Since December of 1989, I’ve walked my dogs (anywhere from one to six of them) a mile or so every morning and every afternoon. Every day unless I’ve been too sick or the weather has been downright dangerous. Yesterday we had our first frost. I bundled up, but the breeze was just stiff enough to pierce my clothes, redden my cheeks, and set my nose dripping. Ava seemed to enjoy herself, but all I could think was, “I can’t face another long winter of bone-chilling morning walks.” Ava, even at 14, has boundless walkie energy and will stare at me…
Category: Mind and Spirit
Spirituality, moods, feelings, and thinking free to live free.
“Every culture should have a couple of outsiders bringing a message from outside of the dominant culture. I’d like to think there’s something I too can add to the way we view the world.” — Philip Connors, fire lookout and author —– Last week you guys in the blog Commentariat and I wrote about the value (or lack of value) of “tribal elders” — wise men and women who stand as guardians of principles, traditions, and hard-won wisdom. In a sense, those elders are the ultimate insiders of a society. They teach, they preserve, they protect. But they also usually…
Winter has already arrived here in the NorthWET, bringing days of steady rain and a desire to crawl back into bed, crank up the mattress warmer, and hibernate for the next seven months. This was one of those years when we never really got a summer; those happen about every fifth year and turn the supposedly changing seasons into one endless, multi-year gloom. During the few rare pleasant days I was mostly hustling to get walls walled and plants planted and forgot to enjoy myself. Still, the rain’s bound to make the newly planted grass happy, and it’s the price…
One recent Saturday I slumped under a cloud of doom. “You have nothing left to say. You’re a failure. You might as well close up shop and slink away.” I felt capable only of staring at the walls or losing myself in a Downton Abbey marathon. Even lying down to take a nap seemed like too much effort. Nearly all writers know this mood. It’s often the precursor to a burst of productivity; but when we’re in it, we never see that. When we’re in it, it’s always The End. Sure enough, the next morning I snapped awake at 4:21…
James Rummel of the Hell in a Handbasket blog rescues a dying puppy. That’s all I have to say. Today, I just don’t have major blogitude in me. But really, is there any need to say more? This beautiful (though also sad) story is courtesy of Commentariat member jed, who also notes that Rummel used to give free firearms training to poor folk. This is a man who takes action & responsibility.
This starts as one of my rambles, but trust me, it eventually develops a point. —– I’m reading a book right now in which the author attempts to make an obscure subject user-friendly. She’s so committed to her attempt at popularization that she opens every chapter with an extended movie reference, usually to big-hit or cult-classic films: Captain Kirk did X; Neo did Y; Harry Potter said ABC. Then she ties that in with her subject. It’s an intriguing approach, but almost too cute, too contrived, too insultingly dumbed down. Yet at the same time that she’s attempting to talk…
It’s been a while since we’ve had a really good monkeywrench post. Bear Bussjaeger provides one involving “malicious compliance” with tyrannical gun laws. Nice one, Bear. Appalachiastan: a culture of resistance (by John Meyers via Bill Buppert). If candidates took advice from Bastiat … Plato got it wrong. A brilliant takedown of “experts,” elitists, and others who pretend they can manage society by John Michael Greer (aka Archdruid), via Borepatch. Could recession really lead to economic revolution? Farhad Manjoo thinks so. I dunno, but it’s an interesting think piece, anyhow. David Koch, dead today at age 79; his legacy is…
I check my rock garden plantings and find them still alive after five days. If I squint hard I can even imagine the little sedums and Alyssiums are actually growing. Definitely none are gasping their last. It’s a miracle! Life in these fecund boonies might make a gardener of my black-thumbed self yet. Even my one dry, brown, bedraggled clearance-sale tomato plant has exploded into a giant green wonder, filled with new blooms and one actual fruit (after deer or some other critter tiptoed through in the night and stole all the original ones). I’ve lopped stray branches from skinny…
I’ve been thinking about the characteristics that lead an individual (and by extension, a culture or a nation) toward freedom: sound judgment, an understanding of economics, a live-and-let-live attitude, skepticism toward Authoritah, determination, a hunger for independence, honor (especially in the sense of being a person of one’s word) — there are so many. A disinclination to indulge in witch-hunts, however insistant the cultural drumbeat, could be helpful. So could the ability to recognize one’s own shortcomings. Or having the skill to apply deeply held abstract principles smoothly to reality’s messy vicissitudes. So many. So complex, too. For instance, good…
The afternoon was hot, so Ava and I decided to go farther than usual, out into the deep woods. It’s cooler there and we still know of one good walking road in the higher hills that hasn’t recently been decreed off limits to the peasants. Locals in the know used to drive a branch of that road all the way up a steep (like 4WD steep) incline to a flat, clearcut spot. There, dense woods gave way to a distant — but sweeping and grand — view of the ocean. No more. Now you can walk, not drive, for about…