Tag Archives: lifestyle

Juggling Priorities

Posted on February 8, 2012 by | 19 comments

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

When I began posting this blog just before the end of June last year,

The Great Speckled Bird: Respecting our Betters, my life was a  somewhat different place, though it hasn’t changed much by outward appearance.  Mainly what’s changed is priorities.  Time has speeded up for me in a sense.  Things I’ve needed to be doing all along, but were on the back burner indefinitely have fought their way to the front burner and now are holding the high ground. 

The season that’s been attempting to pass itself off as a winter here seems every day to be assuming the attire of early spring.  Which is to say, I need to be doing spring-like things inside the priority mix, instead of winter things, and the spring activity demands this year will be somewhat different from last year. 

One of the ways that will manifest itself is that I’ll be posting less regularly on this blog, trying to spend more time doing higher priority activities.  A lot of the projects I had planned, or was working on during the blog months are going to be abandoned or allowed to be pushed into abstractions for some future time, except one.

So the frequent and somewhat regular posting here will change to a target-of-opportunity mode. 

Jeanne will continue posting the Ask Old Jules entries, and I’ll probably occasionally post something there also, as time allows.

I’m no good predicting the future, but my intention, within the context of what the Coincidence Coordinators will allow, is to have this shelter and the area immediately around it back mostly as it was when I arrived several years ago.  Including me being somewhere else.   Most of my priority juggling is going to try to fit itself into that as best it can.

Hopefully the ancient Mayans had all that figured out and that’s what all the hoopla about the Mayan calendar’s really about.  The cats and me experiencing another pesky reincarnation without the Universe raising any eyebrows.

Old Jules

 

19 Comments

Posted in 2012, Adventure

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Picking Your Own Hills Worth Dying For

Posted on February 4, 2012 by | 16 comments

“Hey!  Congratulations man!  You picked a hill worth dying for and just got your leg shot off instead of dying.  Cool!”

“I didn’t pick it man.  I don’t know who picked it.  Maybe the General.  Maybe the Colonel.  Maybe the other side.  I din’t do any picking.  Nobody asked me anything.”

“Wow.  You got your leg shot off and didn’t even make your own choice about whether it was worth the effort?”

“Higher than my paygrade.  Not my job to figure out whether hopping around on a stump of a leg the rest of my life or spilling my guts across the landscape is worth why they think I should do it.  It’s up to the big brains to decide that.  The Generals, and Colonels and Lieutenants.  The people who see the bigger picture.  I’m not into long-term thinking.”

“Sheeze man.  Tough gig.”

Bloody Valverde.  Measured in percentage of casualties among those participating, the second bloodiest battle of the Civil War.

Texas Mounted Volunteers were on that mesa, coming down to cross the Rio Grande just below the left end.

Federals and New Mexico Volunteers were below and across the river trying to keep them from doing it.

You can’t get over there anymore without breaking some laws.  The railroad police will arrest you for trespass if they catch you trying to cross the RR bridge.  Last I heard, Ted Turner owns the ranch the mesa is on.  He has riders out there who’ll haul you off for trespass if the RR police don’t get you.

A few cows graze up there and Ted Turner can’t have people up there bothering them by poking around among the pockmarked hideyholes and artillery placements.  A lot of men on both sides died so Ted Turner could keep the right to keep you off his holdings and bothering his cows.

If you sighted across the top of that monument across the end of the mesa and drew a tight bead you’d be looking at a mushroom cloud about 50 miles away when they fired off the first atomic bomb in 1945.

But by 1945 the government and scientists all finally realized the place wasn’t worth anyone getting excited about, getting legs shot off or dying for.  By that time they knew it wasn’t worth anything except for blowing up with an atomic bomb.   You can’t go over there, either, for what that’s worth.

Pretty big hunk of granite for such a little event.  But nobody much winds around those desert roads to look at it.

I used to have a pretty nice cannon ball that came off that battlefield.  Wonder what ever became of it.  Hope I didn’t scare any of Ted’s cows or stir up any future atomic bomb attacks on the place by the US Government.

Old Jules

 

16 Comments

Posted in Adventure, History, Music, New Mexico, NM, YouTube

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Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die

Posted on February 4, 2012 by | 7 comments

http://www.teapotparty.org/

If I believed in representative democracy I think I might be tempted by this, even though I don’t smoke dope.

 

There’s something refreshing about seeing someone injecting some humor into all the scowling.  This modern religion of self-important in-your-face sneering between opposing political illusions and conflicting certainties about ‘What this country needs‘ and who’s most worthy of hatred and purple scorn ought to get boring for those doing it.  For the good of their souls, maybe.  Or, failing that, just as a means of demonstrating a human brain resides inside the human skull.

ABOUT WILLIE NELSON’S TEAPOT PARTY

  • Willie Nelson was busted in Texas for possessing marijuana on Nov. 26, 2010. Following the arrest, Willie founded the Teapot Party, declaring: “Tax it, regulate it and legalize it! Stop the border wars over drugs. Why should the drug lords make all the money? Thousands of lives will be saved.” Since then, Willie clarified the focus of the party. “The purpose of the Teapot Party is to vote in people who believe the way we do,” he stated, “and vote out the ones who don’t.” With that in mind, we’ve embarked on a campaign to find candidates to support in upcoming elections. So far we’ve made four endorsement and there will be many more to come. We encourage Teapot Party supporters to use this site to their advantage. Learn who we’re supporting, read the latest blogs, find out what’s happening in the marijuana-reform community, order free stickers, buy Teapot Party merchandise, keep up with our Facebook and Twitter feeds and upcoming events, such as rallies and meetups. With your support, we can make a difference by ending cannabis prohibition in our lifetimes. Please send donations to the candidates of your choice. Then go out and “vote in people who believe the way we do and vote out the ones who don’t,” just like Willie says.

I suppose old Willie still believes in representative democracy.  I’ll try to forgive him being stupid by believing something I don’t.  I’ll reciprocate by being stupid enough not to start smoking dope again.  Too damned much trouble. 

I’m trying to remember when it was I figured that out.    Sometime a long time ago, but before too much later, I think it was.  I had the High Roller already, but I don’t think I had the gray John B. Stetson yet.

Old Jules

7 Comments

Posted in 1970's, 2012, America, Current Issues, Politics, Senior Citizens, Solitude, YouTube

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One of the Fascinations of Christian TV

Posted on February 3, 2012 by | 17 comments

Maybe I should have explained this on my earlier post.  If my dad’s still alive he’s too old to care, and anyone else who might have once felt anything about it will also be old enough to handle it.

For me, discovering I had a biological half-brother didn’t come as a particular shock.  I’d always figured I probably had a few, maybe a lot.  My dad never made any bones about having been a rounder all his life.  His extra-marital affairs cost him a couple of marriages.

One night during the early 1980s, Dad and I were sitting in the parking lot of the Georgetown, Texas, hospital at 2:00 am, because his wife of the time was inside being treated in the Emergency Room.  They were visiting my wife and me over some holiday.

It was a long wait, and the conversation drifted to women, observations about them, stories about them, puzzlements about women we’d found during our individual experiences with them.  Somewhere during all that the subject of the products of our meanderings came into the discussion.

He said he didn’t actually know how many kids he’d left along his back trail, but one was a sure thing.  He’d first seen the guy on television because someone told him there was a televangelist who bore an amazing likeness, both in physical features and in mannerisms of speech and gesture.

Dad was mildly interested, enough to eventually watch the guy on television.  Which bowled him over.  He said it was like watching a movie of himself speaking at a Toastmaster meeting at an earlier age.  A suspicion dawned for him sufficiently to cause him to find out more about the man.  Where he was from, how old he was, and eventually to find out who the mother of the televangelist was.  He had, it turned out, vivid recollections of her when they both were a lot younger.

He didn’t name the man, and I didn’t give it a lot of thought for a number of years.  But early during my Christian television watching it came back full force.  For a moment I was disoriented, almost as though I watching my dad on television.  I truly was amazed and there was no doubt in my mind I was seeing my biological half-brother.  Just about my own age. 

My lady friend of the time, whom I made a point of having watch him without explaining, commented, “He looks and talks like you.  Weird.”

The man was a moving speaker and a faith healer of some fame.  So one of the attractions motivating me to rise at 3:00 am and watch Christian television was the strangeness of watching him, particularly. 

I always tried to catch his show and his appearances when I could.  If a person’s going to put himself through an experience of that sort, 3:00 am’s not an altogether bad time to do it.

Old Jules

17 Comments

Posted in 1980's, 1990's, Human Behavior, Parents

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A Search for the Meaning of Life

Posted on February 2, 2012 by | 33 comments

In 1992, when my 25 year marriage dissolved and I moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, one of the projects I was determined to pursue was an attempt to understand the meaning of life, or something in the neighborhood.  I did a lot of thinking and planning about how to approach the matter in a way I considered the most likely possibility for success.

Part of the project involved learning everything I could about religions and metaphysics, and I began with an intense study of Christianity, early Christian history, pre-Nicean Christian documents, practices and beliefs at a time before anything qualified as Canon.  For a couple of years I submerged myself in the subject.

During the same time period I got up 3:30 am and spent a couple of hours watching Christian television to get a better understanding of what was going on with Christianity today.  I found I got a lot of enjoyment doing it, and I discovered one I liked particularly well and thought of almost as an old friend.

Garner Ted Armstrong.  I spent a year or so in my early 20s working for Rainbow Baking Company in Houston loading bread trucks off a conveyor belt 12 hours a day, and I filled some of the solitude listening to Garner Ted over a portable radio and earpiece.  I considered him one of the best rhetoricians of the 20th Century already when I found him preaching on television.

But what I hadn’t realized was his level of scholarship and open mindedness about Christian history.  The fact I was submerged in it at the time led me to write a letter to him asking his take on some issues I’d found ambiguous.

From that time until his death several years later, Garner Ted Armstrong and I indulged in exchanges of 20 page letters discussing the nuances of Christian history, Christian texts, the implications of the Nag Hammadi codices, news coming out of the Dead Sea Scrolls, where Christianity had been and possibly where it was going.

A truly strange time of my life, though just one of those side-trails that had little to do with my coincident search and research involving a lost gold mine, nor with understanding the meaning of life.  The former, I never found, and the latter, when I found it, didn’t need elaboration.

I still miss old Garner Ted Armstrong and those long letters.

Old Jules

33 Comments

Posted in 1990's, Adventure, History, New Mexico, Relationships, Science, Senior Citizens, Solitude

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Clarifying a General Point – Politics and this Blog

Posted on February 1, 2012 by | 8 comments

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

When I post a blog I frequently do so in complete ignorance of current events.  I don’t have a television, the radio never gets turned on, and I don’t read newspapers or magazines until they sometimes fall into my hands many years after they were printed.

I don’t know and don’t wish to know who wants to be king.  The Challenge of 2012: Not Knowing Who Wants to be King   And I’m not likely to get any joy from knowing which readers prefer which liar and scoundrel, and which prefer some other one.  I have no intention to participate in the scramble to assassinate characters of the occupants of one side of the pool of corruption to give advantage to the occupants of the other side of the pool.

 If a post here manages to convey an impression I’m giving support to one political illusion over another, it’s entirely by accident and not to be taken as a launchpad for more intense and focused discourse on the issue.

Old Jules

Today on Ask Old Jules:

Old Jules, why are there so many religions and spiritual beliefs?

8 Comments

Posted in 2012, America, Politics

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An Addendum About My Personal View of Mormons

Posted on January 31, 2012 by | 9 comments

I didn’t say this in the post because I didn’t think it needed saying, but I think it might.

I’ve got nothing bad to say about Mormons.  I’ve never been ill-treated by them, cheated by them, lied to by them so far as I know.  The ones I’ve met have generally been solid, hard-working, honest people.  Seemingly more so compared to the impression I’ve been left with in my seven decades of experience with the remainder of the population.  Christians, Gentile, Jew, atheist, Muslim and agnostic.  Even Buddhists, Taoists, Hindu, and the herd of New Age Gurus.  Even Hopi Elders and Ambiguous Native American Shamans.

My interest in Mormons came to being with the gradual realization that the parties involved in the lost gold mine I searched for so many years were predominantly Mormons.  It was a factor left entirely out of the legend as it came out of the 19th Century and it required years of research to uncover that fact.  The cousin of one of the central characters was evidently the second wife of Brigham Young.  Family names of the lost gold mine participants also show up among people involved in Mountain Meadows.

The timing on the lost gold mine incident and that of the Mountain Meadows massacre originally drew my interest.

What Mormons believe about polygamy, same-sex marriages, almost anything at all has no bearing on my impression and generally benevolent attitude toward them as a whole.  In areas where we disagree I’m willing to forgive them for being wrongheaded, same as I try to forgive everyone else who disagrees with me.  Otherwise I’d be forever having to keep score of who was right in this world, and who is wrong.  It just ain’t worth the effort even those relatively few areas where I can’t restrain myself from having an opinion.

Old Jules

9 Comments

Posted in America, Book Reviews, History, Native American, Native Americans

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The Mountain Meadows Massacre – Juanita Brooks

Posted on January 31, 2012 by | 26 comments

I’m re-reading The Mountain Meadows Massacre, by Juanita Brooks at the moment.  Twenty or thirty years ago when I submerged myself in everything I could find about the event I concluded the Brooks work was the best out there.  When it came into my hands again recently I held back beginning it again to savor the anticipation.  Now I’m midway through it again and it’s as fine a piece of research as ever.

Brooks was a Mormon lady, which made the Mountain Meadows Massacre a work of courage on her part.  The LDS church had spent a century suppressing the realities about the mass homicide of an estimated 60-120 men, women, and children of the Fancher wagon train journeying through Utah to California in 1857, by Mormons and members of a tribe of Native Americans.

The event happened at a time when there was plenty of massacre going on across North America, but was unusual for a couple of reasons.  First, because the people involved were Mormons killing Christians, as opposed to Christians killing Mormons, and the motivation wasn’t acquisition of territory belonging to someone else.   Second, because the circumstances surrounding the massacre involved ‘normal’, dutiful, pious people behaving in ways anyone outside the context could only consider far from normal.  Believing the killing was defensively justified and necessary.

Brooks establishes clearly and thoroughly that the heads of the LDS ordered the massacre and that John Lee, who’d been hanged for it and handed full responsibility by the LDS Church, was carrying out those orders.

An excellent read for anyone interested in history, human behavior, duty, and the ability of the human mind to justify anything it applies itself to.

Old Jules

26 Comments

Posted in Book Reviews, History, Reading

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The link to the Ask Old Jules blog is active

Posted on January 31, 2012 by | 2 comments

http://askoldjules.com/

All that’s over there until the first post tomorrow is the single-post archive migrated from Facebook.  But if you’d care to go for a look at the archive it might give you an insight into the general drift.

I’m posting this today in hopes of discovering whether anything needs changing, whether the navigation works, and to just give anyone interested a gander at it.  If you click it and find there’s a problem of any sort I’d be obliged if you’d send her an email, post it here, or let us know by mental telepathy.

Gracias,

Old Jules

 

2 Comments

Posted in 2012, Communication

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Posted on January 30, 2012 by | 13 comments

Seems the advantages of being out of sight and out of mind for most of the population aren’t necessarily advantages when the out-of-sight geography includes something a multi-national corporation wants. All those city folks needing to keep the air conditioners turned down to 70 and to be able to light up the hair dryers every morning probably never ask themselves where the electricity popped out of the ground and hopped into the wires they plug things into.

One more bug on the windshield of civilization.  Old Jules

 

BEYOND THE MESAS, LLC

[The following letter was written by former Hopi Tribe chairman Benjamin H. Nuvamsa from Shungopavi.  He presented the letter to the Hopi Tribal Council on Friday January 13, 2012]

January 13, 2012
Hopi Tribal Council
Hopi – Tewa Senom

It is time we have a serious discussion about coal mining on our reservation, our water rights and our environment.  For far too long, we have pushed these issues aside, not willing to talk about how these issues impact our lives.  We must talk about how the Peabody Western Coal Company and Navajo Generating Station are affecting our lives.  Since the mid 1960’s, Peabody Coal has been mining our coal, pumping our precious Navajo Aquifer water and paying us pennies on the dollar in return.  Navajo Generating Station is emitting dangerous and harmful particulates into the air we breathe.  Our coal resources are being depleted.  Our Navajo Aquifer has been damaged…

View original post 979 more words

13 Comments

Posted in Native American, Native Americans, Outdoors, Politics, Survival

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