About a year ago the trees in the vicinity of the cabin began dying. I’d been fairly certain it would happen because there’s a grove immediately above about 100 yards that had all died off two or three years ago. It appears to have started at the power line easement atop the hill and is making a path of dead trees moving east, or downhill.
Conventional wisdom is that it’s Red Oak Wilt, or Red Oak Disease. There aren’t a lot of certainties about it, no preventive measures or cures anyone’s aware of.
Over the space of about a month they lost all their leaves and the bark began separating from the wood. One of the problems with trying to get them down is the abundance of wasps making nests between the wood and the bark. Hundreds of wasp nests and clouds of angry wasps. The temptation is to wait for a cold day.
There was a certain amount of urgency about trying to take some of them down because after Oak Wilt kills a tree the first strong wind often brings it down. Evidently the disease rots the root system long before anything shows above ground. Several of the dozen-or-so trees dying immediately around the cabin and outbuildings actually have large limbs hanging over roofs.
But the nights are cooling enough to send the message it’s time to begin building a pile of firewood. It won’t take much hauling this year. Some of it I could almost cut and allow it to drop down the chimney pipe.
The larger trunks are going to be a major undertaking to split, so I’m thinking I might sawmill any of them with potentially good lumber left. Sometimes Oak Wilt rots out the center too badly to leave anything worth using except to burn, but sometimes it leaves the heartwood almost untouched.
If there’s enough capable of being sawmilled it might provide enough oak for a project I have in mind cut relatively thin into planks usable for building a structure. But in any case it ought to stay toasty inside the cabin this winter.
The human mind is a strange place to find ourselves living if we ever get enough distance from the background noise to notice. I tend to notice it a lot.
This morning seemed destined to be just another day. Gale and Kay were doing the Austin Gem and Mineral Show, so I’d figured to walk up to his house to get the truck mid-day so’s to take care of putting their chickens to bed tonight. Startled me a bit when I looked up and there he sat in Little Red a few feet away, having brought it down to me. My hearing must be further gone than I’d realized.
Seemed they’d no sooner gone than I got an email from Jeanne saying my old friend from childhood and later lost-gold-mine chasing days was in Fredericksburg trying to get hold of me hoping I could get over there for lunch. Heck, it must be 15 years or more since I’ve seen Keith, though recently he’s been reading this blog. Naturally him being 40 miles away and me with a truck sitting there available, I headed over there.
Really nice visit, but in the course of bringing one another up-to-date he asked me a number of questions about my situation here that forced me to take a hard look and organize my thoughts about it all. That kicked off a series of trails of thinking to organize clearer, more concrete priorities for myself within a realistic examination of my options.
There aren’t a lot of them, but they’re all stacked atop a single one: having the means of leaving this place in a relatively short time if the need arises. It’s time I decided on a single course of action and begin leading events in a direction that allows it to congeal in a way that accomodates the needs of the cats.
But the process of thinking about it in an organized way had a parallel thinking-path over whispering somewhere else in my brain wiggling out a sort of excitement, anticipation about it. Here’s something that will be pure trauma and agony for the cats I do everything possible to spare such things, and my ticker’s beating a little faster in a pleasurable way just considering it.
That, combined with the certainty the process of getting things together to execute the plan I come with is going to involve some unpleasantness, excruciating work and fingernail chewing as it goes along.
Seems I’ve somehow contrived to be two different places at the same time inside my mind. One being pushed by probabilities to do what makes sense rather than what I’d prefer, the cats would prefer. And one reaching somewhere into fond memories of pinon trees, high mountains and an entirely different sort of solitude than I have here.
Keith confided to me today, “Everyone thinks you’re crazy.” I can’t find any good argument that everyone’s wrong. It’s nice being crazy and still being as happy as I manage to be all the time, though.
Anyway, to satisfy that fiddle-footed nagging, here are some songs of the highway and the road.
I find my views about rioting to be possibly artificially drawn away from magnetic north by several personal experiences with them, as well as having been an adult during the giant city burning episodes around the time of the MLK killing.
From personal observation and experience I feel a high level of certainty that every riot since the 1960s was and is heavily infiltrated by police or other government provocateurs, pushing, inflaming and instigating to direct events toward violence. I’m not suggesting the riots wouldn’t have happened without them. The riots would almost certainly have happened anyway. I honestly don’t have a clue why they’re doing it.
But my first experience with it was Halloween, 1960, in Borger, Texas. During the days before Halloween the kids in high school were all gearing up for it, but I was a newbie in town, had no reason to anticipate what they saw as the normal way to celebrate Halloween. Wild and wooly oil-field worker traditions combined with a boys-will-be-boys tolerance on the part of adults left the options wide open.
The newspaper the next day described it as a quieter than usual Halloween with the main damage being someone starting a bulldozer at a construction site and driving it through a house, nobody hurt.
A few hundred teenagers drunk on main street armed with eggs, veggies, rocks, jars of gasoline, cornering police paddy wagon with barrage after barrage, following them back to the station house and setting fire to the lawn was just a beginning. I never saw anything like it, even during the riots at the University of Texas I was a part of a decade later.
My point is, rioting is fun, it’s joyful, it’s seductive if the anonymity of a mob can be maintained and when there are no consequences. It doesn’t take much to get people rioting under those circumstances.
On the other hand, the day after Kent State and afterward throughout the remainder of the Vietnam War the temptation to riot was always there so long as it was someone else stepping off the curb into the street. The police and a lot of the rest of the country made it plain by word and attitude they felt tolerance for what happened at Kent State and wouldn’t mind seeing it again.
I recall what a letdown it was when I realized I wasn’t the gutsy hotshot I had people thinking I was, that I was just a loudmouth coward when it came to offering myself up for what I claimed I believed in by making myself a target for all those cops to practice on.
I don’t think things are much different now. My near-certainty about riots in the US is that the government response will determine whether there are riots, or won’t be. I don’t give advice, but if I did I’d suggest anyone involved in a peaceful demonstration immediately remove himself/herself from the area as rapidly as possible at the first sign of violence.
I’d suggest carefully exploring the route and area of the demonstration on maps and on the ground beforehand. Pre-arranged escape routes memorized to allow getting the hell out of dodge. Cell phones set with standby text messages to friends and cohorts to get the message out immediately that things are going sour. But I won’t suggest it.
But I don’t have a lot of reason to think having a riot going on and being in the center of it is a place I’d want to spend a lot of time.
Sheeze. I was lying in there meditating, preparing my spirit for the coming day when I heard a rustling in the other room. I ignored it at first, figuring it was just one of the cats took advantage of the window screen that doesn’t latch convincingly. But gradually I focused because somebody was having a party in there.
As I considered the awakening possibilities an opinion formed that it was probably Tabby as the most likely candidate, her being the youngest and most imaginative. Now, completely focused I listened for more hints until the sound of something falling nudged my curiosity enough to pull me out from under the blanket.
When I came through the door I couldn’t see any cat, but the window screen was pulled open far enough to admit a large cat. No sign of the offender still, though as I walked over for a closer look.
Then out from under the layers of books and other belongings a large coon face glared at me, hissed and threatened. I didn’t like this a bit. There was an escape route through the window, but I was near enough the way out Brother Coon mightn’t consider it the best option. I didn’t want him coming further into this maze of hiding places. This cabin isn’t big enough for me and a coon.
I stepped slightly away from the route through the window, eyes locked to his, baring my teeth, growling and snarling, him baring his, then stood stock still. Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef in the final scene of the Good Bad Ugly. It seemed to last forever.
But while the tension never eased, like Tuco, I saw his eyes working toward that route outdoors. My arms were spread to increase my threatening appearance and my hand was near an open bag of pinto beans. I allowed my hand to creep toward it, then drew and fired a handful of pintos at the coon.
He didn’t have the strength of his convictions. No Lee Van Cleef, old Brother Coon. He was out that window faster than I can type it. I probably should add, I’m having a bit of difficulty typing. My hands are still shaking a bit. Clint Eastwood, I ain’t.
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Ms Cholla, I feel obliged to update you, wasn’t there for headcount again last night. This time I was more canny, looked right away over at the rooster compound and there she was, searching and poking around for a way in. No problem for me. If she wants to live with the damned roosters it suits me just fine.
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Spent most of the day yesterday trying to get the Documents and Settings saved from this going-kerplunk comp into some sort of form to allow it all to be transferred to the Thrift Store comp, but no joy. Kept getting error messages after a few hours at a time of the old machine considering the matter.
Just saying.
Old Jules
5:30 am – That coon’s been back on the porch three times since the post. He’s standing on his hind legs trying to look in the window or playing with the edge of the door trying to get back in. But thus far, he’s just a smidgen too canny to give me a shot at him through the window screen.
He needs to figure out something else to do with his time if he wants to live until daybreak.
Evidently a bat got confused and got snagged in the buglight instead of coming into the cabin to fly around as they usually do.
Every m0rning the chickens feast under that light as soon as I turn them loose. But I think I’d best unplug it before I poke around with a stick trying to get that bat out of there.
Ah well. Maybe the chickens will eat it.
This cool morning had me putting on clothing instead of running around with nothing but shoes on to turn out the chickens and feed the cats. But it reminded me I’ve been almost a year without any gas for the cookstove and no way except the woodstove to knock the morning chill out of the cabin. I’m going to have to do something about that.
Then there’s this:
It’s coming nigh onto time to haul water again. Probably also ought to try to figure out what’s wrong with that well pump. It’s been since last December it quit, but I didn’t want to rush anything. If I need to pull that pump I didn’t want to do it in cold weather when it happened, but didn’t want to do it in hot weather the rest of the time.
Saw this in the parking lot of the Humane Society Thrift Store the other dayInside the guy was easy to identify, looked about like you'd figure
He was poking around in a box of old LP records. I tried to start a conversation with him about old music but he wasn’t having any of it.
This old XP’s going kerplunk. I picked up a replacement at the Thrift Store and if I can figure out where all these wires go I’ll have it in here in a jiffy as soon as I get around to it.
I don’t get to town all that often, so I naturally like to put on the dog, spiff myself up a bit. Sometimes that includes shaving, but I’ve found the average electric just doesn’t do the job. Add to that the fact the disposables and the replaceable blade razors leave a person with a dangerous piece of throwaway I’ve not yet figured out any use for.
Still, I like to look nice when I go to town, so I use the tool I also use to remove a lot of clogged hair from the two longhaired cats I share the place with. The shorthairs consider it a blessing to be exempt.
Starting out here’s how it appears:
After. You can see there’s a difference if you look closely.
Add a John B Stetson, a cleanest shirt and bluejeans, galluses, a pair of deadman’s boots from some thrift store and I’ll have the hearts of the town ladies all a-flutter with the fantods.
Gotta get moving, dress up and walk up the hill to see if Little Red’s available for the borrowing. Later this day maybe I’ll tell you what exciting happened there.
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.
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:
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
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:
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 
