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| author | luxagraf <sng@luxagraf.net> | 2023-12-26 11:14:54 -0500 |
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| committer | luxagraf <sng@luxagraf.net> | 2023-12-26 11:14:54 -0500 |
| commit | 95ceb9c0cc3bde46426a67fdb3f8ef23e147499a (patch) | |
| tree | 3d788bd359d04ff3f3285a48328e24b8865f3508 | |
| parent | e8795f06834c10a9b637ead7ea368735feddfbb4 (diff) | |
added a seperate file for some guides I want to do. scratch is just
getting to big to open.
| -rw-r--r-- | guides.txt | 97 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | scratch.txt | 713 |
2 files changed, 674 insertions, 136 deletions
diff --git a/guides.txt b/guides.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7054096 --- /dev/null +++ b/guides.txt @@ -0,0 +1,97 @@ +# Photography + +## Getting Started with Darktable + +Ansel Adams once said "the negative is the score, and the print the performance.” Were he shooting digital today, I suspect Adams would rephrase that to: ***the RAW file is the score, and the print the performance.*** + +Today's RAW file is the equivalent of a film negative (RAW files are actually considerably more malleable, but you get the idea). The point is, if you want more control over the final look of your photographs, you want to shoot RAW format images. These days nearly every camera can shoot RAW files -- even my four-year-old phone can do it. You may have to turn this features on though. Look through your manual or menus until you find something like "image format", which should have options for JPG and RAW. You want RAW. You can shoot in RAW *and* JPG if you want, but I tend to shoot just RAW. + +The problem with RAW is that they are the equivalent of film negatives. You have to "develop" them. As with developing film, the process of developing a RAW file takes time and skill. When you're first starting it can seem overwhelming, which is probably why you're here. Don't worry. Remember what Thoreau said, "nothing can be more useful to a man than the determination not to be hurried." I'm sure Thoreau would say "a person" if he were writing today, but the point is, relax, take a breath, there's no need to rush, it'll make sense eventually. + +There are a lot of great tutorials out there on Darktable (see this guide's [parent page](/guides/photography/) for some links). The problem I noticed as I was learning is that tutorials go out of date, especially video tutorials. Videos show you what to do better than words can sometimes, but they're a pain to re-shoot and keep up-to-date so hardly anyone does. When I was learning Darktable, I found it frustrating to watch good tutorials, but discover that the features described no longer worked the same way in Darktable. I am trying to avoid doing that here. Darktable is updated twice a year at the moment, so not that often, but things do change. And I find new tricks from time to time too. I will keep this guide updated to reflect both changes in Darktable and changes in my own workflow. + +Okay, ready? Let's get started. + +--- + +##### Table of Contents + +- [Setting Up Darktable](#setup) +- [Learning Your Way Around Darktable](#around) +- [Customizing Development Modules](#customize) +- [Example Quick Edits (Video)](#example) +--- + +### Set Up Darktable {: #setup } + +The first thing to do is [download Darktable](https://www.darktable.org/install/) for your PC. Darktable is available for Linux, Mac, and Windows. I have never used the Windows version, but presumably it works like Mac and Linux. + +Once you have Darktable installed, open it up and you will get a blank library screen. Before you do anything else, let's check some settings to make sure we're all on the same page. Click the gear icon toward the top of the screen to the right side: + +<img src="images/2023/darktable40-settings.jpg" id="image-3854" class="picwide" /> + +Click the Processing tab on the left side of the settings panel and make sure that **Auto Apply Pixel Workflow defaults** is set to **scene-refered (filmic)**, like this: + +<img src="images/2023/darktable40-processing-settings_6cAuG3R.jpg" id="image-3849" class="picfull caption" /> + +This will ensure that what's applied by default when you import an image is the same as what's applied to mine. This isn't necessarily the "right" thing to use, scene-referred (sigmoid) will also work, but it won't produce the same results as the rest of these tutorials. + +We're done with settings. Hit escape to close the settings window and save your changes. Yeah, that's weird way to do it, but that's the way it works in Darktable (on Linux at least). + +Let's add some images to our Library view so we can explore both that and the darktable view. To do that you want to open the import module in the upper left corner of the screen and click the **add to library** button. + +<img src="images/2023/darktable40-import_zzr1pfq.jpg" id="image-3851" class="picwide caption" /> + +Naming and organizing your images is a topic into itself. I am going to assume that you have a system for this and that you don't want Darktable to move or rename images. Because you don't, it's tools are not the best for that. I have a custom shell script that renames my images for me, but you can do that same thing using [Rapid Photo Downloader](https://damonlynch.net/rapid/) on Linux. I'm sure MacOS and Windows have similar apps (if you have suggestions, drop a comment below and I will add them here). + +Use what works for you. What I do is use a directory structure of a folder for the year, then within that folders that start with the month number, followed by the event name. So if I took some pictures at Edisto Beach in January of 2024, those images would live in `2024/01_edisto-beach`. Within that folder every images is named YYYY-MM-DD_HHMMSS_event-name.ARW. Which works out to a timestamp with the event name on the end so I can sort them by date taken in any application, including the file browser, but know roughly what they are without opening them (thanks to the event name on the end). Anyway, this is what works for me, do what works for you. + +The import dialog has a few options worth understanding. The "select only new pictures" option is a handy option if you regularly add more images to existing folders as I do. Darktable **WILL NOT** automatically add new images to your database. You must go and import them manually, even if the folder is already in Darktable. If you check the "select only new pictures" option, the new images will be automatically selected when you open that folder in the import dialog. + +That other option is to find new images recursively. I leave this unchecked because I never import a folder with another folder inside it, but if you do, this will tell Darktable to import all the images, no matter how many folders deep they might be buried. + +Also see the [relevant Darktable Manual entry for the import dialog](https://docs.darktable.org/usermanual/4.4/en/module-reference/utility-modules/lighttable/import/#import-dialog). + +###Learning Your Way Around Darktable {: #around } + +I prefer to navigate Darktable mostly using keyboard shortcuts. I use some built-in shortcuts, like **`d`** and **`l`** to switch between **`d`**arkroom and **`l`**ighttable views, and I have quite a few custom shortcuts as well. The one I consider most essential is mapping the Exposure model to `Shift+e`. This allows me to hold down Shift-e and flick my mouse scroll wheel (or trackpad) up and down to increase and decrease exposure. I don't have to futz with opening the Exposure module or anything else, I hit the shortcut and adjust. This save so much time. + +Here's how I set it up. Open the preferences pane again. Choose **Shortcuts** in the left menu and then click the little arrow to open the **processing modules** section and scroll down to **exposure**. Click the arrow next to **exposure** and then double click on **exposure**. After you double click, Darktable is waiting for you to define the keyboard shortcut. Hold down shift, press 'e' and scroll your mouse. Now look below and you should see a line like what's in this screenshot: + +<img src="images/2023/darktable40-exposure-shortcut.jpg" id="image-3852" class="picwide caption" /> + +Hit escape to save and exit the preference. Yup, still weird, but now we're used to it. Next select an image, hit **d** to open it in Darktable view. Test your shortcut: hold down **Shift** and **e** and scroll up and down and your image should get lighter and darker. Awesome. If not, re-read the above. It took me hours to figure this out the first time I tried to set this up, so don't feel bad if it doesn't work right away. Re-read the above and try again. Remember Thoreau. Don't hurry. + +### Customizing Development Modules {: #customize } + +Darktable adjustments are done in what are called modules, little tools that handle a certain type of adjustments, for example the exposure modules adjusts exposure, sets a black point and handles other things related to exposure. Darktable has enough of these little modules that I am overwhelmed by the full list even after using the app for eight years. When I counted just now I came up with 64 user-adjustable modules. That's a lot of options. Too many in fact. But you don't have to use all of them. + +Of those 64 modules I use 9 on a regular basis and another 6 occasionally. Why so many options? This is the nature of open source software to some extent. Anyone with an itch can write some code to scratch it, and if the core developers are okay with including it in the app, it ships. I rather like that, even if most of it gets in my way. There's an easy solution: I narrow down the modules considerably by customizing which ones I see. + +If you'd like to do the same, here's what I suggest. These are the core modules where I spend most of my time: + +- **Exposure** (lighten or darken an image) +- **Filmic RGB** (control how light the whites and how dark the blacks) +- **Color Calibration** (set the white balance) +- **Color Balance RGB** (enhance colors and color contrasts) +- **Diffuse or Sharpen** (Sharpen) +- **Crop** +- **Tone Equalizer** (raise shadows) +- **Retouch** (fix spots) +- **Rotate and Perspective** + +Then there are some others I use only occasionally but I like to have easy to get to, things like **denoise**, **chromatic aberrations**, and **LUT 3D** since I use a number of LUTs to speed up development. There are a couple others you can see in the screenshots below, but mostly I ignore the other 51 modules. To make them easier to ignore, I hide them. To customize which development modules are shown, click the hamburger menu at the top of the modules section (which is on the right side of the screen in darktable mode) and select **Manage presets**. + +That will bring up a huge screen with all the modules in columns. I suggest first clicking the preset drop down menu and selecting **workflow: scene-referred**. That gives you all the modules optimized for a scene-referred workflow. It's not important to understand what that means, but if you'll recall, we set up Darktable to apply the scene-referred presets when we import new images. This continues using that same workflow. We want to use those modules, but not all of them, so select duplicate and give your new module layout a name. Now you can customize this layout. I start by deleting the quick access column completely because I don't need it, nor do I find it quick. There's a checkmark at the top of the screen to disable it. + +Then I set up the other four like this: + +<img src="images/2023/darktable40-custom-modules.jpg" id="image-3853" class="picwide caption" /> + +When you have things set up that way hit... wait for it... escape to save your changes. Still weird, but maybe less so after the third time. Or not. I still think it's weird. + +### Example Edits (Video) {: #example } + +Okay, you now have Darktable set up just like I do. This may or may not end up suiting you, but for now it gives you place to start. To show you how I work within this setup, check out the video below and then you can jump to the next article in this series, which covers what each module does and how I use them. + + diff --git a/scratch.txt b/scratch.txt index 860d0c1..7a4d31a 100644 --- a/scratch.txt +++ b/scratch.txt @@ -1,18 +1,25 @@ -The energy of chaos is required to change the existing order. +Your power is proportional to your ability to relax. -"Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing" -- Helen Keller +Nothing can be more useful to a man than a determination not to be hurried. # Scratch -Your power is proportional to your ability to relax. + +The energy of chaos is required to change the existing order. + +"Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing"—Helen Keller --- + +We're sliding toward a post-political mode of government, in which expert administration replaces democratic contest, and political sovereignty is relocated from representative bodies to a permanent bureaucracy that is largely unaccountable. Common sense is disqualified as a guide to reality and with this disqualification the political standing of the majority is demoted. -- Matthew Crawford Anti-Humanism and the Post-Political Condition First Things Lecture https://yewtu.be/watch?v=pC0bxPbk5nw + + People need... the freedom to make things among which they can live, or give shape to them according to their own tastes, and to put them to use in caring for and about others. If you don't define success for yourself, you can never be successful. That sounds silly, but it's true. Not defining where you want to get to means you'll never get there. This lack of vision isn't an accident usually, it's actually a clever dodge your subconscious mind comes up with because it also means you can't fail. If there's no target to hit, you can't miss. -But without a vision of what success if for you, you will never be successful. And that will haunt you and leave you feeling incomplete in vague, difficult to recognize ways. You have to define what success looks like *for you*, lest you always feel like you're failing -- whether or not you actually are. +But without a vision of what success if for you, you will never be successful. And that will haunt you and leave you feeling incomplete in vague, difficult to recognize ways. You have to define what success looks like *for you*, lest you always feel like you're failing—whether or not you actually are. I submit that it is better to know you failed than to have no idea where you are. @@ -58,9 +65,9 @@ As Matthew Crawford observes in Shop Class as Soulcraft, “shared memories atta ## advertising -One of the interesting things about living the way we do is that we're subjected to very little advertising. We don't have a television, we don't go out to eat (and see TVs there), and we seldom drive on interstate highways, subject to billboards. There are some billboards on the backroads we favor—I don't think it's possible to escape billboards completely, save in Vermont, Maine, Alaska and Hawaii, all of which have outlawed them -- but not that many. I think the main place we encounter advertising is at the gas pump and that's pretty easy to ignore because I don't think I've ever put gas in the bus without having a conversation with someone passing by. +One of the interesting things about living the way we do is that we're subjected to very little advertising. We don't have a television, we don't go out to eat (and see TVs there), and we seldom drive on interstate highways, subject to billboards. There are some billboards on the backroads we favor—I don't think it's possible to escape billboards completely, save in Vermont, Maine, Alaska and Hawaii, all of which have outlawed them—but not that many. I think the main place we encounter advertising is at the gas pump and that's pretty easy to ignore because I don't think I've ever put gas in the bus without having a conversation with someone passing by. -Despite the gas pumps, it seems safe to say that, living as we do in the bus, we are subjected to very little advertising. This is something I generally spend absolutely zero time thinking about until we come into major American city—something we try to avoid doing -- and I am awestruck by how much advertising there is -- it absolutely saturates the environment. +Despite the gas pumps, it seems safe to say that, living as we do in the bus, we are subjected to very little advertising. This is something I generally spend absolutely zero time thinking about until we come into major American city—something we try to avoid doing—and I am awestruck by how much advertising there is -- it absolutely saturates the environment. ## What are people for @@ -95,7 +102,7 @@ This is what struck me about Walden when I recently reread it: that it starts wi In getting in the bus I did not set out to step away from society. I have not stepped away from it at all. I am typing this using grid powered electricity, listen to the cacophony of helicopter rides while staring at the dense Florida branbles around our campsite, which, were I to bushwack through them, would lead me to the Walmart parking lot where I stocked up on steak, eggs and veggies not four hours ago. I am in Concord. And yet I am not. I understand now HD. And I also see both your flaws and mine. -20th-century French anthropologist René Girard's mimetic theory takes this idea of Thoreau's -- that we do not want things a vacuum, we want them because other people want them -- and reminds us that when you leave behind one certain mimetic process, you always enter into another one. You might not want a big fancy house, but you might really want a cool vintage RV, or a particular sailboat. Something will always fill that vacuum of desire and unless you're really on your toes -- and I certainly am not -- chances are that thing that fills it will again be something you don't need at all and only want because someone else has it. +20th-century French anthropologist René Girard's mimetic theory takes this idea of Thoreau's—that we do not want things a vacuum, we want them because other people want them -- and reminds us that when you leave behind one certain mimetic process, you always enter into another one. You might not want a big fancy house, but you might really want a cool vintage RV, or a particular sailboat. Something will always fill that vacuum of desire and unless you're really on your toes -- and I certainly am not -- chances are that thing that fills it will again be something you don't need at all and only want because someone else has it. What one needs to do is question the forces which are pulling them. Mimetic desire runs deep, so deep that most of it is simply accepted as opposed to worked with. What I mean by this is that the majority of items we have and actions we undertake are not acquired or undertaken out of conscious wanting, but out of the general acceptance that they and that is what you do/get. People have 3-piece sofas, fridges, tons of cutlery and plates, nic-nacs, new cars, new phones etc. People go to school, have kids, get mortgages, take out loans, perform Christmas day etc. And all of this falls under the idea of 'It's just want you do.' In fact, perhaps that's a good place to finish up, as I've just found my new favorite slogan... @@ -232,57 +239,87 @@ People have forgotten how important the sun is. You can die from lack of sun. # Stories to Tell -## Fort Klock +One of the horrors of the online world is the way in which it cuts off the senses. +## Darktable shortcuts: -We left the shores of Lake Ontario on a blustery, cold, and windy day. Fortunately the wind was from the north west, so it blew the bus down the Mohawk Valley to a small town on the shores of the Erie Canal where there was marina that also had a few campsites. +### Darkroom dev shortcuts: -<img src="images/2023/2023-10-08_123254_st-johnsville.jpg" id="image-3753" class="picwide" /> +Shift + e while scrolling to change exposure +Shift + c open color calibration eyedropper +Shift + l to apply Astia LUT +Shift + b Boost color balance rgb preset +Shift + s to apply clarity preset +control + s to apply lxf sharp -The campground wasn't much, there was a train track about 100 feet from the back of the bus, and trains came by about every two or three hours, but it was right on the shores of the Erie Canal, one of the more impressive feats of engineering in American history. The Panama Canal gets all the glory (it too was an epic feat), but many people don't realize there are still networks of canals running all over the eastern United States. They aren't used much commercially at the moment -- with diesel prices rising, the canals may be economically viable again soon though -- but the Great Loop[^1] is popular with sailors. +### Lighttable shortcuts -<img src="images/2023/2023-10-11_150813_st-johnsville.jpg" id="image-3770" class="picwide" /> +alt + - zoom out (custom) +alt + = zoom in (custom) -With the tailwind we were at our campsite by lunch time and started looking around for something to do. Part of the reason we're here in upstate New York and headed through the mid Atlantic was to show the kids some American history sites, so when Corrinne found something called Fort Klock, A Fortified Stone Homestead, we figured it'd fit right in. What kid doesn't love the sound of a "fortified homestead"? -<img src="images/2023/2023-10-08_124343_st-johnsville.jpg" id="image-3754" class="picwide" /> +## Repair Fail -To be honest we weren't expecting much from Fort Klock, but it turned out to be the best historical site we've visited. We enjoyed it more than Jamestown, Yorktown, and definitely more than Williamsburg (more on those soon). What made it the best place we've been was the people, or rather the person, Les. +One of the most underappreciated, least talked about aspects of repair is the cultural hierarchy within that world. You have to earn your way to the top of it. Experts in repair are experts because they have done it, not because they think they can do it. There's no way to fake expertise, especially in car repair. -We were the only people around and when we walked in the only other person was Les who had been in the kitchen, tending the fire. He asked if we wanted the tour and we said sure. We paid $20 for the five of us and Les proceeded to lead us on a three-hour historical tour of the property, and by extension life in the Mohawk Wall over the last three hundred years. +To really understand all the way down is to have a total cognitive understanding of the thing, from top to bottom that stands in stark contrast to the dependency of consumer culture. To get that is not easy. It is hard one. It is competitive. -It would be impossible for me to try to capture it here because part of it was that when he was talking about cooking, there was a fire in the hearth, when he talked about making far tools out of wood, he was showing us how to drag a draw knife, how to save the shavings to start the fire, and how to work a loom. +The early drafts of my Wired article on the bus had a lot more about this, but they were cut out during the edit process, which was my only frustration with that piece. I thought, and continue to think, that it's is very important to acknowledge that skills like repairing cars are earned through experience. There is no other way. -There were no glass walls cutting you off from Fort Klock. There were some railings here and there, but for the most part you could touch and interact with artifacts in a way that you never can at most historical sites. For the kids that's the whole point. They don't care about the abstraction we call history -- those people back then. The kids want to know how people lived, what the kids did, how things work, what the food smells like, how you load a muzzleloading rifle, how you fire a cannon, how you make a canoe, how you sail a wooden square rigger. I'm the same way. I don't really care about who own the battle, I want to here the stories of the people who fought, or farmed, or traded, or hunted. That's what Fort Klock was: history that's still alive. +When you start trying to fix things, you suck at it. There is a steep learning curve and you will fail. You will fail over and over until you learn. I find this dynamic interesting because those are two things I truly dislike -- failure and asking for help. -<div class="cluster"> -<img src="images/2023/2023-10-08_125036_st-johnsville.jpg" id="image-3755" class="cluster picwide" /> -<img src="images/2023/2023-10-08_130002_st-johnsville.jpg" id="image-3756" class="cluster picwide" /> -<span class="row-2"> -<img src="images/2023/2023-10-08_140239_st-johnsville_S4yjTPU.jpg" id="image-3758" class="cluster pic66" /> -<img src="images/2023/2023-10-08_140542_st-johnsville.jpg" id="image-3759" class="cluster pic66" /> -</span> -<img src="images/2023/2023-10-08_143146_st-johnsville.jpg" id="image-3761" class="cluster picwide" /> -<img src="images/2023/2023-10-08_145836_st-johnsville.jpg" id="image-3762" class="cluster picwide" /> -</div> +I hate asking for help more than I hate failure so for me, learning to repair anything is a trial and error and error and error and error and error and give-up-and-ask-for-help process. -Klock's fortified homestead is a stone farmhouse built in 1750 with walls over 2 feet thick. It sits on Kings Highway, the main thoroughfare of the valley at that time, and on the edge of the Mohawk River. It was a major trading post in the area and one of the primary defensive structures around. +This process is important though. You can't shortcut it. You need those moments of crushing failure and ineptitude. Otherwise your sense of yourself can outstrip what you're capable of, which is usually referred to as "having an ego." Or worse that self-image becomes so fragile you avoid situations that might force you to alter it, and when it is inevitably punctured you go all to pieces, which is worse than ego, no ego. -It was built from the ground up with defense in mind. There are little portals on all sides with angled access on the side to provide a wide range of fire. The windows could be covered by sturdy wood shutters and -- the real key to its defensive capability -- it was built over a spring, which still bubbles up in the cellar. All the Klock's has to do was lay in some food and ammunition and they were ready to withstand a siege. Which they did, several times. +Suck early, suck often. -Fort Klock was used during both the French and Indian war and the American war for Independence, as both a refuge and trading post (there were other such fortified homes in the valley, but this is the only one that's been restored and has public access). +It's one thing to understand that intellectually. Its another to live the experience of failure. +About two weeks into our stay in the outer banks the Jeep started acting funny. There was no definitive thing I could put my finger on, just an intuition that something was wrong inside the engine. Deep inside the engine according to my hunch. I did what anyone would do; I ignored it. +Until it became audible. Thunk thunk thunk when I accelerated. For a long time there had been a tapping sound that I somehow instinctively knew was a bent rod. Despite two mechanics telling me it wasn't. I took off the valve covers and sure enough, there was a bent rod. But that wasn't all, I ran the engine with the covers off and realized one of the exhaust rods was no longer lifting the tappet. This was on one of the two cylinders that always had slightly sooty spark plugs when I check them, so far it all made sense. I ordered some rods and some new lifters. -Rather amazingly the home remained in the Klock family through the 1950s, though it was largely abandoned when the family moved back to town in the '30s. In the early 1950s the Tryon County muzzleloaders (re-enactors interested in collecting and shooting antique guns) were looking for a place to shoot and came across the property. The last descendant of Klock had been looking for someone to restore the property and so they struck a deal. The muzzleloadiing group raised money and rebuilt the property and eventually opened it to the public. +Unfortunately the heads on the AMC 360 engine do not allow you to extract the lifters. I had to pull the intake manifold off. I didn't want to do that at a campsite in the sand dunes so I rented a storage unit to work on it and had it towed up. -Today it is owned and operated by the Fort Klock Historic Restoration group. The non-profit was spun off of the muzzleloaders group because the National Park Service refused to give the National Historic Landmark distinction to a muzzleloading club. Fortunately the muzzleloaders had the humility the government lacked and they set up a separate foundation and eventually got the historic designation. Don't let the name fool you though. The truth is a bunch of people who love shooting muzzleloading rifles saved and restored this place and continue to maintain it. +It took me two days to unhook everything and get the intake manifold off and the passenger side head. There was an oil leak toward the rear of the engine I thought maybe the head gasket was bad. It turned out I was wrong. Fail number one, but that one was minor, just a wasted day worth of work and $40 for a new head gasket. No biggie, I put the head back together and torqued it down. -There is something sad about a house that is no longer a home. We've been in many over the years, and I always get the feeling that the walls feel lonely after generations of families running through them, the silence is greater for the sounds that are no longer there. It's as if an entire way of life falls silent when the families leave. Fort Klock was the opposite. It still smelled of woodsmoke and life and that, combined with Les's stories, which always seemed to wander from the past, to the present, the grandparents of someone down the road, the ancestors of the man who still has a working blacksmith shop just over the ridge in... history was not something abstract, but real. That barn, in that person's family, that did this, and so on for three hours. It was the best $20 I've ever spent. +I'd spent three days now though, hanging out alone in a storage unit, talking to my GoPro since I recorded everything. Still, I was optimistic, I was having fun. We weren't due to leave for another three days. I had time. Then the parts got delayed. I spent a day thinking about all the other things I could be doing. Everything has opportunity costs. I didn't get to see Val as much as I wanted. I didn't even really see Corrinne or the kids much for the better part of a week. I was back and forth between the storage unit, the mailbox to check on parts, and various parts stores. Still, I was optimistic. + +I pulled out the lifters. The one that wasn't lifting was worn down a good 3/16th of an inch. It was then that I realized my original hunch was right, the problem was deeper, I was treating symptoms. The nagging suspicion that I was out of my depth and just plain wrong began to set in. This is when the thoughts about opportunity costs started to creep in more frequently. Long before I ever did any repairs I rationalized not doing them by thinking that I could earn more money working however many hours I'd be working on the car, so it made more sense to pay someone else. I'll stick to working, they can stick to repairing. But that's just a rationalization. I didn't spend that saved time working. I did got knows what with it. + +I started to think about that from the opposite direction there. I started to think, you know what, I think I am done with this. This isn't the way I want to spend my time. My family's time. When I am gone working on the car that means Corrinne has to take care of the kids, and I don't get to see any of them. At some point -- and I am honestly not sure what that point is sometimes -- that trade off is no longer worth it. I tried to quanitfy this someone. What's the cut off? I spent 8 hours trying to fix it and then punt? 16 hours? I finally concluded that it's not a quantifiable thing. But there is a point at which it is not worth the time. + +Then there's the time pressure from the need to move. The outer banks was getting colder every day. We need to be in Edisto for Christmas, we're supposed to spend January on the Georgia coast, all of these things felt like the might be slipping away. + +Then there's the bus. The exhaust manifold had cracked and I needed to replace that, which was just a quick job once I had the new manifold, but it still needed to be done. If I gave up on the Jeep would it really matter, I still look after the bus after all? But the Jeep is by far the most fun car I've ever driven, I hate to give up on it. + +I decided to put everything back together and see what happened. + +I put it back together, except for the valve covers, and started the engine. It turned over and oil started shooting out the rod end I'd replace. But not out of any other rods. That's when I know something else was wrong. I was out of my depth. I had failed. It hadn't even occurred to me that oil should have been shooting out of all the rods all the times I'd started it with the valve covers off. That should have been extremely messy and it never was, something else was wrong. My uncle suggested the oil pump was probably dead. Either way, I was out of time, we had to get moving if we were going to make Christmas down south. + +I punted. I called the mechanic I'd almost called to begin with. He said he didn't have room for it on his lot and couldn't get to it until after the holidays. Damn. I called some other mechanics, none of whom really grabbed me but I had to do something. I settled on one, called a tow truck and sat down to wait for it. The original mechanic called me back. He said he'd make room, bring it on by. I took that as a sign, so I did. And that's where it sits today. + +I took everything out of it, somehow found room for it in the bus and we hit the road with everyone in the bus, something we haven't done in years. -[^1]: The Great Loop is a route that brings together various waterways, making it possible to travel along the Atlantic seaboard, Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, Great Lakes, Canadian Heritage Canals, and the inland rivers of America -- like the Erie Canal -- to make a big loop. There are a few routes, but the Erie portion seems to be one of the more popular ones. + +Still, I prefer that to outsourcing things. + + + + + +On November 16th I came home from another day on the boat and said to Ali, “I think I’m done.” That’s all it really took—a decision had finally been reached somewhere on the Sabalo Centro bus between the marina and Old Town. + +“What do you mean?” she asked. + +“With boats. I think I’m done. This just isn’t the way I want to spend my time. Our time.” This had been in the back of my mind for months, but for some reason that day I was ready to accept it. The stupid thing is, the only reason I’d been having a hard time coming to that decision in the first place, is because I really loved our kids’ rooms. I loved how cosy and warm they were and how everything a child could ever want was within arms reach. For the first time in many many years I’d gotten sentimental over an inanimate object. + +We talked. And we talked. We talked about how our cruising plans were actually pretty stupid. Cruising to places in order to get off the boat. That’s stupid. Boats are meant to be sailed and lived on, not to be used as an alternative to a car. And while we enjoyed cruising Mexico, we didn’t enjoy the part-time-ness of it. Being a part-time cruiser is far more difficult than being a full-time cruiser. It’s hard work to move on and off and on and off. And it’s a terrible waste of money. + + ## Before The Motor Laws @@ -290,7 +327,7 @@ There is something sad about a house that is no longer a home. We've been in man Electric cars are limited to a city for the most part. I don't think this is a design flaw. I think this is a design intent. Kill the ability to take to the open road and you kill the myth of the open road and the myth of the open road is the quintenssential myth of america. It is, I would argue, the entire idea on which america was founded, long before the road was paved or had cars on it. The electric car is designed to castrate that idea and the current reality along with it. -f the urban operating system is going to happen, as the WEf and all the smart city avocates believe, I want to throw my lot in with the free softwareists -- the drivers. +f the urban operating system is going to happen, as the WEf and all the smart city avocates believe, I want to throw my lot in with the free softwareists—the drivers. ## Car Show Post @@ -310,11 +347,11 @@ The word nostalgia comes from two Greek words, *algos*, which gives us the "pain *Thanks for keeping it going.* Thanks for maintaining a path to healing the present. Thanks for pointing the way. -I didn't say anything to the Bronco though. There was no one around. Maybe the steel and iron understand, I think they do, but no one, including me, wants to be the weirdo talking to the car in an empty parking lot. Besides, it's the person who's maintaining that connection that matters. It's their struggle to keep that thing working that matters. All those people laboring to keep those bits of the past working in the present, that's what matters. Without them the objects are just rust and decay. Someone has to maintain them, recover them, repair them -- this is what matters. This is the bond in the present to the past. Those who keep things going understand them, understand where they came from, why they work the way the work, and what that means. You have too, otherwise you'll never be able to keep whatever it is working. +I didn't say anything to the Bronco though. There was no one around. Maybe the steel and iron understand, I think they do, but no one, including me, wants to be the weirdo talking to the car in an empty parking lot. Besides, it's the person who's maintaining that connection that matters. It's their struggle to keep that thing working that matters. All those people laboring to keep those bits of the past working in the present, that's what matters. Without them the objects are just rust and decay. Someone has to maintain them, recover them, repair them—this is what matters. This is the bond in the present to the past. Those who keep things going understand them, understand where they came from, why they work the way the work, and what that means. You have too, otherwise you'll never be able to keep whatever it is working. This means you're constantly communing with the past. If that sounds too hippy for you, don't worry, that communication with the past often goes like this, "what #$%@ idiot wired this together with electrical tape" or words to that effect. It's not all good, the past. But most things from prior to about 1995, were made with the implicit understanding that they would, at some point in the future, need to be repaired. This was an understood part of the design process, even if the designer assumed the repair person would be "a professional". -Go back a bit further and not only is that part of the design process, but there's no assumption about professionals, the assumption is that the owner would be fixing it. Read any car manual -- not the repair manual, just the owner's manual -- and you'll find the manufacturers assumed owners would change the oil, repair the brakes, and perform other basic maintenance. +Go back a bit further and not only is that part of the design process, but there's no assumption about professionals, the assumption is that the owner would be fixing it. Read any car manual—not the repair manual, just the owner's manual -- and you'll find the manufacturers assumed owners would change the oil, repair the brakes, and perform other basic maintenance. Somewhere in the last 30 years, we lost this culture of repair. @@ -341,7 +378,7 @@ No one knows when that's going to be, but increasingly, I think we all feel it c The past hundred years have been unlike anything in human history. Today you can buy things made in China for a $1 at your local hardware store. But the global trade that's made our world possible is falling apart. We aren't going to keep getting endless replacements doodads, and most of the things that surround us now can't be repaired. We're going to have to reach back, to dig the old stuff that was repairable out of the weeds and get it running again. -This is where I believe the anachronists can guide us into a saner future -- by going through the past -- but that's not why I started learning to fix things and it isn't why I fix things now. +This is where I believe the anachronists can guide us into a saner future—by going through the past -- but that's not why I started learning to fix things and it isn't why I fix things now. Where we spend our summers there are a number of campsites that are designated "seasonal", that is, the occupants, like us, have the site from the middle of May to the middle of October. As you would expect, we get to know the other seasonal people. @@ -413,7 +450,7 @@ Strangely, we live in an age where the dominant myth, the story most of us live The myths we were handed from 17th-century culture (which is where most of our myths begin) claim that everything can be reduced to understandable parts, dealt with at that level, and the whole will somehow benefit. The famous mechanistic universe. Anyone who has spent any time working on engines should have serious doubts about Descartes mechanistic universe. Pipe organs, which were the beginnings of the modern engine in many ways, were probably no different than internal combustion engines when it comes to mysterious failure of the parts to make a whole, which means Descartes had no excuse. Descartes, I suspect, did not turn his own wrenches. -If he had he might have saved us a 400-year-long detour into the fantasy world we currently inhabit. We do not experience the world as the sum of its part and, so far as I can tell, this is just not at all how the world works. It might be nice if it were how the world works. But it doesn't. On the plus side, if the universe truly were mechanistic I don't think half the hacks and things I do to keep the bus going would work. I think this is a big clue that things are very different than what the stories claim -- things that should work didn't, things that shouldn't work often do. +If he had he might have saved us a 400-year-long detour into the fantasy world we currently inhabit. We do not experience the world as the sum of its part and, so far as I can tell, this is just not at all how the world works. It might be nice if it were how the world works. But it doesn't. On the plus side, if the universe truly were mechanistic I don't think half the hacks and things I do to keep the bus going would work. I think this is a big clue that things are very different than what the stories claim—things that should work didn't, things that shouldn't work often do. I read a lot of writers who explore this space, that is, the gap between myth/story and the reality we experience, and there tends to be a good bit of hand wringing about how this leaves us fragmented, incapable of certain things that were easy to someone living 500, 1000, 5000 years ago when myths better matched the world. That may well be the case. Certainly what I have read of indigenous people of North America, they seemed by the large have cohesive myths that created a world in which they were... content? Where things made sense to them. They had a place within their world that they fit into you. @@ -492,11 +529,360 @@ https://www.vagabondjourney.com/you-cant-get-lost-anymore/ # jrnl +## In The Dunes + +> Nothing can be more useful to a man than a determination not to be hurried.<cite>—Henry David Thoreau, Journal, March 22, 1842</cite> + +Mornings grow colder with every passing day. The sunrise edges a little further south every time I crest the dunes to watch. The wind howls most mornings, a biting cold that cuts through the layers of wool I pile on in a futile attempt to keep warm. But the sunrises. Never the same, always spectacular. + +<img src="images/2023/2023-12-10_065437_oregon-inlet.jpg" id="image-3862" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2023/2023-11-20_062538_oregon-inlet-nikonzf.jpg" id="image-3856" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2023/2023-11-16_060729_oregon-inlet-a7crii.jpg" id="image-3855" class="picwide" /> + +In the popular imagination, living in an RV -- or #vanlife as my editors at Wired insist on calling it -- is one of leisure and relaxation. We all spend hours drinking coffee in the sunshine, reading in hammocks, doing yoga on the beach, or in my case, hanging out with my wife and kids. + +I have been known to spend a while drinking my coffee in the sunshine, and our family is together almost all the time, but by and large, this is not how I've been spending my days lately. It *should* be how I spend my days. It should be how we all spend our days, lingering over the things we love, but life has a way of finding other things to eat up our time. + +I get to the point where I feel antsy whenever I am not doing something. Maybe antsy isn't the right word. I feel like I *should* be doing something whenever I am *not* doing something. That creates a low grade stress that permeates life. When you're feeling like you should be doing something else it pulls you out of whatever you're trying to do and you end up doing nothing. + +I did not use to be this way. I remember, and I have even written about, finding peace in [doing nothing but listening to the rain](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2017/07/time-and-placement). + +What happened? I've been thinking about this a lot lately. Somewhere in the last five years I lost touch with that ability to relax into any situation, an ability I think is the key to traveling well. How did I lose touch with something so essential? + +I don't know exactly, but I know that these days I feel like there is always something that needs to be done: a meal that needs to be made, an engine that needs to repaired, a child that needs attention, a thing to write, a thing to edit, a thing to call in. Something always needs to be done that keeps you from doing what you want to do. + +That probably sounds a lot like your life as well. That's why I am writing this, to let you know that the solution to feeling overwhelmed is not buying an RV and hitting the open road. Modernity will find you, and try to hurry your life along, even out here. + +This is where Thoreau comes in. "Nothing can be more useful to a man than a determination not to be hurried." I'm sure if he were writing today, Thoreau would say "person" rather than "man", but the point is that it takes *a determination* not to be hurried. Thoreau wrote that in March of 1842, in case you were thinking hectic lives were a recent phenomena. + +I dug through a 1906 copy of Thoreau's complete journals to see if there was any additional context to that thought, but there isn't. It's a single line set off by itself, no connection to any of the ideas around it. It stands on its own though I think. + +Something about Thoreau's phrasing, "a determination", made me realize that not only was I hurried by things that should not be hurrying me, but that this state, this feeling of always needing to do something, was a state of existence I had *allowed* myself to fall into. I lost the awareness of it that you must have to resist it -- because if you aren't *determined* not to be hurried, you will be. You are in charge of how your mind works. It's your responsibility to stop the hurrying. + +That's why I like Thoreau's particular phrasing here. It takes work, determination, not to be hurried. If you aren't working at it, life is going to rush you along with no time to appreciate the sound of the rain or enjoy that coffee in the sunshine. I find it both heartening to know that Thoreau had this problem, and somewhat depressing that Thoreau had this problem -- despite being nearly 200 years on, life seems to be no less noisy. Same as it ever was. + +It was around this time that I started running out over the dunes to watch the sunrise every morning. It was driven mostly by a desire to see what was over the hill from the bus. From the bus all I could see was the sky and I would wonder, what does the sea look like? So I ran over the dunes nearly every morning. Sometimes with a camera, sometimes not. I had to see what was on the other side. + +<img src="images/2023/2023-12-05_065850_oregon-inlet.jpg" id="image-3861" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2023/2023-11-20_063355_oregon-inlet-nikonzf.jpg" id="image-3857" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2023/2023-12-03_105455_oregon-inlet.jpg" id="image-3859" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2023/2023-12-03_104959_oregon-inlet.jpg" id="image-3858" class="picwide" /> + +After I did my morning rituals out there I would sit down and watch the sunrise. It was rarely the relaxing sort of reverie you might be thinking, this is the Outer Banks after all, and it's nearly December. Usually the wind was blowing at least 10 knots and the temperature was rarely above 40. Mostly I sat with my teeth chattering, desperately wishing I was back in the warm bus, unable to feel my toes, but there to watch the sun rise and do nothing else. To force on myself the unhurriedness of sitting still, observing the world. + +It took a while to work. At first I was trying to hard to get something out of it. That doesn't work. It wasn't until it became routine that I started to find my way back to the relaxed kind of energy I was seeking. + +The key turned out to be bringing my notebook with me, not to write down some profound insight, I had none of those, but to write down all the things that were on my mind instead of the sunrise in front of me. It's not until you clear all the hurriedness out of your mind that you can begin to relax. You can never relax when you feel there other things you need to be doing. The secret to being relaxed is to be okay not doing the things that need to be done. + +There is no true relaxation until you are mentally free of all the hurriedness, that feeling that there's something you should be doing. The way to get to that state, for me anyway, is to write down everything that needs to be done, know that it's all in a notebook I can look at from time to time, and then get on with life. It is of course one thing to know this intellectually and another to stay on top of it. + +There's an interesting dichotomy at work here: in order to relax, you need to be disciplined. This is where I failed. I was not being disciplined in my determination to remain unhurried. I was not doing the work of keeping my life organized so that I could in turn relax and be unhurried. + +As an aside, I find the larger lesson here fascinating and instructive: the path to wisdom seems to begin in the mundane ability to keep track of your commitments so you can get them off your mind, which then frees your mind up to thing about other, if not higher, than certainly more interesting things. + +In the end it wasn't going into the dunes to watch the sunrise that brought me back around to a more relaxed state, it was bringing my notebook with me and clearing my mind into it. Once that was done, I could watch the sunrise without worrying that I should be doing something else. It's not a solution exactly, more of [an ongoing practice](https://luxagraf.net/essay/everything-is-a-practice). Not only in the dunes, but everywhere, carving out time to empty your mind of commitments so that you can be free to live a more relaxed, unhurried life. Not a grand revelation, just a short run through the dunes and a little while sitting still. If only it had been a bit warmer. + + + + + +## Halloween in the Outer Banks + +From Virginia Beach we drifted south, making the short drive down to Oregon Inlet in the Outer Banks. Our plan was to spend a couple of weeks there, visit friends, get some time at the beach, and then head to Ocracoke for Thanksgiving. It was pretty good plan, but it didn't work out that way. So it goes. + +We arrived on a nearly perfect day at the end of October -- sunshine, clear skies, hardly any wind. + +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-25_130859_oregon-inlet.jpg" id="image-3833" class="picwide" /> + +The first week we were there the days were in the 70s, the nights cooling off to the low 50s, which is perfect temps for living on grid in the bus. Although there are some electric sites at Oregon Inlet, we've never felt the need for them. There's plenty of sunshine for our solar (no trees) and we prefer to the non-electric sites backed up against the dunes, a short walk from the bus to the shore. + +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-28_072551_oregon-inlet.jpg" id="image-3840" class="picwide" /> + +We got plenty of time in at the beach that first week. We went [seining](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2022/06/seining-with-val) again with our friend Val (the main reason we came back here was to see friends we made on our last trip), and went bird watching around Pea Island. + +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-25_162557_oregon-inlet.jpg" id="image-3834" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-26_134245_oregon-inlet.jpg" id="image-3835" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-26_141515_oregon-inlet.jpg" id="image-3836" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-26_141532_oregon-inlet.jpg" id="image-3837" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-27_140902_seining-with-val.jpg" id="image-3838" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-27_142334_seining-with-val.jpg" id="image-3839" class="picwide" /> + +It wasn't long after we arrived in the Outer Banks before Halloween rolled around. In our family Halloween has always been a big holiday. This year Elliott spent hours designing and then building out his own green demon costume. I would take no outside assistance. + +But something has changed about Halloween. The Halloween vibe has shifted from the kind of playful, mock-scary decorations of the past, to an overabundance of plastic horror movie stage props. I read somewhere that ticket sales of horror movies correlate closely with several economic indexes -- as the economy gets worse, horror movies get more popular. + +I'm no economist, but this makes sense to me. As the world gets genuinely scary, our fantasy worlds have to up the "scary" tropes to continue to offer an escape. I think this plays out in Halloween decorations too. The change in the Halloween vibe has really accelerated over the last two years as the economy has cratered. Neighborhoods decorated with dismembered body parts says a lot about the quality of life in them I fear. + +Whatever the case, our kids are not fans of the horror movie vibe, so we decided to head the Elizabethan Gardens, which had a Halloween festival and trick or treating setup the weekend before the holiday. + +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-28_175458_halloween.jpg" id="image-3844" class="picwide" /> +<div class="cluster"> + <span class="row-2"> +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-28_175457_halloween_ORTKJsQ.jpg" id="image-3843" class="cluster pic66 caption" /> +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-28_175730_halloween.jpg" id="image-3845" class="cluster pic66" /> + </span> +</div> + +It was one of many local events we've ended up at over the years where after about half an hour we realize we're the only ones there that don't know everyone. I rather like it when we parachute into someone else's world for a few hours, and everyone was very kind and welcoming. Although I did have to explain to the kids there was no way they were going to win the costume contest, which was decided by popular vote. Outsiders don't win popular votes. They had fun though, and loaded up on candy, which, let's face it, is the important part of Halloween. + +Corrinne was complaining to another friend about the whole horror movie Halloween thing, and she told us to come to her neighborhood, which was suitably old school and not into the horror movie thing. This turned out to be true, so the kids got to go trick or treating in peace after all. It really was an old school neighborhood, pretty much just like [being back in 1984 ](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2023/08/everyday-1984). Val joined us and we all wandered around for a few hours, gathering candy from strangers, as you do on Halloween. + +## History + +We crossed the Mason Dixon line on our way to Assateague, but it didn't really feel like we were in the south yet. No offense Maryland, but it wasn't until I stopped at a gas station in Virginia that I heard the friendly twang of a southern accent. A few miles later I passed a cotton field and I felt like we were back. Smiles were less strained. Drivers were slower. [Duke's mayonnaise](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2007/06/sailing-through) was on nearby shelves. + +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-22_131925_virginia.jpg" id="image-3823" class="picwide" /> + +One of these days I'll get around to the essay about why it is that I love the south more than the rest of the country. Not today though. + +Unfortunately Virginia Beach isn't the most southern of places. We had planned to stay closer to Jamestown and Williamsburg, but the day we left Assateague Corrinne came down with what I'd had (not the ragweed apparently) and didn't feel up to a longer drive. We cut it short and stopped at First Landing State Park, just on the other side of the Chesapeake Bay. + +That meant a longer drive to the stuff we were here to see, but it also meant we were closer to groceries. We stocked up, and then following day the kids an I drove about an hour inland to see Jamestown. + +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-23_113518_virginia.jpg" id="image-3824" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-23_113807_virginia.jpg" id="image-3825" class="picwide" /> + +Jamestown has two parts, a National Park site that appears to be in a perpetual state of digging and disarray, and a re-enactment section that features a replica of the old settlement, a native village, and a few other odds and ends. We started at the actual site, which has a few buildings, mainly the church, but is on the same land as the original Jamestown settlement. + +I will confess that I generally dislike archaeology. To me it's a fancy word for grave robbers that we've collectively agreed to not call grave robbers. Do we learn things from archaeology? Well, maybe? I definitely think we can learn a lot about ourselves, how we see the world, and how we view our relationship to the past. That is to say, that archaeology is something we invented says more about us than anything else. + +It's not that I think archaeology is all wrong. There may be some truth to the stories archaeologists tell us. The problem for me is that we will never really know. There is very little that's testable about the hypotheses archaeology offers. The stories we tell ourselves based on archaeology are educated guesses presented as truth, whereas the stories from other sources, which may be educated in a different way, don't get that blessing, which rankles me. + +At Jamestown current archaeology is attempting to say whose body is in which grave, which is just... I don't want to sound too cynical, but who cares? I try to keep my prejudices out of the kids' experience so I didn't say a word, but after listening to about five minutes of a tour guide's talk, the kids wandered off to look at other things. My daughter even asked me, why does it matter who is buried where? I try to see the upside of these things, so I told her perhaps it mattered to the descendants of the people buried. She said if it were her ancestor she'd want their bones left in the ground even if she didn't know exactly where. + +We wandered away from the grave robber area to see the rest of the Jamestown site, which was beautiful. If you were picking settlement locations based solely on picturesque qualities, Jamestown was a brilliant find. It was undoubtedly different 400 years ago, when it was covered by old growth, but it was probably even better. It's still beautiful today. + +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-23_115710_virginia.jpg" id="image-3826" class="picwide" /> + +We drove around the island and stopped near a marsh to have a picnic lunch. It was quiet back in the woods and we had fun imagining perhaps Pocahontas once stopped for a snack in this very same place. The kids loved the fact that Pocahontas would probably have been eating something similar -- dried meat, nuts, hard bread (crackers), cool water to drink. Probably not plantain chips, but otherwise we were reasonably historically accurate. + +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-23_125933_virginia.jpg" id="image-3827" class="picwide" /> + +After lunch we drove over to the re-enactment area. There was a museum, but I knew the kids didn't care that much, they were in a rush to get to the real stuff, the replicas and actors. There turned out to not be many actors around, but those that were there were great. One man, who was captain of the guard, put Elliott and another boy each in charge of an imaginary squad and walked them through their duties. + +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-23_133725_virginia.jpg" id="image-3828" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-23_140014_virginia.jpg" id="image-3830" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-23_140022_virginia.jpg" id="image-3831" class="picwide" /> + +The highlight though, were the replica ships. Only one was open, but the kids got to run all around it, go below decks, see the hold, and even the captain's quarters -- pretty much everything but climbing the rigging. This was extra entertaining for them because I wrote them a book a few years ago about a family that lives on a boat in the year 1710. These ships were a different design, but close enough that I could say, yes that's how Lulu and Birdie (the main characters in the book) would have cooked, where they would have slept, etc, which gave them a kind of connection to the book that goes beyond anything I could ever write. + +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-23_134846_virginia.jpg" id="image-3829" class="picwide" /> + +It was fun for me to watch them all infected by this fascination with the past, this thing we call history. It has always struck me that we do ourselves a great disservice by cutting off the past, putting it outside our "reality," the world around us. The past can be in the present. It can be all around you all the time. Many cultures have this view. Our view of the past as something "back there" is a choice, and from what I have seen, it is not a natural one. At least not to kids. Kids are ready to step into the past as a real and living thing. It *is* a real and living thing for them when we get out of the way, which is what I try to do as much as possible. + +Unfortunately, after Jamestown we decided to see Colonial Williamsburg. This was a mistake for a variety of reasons, and to tell the full story would be a post of its own and to be totally honest, I don't want to ruin Williamsburg for anyone else. But because I know you're going to ask, I will go with my grandmother's advice and say nothing. Yes, we went to Williamsburg. And then we went home for the day. + +Undeterred by Williamsburg, we went back the following day to check out the Yorktown battlefield, which was also divided into a museum, re-enactment area, and actual battlefield. This time the kids were into the museum and we spent several hours walking around talking about the revolutionary war (the war of colonial aggression to my British friends). The kids were especially taken with the signs that said "please touch sword" rather than the usual, don't touch anything signs you see in most museums. After wandering around the working farm out back, we drove out to the battlefield, but that one failed. To a kid, a field is just a field. + +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-24_124411_virginia.jpg" id="image-3832" class="picwide" /> + +We drove into the little town that was nearby and found a fun little maritime museum, that consisted mainly of one man's amazing model ship building prowess. From early colonial ships to modern warships it was a historical tour of American shipbuilding in miniature. But more than anything it was the sort of small museum where everyone is incredibly enthusiastic and kind and friendly. All volunteers, doing it for the love of it. It helped restore the kids' faith in grownups I think, which was a little shaken after Williamsburg. + + +## Shoreline + +If there is a theme to the places we go, it's water. Lakes, ponds, rivers, streams, creeks. We find them. Even out west, far from any large body of water, "the desire of water is scribed across the desert like graffiti."[^1] + +While I like almost all places with water—the bigger the better, which is why we spend so much time by the sea. The sea is life. It is the blood in our veins. It always feels like coming home to me. It's only been six months since we last saw it, but that feels like too long now that we're back. + +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-15_142629_assateague_QNhTUJC.jpg" id="image-3811" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-15_143433_assateague.jpg" id="image-3812" class="picwide" /> + +I tried to read a book once about why it is that many, if not most, people feel most at home near the shore. I like the premise, but it turned out to be a book full of studies, with lots of evidence of the sea doing this and that for people, and I couldn't help [thinking of Conrad](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1058/1058-h/1058-h.htm), who spent a good deal more time *at* sea than most: "For all that has been said of the love that certain natures (on shore) have professed to feel for it, for all the celebrations it had been the object of in prose and song, the sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness." + +I tossed the book of studies in a free book bin months ago. I realized I didn't care. I know why *I* feel at home by the shore and that's enough. I also know that part of why I love the sea is that like Conrad writes, it doesn't seem to much care about humanity, certainly not for our individual lives. My impression is not that it dislikes us, rather that it is far too old, too immense, too complex to even notice that we exist. I find this heartening, this reminder that there are forces far above and beyond me, that I can't begin to fathom. The world is large, we are small. We forget that at our peril. + +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-16_070233_assateague.jpg" id="image-3813" class="picwide" /> + +I don't think, for instance, that the sea really cared that I came down with a head cold the day after we arrived. It might have been the pace we've been keeping for the last couple months. You get a rush of energy from moving quickly through things, but it feeds on itself, you burn through it eventually, and when you finally stop there's a tendency to crash. Or it could have been allergies. The campground at the National Seashore in Assateague is covered in ragweed. It was virtually the only plant around. + +Still, if you have to pick a place to crash (or succumb to ragweed), the sea is the place to do it. I usually cure myself of illness by swimming. I know few will believe me, but it works for me. + +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-18_115218_assateague.jpg" id="image-3819" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-18_120634_assateague.jpg" id="image-3820" class="picwide" /> + +Assateague (and Chinoteague to the south) is a barrier island somewhat like the Outer Banks, but less windy. That might make it sound more appealing, but it doesn't work out that way in practice. The magic of barrier island is, I think, in that windswept character that is inescapable in the Outer Banks. In the Outer Banks, life becomes about wind. You notice when it changes directions, you notice when it picks up, dies down, and most of all you notice when it stops because it so rarely does. There was none of that in our time at Assateague. + +Instead there are semi-wild horses, which people really seem to love. Including my kids. They certainly make themselves at home in the national park. + +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-16_145513_assateague.jpg" id="image-3816" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-16_150331_assateague.jpg" id="image-3818" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-16_145500_assateague.jpg" id="image-3815" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-16_150144_assateague.jpg" id="image-3817" class="picwide" /> + +We spent a few days in the National Seashore portion of the island, and then migrated over to the Maryland State Park portion, which is much nicer. No ragweed and right on the beach. My head cold cleared up. Storms rolled in. The sea didn't seem to care. It was good to be back by the shore. + +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-21_181547_assateague.jpg" id="image-3822" class="picwide" /> + + +[^1]: From Craig Childs' *[The Secret Knowledge of Water](https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-secret-knowledge-of-water-discovering-the-essence-of-the-american-desert-craig-childs/114453?ean=9780316610698)*, one of the few books I keep with me in the bus. + +## Farm Life + +One day this past summer a man stopped by our site to talk about the bus. I wasn't around, but when I got back he was telling Corrinne about something called Harvest Hosts. It's a clever idea, wineries, farms, other people with land provide free camping in exchange for you spending some money at their store or whatever they have. We looked into it a few years ago when first launched, but it was mostly wineries at the time and neither of us drink, so it didn't make sense for us. + +That day last summer though he assured us that the service had grown considerably and there was a wide range of options, not just wineries. We didn't do anything about it just then (we take what I like to call an Amish approach to things—we like to think about them for a long time before we actually do anything), but as we plotted a route the rest of the way down the Erie Canal, past New York City, along the New Jersey coast and beyond, there were quite a few places with nowhere to camp. Normally we'd get a hotel, but that's expensive and we don't enjoy it, so we decided hey, lets try out Harvest Hosts. + +We signed up and booked a night at an [apple farm](https://eatapples.com) about halfway between St. Johnsville and where we were headed in New Jersey. It turned out to be a great experience. The kids got to see what a real working farm is like (well, orchard in this case), we stayed for free, and we loaded up on apple cider, fresh cheese, and other treats. In the end we spent about as much as a hotel, but it was a much more enjoyable experience. + +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-12_143339_driving-hudson-valley.jpg" id="image-3791" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-12_170522_driving-hudson-valley.jpg" id="image-3792" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-12_140938_driving-hudson-valley.jpg" id="image-3790" class="picwide" /> + + +Apparently every place is very different, but this farm we were more or less alone in a big open field. Having just been to the Baseball Hall of Fame, the kids wanted to play, and what better place than an empty farm field? + +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-12_171812_driving-hudson-valley.jpg" id="image-3793" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-12_174012_driving-hudson-valley.jpg" id="image-3794" class="picwide caption" /> + +One catch about Harvest Hosts is that you can only stay 24 hours. So the next morning, after we went back for more fruit, veggies, and cheese, we hit the road again, bound for New Jersey. + +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-13_094107_driving-hudson-valley.jpg" id="image-3795" class="picwide" /> + +You might be wondering why we didn't stop off in New York City. We talked about it, but in the end decided that right now isn't a great time to be in New York. Crime is pretty high, particularly in the outer boroughs from what I hear. And yes, I have traveled through sketchy parts of India and Thailand where people were blowing up buses and trains and never worried about that. I still wouldn't. But American cities right now, especially New York, are too chaotic and unpredictable to be safe[^1]. Besides, we're just not city people anymore. I'd make exceptions for Paris, Bangkok, and a handful of others, but by and large I don't enjoy cities these days. + +We drove right on by New York City, catching a view of the Manhattan skyline from the turnpike before pointing ourselves south to a place called Cheesequake, New Jersey. We spent the night there. Between the five of us we didn't take a single photo of the place, which tells you more than I can with words. + +The next morning we hit the road again, headed south down the New Jersey shoreline for the Cape May area. Cape May is a major birding area and I would like to have stopped for a while, but I had picked up a cold and wasn't feeling that great, and then it started to rain. + +We stayed at another farm, this one a [sheep dairy farm](https://www.mistymeadowsheepdairy.com). This time we exercised a little more restraint and bought plenty of cheese, but not enough to fund a night in a hotel. We also discovered a downside of Harvest Hosts—when the weather pins you down, there's not much to do but sit in your rig and read and play games. It was only for an afternoon, so it wasn't too bad. + +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-15_072446_driving-hudson-valley.jpg" id="image-3797" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-15_072512_driving-hudson-valley.jpg" id="image-3798" class="picwide caption" /> + +The next morning we were up bright and early to catch the Henlopen Ferry to Delaware. + +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-15_094314_driving-hudson-valley.jpg" id="image-3799" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-15_094435_driving-hudson-valley.jpg" id="image-3800" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-15_094624_driving-hudson-valley.jpg" id="image-3801" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-15_104646_driving-hudson-valley.jpg" id="image-3802" class="picwide" /> + +I'll never stop enjoying putting the bus on ferries. There's something about sitting at the table in the bus and looking out to see the ocean that makes me happy. For a moment it's a boat. And then we were ashore again, still headed south, bound for Chincoteague, wild horses, and some warm beach days. + +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-15_115544_driving-hudson-valley.jpg" id="image-3803" class="picwide" /> + +[^1]: This is not me watching the news (I haven't done that in 25 years). Our decision was based on reports from friends currently living in New York City. + + +## Baseball Diamonds + +We would never have come this way if weren't for the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. Not that I wanted to go there that badly, but when we took the kids to a [baseball game back in Florida](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2023/04/bus-work-and-baseball) the Baseball Hall of Fame somehow came up and I remember Elliott saying "can we go?" + +My first thought was probably not. I lived in western Massachusetts for a few years and had driven the mountains in the area—they're more than I would want would to put the bus through. It's not that the bus can't climb mountains. It can, it's just slow and I never know which mountain is going to be its last. I like to save mountain driving for out west, where it's unavoidable. + +Still, I pulled up Cooperstown on the map to see where it was and what it looked like. That's when I noticed the Mohawk and Hudson River Valleys, which cut through upstate New York. Valleys aren't so bad. That's probably why they put a turnpike along them. Hmm. I plugged the route into a website I use to get the elevation change of a road and was surprised to find that most of the big inclines were actually downhill. I started formulating a plan to make it through the Appalachians without going south. And here we are, upstate New York. + +I had to work some early mornings while we were in St Johnsville, which turned out to be a lovely, if somewhat curious town at 5 AM (and otherwise). + +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-09_062423_st-johnsville.jpg" id="image-3764" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-11_150530_st-johnsville.jpg" id="image-3769" class="picwide" /> + + +One day the kids and I headed up into the hills to find Cooperstown. I don't really know what I was expecting, but it wasn't what I got. To me the Baseball Hall of Fame is a big thing. But Cooperstown is a tiny little town. I mean tiny. The population is 1,867. Yet somehow, this is where the Baseball Hall of Fame is located. It wasn't even crowded. + +I was dreading how much it was going to cost, but when I got the kiosk to pay the man looked at the kids and said, they're free right? I said, um, well. He said, yeah, they're free. Who am I to argue? + +There are several floors to wander, much of it is a tour through the history of Major League Baseball. That latter part is key, if the MLB as an organization isn't involved, there probably isn't much about it (despite the MLB not owning or otherwise having anything to do with the hall of fame). I understand that you have to set some limits or it would be an overwhelming thing to document, but I was a little disappointed there was almost nothing on stuff like the Cuba league or the Negro League (Satchel Paige has a plaque, but that's about it). + +<div class="cluster"> + <span class="row-2"> +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-10_145936_baseball-hall-of-fame.jpg" id="image-3783" class="cluster pic66" /> +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-10_134102_baseball-hall-of-fame.jpg" id="image-3778" class="cluster pic66" /> + </span> +</div> + +There was plenty of cool stuff though. We got to sit in Hank Aaron's locker and see countless artifacts. Different parts of the room had different historical games being broadcast, which was fun. I like being at a game, but radio is still my second favorite way to "watch" baseball. + +<div class="cluster"> +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-10_150815_baseball-hall-of-fame.jpg" id="image-3784" class="cluster picwide" /> +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-10_144236_baseball-hall-of-fame.jpg" id="image-3782" class="cluster picwide" /> + <span class="row-2"> +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-10_143800_baseball-hall-of-fame.jpg" id="image-3781" class="cluster pic66" /> +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-10_151130_baseball-hall-of-fame.jpg" id="image-3785" class="cluster pic66" /> + </span> +</div> + +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-10_134903_baseball-hall-of-fame.jpg" id="image-3780" class="picwide caption" /> + +I was a little disappointed to find almost nothing about the 1980s LA Dodgers, which to my mind *were* baseball for so many years. I knew every player and every stat about them. I still remember most of it. But of course that was just my world. The LA Dodgers did not figure quite so prominently in the larger world of 1980s baseball. + +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-10_134301_baseball-hall-of-fame.jpg" id="image-3779" class="picwide caption" /> + +Part of the fun of going to Cooperstown turned out to be the drive. Upstate New York is on the more beautiful places we've been. The fall colors mixed with the seemingly endless historic farmhouses was fantastic. I could have driven around exploring for days. + +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-10_154603_baseball-hall-of-fame.jpg" id="image-3786" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-10_160121_baseball-hall-of-fame.jpg" id="image-3787" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-10_160158_baseball-hall-of-fame.jpg" id="image-3788" class="picwide" /> + +As it was though I had to work much of the time we were in St. Johnsville. Corrinne took the kids up to dig for Herkimer diamonds one day. Not real diamonds, Herkimer diamonds are "double-terminated quartz crystals", whatever that is. But they're primarily found here, in and around Herkimer County and the Mohawk River Valley. They aren't just lying around either, you have to split rocks to find them. + +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-09_105158_st-johnsville.jpg" id="image-3765" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-09_105431_st-johnsville.jpg" id="image-3766" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-09_113950_st-johnsville.jpg" id="image-3767" class="picwide" /> + +I was looking at these pictures later and the only think that came to my mind was *Cool Hand Luke*. Next time I'll boil up some eggs for them to take along. + +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-09_132556_st-johnsville.jpg" id="image-3768" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-11_152215-1_st-johnsville.jpg" id="image-3771" class="picwide" /> +## Fort Klock + +We left the shores of Lake Ontario on a blustery, cold day. Fortunately the wind was with us. The bus blew down road into the Mohawk Valley, to a small town on the shores of the Erie Canal where there was a marina that also had a few campsites. + +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-08_123254_st-johnsville.jpg" id="image-3753" class="picwide" /> + +The campground was wedged between the canal and a train track, with a about 100 feet in either direction. Trains came by about every two or three hours, but it was right on the shores of the Erie Canal, one of the more impressive feats of engineering in American history. + +The Panama Canal gets all the glory (it was an epic feat), but many people don't realize there are networks of canals running all over the eastern and southern United States. They aren't used much commercially at the moment—although with diesel prices rising, the canals may be economically viable again soon -- but the Great Loop[^1] is popular with sailors. + +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-11_150813_st-johnsville.jpg" id="image-3770" class="picwide" /> + +It was a short drive. We made it to our campsite by lunch time and started looking around for something to do. Part of the reason we're here in upstate New York and headed through the mid-Atlantic region was to show the kids some American history sites, so when Corrinne found something called Fort Klock, A Fortified Stone Homestead, we figured it'd fit right in. What kid doesn't love the sound of a "fortified homestead"? + +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-08_124343_st-johnsville.jpg" id="image-3754" class="picwide" /> + +To be honest we weren't expecting much from Fort Klock, but it turned out to be the best historical site we've visited. We enjoyed it more than Jamestown or Williamsburg (more on those soon). What made it the best place we've been was the people, or rather the person, Les. + +We were the only visitors there and when we walked in the only other person was Les, who had been in the kitchen, tending the fire. He asked if we wanted "the full tour" and we said sure. We paid $20 for the five of us and Les proceeded to lead us on a three-hour historical tour of the property, and by extension life in the Mohawk Wall over the last three hundred years. + +It would be impossible for me to try to capture it here because part of it was that when he was talking about cooking, there was a fire in the hearth, when he talked about making far farm tools out of wood, he was showing us how to drag a draw knife, how to save the shavings to start the fire, how to work a loom. + +There were no glass walls cutting you off from Fort Klock. There were some railings here and there, but for the most part you could touch and interact with artifacts in a way that you never can at most historical sites. For the kids that's the whole point. They don't care about the abstraction we call history—those people back then. The kids want to know how they would have lived, what kids did, how things worked, what the food smelled like, how you load a muzzleloading rifle, how you fire a cannon, how you make a canoe, how you sail a wooden square rigger. I'm the same way. I don't really care about who won the battle, I want to hear the stories of the people who fought, or farmed, or traded, or hunted, or whatever. That's what Fort Klock was, a working example of what life was like. History that's still alive. + +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-08_125036_st-johnsville.jpg" id="image-3755" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-08_130002_st-johnsville.jpg" id="image-3756" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-08_143146_st-johnsville.jpg" id="image-3761" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-08_145836_st-johnsville.jpg" id="image-3762" class="picwide" /> + +Klock's fortified homestead is a stone farmhouse built in 1750 by Johannes Klock. The walls are over 2 feet thick. It sits on Kings Highway, the main thoroughfare of the valley at that time, and on the edge of the Mohawk River. It was a major trading post in the area and one of the primary defensive structures around. + +It was built from the ground up with defense in mind. There are little portals on all sides with angled access to provide the widest range of fire to those inside. The windows could be covered by sturdy wood shutters and—the real key to its defensive capability -- it was built over a spring, which still bubbles up in the cellar. All the Klock's had to do was lay in some food and ammunition and they were ready to withstand a siege. Which they did, several times. + +Fort Klock was used during both the French and Indian War and the American War for Independence, as both a refuge and trading post (there were other such fortified homes in the valley, but this is the only one that's been restored and has public access). + +<div class="cluster"> +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-08_153828_st-johnsville.jpg" id="image-3763" class="cluster picwide" /> +<span class="row-2"> +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-08_140239_st-johnsville_S4yjTPU.jpg" id="image-3758" class="cluster pic66" /> +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-08_140542_st-johnsville.jpg" id="image-3759" class="cluster pic66" /> +</span> +<img src="images/2023/2023-10-08_142415_st-johnsville.jpg" id="image-3760" class="cluster picwide" /> +</div> + +Rather amazingly the home remained in the Klock family through the 1950s, though it was largely abandoned when the family moved back to town in the '30s. In the early 1950s the Tryon County muzzleloaders (re-enactors interested in collecting and shooting antique guns) were looking for a place to shoot and came across the property. The last descendant of Klock had been looking for someone to restore the property and so they struck a deal. The muzzleloadiing group raised money and rebuilt the property and eventually opened it to the public. + +Today it is owned and operated by the Fort Klock Historic Restoration group. The non-profit was spun off of the muzzleloaders group because the National Park Service refused to give the National Historic Landmark distinction to a muzzleloading club. Fortunately the muzzleloaders had the humility the government lacked and they set up a separate foundation and eventually got the historic designation. Don't let the name fool you though. The truth is a bunch of people who love shooting muzzleloading rifles saved and restored this place and continue to maintain it. + +There is something sad about a house that is no longer a home. We've been in many over the years, and I always get the feeling that the walls feel lonely after generations of families running through them, the silence is greater for the sounds that are no longer there. It's as if an entire way of life falls silent when the families leave. Fort Klock was the opposite. It still smelled of woodsmoke and life and that, combined with Les's stories, which always seemed to wander from the past, to the present, the grandparents of someone down the road, the ancestors of the man who still has a working blacksmith shop just over the ridge in... history was not something abstract, but real. That barn, in that person's family, that did this, and so on for three hours. It was the best $20 I've ever spent. + + + +[^1]: The Great Loop is a route that brings together various waterways, making it possible to travel along the Atlantic seaboard, Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, Great Lakes, Canadian Heritage Canals, and the inland rivers of America—like the Erie Canal -- to make a big loop. There are a few routes, but the Erie portion seems to be one of the more popular ones. + ## Niagara Fails We left Long Point Canada bright and early, headed back to the United States to check out Niagara Falls. We originally planned to see the falls from the Canadian side because the view is better, but then there was a lot of traffic and on the map it didn't look like there was much parking for the bus. We decided to get through the border, grab a campsite, and come back to check out the falls later. -It was another pleasant drive through the Canadian farmland of Ontario for most of the morning. In an older vehicle 80 km an hour is a much nicer speed than 55 MPH. I'm not sure why, there isn't a huge difference, but people weren't tailgaiting me constantly -- yet too timid to actually pass -- and everything felt a bit more relaxed. Maybe that's just the way people drive in Canada. Whatever the case it was a pleasant drive despite some road construction and confusing detours. +It was another pleasant drive through the Canadian farmland of Ontario for most of the morning. In an older vehicle 80 km an hour is a much nicer speed than 55 MPH. I'm not sure why, there isn't a huge difference, but people weren't tailgaiting me constantly—yet too timid to actually pass -- and everything felt a bit more relaxed. Maybe that's just the way people drive in Canada. Whatever the case it was a pleasant drive despite some road construction and confusing detours. We made it to the border shortly after lunch and were waiting in line to get through to the US side when Corrinne started gesturing to me. I was mostly worried about the bus sitting there idling in the heat, the Jeep never crossed my mind, but then she got out and walked back and said the Jeep had died. Well, shit. @@ -552,7 +938,7 @@ The day we decided to leave the temperature started to drop and it felt like the ## Canada -When we plotted our route east we planned to duck south of Lake Erie. The more direct route -- along the north shore of Lake Erie -- involved going into Canada, and the kids' passports were expired. +When we plotted our route east we planned to duck south of Lake Erie. The more direct route—along the north shore of Lake Erie -- involved going into Canada, and the kids' passports were expired. About two weeks before we left Washburn we mentioned something about that to our friend Mark and he said the you don't need a passport for kids in Canada, just a birth certificate would do. A little investigation proved him right, and so we altered our plans to go along the north shore of Lake Erie, through Ontario and then back into the states in Niagara. @@ -581,7 +967,7 @@ We managed to get a campsite for the night, and since it was a beautiful day, te The water was warm in the shallows, not just by Lake Superior standards, but actually, like, warm. When you waded out deeper you could find the colder thermal layers and it was possible to stand there with your feet turning to blocks of ice while the rest of you was fine. So long as you stuck to the shallow areas though, which had been warmed by days of sunshine, it was like playing in bath water. We hadn't spent that much time at the beach since we [left Florida in May](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2023/05/goodbye-florida). -After dinner we went back down to watch the sunset over the lake, one of the nice things about being on the east side of a great lake -- you get to see the sunset over the water. +After dinner we went back down to watch the sunset over the lake, one of the nice things about being on the east side of a great lake—you get to see the sunset over the water. <img src="images/2023/2023-10-01_174334_canada.jpg" id="image-3712" class="picwide" /> <img src="images/2023/2023-10-01_174424_canada.jpg" id="image-3713" class="picwide" /> @@ -666,9 +1052,9 @@ Had I been born a century or two earlier, I suspect I'd feel about the horse the I haven't ridden horses enough to know how I'd feel about them, but the car quickly came to feel like a natural extension of my body. There's an interview with Steve Jobs where he talks about how, per kilometer a human being isn't very efficient. The most efficient animal per kilometer is the Condor. But, and this is the part Jobs zeros in on, put a human on a bicycle and he becomes astronomically more efficient than any other human. -What Jobs doesn't mention, but any cyclist can attest to, is how the bicycle quickly becomes more than a tool, turning rather to an extension of the body. This also happens with cars and is, I think, more than anything else, is why I like driving *older* cars -- they are more directly connected to you and your decisions, they are more fully an extension of the body. +What Jobs doesn't mention, but any cyclist can attest to, is how the bicycle quickly becomes more than a tool, turning rather to an extension of the body. This also happens with cars and is, I think, more than anything else, is why I like driving *older* cars—they are more directly connected to you and your decisions, they are more fully an extension of the body. -There is very little abstraction in vehicles from the 1970s and earlier. The mechanical workings of an old car form a clear picture in my head at this point -- I know what happens when I push on the gas pedal. I know the entire chain of connection from the pedal to the piston compression to turning that detonation into rotational energy that actually moves you down the road. This clear picture in turn (I feel) gives a deeper connection between driver and machine. +There is very little abstraction in vehicles from the 1970s and earlier. The mechanical workings of an old car form a clear picture in my head at this point—I know what happens when I push on the gas pedal. I know the entire chain of connection from the pedal to the piston compression to turning that detonation into rotational energy that actually moves you down the road. This clear picture in turn (I feel) gives a deeper connection between driver and machine. <img src="images/2023/2023-09-27_170422_harrisville-sp.jpg" id="image-3686" class="picwide" /> @@ -704,17 +1090,17 @@ We managed to get a site without any violence, which was nice. We also booked it <img src="images/2023/2023-09-21_082623_copper-harbor.jpg" id="image-3667" class="picwide" /> -Copper Harbor is a place that remains mostly beyond the reach of the world. It's like [Ocracoke](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2022/05/ocracoke-beaches), [Apalachicola](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2013/05/all-the-pretty-beaches), [Patrick's Point](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2017/10/pacific), [Edisto](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2020/01/walking), and other places I've [never named](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2017/08/canyoneering). They are not off the map -- that's not possible any more -- but they are at the edges, far enough outside the lines to be mostly ignored, visited like shrines by devotees. +Copper Harbor is a place that remains mostly beyond the reach of the world. It's like [Ocracoke](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2022/05/ocracoke-beaches), [Apalachicola](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2013/05/all-the-pretty-beaches), [Patrick's Point](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2017/10/pacific), [Edisto](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2020/01/walking), and other places I've [never named](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2017/08/canyoneering). They are not off the map—that's not possible any more -- but they are at the edges, far enough outside the lines to be mostly ignored, visited like shrines by devotees. These are worlds where cell phone service is spotty to non-existent and the people who live in them interact more, it seems to me, with the world around them. They are more present, more connected to the people around them than other places. <img src="images/2023/2023-09-20_140714_copper-harbor.jpg" id="image-3665" class="picwide caption" /> -This is my best guess. I don't live in any of them, but after spending months in several I would say that one characteristic they all share is some kind of external hardship that unites the people living there. Up here that's snow. Ocracoke and Apalachicola have storms, for others it's the sheer remoteness of life that bring people together. When the nearest store is hours away, when the nearest hospital is probably too far to help, the nearest services don't really serve you, you have to band together to get by, you share, you help others out, they help you. The way the world has been since the beginning of time -- until the last 50 years anyway, when the [outside expert](https://luxagraf.net/essay/the-cavalry-isnt-coming) arrived to tell people they were doing it wrong. Look where that got us. We need to get back to the way of Ocracoke, the way of Apalachicola, the way of Copper Harbor. +This is my best guess. I don't live in any of them, but after spending months in several I would say that one characteristic they all share is some kind of external hardship that unites the people living there. Up here that's snow. Ocracoke and Apalachicola have storms, for others it's the sheer remoteness of life that bring people together. When the nearest store is hours away, when the nearest hospital is probably too far to help, the nearest services don't really serve you, you have to band together to get by, you share, you help others out, they help you. The way the world has been since the beginning of time—until the last 50 years anyway, when the [outside expert](https://luxagraf.net/essay/the-cavalry-isnt-coming) arrived to tell people they were doing it wrong. Look where that got us. We need to get back to the way of Ocracoke, the way of Apalachicola, the way of Copper Harbor. All that said, I also think that much of what saves these places from the ills of modernity has to do with size. It might be that this kind of culture can't scale beyond a certain size.There are certain things you can't do if you live here. You can't put your headphones on and ignore the world when the world consists of only a few hundred people. Humans haven't regressed that much yet, thankfully. -To be clear, I have no romantic notions about small town living. Small towns can be really awful if you want to buck the trends of the town. My favorite example of this is from the 1820s, when Transcendentalist Joseph Palmer -- who was considered eccentric because he dared to grow a beard -- was mobbed by his New England neighbors who tried to shave him in the street. He was then thrown in jail for defending himself, being charged with "unprovoked assault." +To be clear, I have no romantic notions about small town living. Small towns can be really awful if you want to buck the trends of the town. My favorite example of this is from the 1820s, when Transcendentalist Joseph Palmer—who was considered eccentric because he dared to grow a beard -- was mobbed by his New England neighbors who tried to shave him in the street. He was then thrown in jail for defending himself, being charged with "unprovoked assault." No, I have no particular love for small towns, but it does seem to me that these places that are "beyond the wall" as my friend Josh likes to say, tend to be small. Perhaps it's that there are not that many people who want to live outside the world. Perhaps these really are some kind of ideal small towns made up of eccentrics who drifted in the tides of civilization until they ended up out here in the eddies. @@ -772,7 +1158,7 @@ I came back and re-installed the starter and made a new wire to replace the melt By now it was painfully obvious that AAA was useless. I could see the towing shop they claimed they'd called across the street, so I called them and asked if AAA had contacted them. They had not. Corrinne called AAA back and found that the person entering our info had listed us as an A108 van, which is about 1/3 our size. She got a manager who promised he'd have a tow truck there in an hour. An hour later, guess what wasn't there? -By now I'd given up hope of going back to Washburn. Olivia made dinner while I kept testing and trying to follow the wiring diagram. It started to get dark not long after that, so we called it a night -- our first in a Walmart parking lot. I've spent quite a few nights in various parking lots with the bus and I have to say, Walmart was by far the best. +By now I'd given up hope of going back to Washburn. Olivia made dinner while I kept testing and trying to follow the wiring diagram. It started to get dark not long after that, so we called it a night—our first in a Walmart parking lot. I've spent quite a few nights in various parking lots with the bus and I have to say, Walmart was by far the best. <img src="images/2023/2023-09-17_074501_keweenaw_T93HZTH.jpg" id="image-3653" class="picwide" /> @@ -835,7 +1221,7 @@ I think the best way to find your path is to slow down, be quiet, and listen. There's a lot of noise in the world, a lot of people telling you what you should do. Some of them may mean well, but no one knows your path. There are no exceptions. No one knows your path. And you don't know anyone else's path. -I think that's part of the reason some people read this site -- they're not happy with their path. Our path is appealing, if only, I think, because it's very different. That doesn't mean it's right for you, but it's an option. Most people I've met through luxagraf are looking for something that our culture didn't offer them. If you think the grand dance of existence might involve more than working all your life for [two TV sets and two Cadillac cars](https://inv.vern.cc/watch?v=9iJQQTg5_Kg), as Lou Reed put it, this site is here to tell you you're not alone. +I think that's part of the reason some people read this site—they're not happy with their path. Our path is appealing, if only, I think, because it's very different. That doesn't mean it's right for you, but it's an option. Most people I've met through luxagraf are looking for something that our culture didn't offer them. If you think the grand dance of existence might involve more than working all your life for [two TV sets and two Cadillac cars](https://inv.vern.cc/watch?v=9iJQQTg5_Kg), as Lou Reed put it, this site is here to tell you you're not alone. I believe that we are here to give the gifts that we have built up inside us over millennia of our soul’s existence, that we are here to shepherd each other toward our gifts and give to the world those things that we have inside us. How you do that is for you to figure out, but I have found that letting go of the ideas that haven't been working is a good place to start. You don't have to follow the scripts you were handed. Those may not be your path. Sit down, quiet your mind, and listen. Be patient. @@ -892,7 +1278,7 @@ I want my kids to grow up the way we did. Yes, they get hurt sometimes. You shou <img src="images/2023/2023-08-08_152605_around-washburn.jpg" id="image-3631" class="picwide" /> -I picked 1984 somewhat at random, but the point stands that part of what I want to do living this way is provide my kids with access to the freedoms that I enjoyed and give them room to figure things out for themselves, explore new places, learn new things, meet new people, and build and sustain relationships -- on their own. +I picked 1984 somewhat at random, but the point stands that part of what I want to do living this way is provide my kids with access to the freedoms that I enjoyed and give them room to figure things out for themselves, explore new places, learn new things, meet new people, and build and sustain relationships—on their own. To be able to do this is a skill everyone has to learn, but we've had several generations now that were never given the chance to do this and... it's not good. These grown men and women are only couple steps above helpless in many cases and we're all starting to see the effects of that. When Mommy and Daddy are always there to fix things and suddenly they aren't.... @@ -906,7 +1292,7 @@ The people we've met, the people who are here regularly, they think like we do, <img src="images/2023/2023-09-02_144746_around-washburn.jpg" id="image-3642" class="picwide" /> -This means that a good bit of what we've done this summer -- is nothing. We've stayed around town and let the kids wander the creeks, make friends, ride their bikes around town, make food over a fire, fish, swim, and whatever else they want to do. +This means that a good bit of what we've done this summer—is nothing. We've stayed around town and let the kids wander the creeks, make friends, ride their bikes around town, make food over a fire, fish, swim, and whatever else they want to do. <img src="images/2023/2023-08-11_173916_around-washburn.jpg" id="image-3636" class="picwide" /> <div class="cluster"> @@ -1065,7 +1451,7 @@ Eventually the mechanic came back and he agreed with my assessment. Then he look Eventually he helped me repack the bearings and we put the wheel back together. I paid him for his time and tools and hit the road again. The scraping went away when I got above 35 and I figured if it wasn't the wheel bearings or the brakes maybe I could just keep driving and try to puzzle it out. Which is what I did for about another 100 miles or so. -It's tough to find camping in the middle of Illinois, but there are some county parks in the small towns. We pulled into Arthur, Illinois -- mostly notable for its Amish population -- not really knowing what to expect. We found a gravel lot behind the high school with electric and water. Good enough of the night. +It's tough to find camping in the middle of Illinois, but there are some county parks in the small towns. We pulled into Arthur, Illinois—mostly notable for its Amish population -- not really knowing what to expect. We found a gravel lot behind the high school with electric and water. Good enough of the night. <img src="images/2023/2023-05-17_174622_driving-to-washburn.jpg" id="image-3546" class="picwide" /> @@ -1138,7 +1524,7 @@ We'd left the heat behind a few days before in Metropolis IL, but that night in Eight days. Only three things broke on two cars that are more than 80 years old between them. -It wasn't until I was sitting there, staring up at the pines above our campsite, that it occurred to me that everything that had gone wrong on our drive -- the broke tailpipe, the cracked rear transmission mount, the broken alternator bolt, the lose steering wheel bolts in the Jeep -- all those things ultimately happened most likely because of excessive vibration. You can maybe blame some of that on general engine vibration, but two of them happened after hitting potholes. +It wasn't until I was sitting there, staring up at the pines above our campsite, that it occurred to me that everything that had gone wrong on our drive—the broke tailpipe, the cracked rear transmission mount, the broken alternator bolt, the lose steering wheel bolts in the Jeep -- all those things ultimately happened most likely because of excessive vibration. You can maybe blame some of that on general engine vibration, but two of them happened after hitting potholes. American roads are falling apart. I remember when we first started we'd notice bad roads. Louisiana's roads were terrible. Corrinne's grandfather built roads in Louisiana most of his life, we'd joke that the roads were probably the same surfaces he'd help lay. I also remember thinking that highway 101 in California, just north of and down through San Francisco, was one of the worst roads in the country. The point is we noticed bad roads. @@ -1237,9 +1623,9 @@ Less frequently I reseal the windows, but it was time. The Florida sun is not ki Just then my daughter walked by and said *hey, that's our window*. *Well, we share it* (meaning her and her twin sister). She pointed to the pane that is behind her head and the pane that is behind her sister's head and then she walked off. And I stood there for a minute and thought right, that's why I am doing this, to keep my family warm and dry. -That's really the only job there is in life -- making sure my wife and kids have a warm, dry, safe place in the world. Strip away all the pretensions of culture and what's left? We make shelters and feed our family and friends, maybe even strangers. That's what all creatures do, each in their own way. My way includes heat and no-see-ums, but you know what, whatever needs to be done, needs to do done. +That's really the only job there is in life—making sure my wife and kids have a warm, dry, safe place in the world. Strip away all the pretensions of culture and what's left? We make shelters and feed our family and friends, maybe even strangers. That's what all creatures do, each in their own way. My way includes heat and no-see-ums, but you know what, whatever needs to be done, needs to do done. -The Wagoneer is a more difficult thing for me to get a handle on because I don't know yet what needs to done. Right now I am just playing whack-a-mole. The first mole was the power windows, which stick. This turns out to be the bane of many a Jeep owner's existence. Not knowing that at the time, I ordered some new plastic tracks and started tearing apart the doors. One fringe benefit of the Wagoneer is the massive tailgate, which gives me something I've never had -- a workbench. +The Wagoneer is a more difficult thing for me to get a handle on because I don't know yet what needs to done. Right now I am just playing whack-a-mole. The first mole was the power windows, which stick. This turns out to be the bane of many a Jeep owner's existence. Not knowing that at the time, I ordered some new plastic tracks and started tearing apart the doors. One fringe benefit of the Wagoneer is the massive tailgate, which gives me something I've never had—a workbench. <img src="images/2023/2023-04-23_083437_big-lagoon.jpg" id="image-3519" class="picwide" /> <img src="images/2023/2023-04-23_105223_big-lagoon.jpg" id="image-3522" class="picwide" /> @@ -1348,7 +1734,7 @@ I eventually gave up trying to find a replacement fuse and just ordered four new We've seen this all up and down the Gulf Coast dating back to Katrina (and before I'm sure, but I didn't live in the south then). Hurricanes take out small businesses, large ones scoop up the land on the cheap. -I don't know that there's anything to be done about it. Tourism may be [a short-sighted industry that ruins better long term bets](https://live.luxagraf.net/jrnl/2013/05/oysterman-wanted), but we all have to pay rent in the short-term. And it isn't just hurricanes bringing real estate opportunists -- fishing and other gulf coast economies have been in decline for some time. Everything from water quality to foreign investment had a hand in killing off the local oyster industry here in Apalachicola. Our friend Amy Evans has been covering this for years. Her article [The Oysterman](https://bittersoutherner.com/the-oysterman), in the *Bitter Southerner* is the best thing I've read on it. +I don't know that there's anything to be done about it. Tourism may be [a short-sighted industry that ruins better long term bets](https://live.luxagraf.net/jrnl/2013/05/oysterman-wanted), but we all have to pay rent in the short-term. And it isn't just hurricanes bringing real estate opportunists—fishing and other gulf coast economies have been in decline for some time. Everything from water quality to foreign investment had a hand in killing off the local oyster industry here in Apalachicola. Our friend Amy Evans has been covering this for years. Her article [The Oysterman](https://bittersoutherner.com/the-oysterman), in the *Bitter Southerner* is the best thing I've read on it. It's not just an abstraction though, the changes wrought by hurricanes and culture play out in the streets of Apalachicola as they do everywhere, and I think the short story, from my point of view, is that the good guys are not winning. @@ -1387,7 +1773,7 @@ We did not have those in California. The purple flag is for "stinging marine lif <img src="images/2023/2023-04-05_113155_st-george.jpg" id="image-3463" class="picwide" /> -I decided -- wait for it -- that is wasn't worth the risk. When we were here at Christmas the kids and I stumbled on a little trail that led down to the leeward side of the island, which faces St. George Island sound. This became our hang out spot. Everyone else headed to the windward beaches, leaving the sound side to us. We spent whole days out there without seeing another soul. +I decided—wait for it -- that is wasn't worth the risk. When we were here at Christmas the kids and I stumbled on a little trail that led down to the leeward side of the island, which faces St. George Island sound. This became our hang out spot. Everyone else headed to the windward beaches, leaving the sound side to us. We spent whole days out there without seeing another soul. <img src="images/2023/2023-04-04_151441_st-george.jpg" id="image-3457" class="picwide" /> <img src="images/2023/2023-04-04_152419_st-george.jpg" id="image-3458" class="picwide" /> @@ -1436,7 +1822,7 @@ I will confess I had never thought of self checkout this way, but now I can't se Something about the whole encounter reminded me of a moment in David Foster Wallace's famous Kenyon graduation speech, *This Is Water*. Wallace talks through how these default thought patterns take over when we're tired, overworked, in a hurry, and so on. But that's the problem he argues, that these default settings are a choice. Not a conscious one, but a choice still and they are robbing us of seeing something more in those moments. Stopping at the store on your way home from work at rush hour doesn't have to be a moment of consumer hell, we experience it that way because our default programming has conditioned us to see it that way. -> If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is and who and what is really important -- if you want to operate on your default-setting -- then you, like me, will not consider possibilities that aren't pointless and annoying. But if you've really learned how to think, how to pay attention, then you will know you have other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, loud, slow, consumer hell-type situation as not only meaningful but sacred, on fire with the same force that lit the stars-compassion, love, the sub-surface unity of all things. +> If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is and who and what is really important—if you want to operate on your default-setting -- then you, like me, will not consider possibilities that aren't pointless and annoying. But if you've really learned how to think, how to pay attention, then you will know you have other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, loud, slow, consumer hell-type situation as not only meaningful but sacred, on fire with the same force that lit the stars-compassion, love, the sub-surface unity of all things. I think a lot time I use those self checkout kiosks as a way to avoid having to spend another second in crowded, loud, slow, consumer hell-type situations. That's what they're there for right? To avoid having to add a cashier to what's already *by default*, at least that's the assumption, a terrible situation. But again, that's a choice. And not the only one. @@ -1503,7 +1889,7 @@ I will confess I had never thought of self checkout this way, but now I can't se Something about the whole encounter reminded me of a moment in David Foster Wallace's famous Kenyon graduation speech, *This Is Water*. Wallace talks through how these default thought patterns take over when we're tired, overworked, in a hurry, and so on. But that's the problem he argues, that these default settings are a choice. Not a conscious one, but a choice still and they are robbing us of seeing something more in those moments. Stopping at the store on your way home from work at rush hour doesn't have to be a moment of consumer hell, we experience it that way because our default programming has conditioned us to see it that way. -> If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is and who and what is really important -- if you want to operate on your default-setting -- then you, like me, will not consider possibilities that aren't pointless and annoying. But if you've really learned how to think, how to pay attention, then you will know you have other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, loud, slow, consumer hell-type situation as not only meaningful but sacred, on fire with the same force that lit the stars-compassion, love, the sub-surface unity of all things. +> If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is and who and what is really important—if you want to operate on your default-setting -- then you, like me, will not consider possibilities that aren't pointless and annoying. But if you've really learned how to think, how to pay attention, then you will know you have other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, loud, slow, consumer hell-type situation as not only meaningful but sacred, on fire with the same force that lit the stars-compassion, love, the sub-surface unity of all things. I think a lot time I use those self checkout kiosks as a way to avoid having to spend another second in crowded, loud, slow, consumer hell-type situations. That's what they're there for right? To avoid having to add a cashier to what's already *by default*, at least that's the assumption, a terrible situation. But again, that's a choice. And not the only one. @@ -1568,7 +1954,7 @@ Fishing slacked off even more after we added boogie boards to the list of things <img src="images/2023/2023-03-10_141326_fort-pickens.jpg" id="image-3381" class="picwide" /> <img src="images/2023/2023-03-11_130530_fort-pickens.jpg" id="image-3382" class="picwide" /> -Then the weather took a turn. It was my fault. I donated the heater. It happens every year. We buy a heater in December or so and then we donate it come spring. There's just no room for a heater so the sooner we get rid of it, the better. But almost every year as soon as I take it to the donation center, the weather turns cold. This year was probably the worst -- it dipped down below freezing for two nights in a row. We have plenty of blankets, and just turning on the stove to make tea and coffee in the morning makes the bus plenty warm, so it'a minor discomfort. But someone has to get up and turn on the stove. +Then the weather took a turn. It was my fault. I donated the heater. It happens every year. We buy a heater in December or so and then we donate it come spring. There's just no room for a heater so the sooner we get rid of it, the better. But almost every year as soon as I take it to the donation center, the weather turns cold. This year was probably the worst—it dipped down below freezing for two nights in a row. We have plenty of blankets, and just turning on the stove to make tea and coffee in the morning makes the bus plenty warm, so it'a minor discomfort. But someone has to get up and turn on the stove. <img src="images/2023/2023-03-09_173839_fort-pickens.jpg" id="image-3379" class="picwide" /> @@ -1595,7 +1981,7 @@ One of the things I find most peculiar about our current age is our utter disreg What better way to understand other people in other times than to put on the clothes, use the tools, and see where you end up? -We're no different. The kids love history. Travel would be pretty dull if you didn't like digging into the history of the places you're going. We've enjoyed all sorts of [re-enactment festivals](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2022/07/around-washburn), [working 19th century farms](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2018/06/alberto-and-land-between-lakes), [historic forts](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2022/10/rodeos-and-fur-trading-posts), and more. Our most recent foray was something less strictly educational and more oddball fun -- [The Gulf Coast Renaissance Fair, Pirate Festival, Wild West Roundup, and Historical Festival](http://gcrf.us). +We're no different. The kids love history. Travel would be pretty dull if you didn't like digging into the history of the places you're going. We've enjoyed all sorts of [re-enactment festivals](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2022/07/around-washburn), [working 19th century farms](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2018/06/alberto-and-land-between-lakes), [historic forts](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2022/10/rodeos-and-fur-trading-posts), and more. Our most recent foray was something less strictly educational and more oddball fun—[The Gulf Coast Renaissance Fair, Pirate Festival, Wild West Roundup, and Historical Festival](http://gcrf.us). I have never been to a Renaissance Fair before, but I've heard some stories. This one was pretty laid back compared to some accounts I've heard. There were plenty of costumes, but there were also plenty of us not in character. Or in totally different characters, like the girls, who dressed in Greek Chitons. Ancient Greece wasn't on the bill, but the very first person we saw inside the festival took one look at the kids and said, "are those Chitons?" Clearly these were our people. @@ -1603,7 +1989,7 @@ I have never been to a Renaissance Fair before, but I've heard some stories. Thi The festival was true to its name. There was a section for Wild West enthusiasts, a section for pirates, a section for all things roughly late Medieval to Renaissance, and plenty of random elements as well, like fire eaters and a woman laying on a bed of nails. -As anyone who's ever been to Medieval Times knows (I have not, but I assume), the big draw for kids is always going to be the jousting. Huge war horses done up in armor, knights in full metal armor as well, riding at each other with actual jousts -- who doesn't love that? +As anyone who's ever been to Medieval Times knows (I have not, but I assume), the big draw for kids is always going to be the jousting. Huge war horses done up in armor, knights in full metal armor as well, riding at each other with actual jousts—who doesn't love that? The answers is, everyone loves that. Pro tip: head the stands early if you want a seat. We did not, and had to content ourselves with some standing room in what was, I think, the cattle pen when the rodeo is in town. The jousting turned out to be slow getting started, with overly long intros to the knights that we couldn't hear because we were behind the speakers. @@ -1660,7 +2046,7 @@ We talked about replacing the Volvo. We decided we'd get a late 1980s Jeep Chero But the Volvo ran fine. I don't fix things that aren't broken. The Cherokee was just a rough plan. -Then the Volvo started to show some alarming behaviors -- stuttering and dying in parking lots, randomly rolling down windows. Things I found best described as "electrical gremlins"[^1]. I tried to ignore these as best I could, but one day in Destin the Volvo stuttered and died in a parking lot and it took me quite a bit of tinkering to get it running again and home. +Then the Volvo started to show some alarming behaviors—stuttering and dying in parking lots, randomly rolling down windows. Things I found best described as "electrical gremlins"[^1]. I tried to ignore these as best I could, but one day in Destin the Volvo stuttered and died in a parking lot and it took me quite a bit of tinkering to get it running again and home. From what I read on the internet that night it sounded like it could be the battery. Or something far more expensive. The battery is in the trunk (I don't know either) and it was a two-year battery going on year five, which seemed like a reasonable culprit. The next day I dropped the kids off at the condo my parents had rented and headed over to the auto parts store to get the battery and alternator tested. @@ -1708,7 +2094,7 @@ How I came to write a story about the bus for *Wired* is something of a story in I don't recall how it came about, but a few years ago some enterprising person at Wired put together a mentoring system, which connected those of us with less experience with more experienced writers and editors. Now, my current title at *Wired* is "senior writer", but I signed up to be mentored because this seemed like a good opportunity to learn. -People sometimes ask me for advice about becoming a writer and I always tell them, find something useful to do for money and keep writing in your spare time. Making a living writing is very difficult. Most people I know who have succeed have had some way to get through the lean years -- either they come from money, have a significant other who makes makes enough to support them, or were prepared to live on lentils and rice and beans for a very, very long time. I went the latter route. I hate lentils. +People sometimes ask me for advice about becoming a writer and I always tell them, find something useful to do for money and keep writing in your spare time. Making a living writing is very difficult. Most people I know who have succeed have had some way to get through the lean years—either they come from money, have a significant other who makes makes enough to support them, or were prepared to live on lentils and rice and beans for a very, very long time. I went the latter route. I hate lentils. I was fascinated by the early internet and started putting together websites in my spare time way back in 1996-1997. By 2000, the height of the dot-com bubble, I was pretty good at it, such as it was back then. I was still working restaurants to pay the bills, but I had a nice side income building websites. Meanwhile, a friend became a writer, and later editor, for Webmonkey.com, which was *the* place to go if you wanted to learn how to build websites on the early internet. It was a collection of tutorials mostly written by the developers working on Wired's website, which was then called Hot Wired. @@ -1833,7 +2219,7 @@ Despite all the press the Plymouth area gets, Florida is where the early Europea I know about early Florida history because I am fascinated by the life of Álvar Núñez, better known by the unfortunate nickname Cabeza de Vaca, or head of the cow. Núñez was long dead by the time any cities were finally established, but he started kicking around Florida as early as 1528, and ended up being shipwrecked, made a slave, escaping, shipwrecked again, and then wandering the desert southwest of America and Mexico for eight years. Along the way he befriended the local inhabitants and lived among them for many years. His is one of the few Spanish accounts of the area that spends any time describing the people he met. -He's just a footnote to the history in the Pensacola historic village though since all trace of him, and most traces of the Spanish, are long gone. The buildings that make up the downtown historic area are pulled from Pensacola's more recent past -- cottages of 19th century settlers, a museum of industry devoted to everything from lumber and turpentine, to brick making and fishing, along with a couple of train cars from the railroads moving it all out to the rest of the world. +He's just a footnote to the history in the Pensacola historic village though since all trace of him, and most traces of the Spanish, are long gone. The buildings that make up the downtown historic area are pulled from Pensacola's more recent past—cottages of 19th century settlers, a museum of industry devoted to everything from lumber and turpentine, to brick making and fishing, along with a couple of train cars from the railroads moving it all out to the rest of the world. <img src="images/2023/2023-01-21_161005_pensacola-museums.jpg" id="image-3303" class="picwide" /> <img src="images/2023/2023-01-21_153755_pensacola-museums.jpg" id="image-3302" class="picwide" /> @@ -1883,7 +2269,7 @@ Just before new year's, Corrinne and the kids rejoined me at Big Lagoon. We had If St. George is the [best spot in the panhandle](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2022/12/christmas-cold), Fort Pickens is a close second. The beach that is. The park has a not so great vibe, but we mostly avoided that by not really doing anything other than going to the beach. The beach is a short walk from the campground, maybe 100 yards, but somehow in that 100 yards you leave all of humanity behind. -No matter how full the campground is -- and it was close to full the whole time we were there -- there's never more than a couple people, if that, on the beach. Where does everyone go? It's something I've never understood, but I'll take it. +No matter how full the campground is—and it was close to full the whole time we were there -- there's never more than a couple people, if that, on the beach. Where does everyone go? It's something I've never understood, but I'll take it. <img src="images/2023/2023-01-02_144135_fort-pickens.jpg" id="image-3283" class="picwide" /> <img src="images/2023/2023-01-02_150639_fort-pickens.jpg" id="image-3284" class="picwide" /> @@ -1910,7 +2296,7 @@ I find leadership fascinating. When I was younger people used to tell me I'd mak It wasn't until I was much older that I realized my understanding of leadership was essentially a Marine Corp drill sergeant screaming at people. And that *is* a form of leadership. But it was developed for a singular purpose: turning a huge swath of young humanity from all kinds of backgrounds into United State Marines. In six weeks. By all accounts it works. To make Marines. It's a poor way to run a campground though. -When you yank that sort of blunt, thoughtless leadership out of the Marines and put it in real life all you really reveal is something about yourself -- that you have no power. Your power is proportional to your ability to relax. If you can't relax about something harmless, whether against the "rules" or no, then you have no power. You cannot make your own decisions, which means you have no agency. That means you have no control. When you have no control you seek to exert control over others because it makes you feel more in control. But you aren't. This is elemental psychology. We all know this when we see it in others, but we're alarmingly blind to it in ourselves. +When you yank that sort of blunt, thoughtless leadership out of the Marines and put it in real life all you really reveal is something about yourself—that you have no power. Your power is proportional to your ability to relax. If you can't relax about something harmless, whether against the "rules" or no, then you have no power. You cannot make your own decisions, which means you have no agency. That means you have no control. When you have no control you seek to exert control over others because it makes you feel more in control. But you aren't. This is elemental psychology. We all know this when we see it in others, but we're alarmingly blind to it in ourselves. Chances are the camp host's boss is a bad leader. And that person's boss is a bad leader. And so on up the chain. That's a reason for the situation as it is, but that's no excuse. We all know better than to be that guy, and yet we all do it in little ways, exerting our power over other people so we feel in control. That's the opposite of control. @@ -1936,7 +2322,7 @@ Just before new year's, Corrinne and the kids rejoined me at Big Lagoon. We had If St. George is the [best spot in the panhandle](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2022/12/christmas-cold), Fort Pickens is a close second. The beach that is. The park has a not so great vibe, but we mostly avoided that by not really doing anything other than going to the beach. The beach is a short walk from the campground, maybe 100 yards, but somehow in that 100 yards you leave all of humanity behind. -No matter how full the campground is -- and it was close to full the whole time we were there -- there's never more than a couple people, if that, on the beach. Where does everyone go? It's something I've never understood, but I'll take it. +No matter how full the campground is—and it was close to full the whole time we were there -- there's never more than a couple people, if that, on the beach. Where does everyone go? It's something I've never understood, but I'll take it. <img src="images/2023/2023-01-02_144135_fort-pickens.jpg" id="image-3283" class="picwide" /> <img src="images/2023/2023-01-02_150639_fort-pickens.jpg" id="image-3284" class="picwide" /> @@ -1979,7 +2365,7 @@ Just before new year's, Corrinne and the kids rejoined me at Big Lagoon. We had If St. George is the [best spot in the panhandle](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2022/12/christmas-cold), Fort Pickens is a close second. The beach that is. The park has a not so great vibe, but we mostly avoided that by not really doing anything other than going to the beach. The beach is a short walk from the campground, maybe 100 yards, but somehow in that 100 yards you leave all of humanity behind. -No matter how full the campground is -- and it was close to full the whole time we were there -- there's never more than a couple people, if that, on the beach. Where does everyone go? It's something I've never understood, but I'll take it. +No matter how full the campground is—and it was close to full the whole time we were there -- there's never more than a couple people, if that, on the beach. Where does everyone go? It's something I've never understood, but I'll take it. <img src="images/2023/2023-01-02_144135_fort-pickens.jpg" id="image-3283" class="picwide" /> <img src="images/2023/2023-01-02_150639_fort-pickens.jpg" id="image-3284" class="picwide" /> @@ -2008,7 +2394,7 @@ But I find leadership fascinating. When I was younger people used to tell me I'd It wasn't until I was much older that I realized my understanding of leadership was essentially a Marine Corp drill sergeant screaming at people. And that *is* a form of leadership. But it was developed for a singular purpose: turning a huge swath of young humanity from all kinds of backgrounds into United State Marines. In six weeks. By all accounts it works. To make Marines. It's a poor way to run a campground though. -When you yank that sort of blunt, thoughtless leadership out of the Marines and put it in real life all you really reveal is something about yourself -- that you have no power. Your power is proportional to your ability to relax. If you can't relax about something harmless, whether against the "rules" or no, then you have no power. You cannot make your own decisions, which means you have no agency. That means you have no control. When you have no control you seek to exert control over others because it makes you feel more in control. But you aren't. This is elemental psychology. We all know this when we see it in others, but we're alarmingly blind to it in ourselves. +When you yank that sort of blunt, thoughtless leadership out of the Marines and put it in real life all you really reveal is something about yourself—that you have no power. Your power is proportional to your ability to relax. If you can't relax about something harmless, whether against the "rules" or no, then you have no power. You cannot make your own decisions, which means you have no agency. That means you have no control. When you have no control you seek to exert control over others because it makes you feel more in control. But you aren't. This is elemental psychology. We all know this when we see it in others, but we're alarmingly blind to it in ourselves. That's doubly true when everyone around us is doing the same thing. Once the leader normalizes this behavior it is very tough to transcend it. @@ -2029,7 +2415,7 @@ I'm not sure how Fort Pickens got this way. Perhaps the superintendent is a bad I know, I know. More travel, less philosophy. Why bother saying any of this? Because I believe that if we don't start questioning the people who are just following orders. Not to be rude or mean. Not because we think we're better, but because it's how we snap each other out of our trances. I don't see when I'm being this way. My family confronts me. I snap out of it. If we don't do this for each other, if we don't call each other out, we'll never snap out of it. And if we don't snap out of it, well, we already know how that ends. -The solution I think is to make sure the people around you feel comfortable confronting you. I know I don't see when I'm behaving this way. I'm not behaving this way, damnit. I'm right. It's fine when I do it. But then my family confronts me. I snap out of it. That's the only way to save ourselves from ourselves -- with help from others. +The solution I think is to make sure the people around you feel comfortable confronting you. I know I don't see when I'm behaving this way. I'm not behaving this way, damnit. I'm right. It's fine when I do it. But then my family confronts me. I snap out of it. That's the only way to save ourselves from ourselves—with help from others. <img src="images/2023/2023-01-03_062727_fort-pickens.jpg" id="image-3285" class="picwide" /> @@ -2047,7 +2433,7 @@ Just before new year's, Corrinne and the kids rejoined me at Big Lagoon. We had If St. George is the [best spot in the panhandle](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2022/12/christmas-cold), Fort Pickens is a close second. The beach that is. The park has a not so great vibe, but we mostly avoided that by not really doing anything other than going to the beach. The beach is a short walk from the campground, maybe 100 yards, but somehow in that 100 yards you leave all of humanity behind. -No matter how full the campground is -- and it was close to full the whole time we were there -- there's never more than a couple people, if that, on the beach. Where does everyone go? It's something I've never understood, but I'll take it. +No matter how full the campground is—and it was close to full the whole time we were there -- there's never more than a couple people, if that, on the beach. Where does everyone go? It's something I've never understood, but I'll take it. <img src="images/2023/2023-01-02_144135_fort-pickens.jpg" id="image-3283" class="picwide" /> <img src="images/2023/2023-01-02_150639_fort-pickens.jpg" id="image-3284" class="picwide" /> @@ -2070,11 +2456,11 @@ Now, lest you think we had a horrible time because of some overbearing camp host It wasn't until I was much older that I realized my understanding of leadership was essentially a Marine Corp drill sergeant screaming at people. And that *is* a form of leadership. But it was developed for a singular purpose: turning a huge swath of young humanity from all kinds of backgrounds into United State Marines. In six weeks. By all accounts it works. To make Marines. It's a poor way to run a campground though. -When you yank that sort of blunt, thoughtless leadership out of the Marines and put it in real life all you really reveal is something about yourself -- that you have no power. Your power is proportional to your ability to relax. If you can't relax about something harmless, whether against the "rules" or no, then you have no power. You cannot make your own decisions, which means you have no agency. That means you have no control. When you have no control you seek to exert control over others because it makes you feel more in control. But you aren't. This is elemental psychology. We all know this when we see it in others, but we're alarmingly blind to it in ourselves. +When you yank that sort of blunt, thoughtless leadership out of the Marines and put it in real life all you really reveal is something about yourself—that you have no power. Your power is proportional to your ability to relax. If you can't relax about something harmless, whether against the "rules" or no, then you have no power. You cannot make your own decisions, which means you have no agency. That means you have no control. When you have no control you seek to exert control over others because it makes you feel more in control. But you aren't. This is elemental psychology. We all know this when we see it in others, but we're alarmingly blind to it in ourselves. Chances are the camp host's boss is a bad leader. And that person's boss is a bad leader. And so on up the chain. That's a reason for the situation as it is, but that's no excuse. We all know better than to be that guy, and yet we all do it in little ways, exerting our power over other people so we feel in control. That's the opposite of control. -The solution I think is to make sure the people around you feel comfortable confronting you. I know I don't see when I'm behaving this way. I'm not behaving this way, damnit. I'm right. It's fine when I do it. But then my family confronts me. I snap out of it. That's the only way to save ourselves from ourselves -- with help from others. +The solution I think is to make sure the people around you feel comfortable confronting you. I know I don't see when I'm behaving this way. I'm not behaving this way, damnit. I'm right. It's fine when I do it. But then my family confronts me. I snap out of it. That's the only way to save ourselves from ourselves—with help from others. <img src="images/2023/2023-01-03_062727_fort-pickens.jpg" id="image-3285" class="picwide" /> @@ -2103,7 +2489,7 @@ I find leadership fascinating. When I was younger people used to tell me I'd mak It wasn't until I was much older that I realized my understanding of leadership was essentially a Marine Corp drill sergeant screaming at people. And that *is* a form of leadership. But it was developed for a singular purpose: turning a huge swath of young humanity from all kinds of backgrounds into United State Marines. In six weeks. By all accounts it works. To make Marines. It's a poor way to run a campground though. -When you yank that sort of blunt, thoughtless leadership out of the Marines and put it in real life all you really reveal is something about yourself -- that you have no power. Your power is proportional to your ability to relax. If you can't relax about something harmless, whether against the "rules" or no, then you have no power. You cannot make your own decisions, which means you have no agency. That means you have no control. When you have no control you seek to exert control over others because it makes you feel more in control. But you aren't. This is elemental psychology. We all know this when we see it in others, but we're alarmingly blind to it in ourselves. +When you yank that sort of blunt, thoughtless leadership out of the Marines and put it in real life all you really reveal is something about yourself—that you have no power. Your power is proportional to your ability to relax. If you can't relax about something harmless, whether against the "rules" or no, then you have no power. You cannot make your own decisions, which means you have no agency. That means you have no control. When you have no control you seek to exert control over others because it makes you feel more in control. But you aren't. This is elemental psychology. We all know this when we see it in others, but we're alarmingly blind to it in ourselves. Chances are the camp host's boss is a bad leader. And that person's boss is a bad leader. And so on up the chain. That's a reason for the situation as it is, but that's no excuse. We all know better than to be that guy, and yet we all do it in little ways, exerting our power over other people so we feel in control. That's the opposite of control. @@ -2128,7 +2514,7 @@ After a week at Grayton we moved down the coastline to our favorite place in the This is where we holed up for the cold front that swept across the United States around Christmas. Even down here the panhandle, where the clear tropical waters still looked inviting, the temperature dipped into the low 20s. I had to put on socks for a week and regular readers know how I feel about socks. -The problem with cold is that it tends to keep me indoors -- I have to fight a tendency to sit around in the bus that doesn't exist when the weather is warm. To avoid falling into the trap of inaction I forced myself out on a long walk in the cold. There's a trail leading right out of the campground here to a point that sticks out into the Apalachicola Bay. It's a wide sandy trail through a slash pine forest. I've been quite sure what species "slash" pines are. The name comes from the turpentine making process, which involves slashing the tree to collect the sap, but there are several species capable of making turpentine. +The problem with cold is that it tends to keep me indoors—I have to fight a tendency to sit around in the bus that doesn't exist when the weather is warm. To avoid falling into the trap of inaction I forced myself out on a long walk in the cold. There's a trail leading right out of the campground here to a point that sticks out into the Apalachicola Bay. It's a wide sandy trail through a slash pine forest. I've been quite sure what species "slash" pines are. The name comes from the turpentine making process, which involves slashing the tree to collect the sap, but there are several species capable of making turpentine. Whatever the case the tall pines are popular with Bald Eagles. I saw four in the five miles I walked. Along with seemingly every yellow rumped warbler in America. I mostly stopped birdwatching while I was here, mostly because every little bird I saw flitting in the bushes turned out to be a yellow rumped warbler. Florida in winter is just yellow rumpled warblers all the way down. @@ -2140,7 +2526,7 @@ While I'm not fan of the cold, if it *has* to be cold, Christmas is the time to ## Birthday in Grayton Beach -After New Orleans we hightailed it to Florida, looking for some warmer beaches. Our first stop was Grayton Beach, where we spent Elliott's birthday -- in the white sands with afternoons warm enough to swim. +After New Orleans we hightailed it to Florida, looking for some warmer beaches. Our first stop was Grayton Beach, where we spent Elliott's birthday—in the white sands with afternoons warm enough to swim. <img src="images/2023/2022-12-15_164430_grayton-birthday.jpg" id="image-3246" class="picwide" /> <img src="images/2023/2022-12-19_155619_grayton-birthday.jpg" id="image-3248" class="picwide" /> @@ -2165,9 +2551,9 @@ By the time Elliott's birthday rolled around the warm weather had retreated unfo </span> </div> -We've always let the kids start their birthdays like Christmas -- giving each other their gifts in the early morning. It's my favorite part of their birthdays, watching them be kind and generous and loving to each other. Elliott's eighth birthday was no exception. He's kind, smart, fun, strong, caring, adventurous, and the best little brother his sisters could ever hope for. I am biased of course, but I know some people think kids have to stay in one place to grow up well, and Elliott (and his sisters) is here to tell those people they don't know what they're talking about. +We've always let the kids start their birthdays like Christmas—giving each other their gifts in the early morning. It's my favorite part of their birthdays, watching them be kind and generous and loving to each other. Elliott's eighth birthday was no exception. He's kind, smart, fun, strong, caring, adventurous, and the best little brother his sisters could ever hope for. I am biased of course, but I know some people think kids have to stay in one place to grow up well, and Elliott (and his sisters) is here to tell those people they don't know what they're talking about. -I am not crazy about how fast they are all growing up -- a speed that seems to be exponentially accelerating too -- but it brings me great happiness and joy to see how they've grown and I am excited to see what they have in store for the future. +I am not crazy about how fast they are all growing up—a speed that seems to be exponentially accelerating too -- but it brings me great happiness and joy to see how they've grown and I am excited to see what they have in store for the future. <div class="cluster"> <span class="row-2"> @@ -2202,7 +2588,7 @@ Despite my losses on the tabletop battlefield I did manage to get some cake. ## New Orleans -After Galveston we headed north, bound for New Orleans. We broke up the drive with a stop at one of the gates of hell, located in Sea Rim, Texas. Sea Grim as we call it. Do not go there. Ever. For any reason. We had to abandon the bus there that night and retreat to a hotel. The next morning we went back, fired up the bus, and did not stop driving until we were safely over the state line in Louisiana -- successfully [escaping Texas](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2017/06/escaping-texas) again, but this was definitely our closest call yet. +After Galveston we headed north, bound for New Orleans. We broke up the drive with a stop at one of the gates of hell, located in Sea Rim, Texas. Sea Grim as we call it. Do not go there. Ever. For any reason. We had to abandon the bus there that night and retreat to a hotel. The next morning we went back, fired up the bus, and did not stop driving until we were safely over the state line in Louisiana—successfully [escaping Texas](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2017/06/escaping-texas) again, but this was definitely our closest call yet. We regrouped for a day at a little state park on a small bayou outside Lake Charles, Louisiana. It was good to be back in the bayous, swamp cypress, and most of all, warm humid air. Never thought I'd miss it, but I did. @@ -2226,7 +2612,7 @@ No, if we're going into a city it has to be a city that's alive the way a forest If you were just looking at it on paper, New Orleans probably wouldn't jump out at you. It's insanely touristy. It's rough around the edges. It has a reputation for violence. And yet none of those things seem to affect the city or the people. It's a mystery, but it's not hard to see how living here you might come to think like Ignatius J Reilly when he rather famously says, "Leaving New Orleans frightened me considerably. Outside of the city limits the heart of darkness, the true wasteland begins." -Picking apart what makes New Orleans great is likely as fruitless as trying to figure out how it got that way. Something about the collision of Afro-Caribbean culture, Acadian culture, French culture -- among others -- created something unlike anywhere else on earth. New Orleans is louder, more vibrant, and more alive than any other city in America and that, I think, is what keeps us coming back. +Picking apart what makes New Orleans great is likely as fruitless as trying to figure out how it got that way. Something about the collision of Afro-Caribbean culture, Acadian culture, French culture—among others -- created something unlike anywhere else on earth. New Orleans is louder, more vibrant, and more alive than any other city in America and that, I think, is what keeps us coming back. Just as we took the girls out for a [birthday around Milwaukee](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2022/07/hello-milwaukee), we had promised Elliott a day out in New Orleans. It started with an early lunch at a Thai restaurant. @@ -2234,7 +2620,7 @@ Just as we took the girls out for a [birthday around Milwaukee](https://luxagraf Then we went to the thing the kids have been talking about ever since we where here in 2018: the New Orleans Children's Museum. Alas, a lot can change in four years. It turned out the Children's museum had moved locations and been "modernized". The kids still had fun, though they all agreed the old one was better. The new one offered a few of the same things, but everything was new and clean and looked like it had just come off the Ikea shelf. The old museum had a rather more homemade charm about it. -This is what passes for progress in modern America though -- taking good things, throwing them away, and replacing them with things that don't work as well and generally suck. In that sense I'm glad the kids are getting a gentle introduction to the future now. +This is what passes for progress in modern America though—taking good things, throwing them away, and replacing them with things that don't work as well and generally suck. In that sense I'm glad the kids are getting a gentle introduction to the future now. And maybe I am reading to much into it, but I found it interesting that much of what was missing were what you might call blue collar stuff: the exhibit showcasing what an electrician does, the sample bayou farm, the signage about lap boarding, and the example working fishing boat. Among the new exhibits were a fake laboratory where the kids could pretend to be scientists and a purely mechanical farming setup that moved crops from harvest to ship without the presence of a single human. Again, maybe I'm overthinking it, but I felt the distinct presence of a specific agenda at work when I compared the old museum with the new. @@ -2262,9 +2648,9 @@ Aside from the jarring sight of my children getting older, I can't help but noti <img src="images/2022/2022-12-08_154738_new-orleans-birthday.jpg" id="image-3232" class="picwide" /> -That was supposed to be the end of our day. We planned to wander over to Jackson Square, maybe listen to some music and then head back to the bus. In Jackson Square though we came across some street performers doing some amazing athletic stuff -- standing flips, gymnastic-style flips without the padding, you have to stop and respect that. So we did. And that's when they said "we need a few volunteers from the audience". As soon as someone says that, I am volunteered. Not because I want to mind you, but because in any situation that requires a volunteer or random person to be selected, it's not random, it's me. Always. I think it's a kind of penance I have to pay for being very lucky in games of chance. Whatever the case, yes, I was selected. And I had fun dancing for a crowd with a bunch of other people who couldn't dance either. +That was supposed to be the end of our day. We planned to wander over to Jackson Square, maybe listen to some music and then head back to the bus. In Jackson Square though we came across some street performers doing some amazing athletic stuff—standing flips, gymnastic-style flips without the padding, you have to stop and respect that. So we did. And that's when they said "we need a few volunteers from the audience". As soon as someone says that, I am volunteered. Not because I want to mind you, but because in any situation that requires a volunteer or random person to be selected, it's not random, it's me. Always. I think it's a kind of penance I have to pay for being very lucky in games of chance. Whatever the case, yes, I was selected. And I had fun dancing for a crowd with a bunch of other people who couldn't dance either. -That's not the surprising part though. The surprising part is that Lilah volunteered -- legitimately volunteered. She and another girl got up and did a similarly impromptu choreographed dance. More surprising is that the street performers gave her and the other girl $20 to keep. Naturally, since this is the most money she has ever earned in about 30 minutes, Lilah is convinced street performers are the greatest thing ever and she is going to be one. And who knows, maybe they are. Their job is certainly a lot more fun than mine. +That's not the surprising part though. The surprising part is that Lilah volunteered—legitimately volunteered. She and another girl got up and did a similarly impromptu choreographed dance. More surprising is that the street performers gave her and the other girl $20 to keep. Naturally, since this is the most money she has ever earned in about 30 minutes, Lilah is convinced street performers are the greatest thing ever and she is going to be one. And who knows, maybe they are. Their job is certainly a lot more fun than mine. By the time that was all over with though we were famished again. We headed over to the warehouse district to an Argentinean restaurant Corrinne had been wanting to try. A few arepas later we all felt much better. It was a long day in the city, but a good one. I still judge the success of our days by how quickly the kids fall asleep and I don't think anyone was up past 9 that night. @@ -2279,7 +2665,7 @@ Oh well, we'll stick to just wandering around, listen to the jazz you hear all o ## Galveston Sings -After a couple of sunny days at the beach we headed a little ways south, out to Mustang Island. We had an uneventful drive down and we were looking forward to some more time in the sun. Unfortunately, when we woke up the next morning clouds had rolled in, a steady drizzle was falling, and the temperature dropped twenty degrees. We were forced to put on socks -- always a sign things have gone astray. +After a couple of sunny days at the beach we headed a little ways south, out to Mustang Island. We had an uneventful drive down and we were looking forward to some more time in the sun. Unfortunately, when we woke up the next morning clouds had rolled in, a steady drizzle was falling, and the temperature dropped twenty degrees. We were forced to put on socks—always a sign things have gone astray. <img src="images/2022/2022-11-13_161813_mustand-island.jpg" id="image-3207" class="picwide caption" /> <img src="images/2022/2022-11-13_163713_mustand-island.jpg" id="image-3208" class="picwide" /> @@ -2291,7 +2677,7 @@ Padre Island National Seashore, where [we've stayed before](https://luxagraf.net <img src="images/2022/2022-11-14_120726_mustand-island.jpg" id="image-3209" class="picwide" /> <img src="images/2022/2022-11-14_121549_mustand-island.jpg" id="image-3212" class="picwide caption" /> -So we decided to head north and check out Galveston. While the weather probably wasn't going to be any better (it wasn't) the State Park campground looked better than Mustang Island (it was) and there was more indoor stuff to do -- museums, old ships, and more. +So we decided to head north and check out Galveston. While the weather probably wasn't going to be any better (it wasn't) the State Park campground looked better than Mustang Island (it was) and there was more indoor stuff to do—museums, old ships, and more. We had an another uneventful drive up the coast. Well, actually, before the drive, the fuel line cracked and was spraying gas everywhere, but I had that fixed in under half an hour, and these days, anything I can fix in under half an hour is uneventful. With some fuel hose patching the line, we were underway again, though a late start did mean we didn't get to Galveston until the sun was setting, which I think is the latest we've ever arrived somewhere. @@ -2318,7 +2704,7 @@ There's a building just adjacent to the ship that serves a museum about the expe <img src="images/2022/2022-11-30_141720_galveston.jpg" id="image-3220" class="picwide" /> -It was too bad, because the potential was there to have something really cool, and the kids did learn a few things, but it could have been much better. Even central premise of the experience -- that you would follow a real immigrant across the ocean and learn about their experience -- fell flat because no matter who you followed the outcome at the end was arbitrary. +It was too bad, because the potential was there to have something really cool, and the kids did learn a few things, but it could have been much better. Even central premise of the experience—that you would follow a real immigrant across the ocean and learn about their experience -- fell flat because no matter who you followed the outcome at the end was arbitrary. Finally, one day, a few days before we were set to leave, the sun decided to get serious again and there was much happiness. @@ -2389,7 +2775,7 @@ We spent the week hanging out with family and visiting, lots of swimming, someho ## Going Down Swinging -When we broke down in Lamar I kept thinking about a book I read almost a decade ago: *Shop Class as Soul Craft* by Matthew Crawford. The gist of the book is that the only way to escape a dependency on stuff is to be able to take it apart and repair it. There is empowerment in knowing how things work -- your stuff will never fail you because if it does break, you can repair it. +When we broke down in Lamar I kept thinking about a book I read almost a decade ago: *Shop Class as Soul Craft* by Matthew Crawford. The gist of the book is that the only way to escape a dependency on stuff is to be able to take it apart and repair it. There is empowerment in knowing how things work—your stuff will never fail you because if it does break, you can repair it. Crawford calls this person who wants to fix their own stuff, The Spirited Man. Crawford writes: @@ -2399,7 +2785,7 @@ I kept staring at the bus's valve covers thinking about that line. Could I get m After a week of thinking it over, weighing other options, and realizing no one else was going to do it for me, I dove in. The valve covers came off. -Well, first I messaged my Uncle Ron and asked for advice before I dug in. He gave me some helpful pointers -- take lots of photos, label everything, keep track of where each rod came from, clean it all up with soap and water, coat it with a light coat of oil. Check. The best mechanics he told me are the ones that were patient and methodical -- take your time. Patient. Methodical. Check. +Well, first I messaged my Uncle Ron and asked for advice before I dug in. He gave me some helpful pointers—take lots of photos, label everything, keep track of where each rod came from, clean it all up with soap and water, coat it with a light coat of oil. Check. The best mechanics he told me are the ones that were patient and methodical -- take your time. Patient. Methodical. Check. I grabbed the four wrenches I'd need and started taking things apart. I pulled off the electrical components first. That's when I remembered the alternator problems I'd yet to deal with. Since I had to drain the radiator anyway, I decided to pull it out completely which would give me easier access to the alternator. I removed the alternator (the most difficult, stubborn bolt in the whole job) and had the local Napa bench test it. Dead. I ordered a new alternator. If you're going to go all the way, you better go all the way. @@ -2427,7 +2813,7 @@ We set up camp at Lake Arrowhead State Park, which was deserted, and settled int Three weeks flew by in Lamar, Colorado. It took a week just to figure out what we wanted to do about the engine and find someone willing to do it. Every mechanic was booked at least two weeks out, so we had plenty of time on our hands. I got caught up on work (and this site), but we also got out to see some of the local sights, like the local end-of-the-season rodeo. -The community college in town has a rodeo team (natch) and hosts this rodeo, which pulled in competitors from all over the place -- Wyoming, South Dakota, there was even a contestant from Australia. We missed the first day, but Saturday I took the kids over to watch their first rodeo. +The community college in town has a rodeo team (natch) and hosts this rodeo, which pulled in competitors from all over the place—Wyoming, South Dakota, there was even a contestant from Australia. We missed the first day, but Saturday I took the kids over to watch their first rodeo. We saw everything from goat tying and barrel racing to bull wrestling and riding, but I think the favorite was the bronco and bull riding. There's something about watching someone try to stay on a bucking animal that I think everyone can relate to, at least metaphorically. @@ -2437,14 +2823,14 @@ We saw everything from goat tying and barrel racing to bull wrestling and riding <img src="images/2022/2022-10-09_120545_lamar-rodeo.jpg" id="image-3156" class="picwide" /> -It had been a long time since I'd been to a rodeo and forgot how physically brutal it is -- by the end of the day my spine was hurting from just watching those guys get thrown around like rag dolls. +It had been a long time since I'd been to a rodeo and forgot how physically brutal it is—by the end of the day my spine was hurting from just watching those guys get thrown around like rag dolls. <img src="images/2022/2022-10-09_121155_lamar-rodeo.jpg" id="image-3157" class="picwide" /> <img src="images/2022/2022-10-09_131358_lamar-rodeo.jpg" id="image-3158" class="picwide" /> <img src="images/2022/2022-10-09_131633_lamar-rodeo.jpg" id="image-3159" class="picwide" /> <img src="images/2022/2022-10-09_132136_lamar-rodeo.jpg" id="image-3160" class="picwide" /> -The first day we went no one managed to stay on a bull for the full 8 seconds. We had so much fun the kids insisted we go back Sunday morning to watch the final rounds of all the events, where the top three finishers from Fri and Sat squared off. This time one young man -- and only one -- managed to stay on for the full 8 seconds and went home with a trophy. +The first day we went no one managed to stay on a bull for the full 8 seconds. We had so much fun the kids insisted we go back Sunday morning to watch the final rounds of all the events, where the top three finishers from Fri and Sat squared off. This time one young man—and only one -- managed to stay on for the full 8 seconds and went home with a trophy. The next weekend we headed about an hour west of Lamar to see something called Bent's Old Fort. Fort is a bit of a misnomer though, it was really a trading post, the largest on the mountain branch of the Santa Fe Trail. The only really. From the last signs of city in Missouri, to well into Mexico, Bent's Fort was the only permanent settlement. @@ -2509,7 +2895,7 @@ The next morning I got up and started troubleshooting. I like to be optimistic s The fact of the matter is this engine is worn down and need to either be rebuilt or replaced. -It's been nearly two weeks now and I still can't tell you which of those things we're going to end up doing, but whichever it is we're looking at a minimum of six weeks. We couldn't even get a mechanic to look at it for two weeks. And that mechanic is in Amarillo. Currently our plan is to—if it's possible -- just fix the head gasket and keep going for a couple of months. Then this spring we can either rebuild or replace the engine. +It's been nearly two weeks now and I still can't tell you which of those things we're going to end up doing, but whichever it is we're looking at a minimum of six weeks. We couldn't even get a mechanic to look at it for two weeks. And that mechanic is in Amarillo. Currently our plan is to—if it's possible—just fix the head gasket and keep going for a couple of months. Then this spring we can either rebuild or replace the engine. Either way, we're stuck in Lamar Colorado for the next two weeks. Worse, when that two weeks is up we're looking at spending over a month without our home. That's stressful, expensive, and not at all what we want to be doing. This is the part of travel that your favorite YouTube stars don't tell you about (actually, the good ones do, see our blogroll for some of those), but it's part of travel. @@ -2627,7 +3013,7 @@ Because yes, there is always a pain in leaving. Heading toward new possibilities For reasons I have not completely figured out, we seemed to have sunk deeper into the life of this place than anywhere else we've stopped in our travels. In all we were here nine weeks, which is actually less time than we spent in the Outer Banks, but I felt more a part of this place. Perhaps it is the open and welcoming people of the area, the [giddiness of summer](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2022/07/washburn) up here, or maybe we're getting better at settling in. Perhaps some combination of these things and more. -We are making a bigger change than we have yet on this leg of our journey (which I count as starting when we left the [100 acre woods]()). For ten months now we have lived by the water—[coastal South Carolina](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2022/02/ice-storm), [the Outer Banks](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2022/05/ocracoke-beaches), and now [the shores of Lake Superior](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2018/08/superior) -- and now we're headed west to the plains, mountains, and deserts. +We are making a bigger change than we have yet on this leg of our journey (which I count as starting when we left the [100 acre woods]()). For ten months now we have lived by the water—[coastal South Carolina](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2022/02/ice-storm), [the Outer Banks](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2022/05/ocracoke-beaches), and now [the shores of Lake Superior](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2018/08/superior)—and now we're headed west to the plains, mountains, and deserts. After [our backpacking trip in the Porcupine Mountains](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2022/09/porcupine-mountains-backpacking) we had two more weeks in Washburn, which we spent visiting with friends we've made, hiking up to a waterfall in the hills, re-visiting Little Girl Point, stocking up on local favorite foods, and readying the bus for the next leg of our journey. @@ -2639,7 +3025,7 @@ Leaving is always bittersweet. The kids will miss their new friends, and so will ## Porcupine Mountains Backpacking -There are only a few small stands of old growth forests left on this continent. I have been to couple of smaller old growth stands—one in the west, one in the south -- but I've never really spent much time in them. When I found out that the Porcupine Mountains were the second largest old growth Hemlock forest left in the U.S., I knew we had to go. +There are only a few small stands of old growth forests left on this continent. I have been to couple of smaller old growth stands—one in the west, one in the south—but I've never really spent much time in them. When I found out that the Porcupine Mountains were the second largest old growth Hemlock forest left in the U.S., I knew we had to go. This time I wanted to spend some time, so I put together a another family backpacking trip. We left the bus in its site in Washburn and headed up into the mountains of Michigan[^1]. Well, elsewhere they might be called hills, but up here they're mountains. @@ -2649,7 +3035,7 @@ We drove a couple of hours around Superior to the Porcupine Mountains, picked up The kids were able (and wanted) to carry more weight compared to [our last trip in North Carolina](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2020/10/walking-north-carolina-woods), but of course what they think they can carry and what they can actually carry depends on the distance. -We wanted a destination to hang out at, so we opted for the trail to Mirror Lake—three miles in from the east, three miles back out to the west. We started with the eastern portion of trail, which went over Summit Peak. We wanted to get the hard stuff over with at the start. For about a half a mile it was straight up -- about half of that was stairs -- to a tower that brought you above the tree tops for a view of Lake Superior. +We wanted a destination to hang out at, so we opted for the trail to Mirror Lake—three miles in from the east, three miles back out to the west. We started with the eastern portion of trail, which went over Summit Peak. We wanted to get the hard stuff over with at the start. For about a half a mile it was straight up—about half of that was stairs -- to a tower that brought you above the tree tops for a view of Lake Superior. <img src="images/2022/2022-08-30_130152_porcupine-mountains.jpg" id="image-3087" class="picwide" /> <img src="images/2022/2022-08-30_120356-1_porcupine-mountains.jpg" id="image-3085" class="picwide" /> @@ -2660,7 +3046,7 @@ We wanted a destination to hang out at, so we opted for the trail to Mirror Lake </span> </div> -It wasn't until we were almost to the lake that we finally stepped into the old growth Hemlock. Much of the old growth forest in the Mirror Lake area was knocked down in a storm in 1953 when 5,000 acres of old growth forest—thousands upon thousands of trees -- came down in a matter of hours. Two high school kids out fishing near Mirror Lake got caught in the storm (and lived), which must have made for an exciting morning. Wind shear like that is not unheard of up here, but that's a pretty extreme example (that is weirdly undocumented online, you can read about it at the visitor center though). +It wasn't until we were almost to the lake that we finally stepped into the old growth Hemlock. Much of the old growth forest in the Mirror Lake area was knocked down in a storm in 1953 when 5,000 acres of old growth forest—thousands upon thousands of trees—came down in a matter of hours. Two high school kids out fishing near Mirror Lake got caught in the storm (and lived), which must have made for an exciting morning. Wind shear like that is not unheard of up here, but that's a pretty extreme example (that is weirdly undocumented online, you can read about it at the visitor center though). It was dark and cool in the old growth, little sun made it down to the forest floor, which was a deep bed of needles. The thing that really jumped out about the old growth though was how quiet it was in those portions of the forest. I noticed the silence before I really registered anything else. I'm not sure why, but I have never been anywhere so utterly silent. The birds were mostly gone, headed south for the winter, that was definitely part of the silence, but it was also just quieter among the hemlocks than in the younger stretches of forest we passed through. @@ -2728,9 +3114,9 @@ Down in the basement there was a very detailed model of Bayfield at the height o <img src="images/2022/IMG_20220818_132312.jpg" id="image-3079" class="picwide" /> <img src="images/2022/IMG_20220818_131627.jpg" id="image-3078" class="picwide" /> -One of the great things about having visitors come is it gives you a reason to do some of the things you just never seem to get around to otherwise. The Houghton Falls is less than two miles from the campground, but for whatever reason—maybe because it was too close by -- we never made it until my parents came. +One of the great things about having visitors come is it gives you a reason to do some of the things you just never seem to get around to otherwise. The Houghton Falls is less than two miles from the campground, but for whatever reason—maybe because it was too close by—we never made it until my parents came. -It turned out to be a great little trail. Judging by the wood planks on the trail, it is probably boggy and miserably buggy in the early season—maybe it's a good thing we waited until August -- but it was dry and nice when we went. After wandering through the forest for a quarter mile, the trail drops down to the river bed which has cut a deep gorge through pre-Cambrian sandstone. The result is a wonderland of caves and pools with plenty of climbing to keep the kids busy. +It turned out to be a great little trail. Judging by the wood planks on the trail, it is probably boggy and miserably buggy in the early season—maybe it's a good thing we waited until August—but it was dry and nice when we went. After wandering through the forest for a quarter mile, the trail drops down to the river bed which has cut a deep gorge through pre-Cambrian sandstone. The result is a wonderland of caves and pools with plenty of climbing to keep the kids busy. <img src="images/2022/2022-08-21_112147_washburn.jpg" id="image-3081" class="picwide" /> <img src="images/2022/2022-08-21_113404_washburn.jpg" id="image-3082" class="picwide" /> @@ -2883,7 +3269,7 @@ And our plan worked. We pulled into the first-come first-serve campground in Was ## Hello Milwaukee -The drive up to Harrington Beach State Park wasn't far, about 50 miles, but somehow that 50 miles changed everything. Once we were past Milwaukee (Harrington Beach is about 30 minutes north of Milwaukee) the last traces of heat disappeared. There were cheese curds at every gas station—a sure sign you're in Wisconsin -- and the world felt quieter, more relaxed, more natural. Even the lake seemed somehow wilder. +The drive up to Harrington Beach State Park wasn't far, about 50 miles, but somehow that 50 miles changed everything. Once we were past Milwaukee (Harrington Beach is about 30 minutes north of Milwaukee) the last traces of heat disappeared. There were cheese curds at every gas station—a sure sign you're in Wisconsin—and the world felt quieter, more relaxed, more natural. Even the lake seemed somehow wilder. <img src="images/2022/2022-06-27_151631_harrington-milwaukee.jpg" id="image-2974" class="picwide" /> @@ -3020,6 +3406,7 @@ The right to repair the need to repair the desire to repair is fundamentally a c + # essays We saw sticker on the sign to the Henry Miller library that said, "Safety Third". This became our antidote to the endless rules of public spaces. It was a good family joke. Whenever we do something other people might frown on, one of us will invariably shout, "safety third!" before plunging ahead. But safetyism is a real problem that we all struggle with. I think you beat the safety game by playing a different one. You play the personal responsibility and risk management game. You go slow, you learn your limits, but then you keep playing. You push your limits. You do things that scare you because they also call to you. You keep expanding and growing. You can read more in the essay [*Safety Third*](https://luxagraf.net/essay/safety-third). @@ -3202,13 +3589,13 @@ Individual projects may come to an end, but the practices that made them possibl The practice leaves a path behind you to show you how far you have come and carves out a path ahead of you to show you where you can go. -The practices of your life *are* your life. They form the path you follow, they are how you become what you want to become, they make you who you are and who the world wants you to be. You are not solely in charge of your practices or the path they form. The world gets a vote too. In the end that's part of the practice too -- adjusting to feedback from the world, your body, your life, your family, your friends. All of these things are part of the practice, all of them inform it. +The practices of your life *are* your life. They form the path you follow, they are how you become what you want to become, they make you who you are and who the world wants you to be. You are not solely in charge of your practices or the path they form. The world gets a vote too. In the end that's part of the practice too—adjusting to feedback from the world, your body, your life, your family, your friends. All of these things are part of the practice, all of them inform it. The practice also informs the experimentation that expands it. -The trick is to follow your curiosity. That often forgotten part of you that society tries to get you to repress. That voice that says, what would happen if... This is the way. Follow it. Follow it knowing you will likely fail, knowing that you're probably doing it the wrong way, but you're going to try it anyway... you'd be surprised what works. I've fixed loose battery wires with a bit of nail, held hoses on with zip ties, and countless other things that should not have worked, but did, at least for a little while. There's plenty of failures along the way of course. Those people always telling you it can't be done -- whatever it might be -- are sometimes right, but wouldn't it be better to find out for yourself? +The trick is to follow your curiosity. That often forgotten part of you that society tries to get you to repress. That voice that says, what would happen if... This is the way. Follow it. Follow it knowing you will likely fail, knowing that you're probably doing it the wrong way, but you're going to try it anyway... you'd be surprised what works. I've fixed loose battery wires with a bit of nail, held hoses on with zip ties, and countless other things that should not have worked, but did, at least for a little while. There's plenty of failures along the way of course. Those people always telling you it can't be done—whatever it might be -- are sometimes right, but wouldn't it be better to find out for yourself? -Now there are reasonable limits to this... I wouldn't go trying to repair a $4,000 lens on your first attempt at lens repair. I wouldn't pick a rare, difficult to replace engine for your first rebuild. Learn to manage risk. When you know you're headed off the map to experiment, pick things to experiment on and situations to experiment in where you can keep the risk level low. Whether that means using something cheap, or doing it at low speed, or making sure the water is deep enough before you jump. Whatever the case, learn to manage risk so that your lessons learned aren't so painful -- financially, emotionally, physically --- that you forget what you learned and remember only the trauma of the learning. +Now there are reasonable limits to this... I wouldn't go trying to repair a $4,000 lens on your first attempt at lens repair. I wouldn't pick a rare, difficult to replace engine for your first rebuild. Learn to manage risk. When you know you're headed off the map to experiment, pick things to experiment on and situations to experiment in where you can keep the risk level low. Whether that means using something cheap, or doing it at low speed, or making sure the water is deep enough before you jump. Whatever the case, learn to manage risk so that your lessons learned aren't so painful—financially, emotionally, physically --- that you forget what you learned and remember only the trauma of the learning. In this process though you will become a better human being. You will get better at living. You will have less pain down the road. Your path will be smoother. You are building real world skills that you can use over and over. Every skill that you pick up transfers to other things too. Your practice will expand and keep growing. @@ -3216,7 +3603,7 @@ The experience you gain using a multimeter to untangle the rats nest of wires un In this way everything you do is always building your skill set. You're always expanding your practice. This makes the path that much easier. You are that much more proficient at being human. The journey become easier, you are less reliant on others and you free up resources to focus on life's more interesting things. That way when the fridge dies at anchor in the San Blas, two days sail from the nearest repair shop, you don't worry. You fix the issues and get on with the dive you were planning to do that day. -Skills transfer in unexpected ways too. It isn't all just troubleshooting methods that transfer. The experience you gain struggling at terrible sketches of birds will come in handy when you start staring at the engine, trying to make sense of what's gone wrong -- you've trained your mind to pay attention to the little details of feathers, which is not so different than paying attention to the little details of how a machine is running or how the wind and weather are changing. It is all connected. +Skills transfer in unexpected ways too. It isn't all just troubleshooting methods that transfer. The experience you gain struggling at terrible sketches of birds will come in handy when you start staring at the engine, trying to make sense of what's gone wrong—you've trained your mind to pay attention to the little details of feathers, which is not so different than paying attention to the little details of how a machine is running or how the wind and weather are changing. It is all connected. I should probably stop here and point out that I am a miserable hack with very few skills. I am not a repair expert or wunderkind of any sort. I can barely fix my way out of a paper bag. I am writing this not because I have mastered it on some long journey of experience, but because I have lived a couple of these examples and when thinking about it later, realized, oh, I made that connection because of this other things that I didn't see as related at the time, but then it turned out it was. @@ -3232,13 +3619,13 @@ How do you find *your* practice? I don't know what you need to do or where you o The Webster's 1913 dictionary definition of practice includes as examples, "the practice of rising early; the practice of making regular entries of accounts; the practice of daily exercise." That's not a bad place to start: get up, get moving, and keep track of where your money is going. That can take you far. None of that is revolutionary. Ben Franklin is famous for saying roughly the same thing. You can find similar quotes going back to the very edges of written history, but it's still a solid place to start. Get up and get going. -What I think gets lost in our time -- [the time of The Experts](https://luxagraf.net/essay/the-cavalry-isnt-coming) -- is that there's not a single path, not a set of practices that work for everyone. We've been conditioned to look for prescriptions that fit everyone and that's just not how life works. You and I are different. You have to experiment and find what works for you. It might be nearly the same as what works for me, but it also might be totally different. I know people who are very much on their path who are vegans and do their best work late at night. You have to find your own way. +What I think gets lost in our time—[the time of The Experts](https://luxagraf.net/essay/the-cavalry-isnt-coming) -- is that there's not a single path, not a set of practices that work for everyone. We've been conditioned to look for prescriptions that fit everyone and that's just not how life works. You and I are different. You have to experiment and find what works for you. It might be nearly the same as what works for me, but it also might be totally different. I know people who are very much on their path who are vegans and do their best work late at night. You have to find your own way. That said, I do have a suggestion on where to start: start with touching your nose. I know, that sounds stupid. If you're into making some kind of huge change in your life the last thing you want to hear is that you should start by touching your nose. What the hell is that going to do? The answer is: it's going to train your will. -If you were out of shape, unable to do a single push up, but desiring to be able to knock out 100 push ups in two minutes you wouldn't start with 50, you'd start with one. But even then, there is a high risk of failure because the effort it takes to get from zero push ups to ten is more than it takes to get from ten to 100. There's a very good chance that you're going to give up before you get to ten -- not because it's too hard, but because you aren't accustomed to forcing yourself to do things. You are not in control of your will. +If you were out of shape, unable to do a single push up, but desiring to be able to knock out 100 push ups in two minutes you wouldn't start with 50, you'd start with one. But even then, there is a high risk of failure because the effort it takes to get from zero push ups to ten is more than it takes to get from ten to 100. There's a very good chance that you're going to give up before you get to ten—not because it's too hard, but because you aren't accustomed to forcing yourself to do things. You are not in control of your will. It's not your fault. Unless you happen to have enlisted in the armed forces, practice a martial art, or have monastic religious training, you have very likely never even been taught that you can train your will, let alone how to do it. That's okay. @@ -3250,11 +3637,11 @@ When you say "will" though most people think of some miserable thing where you g The problem is that most of your life you've been told to do things you didn't want to do. School is the primary culprit here for most of us, though there maybe other things in your life. Schooling in the United States is almost universally designed to damage the will and leave you unable to do much of anything save serve the will of others. This is why most of us leave school and get a job. We literally go out to serve another's will. Our will has been so damaged we think that the thing we fight against when we "grit our teeth" or "just do it" is our will. -That's not your will, that's your will divided. Our wills know a bad deal when they see one, even if we don't. And so they fight it -- they fight school, they fight our pointless jobs, they fight our uninspired cities and all the rest. And we fight our will. And we become convinced that this struggle against ourselves is what it means to direct our will. We become convinced that we're weak. +That's not your will, that's your will divided. Our wills know a bad deal when they see one, even if we don't. And so they fight it—they fight school, they fight our pointless jobs, they fight our uninspired cities and all the rest. And we fight our will. And we become convinced that this struggle against ourselves is what it means to direct our will. We become convinced that we're weak. That makes for a ton of emotional baggage wrapped up in our divided will. That why every New Year's when we vow to hit the gym and do those push ups, we fail. We spiral downward, further convinced we are weak. -This is compounded by the fact that your will is the source of most of your emotions -- when your will succeeds in the world, you are happy, when it fails you are miserable. If you have a lot of miserably emotions locked up in your will and you try to focus it... it doesn't work. By the end of February it's been two months since you went to the gym. +This is compounded by the fact that your will is the source of most of your emotions—when your will succeeds in the world, you are happy, when it fails you are miserable. If you have a lot of miserably emotions locked up in your will and you try to focus it... it doesn't work. By the end of February it's been two months since you went to the gym. That's why you start with touching your nose. This is a variation on what every religious training manual (and some of the better secular ones) I've read advices doing. Something silly. Something that doesn't matter. Something that you have no emotional attachment to. Something you will not fail to do because of years of damage to your will. Touching your nose is easy and has no emotional baggage for most people. @@ -3264,7 +3651,7 @@ Congratulations, you unified your will and succeeded. This is the beginning. Thi Now you need to do that every day. Write "touch your nose!" on a piece of note paper and put it somewhere you will see it every day, ideally multiple times a day, ideally somewhere other people won't bother you about it. Then every time you see it, touch your nose ten times with your left hand. -Congratulations. You have a new practice in your life. No, not touching your hose. The habit of doing something because you chose to do it. Not because some authority told you to or some unnoticed compulsion drove you to -- you chose to do this. You do it. You direct your will. +Congratulations. You have a new practice in your life. No, not touching your hose. The habit of doing something because you chose to do it. Not because some authority told you to or some unnoticed compulsion drove you to—you chose to do this. You do it. You direct your will. That is the beginning of the practice. @@ -3330,7 +3717,7 @@ Not in human terms anyway. Individual projects may come to an end, but the pract [^1]: This would be a good example of -## No Cavalry -- what to do? +## No Cavalry—what to do? @@ -3339,7 +3726,7 @@ Once you accept that there is no cavalry coming, or perhaps more conservatively, Another way to put this would be: How do I begin to take responsibility for and become accountable for myself, my family, my world? -I have no idea. Which is to say that I know what I am doing for those things, but I don't know what you should do -- that's for you to figure out. If I told you what to do you'd just be dependant on me, no better off than being dependant on the cavalry. +I have no idea. Which is to say that I know what I am doing for those things, but I don't know what you should do—that's for you to figure out. If I told you what to do you'd just be dependant on me, no better off than being dependant on the cavalry. No one can tell you how to get on the path to self-dependency because no one other than you knows what your path to self-dependency looks like. You have to find it. And you'll know when you have. Find it is the fun part. Don't worry if it takes a while. It took me the better part of two decades. But I know people who figured it out much quicker. @@ -3354,7 +3741,7 @@ In the first essay on this subject I suggested that you stop using money to meet If you live in Manhattan this scenario isn't going to come up. But if you start trying to meet people, to listen to them, you will build relationships that lead to things like this. Perhaps not free food, perhaps it will end up being chess lessons or tk, but it will be something and your life will be richer, and slightly, ever so slightly less dependant on the system of The Machine. -This will also give you agency. You are the one with the connection to others, nothing is mediating that. This is agency. Agency reduces stress. It helps you to see bad things, bad situations for what they are: bad situations. When you have agency and the self-confidence that it, along with experience, give you, you begins to see that with sufficient resources -- time, effort, knowledge, money, etc -- any problem can be solved. +This will also give you agency. You are the one with the connection to others, nothing is mediating that. This is agency. Agency reduces stress. It helps you to see bad things, bad situations for what they are: bad situations. When you have agency and the self-confidence that it, along with experience, give you, you begins to see that with sufficient resources—time, effort, knowledge, money, etc -- any problem can be solved. @@ -3416,7 +3803,7 @@ I think rejecting the world of passivity, of getting off our butts and taking ma We eliminate our dependence on the cavalry by becoming the cavalry for ourselves, for our families, and for our neighbors. *Être fort pour être utile* *. Be strong to be useful. -Eliminate the central conceit of modernism—that there is a group of people you need to save you from... the world, yourself, your shortcomings, your neighbors, your neighbors' shortcomings and on down the line -- by taking responsibility for yourself and the expanding that responsibility outward to your family, to your community. +Eliminate the central conceit of modernism—that there is a group of people you need to save you from... the world, yourself, your shortcomings, your neighbors, your neighbors' shortcomings and on down the line—by taking responsibility for yourself and the expanding that responsibility outward to your family, to your community. The message of modernism is that you're helpless and you need saving. If you want to dig deep into the psychology of this I'd say it's about what you'd expect to get when a culture takes the gods out of its religion and replaces those gods with administrative systems. We're not the first. The Romans went down this path, so did the Chinese. Read Oswald Spengler or Arthur Toynbee if the history interests you. All you really need to know though is that there's a long history showing it doesn't work. Look around you, is stuff working? No, no, it is not. @@ -3791,9 +4178,9 @@ from geography of time, robert levine p206 note: [[rn The Geography of Time]] ## Storms -The night I was born there was a huge storm. At least if my parents are to be believed. My mother still claims that the storm, and a broken window in her hospital room are the reason she can down with ppnemona the next day. All I know is that I have always loved storms, not just sitting and listening to them -- though I like that too -- but getting out in the them, or just before them, when the lightening is still a ways off, flashing the horizen and the dark thunderheads have obscured the light of day, the wind is starting to pick up, it's as if the world were waking up, finally coming alivve with something massive and important to say, you can literally feel it in the air, electricity and ozone are a potent mix, they smell something like freedome to me. +The night I was born there was a huge storm. At least if my parents are to be believed. My mother still claims that the storm, and a broken window in her hospital room are the reason she can down with ppnemona the next day. All I know is that I have always loved storms, not just sitting and listening to them—though I like that too -- but getting out in the them, or just before them, when the lightening is still a ways off, flashing the horizen and the dark thunderheads have obscured the light of day, the wind is starting to pick up, it's as if the world were waking up, finally coming alivve with something massive and important to say, you can literally feel it in the air, electricity and ozone are a potent mix, they smell something like freedome to me. -A good storm is my favorite time to get out in nature -- camping, hiking the high country or swimming in the ocean. I've been surfing as hurricanes approached, swam in Mexico while lighten struck the sea in front of me and I still love to be out on the shore when storms arrive. +A good storm is my favorite time to get out in nature—camping, hiking the high country or swimming in the ocean. I've been surfing as hurricanes approached, swam in Mexico while lighten struck the sea in front of me and I still love to be out on the shore when storms arrive. I've been thinking about storms. It's the time of year to do that here in the American South. More than stormms though, I've been thinking about what @@ -4190,17 +4577,17 @@ people have been talking to gods and demons for far more of human history than t Because if you don’t build your dream, someone will hire you to help build theirs. https://medium.com/what-i-learned-building/1b7dfe34fced -In civilizations without boats, dreams dry up, espionage takes the place of adventure, and the police take the place of pirates. -- Michel Foucault, Of Other Spaces, 1967 +In civilizations without boats, dreams dry up, espionage takes the place of adventure, and the police take the place of pirates.—Michel Foucault, Of Other Spaces, 1967 “It’s more fun to be a pirate than to join the navy.” -Steve Jobs (quoted in Odyssey: Pepsi to Apple, 1987) -The true adventurer goes forth aimless and uncalculating to meet and greet unknown fate. -- O. Henry +The true adventurer goes forth aimless and uncalculating to meet and greet unknown fate.—O. Henry "Do what you can, with what you have, where you are." T. Roosevelt -“In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.” -- David Foster Wallace +“In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.”—David Foster Wallace -"The wilderness should be preserved for political reasons. We may need it someday not only as a refuge from excessive industrialism, but also as a refuge from authoritarian government, political oppression" -- Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire +"The wilderness should be preserved for political reasons. We may need it someday not only as a refuge from excessive industrialism, but also as a refuge from authoritarian government, political oppression"—Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire I am the happiest man alive. I have that in me that can convert poverty to riches, adversity to prosperity, and am more invulnerable than Achilles; fortune have not one place to hit me - Sir Thomas Browne Religio Medici @@ -4343,7 +4730,7 @@ The less technology your life requires the better your life will be. That's not to say technology is bad, but I encourage you to spend some time considering your technology use and making sure you *choose* the things you use rather than accepting everything marketed at you. -This is not my idea. I stole it from the Amish. The Amish have a reputation for being anti-technology, but they're not. Try searching for "Amish compressed air tool conversion" if you don't believe me. The Amish don't rush out and get the latest and greatest, that much is true. They take their time adopting any new technology. They step back, detach, and evaluate new technology in a way the rest of us seldom do—they're arguably more engaged with technology than you and I -- and this allows them to make better informed decisions. +This is not my idea. I stole it from the Amish. The Amish have a reputation for being anti-technology, but they're not. Try searching for "Amish compressed air tool conversion" if you don't believe me. The Amish don't rush out and get the latest and greatest, that much is true. They take their time adopting any new technology. They step back, detach, and evaluate new technology in a way the rest of us seldom do—they're arguably more engaged with technology than you and I—and this allows them to make better informed decisions. That's what I try to do. I take my time. There's very little latest and greatest on this page. And I am always trying to get by with less, if for no other reason than this stuff costs money. There's no affiliate links here, no links at all actually. I'd really prefer it if you didn't buy any of this stuff, you probably don't need it. Again, I could get by with less. I should get by with less. I am in fact always striving to need less and be less particular about what I do need. @@ -4450,7 +4837,7 @@ I find that the digital world isn't very satisfying. I have a rather outlandish ###8. Don't Report Stories, Live Them -I have no training as a journalist. I studied philosophy, religion, and literature, but somehow I ended up writing for journalism outlets. I have no real problem with journalists -- the few left who actually do journalism, almost none of whom are published by major publishers -- but I also have no desire to be one. +I have no training as a journalist. I studied philosophy, religion, and literature, but somehow I ended up writing for journalism outlets. I have no real problem with journalists—the few left who actually do journalism, almost none of whom are published by major publishers -- but I also have no desire to be one. The stories I tell are ultimately about me because that is what I know. The idea that you can tell other people's stories seems fundamentally wrong to me. They are not your stories, let other people tell their own stories. @@ -4474,6 +4861,41 @@ As the Aussies would say, "have a crack at it." There are two parts here though. [^2]: Matthew Crawford's *[Shop Class as Soul Craft](https://bookshop.org/books/shop-class-as-soulcraft-an-inquiry-into-the-value-of-work/9780143117469)* very much influenced my thinking on this subject. Crawford digs into why people like to repair things and concludes that this need to be capable of repair is part of a desire to escape the feeling of dependence, to reassert their agency over their stuff. He calls the individual who prizes his own agency the Spirited Man. This becomes a kind of archetype of the antidote to passive consumption. Passive consumption displaces agency, argues Crawford. One is no longer master of one's stuff because one does not truly understand how stuff works. "Spiritedness, then," writes Crawford, "may be allied with a spirit of inquiry, through a desire to be master of one’s own stuff. It is the prideful basis of self-reliance." Exactly. # SRC + +## Finding Django + +I was still running a restaurant kitchen the first time someone told me I should learn Python. It was 2004 when my best dishwasher, Aaron, a young man who enjoyed solving unsolved math theorems in his spare time (yes it was a lot like working with Good Will Hunting) said, Learn Python. That was all he said. Learn Python. I'd been complaining about PHP, which was at the time the language I understood well enough to build things with, but I hated it. It's highly functional, but messy, inelegant language. His solution was Python. He was smarter than me, so I wrote it down. Learn Python. + +The problem with learning in any programming language is that there's a sharp learning curve that involves a lot of drudgery and bashing your forehead into the keyboard when things don't work. There was no Stack Overflow in 2004. We bought books from the likes of O'Reilly and tk. I bought Learning Python and a skimmed the first few chapters. I had no project though. Without a project that obsesses you, you'll never learn to program. + +I also didn't learn Python just then because running restaurant is an all-consuming, life-sucking thing to to do. There is no spare time in which you are not thinking about food. After another year I was burned out. I scraped together what money I had, bought a couple of plane tickets and headed off to lose myself in Asia. Hey, it worked for the Beatles. Sort of. + +At some point in my travels I fell in with a couple of English travelers who were not familiar with the great Jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt. For shame. Back then we all traveled with iPods, there was a limited amount of music anyone would carry at any one time. I did not have any Django Reinhardt myself. For shame. + +This was also the heyday of sites like Limewire though, so I went down to the internet cafe below our guesthouse in Bangkok to search for some Django Reinhardt. The problem was that the keyboard, naturally enough, was Thai. I could change the layout in Windows settings, but the symbols on the keys were still Thai, which made it hard to type. I figured Django was a distinctive enough name that that was all I needed (this was back when Google's index held useful information rather than content farm spam). I typed in Django and sure enough, Reinhardt was right there in the first couple of results. + +Oddly enough, that's not what caught my eye. What caught my eye was a website for something called Django, "the web framework for perfectionists with deadlines." (here's the [early 2006 version of the site](https://web.archive.org/web/20060410074810/https://www.djangoproject.com/) as I discovered it) I didn't have any deadlines just then, but perfectionist? I can't tell you how many times I messed with tabs and spaces to make sure my hand written HTML was properly indented when you viewed source, something no one was ever going to see except my fellow perfectionists. God bless you if you ever viewed source and were appalled by the sloppy unindented source code that confronted you. Was there, possibly, a web framework for people like us? For people like me? Tell me more. + +It was the subhead that got me: Django is a high-level Python Web framework. Learn Python. If this were a movie there would have been a bad flashback here where Aaron's face cuts through a cloud of Southeast Asian traveler haze saying, *Learn Python*, *Learn Python*. + +But I didn't learn Python just then because I was busy building Flash websites (I know, I know) so I could afford to keep traveling. Sometimes you have to stick with what you know to get on down the road. Not very perfectionist of me. + +Six months later, back in Los Angeles, trying to figure out what in the world I was going to do with myself, a friend asked me to build a website for a bike charity, Wheels4Life. I agreed to do it, on the condition that I build it using Django. I had a project. + +That website turned out well. I built another. And another. I ended up at the first Django conference ostensibly covering it for WIRED, but I was mainly there to meet the founders and learn from the community. + +## Origins and Power of Markdown + +I would call markdown one of the most widespread and influential "apps" of the last couple of decades and it's pretty much just a Perl script that's not in version control, was mostly written by one person, and hasn't seen a meaningful update in 20 years. It just works despite ignoring every supposed rule of what makes good programming. Which drives programmers crazy. So much so that they've tried to take over Markdown (which, full disclosure, I've written about before) But I thought it might be interesting to talk to John Gruber about his little script and its impact. + +## Text Editors + +You want controversy in programming, just say "text editors" to a couple programmers. For this though I was thinking of a slightly different angle -- that text editors remain more or less unchanged over 4 decades. + +## Programming for Intrinsic Value Vs Extrinsic +Or the difference between Linux culture and startup culture -- giving vs getting and how it shapes the final product. + + ## Scratch I know several people who take tech holidays. I understand this urge, probably it's the only solution to what I think is the central problem of modern times—distraction and the inability to do deep work. That said, I am going to try other things to tame the beast. @@ -4533,7 +4955,7 @@ Writing is as least as much research as it is actual typing, and this tends to b From this I have learned something important: I am not a very good judge of what is important to me. -A lot of the things, *a lot*—like almost all -- of the things I go to look up on the internet are utterly trivial things I don't really care about once the two seconds where I did care have passed. I am forced to confront this every time I go over my day's list of stuff to look up later. Of all the things I write down in my notebook to look up later, I actually end up looking up maybe one in twenty. Probably less. I have no real way to catalog how much screen time this has saved me, but it feels like it must be ages. +A lot of the things, *a lot*—like almost all—of the things I go to look up on the internet are utterly trivial things I don't really care about once the two seconds where I did care have passed. I am forced to confront this every time I go over my day's list of stuff to look up later. Of all the things I write down in my notebook to look up later, I actually end up looking up maybe one in twenty. Probably less. I have no real way to catalog how much screen time this has saved me, but it feels like it must be ages. Once I've exhausted all avenues of analog deferment I still give myself one more ultimatium that I call the Outkast ultimatum: forever ever? Is it really really that important? Right now? Really, really? It might pass. It will probably pass. No? Okay then. @@ -4563,7 +4985,7 @@ The reason for single task computing is to make sure you always have a task when This started as a throwaway ending, but in the months since I started experimenting with this I've come to believe that this is the most important rule: every time you interact with the digital, make a point to spend the same amount of time not interacting with the digital. If I edit photos for this site for 30 minutes, then I go and either make something tangible, write in a notebook, draw a postcard, whatever it may be for 30 minutes. If you don't feel like making something than go for a walk or play with your kid, or lie down in your yard if you have one. Read a book in a hammock. Just do something that does not involve a screen. And do it for the same amount of time you spent on the screen. -When I started doing this I found myself at a loss for what to do with myself, which was kind of terrifying. Was I really that used to mindlessly staring at a screen that I had nothing else to do? What did we use to do before we had screens? This is the advantage of being part of an analog generation—the last of those for a while -- you can think back to the pre-digital era, retrace your steps as it were. This ended up unlocking a whole flood of memories that I walked through in great detail in meditation, most of that is not relevant here, but one thing that came back to me was that we used to publish zines. Now that's one of the things I've been doing with what I think of as "my analog time". Another things I did was type, on a typewriter. I'm on the hunt for a good super compact model. Yeah, I know it's like the worst hipster cliche. I don't care. I'm craving that analog pounding of the keys. The sound of something happening in the world. +When I started doing this I found myself at a loss for what to do with myself, which was kind of terrifying. Was I really that used to mindlessly staring at a screen that I had nothing else to do? What did we use to do before we had screens? This is the advantage of being part of an analog generation—the last of those for a while—you can think back to the pre-digital era, retrace your steps as it were. This ended up unlocking a whole flood of memories that I walked through in great detail in meditation, most of that is not relevant here, but one thing that came back to me was that we used to publish zines. Now that's one of the things I've been doing with what I think of as "my analog time". Another things I did was type, on a typewriter. I'm on the hunt for a good super compact model. Yeah, I know it's like the worst hipster cliche. I don't care. I'm craving that analog pounding of the keys. The sound of something happening in the world. @@ -4655,7 +5077,7 @@ Fail gracefully when possible (an elevator is still stairs even when broken mitc Complex systems are inherently fragile. The optimization that makes the system "easy" to use, also generally eliminates the redundancies and graceful degadation that makes a system resilient. -Much ink was spilled, many hands wrung, many complaints lodged about our addiction to screens. All this worry though, about what? I think the answer is distraction. This is what western philosophers—and ordinary people like you and I -- have worried about for centuries. The only difference to day is the degree for distraction. Why distraction? I think distraction bothers us because it keeps us from attending to the adventure of human existence. +Much ink was spilled, many hands wrung, many complaints lodged about our addiction to screens. All this worry though, about what? I think the answer is distraction. This is what western philosophers—and ordinary people like you and I—have worried about for centuries. The only difference to day is the degree for distraction. Why distraction? I think distraction bothers us because it keeps us from attending to the adventure of human existence. At least I for one, want to spend more time attending to the adventure of shared human existence than I do screens. Screens are ultimately both addictive and boring. @@ -4671,7 +5093,7 @@ Normally I would never say anything about this because really, the software you I went back to X.org. Sorry Wayland, but much as I love Sway, I did not love wrestling with MIDI controller drivers, JACK, video codecs and hardware acceleration and all the other elements of an audio/video workflow in Wayland. It can be done, but it's more work. I don't want to work at getting software to work. I'm too old for that shit. -I want to open a video and edit. I want to plug in a microphone and record. If it's any more complicated than that -- and it was for me in Wayland with the mics I own -- I will find something else. Again, I really don't care what my software stack is, so long as I can create what I want to create with it. +I want to open a video and edit. I want to plug in a microphone and record. If it's any more complicated than that—and it was for me in Wayland with the mics I own -- I will find something else. Again, I really don't care what my software stack is, so long as I can create what I want to create with it. So I went back to running Openbox with a Tint2 status bar. And you know what... I really like it. @@ -4754,24 +5176,42 @@ That said, this thing is not perfect. The keyboard is prone to double typing let If you don't do everything in a terminal you might be able to still get something similar set up using other offline-friendly tools. I'm sure it's possible I just have no need so I haven't explored it. Anyway, if there's something you want to know, or you want me to try to see if it might work for you, feel free to email me, or leave a comment. -## Git Annex Piece +## Running Arch on Server -I rarely have access to fast internet. What little speed we get my wife uses to tutor her clients over Zoom. There's no way around that bandwidth. +The big tricky part for me is Postgresql, the database that powers this site behind the scenes. Major updates, e.g. postgres-15 -> postgres-16 require manual intervention. For this reason it's essential to make sure pacman doesn't automatically update postgres. I open `/etc/pacman.conf` and set it to ignore postgres: -I on the other hand can make do. I don't need fast internet. Or internet at all really. +~~~ +IgnorePkg=postgresql +~~~ -The fact that I don't need fast internet is not by chance or circumstance -- it's the result of technological choices made with the end goal of not needing bandwidth, or regular access to the internet, in mind. Despite our situation I manage to work remotely, record, store, and backup, gigabytes of audio, video, and photos, and have lived this way for six years now. +Then I periodically check to see if there's a major update available for postgres by looking at the Arch package: -I have discovered in this day and age of always-on internet and constant silent background updates that this way of living is somewhat anomalous to people. A few of them emailed me to ask how we do this. Rather than respond just to them, I thought I'd write it up here. +Then I use the [instructions from the arch wiki](https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PostgreSQL#Upgrading_PostgreSQL) to upgrade postgres: -The question was something like, you are often in places with little to no bandwidth, but yet you advocate having three backups and store tons of data, how do you do that? +> 1) While the old database cluster is still online, collect the initdb arguments used to create it. Refer to #Initial configuration for more information. +> +> 2) Stop postgresql.service. (Check the unit status to be sure that PostgresSQL was stopped correctly. If it failed, pg_upgrade will fail too.) +> +> 3) Upgrade postgresql, postgresql-libs, and postgresql-old-upgrade. +> Rename the old cluster directory, then create a new cluster and temporary working directory: +> +> **Note: If you had not emptied /var/lib/postgres/olddata from a previous upgrade, do it before moving the content of the latest /var/lib/postgres/data there.** +> +> # mv /var/lib/postgres/data /var/lib/postgres/olddata +> # mkdir /var/lib/postgres/data /var/lib/postgres/tmp +> # chown postgres:postgres /var/lib/postgres/data /var/lib/postgres/tmp +> [postgres]$ cd /var/lib/postgres/tmp -Well, secret to my system is a little program written by someone who also understands what it's like to live on limited bandwidth. That would be [Joey Hess](https://joeyh.name) and his program [git annex](https://git-annex.branchable.com). +> Initialize the new cluster using the same initdb arguments as were used for the old cluster: +> [postgres]$ initdb -D /var/lib/postgres/data --locale=C.UTF-8 --encoding=UTF8 --data-checksums -If you are not a nerd and don't know what git is, nothing beyond here will make any sense to you, nor will my solution work for you. Sorry. If you do know what Git is, git annex is a wrapper around git that makes it possible to store large files in Git. +> Upgrade the cluster, replacing PG_VERSION below, with the old PostgreSQL version number (e.g. 15): +> [postgres]$ pg_upgrade -b /opt/pgsql-PG_VERSION/bin -B /usr/bin -d /var/lib/postgres/olddata -D /var/lib/postgres/data -That's nice, but that's not the power of git annex. The power of git annex is in the concept of remotes. +Note that, if you use the postgis extention like I do, in addition to postgresql-old-upgrade, you also need postgis-old-upgrade installed. That package is rarely updated so I end up editing the package file by hand most of the time and re-installing it. +> +https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/postgis-old-upgrade @@ -4833,7 +5273,7 @@ Allison transmission Cummings 24 valve 5.9L straight 6 turbo deisel -Alison MD 3060 -> possibly best transmission you can get (has overdrive, actually double overdrive if you get it unlocked by an allison dealer -- can help MPG). +Alison MD 3060 -> possibly best transmission you can get (has overdrive, actually double overdrive if you get it unlocked by an allison dealer—can help MPG). Also sounds good: International 466 or 466e @@ -4842,3 +5282,4 @@ Also sounds good: International 466 or 466e baskets for wall storage: https://www.amazon.com/mDesign-Portable-Farmhouse-Organizer-Entryway/dp/B08234PYXC piping video: https://inv.vern.cc/watch?v=g0Y8bZjRhQQ + |