Things are moving along like crazy on my new house! Contracts are signed. The home inspector is lined up for Monday. Roofers should be trooping by and giving estimates any day now. By Tuesday I expect to know whether it’s a go. In any case, I’ll be packing and very shortly heading off on a cross-country trip. The very same Leslie who found the house and is handling most of the chaos also found me a Plan B — a super dog-friendly rental I can take if the sale falls through. So no matter what happens, I’m out of here…
17 CommentsCategory: Practical Freedom
A broad category of things we can do, or things others are doing, to increase personal freedom
Let me tell you about the people in this high desert gulch — and the people connected to it, though they may be far away. Neighbor M. needed the footer space dug for some retaining walls. Though M. is a tireless worker, this was clearly a job for a backhoe, not muscles. Neighbor Joel also needed backhoe work for the septic system on his Secret Lair. Without a word to Joel, M. arranged to have both jobs done at his own expense last Saturday. The work was done by our neighbor L. If you read Joel’s blog, you’ve heard about…
5 CommentsSorry for the “lite” posting this week. I hope I made up for the lack of volume with the quality of Wednesday’s post. (The quality of response to that post has certainly been outstanding.) I had some bad news Wednesday. Nothing earth-shattering, but a setback that … well, it drove me to eat four whole squares of chocolate (a huge indulgence at the very end of my month of primal-nutrition purity). It’s kept me in the doldrums since then. You may remember that I’ve been debating options about where to live. The more I explored, the more I realized I…
13 CommentsToday in 1943, “pay-as-you-go” income-tax withholding began. (Oh thank you, Milton Friedman.) Today in 2004, Marlon Brando died, age 80. There was probably no connection between the two, but I have friends who could spin conspiracies proving me wrong. Today is also the day the Battle of Gettysburg began (1863). I had a Confederate cavalry re-enactor friend who, with his comrades, almost won that battle once. It was very embarrassing for the event organizers. Not to mention the Union troops. —– The wind has been howling more than usual lately. Making me crazy. Makes me dream of northwest forests. But…
21 CommentsAfter blogging about it yesterday, I’ve been taking Kent McManigal’s challenge, “What would YOU do if you woke up in liberty?” My first thought was, “Not much different than I’m already doing.” After all, I’ve been consciously pursuing (and preaching) freedom for a long time. I’m out here in the hills, doing pretty much what I want, with people I want to be with. I live in a place where you can strap a gun on and go downtown (such as downtown is) and nobody will give you a second glance. A place where the neighbors are self-sufficient and helpful…
31 CommentsGot this note last night from my beloved former veterinarian up in the Pacific Northwest: I thought this may make you smile. I had a visit … from an outlaw last night. Someone left a note attached to a $100.00 bill shoved in the front door of the clinic. The note said, “I had some extra cash while passing through, please use it to care for an animal in need.” It was signed “Colton Harris-Moore AKA the barefoot bandit.” [My receptionist] found it and was busy trying to figure out which client left it when I came in. After reading…
12 CommentsP.T. reminded me that today is the birthday of the late, great (and sometimes rather quirky) Karl Hess. She pointed me toward his 1969 Playboy article, “The Death of Politics.” Yeah, bits of it are dated now. But even those parts give an interesting look at the way politics and government never fundamentally change, even as the world shifts around them. If I have one hero in the ranks of libertarians and market anarchists, it’s Hess. Whatever else the man did, he seriously tried to live by his principles and implement them in the real world.
5 CommentsOkay. It’s Friday. It’s May. The weekend is coming. The sun in shining. It’s a good day for being naughty here at the blog. Don’t tell Dave Duffy (aka The Boss), but today let’s cover things strictly illegal and fattening. To wit: You just know cannabis is finally out of the Reefer Madness days and inching toward the mainstream when the New York Times runs a straightfaced article on how chefs’ and other staffers’ personal use of the herb is influencing both food and atmosphere at restaurants. Well, makes sense. Cannabis. Munchies. Yeah. And along those lines: Dan D. Lyon,…
12 CommentsDoes it seem to you that the world is about to shatter? That there is so much wrongness that “the centre cannot hold”? Ah well, a lot of us have had that feeling since we became aware of the Lies Our Civics Teacher Told Us. It’s dogged me on and off since Nixon removed the last gold backing from the dollar. The fall became inevitable then; we doomsayers just expected it to come quicker. But come it must. And these days, as mainstream economists continue to tout the return of prosperity while we watch catastrophe rolling onward with our own…
4 CommentsWell, since it appears that the U.S. stock market isn’t going to crash — yet — this morning — okay, for the next couple of hours, at least — I’m going to sit down and take up a much more serious, but slower-paced, problem that’s been on my mind. I’m talking about the national, even global plague of “do somethingness.” You know how people are always trying to find solutions to gigantic problems, and (because their only tool is government), making a worse mess of everything? Blame “do somethingness.” If we could only end the “do something” plague, clever, independent…
14 Comments