Just ring it up at the full price we agreed to. I’m not looking for any bargain.”
The comments on the Yin Yang Conspiracy post got me thinking about this:
In 1961, at the age of 17 I took an oath agreeing to be part of a team effort to kill anyone John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and later Lyndon Baines Johnson, thought needed killing.
Everything I’ve learned about those two men during the decades since has caused me to believe both were despicable, incorrigible individuals bent on personal power and self-aggrandizement, first, with the betterment of the US public only a priority to the extent it contributed to those.
But I raised my right hand and took an oath to become the trigger-finger for anything they wanted doing, volunteered to point a rifle and kill whomever these two car salesmen cum rich-boy opportunists found more convenient dead than alive.
My thinking today is that, despite the popularity of the choice I made, despite the fact millions of other men made the same choice to abdicate their ethics, their intelligence, their judgement to those men and others exactly of the same unworthy breed, [still do so today,] it’s not a choice to be admired, praised, encouraged, or rewarded. If anything, it’s a testimony to my own shallowness, stupidity, weakness of character and obliquely, a failure of self-respect.
Today, men and women who openly vilify the President of the US, the US Congress, detest the US military command and officer corps, are nevertheless pointing their weapons at whomever those people they detest tell them to kill. And label doing so a virtue.
Aside from the fact I didn’t know enough when I took my oath to recognize what scum the two presidents I agreed to kill for were, those people serving today are in precisely the same position I was in. They’ve agreed to do whatever the dregs of humanity tell them to do, do it without question.
The main change between 1961, and 2011, is that I agreed to do it for $78 per month, whereas they’re getting paid one hell of a lot more to obey the orders about which unlucky human beings get the downrange surprises.
Think about it. Thousands of young men died, thousands killed because Richard Milhaus Nixon told them to do it. Yet Richard Nixon outranked those politicians of the time in scumhood so conspicuously he was casheered from office by the others of his club. His own peers.
Edited in Preface: Someone’s told me this post is a bit grim, which floored me. That is NOT what this is all about. I might well be the happiest man on the planet, the most joyful and grateful for the roof over his head, for the animalcules, for every moment of this life I’m blessed with. I am sure as hell not complaining about the way I live in this post, not poking around looking for sympathy from anyone. There’s not one of you I’d trade lives with.
Please allow your mind to read what follows with a smile. I love this crap. This post is me laughing at myself, laughing at whatever life might throw at me, telling life, “Do your damnedest! I’ll keep coming.”
“Science,” Hydrox the jellicle cat insists, “You observe, you formulate a premise, you test the premise and revise it, then you test again. Just make damned certain it’s right this time.” Hydrox is one of the two felines indoors during cool, and especially during inclement weather. “If science isn’t cutting it try some engineering.”
He takes a jaundiced view of hiding under something to get away from thunder only to get drenched by a lousy roof repair experiment. Hydrox is attuned Level 3 Reiki.
“Reiki Masters,” he assures me, ” At least cat Reiki Masters, don’t appreciate being interrupted from doing high-minded things by getting sloshed because of criminal negligence on the part of a human being.”
Back when I was attuning him several people thought this mightn’t be a good thing. It’s been a mixed blessing.
That chimney pipe was leaking badly back when it still rained. But this repair job hasn’t had the test of a good rainfall yet.
Edit: This larger diameter stovepipe came from Habitat for Humanity Thrift Store [toward the bottom here: Curiouser and curiouser ] for a couple of bucks. If the current fix doesn’t work I’ll cut the down-end with the angle cutter to match the slope of the roof, cut the top shorter than the chimney vent and sleeve the chimney with it. I thinks it will block of a lot, if not all the pesky intrusion of rain into the chimney pipe.
As you can see, I’ve smeared tar all over the the joints in the sheet metal roof, in addition to the customized chimney. That didn’t work too well, I’ll confess. Got some other things to try though. The light brown or tan you see is the foam you get at the hardware store that is touted as being able to plug large leaks by expanding into them to fill in the space. No joy on that.
The chimney problem’s crucial. Water hitting the side of it goes inside, runs down to the elbow in the bedroom but doesn’t slow down much:
[The gray hat’s a XXXXXX John B Stetson I picked up at a silent auction a few years ago for $10. Man who owned but never wore it died and left it to me, though we never met.]
Naturally there’s a backup plan to keep water from coming down on the bed in the unlikely event it rains:
This has worked pretty well in the light rain arena. Hasn’t been tested in a bull goose honest-to-goodness wind blowing rain sideways daddy-long-legs storm.
But we didn’t reach a consensus, the felines etc. on the matter of roof repairs and leaks. Shiva the cow-cat argues, “What the hell! Here’s a perfect spot for both those indoor cats in a thunderstorm. What’s the big deal? If they don’t like it throw them outdoors with Tabby and me.
“I’m sick and tired of all the age discrimination around here in favor of geriatric cats.”
Compulsive personality. That’s the only possible explanation I can think of for this recurring pattern in my life.
Today I had to go into Harper to pay a bill due tomorrow. I hate to make a trip in without getting full value for the gasoline expended getting there, so after I’d taken care of business I drove around the several back streets. I was craning my neck, straining my eyes, looking into the back yards of abandoned houses for a cab-over camper or camper trailer I might be able to pick up cheap as a potential way to give myself an escape route if something goes sour here.
I’ll be posting about some of that Harper thing another time. But after I finished nosing the back streets I went to the Harper Library Resale Store just because it was there. Picked up $6.00 worth of used books at 25 cents each, moseyed around and eyeballed a wireless weather station with rain gauge, anemometer, all manner of goodies for $20. But the box was open and there was dust on it.
My computer-like mind registered this and concluded it had been sitting there a while, nobody willing to pay $20 for it. So I carried my books to the register and while she counted them, “That weather station back there looks as though it’s been here a while.”
She stopped counting and looked at me grinning. They know me there. “You want to bargain about it?”
“Wulll. Actually, I’m not sure I want it. I couldn’t pay more than $10.”
She grinned and pointed to the room where it was located, started walking back there. “You’re going to TAKE $10? You ought not take $10.” Sheeze. We don’t get any weather here and who cares how fast the wind is blowing? When we got there she picked it up out of the box, frowning.
“The wind direction doesn’t work is the only thing.”
“Bobby Dylan and I decided a long time ago we didn’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”
So back to the register. $16.00. She holds up an orange card. “Do you have one of these yet?” No, I nods. “Every time you buy $10 worth of anything we stamp it. When you’ve got $10 stamped 10 times you get $10 off your next purchase.”
“Whoah! You’re telling me if I spent $4 more I’d have gotten two stamps on there?”
Smile. “Yes.”
“Okay. Let me wander around in here a little longer.”
I found four copies of the Texas Historical Review from the 1990s for 50 cents each. Then I found a pair of good sneakers that fit marked $3. I carried them back to the register. “Okay. $2 for the Historical Reviews and $3 for the shoes. Give me another stamp on that card.”
She starts adding, mutters, “Men shoes are half price today. You’re 50 cents short. 26 cents even if we count the sales tax.”
Deep breath. “I want to donate 26 cents to the library. Stamp the card.”
Speedometer cable was making noise on the Toyota when it went Communist. Maybe if the cable breaks I can attach that anemometer to the top of the truck and use the wind speed for a speedometer if I ever get the 4Runner running on pavement again.
SOLAR RADIO BURSTS: This week’s sharp increase in solar activity has turned the sun into a radio transmitter. Bursts of shortwave static are coming from the unstable magnetic canopy of sunspot 1283. Tuesday in New Mexico, amateur radio astronomer Thomas Ashcraft recorded some samples at 21 MHz: listen. Radio listeners should remain alert for this kind of solar activity as sunspot 1283 continues to seethe. http://spaceweather.com/
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Got a call last night from Gale saying they were in Van Horn, headed home. They should have arrived around midnight, so they can take care of their own animalcules this morning.
He said the Hatch Chili Festival probably won’t be among their future plans for having a booth. Sales were flat on most of his crafts, though the Siberian Wolf fang jewelry sold a bit, and his old stand-by steak turners with elk-antler shaped handles might have brought him to the break-even point. He sounded a bit down-hearted and beat to a small frazzle. But those craft shows are a big piece of the glue holding this place and their lifestyle together.
I’ve wondered for some while how long financial ventures depending on consumers buying non-essentials could hold up in a lousy economy.
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking over the past while about various news items I wouldn’t be aware of if it weren’t for the Internet and blogs I read. It’s guided my thinking into directions I probably wouldn’t otherwise drift, such as actually having conscious priorities in my life for a while. At least sort-of priorities.
Not to suggest anyone’s a good economic prognosticator, but with all that guessing going on out there, and with what appears to be a lot of contributory factors, I probably owe it to the cats, at least, to have a backup plan. A way to get the hell out of Dodge intact if things go sour, that has room in it for four cats. If something happens to Gale or their finances, or SS is eroded by inflation, or both, hedging against the sleep-under-a-bridge alternative probably makes sense.
My obvious first priority is to get my new truck running and street legal.
But after that’s done, I’m either going to need to build a house to live in on the bed of it, find an old overcab camper to fit in it, or find a camper-trailer sitting out somewhere I can pick up for nearly nothing for fixing up to pull behind it.
I see these sitting around with weeds growing up around them a lot. I think once I have transportation I’ll have to get serious about trying to acquire one or something rhyming with it as a future place for me and the felines if the Coincidence Coordinators decide to play dirty.
I’m thinking if things get too rough I might be able to slick out further west and establish a moving circuit of campsite homes on US Bureau of Land Management and US Forestry Service lands, changing locations every couple of weeks to stay legal. The cats don’t care for the idea, but they tell me they’d agree to it if I won’t get any chickens.
I’ll probably talk more about various facets of all this in future posts. Progress reports, learnings, that sort of thing.
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Meanwhile, happy posthumorous birthday to Jimmie Rodgers
74 years old, a resident of Leavenworth, KS, in an apartment located on the VA campus. Partnered with a black shorthaired cat named Mister Midnight. (1943-2020)
Since April, 2020, this blog is maintained by Jeanne Kasten (See "About" page for further information).
https://sofarfromheaven.com/2020/04/21/au-revoir-old-jules-jack-purcell/
I’m sharing it with you because there’s almost no likelihood you’ll believe it. This lunatic asylum I call my life has so many unexpected twists and turns I won’t even try to guess where it’s going. I’d suggest you try to find some laughs here. You won’t find wisdom. Good luck.
So Far From Heaven 
