Old Jules
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/
Tag Archives: miscellaneous
“Trash” has paid for Christmas & a used Precor 9.33 treadmill!
Posted in 2011, Survival, Thrift Stores
Tagged culture, economy, environment, home, Human Behavior, Life, lifestyle, misc, miscellaneous, other, personal, society, survival
Second Harvest – The Cast-Offs of Affluence
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
Eating From Dumpsters During The Holidays
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
Muddy muddy muddy etcetera
You’ll be happy to know Old Sol’s finally getting things under control up there.
That line of misbehaving sunspots that were marching across above the equator so long finally got its comeuppance. Today there are only three honest-to-goodness ones and the litter of little peckerwoods just coming around the horizon.
Astrophysicists aren’t in agreement about what was getting out of hand up there, but many now assert it might be mud and all this rain that finally got it under control. There’s been so much rain lately every stick of firewood here’s been soaked, and even though cooling down Old Sol with wet firewood would be a big job of work, eventually it was bound to happen. Probably the reason for this cold snap, too.
But the other line of thinking among Hopi Elders, surviving Mayan track-of-time keepers, and the folks at BUREAU INTERNATIONAL DES POIDS ET MESURES, ORGANISATION INTERGOUVERNEMENTALE DE LA CONVENTION DU METRE, believe there’s a more novel reason that line of sunspots dwindled. They couldn’t stay in step.
Time, they assert, is so screwed up it’s impossible to keep anything going with any regularity and the sunspots finally just got too frustrated to keep trying.
There might be a lot to that. I get the email reports from the Hawaii Konate folk, and the circular always starts off with the caveat:
“Coordinated Universal Time UTC and its local realizations UTC(k). Computed values of [UTC-UTC(k)] and uncertainties valid for the period of this Circular. From 2009 January 1, 0h UTC, TAI-UTC = 34 s.”
Those uncertainties cover a lot of ground all over the planet and the people making a living trying to keep track of what time it is send out the Circular to advise interested parties of what time it wasn’t, mostly, any given day in cities of clockwatchers. But even telling what time it wasn’t has a considerable uncertainty factor, which they aren’t ashamed to admit.
I don’t know why they even keep those people on the payroll if they can’t tell us what time it wasn’t.
I’m going to kick this around with the cats and chickens. See if we can’t figure out a way to get a piece of the action on this timekeeping racket.
Old Jules
WordPress Planetarium Software and 21 Grams
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
What’s with the pointy nightcaps? Sensible Sleep Headgear
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
Weird Thrift Store Haul
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
Brewster McCloud – A Strange and Memorable Movie
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
No Blog Awards Appeal and the So Far From Heaven Blog
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
New Careers for Retirees and the Unemployed
I know some of you readers are out of work and having difficulties finding jobs. With this post I’d like to twist your mind around in a way that might give you a different way of approaching the affair of starting to make money to live on.
I don’t know whether there’s any hope or not, but I can tell you it ain’t easy. From the time I gave myself a Y2K until I moved back to Texas I tried a number of desperate ideas that might have worked if I’d been smarter.
But I think there still might be something here in the way of thinking about it to give you a fresh perspective. Trying to find jobs flipping hamburgers at minimum wage or clerking in a motel graveyard shift, or stocking shelves and unloading trucks for a Dollar General didn’t prove out for me. I suspect it won’t for you. A lot of the reason is that young people don’t like working around older people. At least, they din’t in my case.
But the world’s still got niches a person might fill, things that people need doing and might pay to get done that the Chinese can’t get over here to do yet.
Polishing long-haul truck rims, bumpers, gas tanks:
I don’t know whether they’re still doing it, but truckers within the past few years [some of them] had an overweening pride in their wheels, bumpers and grilles.
Frequently they’ll pay up to $100 for the tractor wheels, gas tank, bumper and grille while they catch a snooze at a roadside park or overnight truck stop. An angle grinder/polisher, portable generator and a CB radio are the main costs of going into business.
Didn’t work out for me because my angle polishing head flew off, the knurled stem that held the head walked across the gas tank, cut through a fuel line [the truck was idling] and started squirting diesel all over the place before it caught fire [after he’d shut the rig down].
Might work out better for you. A person could make $500 – $1000 per day if he was fast and good.
Bodyguard:
Bodyguard didn’t work out well for me, either, though it paid well. Anyone who needs a bodyguard usually has a reason for needing one.
Respectable people doing legal things hire bodyguards from companies who do that for a living. But there’s a type of activity going on out there in the world that needs a different kind of bodyguard. If you’re a person who’s generally law-abiding, but desperate or open-minded enough to look into it, you might find a place there.
You’ve got to be a non-drug user, absolutely and unwaveringly, uncompromisingly honest, and you’ve got to be willing to be around some of the sleaziest human beings on the face of the earth all your waking hours. And you’ve got to be convincing that you’re uglier, colder and crazier than all those lowlifes around you.
Then there’s the danger of going to prison, which isn’t likely, but could happen. The things that go sour in that line of work tend to be of a different variety.
Tool handles:
It used to be a person could do well trading with the tribes if he was willing to go deep into the rez. Might still be so. They always have tools with broken handles, so buying a load of handles somewhere for all manner of tools, replacing the handles on the broken tools you’ve bought, then taking them by the truckload onto the rez, buying their heads with broken handles and selling them a used one you’ve repaired can be middling lucrative. But you’ve got to be relatively near a big rez or a lot of small ones.
Those mightn’t fit you and probably don’t, but they might give you an idea or two about some crack you can shine a flashlight into and find a way to make a living. Even in this brave new 21st Century.
Old Jules
Posted in 2011, America, Senior Citizens, Survival, Trucks
Tagged country life, culture, economy, Education, employment, home, Human Behavior, humor, jobs, Life, lifestyle, misc, miscellaneous, musings, personal, psychology, Reflections, senior citizens, society, survival, unemployment
So Far From Heaven 