Category: Rural and small-town living
Life far from freeways, Starbucks, malls, and other benefits/distractions
Despite predictions that Seasteading is dead, the project got a grand writeup in the Daily Mail this week and is moving ahead with plans for 2020. It seems Patri Friedman, Peter Thiel and company are sailing ever closer to conducting their experiment in liberating mankind from politicians. (Marvelous goal; to which I say with a touch of skepticism and an equal touch of joy in their monumental vision, “Good luck with that.”) Of course, it all begins with an agreement with government — in this case the government of French Polynesia. Not a bad neighborhood, Tahiti. Gorgeous concept drawings, too.…
When last we spoke, I couldn’t brain because I had the dumb. I decided to take the weekend off from blogging — and in fact from every sort of pressure or expectation for myself. That’s harder to do than to decide to do. It began nicely. Friday evening — softly drizzly, but peaceful — Ava and I wandered the town enjoying Christmas lights. Then I stopped into the grocery store to pick up ingredients for beef stew, my favorite fall comfort food. The old family recipe I adapted requires Kitchen Bouquet, a condiment from Mom’s day that I’m always surprised…
You know how Joel writes so entertainingly over at TUAK about those days when everything goes haywire? When mad bulls charge into his yard while he’s lying in the mud fixing busted plumbing and his homemade bread is in the house caving in while packrats are eating the wiring on his Jeep? Those days. Joel days. So I closed the computer earlyish this morning, pledging to work on the new RebelFire story. But of course I can’t write until the house is clean. So I start cleaning. And organizing. Which reminds me that since my second backup heat source is…
I’m still basking in the glow of last week’s great gift, which enabled me to pay off last summer’s construction loan, budget money to insulate the attic and restore my propane service, do a little paying forward, and still put plenty aside. Yesterday another of my angels flew in and I immediately put his contribution to good use, also. In fact, three of Living Freedom’s biggest angels have been involved in all this. (And Patreon made its monthly payout, also put to good use, thank you.) Is there a word for a band of angels? Flock? Pride? Flight? Gratitude? A…
Yesterday came sunshine — a brief respite between cold-and-wet and windy-and-really-really-wet. Thank you, November, for the small break. I took advantage of it to go meet a local who wanted to buy St. Guinefort the Greyhound. He’d seen it at the county fair and didn’t have much trouble tracking me down because — as it turns out — he’s one of the few locals who recognize my name from my writing. It also turned out (small town and all) that we have mutual acquaintances. Best of all (aside from the fact that he bought me a nice lunch and will…
It’s been one of those weeks. You know the kind. Nothing really terrible is happening, but the petty annoyances and small setbacks threaten to overwhelm all productivity. It started with Amazon’s sudden imposition of stupid security on vendor accounts, then went from there in a bruising week of itty-bitty pokes by Jokester Fate. I found a solution for the Amazon stupidity (thank you, parabarbarian), but getting it implemented involved hours of additional stupid. And so the days went, with my writer’s to-do list getting longer and my patience shortening by the hour. Yesterday I woke up to a tank-rental bill…
aka four more reasons I love living here. Click to embiggenate. We don’t get the spectacular fall colors around here, but I thought this was an okay approximation. This last one’s not particularly beautiful, but I’ve always been attracted to landscapes that look “layered,” as the various patches of vegetation in the foreground do. The yellow-brown band nearest the hill is cattail. Closer to camera is some type of heather or close relative of heather, and closer yet just some grasses, maybe some sedge. I don’t know what all the plants are. I just know I like looking at them…
Well, we have entered the Big Dark. The Big Dim. The Big Wet. Late October and the first weeks of November are usually the wettest part of the NorthWET’s year, and the rainy season has arrived with a series of three storms strung between China and our doorstep. Today the wind howls, small branches fall, mysterious knocks and crashes can be heard through the neighborhood, and rain blurs the windows. But it’s not cold and I am cozy now that all Ava’s required walks are done for the day (Neither snow no sleet nor gloom of night shall stop Ava…