Tag Archives: Life

Helpful Advice

Posted on September 29, 2011 by | 9 comments

I don’t give advice, but I’m frequently interested in the viewpoints of people who do consider themselves wise enough to give it.

Well, I say I don’t give advice and I sincerely try not to, try to catch myself at it and chide myself when I discover I’ve backslid in a way I can’t squirm out of.  Well, most of the time.  If you’ve read the Survival Book  [  https://sofarfromheaven.com/survival-book-2/ ]  you know I’m lying to myself and to you when I say it.

Some of you nitpickier readers might assert the ‘Ask Old Jules’  blurbs Jeanne posts on the Facebook page amounts to advice, but I can’t agree.  That’s just answers to questions with no attempt to be helpful, no wish to influence the choices other people make.

But I’ve digressed.

I read Ed Hurst’s blog, ‘The Oracles of Marriage’ http://my.opera.com/soulkiln/blog/, and while I find myself not in total agreement with him in a lot of ways, I suspect people involved in relationships with other people might profit from reading and carefully considering what he says.

There’s also the Dear Coke Talk http://www.dearcoketalk.com/ blog ruminating and giving advice I find amusing and might have found helpful when I indulged in relationships.

We’re living in a time of possibly the most profound social experiment in the history of mankind.  During the past century 10,000?  50,000? years of accumulated human wisdom and tradition has been discarded worldwide in favor of various packages groups believe they’ll like better.  I’m not, personally, certain anyone on the planet is qualified to give advice in times such as these.  The body of experience just isn’t sufficient to pull solutions out of a catch-as-catch-can gut feel cauldron of individual preferences and biases, and deliver them any meaningful where.

Seems to me it would be a good time for people involved in relationships to do a lot of pondering, reading, discussing with the party of the second part about boundaries, about ownership, about mutual dependencies, about verbalizing expectations, and about self-reliance.

But what the hell do I know?  I can show you how to start a fire with flint and steel.  I can elaborate at length on how you can make the best of almost any bad situation and come away from it a lot more confident and probably happier than you went into it.  But when things go into the arena of two people clinging to one another in a complex web of expectations neither has clearly defined, neither has ever agreed to, the only reasonable approach seems to me to be honest communications.

I was married 25 years and one of the conversational mantras during that time was, “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.”

“Yes, something’s the matter.  What is it?”

“Nothing.  No, really.  Nothing.”

That interchange sums up what I’m talking about.  It’s a statement communicated by non-verbal methods that the party of the second part hasn’t satisfied the expectations of the party of the first part.

Why isn’t the answer a forthright statement?  Because the unsatisfied expectation isn’t one that has been brought out into the open, discussed, and agreed to.

“I’m angry and I want you to know I’m angry, but you’ll have to guess why, want me to not be angry.  I’ve chosen this method in hopes of getting you to modify your behavior to something more in tune with what I want from you, knowing you probably won’t agree to it unless I sulk it out of you.”

How the hell can anyone presume to give advice about how to do that better?  When the goal is ownership and control who’s better qualified than the party of the first part, whichever the gender?

Old Jules

Kenny Rogers & The 1st Edition – Something’s Burning

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Posted in 2011, Human Behavior, Liars, Relationships

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Thinking on your Feet

Posted on September 26, 2011 by | 4 comments

A friend and I were chewing the fat outside a car wash business he owns next to a convenience store in Las Lunas, New Mexico a few years ago. A pregnant woman who worked at the convenience store came outside and plopped down out of sight of the front door, smoking a cigarette, sitting on the concrete and leaning against the building.

We’d discussed this woman before…. a nice young lady with a life a person wouldn’t wish on anyone…. last time I’d seen her she was sitting in the same spot crying, which is how I came to ask my bud about her story. Anyway, seeing her brought her into the conversation again.

Most recent weirdness in her life:

The lady was  20 years old. She’d gone into Isleta Casino a while back with a friend, began feeding her paycheck into the slot machines. Now, it was illegal for this woman and her friend to be playing the slots, minimum age being 21.

So what happens? She hits a $5000 jackpot on the machine she’s playing. It lights up like Times Square on New Years Eve, making all kinds of commotion, people coming from all directions to see. She knows she’s going to have to show an ID to get the money. So what does this poor lady do?

She and her friend beat feet out of there, leaving the jackpot.

I suppose the first thing that comes to mind is this: What the hell was she doing putting her money into a gambling machine if she couldn’t accept a payoff, supposing she hit?  Did she do some heavy thinking about this?

But, even so, she ought to have been able to get someone legal to accept the payoff and split it with her, thinks I.

But she knew she was breaking the law, and what do you do when you get caught red-handed? Why hell, you run if your knees are still good enough to allow it.

That’s what’s called thinking on your feet.  Thinking afterward what you done-already should have thought before-wards.

Old Jules

Frank Sinatra and Count Basie– Luck be a Lady

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Posted in Adventure, Human Behavior, Native American, NM, Youth

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A Few Noticings in Town

Posted on September 24, 2011 by | 6 comments

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.

Old Jules

Loudon Wainwright– Glad To See You Got Religion

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Posted in 2011, America, Free, Human Behavior, Kerrville, Thrift Stores

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The Horror of Discovering You Love Opera

Posted on September 21, 2011 by | 11 comments
A performance of Don Giovanni with the great Italian baritone Antonio Scotti (as Don Giovanni). Scotti sang the role of Don Giovanni at Covent Garden, London, in 1899 and again at the Metropolitan Opera, New York in December of the same year.

It never dawned on me I was proud I didn’t like opera.  I’d never heard any opera except brief snatches or in spoofs.  I’d never given any conscious thought at all to the fact I thought people who went to operas did it to show off to other people who went to operas, or were snooty and just wanted to impress someone, or were sissies.  Never gave it a single thought.

To my mind a person who went to operas was just naturally, naturally, naturally someone I had no respect for, had no time for, would never take seriously.  I didn’t need to think about it.  I knew.  I don’t recall anyone ever trying to change my thinking about it, either.  I imagine they all knew same as I did those opera goers were phonies and sissies.

So, sometime in the late-1980s when my ex-wife got a couple of opera tickets for a performance on the University of Texas campus I wasn’t overjoyed.  I suited up and traveled down there under duress, grumbled behind her to our seats, scowled when the lights went down and battened down the hatches for hard weather.

Over the next couple of hours a pair of blinders was removed from my eyes, plugs removed from my ears.  A war went on inside me as the realization dawned that I loved this stuff.  The next time an opera came to Austin it was me insisting we get tickets.

That would be bad enough if it had stopped there.  But when my marriage broke up in 1992, and I relocated to Santa Fe, mildly affluent, I discovered a Santa Fe Opera exists.  I attended a performance, and thereafter every year bought season tickets and used them as long as I could afford them.

I’ve attended a lot of concerts and live performances in my life and enjoyed many with Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark, Kinky Friedman, Leonard Cohen, Loudon Wainwright and others, including a few Broadway performances.  But I’d be lying if I claimed every opera I ever attended wasn’t as thrilling and uplifting as I walked out as any of those.

And naturally, I hate myself for it and hang my head in shame admitting it.

Florida Grand Opera-DON GIOVANNI, The Don’s final scene

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Posted in 1990's, Adventure, Education, Human Behavior, Music, NM

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Abdicating Personal Responsibility to Politicians

Posted on September 19, 2011 by | 6 comments

The comments on the Yin Yang Conspiracy post got me thinking about this:

In 1961, at the age of 17 I took an oath agreeing to be part of a team effort to kill anyone John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and later Lyndon Baines Johnson, thought needed killing.

Everything I’ve learned about those two men during the decades since has caused me to believe both were despicable, incorrigible individuals bent on personal power and self-aggrandizement, first, with the betterment of the US public only a priority to the extent it contributed to those.

But I raised my right hand and took an oath to become the trigger-finger for anything they wanted doing, volunteered to point a rifle and kill whomever these two car salesmen cum rich-boy opportunists found more convenient dead than alive.

My thinking today is that, despite the popularity of the choice I made, despite the fact millions of other men made the same choice to abdicate their ethics, their intelligence, their judgement to those men and others exactly of the same unworthy breed, [still do so today,] it’s not a choice to be admired, praised, encouraged, or rewarded.  If anything, it’s a testimony to my own shallowness, stupidity, weakness of character and obliquely, a failure of self-respect.

Today, men and women who openly vilify the President of the US, the US Congress, detest the US military command and officer corps, are nevertheless pointing their weapons at whomever those people they detest tell them to kill.  And label doing so a virtue.

Aside from the fact I didn’t know enough when I took my oath to recognize what scum the two presidents I agreed to kill for were, those people serving today are in precisely the same position I was in.  They’ve agreed to do whatever the dregs of humanity tell them to do, do it without question.

The main change between 1961, and 2011, is that I agreed to do it for $78 per month, whereas they’re getting paid one hell of a lot more to obey the orders about which unlucky human beings get the downrange surprises.

Think about it.  Thousands of young men died, thousands killed because Richard Milhaus Nixon told them to do it.  Yet Richard Nixon outranked those politicians of the time in scumhood so conspicuously he was casheered from office by the others of his club.  His own peers.

What am I missing here?

Is there something in this worthy of admiration?

Old Jules

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Posted in Adventure, America, Current Issues, Human Behavior, Politics, Senior Citizens

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The Yin Yang Conspiracy

Posted on September 19, 2011 by | 7 comments

In 1970, the University of Texas was squared off against itself.  The frats, the student government, the sororities, the administration, the ROTC department, and the cops on the one side, and us on the other.

The Vets against the Vietnam War, the Wobblies (IWW), the Panthers, the Young Socialistist Alliance (Trotskyite), the RYM2 (Revolutionary Youth Movement faction of the Students for a Democratic Society), Weathermen (the other, more interesting side of the SDS), and hundreds of other splinter groups were taking a fair beating, though we had the numbers.

I was in the middle of all that, writing for the alternative newspaper, the RAG, and trying to get an education dovetailed with sex, drugs and Rock and Roll with helping organize an occasional riot, march or rally thrown in for good measure.

That’s when we invented the Yin Yang Conspiracy.  An ad hoc political party.  We ran a longhair named Jeff Jones for student body president, and we threw the bastards out, lock stock and fraternity pin.  Lordee we thought we’d done something fierce, beating the system that way.  Hot diggedy-damn.

Anyway, this blog entry is in memory of that microscopic triumph among people who had in common only that they opposed the War. 

The Yin Yang Conspiracy.  A tiny piece of winning the Vietnam War by bringing the troops home.  Winning the easy way.  Coming out in the open, looking those cops, those stay-at-home flag-waving patriots in the eye through their riot masks, and saying, “Enough is enough!”

We learned a lot.  Surveillance, provocateurs, intimidations probably weren’t so pervasive in those days.  No yes-man Congress had passed a Patriot Act, so we still had some rights and protections under the US Constitution.   It would be a tougher gig today.

But, if that was now we’d be doing it again.  We’d be working in both, subtle and overt ways to bring those boys home.

Trying to get them out of there before too many more get all shot up and crippled up and be completely forgotten by the patriots who are waving flags back home.

Old Jules

Country Joe McDonald – I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die Rag http://youtu.be/3W7-ngmO_p8

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Posted in 1970's, Adventure, America, History, Human Behavior, Texas

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September 13, moonbows and canned thunder

Posted on September 13, 2011 by | 7 comments

Expect an uneventful day, blogsters.  Nothing has happened in the world on September 13, since 1922:

Turkey
1922 Turkey Constantinople

13th Sept. 1922 : Following the Turkish Victory in Constantinople, crowds have taken to the streets and are attacking Greek churches and homes and destroying them . The Turkish troops have been dispatched to keep order. The spread of Typhus and the Plague are now reaching epidemic proportions but authorities are insisting they do no not wish aid in the form of medical assistance from neighboring countries.

Siege of Constantinople Public Domain Photo

Full Size Original Here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Siege_of_Constantinople.jpg    Well.

Actually there was this: U.S.
1926 U.S.A. Bandits Robbing Mail Trains

13th September 1926 : The Post Office Department sent a memo to it’s army of 25,000 railway mail clerks an order to shoot to kill any bandits attempting to rob the mail, this follows an ever increasing number of robberies by bandits on the mail service which carries millions of dollars worth of mail every day. They also issued a statement saying that if the robberies continue the marines will be bought in again to protect the mail. http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/september13th.html

But otherwise nothing’s ever happened on September 13, since 1922, so relax.

On the other hand, this from Spaceweather.com

HARVEST MOONBOW: Last night’s Harvest Moon was so bright, it did something normally reserved for the sun. It made a rainbow:

“I was surprised to see a rainbow at night,” says Marsha Adams of Sedona, Arizona, who took the picture nearly 2 hours before sunrise. “The rainbow was apparently caused by the Harvest Moon beaming through the rain clouds.”

Indeed, moonlight reflected by raindrops breaks into the colors of a rainbow just like sunlight does. It takes an especially bright Moon, however, to make the phenomenon visible to the human eye. Did anyone else spot a Harvest Moonbow? Submit your images here.

http://spaceweather.com/

Yeah, Old Sol’s still got a case of measles or chicken pox.  Astrophysicists are attempting to arrive at a consensus about which, without success:

http://spaceweather.com/

http://spaceweather.com/

http://spaceweather.com/

I’ve been talking this over with the cats and chickens this morning, the September 13 ennui, and the possible implications and ramifications as they apply to the human psyche and potential injecting something to mitigate it all.  Eventually we agreed on a course of action.

Today I’m going to be playing a constantly repeating CD of a violent thunderstorm outdoors with as much volume as I can coax out of the receiver and speakers.  We here in the middle of nowhere want to do our small part for humanity while maybe giving a whispering hint to Mama Nature without being pushy.

It’s a true fact I’ve observed whenever I’ve been around watching people watch television:  When the box shoots out canned laughter it triggers laughter on the people watching it.  It’s time, the cats, the chickens and I have decided, to give Mama Nature a healthy dose of canned thunder and the sound of rain falling.

Old Jules

9:30 AM – Raising the ante:

On the off-chance I’m being too subtle in my communications with Mama Nature, I’ve got a load of socks and underwear in my handy-dandy 1947 Kenmore washing machine [ Clean Underwear and Hard Times ] running the gauntlet.  After the rinse I’m not going to wring them out, but instead will hang them from the line to provide the nearest thing I’m able to rainfall hitting the dirt underneath the line.

I’m betting between the canned thunder, the sound of rainfall, and all that dripping underneath, Mama Nature’s plenty smart enough to put it all together.

I just hope I got all the soap out of my socks and drawers.  I don’t need Mama Nature soaping down the countryside and trying to wash all the stuff out of the holes in the roof I’ve been plugging to stop the leaks if it ever rains.

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Posted in 2011, Astronomy, Chickens, Country Life, Current Issues, Free-ranging-chickens, Homesteading, Human Behavior, Nature, Poultry, Solitude, Texas

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Thursday morning meanderings

Posted on September 8, 2011 by | 7 comments

SOLAR RADIO BURSTS: This week’s sharp increase in solar activity has turned the sun into a radio transmitter. Bursts of shortwave static are coming from the unstable magnetic canopy of sunspot 1283. Tuesday in New Mexico, amateur radio astronomer Thomas Ashcraft recorded some samples at 21 MHz: listen. Radio listeners should remain alert for this kind of solar activity as sunspot 1283 continues to seethe.  http://spaceweather.com/

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Got a call last night from Gale saying they were in Van Horn, headed home. They should have arrived around midnight, so they can take care of their own animalcules this morning.

He said the Hatch Chili Festival probably won’t be among their future plans for having a booth. Sales were flat on most of his crafts, though the Siberian Wolf fang jewelry sold a bit, and his old stand-by steak turners with elk-antler shaped handles might have brought him to the break-even point.  He sounded a bit down-hearted and beat to a small frazzle.  But those craft shows are a big piece of the glue holding this place and their lifestyle together.

I’ve wondered for some while how long financial ventures depending on consumers buying non-essentials could hold up in a lousy economy.

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Came across an interesting blog: dumpster find of the week: boot haul, boat haul – Seems to be a kindred spirit.

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I’ve been doing a lot of thinking over the past while about various news items I wouldn’t be aware of if it weren’t for the Internet and blogs I read.  It’s guided my thinking into directions I probably wouldn’t otherwise drift, such as actually having conscious priorities in my life for a while.  At least sort-of priorities.

Not to suggest anyone’s a good economic prognosticator, but with all that guessing going on out there, and with what appears to be a lot of contributory factors, I probably owe it to the cats, at least, to have a backup plan.  A way to get the hell out of Dodge intact if things go sour, that has room in it for four cats.  If something happens to Gale or their finances, or SS is eroded by inflation, or both, hedging against the sleep-under-a-bridge alternative probably makes sense.

My obvious first priority is to get my new truck running and street legal.

But after that’s done, I’m either going to need to build a house to live in on the bed of it, find an old overcab camper to fit in it, or find a camper-trailer sitting out somewhere I can pick up for nearly nothing for fixing up to pull behind it.

I see these sitting around with weeds growing up around them a lot.  I think once I have transportation I’ll have to get serious about trying to acquire one or something rhyming with it as a future place for me and the felines if the Coincidence Coordinators decide to play dirty.

I’m thinking if things get too rough I might be able to slick out further west and establish a moving circuit of campsite homes on US Bureau of Land Management and US Forestry Service lands, changing locations every couple of weeks to stay legal.  The cats don’t care for the idea, but they tell me they’d agree to it if I won’t get any chickens.

I’ll probably talk more about various facets of all this in future posts.  Progress reports, learnings, that sort of thing.

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Meanwhile, happy posthumorous birthday to Jimmie Rodgers

http://youtu.be/qEIBmGZxAhg

He’d have known exactly how a person ought to go about becoming an honest-to-goodness hobo with a house.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2011, Adventure, Country Life, Emergency Preparedness, Senior Citizens, Social Security, Solitude, Trucks

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Don’t Call an Angry Jersey Bull a Sick Cow

Posted on September 7, 2011 by | 16 comments

He won’t like it.


  Every spring and fall the lady friend I mentioned in So Long, and Thanks for all The Valentines entry and I used to go adventuring down the Rio Grande to the wildlife refuges.  We’d watch the antics of the full quota of migrating birds at Bosque del Apache  Wildlife Refuge near San Antonio, NM  [ http://friendsofthebosque.org/aboutrefuge.html ] and other sites near the river.  We carried our cameras and binoculars along, same as everyone else, and let where the birds were tell us where it was okay to go.

One year we were scouting the roads and farms on the east side of the river when we spotted a huge flock of cranes grazing among a dairy herd.  No signs forbidding trespassing, so I followed the irrigation ditch bank to get us as near them as possible.  Then we got out of the truck and began threading our way through the cows as we tried to get close enough for good pictures while the birds tried to foil the effort by moving further away.

The cattle were contained by an electric fence positioned about 18 inches off the ground.  The lady and I got separate by about 40 yards, me trying to be sneaky and circle around the cranes, her a few feet away from the cattle but on the side of the fence opposite them.

“Jules! There’s something wrong with that cow.”  I was focused on the cranes and didn’t pay her any mind.  I didn’t care if there was something wrong with one of the cows.  “Jules! That cow is SICK.”

This happened several times, me still ignoring it, her becoming increasingly shrill.  Finally, frustrated, I glanced toward her.  SHEEZE!

A huge Jersey bull was snorting and pawing up a dust cloud fifteen feet across that single strand of electric wire from her, telling her to “QUIT CALLING ME A COW!”

I yanked off my mackinaw.  “THAT IS NOT A COW.  STAND STILL!  DON’T SAY ANYTHING ELSE!  DON’T MOVE!”  I waved the mackinaw in the air.  “HYAAAAH!  HAYAAAH LOOKEE HERE YOU BASTARD!”

Snort.  Stomp.  Paw.  Dust.  Now he’s turning my way and I ain’t even across the fence from him.  “Hyahhhh!”  Less enthusiasm.

To her:  “Back away slowly.  REALLY slow.  Hyahhhh!”  Me backing away too, still waving the mackinaw, stepping across the fence, him taking a few paces toward me.  “HEAD TO THE TRUCK!  Slowwwww and easy.  Don’t attract his attention again.”  SOB’s thinking he’ll charge me, moving my way stomping and snorting, pawing up dirt.

I got up on the ditch road thinking how I can jump into seven, eight feet of water if I need to without ruining the camera and binocs.  He’s maybe 40 feet away, still coming.  She’s beside the truck.  “OKAY!  START YELLING AND WAVING YOUR ARMS AROUND, THEN IF HE TURNS GET IN THE TRUCK!”

She did, he did, and I did.  He never came past the fence.

When I was a kid a Jersey bull was universally known to be a dangerous beastie.  We had to sit through films at school telling us to watch out for them.  I read somewhere once that more kids on farms were killed by Jersey bulls than died any other way.  She sat through the same films.

I suppose she forgot.

Or maybe I was just more tuned in because of a Jersey milk cow who used to chase me all over the barnyard, me trying to get her into the stall for milking.  My step-dad always sneered at me about that, “All you have to do is grab that ring in her nose!  She won’t do anything after that.”

I don’t recall I ever got close enough to grab that ring and test it out.  I preferred batting her across the nose with a broken hoe handle.

When It’s Mushroom Picking Time in Minnesota http://teresaevangeline.blogspot.com/2011/09/when-its-mushroom-picking-time-in.html reminded me of this.  Rather than bog down her comments with my yarns I figured I’d best post it here if I wanted to tell it.

Old Jules

Johnny Cash -the Bull Rider
http://youtu.be/TViGS1ePGp8

6:15 AM Newsflash:

Last night I heard a ruckus outside the back window along with the sound of destruction.  I shined a flashlight through the screen and found a feral sow and 5-6 piglets about the size of Cocker Spaniels had broken into the rooster pen and were tearing everything up, one trying to get up the chute to the night rooster fortress.

I got the .22 and picked a target, the one tearing up my chute, fired through the screen, resulting in more destruction of the pen, a squealing, flopping-all-over-the-place pig, herd stampede by the others, and one ANGRY feral sow.

She’s been out there all night snorting and grunting.  My guess is that piglet’s still alive out there, injured, and she’s waiting until I come out to express her displeasure.

I’m not going outdoors until it’s light enough to see what I’m doing and she’s doing so’s we can come to some sort of permanent understanding about the issues involved.

Old Jules

7:30 AM aftermath

Judging from appearances she and the pigs ate the one I shot during the night.  Stinks something awful all over back there.  They did a lot of damage to the rooster pen, which I’ll have to shore up today while the two roosters run loose and hopefully leave The Great Speckled Bird: Respecting our Betters alone.

The Liar: The Great Speckled Bird, Part 2 might have to hang off in the background today, leaving the hens alone.

Damage from the hogs wasn’t restricted to the chicken pen.  They tore off some of the siding to the storage building trying to get to the chicken feed, also, broke pieces off.  More repairing and shoring up necessary there.

When I went out the sow was in a cedar thicket near the main henhouse where I could hear, but couldn’t see her.  Couldn’t tell whether the pigs were in there, too, or not.  I agreed not to go in after and she agreed to not come out after me.

Old Jules

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Posted in 1990's, Adventure, Country Life, Education, Human Behavior, NM, Wildlife

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Who Has Been an Inspiration in Your Life, and Why?

Posted on August 23, 2011 by | 13 comments



I’m not an admirer of human beings as being particularly inspirational, on the whole.  Yeah, a lot of human sentences find themselves trapped between quotation marks in fragments people find supportive of viewpoints that won’t stand on their own hind legs.  Pithy wisdomoids giving authority to vapid premises.  Often this does happen in a synthetically inspirational context.  But the sources of those quotes usually don’t appear so wise or unblemished under careful scrutiny.

Maybe ‘inspirational’ isn’t the appropriate word to capture the concept I’m hoping to convey.

Maybe ‘has had an influence on your life you believe helped you to be a person you came nearer admiring than the one you were previously’ would more accurately describe it while filling the need for cumbersome rhetoric.  The inspiration derived from firing wisdomoids back and forth at one another isn’t made of the strong stuff I’m trying to communicate.

For instance, I used to be acquainted with a Vietnam vet, who lived in an Econoline van in Albuquerque.  He had a route of parking spots and a time schedule he’d follow to hang around each place for a while.  The street guys who were dumpster-diving knew his schedule.  They also knew  he’d pay a fair price for  anything he could get his money back on that they’d salvaged out of the trash.  After making his rounds, the Econoline would head to the flea market and he’d sell first to the crowd, then whatever was left to the flea market merchants.

By reselling it from homeless guys dumpster-diving, he provided them a means of getting some cash for a lot of things they’d have no way to sell  for themselves, or would have had a lot of difficulty getting more than a few cents for.  His route superimposed an economic network devised to offer those submerged in hardship a trickle of income, a safety net.  He provided a valuable service.

But what I particularly admired was that, when he came across someone he believed was ready to try drug or alcohol withdrawal he’d pack them up in the van and head off somewhere to the middle of nowhere, usually a small town with a restaurant or grocery store where he could pick up food and supplies. Once out of the city environment, he’d keep the addict in the van a week, two weeks, a month, drying them out, getting them clean, being there for them.

I came across him once parked at Vietnam Memorial Wall park in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico.  I didn’t realize at first what I was seeing.  I just saw his van with the white Ministry sign roughly painted on the side and recognized it and him outside it.  I stopped to chew the fat with him, then heard the moaning in the Econoline.  He caught my eye and shrugged.

“Trying to kick smack.  He’s on his second week.  It ought to start getting better in a few days.”  The odor of vomit, urine and human excretions was strong near the truck, so we drifted further afield as we talked.  Probably he was used to it, but I wasn’t.

Christian guy.  One of the Christians I’ve known that kept me believing there are honest-to-goodness bona fide Christians in the world.

I surely admired his guts, his determination and compassion.  There’s a lot about him I’d admire in myself if I looked inside me and surprised myself finding it there.

Nice to come across a Christian occasionally who isn’t all hat and no cattle.

“I wonder what Jesus thought about sin.  Jesus did his talking about loving neighbors, compassion, peace-making, mercy, that sort of thing.  Hardly said anything about sin.  If he could speak his mind today I wonder if he’d forgive Saul of Tarsus the way he did Judas.”  Josephus Minimus

Here are a couple of blogs you might find of interest:

Urbandumpsterdiver’s Blog

Doing It Homeless

Old Jules

Kingston Trio-Reverend Mr. Black
http://youtu.be/sKJiDbvKbZs

John Lennon– Cold Turkey
http://youtu.be/n6wxTkkfLqM

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