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:
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????
This is a confusing situation. First I consulted my feline advisers about it, which didn’t help much.
Mr. Hydrox did, however, point out that the chickens, coons, possums and deer want to be like cats, coming onto the porch eating cat food, which gave me pause. But then I discussed it with the Great Speckled Bird, who pointed his spurs of blame in the direction of the deer and the coons, mainly.
“You’re constantly having to run them out of the chicken feed you put out for us. Those deer aren’t even scared of you, but it’s fun watching you trying to chase them off throwing rocks, cussing and waving your arms around. Damned deer want to be like us chickens.”
The deer were next in line for consultation. That’s more difficult because they don’t speak proper English. But a young buck assured me it was the feral swine causing the problem. “Squeeee deer are just hungry. Squeee don’t meannnnn no harm ner try busting things up. Most of ussss. It’s them damned wild hawggggs doing that. They want to beeeeee like us deer. Copycat bastards.”
What I was trying to figure out was why ‘we’ US citizens want the rest of the world to be like us.
At least, we want them to want to be like us
Time was not so long ago when the US cared so little about whether the rest of the world wanted to be like us, or not, the thought would have never entered their heads yea or nay. Prior to WWII most US citizens wanted nothing more than to go about their own affairs and be left strictly out of the troubles spilling blood all over the planet. What the rest of the world did was the business of the rest of the world.
Earlier, during the Civil War, when the UK was trying to decide whether to join the French in the invasion of Mexico, the Prime Minister was saying a lot of things to Queen Victoria about the leadership of the country (Abraham Lincoln), the reasons for the war, the conduct of the war, that Americans would have found painful to hear if they hadn’t been too busy killing one another to pay attention.
But they’d have found those remarks between the PM and the Queen painful because they contained so much truth. Not because they cared a damn what the leaders of the UK thought about the US.
We’ve spent the last half-century trying to make the rest of the world want to emulate us, politically. Most of the world wasn’t interested. But we did succeed in a lot of ways nobody anticipated. We shipped all our industry off to the countries we’d spent a lot of lives and treasure whupping the socks off of, trying to help them be like us just a few years earlier.
By ‘we’, I’m not talking about ‘me’, nor am I talking about ‘you’ if you happen to just be a regular person who wasn’t involved in making decisions to ship all our production, manufacturing and skilled labor jobs off to third world countries because of the cheap labor and ostensibly trying to help them to be like us.
The ‘we’ I’m talking about is some nebulous consortium of folks who had enough money to own companies, factories, mines, lumber mills, steel mills and all the other components involved in a healthy economy with a population of employed citizens.
And by ‘we’ I’m also talking about several generations of bought and paid for politicians of both parties who found themselves more attracted to serving the interests of those described immediately above than protecting the interests of the citizens who elected them to public office.
When the parts of ‘we’ described above were minding ‘our’ own business the part of ‘we’ not included had thriving industry, plenty of jobs, affluence. Anyone who wanted a job could find one.
But gradually, as ‘we #1’ and ‘we #2’ succeeded in making the rest of the world in our own image in some unanticipated ways, all three of ‘our’ industry and production infrastructures became a dead shell. All ‘our #3’ jobs became government related, or pure government, or ‘service’, such as selling insurance, flipping hamburgers, running the sewer plant, advertising, cashiers, sales, lawyering, medical, and cops. The kinds of jobs producing nothing of lasting value, nothing for export.
And in the process, the world we made in our own image wanted to be like us. They wanted cars, television sets, air conditioners, microwave ovens. They became super-consumers. They began needing petroleum products for energy, for plastic rubber monster toys for the kids. Petroleum to run their power plants to refrigerate. Petroleum to run their hair dryers. Petroleum to run their industries.
They became like us.
Meanwhile, the dead hull of US industry didn’t demand so much energy, but our automobiles, air conditioners and plastics requirements continued to do so.
But the rest of the world wanted it, too. They became like us. Prices skyrocketed.
So, now we don’t have any industry, don’t produce anything, but still need the energy to run. And so, also, does the rest of the world because they’ve done as we hoped. They became like us. Now maybe we need to find some other ways to make them want to be like us, before they decide to be like us in some other unanticipated ways we’ll like a lot less.
But a couple of decades ago the entire Eastern Block of Nations, along with Iran, did something we might be well served to emulate. They kicked out all the politico factions who’d been selling out the interests of the citizenries, tried a lot of them for treason and other serious crimes, and tried to start anew.
Now that they’ve managed to become like us it’s time we tried to be like them.
Finally, Tabby pointed out what’s probably both true and obvious.
“You run those chickens off the porch when they try to steal our food. You do whatever you have to do to keep the coons and possums from killing the chickens. You drive the deer away from the chicken feed. And you kill the swine because they’re dangerous to all of us and destroy everything that stands in their way of taking everything from all of us.
I should have known this was coming yesterday when I took a nap and kept noticing a few things crawling on me occasionally. But I was preoccupied with musing about other goings on.
Then last night I went in there to rest a few minutes and conked out, only to be awakened around midnight-thirty with a lot of things crawling on me. Pretty much all at once, doing a little stinging here and there.
That half of the bed is taken up by upwards of a hundred books, some read already, some partway through the experience of being read, some waiting to be read, some held for re-reading. They’re usually not enough of a problem to outweigh the advantage of having a book near at hand when I need something to read. But when I turned the light on, here’s what I saw last night:
It’s not the first time that’s happened and I could have prevented further invasion if I’d been paying closer attention. I keep a container of boric acid powder nearby and usually try to do a pre-emptive strike on them on a fairly regular basis. But it requires taking the layers upon layers of books off and squirting the boric acid powder all over the underlying bed surface.
This, I’m reluctant to do, because everything gets disorganized and I lose track of which things have already been read, which are waiting to be read, which are occupied holding something else up, and generally where things are.
So they sneaked up on me. I had to do it in the middle of the night with no pre-planning, no organization at all.
Sheeze. Now it’s chaos in there.
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9:30 AM edit:
Heck, I might as well add this since I’ve got them there together now. Here are a couple of authors I’ve come across lately I’ve enjoyed a lot.
They’re thrift store books, so I’m not certain you could find them easily, but both authors have an interesting approach, plotting is tight, characterization’s good, and they hold the attention well.
Upfield writes about an aboriginal who’s an Australian police homicide detective and his mystery solvings, along with his ethnic difficulties trying to do his job in that setting, along with his internal struggles demanding he go back to being a bushman. Good reads.
Alexander’s a completely different bag of tricks. He’s created a blind brother to Henry Fielding, author of Tom Jones, who’s a magistrate-cum-detective in London. His characters include Dr. Johnson, whores, a pirate, poets, actors, and all manner of peasantry. The narrator is actually a ‘Boswell’ sort relating the activities and events, a young teenager taken off the streets.
I don’t have enough distance from the Alexander books yet to decide whether it’s his unique and innovative setting, plotting and characterization intrigues me so much about him, or whether he’s also a damned good author.
Old Jules
11:20 AM edit:
Heck, I might as well add these since everything’s screwed up in there anyway:
Mari Sandoz – Crazy Horse, and Old Jules. Mari’s my daughter in a previous lifetime. Her biography of Crazy Horse is better than a lot of others about him. Her biography of me during that lifetime is as good as you’d expect from a daughter.
Doug Stanton, In Harm’s Way is the hair-raising account of the sinking of the USS Indianapolis during the last days of WWII, and the ordeals of the survivors in shark infested waters off the coast of Japan.
Dan van der Vat, The Pacific Campaign is nothing to write home about. Of the thousand-or-so books following the steps, events, tactics and strategies of the Pacific War this one ranks in the bottom third,in my estimation.
Lauro Martines, Fire in the City, is a narrative of the strange and
surprising emergence of Friar Girolamo Savonarola in Rennaisance Florence. So little attention has been paid this fascinating man and time it’s worth the read even if you aren’t crazy about Martines’s particular style of writing and his method of organizing his material.
Niaid was curled up on the bed, [I double-checked] so whatever else that critter was, it was an outsider. The chickens were ranging free and I couldn’t hear any alarm from them, but this guy just looked too big to have roaming around without interruption.
As I came around the cabin where I could see him better:
It was obvious the feline was operating out of a different reality. Which didn’t necessarily mean he didn’t need to be the focus of protective measures. But how does a person protect his chickens from a shadow-cat? I’ve done some websearching on the various news sites and checked out the methods incorporated by the US Government into programs to avoid having shadow-cats disrupting citizen-like critters such as these:
The consensus seems to be you have to get one of these:
No matter what the cost.
I’m not certain I want to have one of those running around here loose, even when I have dangerous shadowcats skulking around peeking at my holdings.
Once something of that sort gets a foothold there’s no predicting where it will end:
Sugar pills in toy jars
Candy counter cures
For the sensory deprived
For the spirit that yearns hardship
Facade struggle for the
Stagely frightened
Sedentary soul
Living a reality
Where gangster boss of fantasy
Celluloid deeds and words
Are worth repeating;
Gladiator wars in plastic armor
Oaken clubs and pigskin missiles
Pudding danger jello struggles
Hard and real inside the mind
Inside the molded plastic
Toy of the mind
Man who cleans the windshield
At the signal is an actor
In the show last night
On MTV or HBO
Sexy girls dancing
In the background
As he postures
Rag and bucket
On the glass
Toy hero pushes button
In the Kevlar coated dragon
Of the field
Sees the enemy extinguished
In a prophylactic
Box of evening news
Before and after
Old war movies
All the same
Any loss is accidental
Cost of war’s
In higher taxes
Salaries for heroes
Fuel bullets
Not in blood
Not in blood
Sterile sealed
In plastic baggies
Plastic baggies
Hold the artificial
Flavor
Of the life
When life was real
Yet the sickness
Needs a remedy and cure
Sugar pills in toy bottles;
New candy counter pudding
For the soul.
From the inside of Night Fortress 2 there’s a step up through the exit hole and he’s having a lot of difficulty with it because of his crippled leg and wing.
Those chains, incidently, are part of an ongoing war with generations of Brother Coon trying to dig into the fortress at night. The links where they meet the ground have treble-hooks wired to them to discourage digging there, but it’s a labor intensive game. They’re the first line of defense. Under the wood chips they’re on the holes are stuffed with prickly pear cactus, then covered with wood chips. Brother Coon eventually gets past them all and insists on my going to the next level of debate: The Lost Coon Diggings
Even the largest hen doesn’t have a problem with it. But after the hens are all out harvesting the night carcasses under the bug-light he’ll still be in there crowing, evidently dreading the prospect of fighting his way through that opening.
I load the chicken drinking water up with home-made colloidal silver, catch him and soak his legs in orange-peel tincture, and it all seems to help, but gradually GSB’s hard living before I got him’s coming home to roost.
Usually GSB doesn’t indulge in cliche, but maybe his mind’s going, too. Lately I’ve heard him say more than once, “If I’d known I was going to live this long I’d have taken better care of myself.”
If he keeps doing that I might be tempted to chop off his head.
Three of these four worthless felines are getting a bit long in the tooth, two longer than the next in line. It’s been a tough summer with the drought and heat wave, so I’ve had to take some measures to give them some relief I couldn’t provide for myself.
Shiva’s not one of the two oldest, but she had a health event a couple of winters ago that’s taken a long time to recover from, and she has a special job here if the cows ever come back. She’s Shiva the Cow Cat. Loved chasing cows back when they were bothersome. [ Artful Communications – White Trash Repairs 3 ]
I might add some other meanderings here today as other things come to mind, but what’s on my mind this morning is I need to start working on the front porch cat houses I put together last fall to give them all places to get out of the elements. Now that the heat’s bending in the other direction I wouldn’t be shocked to see a winter rearing it’s head before I’m ready for it.
Old Jules
————————————-
7:45 AM – Escape Route Possibilities – Fridge and trailer
Another issue that’s been on my mind a lot lately is creating myself a place to live if anything intervenes to insist I get the hell out of Dodge. The whole thing’s complicated by the contract I have with these cats, all but one of them, to take care of them until they die off, or I die off. I’ve talked with them about it, and they have some strong views about minimum living conditions, etc, which I’m obliged to consider. A tent or under a bridge doesn’t meet their minimum criteria.
I mentioned in an earlier post that I’m looking around for an old travel trailer I can get for a price I can afford, and the new truck up there Gale’s going to help me pull to town to let an honest-to-goodness mechanic fix the wiring mess, inspect it to get it legal, and eventually pull whatever I come up with for it to pull.
While I’m scouting around looking for an old travel trailer I’ve also been looking at this, considering whether it mightn’t offer an alternative:
Of course, if I select this option I’ll be building it from salvaged recycled materials.
This trailer below has been sitting there with that load on it from the time Gale and Kay moved here from Pflugerville. His shop building was full and he didn’t have anywhere to put all that stuff, so it’s stayed there, everything on it getting ruined by the weather and the tires going flat.
another view:
That lathe, left rear, is troubling to see. But so’s a lot of the other once-useful items on there.
another view:
another view:
If I can think of somewhere to put that junk, protecting whatever’s left worth protecting, I just might be able to talk him out of the trailer if I decide the building a house on a trailer option seems the best after everything’s considered.
On the other hand, the fridge is now a sure thing. I was talking with Gale while he was doing some jewelry work the other day and noticed this, down there bottom center:
Turns out it’s the gas/electric fridge out of an old travel trailer I gave him about 30 years ago. He says it’s mine if I want it.
The sign and that line of people outside the building suggests the Christians in Washington mightn’t have anything in common with regular old actual Christians of the old actual Christianity faith.
I don’t know what they’re doing to help those people in there, being a non-Christian, but they must be doing something. That line stretches all the way out into the parking lot.
I don’t need a gas grille, but if I did I’d have snapped this one up from the Salvation Army:
It’s missing the burners and regulator, cheap to add and retrofit, looks barely used, but the price is amazing:
Only thing I can figure is the Chinese have bought out Harley Davidson:
Damned thing is 200cc and has a pull starter like a lawn mower. They charge extra for ape-hangers.
But it looks as though they’re also wanting to cash in on some of the automotive company bailouts:
Notice the suicide shift above the right fender. You have to turn loose the steering wheel to shift gears. Can’t imagine how they got that through Ralph Nader’s US Department of Transportation and Welfare.
Best for last, though. Here’s a free crapper and exercycle from Habitat for Humanity:
Tempting, but I’ve already got the one, and I get my exercise just trying to stay alive. Fact of life.
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 
