Category Archives: Solitude

Jeb Stuarts, Jeb Stuart MacGruders and the Fallen

Posted on March 30, 2012 by | 6 comments

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

I’m five years older than old Bob Lee was when he had his little problem at Gettysburg.  I’ve fingered a lot earlier than when I was 65 that I could have avoided what happened to him if it had been me, instead of him dealing with a particular horse soldier.  Jeb Stuart, or Jeb Stuart MacGruder, I think it was.

Bobby Lee should have had the good sense to follow the advice of Longstreet and not become an invader, I always figured.  Should have stayed the hell down in Virginia, fought in defense of his home soil.

Lee was plenty old enough to know the great majority of the leadership on both sides was composed of the spiritual kinfolk of Stuart, Lincoln, Custer, Fetterman, Hooker, and other dandies too absorbed in what the newspapers were saying about them to keep their eyes on the ball.

Bobby Lee didn’t think that way, but he got the smell of blood in his nose anyway.  The men following his orders and getting shot to hell would have been just as happy defending Vicksburg, but they trusted his wisdom, they had the smell of blood in their noses, too. 

Same as these today.

But while I was thinking about that last night the damn tree fell on the storage building, so I don’t know where I was going with it.

Old Jules

Today on Ask Old Jules:  Escape from Reality?

Old Jules, why is escaping reality ultimately harmful?

 

6 Comments

Posted in Senior Citizens, Solitude, YouTube

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When Bad Things Happen to Good Megafauna

Posted on March 26, 2012 by | 10 comments

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

Old Sol and I continued our conversation from the previous morning yesterday.

“So.  You’re saying you think I need more diversity in my art?”

“I’m sure as hell not saying you need more ego.  You’ve got more than enough of that, what with your astrophysicists, Hopi Witch Doctors and Mayan-bean-counter buddies.”

“That was a hurtful thing to say.  What are you so irritated about this morning?”

“I’m not irritated.  Sometimes your bluster’s a bit tedious though.  You’re forever trying to take credit for everything that happens, whether you had anything to do with it or not.  But the most cataclysmic event, for instance, that’s happened since man has been around, you had nothing to do with.”

“Um.  You’re referring to the megafauna?”

“Yeah.  Millions of rhino, mammoth, hippos, sabre-tooth tigers all killed in the space of a few days.  Lots of them frozen fast enough to keep them from decaying much.  Carcasses stacked up like cord wood over half the planet.  If you’re able to do that, big fella, I say go for it.”

“I never said I did.  That wasn’t me.  We stars are mostly uniformists, gradualists, except for a few rare renegade exceptions.  We don’t go in for drama.”

“Okay.  I’ll buy that.  I envy you, though, getting to see all those giant beasties wiped out.”

“Yeah.  It was a sight to behold.  Just out of curiosity, what do you think happened?”

“It’s obvious what happened.  All a person has to do is discount everything he believes he knows already that would keep it from happening.  Then allow himself  to look at whatever options are left on the plate.  There aren’t many.”

“I’m about out of time.  But you’re admitting the reason nobody looks at the obvious isn’t my fault?”

“No.  I guess it isn’t.  They’re all lap-dancing to their own agendas.  Sometimes you end up as part of the agenda, is all.  I reckons.”

Old Jules

Today on Ask Old Jules:  Adopting an Illusion?

Old Jules, if you act like something for long enough, will you become like the illusion?  If you acted as a good moral, rule-abiding citizen, could you eventually adopt those beliefs and habits?

10 Comments

Posted in Animals, Astronomy, History, Human Behavior, Liars, Nature, Science, Solitude

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Commitment to Dogs That Won’t Hunt

Posted on March 23, 2012 by | 20 comments

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

Searching around in my mind as I drove to Kerrville yesterday I was trying to find something, almost anything, the word ‘we’ could be applied to that included all of humanity.  Not an easy task, despite most of the lofty notions humans have about themselves.

Intelligence and thinking came to mind, but didn’t survive even long-range scrutiny.  Whatever else we might be, human beings are only intelligent when compared to one another within a miniscule range of options.  Probably the least intelligent human being able to function is somewhat smarter than the next-best up for consideration in the animal kingdom.  And a few notches up on the yardstick, the smartest human being isn’t much more intelligent.  But there’s enough difference top-to-bottom to demolish the word ‘we’ when it comes to defining anything all humans have in common.

As for thinking, there’s just not a hell of a lot of it going on.  The overwhelming majority of humans are riding along on shock waves created by thinkings of an underwhelming few individuals.  Of the several billion humans on this planet there’s not more than a shot-glass full who could figure out how to manufacture a lead pencil.  Or, for that matter, a shot-glass.  Or build a fire without materials provided by some autopilot composite of individuals not-thinking somewhere else.

Pride held up a lot better, but as I turned it over examining all the nuances I found it was handcuffed to something else.  Commitment.  This species couldn’t have survived this long without it any more than a tribe of beavers could survive without the non-thinking commitment to building community dams.

And pride is the glue holding it together.  A necessary virtue to keep things moving, even though the commitments most frequently to dogs that don’t hunt, haven’t hunted for centuries, but nobody’s devoted enough thought to the matter to notice.

When I was a kid the adults used to say if a snapping turtle ever got a bite on you it wouldn’t turn loose until it thundered.  One of the places in this reality where the word ‘we’ can be applied to humanity is our commonality to that imaginary snapping turtle.  Commitments come along, sometimes the result of someone thinking something, sometimes just out of the blue, and ‘we’ lock our pride into it and don’t turn loose until it thunders.

When I began this post I intended it to examine human commitments to failed ideals and myths.  I planned to reflect on our often failing repeated attempts to commit ourselves to individuals, to political parties, to geographic boundaries.

But I’m going to have to save that for some future post. 

I was watching bumper stickers as I drove along considering all this.  Proud to be an American.  Proud to be a Texan.  Proud to be a Native Texan.

Presumably those declarations are a source of pride because of the effort and personal hardship involved in achieving them.  If pride had anything to do with personal achievement.  Or thinking.

Old Jules

Today on Ask Old Jules:  Views on Atheism?

Old Jules, what is your view on my religion? I’m an atheist.

 

20 Comments

Posted in 2012, America, Animals, Communication, Current Issues, Education, History, Human Behavior, Solitude, Survival

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A Bit More About What’s Not Happening

Posted on March 4, 2012 by | 9 comments

First off, The Invader Cat’s not becoming a fixture around here.  It’s just hanging around getting meals and paying the fare by being bullied by chickens and the other cats.  It has a home somewhere.  I’m certain of it because sometimes it vanishes for a couple of days.

But it’s not a fixture and it’s not becoming a fixture.  Even though when I was putting the piece of the can of feed I’d saved for it down last night, it came within a couple of feet of me scratching it behind the ears.

Secondly, if you’re among those trying to figure out what’s not happening by tracking Ganymede, you’re a day late and a dollar short.  Ganymede looks great at first, but the further you hone things down the more you’ll conclude something’s missing.  I’d suggest doing some dizzying calculations correlating Ganymede positions with with the position of Mercury.  Which, if you run through enough ways of measuring where they are, will give you a lot clearer view of what’s not happening.

Thirdly, I worked a lot on the brush dams in the ruts on the road coming down here yesterday in hopes of further rainfall runoff forcing the hill to give up more of the dirt it’s been bringing down from above.  Over the years it’s gradually been filling the worst blow-out-a-tire, high-centering ruts.  Now if we can keep getting a few of these male rains I think this will finish it off. 

Which is to say, spectacular erosion won’t be happening and past erosion will have reversed itself somewhat.

Lastly, despite your hardheadedness on the issue if you’ve got any, cold weather isn’t happening.

If you’re going to be a part of what’s happening you’re going to have to switch from felt to straw.  If you try to hang on to your outdated good-times idea about felt you’re going to have sweat running down around your eyelids and getting into your ears next time you go to town.  And you won’t be happening.

Just saying.

Old Jules

Edit 8:37 am:  I neglected to mention earlier while talking about Mercury and Ganymede that Saturn seems to be happening a little bit.  Even though it’s way to hell and gone off the other side of things where you’d expect it to have to be.

9 Comments

Posted in 2012, Astronomy, Homesteading, Human Behavior, Science, Senior Citizens, Solitude

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Placitas – Impossible to Stay but Hard to Leave

Posted on March 3, 2012 by | 19 comments

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

That adobe was built sometime in the 1930s as a turkey barn, then later converted to a dairy barn until the 1950s.  The walls were 18 inches thick, the floor a couple of inches of poured concrete, flat roof that held several thousand gallons of water when snow accumulated on the roof and the canales intended to drain the melt became solid ice.

No heat, rotten iron pipes for plumbing, and a back wall ready to collapse next snowfall.  The vigas holding up the roof, cracked timbers sagging with the weight of 75 winters.  Roof leaking into the adobe walls, eroding them beneath the vigas enough to cause me to arrange the couch I slept on in such a way there’d be something between me and it if the whole thing collapsed.

The rent was so high I couldn’t afford to pay it, eat, feed the cats and pay the utilities, even with the intermittent jobs I could pick up.  So they’d cut off the utilities every few months until I could raise the money to have them turned back on.

Maybe the best place I’ve ever lived.  Certainly the hardest.

That last winter living there I was shovelling snow off the roof, slipped and fell into the snow on the ground below and lay there unconscious some undetermined time before I awakened and struggled indoors.  Stove up something awful the rest of the winter.

But the cats loved the place and so did I, even as I watched the walls dissolve and the crack between the back room wall and ceiling widen.  The near-certainty the house wouldn’t last another winter gradually had me wondering whether I could find a bridge to live under without giving up the felines.

Gale had been suggesting for several years that I move here and live in this cabin on his place.  Another winter in Placitas, the cat necessities, and the vice grips of no-obvious-alternatives gradually persuaded me.

Gale and his brother drove up from Texas with a trailer, packed me up and hauled me, the cats, and all my worldly goods down here in one fell swoop.  A person can count himself lucky if he can have one friend in a lifetime like Gale’s been to me.

For several years here it’s been easy to not think about what comes next, to just savor being here and the absolute luxury of not being in the joy of Placitas, the adobe, the proximity of some bridge to live underneath.  We seemed a lot younger, that short time ago, Gale and me.  The cats, too, for that matter.

But aging comes more quickly these days and it’s creeped into the picture until it fills it.  The Coincidence Coordinators are nagging at me with increasing urgency and insistence to look for the next bridge not to live under. 

So far I believe I’ve been the luckiest man ever to walk the face of this planet, possibly among the happiest.  I’ve discovered I’m nowhere near as tough as I once thought myself to be and Placitas taught me I’m also not the pioneer my ancestors were.  I wouldn’t change a minute of those years after I gave myself a Y2K, but I sincerely won’t regret not doing it again if I don’t have to.

But maybe now I’ve toughened up enough to make the next step as much a blessing as this one’s been.

Old Jules

Today on Ask Old Jules:  Marriage Before Sex?

Old Jules, why is it important to get married for having sex?

 

19 Comments

Posted in 2000's, Homesteading, Music, New Mexico, NM, Senior Citizens, Solitude, Survival, Texas

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Why a Hermit? Escaping Loneliness in a Young World

Posted on March 2, 2012 by | 34 comments

I probably should post this on Ask Old Jules, but nobody much reads that blog.  Not that it matters whether anyone reads it, I suppose.  But if I’m going to compose words something in me likes it better thinking it will be read by someone else, than to just fade into oblivion.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this solitude addiction of mine lately, attempting to be candid with myself about it and what it means.  The tripwire involved several emails I’ve received asking what makes me do it, want it, whatever.  It’s plain enough the emails were sincere and genuinely interested, at least on some level.  But it’s also patently obvious the concept is foreign enough to those asking to leave them without a foundation for thinking about it.

One of the emailers was a cautious man carefully lo0king for someone to keep an eye on a property he owns in a remote area.  He’s somewhat caught between conflicting realities, I suppose.  There’s a need for someone ‘responsible, someone he can trust.  But anyone who’d stay there and do what needs doing is going to be a person he can’t understand, can’t identify with.

His concern’s legitimate.  If he allows someone to occupy the place and they happen to be the sort to cook meth on the side, or grow illegal herb, he’s in danger of having the property confiscated.  But he also runs that risk even if the grower or cook enter the unattended property without his knowing it.  Absentee ownership isn’t as seductive a proposition as it once was.

But the email exchange did get me asking myself to form some candid understanding of exactly what motivates me and why I’m a lot happier not being around people much.  And the eventual answer startled me a bit, seemed internally inconsistent.

I generally like people okay as individuals, I concluded, but dislike them in the composite.  I don’t have much in common with groups, but I can almost always find something in common with individuals.  So when I meet strangers in town I find I’m able to have friendly, enjoyable exchanges, though brief.

But I’m always acutely aware that each of those strangers is a part of some larger we, identifying with it, considering himself and it inseparable at some fundamental level.  And almost every ‘we’ I’ve ever examined closely has led me to want nothing to do with it. 

However, another piece of being around ‘we’ identifications scattered around all over urban landscapes is the forced realization of isolation and exclusion of a different sort than that of a hermit, deliberately self-imposing solitude.

The simple fact is, I get lonely and hell when I’m around people.  And I’m not lonely at all when I’m not. 

At least I think I might if I tried it.  I actually don’t recall ever feeling lonely under those circumstances, though I do recall not caring for it.

Old Jules

 

34 Comments

Posted in Senior Citizens, Solitude, Survival

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Trapped by Time

Posted on February 25, 2012 by | 15 comments

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

I had the vague, but mistaken notion I wouldn’t post on the blog today.  I awakened fresh and full of energy, went out onto the porch to chat with the cats and none were available for comment.  So I went back indoors, put coffee on, did my usual getting started routines and bounced around as though I’d become a young man of, say, 60 or 55 during the night.

By the time the coffee was prime, Hydrox spoke outside the front door.  But him being an old guy, when I let him in he promptly headed for the bed and crashed.  Caused me a moment of concern, because the cats here always demand a few moments of quality time, each, me talking to them, scratching them behind the ears, holding them upside down, then finally pulling their tails while they pretend anger and trying to get away.

But there he was, curled up on the bed without so much as a sidle-against-the-leg.

So I plunked down at the comp to begin the daily download ritual and glanced at the time.  3:35 AM.  Sheeze!  3:36 by the time I pulled my eyes away.  The damned computer clock must have gone wokkyjawed!  So I pulled up the sleeve of my sweatshirt far enough to show my watch, which promptly sided with the computer, despite the fact I’ve tried to treat it well.  All I demand of a watch is loyalty when it comes to a crunch, aside from occasionally telling me what time it is.

5:00 AM is when I get up.  Not sometime after 3:00.  I sometimes awaken at 4:30 and lie there a while savoring being alive, but I don’t hop out of bed like some fool and start making coffee.

So I’ve somehow hornswoggled myself.  Might just as well see what’s blogworthy, thinks I.

The NASA site reports Spitzer’s still out there dragging surprises out of the Universe:

NASA Telescope Finds Elusive Buckyballs in Space

Astronomers using NASA‘s Spitzer Space Telescope have discovered carbon molecules, known as “buckyballs,” in space for the first time. Buckyballs are soccer-ball-shaped molecules that were first observed in a laboratory 25 years ago. They are named for their resemblance to architect Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic domes, which have interlocking circles on the surface of a partial sphere. Buckyballs were thought to float around in space, but had escaped detection until now.

“We found what are now the largest molecules known to exist in space,” said astronomer Jan Cami of the University of Western Ontario, Canada, and the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif. “We are particularly excited because they have unique properties that make them important players for all sorts of physical and chemical processes going on in space.” Cami has authored a paper about the discovery that will appear online Thursday in the journal Science.

But I see by the date that was 2010.  Nothing there worth blogging.  Out-of-date old news.  Sheeze.

Old Sol’s UV pics on spaceweather.com don’t get updated weekends, normally, so a person’s left looking at how it was October 25, 2005 compared to yesterday, instead freshly dressed and spiffed up for a Saturday in February, 2012. 

Any port in a storm, I reckons.

As you can observe for yourself, the drama continues.

Anyway, I see time’s moved right along and it’s 4:59 AM.  Won’t be long before the data’s posted on the various sites so I can download it.  Probably just time for another cup of coffee, another moseying around outdoors to see if any felines have discovered the world made it through the night.

5:04 AM, Yeah, Niaid’s up and around, came in and had her morning hissing/swatting match with Hydrox, rousted him off the bed and stole his place.  Now he’s wanting back outdoors to see what’s in the news.

The Invader-cat doesn’t know how things work around here yet, so it’s out there under the window meowing to itself in puzzlement, hoping I’ll be putting out some viddles.  And the various roosters must have picked up on the house activity noise enough to get them crowing, wondering what-the-hell’s going on.

About all I can tell you about what’s in store for today is a nap.  I don’t care what the Mayan calendar says.

Old Jules

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Today on Ask Old Jules:  Are We De-evolving?

Old Jules, are we de-evolving?
The rules of natural selection and competition don’t really exist now. Everything is pretty much given to you as long as you have money. Could this mean that humans could be different in the next hundred years?

 

15 Comments

Posted in 2000's, 2012, Animals, Astronomy, Country Life, Current Issues, Human Behavior, Senior Citizens, Solitude

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Why Superstitions are a Bad Thing

Posted on February 22, 2012 by | 16 comments

Accidental Posting.  This is the post for tomorrow I was working on when I hit the wrong button.  It’s still the post for tomorrow.

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

I suppose there are a lot of good reasons to be tolerant of the superstitions people hold, but it’s not always easy to put up with it. 

For instance, a lot of people are so superstitious about this and that, they don’t help bring up Old Sol mornings.  That naturally puts a heavier load on the rest of us.  Not being sure someone else is going to cover it requires iron nerves if we decide to sleep in, or happen to croak during the night.

Last time I flew anywhere the airport security folks were so superstitious one of them wanted to physically touch what’s in my  medicine bag.  Can you imagine that?

I’ve been wracking my brain trying to remember when that was.  I don’t think I’ve been through airport security since sometime before 1998, but I think I must have been later than that by several years.  It’s only since people got superstitious about other people of Middle Eastern extraction, I think, that anyone’s gotten that submerged in his fantasies he’d do something quite that far off-the-wall.

But it shows up other places, maybe worse.  For instance, I’ve got this stuff made from red clover, bloodroot, galangal, and sheep sorrel I use on myself to get rid of skin cancers popping up from time to time because of my not protecting myself against a particular insecticide when I was a young man.  The easy way was to buy it because making it is a considerable chore.  

But a few years ago the FDA got all uppidy and superstitious about it.  Went out and attacked the bejesus out of all the websites where a person can buy it, ran them off.  Even the name is verboten.

Then a few days ago Gale was telling me about some stuff his dermatologist was having him rub on his face to get rid of skin cancers.  That is one horrifying face old Gale’s putting on at the moment, same as you’d expect if he was using the same stuff I’m using, but doing it on his face.

It appears to me what Gale’s putting on his face is the exact same concoction the FDA was so superstitious about people using if they were buying it off the web, or making it themselves.    Maybe it was the fact every Native American tribe on the continent’s been making it and treating themselves with it for all manner of carcinomas since before Columbus.

That ought to be enough to make anyone makes a living off treating people for cancer, or selling pharmaceuticals to them for big bucks superstitious.  It goes against every superstition the medical and scientific communities hold dear.

I suppose a person just needs to be especially conscious and tolerant of scientific and medical superstitions, more than others.  After all, they’ve got an army of police and other people carrying around guns willing to use them if anyone violates their superstitions.

The Tale of the Dreamsheep Mother and the Y2K War Gods

Sometimes I think the whole reason people have those superstitions is just to give them an excuse.  An excuse to explain how their particular brand of enlightenment is the only one anyone has any business adopting as a superstition.

Because it’s the one they believe.

Old Jules

16 Comments

Posted in 2000's, 2012, America, Current Issues, Human Behavior, Solitude, The Lone Psychiatrist

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Powdered Horse Milk

Posted on February 22, 2012 by | 16 comments

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

After I finished my morning download ritual this morning and prepared to go outdoors to bring up Old Sol and turn out the chickens I checked Ask Old Jules Biggest Regret? to see which of my brainstorms of the past she’s picked for the day.  I take a lot of things about myself for granted and occasionally one of my answers rattles me a bit, gets me asking questions about me and what makes me tick.  This morning is one of those.

Sitting out there under the tree I found myself asking, “What in the dickens is wrong with me that I feel so content and can’t come up with anything to regret?  It ain’t as though I haven’t gone the last mile to assure myself of plenty any sane person would prefer to be otherwise.”

I can’t guess how many people live the way I do, close to the cuff, physically having to force myself to maintain a comfort range that includes whatever the Universe tossed my way.  Probably a lot do in the poorer countries, but likely not too many within the boundaries of the US.  But when I see some evidence of them, I generally find myself on the edge of feeling sorry for them.

But meanwhile, I’m about as content, almost euphoric about my own life most of the time as a person could be.  Yeah, there are nagging things need doing, need changing, forever being pushed forward in time for one reason or another because of limited options.  But they whisper from the wings and mostly I don’t pay them any mind.

“Would I like, or trust someone like me if I came across him?”  That’s what I finally found myself asking.    And the answer’s a bit confusing to me.  “No,” I’m forced to admit, “I probably wouldn’t.   How the hell could you trust someone like that? “

“So, do you want to change it?”

“I’d hate to.  I’m more-or-less fond of being happy.  But it might be better to cultivate some regrets, some yank-your-heart-out-things I wish I’d done differently.  This satisfaction thing can be taken too far.”

Cultivating regrets, yearnings, deep feelings of loss might just be what it takes to live a life of fulfillment.  It would open the door to finding things to be scared of, frightened they’d happen.  Angry because they did, or didn’t.

Old Jules

 

16 Comments

Posted in 2012, Adventure, Country Life, Homesteading, Human Behavior, Outdoors, Senior Citizens, Solitude, Survival

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Shinola, etc.

Posted on February 20, 2012 by | 22 comments

I’ve been coming across the word disambiguation somewhat frequently on the web lately. It always brings a smile when I see it, gives me a momentary ambition to disambiguate something.

But the problem is that I don’t know anything much.  Even inside the 21st Century where uninformed opinion is respectable, almost universal, and carries the certainty and power of positive speaking, I just don’t know anything much.

Besides, the dialup connection, or WordPress is being a pure D Communist this morning.  It’s taking me forever to even load the site.  I’m rolling on the floor with joy everytime it tells me it can’t find the webpage.

So instead of disambiguating you readers on some uninformed opinion I have, I think I’ll give you a quick and dirty on something I know something about because I’ve discovered it around here and watched it happen.

I’ve told you about the Great Speckled Bird and how he’s in decline because of something he did in his youth to cripple him up something awful.  One side of him just doesn’t work the way it ought to, and it causes him a lot of pain and distress.  I’ve expected him almost every morning to be dead when I go out to turn them out for free ranging.

But  I’ve been making up orange-peel tincture and treating him with it for a longish while, and it always makes him feel better after I’ve done it.  Sometimes when he’s in particular pain he actually volunteers, gimps over and sits around near where I am, hinting.

I don’t have arthritis troubling me, but if I did, the Great Speckled Bird testifies it’s the way to the truth and the light, orange peel tincture.  He says it’s the difference between Chit and Shinola.

Costs almost nothing to make, too.  Just put your orange or grapefruit peels into a jar of vinegar instead of throwing them away.  In a while you’ll have a tincture.

Chit and Shinola disambiguated.

Old Jules

Today on Ask Old Jules:  State of Democracy?

22 Comments

Posted in 2012, Chickens, Country Life, Current Issues, Free, Free-ranging-chickens, Homesteading, Human Behavior, Outdoors, Science, Senior Citizens, Solitude, Survival

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