Like most here I’ve been watching the standoff at the Bundy ranch. I’ve had nothing new to add to the discussion, so I haven’t blogged about it. Like others, I was just trying to figure what to make of it. I only hoped it wouldn’t end up being another Weaver/Waco massacre.
Not this time:
(Image via Sipsey Street, where Mike Vanderboegh has some spirited things to say about it.)
A Widow’s Walk Off-Grid to Self-Reliance:
An inspiring, true story of courage and determination
Mason Marshall Press, 2014
$12.95 paperback
$8.95 Kindle
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Photos show a normal, though elderly, little house. But Annie Dodds quickly discovered why she was able to lease the place sight-unseen for just $500 per year. It had no electrical service, no plumbing (not even an outhouse), rats in the attic, a tree staving in one wall, and a host of other cold, hot, wet, dry, dirty, inconvenient problems.
It was the kind of place where, on a bad day, you might open your sock drawer, briefly think, “I don’t have any socks that color,” then realize you were looking at a rattlesnake coiled atop your footwear.
But Annie loved it.
A Widow’s Walk tells the story of how she — recently widowed, emotionally devastated, dead broke, middle-aged, and equipped only with her own resourcefulness — followed her Backwoods Home-inspired dream of living independently and off-grid.
I’ve told you before that a longtime friend of this blog is dying. Cancer. And the disease is taking its own long, harrowing time. When I’ve etalked with him, he’s seemed in good spirits, though tired. It’s much harder on his wife, he says. And in my few contacts with her, I see. Yesterday she sent me the following and gave permission to post it. The following words are hers: —– I have been introspective for the past few days. I am rambling here so please forgive me. F. and I have spent a good part of our youth preparing…
On Eric Holder and those not-so-smart guns that make government control freaks and their cronies in the business world drool.
Doesn’t it just stand to reason — doesn’t it just? — that the Human Ken Doll has has nothing good to say about the Human Barbie Doll? Weird old world we live in, innit? I know there’s absolutely nothing funny about a fatal mudslide, as the people of Oso, Washington, are learning to their horror. But at least there’s a certain strangely poetic justice to this mudslide in China. Government priorities. I swear, anybody as witty as Tam ought to have a late-night show of her own and be getting fabulously rich and famous. The homeless guy and the ATM…
I’ve been trying to find good words to say about the McCarthyist botch of political correctness run amok at Mozilla this past week. I think this pretty much takes care of what needs saying. Can hardly believe it’s from a former Obama speech writer. (H/T JG)
Laird Minor, a good guy and a member of the Living Freedom Commentariat, has just published a new book. It’s called Kairos: A Proposal to Restore Federalism to the United States. Okay, I hear the keyboards of the anarchists and cynics charging up now. I suspect I’m even hearing the sound of a few claws being sharpened out there. I suspect Laird’s expecting that. Nevertheless, some things to note: Kairos is free for the next several days; Laird is more interested in getting it read than getting it sold, so he’s also offering a free .pdf copy to those who…
You tell me. I know that the right software and the right settings are key to electronic privacy on computers. But are there some computers (laptops, especially) that are inherently more private and secure due to their hardware? I always buys used Lenovo laptops. They (and their predecessors from IBM) are the sturdiest beasties in the computer world. Mine have been knocked off tables by rambunctious dogs (or by me) dozens of times, and while various plastic bits may have cracked or broken off, the workings inside their titanium cases have just gone right on ticking. Unfortunately the other day…
