A bit of fun on a December afternoon.
THE CANDIDATES [BOTH PARTIES]:
Am I JFK? Ronald Reagan? FDR? George Wallace?
Democrats:
Republicans:
ECONOMY:
Democrats:
Republicans:
TRADE AND BUDGET DEFICITS [BOTH PARTIES]
The pretense:
The reality:
FOREIGN POLICY:
Democrats:
Republicans:
Old Jules
Posted in 2011, America, Human Behavior, Politics
Tagged culture, economy, environment, Events, Human Behavior, humor, Life, music, politics, psychology
Posted in 2011, Survival, Thrift Stores
Tagged culture, economy, environment, home, Human Behavior, Life, lifestyle, misc, miscellaneous, other, personal, society, survival
When I got booted out of Peace Corps training at Hilo, Hawaii in December, 1964, I dropped off the plane back to the mainland at Honolulu. I went to work in the Hilton Hawaiian Village Hotel Makahiki Restaurant for a while as a bussboy while deciding what to do next.
I was the only Haole working at the Makahike. All the other bussboys were Filipino and the waitresses, managers were all Orientals. The bussboys all worked for minimum wage and a percentage of tips, which still left things marginal as a means of survival.
But I soon discovered the bussboys all had an edge. On my first day, maybe first hour working there I went into the back carrying a huge tray full of dirty dishes and food left behind by the eaters. I’d no sooner gotten out of sight of the customers before the head bussboy grabbed me by the arm, put the tray down and began screaming at me. Moving dishes and pointing at leftover food items I’d mixed, spilled water over, made no effort to keep separate from others.
“Garbage! You made it garbage Haole bastard!”
It turned out all the bussboys kept discarded food separate and put it on a table in the back each time they unloaded from the customer service area. Then, anytime one of us had a brief break in customer demand up front, we’d go to the table and gobble a half-eaten steak, papaya, anything suiting our fancy.
During the time I worked there I ate well. I’m not certain I’ve ever eaten better, more consistently, even during times of affluence.
In the post Could you choose to live on the street? I described a man I knew as a youngster who dropped out of being president of a bank to live under a bridge. I suspect one of the ways he survived involved carrying what I did at the Makahiki a step further.
Similarly, in the post, Who Has Been an Inspiration in Your Life, and Why? I described a man who’s used second-harvest of affluence as a means to pursue what he considered worthy human activity.
This morning I’m reposting a couple of blogs of people who are following the second harvest route to life. I admire the spirit.
Old Jules
Posted in 2011, Hawaii, Survival, Welfare
Tagged culture, economy, environment, home, Human Behavior, Life, lifestyle, misc, miscellaneous, society, survival
Frog Gravy: The Incarceration Experience
This video is called Shopping at the Third Hand Store, aka Dumpster Diving. I love these guys. Shopping carts, cell phones, watermelons. Too cute for words.
We have been eating out of dumpsters for a little more than a year now. We have never gone hungry and we have never been sick. In fact, we now eat way better than we ever did when we had money, and our immunity to illness seems to have been bolstered from dumpstering for food.
A while back I received the following comment from Poland on one of my YouTube dumpster videos:
That’s possible only in America!
In Polish dumpsters we have only stinky dump, and i mean it, just dump.
What you have here it’s not dumpster as i know it, just place when people leave useful stuff.
I think i’ll just move to America and live from Dumpster diving, it would higher…
View original post 678 more words
Posted in 2011, America, Current Issues, Human Behavior, Survival
Tagged culture, economy, Human Behavior, Life, misc, miscellaneous, other, sociology, survival
You’ll be happy to know Old Sol’s finally getting things under control up there.
In case you hadn’t noticed it, WordPress has evidently installed a planetarium software over-ride here with the stars speeded up and going across the blog north-to-south instead of horizontally. I’ve no idea why.
After they filmed the scene from the movie 21 grams at the motel next door to where I lived in Grants, New Mexico, I got the job of helping to clean up the site afterward. While I watched them finish things up I saw wossname, Sean Penn smoking the cigar above and leave it in this ashtray.
Those folks left a hell of a mess.
But being the sort of guy I am, I emptied those butts into a baggie and stored them away for whatever future use I could put them to. That’s bound to be an expensive cigar and I always figured on smoking it on down, but I could never build up the certainty I’d advanced to that level of risk level yet. Whatever’s on that cigar always seemed to me potentially more lethal than whatever I’ve already got and don’t know about.
But I’ve digressed. What I wanted to say is, “DAMN those movie people are a messy bunch.”
That, and, “Why don’t WordPress stars move horizontally across the screen like normal stars?”
Old Jules
Every year I wonder about these pictures of Scrooge and others wearing pointee nightcaps. It’s a subject dear to my heart because I became an aficionado of sleeping hats when I used to do my slumbering outdoors a lot.
The function of a nightcap is to keep a person from losing his body heat through his exposed scalp and hair. Besides doing that it needs to stay on the head while you toss and turn. Those pointed hats do none of that.
I’ve tried a lot of different types of sleeping caps through the years and found it’s not easy to find one that satisfies all the minimum criteria:
This one’s sheepskin and I’ve used it for 30 years when the weather’s cold enough. But it’s stiff and doesn’t stay on all that well because one of the straps for tying under the chin broke off sometime way back there and I haven’t gotten around to fixing it. The temperature has to be not-too-warm or it becomes a cranial sweat lodge and not-too-cold because it doesn’t provide any protection to the exposed part of the neck.
A balaclava solves some of that, but it’s only one layer thick, somewhat expensive, and tends to wear out at the chin. When the ambient temperature gets down around freezing it needs some help.
They make those fleece caps for women and I find them in thrift stores for a buck frequently. When I find them, I buy them and wear them a lot, outdoors, indoors and as sleeping caps when the weather’s cold, but not cold enough for something more extreme.
During this last cold snap when the water froze inside the house I came up with this, and I like it a lot. It’s a fleece blanket folded four times lengthwise, wrapped around the head and tucked into/zipped in to the fleece vest. It stays in place and is warmer than anything I’ve ever found. It’s tempting to drag out the scissors, needle and thread and cut it down to a four-layer balaclava, but I hate to mess up that fleece blanket. The “don’t fix it if it ain’t broke” school of winter headgear might apply here.
When the weather’s cool but not cold, the stocking cap is a seductive option, even though they don’t ride out the night well. I keep a stack of a dozen of them on the bookshelf above the bed so I can reach up and find one for a quick reload without turning on the light. Same concept as a fresh clip of ammo for a rifle near at hand.
Pointee hats are talk. As Tuco observed in The Good, Bad and Ugly, “When you’re going to shoot, shoot. Don’t talk.”
Old Jules
Posted in 2011, America, Country Life, Music, Outdoors, Senior Citizens, Survival, Thrift Stores
Tagged caps, clothing, country life, culture, environment, fashion, hats, headgear, home, homesteading, Human Behavior, humor, Life, lifestyle, misc, miscellaneous, music, musings, Nature, other, personal, random, senior citizens, society, survival, wisdom
I don’t have a clue what this thing was originally intended to do.
Neither did the people running the Salvation Army Thrift Store.
I watched the value reflected in the price tag for about six weeks falling from the original $50 to $14.95.
Every time I went in there I folded it, unfolded it, stood it up this way and that way, squinted at it trying to figure out what it was for, but seeing other possible uses the people who designed it never thought of.
This thing is a tough, expensive piece of work.
It was evidently intended to lock something in, or out.
And clamp to something along one side.
Whatever it might have been, it’s about to become a part of something else. I pointed out to the manager that it’s been there at least six weeks.
He picked it up and examined it every which way, same as I’d been doing.
“What do you suppose it is?”
“I figure it’s a way to block off the wind going through the chainlink door into my chicken house. They just added a lot of extra parts.”
“Five bucks?”
“I’ll take it.”
“Bring me some eggs next time you come to town.”
Old Jules
Posted in 2011, Free-ranging-chickens, Redneck Repairs, RedneckRepairs, Thrift Stores, White Trash Repairs
Tagged Chickens, country life, culture, DIY, economy, home, homesteading, Human Behavior, humor, kludges, Life, lifestyle, misc, miscellaneous, personal, Poultry, redneck repairs, senior citizens, Thrift Stores
I watched this movie repeatedly in theaters when it came out in 1970, always remembered it, but never came across it again. Four decades later I still have vivid recollections of certain scenes and a general impression it’s one of the best movies I’ve ever seen.
I’ve no idea whether I’d still like it today, no idea whether seeing it again would inspire me to think of all of it as still as somehow haunting and valid to the human experience as I once did.
Watching the trailer brought back some reminders of scenes, but it somehow failed to capture whatever it was that captured me.
In some subtle ways my mind connects Brewster McCloud with Balzac’s Droll Stories. A multi-layered plotting capable of being enjoyed for the surface stream hilarity, but containing something fundamental, profound and pervasive about the human condition.
If you’ve watched this movie recently enough to recall it better than I do, or if you should see it after reading this, I’d be interested in learning how it sits with you.
Old Jules
Jeanne's work
Please help me control the egos of the hats, cats, chickens, deer, wild hogs, dead trees and the Communist Toyota 4-Runner.
I appreciate all you visitors who come here and the kind words many of you say about So Far From Heaven. But I’m asking a favor of all of you. Accept our gratitude, but don’t offer awards.
There are thousands of fantastic blogs on the web. Many of those great blogs are getting blog awards. I believe all of those receiving those awards deserve them, aside from the awards offered to this blog. This blog is not yet worthy of any blog award.
Jeanne and I work hard on So Far From Heaven and we’re both determined to make it better, possibly good enough to receive an award someday. But we both know we aren’t there yet. So Far From Heaven has a long way to go..
Giving blog awards to So Far From Heaven detracts from the value of the awards.
But the blog awards offered to this blog have also bloated the community ego. The cats, chickens, deer, dead trees and even the Communist Toyota have all become insufferable.
So until some time in the future when we consider the blog to have reached a better standard, please accept our thanks for the thought, but don’t nominate So Far From Heaven for blog awards.
Gracias,
Old Jules
Posted in 2011, Admin., Communication, Current Issues, Internet
Tagged animals, cats, Chickens, country life, Events, Human Behavior, humor, Life, lifestyle, misc, miscellaneous, musings, personal, senior citizens, thoughts
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/
So Far From Heaven 