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+There's no temperature gauge. It broke several thousand desert miles ago. But you can smell it coming, whiffs of radiator fluid slip in the draft at the front of the engine doghouse. That's when you know, it's time to stop. It doesn't happen often. The 318 likes to run hot, but climbing mountains with a 12,000 pound RV on your back will eventually make any small block engine overheat.
+
+I start looking for a place to pull over. There's nothing. The left side of the road is a sheer cut of rock, quartzite, phyllite, limestone laid bare by dynamite. To the east as far as I can see the barren rocky foothills of the White Mountains bubble and scrape their way toward the desert floor, dust swept and brown. Dotted here and there are clumps of creosote and sagebrush, interrupted occasionally by splashes of yellow Rabbitbrush. It's a stark but beautiful landscape. Without a pullout. But it doesn't matter, we haven't seen another car in at least an hour of driving. We are on Highway 168 somewhere in Nevada between the ghost town where we camped last night, and the top of the White Mountains. So I stop right in the middle of the road. 
+
+When the engine shuts off a silence descends. No wind. No birds. No talking. We—my wife, three children, and me—just listen to the quiet hissing of steam escaping the radiator cap, and then a gentle gurgle of coolant in the engine. It's October, but I'm glad I had the presence of mind to stop in the shade, the Nevada sun casts a harsh light on the road. After a minute my wife turns to the kids and says, "you want to walk around and see if we can find some fossils?" 
+
+As a child of the 70s, I've spent a fair share of time at the side of the road next to broken down vehicles. This is what vehicles of those days did. The 1967 VW fastback, which managed to get me home safely from the hospital after I was born, was replaced with a 1976 mustard yellow Volkswagen Dasher that routinely overheated near Yuma, AZ on its way from my childhood home in Los Angeles to my grandparents' home in Tucson. To this day my father curses that car. There was also a 1969 Ford F-150 pickup that was reliable until you stuck a camper on its back and tried to climb over the Sierra Nevada mountains. 
+
+I was no stranger to dealing with the sweat, the cursing, the money, and the occasional blood, required to keep old cars running. It used to be a necessity. These days it's a labor of love. There is something in the shape of these vehicles, something in the way they move, the way they were built, that is unlike anything on the road today. 
+
+Most people don't dive in as deep as we have. In June of 2016 my wife and I bought a 1969 Dodge Travco, a motorhome that, at the time, was just shy of its 50th birthday. We bought it to make it our full time home. We were tired of the suburbs and we wanted our kids to see the United States, to have a better sense of the place they were born. I didn’t want them to read about the deserts and mountains and forests, I wanted them to be in them. And I wanted them to also know the frustration and the joy of fixing something, of continuing down the road by the sweat and effort of, if not them, then at least me.
+
+My kids called it the bus. Which was apt. When you say motorhome most people picture something that looks nothing like our old Dodge. To call it an RV is to say a Stradivarius is a violin. The Travco is not an RV; it’s a 27 foot long fiberglass container of beauty and joy. It’s bright 1960s turquoise and white with sweeping curves and rounded windows. It is bold in a sea of beige modern RVs. The Travco was cool enough that it was once featured in Playboy magazine. Johnny Cash had one. So did James Dean and John Wayne. I wanted one from the first time I saw a picture of one back in 2016. From that moment on my wife and I knew we were getting a Dodge Travco. It looked awesome and it had one of the most common engines of the era, which meant we could figure out how to fix it on the road. We wouldn’t need to rely on anyone else to keep us going and safe.
+
+There aren't many Travcos left in the world, but after a few months of haunting Craigslist, in June of 2016, I found one for sale in the mountains of North Carolina, in the sleepy college town of Mars Hill. A couple who restored vintage trailers found the bus somewhere in Tennessee and tried their hand at fixing it up. For some reason, they changed their mind and sold it.
+
+I could have picked up where they left off, but as I looked it over, I decided I wanted to gut it instead. I wanted to understand the Travco, to design and build out everything in it exactly the way we would need it. Wood, sealant, metal, fiberglass, and all the things RV interiors are made out of are static. They just sit there, which makes them relatively easy to restore. I grew up around repair and restoration. My grandfather worked for the telephone company and had a shed full of tools behind his house in Tucson. When he retired he spent his weekends buying broken things at the swap meet and his weekdays fixing them to resell the next weekend. 
+
+In the summer it was blazing hot in Grandpa’s shed, but my cousins and I didn't notice the heat. We were too excited watching him tear things apart and put them back together again. It was miraculous to take these discarded things—phones, televisions, radios, blenders—and breathe life back into them.
+
+My father had a garage full of tools as well. I was playing with hammers and tape measures from the time I could walk, graduating to model airplanes in grade school. As I got older, I started using more tools, taking more things apart and trying to put them back together. I gravitated toward working with wood, which I found more forgiving than radios and blenders. I sketched bookshelves, tables, chairs, and then built them as best I could. I managed to come out of childhood with a few carpentry skills, and more importantly and misguidedly, a belief that with the right tools, anything was fixable. 
+
+Which was why, standing there in the hills of North Carolina, looking over the bus for about an hour, I was unfazed. There was some obvious water damage. I knew I’d have to tear out walls and replace them with new wood. And if you’ve got the walls off you might as well re-wire, re-plumb, and re-insulate. But withlooking around the interior, I could see saw what I saw when I was sketching projects—the finished result. The only thing to do was do the work to make it look the way it already looked in my head. The engine I was blissfully ignorant about. It was hard to start, but once it got running it seemed good enough to my untrained ear. I handed over the money and climbed into the cockpit.
+
+That first drive was nerve wracking. According to the odometers of my past cars, I've driven near 250,000 miles. But driving a car is nothing like strapping yourself to a 27-foot long monstrosity in unknown condition and pointing it downhill. A prudent man would have done a test drive. A couple of hairpin turns had my palms sweating—I made a note to myself to buy my next vehicle in Kansas—but I finally managed to get her out on a four lane road where she felt more manageable. After I had been driving, tensely, for a couple of hours I pulled over at a rest area to take a break.
+
+The engine wasn't even off before two people came running up to the bus to see it, take pictures, ask about it: What year is it? Where did you get it. Then they asked the question I would come to realize everyone who loves old cars wanted to know: what engine is in it? 
+
+The Travco is driven by a Chrysler 318 LA, a 5.2L small-block V8 engine. The LA stands for lightweight A series engine. This is the same engine you'll find in most things Dodge made in 1969, from the Dart to the D100 truck. Larger engines like the 440 are more sought after in vintage racing circles, but the 318, as most enthusiasts call it, is the unsung hero of the muscle car era. Some people claim the cylinder bore size in my 318 is bigger than what you find in a Dart, which would give the bus's 318 more power. I've done a little research, but still can’t confirm or deny this;  that said, on the side of a long mountain climb in the desert hills of Nevada for instance, it can feel like I have the power of a Dodge Dart, with 8000 extra pounds of weight on top.
+
+On that first drive with the Travco, when I stopped at that rest area to collect my wits, I knew next to nothing about engines. I knew that the modern ones looked complex and intimidating and involved a lot of computer chips and automation via sensors. But I'm a former computer programmer; part of what I was after, when we decided to live in a vintage RV, was less computers. 
+
+[[break?]]
+
+The first year with the Travco, I spent most of my free time that year completely rebuilding the interior. For the bulk of 2016 it sat in our driveway, with me inside, sweating through the southern summer, freezing through the winter. Our neighbors begin to give directions based on it: “we’re two houses after the big blue bus.” I gutted the interior down to the bare fiberglass walls. I rebuilt all the electrical, propane, and water systems before insulating it and sealing it back up. I deliberately kept everything low tech. There's only one computer chip in the bus. There's no backup cameras, no motorized awnings, no automated systems at all. I had to go out of my way to find a hot water heater with a non-electric pilot light system. I have to get out and light it by hand every time we reach camp—but the system will never fail. 
+
+A friend of mine joked that I had become like Captain Adama from Battlestar Gallactica, who famously wouldn’t let networked computers on his ship because they introduced a vulnerability he considered unacceptable. It wasn't that he was opposed to technology, his character commands a spaceship after all, it was a particular kind of technology, perhaps even a direction of technology, that Adama opposed. In his case networked technology opened to door to murderous robots bent on destroying humanity. Our case is a little less dramatic. We just didn't want to have to have something break when we're miles from the nearest place that could fix it.
+
+No one is perfect though, and the bus does include one complex, fragile system: our solar panels and batteries. I thinkAnd I believe even Adama would approve of the solar panels; they have been our primary source of power for years. But he wouldn’t not approve of the Bluetooth network the solar charge controller uses. That network is an unnecessary potential point of failure. Sure, it’s nice to be able to check our solar and battery status from my phone, but we don’t have to do that. To mitigate that vulnerability [[OK? To avoid repeating point of failure 3x]] point of failure, I installed a shunt with a hardwired gauge. Should the Bluetooth fail, or, more likely, should I lose my phone, I can just look at the gauge. Like Adama, I am not opposed to technology. I’m opposed to unnecessary technology and single points of failure.
+
+The comedian Mitch Hedburg tells a joke about how an escalator can never break, it can only become stairs. In web design this is referred to as graceful degradation. How good your technology is depends on how elegantly it handles failures. (This is a design principle I bet, and perhaps even Adama , can could get behind.) A lot of modern design has taken exactly the opposite approach. In the name of convenience, complex systems are hidden behind deceptively simple user interfaces. But no matter how simple these things might seem when you use them, the complexity behind them is inherently fragile. 
+
+It's not easy to argue against such systems—certainly it is more convenient to flip a switch and have hot water, or to be able to check solar battery status from my phone—but the trade off in potential for catastrophic failure isn't worth the small gain in convenience, especially when the nearest repair shop might be hundreds of miles away.
+
+Sometimes inconvenience can even beend up  as a benefit. It has a way of forcing you off autopilot and getting you paying attention. With an engine as old as the Travco’s, you need to pay attention. It's part of the cost of admission. 
+
+[[break]]
+
+Modern user interfaces have hidden this fact from you, but the first time you start your car every morning the engine is cold, which makes it hard tomaking it difficult to start. There are three important components in an internal combustion engine: air, fuel, and spark. The spark is a constant, but when your engine is cold it needs more fuel than air. A computer chip controls this mixture in modern cars, but in older, aspirated engines like the 318, the carburetor controls this mixture with a flap that opens and closes. In our 318 this flap is controlled by the driver via the choke cable—a steel wire attached to the carburetor flap at one end, and a knob on the dashboard at the other. Pull out the knob and the flap in the carburetor closes, limiting the air coming in, and allowing the cold engine to start up.
+
+Manual choke is archaic. But since ours was broken when we got it, I went even more archaic. Every time I start the engine I lift up the engine cover, unscrew the air filter, and close the carburetor flap with my finger. At first this was just expedient. Fixing the choke was on my list of things to do, but finding a long enough choke cable, with a period-correct Dodge dashboard knob took years of scouring eBay. By the time I found one I was simply used to doing it myself, literally by hand. The eBay choke cable has been sitting in a storage hatch under the back bed for more than a year.  
+
+The truth is, I like opening the engine, I like making sure everything looks right, I like watching it come to life. If something is wrong, I know right away. Once a wire came off the ignition coil and instead of wondering why the engine wasn't starting—which it wasn't—I was startled to watch electricity arcing out of the ignition coil. That's not right. But it was also very simple to fix. I found the wire and plugged it back in. The engine started right up.
+
+Every morning before we head out on the road, I open the engine cover and spend some time studying the 318, connecting with it. It's a ritual, somewhere between making coffee and invoking the gods, a small part of my morning that's dedicated to making sure the rest of our day goes smoothly. For a long time I really was looking over the engine before every drive;  these days I am often just spending time with it.
+
+Car enthusiasts often get this way. It might seem irrational to be attached to a particular set of nuts and bolts and cast iron, but it happens. Now, driving around the country, when I see broken down cars in someone's yard I don't see junk, I see failed relationships.
+
+—
+
+The bus is very much a relationship. The five of us moved in and hit the road on April 1, 2017. My wife said that if it didn't work out we’d just pass it off as a bad April Fools joke. It worked out. Though like any relationship, me and the bus have had some rocky moments.
+
+April 2nd, less than 100 miles from home, we had our first problem. I had just finished backing into aour first campsite at Raysville campground, still in Georgia, when I smelled a strange scent, something like burnt grapefruit. I laid down in dirt and slidslide myself under the engine. A thin, warm redread liquid splashed on my forehead. Transmission fluid was leaking out of the bottom of the radiator. There are two transmission cooler cooler lines running into the bottom of the radiator where transmission fluid is cooled before being sent back to the transmission.
+
+I didn't know exactly how to fix it, but I knew enough about engines to know that this wasn't too serious. As long as Iat I kept the fluid level topped off, it wouldn’tshouldn’t be too much of a problem. I didn't want to disrupt our new life on the road by taking the bus in for repairs on our third day out. Instead I added a transmission fluid refill to my morning ritual. of starting the engine. 
+
+In the first three weeks, I went through a lot of transmission fluid those first three weeks. I topped it off every morning before we hit the road and every time we stopped for gas. Treating symptoms works for a while, but inevitably the underlying cause gets worse. We made it down to the South Carolina coast, and then swung south, through the windswept marshes of the Georgia coast, and then we headed inland, across the swampy pine flats of south Georgia and into the Florida panhandle.
+
+Part of the reason I put off dealing with the leak is that we were heading tostaying at a friend'sfriends beach house on St. Georgia Island. But then the day we arrivedwe were due to arrive the leak got worse. I pulled into the driveway with barely any transmission fluid left, even though and I had just filled the reservoir two hours before. We unpacked for a week out of the bus and I made spent an hour on the phone searching for a mechanic willing to work on such and old, huge vehicle, and finally and after a few days, . I found one whothat was game. AA few days later, . and a few days later, with my wallet a bit lighter, we had the problem was solved. 
+
+So we got back in the bus and We continued on our way, tracing a route along the white sand beaches of the Gulf Coast, west through Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, right into New Orleans where people cheered the bus from the sidewalks as weI drove through town. For those two months the bus ran perfectly. But as After New Orleans though, as we headed into the June heat of Texas, the temperature gauge began to climb. And climb. All the way into the red. We took to driving in the early mornings, which helped, but I knew something needed to be done. 
+
+We stopped to visit relatives in Dallas and had the radiator re-cored. That, which would eliminated ite the radiator as the source of the problem. Not an hour outside of Dallas though the temperature gauge shot right back up to the red. We stopped at another repair shoip. They replaced the water pump and thermostat, more possible causes of running hot. We headed out of town early again, before it got too hot. That worked. Until it got hot. And then, the temperature gauge climbed again. 
+
+Our thermostat problemThat, andcombined with the brutal West Texas hea,t was getting to us. I punted. In tktk where?We got a hotel for the night and I called my uncle. He listened to me for a while,bit and then told me to go get a temperature gun and take readings around the engine when it was running. That night, I I ran out that night and paid way too much for a temperaturefor temperature gun at a local hardware store and we hit the road again early the next morning. EI stopped every half hour, I stopped, and got out and took temp readings on the top and bottom of the engine. Everything was well within the operating parameters. WeI drove on into the mid day heat and watched the temperature gauge climb again. But the readings from the gun never changed. I called my uncle back. If I were you he said, I'd pull out that temperature sensor and chuck it out in the desert somewhere." I hung up feelingthinking that the main problem with the bus was me. I didn't even know how to find the problems, let alone fix them. 
+
+[[we need to see you following his advice then, because reader isn’t clear if he’s joking or not. And, we now need to know something about your uncle, so we can sense the relationship/his help, more clearly. Maybe something like:
+
+My uncle, though, did. He was a [[TKTK what/who is he/what does he do? ]] [[Also is he your mom’s brother or your Dad’s? A little tiny bit of bio//and show him to us? What does he look like?] So I took his advice. ]
+I was happy to realize there was nothing wrong, and I unhooked the temperature gauge from the sensor. And everything was fine. I was happy to realize there was nothing wrong;  so it wouldn't stress me out, but I wasn't happy thinking about the thousands1000s of dollars I'd spent trying to fix what turned out to be faulty $15 sensor. How did my uncle know what to do without even being there? How did I learn to do that? The learning curve felt insurmountably steep. I resigned myself to learning the hard way: by bashing my head against the problem until I gave up and turned to someone with more experience.
+
+Two months later, near the end of a summer spent in cool pine forests in the Rrocky Mmountains, we decided to attempt a 10,000 foot pass near Ridgway Colorado. We'd previously managed to get to 9,600 feet before, and tk pass was not a steep climb as Rocky Mountain passes go. I thought we could do it. We started early, but we didn't get more than a mile out of town before I smelled that familiar grapefruit smell of transmission fluid. I pulled over and crawled under the bus —and saw the only to see the same transmission cooler line leaking again. 
+
+We turned around, and limped back to Ridgway, and I. I found a side street to park on, in front of a mechanic's shop as it turned out. I got under the bus againto see what I could. This time I knew what I was looking for, and sure enough, once I got the nut off the flare was not just cracked but missing a whole chunk. The transimission cooler lines are fitted enoughenugh that I couldn't just cut them off, put in a new flare and reattach them. They were too short for that, and even if I could have made it work they would have been nearly touching the exhaust, which would heat them far more that the transmission cooler ever cooled them.
+
+I was forced to reach out for help, get helppunt again. I called around for a shop that had big enough bays to work on the bus andus and eventually found one in nearby Montrose, TK miles away. I put the existing line back on as best I could and limped back to the Ridgway State Park campground [[right?]the campground, and we started. That night we repacking, ed and gathering uploaded what we needneeded for a few days of tent camping in a rental car. 
+
+That evening, I was sitting outside the laundry room in the campgroundat Ridgway State Park, watching the famous golden light of the Rockies play across the Cimmarron Range, when a fellow camper came to do his laundry. HeAfter he stuffed his laundry in the machine, and we started talking. TheEventually the conversation came around to the bus, as most conversations I have in campgrounds do. After he asked about thewhich engine was in it, he took a different tack than most people. He asked me something no one else ever had, something that caught me off guard. Something thatand has haunted me ever since: . He said, "Ddo you turn your own wrenches?" I saidtold him I did as much as I could, but that sometimes I had to get professional help. "You have to turn your own wrenches," he said shaking his head. "You can't have a vehicle like that if you don't turn your own wrenches." 
+
+This I realized that night, this is an absolute truth. You can't have a vehicle like this if you don't turn your own wrenches. You'll go crazy or broke or both. We spent a couple weeks in a tent while the mechanics in Montrose tried to find new transmission cooler lines for the bus. Eventually they did and we were on our way again, but not for long. A couple weeks later, coming down western Utah, bound for Zion National Park, I stopped for gas and guess what I saw pooling under the bus? You can't have a vehicle like this if you don't turn your own wrenches. You'll go crazy or broke or both.
+
+It was a Sunday in Utah. We tried to find a mechanic, but nothingthere was no one open. Nothing happens on a Sunday in Utah. SoIn the end we just pulled over on a back street, across from a mechanic's shop that was closed. I crawled under the bus and started poking around. This time the leak was from the back of the transmission line rather than the front. I unscrewed it and sure enough, the flare was cracked. I knew what to do, but I didn't have theto tools and the hardware stores weren't open. 
+
+I climbed out from under and sat down on the Travco’s step, wiping the grease from my hands. My wife had just asked was just asking me what we were going to do, when the rolling metal door of the shop across the street rattledstreet, rattled and then flew opencame flying up and open with a clang. A man about my age came walking over and asked if I needed help. I told him my problem. It turned out it was his shop. He didn't work Sundays, but he was therestill at the shop working on his own projects. Together we pulled off the transmission line, and took it inside, and cut off the cracked flare, and re-flared it. Then heWe put it back on and he showed me where the lastprevious mechanic had gone wrong. He'd overtightened the TKTKit and cracked the metal. We tightened it. Gently. The mechanic wouldn't take any money. Help someone else out someday, he told me.
+
+This is, in part, of what I love about living in the bus, part of why we keep doing it five years later. We—because we haven't stopped needing to fix things. In the course of writing this article I had to rebuild the vacuum booster that powers our brakes system, replace two belts, change the spark plugs, and half a dozen other projects. The bus will never not need fixing. But mythe relationship has changed. I no longer look at the engine in awe and mystery. I know what all the parts do now. I don't know everything that can go wrong, and I don't always know what to do when it does, but I have the thing I've come to prize the most—the relationship with my our fellow shade tree mechanics and car enthusiasts. They are what keeps me doing this. It’sIt isn't just me turning my own wrenches, it's everyone who turns their own wrenches. 
+
+--
+
+[[SG, seems like we want to actually go to the fact that you, at this point, knew that the engine didn’t need fixing, but cooling. I’d skip the link to that community, OR, make it more explicit that you and them would know, this  isn’t a thing that can be fixed. So here are two suggestions:
+
+Sitting at the side of the road in Nevada, TK YEARS in with the Travco, I knew that though, that community feels far away. It wouldn't do me much good even it was here though. The engine overheating isn't really a thing that can be fixed. It's what happens when a small engine tries to climb a big hill. OldWhether its fixing it, or just deal with it's limitations, old cars will teach you so much, including patience.
+
+Even within the community of repair enthusiasts we get some strange looks when we say we actually live in a 1969 RV. It makes me smile a little, sitting out here in the middle of the Nevada desert foothills, waiting for the engine to cool enough to keep plodding up the hill. 
+
+I go for a walk up the road, to see what's beyond the next curve. Maybe the road crests a ridge and drops into a cool, lush valley with a river running through it. The bend doesn't seem to end though., I keep walking but can never more than the next few hundred yards. I give up and head back to the bus. My wife and kids are back from their explorations, ready to go. The engine has cooled some, so we clamor in and decidedecided to make another push up the mountains. ButThe problem is that now we're starting from zero. On this kind of incline, starting from a full stop I give us a mile before we overheat again. (I won’t know exactly, will never know of course because the odometer is broken). , but we don't get far. But we get on down the road. After about TKTK minutes [[because we already used “a mile”]]what I'd guess is a mile I spy a pull out. I haven't smelled radiator fluid yet, but I decided to take advantage of the ability to pull off the roadpull out. 
+
+My wife and I discuss turning back. There's a strange college back in the valley behind us called Deep Springs. They have a sign out front that says no phone and not to bother them, but something tells me they'd be okay with the buswith bus. We could get a fresh start in the morning. It's been a long day of driving and the kids are tired and hot. 
+
+Then we hearhere anthat unmistakable sound that always makes me smile. A loud engine, probably a Harley Davidson, is rumbling up the hill. In a few minutes the bike appearsis too us and the rider pulls over. He askschecks to see if we're okay.  I tell him we are. We go through the usual talk about the bus. Then, but he tells us we're only about a mile from the top. 
+
+That changes everything. Suddenly we're not quite so tired. The prospect of making it over the mountains feels possible again. We thank the rider and he continues on his wayup. We decide to give the engine some more timeanother bit to cool before we try again. 
+
+As we wait, I think aboutI am thinking about a conversation I had with some construction workers earlier in the day. We had stopped at the top of athe first pass forand had a snack. A road work crew we’d passed coming up the mountain pulled over nearbyinto the same turnout we were in. I hadtook askedthe opportunity to ask them about the next pass, the one we're sitting on now. They saidseemed to think we’d be fine, though one of them mentioned,them did say, "there's one part we call the narrows, it’s only one lane through there." I stared at him for a minute. "Seriously?" “Seriously.” “Don’t tell my wife that.”
+
+NowThis conversation comes back to me now and I mention thisit, as casually as I can, to my wife. She does not seem thrilled, but we agree to try for the top. It's a long mile, we never get above twenty miles an hour, but after half an hour, we make it to the topafterabout half an hour later we are at the top. aA spectacular view of the Owens Valley in California opens up below. I can see the Sierra Nevada mountains rising up out the hazy valley. We are at the top. I have just a second to enjoy it before we passgo flying past a sign that says, "Caution, One Lane Road Ahead."
+
+The narrows come up so fast we don't really have time to even plan for it. We're just in it. ThankfullyFortunately, nothing comesis coming the other way., but toit is very much a one lane road. To this day I have no idea what happens if you meet another car coming the opposite way, especially if its one of the empty hay trucks that drive the rest of highway 168 at about 70 miles an hour. 
+
+Coming down the steep grade mountain we is easier than coming up, but we do still stop to rest the brakes a few times. We have a vacuum brake system that works extremely well, but long continuous down grades of 6-8 percent do require taking breaks. After TK hours, A few hours later though we pull into a campground outside of Bishop, California. It's empty this time of year and the road in is full of ruts that have the bus lurching and creaking around. About TK how far along, we hearTherew's a loud clang at one point and mMy wife and I look at each other. I, but I keep going and pull into the first campsite, and s. I shut off the engine for the final time with a sense of deep relief.
+
+–
+
+tk broken axle story and fixing the bus with my uncle.
+
+[[will pick up the rest/work through the rest in morning]]
+
+Which wasisThat's part of why we were at the side of the road that day in Nevada. We were on our way to visit my uncle. I didn't know it yet that day, but he would end up saving us just a couple of days later. He would keep the bus going when it almost broke completely, in an irreparable way. But more than that, he would show me how to turn my own wrenches. He helped me rebuild my carburetor and exhaust system;, and he showed me that there was no mystery to it. It's all just nuts and bolts he would saytell me every time I got frustrated. It’sRemember it's all just nuts and bolts. 
+
+[[Scott, here’s a suggested tightened up version (I kept your full original below). It felt like we could be stronger if shorter, tighter:]]
+
+Nuts and bolts aren't where most of the work is though. It's the problem solving that happens in your head. That’s a skill that takes years, even decades to develop. I am still early on this journey, but it is infectious when you hold something unknown in your head and step through the system until you come up with a hypothesis about what might be wrong. This takes me many miles of driving, many miles of thinking.
+
+It also takes asking many questions of many people. I've met Travco salesmen who knew the original designer, mechanics who've worked on Travcos, and dozens of people who knew the 318 engine inside and out. And there’s my uncle, who knows more about engines than I ever will.
+
+The community of people repairing things is an interesting group, perched on an interesting dichotomy. We are, by and large, a group of people who prize self-reliance. Whether that self-reliance grows out of economic necessity, pure enjoyment, or some other factor, it is essential to the spirit of repair. At the same time, the community is a very hierarchical one, which means those of us near the bottom of the hierarchy must rely on and must learn from those above us, which isn't very self-reliant, but I think this is a big part of what makes this an interesting and dynamic community. Self-reliance alone tends to make you isolated and either conceited (if you're good, or think you are) or intimidated (if you know you're not very good). The only way out of these predicaments is to connect with other people who know more than you. In the first case they'll quickly put you in your place, in the second, they'll lift you up to where they are.
+
+
+
+
+Original:
+
+Nuts and bolts aren't where most of the work is though. Most of the work I do in keeping this engine running happens in my head. A mechanic isn't someone who blindly turns wrenches, anyone can do that. A mechanic, professional or otherwise, is someone who can listen to an engine and figure out, based on experience, which nuts and bolts need turning. It's the problem solving that happens in your head that separates those who can fix an engine from those who cannot. This is a skill that takes years, even decades to develop. I am still very early on this journey, but it is infectious and exhilarating when you hold something unknown in your head and step through the system until you come up with a hypothesis about what might be wrong. This takes me many miles of driving, many miles of thinking.
+
+It also takes asking many questions of many people. I've been fortunate to have my uncle who knows more about engines than I ever will to help me out, but there have been plenty of others as well. I've met Travco salesmen who knew the original designer, mechanics who've worked on Travcos in the past, and dozens of people who knew the 318 engine inside and out. All of it put together and you have perhaps the most important part of repairing anything: the community.
+
+The community of people repairing things is an interesting group, perched on an interesting dichotomy. We are, by and large, a group of people who prize self-reliance. Whether that self-reliance grows out of economic necessity, pure enjoyment, or some other factor, it is essential to the spirit of repair. At the same time, the community is a very hierarchical one, which means those of us near the bottom of the hierarchy must rely on and must learn from those above us, which isn't very self-reliant, but I think this is a big part of what makes this an interesting and dynamic community. Self-reliance alone tends to make you isolated and either conceited (if you're good, or think you are) or intimidated (if you know you're not very good). The only way out of these predicaments is to connect with other people who know more than you. In the first case they'll quickly put you in your place, in the second, they'll lift you up to where they are.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+things I’ve cut:
+
+
+[[TKTk like:]] But it wasn't the look that got me. [[Then something like]] I felt that it was important to be able to repair our home, on the road, TKTK keep me and my family safe. [[then]]
+
+
+ violin. The Travco is not an RV; it’s a 27 foot long fiberglass container of beauty and joy. It’s bright 1960s turquoise and white with sweeping curves and rounded windows. It is bold in a sea of beige modern RVs. It hails from a very different era, one when the Right to Repair was the Need to Repair, and when the need to repair was an unspoken, accepted part of using technology. 
+
+The labor of maintenance is the price of admission to the world of old vehicles, that's all. If you love the design, the aesthetics, the limits, of thosethe vehicles of that era then you don’t hesitate to pay feepricethe admission. 
+
+
+--
+
+The Travco was cool enough that it was once featured in Playboy magazine. Johnny Cash had one. So did James Dean and John Wayne. I wanted one from the first time I sawran across a picture of one back in 2016. From that moment on my wife and I knew we were getting a Dodge Travco. 
+
+
+
+
diff --git a/scratch.txt b/scratch.txt
index 20df59f..d96b46b 100644
--- a/scratch.txt
+++ b/scratch.txt
@@ -1,11 +1,237 @@
 The energy of chaos is required to change the existing order.
+
 # Scratch
 
-Whatever one’s opinion of the response to the disease, what is undeniable is that so many people of influence took for granted that safety must always trump social relations and that the human being is not the center of a web of loyalties and commitments but is rather a physical fact needing technical management. Nothing, it was revealed to us, is worth risking life for—nothing. If other occasions for risk remain, this is evidently only because administration has not yet found the means to quash them. It was revealed that no danger is greater than death. It was revealed that life is sheer matter and not something else, for example, the capacity for love.
-https://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2022/06/atoms-and-the-void-review-of-interventions-2020/
+Code
+
+1) Everything is a Practice
+
+There is no finish line in life. You don't Individual projects may come to and end, but most things you want to do are essentially endless.
+
+2) Retain agency above all
+3) Make something you like everyday
+4) Prefer the Analog
+5) Don't Report Stories, Live Them
+6) Novelty wears off, routines carry you through
+7) Live small, venture wide
+8) 
+
+Art is the transmission of a feeling across time. The artist feels something that drives him or her to make something and then the viewer experiences a feeling when they see or read or otherwise interact with that thing that the artist made. Those may be very different feelings, the feeling in the artist and in the viewer, but that thing that is making that connection is, I think, art as we define it in western culture. There are different conceptions of art. Even our culture at earlier periods had different definitions. And there are still artists who would probably disagree with this and say that the purpose of art is actually the expression of the divine, but I would still argue that it's the feeling of the divine that drives the artist to create. So it may not be that they're trying to communicate their own feeling, but that feeling is still the driving impulse behind the creation of the thing. And then, like I think of cooking, and I think well, at it's best cooking is exactly what I just described, but then also other times I am just scrambling these eggs so the kids can eat before Corrinne starts work at the table. 
+
+Working in Crawford quote:
+
+Matthew Crawford's Shop Class as Soul Craft captures this feeling in a way that no other books I've read manages. Crawford defines this desire, this need to be capable of repair as a desire to escape the feeling of dependence. What he called the Spirited Man, 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."
+
+In the years since Shop Class was published I have witnessed a convergence of two worlds, the collision of the spirit of inquire that looks to books and the spirit of inquiry that wants to works in the real world, to fix things, to get one's self moving down the road again. I see this in the work of Van Neistat, who explicitly took the Spirited Man mantle and ran with it. But also in the thousand people without filmmaking skills who are quietly working in their yards, in their garages, at the side of the road. Shade tree mechanics. Tinkerers. Spirited men and women who want first and foremost to understand, to expand their understanding of the world around them, to know how to use the tools we toolmakers have created for ourselves.
+
+I think this goes the heart of the question of existence... why are we here? Are we here to optimize our days in service to some unknown thing are we here to be entertained? Or are we here to understand the world around us, to take part in the co-creation of our world? Are we along for the ride or are we standing at the helm, trimming the sails and pointing the bow into uncharted territory? 
+
+Crawford writes that the spirited man "hates the feeling of dependence, especially when it is a direct result of his not understanding something. So he goes home and starts taking the valve covers off his engine to investigate for himself. Maybe he has no idea what he is doing, but he trusts that whatever the problem is, he ought to be able to figure it out by his own efforts. Then again, maybe not—he may never get his valve train back together again. But he intends to go down swinging." 
+
+This was the spirit in which I set off in the bus. I had no idea how the engine worked or if I would be able to keep it running, but I intended to go down swinging.
+
+
+
+
+Passive consumptions displaces agency. One is no longer masters of one's stuff but a servant of its makers. 
+
+---
+
+I don't want to report stories, I want to live them.
+
+have your own code. Not a contractors code. Not any organizations code. Your own code that means something to you, that makes you take pride in your work.
+
+When you live in a small space you have to be organized. Everything needs a place. Even if that place is to just shove it in a messy cabinet and close the door quickly. Otherwise you space will be unbearable.
+
+I think after a while the novelty of anythin wears off. even living on the road. or perhaps its that I felt the need to dial back the novelty a little. first we returned to places we'd already been, but that wasn't the answer. Then we went to new places, but moved much slower. settled in a bit. but that wasn't entirely the answer either. it wasn't until we enrolled the kids in juijitsu that i realized, oh, this is what i am supposed to do. i am supposed to look more closely at these places. to befriend the people within in them, to understand them to a greater degree. I do not know why, I just know that this is part of it. i still do not have all of it, it is still not perfected, but every day that passes i get new ideas and things fit more. 
+
+as a spin off of the moving slower idea i came to realize that okay, i have achieved the thing I set out to do. we live on the road. now what? it wasn't until i sat twith this question for a long time in meditation that something like an answer began to form. and a big part of the answer was, now you make stuff. now you write, now you build, now you create, now you fix. now you do all the things you have always done, but you find a way to do them on them within the constraints of how you life now. Fewer tools, less space, in some cases i've added some ttools that seem strange at first glance. 
+
+the answer is to put the art back in. to blend the books and the life and use them to make some kind of art. mechanical, analog art. and digital recordings to supplement it. but that mechnaical stuff needs to happen. it has been missing too long.
+
+---
+Safety mania and death phobia are signs of a disconnection from purpose and passion. If you have nothing more important than your own life, then preserving life is left as the only purpose. Because our civilizational answer to “Why are we here?” has unraveled, many of us individually have trouble answering that question too, for the individual story draws from the collective.
+
+OK, I realize I may have risen to too high an altitude for the practical purpose of preventing the next bout of pandemania. So I will end with this: We can reduce our general susceptibility to fear-mongering by reducing the levels of fear current in society. A society ridden with fear will acquiesce to any policy that promises them safety. How do we reduce ambient levels of fear? There is no single answer. Besides, each one of us already knows how.
+
+https://charleseisenstein.substack.com/p/pandemania-part-5
+---
+
+
+## Boundary Waters
+
+3:20 minutes to Ely, shuttle to put in. $55/$45 for 3/2 seat canoes. 
+https://elyoutfittingcompany.com/boundary-waters-canoe-gear-rentals-shuttles/
+
+## Fall 
+
+distance to tucson via theodore roosevelt: 2,200
+distance to Fl via New Orleans: 1900
+distance from tucson to Athens via New Orleans and st george: 2100
+mardi gras: feb 21
+
 
 # Stories to Tell
 
+An alternative to the front porch culture. it think we went wrong when we became to sedentary, it made us see the world as fixed, unchanging, things as they are become things as they have always been. I think the connectedness and community that you find in people who want to create a front porch culture is the right way forward, but I don't think that a rootedness to place is what drive that. I think that's a conscious human decision. I don't think it organically springs into a being. I think people have to want it, and I think so long as there is television, the internet, screens, that will not happen. the culture from afar is too strong, to universal and too enslaving to overcome. it's not until that culture has run its course that something new will arise. that doesn't mean of course that you can't free yourself from screens, from the culture of afar. That's not too difficult. But you aren't going to free the whole of culture. 
+
+## Around Washburn
+One weekend I took the kids over to Madeline Island again. The museum was have a trading post-style reenactment., and we are suckers for a good reenactment festival. 
+
+
+
+We got to see some real birch bark canoes, and some artifacts like trade blankets, early compasses and navigation tools, even early pharmacy tools, including a pill-making board the kids got to try out, making some playdough pills.
+
+Most of the reenactment stuff was things Voyageurs would have used in the fur trade, though there were a couple of people there representing local tribes. One man in particular was really great at show the kids various tools and demonstrating how they worked. He was so good I forgot to take any pictures, which I realized later is kind of the highest praise I can (accidentally) give.
+
+
+
+## Ten
+
+I was thinking the other day about some friends I haven't talked to since I left Los Angeles for good in 1999. I was thinking how astounded they would probably be to know that I had managed to keep two children alive and well for ten years now. What they would probably say is, *I think you mean your wife has managed to keep two children alive and well for ten years*. And of course they'd be right. 
+
+Whatever the case, somehow, our twins are ten. Double digits. Decades old. And all that. 
+
+
+
+## Midsummer
+We pulled into Memorial Park Campground in Washburn, Wisconsin just before lunch on a Thursday and grabbed one of the few spots left in the campground. It was just a few sites down from where we [stayed four years ago](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2018/08/island-golden-breasted-woodpecker). We love a good first-come, first-serve campground, especially one with no stay limits. We unfurled the awning and settled in for the summer. 
+
+<img src="images/2022/2022-07-08_200436_washburn.jpg" id="image-3017" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2022/2022-07-08_174443_washburn.jpg" id="image-3016" class="picwide" />
+
+For us, these days, settling in means signing the kids up for Jui Jitsu, getting library cards, and figuring out the best places to get in whatever body of water is nearby. Washburn, and nearby Ashland, provide all that and more, perhaps most importantly, reasonable temperatures all summer, little in the way of crowds, and the kind of hospitality you really only find in small towns anymore.
+
+At their first Jui Jitsu class one of their classmate's mother invited us to a midsummer party. Summer is bigger deal up here than it is in say Florida. When something is so fleeting you appreciate it more I think. Whatever the case, we showed up and had a great time. There was music, flower wreaths, comedy, even sack races. The kids danced late into the night. It was a good way to celebrate midsummer, something I've never celebrated before.
+
+<div class="cluster">
+    <span class="row-2">
+        <img src="images/2022/2022-07-16_165753_washburn.jpg" id="image-3019" class="cluster pic66" />
+        <img src="images/2022/2022-07-16_171809_washburn.jpg" id="image-3020" class="cluster pic66" />
+    </span>
+    <img src="images/2022/2022-07-16_175425_washburn.jpg" id="image-3021" class="cluster picwide" />
+    <img src="images/2022/2022-07-16_190818_washburn.jpg" id="image-3022" class="cluster picwide" />
+</div>
+
+While Jui Jitsu, libraries, and swimming holes are all we really need, we do appreciate there being good Mexican food, and as of this summer, Washburn has that. All this corner of the world needs now is for the shifting climate to mellow out the winters a bit.
+
+<div class="cluster">
+    <span class="row-2">
+<img src="images/2022/2022-07-24_124345_washburn.jpg" id="image-3023" class="cluster pic66 caption" />
+<img src="images/2022/2022-07-25_153047_washburn.jpg" id="image-3024" class="cluster pic66" />
+    </span>
+<img src="images/2022/2022-07-26_072037_washburn.jpg" id="image-3025" class="cluster picwide" />
+</div>
+
+I think if we'd been closer to Washburn in 2020 when the U.S. shut everything down, we'd have rented a place around here. But of course that's not where we were so we'll likely never know how we'd handle a winter up here. For now though, it's a pretty great place to spend your summer.
+
+
+
+## Away From the Crowds
+
+We would have stayed longer at Harrington Beach State Park, and we would have loved to head up into the Door Peninsula, but we were facing every full time RVer's least favorite holiday: Fourth of July weekend. Everything was booked. So, we loaded up our still-not-installed awning and headed north, where the crowds are fewer and we knew of at least one first come first served campground. 
+
+You can't just show up at a first come first serve campground on the Friday of fourth of July weekend though. Corrinne does 90 percent of the camp planning and she, marvel that she is, found a campground somewhere in the middle of Wisconsin that was somehow not already booked for the fourth and was on our way. We had reservations the day before and hit the road Friday.
+
+Now, you might be asking yourself, what sort of campground *isn't* full on America's most popular camping weekend? How awful is it that no one wants to go there? Actually it was quite nice. I think no one wants to go there in part because it's in a very rural area and when you have wild acreage, camping isn't really something you care about as much. At least that was our experience living in a 300-acre pine forest. Whatever the case Governor Thompson State Park was nice and we were happy to have a spot to park for the holiday weekend.
+
+Admittedly, there wasn't much to do at Governor Thompson if you don't have a boat (it's on a lake). One fellow vintage camper owner we met ventured over to the swim beach one day and called it the saddest little thing he'd ever seen. We never went to find out for ourselves. We just relaxed, did a lot of reading, and finally had the space to get our new awning installed.
+
+<img src="images/2022/2022-07-02_153235_gov-thompson-sp.jpg" id="image-2999" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2022/2022-07-02_180645_gov-thompson-sp.jpg" id="image-3000" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2022/2022-07-02_182710_gov-thompson-sp.jpg" id="image-3001" class="picwide" />
+
+After putting on the window awning on the other side I was dreading the full size patio awning. Fortunately for me, the installation process was different, so my fears proved unfounded. In some ways I think it was easier to install the patio than the window awning, though there were a couple of awkward moments. But now have plenty of shade to sit around and relax (and work, and play) in. 
+
+<img src="images/2022/2022-07-03_120708_gov-thompson-sp.jpg" id="image-3004" class="picwide" />
+
+I'd forgotten how nice it is to have that under the awning space. We used to live in that shade, but we stopped using our old awning because it was so beat up and gross. Sitting under it was not a pleasant experience the last few months. With the Zipdee we've reclaimed that space. We have a wonderfully warm yellow light bathing the bus from all angles, and we've been spending a lot more time outside. Zipdee awnings aren't cheap, but well worth the money in my opinion.
+
+<img src="images/2022/2022-07-03_115523_gov-thompson-sp.jpg" id="image-3002" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2022/2022-07-03_115524_gov-thompson-sp.jpg" id="image-3003" class="picwide" />
+
+With the holiday weekend behind us we continued north, bound for the shores of Lake Superior. We stopped off at a place called Copper Falls for a couple of nights. It's supposedly one of the highlights of the area, but our experience was that it's buggy and there's not much to do other than hike to see the falls. They are nice waterfalls, but you can't get near them and the mosquitoes and black flies were bad enough that it would have made Yosemite miserable.
+
+<img src="images/2022/2022-07-04_182326_copper-falls.jpg" id="image-3007" class="picwide" />
+<div class="cluster">
+    <span class="row-2">
+<img src="images/2022/2022-07-04_152815_copper-falls.jpg" id="image-3008" class="cluster pic66" />
+<img src="images/2022/2022-07-04_154726_copper-falls.jpg" id="image-3006" class="cluster pic66" />
+    </span>
+</div>
+<img src="images/2022/2022-07-04_154339_copper-falls.jpg" id="image-3005" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2022/2022-07-04_182533_copper-falls.jpg" id="image-3009" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2022/2022-07-04_191019_copper-falls.jpg" id="image-3010" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2022/2022-07-04_191036_copper-falls.jpg" id="image-3011" class="picwide" />
+
+I never like to complain too much about anywhere because it's an incredible experience to be able to live the way we do and a few bad nights for us is a tiny price to pay (and Copper Falls wasn't even that bad), but I was glad to hit the road again.
+
+And our plan worked. We pulled into the first-come first-serve campground in Washburn WI on a Thursday morning, snagged the best site, and settled in for the summer. 
+
+
+## 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. 
+
+<img src="images/2022/2022-06-27_151631_harrington-milwaukee.jpg" id="image-2974" class="picwide" />
+
+Last time we were here I [wrote about the yellow warblers](https://luxagraf.net/dialogues/yellow-warbler) that were everywhere in our campsite. This time was no different, one even came in the bus to check it out.
+
+<div class="cluster">
+    <span class="row-2">
+<img src="images/2022/2022-06-28_110935_harrington-milwaukee.jpg" id="image-2977" class="cluster pic66" />
+<img src="images/2022/2022-06-28_110933_harrington-milwaukee.jpg" id="image-2995" class="cluster pic66" />
+    </span>
+</div>
+ 
+We came back to Harrington because it's a good place to camp and access Milwaukee. We don't spend much time in cities anymore. We avoid them actually, especially large cities. Driving into the Chicago to get the awning was a nightmare I'd just as soon never repeat. Smaller cities like Milwaukee are more tolerable, though still not our thing anymore. 
+
+That said, we made an exception here because we actually like Milwaukee and we have some friends living here that we wanted to catch up with, however briefly. We had also promised the girls we'd get some sushi and cupcakes, and then go to a museum for their birthday since we'd be spending their actual birthday somewhere without sushi.
+
+We started with cupcakes of course.
+
+<div class="cluster">
+    <span class="row-2">
+<img src="images/2022/2022-06-29_103614_harrington-milwaukee.jpg" id="image-2979" class="cluster pic66" />
+<img src="images/2022/2022-06-29_103541_harrington-milwaukee.jpg" id="image-2978" class="cluster pic66" />
+    </span>
+</div>
+
+Then we had a sushi lunch and popped into a bookstore that was pretty amazing, but, despite having a seemingly endless number of books, did not have the one that the girls wanted.
+
+<div class="cluster">
+    <span class="row-2">
+<img src="images/2022/2022-06-29_123150_harrington-milwaukee.jpg" id="image-2980" class="cluster pic66" />
+<img src="images/2022/2022-06-29_123221_harrington-milwaukee.jpg" id="image-2981" class="cluster pic66" />
+    </span>
+ <span class="row-2">
+<img src="images/2022/2022-06-29_131256_harrington-milwaukee.jpg" id="image-2982" class="cluster pic66" />
+<img src="images/2022/2022-06-29_131312_harrington-milwaukee_bzc4u7m.jpg" id="image-2983" class="cluster pic66" /></span>
+</div>
+
+The next stop was the Milwaukee Public Museum, which is such a vague name we didn't really know what to expect except that it had some dinosaur exhibit of some kind. I think that was a good way to go in, not knowing anything (the opportunity for you to go not knowing anything is about to be ruined) because now that I've been, I am still not totally sure what the Milwaukee Public Museum is, beyond, the very generic: really fun.
+
+The specimen collection in the lobby area reminded me of [La Specula in Florence](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2011/06/natural-science), and set the tone of the place. It's a throw back the museums of old: big dioramas, lots of signs and welcome absence of any screens, or QR codes, or any of the ridiculous digital gimmicks that pass for content in modern museums. Instead it was interactive in the original sense -- the kids could touch the buffalo fur and ride a penny farthing and even let butterflies land on them. 
+
+<div class="cluster">
+    <span class="row-2">
+<img src="images/2022/2022-06-29_135459_harrington-milwaukee.jpg" id="image-2984" class="cluster pic66" />
+<img src="images/2022/2022-06-29_135612_harrington-milwaukee.jpg" id="image-2985" class="cluster pic66" />
+    </span>
+<img src="images/2022/2022-06-29_182409_harrington-milwaukee.jpg" id="image-2990" class="cluster picwide caption" />
+<img src="images/2022/2022-06-29_141216_harrington-milwaukee.jpg" id="image-2986" class="cluster picwide caption" />
+</div>
+
+The natural history portion of the Milwaukee Public Museum was extensive and full of great dioramas, though I have to take some exception the tiny little section devoted to the south. The south is apparently little more than a footnote here and can be adequately represented by a banjo, a musket, a few ears of corn, and a flag none of us recognized. 
+
+What the Public Museum does a far, far better job with is the history of Milwaukee, which is set up in a lifesize replica of Milwaukee through the ages, though most of it is done up like the late 19th century. This was by far the most fun to walk around. It was lit with the equivalent of old gas lamps so it's a very dark exhibit that you can get lost in. 
+
+
+
+-- roughly the technological level I suspect my grandkids will live in. 
+
+
+
 ## Illinois Beach
 
 I think it's important to remember that it's fun to do something for no reason at all. That is, not everything needs a reason beyond simply the freedom to do it. 
@@ -131,6 +357,11 @@ The average person spends 87% of their time indoors and another 6% in enclosed v
 
 
 # Notes
+
+## No Risk
+Whatever one’s opinion of the response to the disease, what is undeniable is that so many people of influence took for granted that safety must always trump social relations and that the human being is not the center of a web of loyalties and commitments but is rather a physical fact needing technical management. Nothing, it was revealed to us, is worth risking life for—nothing. If other occasions for risk remain, this is evidently only because administration has not yet found the means to quash them. It was revealed that no danger is greater than death. It was revealed that life is sheer matter and not something else, for example, the capacity for love.
+https://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2022/06/atoms-and-the-void-review-of-interventions-2020/
+
 ## Travel Cheaper
 
 Ways to reduce travel spending:
@@ -678,26 +909,27 @@ Unfortunately, the United States is not the best travel value for us. Without an
 # Pages
 ## Technology
 
-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. 
+The less technology your life requires the better your life will be. 
 
-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 certainly 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. 
+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. 
 
-That's what I try to do. There's very little latest and greatest on this page. I am always trying to get by with less. There's no affiliate links here and 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.
+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.
 
-Still, for better or worse. Here are the main tools I use.
+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.
+
+Still, for better or worse. Here are the main tools I use in building this site and living on the road.
 
 ## Writing
-### Notebook and Pen
 
-My primary "device" is my notebook. I don't have a fancy notebook. I do have several notebooks though. One is in my pocket at all times and is filled with illegible scribbles that I attempt to decipher later. The other is larger and it's my sort of captain's log, though I don't write in with the kind regularity captains do. Or that I imagine captains do. Then I have other notebooks for specific purposes, meditation journal, commonplace book, and so on.
+### Notebook and Pen, Pencil and Paper
 
-I'm not all that picky about notebooks, if they have paper in them I'm happy enough. I used to be very picky about pens, but then I sat down and forced myself to use basic cheap, clear black ink, Bic-style ballpoint pens until they no longer irritated me. And you know what? Now I love them, and that's all I use—any ballpoint pen. Ballpoint because it runs less when it gets wet, which, given how I live, tends to happen.
+My primary "device" is my notebook. I don't have a fancy notebook. I do have several notebooks though. One is in my pocket at all times and is filled with illegible scribbles that I attempt to decipher later. This one I mainly write in pencil, and I stick post-it notes into the actual notebook so that I can then move the post-it notes to the larger notebook where I write them in pen. This larger notebook is a mix of notes, as well as a sort of captain's log, though I don't write in with the kind regularity real captains do. Or that I imagine captains do. Then I have other notebooks for specific purposes, meditation journal, fiction notebook, and so on.
 
-### Laptop
+I'm not all that picky about notebooks, if they have paper in them I'm happy enough. I used to be very picky about pens, but then I sat down and forced myself to use basic cheap, black ink, Bic-style ballpoint pens until they no longer irritated me. And you know what? Now I love them, and that's all I use -- any ballpoint pen. Ballpoint because it runs less when it gets wet, which, given how I live, tends to happen. Pencils are a more recent development for me. I adopted the Pentel P209 with .9mm lead because someone on the internet said the led didn't break. This has proved true, so I've stick with it.
 
-My laptop is a Lenovo x270 I bought off eBay for $384. I upgraded the hard drives and RAM, which brought the total outlay to $489, which is really way too much to spend on a computer these days, but my excuse is that I make money using it. 
+### Laptop
 
-Why this particular laptop? It's small and the battery lasts quite a while (like 15 hrs when I'm writing, more like 12 when editing photos, 15 minutes when editing video). It also has a removable battery and can be upgraded by the user. I packed in almost 3TB of disk storage, which is nice. Still, like I said, I could get by with less. I should get by with less. 
+I recently retired my trusty Lenovo x270. I still love it, but it just wasn't up to editing video. I ended up getting an HP Dev One, which I generally like, though the screen is a little glare-prone. This computer is probably overkill for me, and it costs $1,000, but I use it for work so it ends up paying for itself that way.
 
 The laptop runs Linux because everything else sucks a lot more than Linux. Which isn't too say that I love Linux, it could use some work too. But it sucks a whole lot less than the rest. I run Arch Linux, which I have [written about elsewhere](/src/why-i-switched-arch-linux). I was also interviewed on the site [Linux Rig](https://linuxrig.com/2018/11/28/the-linux-setup-scott-gilbertson-writer/), which has some more details on how and why I use Linux.
 
@@ -705,7 +937,7 @@ The laptop runs Linux because everything else sucks a lot more than Linux. Which
 
 ### Camera
 
-I use a Sony A7Rii. It's a full frame mirrorless camera which makes it easy to use the legacy lenses I love. I bought the A7Rii specifically because it was the only full frame digital camera available that let me use the old lenses that I love. Without the old lenses I find the Sony's output to be a little digital for my tastes,
+I use a Sony A7Rii. It's a full frame mirrorless camera which makes it easy to use the legacy lenses I love. I bought the A7Rii specifically because it was well suited to using with the old lenses that I love. Without the old lenses I find the Sony's output to be a little digital for my tastes,
 
 The A7 series are not cheap cameras. If you want to travel you'd be better off getting something cheaper and using your money to travel. The Sony a6000 is very nearly as good and costs much less. In fact, having tested dozens of cameras for Wired over the years I can say with some authority that the a6000 is the best value for money on the market period, but doubly so if you want at cheap way to test out some older lenses.
 
@@ -725,13 +957,13 @@ These days I have whittled my collection down to these lenses:
 * Pentax 35 f/3.5
 * Pentax 20 f/4
 
-Yes, that's a lot of lenses. I used keep the Minolta 50 f/2 on there about 90 percent of the time, but these days I actually change things up quite a bit more. I'm all over the place. None of these lenses are over $200.
+Yes, that's a lot of lenses. I used to keep the Minolta 50 f/2 on there about 90 percent of the time, but these days I actually shoot with all of these pretty regularly. None of these lenses are over $200.
 
 I also have a Tokina 100-300mm f/4 which happens to be Minolta mount so I use a Minolta 2X teleconverter with it to make it a 200-600mm lens. It's pretty soft at the edges. That's a nice way of saying it's utter garbage at the corners, but since I mostly use if for wildlife, which I tend to crop anyway, I get by. I also have a crazy Russian fisheye thing that's hilarious bad at anything less than f/11, but it's useful for shooting in small spaces, like the inside of the bus.
 
 ## Video
 
-In addition to the photo gear above, which I also use for video, I have GoPro Hero 9. I mostly use it while driving the bus and have yet to actually make a movie out of any of the footage I shoot. But it piles up on my hard drive and I keep telling myself, one of these days.
+In addition to the photo gear above, which I also use for video, I have GoPro Hero 10. I mostly use it while driving the bus and have yet to actually make a movie out of any of the footage I shoot. But it piles up on my hard drive and I keep telling myself, one of these days.
 
 ## Audio
 
@@ -743,7 +975,72 @@ And there you have it. I am always looking for ways to get by with less, but aft
 
 [^1]: If you've never shot without autofocus don't try it on a modern lens. Most modern focusing rings are garbage because they're not meant to be used. Some Fujifilm lenses are an exception to that rule, but by and large don't do it. Get an old lens, something under $50, and teach yourself [zone focusing](https://www.ilfordphoto.com/zone-focusing/), use the [Ultimate Exposure Computer](http://www.fredparker.com/ultexp1.htm) to learn exposure, and just practice, practice, practice. Practice relentlessly and eventually you'll get there.
 # SRC
-## tech holidays
+## Rules for Screens, Part One
+
+I have a strange page about [technology](/technology) buried on this site. Still, people find it. Something must link to it? I'm not sure how or why, but it seems to get a lot of traffic. Or at least it generates a fair bit of email. About a dozen people a year take the time to email me about the first line of that article:
+
+**The less technology your life requires the better your life will be.**
+
+I get a mix of responses to this ranging from the occasional "who are you to judge me, how dare you tell me not to play video games" (which I don't usually respond to), to the more frequent, and thoughtful, "hey, I feel the same way but I can't seem to get technology out of my life". 
+
+In crafting a response to the most recent person who wrote some variation of that comment, I accidentally wrote a massively long post I am breaking into a three-part series, retracing how I came to use screens so little, despite editing photos, writing for this site, and working for an online publication, all of which do in fact require a screen. I use screens when it makes sense to do so, but the rest of the time I avoid them.
+
+We're going to start with the basic stuff. I did most of the steps in this part back in 2016 when we were getting ready to move into the bus. This is actually all the hardest things to do, because these will free up enough time that you'll find yourself staring into the void for the first time since you were a kid. Don't worry, it's good for you. Anyway, on with it.
+
+**Luxagraf's rules for screens, part one.**
+
+---
+
+## **Rule One: Throw Your Television in the Nearest Dumpster**
+
+Yup, we're going to start with the hardest one. You'll notice that I am more sympathetic to not going cold turkey with other things below. Not this one. This is the absolute requirement. Kill your television. Now. Tough love people.
+
+But... but. Look. Here's the thing. You have this gift of life for, on average, around 73 years. 73 YEARS. You won't even last as long as the average hardwood tree. And you're going to spend that precious time watching television? No. No you're not. Not anymore. You're going to live. Find a dumpster. Put your TV in it. 
+
+Okay, you don't want to put your $1,200 TV in the dumpster. Then find an old sheet or blanket and cover it up. Put some low-tack painters tape on there, make it hard to take off. That'll work for now. But get ready to eBay that thing. Or find a dumpster.
+
+Now cancel Netflix, Hulu, or whatever other subscriptions you had. If you subscribe to two streaming services, that's just under $30 a month. That's $360 a year. That's $1,800 every five years. That's crazy. But now you have about $30 a month you can either save or spend on something you want. Something tangible. I mean, reward yourself if you really do this. At least buy some ice cream. 
+
+---
+
+## **Rule Two: Make Something**
+
+If you watched television for 3 hours in the evenings, congrats you were already watching less than most people -- and you stop doing that you have just reclaimed 15 hours a week. FIFTEEN HOURS! That's enough to get a part time job somewhere. It's enough time to do, lord, there's no limit to what you could do really. Start a business, write a book, read the entire canon of Russian literature. The paradox of choice can get you here and you'll end up watching YouTube for hours on your laptop. I know, I've done it. 
+
+You have to start creating something. I strongly suggest you create something real and tangible. Something you can hold in your hands. Cook yourself a fancy dessert if you like. Yeah you can even look up a recipe on a screen, don't worry about it. The internet is incredibly helpful for learning things. That's another idea. Find something you really love and learn more about it. Read everything you can about agates if that's your bag (it's my wife's bag). But do it by checking books out from the library, not by reading on your phone.
+
+Do what you want, but do something. Deliberately carve out some time to make something. And I know everyone says, I'm not a creative person, I don't know what to make. Start small. Write a card to your closest relative. Write a postcard if a card is too much. Make dessert for your family, your significant other, yourself, whatever. Just make something. Except maybe don't make a fancy dessert every night. That won't end well. If all else fails, just go for a walk. 
+
+---
+
+## **Rule Three: Delete Social Media Apps**
+
+Yeah, now we're getting real. I know it's going to be hard. But you know what, take easy, start small. You probably have Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, a bunch of stuff in other words, on your phone. Just pick one and delete it for one week. You can always reinstall it so it's not like there's too much to lose here.
+
+But we're not done.
+
+Get a piece of paper and a pen. Fold the paper up so it's small enough to fit in your pocket. Put it in your pocket, or otherwise keep it on you. Now, every time you feel like checking whichever social network you deleted, instead of checking it, pull out your paper and pen and write down why you wanted to check it. It doesn't need to be an essay, just write like "wanted to see what Mark was up to" or whatever the source of the urge was. 
+
+Do that for one week. At the end of the week look back over what you wrote down and decide for yourself if those things you were planning to do are worth your time. If they are then re-install that app and be on your merry way. If they aren't, or more likely, if you aren't sure, do the experiment for another week.
+
+If you decide that this wasn't the best use of your limited time on earth, repeat this process with the next social app on your phone. When you've deleted all the unnecessary apps from your phone you're done with this step. 
+
+Oh, and the ones you keep, don't feel bad about those. If you're feeling a sense of guilt about them still it might be worth repeating this experience, but if you really do enjoy them then don't feel guilty about them.
+
+## **Rule Four: Track What You Do When You Use a Screen**
+
+Far to much of our lives are lived in a kind of automated mode. Think back over everything you did in the last five minutes before you started reading this. If you're like me, you probably struggle to remember what it was you were doing or how you ended up precisely here at this moment. Some of this autopilot living is a good thing, especially, I've found, morning routines, but I do it far too much.
+
+So I started keeping closer track of what I was doing and why. I'm not suggesting you do that. That's actually advanced level stuff, what I am suggesting is very simple: every time you use a screen, remember to do it consciously. Don't judge yourself for it, just note that hey, I am using a screen. That's all. Now if you're somewhat obsessive like I am you might want to write down whatever notes you can, about why you're using a screen. 
+
+Unlike the steps above, this is not really a rule. It's a process. It's an ongoing process that will probably never end, at least in my case. I like to be conscious of when I use a screen, so although I started this years ago, I still do it today.
+
+That brings me to the final point I will leave you with: everything is a process. To paraphrase Alan Watts, you are not a thing, you are a happening. Which is to say, all of life is a never ending process, there may be goals, there maybe markers along the way, but it's not like you get to place where you never have to do anything again. The goal, at least at this very basic level of using less screens, is to build systems and processes that will help you do things other than stare at a screen. 
+
+Now go kill your television.
+
+
+
 
 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.
 
@@ -778,37 +1075,40 @@ I still use them. I keep open some tabs for the stock market because those are r
 
 ## Intentional computing. 
 
-A computer screen is a distraction from life. There is no life in this thing we are both staring into at different points in time. Life is what happens when we close this and go back to the world. That's true of a book too. But a book's distraction from life is much less consuming than a computer screen. It is a single story. More important is that its depth is limited. A book ends on the final page. The world of the screen taps into the network and offers unlimited depth. A world without end. There is no final webpage. This is why we fret over the distractions of computers and never worry about books. 
 
-So how do you stop yourself from getting sucked into a world without end? I've been thinking about this for decades now, gradually spending less and less time on a computer. Two things jump started me on a path to less screens. One was the birth of my children, which were a kind of sledge hammer reminder that nothing digital matters. None of it actually exists and none of it matter. The people in front of you, they matter.
+"We want to complexify our lives. We don’t have to, we want to. We wanted to be harried and hassled and busy. Unconsciously, we want the very things we complain about. For if we had leisure, we would look at ourselves and listen to our hearts and see the great gaping hold in our hearts and be terrified, because that hole is so big that nothing but God can fill it.
 
-The other thing was selling our home and hitting the road in the bus. This was another sledge hammer reminder that the physical world is what matters. Given a choice between staring at a computer screen at night and sitting around a fire and staring up at the night sky, is well, not even a choice.
+"Man is obviously made for thinking. Therein lies all his dignity and his merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought. Now the order of thought is to begin with ourselves, and with our author and our end. Now what does the world think about? Never about that, but about dancing, playing the lute, singing, writing verse, tilting at the ring, etc., and fighting, becoming king, without thinking what it means to be a king or to be a man.
 
-These two things greatly reduced how much time I spent using a computer (and be computer I mean a laptop or phone). Then we left the road and rented a house and something interesting happened. I went back to staring at the screen way too much. All that distance I thought I had created? Gone with single change of behavior. I just slid right back into those old habits of tucking the kids in and sitting down at my desk to stare at a screen. 
+"I have often said that the sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room." - Blaise Pascal
 
-I could defend myself and say that I write a novel in that time, which is true, but that only really accounts for maybe half the time I spent staring at that screen. And now that we're back in the road, I've once again had to wean myself off. I still pick campfires over screens, but like most of us I imagine, I still spend way to much time on a screen.
+#############
 
-I want to spend less though, and so I've been working at this for some time, finding ways to not just get off the screen, but handle the things that I used to do on a screen, without needing a screen. This time I don't want to relapse should I be away from life on the road for some reason. 
+I believe that screens are a distraction from life. 
+
+There is no life in a screen. Life is what happens when we look away from this screen at the actual world around us. Perhaps it is strange to say this on a screen. Still, it feels like a truth we all know. We all used to know. At least, anyone over 35 knows. It is our task to carry this memory through. I am writing this for other people who want to spend less time staring at screens and more time not.
 
-To lessen the time I spend using a screen I realized I needed to turn it into a book. I needed to put edges on it and make sure it has a last page. In order to defeat that time sucking endless form of the network we're going to have to put some endings in place.
+## Rules for Screens, Level Two
 
-What I've done is to create many endings. Endings for every beginning. The best ending in this case is the beginning that never begins. Here's the basic idea: only use a computer when you absolutely have to. Every time I reach for my laptop or phone I force myself pause and think, first, do I need to do this right now? Yes? Okay, but could I do whatever it is I am about to do *without* a screen? Quite often the answer is yes. So that's what I do -- I use some analog tool instead. 
+### Rule One: Prefer the Analog.
 
-**Rule one: prefer the analog.**
+Here's the basic idea: only use a computer when you absolutely have to. Every time I reach for my laptop or phone I force myself pause and think -- do I need to do this right now? Yes? Okay, but could I do whatever it is I am about to do *without* a screen? Quite often the answer is yes. So that's what I do. I use some analog tool instead. 
 
-I am a writer so often when I am going to open my laptop the things I am about to do is write. Now for work, I go ahead and write on the laptop. There's too much to look up, cross-link and reference to not use a laptop. For myself though, I prefer to write things like this in a notebook with a pen. 
+I write for a living, so when I am going to open my laptop chances are, I am about to write. For work, I do write on the laptop. There's too much to reference and link to not use a laptop. When I'm writing for myself though, I prefer to write things like this in a notebook with a pen. 
 
-But writing is as least as much research as it is actual typing, and this tends to be where I really get sucked in. In an effort to cut down on the amount of time I spend "researching" stuff that I probably don't really need to research, I now write down questions on paper instead of immediately typing them in duckduckgo. Only later do I set aside some time to go back to this list and actually look things up.
+### Rule Two: Batch Your Queries
 
-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. Of all the things I write down in my notebook to look up later, I actually end up looking up maybe 1 in 20. 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.
+Writing is as least as much research as it is actual typing, and this tends to be where I really get sucked in to the endlessness of the network. In an effort to cut down on the amount of time I spend "researching" stuff that I probably don't really need to research, I now write down questions on paper instead of immediately typing them in duckduckgo. Only later do I set aside some time to go back to this list and actually look things up.
 
-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? Could it wait? Let's wait then, it'll probably pass. No? Okay then.
+From this I have learned something important: I am not a very good judge of what is important to me. 
 
-**Rule two: Batch your queries before going digital**
+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.
 
-If it doesn't pass and I really have to open the screen, then let's do it. What greets me when I open my laptop is an entirely blank screen. Well, actually it's a gloomy, slightly blurry picture I took a long time ago somewhere deep in the lagoons of the Florida panhandle. The point though is that I don't leave any applications open, ever. This encourages what I call single task computing: open an application, complete a task, close the application and then the laptop. The task is done, the last page has been reached so you shut the book, so to speak.
+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.
 
-**Rule two: Practice Single Task Computing**
+## Rule Three: Single-Task Computing
+
+At the end of the day.What greets me when I open my laptop is an entirely blank screen. Well, actually it's a gloomy, slightly blurry picture I took a long time ago somewhere deep in the lagoons of the Florida panhandle. The point though is that I don't leave any applications open, ever. This encourages what I call single task computing: open an application, complete a task, close the application and then the laptop. The task is done, the last page has been reached so you shut the book, so to speak.
 
 This is the opposite of how we approach computers much of the time, but I find that trying to multitask on a computer ends up with me distracted by all things shiny and next thing I know an hour has gone by. Single task computing prevents this, but you have to be vigilante. Applications encourage the opposite -- especially web browsers, where the tab essentially functions as an ever expanding task list.
 
@@ -822,6 +1122,44 @@ You know that expression out of sight out of mind? That's buffers. For example I
 
 That is about as uni-tasky as I've been able to make a screen. 
 
+What I've really done here is recreate the typewriter, and no one has ever accuse a typewriter of stealing their attention.
+
+**Rule four: Use The Machine Lest It Use You**
+
+The reason for single task computing is to make sure you always have a task when you sit down to your laptop. Do not use the machine if you don't need to. When you do that the machine is using you. There is no such thing as entertainment. Entertainment is a word designed to hide the truth: you are poring precisions hours of your life into the machine. Why does the machine want your life? I have no idea, but observation suggests it does. Don't give your life away.
+
+**Rule 5: Balance the digital with the Analog**
+
+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.
+
+
+
+In order to tell you how I have managed to reduce my screen time it helps to look at the bigger picture. Let's start with the book.
+
+If the screen is a distraction from life than so is a book. A good book is every bit as hard to put down and distracting from the shared human existence we call life as a screen. And yet the book feels less problematic. I think this is because a book has borders. I has hard limits. 
+
+A book is a single world. The boundary of its world is well-defined. A book ends on the final page. Its depth is limited. We known our way in, we find our way out just as easily.
+
+The story on the screen offers unlimited depth. A world without beginning or end. There is no final webpage. This is why we fret over the distractions of screens and never worry about books. 
+
+Two things started me on a path to less screen time. One was the birth of my children, which were a kind of sledge hammer reminder that nothing on a screen matters. None of it actually exists and none of it matters. The people in front of you, they matter. Not just the people though, the tangible world, the world of artifacts you can hold in your hand. This is what matters. I have not watched a television show or movie since they were born. That screen was easy to stop.
+
+The other thing that really changed my relationship to the screen world was moving into the bus. This was another sledge hammer reminder that the physical world is what matters. Given a choice between staring at a computer screen at night and sitting around a fire, staring up at the night sky, is, well, not even a choice.
+
+These two things greatly reduced how much time I spent using a screen. But then we left the road and rented a house for a year and something happened. I went back to staring at the screen way too much. All that distance I thought I had created? Gone with single change of behavior. I slid right back into those old habits of tucking the kids in and sitting down at my desk to stare at a screen. 
+
+I could defend myself and say that I wrote a novel in that time, but that only really accounts for maybe half the time I spent staring at that screen. And now that we're back in the road, I've once again had to wean myself off. I still pick campfires over screens, but like most of us I imagine, I still spend way to much time on a screen.
+
+So how do you stop yourself from getting sucked into a world without end? 
+I want to spend less though, and so I've been working at this for some time, finding ways to not just get off the screen, but handle the things that I used to do on a screen, without needing a screen. This time I don't want to relapse should I be away from life on the road for some reason. 
+
+To lessen the time I spend using a screen I realized I needed to turn it into a book. I needed to put boarders on it and make sure it has a last page. In order to defeat that time sucking endless form of the network we're going to have to put some endings in place.
+
+What I've done is to create many endings. Endings for every beginning. The best ending in this case is the beginning that never begins. Here are my five rules for avoiding the digital.
+
+
 
 
 
@@ -885,3 +1223,12 @@ 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.
+
+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. 
+
+Interestingly though, what's true of a screen is also true of a book. After all a good book is every bit as hard to put down and as distracting from shared human existence as a screen. And yet the book feels less problematic. I think this is because a book has borders, has hard limits, has edges. 
+
+A book's distraction from life is much less consuming than a computer screen. It is a single story. Its depth is limited. A book ends on the final page. The boundary of its world is well-defined. We known our way in, we find our way out just as easily.
+
diff --git a/src/published/2019-04-07_why-and-how-ditch-vagrant-for-lxd.txt b/src/published/2019-04-07_why-and-how-ditch-vagrant-for-lxd.txt
index 837af2b..e83d8e3 100644
--- a/src/published/2019-04-07_why-and-how-ditch-vagrant-for-lxd.txt
+++ b/src/published/2019-04-07_why-and-how-ditch-vagrant-for-lxd.txt
@@ -1,3 +1,5 @@
+* **Updated July 2022**: This was getting a bit out of date in some places so I've fixed a few things. More importantly, I've run into to some issues with cgroups and lxc on Arch and added some notes below under the [special note to Arch users](#arch)*
+
 I've used Vagrant to manage my local development environment for quite some time. The developers I used to work with used it and, while I have no particular love for it, it works well enough. Eventually I got comfortable enough with Vagrant that I started using it in my own projects. I even wrote about [setting up a custom Debian 9 Vagrant box](/src/create-custom-debian-9-vagrant-box) to mirror the server running this site. 
 
 The problem with Vagrant is that I have to run a huge memory-hungry virtual machine when all I really want to do is run Django's built-in dev server. 
@@ -96,10 +98,25 @@ The last step in our setup is to add our user to the lxd group. By default LXD r
 sudo usermod -a -G lxd yourusername
 ~~~~
 
-#####Special note for Arch users.
+#####Special note for Arch users. {:#arch } 
 
 To run unprivileged containers as your own user, you'll need to jump through a couple extra hoops. As usual, the [Arch User Wiki](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Linux_Containers#Enable_support_to_run_unprivileged_containers_(optional)) has you covered. Read through and follow those instructions and then reboot and everything below should work as you'd expect.
 
+Or at least it did until about June of 2022 when something changed with cgroups and I stopped being able to run my lxc containers. I kept getting errors like:
+
+~~~~console
+Failed to create cgroup at_mnt 24() 
+lxc debian-base 20220713145726.259 ERROR conf - ../src/lxc/conf.c:lxc_mount_auto_mounts:851 - No such file or directory - Failed to mount "/sys/fs/cgroup"
+~~~~
+
+I tried debugging, and reading through all the bug reports I could find over the course of a couple of days and got nowhere. No one else seems to have this problem. I gave up and decided I'd skip virtualization and develop directly on Arch. I installed PostgreSQL... and it wouldn't start, also throwing an error about cgroups. That is when I dug deeper into cgroups and found a way to revert to the older behavior. I added this line to my boot params (in my case that's in /boot/loader/entries/arch.conf):
+
+~~~~console
+systemd.unified_cgroup_hierarchy=0
+~~~~
+
+That fixed all the issues for me. If anyone can explain *why* I'd be interested to hear from you in the comments.
+
 ### Create Your First LXC Container
 
 Let's create our first container. This website runs on a Debian VM currently hosted on Vultr.com so I'm going to spin up a Debian container to mirror this environment for local development and testing.
diff --git a/src/switching-to-lxc-lxd-for-django-dev-work-cuts.txt b/src/switching-to-lxc-lxd-for-django-dev-work-cuts.txt
index 5f128fe..d146c3f 100644
--- a/src/switching-to-lxc-lxd-for-django-dev-work-cuts.txt
+++ b/src/switching-to-lxc-lxd-for-django-dev-work-cuts.txt
@@ -1,42 +1,201 @@
+***Updated July 2022**: I've run into to some issues with cgroups and lxc on Arch and added some notes below under the [special note to Arch users](#arch)*
 
-Error: Failed to run: /usr/bin/lxd forkstart debian /var/lib/lxd/containers /var/log/lxd/debian/lxc.conf: 
-Try `lxc info --show-log local:debian` for more info
-Hmmm. Nothing like a error right after init. Okay so run that suggested command:
+I've used Vagrant to manage my local development environment for quite some time. The developers I used to work with used it and, while I have no particular love for it, it works well enough. Eventually I got comfortable enough with Vagrant that I started using it in my own projects. I even wrote about [setting up a custom Debian 9 Vagrant box](/src/create-custom-debian-9-vagrant-box) to mirror the server running this site. 
+
+The problem with Vagrant is that I have to run a huge memory-hungry virtual machine when all I really want to do is run Django's built-in dev server. 
+
+My laptop only has 8GB of RAM. My browser is usually taking around 2GB, which means if I start two Vagrant machines, I'm pretty much maxed out. Django's dev server is also painfully slow to reload when anything changes.
+
+Recently I was talking with one of Canonical's [MAAS](https://maas.io/) developers and the topic of containers came up. When I mentioned I really didn't like Docker, but hadn't tried anything else, he told me I really needed to try LXD. Later that day I began reading through the [LinuxContainers](https://linuxcontainers.org/) site and tinkering with LXD. Now, a few days later, there's not a Vagrant machine left on my laptop.
+
+Since it's just me, I don't care that LXC only runs on Linux. LXC/LXD is blazing fast, lightweight, and dead simple. To quote, Canonical's [Michael Iatrou](https://blog.ubuntu.com/2018/01/26/lxd-5-easy-pieces), LXC "liberates your laptop from the tyranny of heavyweight virtualization and simplifies experimentation."
+
+Here's how I'm using LXD to manage containers for Django development on Arch Linux. I've also included instructions and commands for Ubuntu since I set it up there as well.
+
+### What's the difference between LXC, LXD and `lxc`
+
+I wrote this guide in part because I've been hearing about LXC for ages, but it seemed unapproachable, overwhelming, too enterprisey you might say. It's really not though, in fact I found it easier to understand than Vagrant or Docker.
+
+So what is a LXC container, what's LXD, and how are either different than say a VM or for that matter Docker?
+
+* LXC - low-level tools and a library to create and manage containers, powerful, but complicated.
+* LXD - is a daemon which provides a REST API to drive LXC containers, much more user-friendly
+* `lxc` - the command line client for LXD.
+
+In LXC parlance a container is essentially a virtual machine, if you want to get pedantic, see Stéphane Graber's post on the [various components that make up LXD](https://stgraber.org/2016/03/11/lxd-2-0-introduction-to-lxd-112/). For the most part though, interacting with an LXC container is like interacting with a VM. You say ssh, LXD says socket, potato, potahto. Mostly.
+
+An LXC container is not a container in the same sense that Docker talks about containers. Think of it more as a VM that only uses the resources it needs to do whatever it's doing. Running this site in an LXC container uses very little RAM. Running it in Vagrant uses 2GB of RAM because that's what I allocated to the VM -- that's what it uses even if it doesn't need it. LXC is much smarter than that. 
+
+Now what about LXD? LXC is the low level tool, you don't really need to go there. Instead you interact with your LXC container via the LXD API. It uses YAML config files and a command line tool `lxc`.
+
+That's the basic stack, let's install it.
+
+### Install LXD
+
+On Arch I used the version of [LXD in the AUR](https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/lxd/). Ubuntu users should go with the Snap package. The other thing you'll want is your distro's Btrfs or ZFS tools. 
+
+Part of LXC's magic relies on either Btrfs and ZFS to read a virtual disk not as a file the way Virtualbox and others do, but as a block device. Both file systems also offer copy-on-write cloning and snapshot features, which makes it simple and fast to spin up new containers. It takes about 6 seconds to install and boot a complete and fully functional LXC container on my laptop, and most of that time is downloading the image file from the remote server. It takes about 3 seconds to clone that fully provisioned base container into a new container. 
+
+In the end I set up my Arch machine using Btrfs or Ubuntu using ZFS to see if I could see any difference (so far, that would be no, the only difference I've run across in my research is that Btrfs can run LXC containers inside LXC containers. LXC Turtles all the way down).
+
+Assuming you have Snap packages set up already, Debian and Ubuntu users can get everything they need to install and run LXD with these commands:
+
+~~~~console
+apt install zfsutils-linux
+~~~~
+
+And then install the snap version of lxd with:
+
+~~~~console
+snap install lxd
+~~~~
+
+Once that's done we need to initialize LXD. I went with the defaults for everything. I've printed out the entire init command output so you can see what will happen:
+
+~~~~console
+sudo lxd init
+Create a new BTRFS pool? (yes/no) [default=yes]: 
+would you like to use LXD clustering? (yes/no) [default=no]: 
+Do you want to configure a new storage pool? (yes/no) [default=yes]: 
+Name of the new storage pool [default=default]: 
+Name of the storage backend to use (btrfs, dir, lvm) [default=btrfs]: 
+Create a new BTRFS pool? (yes/no) [default=yes]: 
+Would you like to use an existing block device? (yes/no) [default=no]: 
+Size in GB of the new loop device (1GB minimum) [default=15GB]: 
+Would you like to connect to a MAAS server? (yes/no) [default=no]: 
+Would you like to create a new local network bridge? (yes/no) [default=yes]:
+What should the new bridge be called? [default=lxdbr0]: 
+What IPv4 address should be used? (CIDR subnet notation, “auto” or “none”) [default=auto]: 
+What IPv6 address should be used? (CIDR subnet notation, “auto” or “none”) [default=auto]: 
+Would you like LXD to be available over the network? (yes/no) [default=no]:    
+Would you like stale cached images to be updated automatically? (yes/no) [default=yes] 
+Would you like a YAML "lxd init" preseed to be printed? (yes/no) [default=no]: yes
+~~~~
+
+LXD will then spit out the contents of the profile you just created. It's a YAML file and you can edit it as you see fit after the fact. You can also create more than one profile if you like. To see all installed profiles use:
+
+~~~~console
+lxc profile list
+~~~~
+
+To view the contents of a profile use:
+
+~~~~console
+lxc profile show <profilename>
+~~~~
+
+To edit a profile use:
+
+~~~~console
+lxc profile edit <profilename>
+~~~~
+
+So far I haven't needed to edit a profile by hand. I've also been happy with all the defaults although, when I do this again, I will probably enlarge the storage pool, and maybe partition off some dedicated disk space for it. But for now I'm just trying to figure things out so defaults it is. 
+
+The last step in our setup is to add our user to the lxd group. By default LXD runs as the lxd group, so to interact with containers we'll need to make our user part of that group.
+
+~~~~console
+sudo usermod -a -G lxd yourusername
+~~~~
+
+#####Special note for Arch users. {:#arch } 
+
+To run unprivileged containers as your own user, you'll need to jump through a couple extra hoops. As usual, the [Arch User Wiki](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Linux_Containers#Enable_support_to_run_unprivileged_containers_(optional)) has you covered. Read through and follow those instructions and then reboot and everything below should work as you'd expect.
+
+### Create Your First LXC Container
+
+Let's create our first container. This website runs on a Debian VM currently hosted on Vultr.com so I'm going to spin up a Debian container to mirror this environment for local development and testing.
+
+To create a new LXC container we use the `launch` command of the `lxc` tool. 
+
+There are four ways you can get LXC containers, local (meaning a container base you've downloaded), images (which come from [https://images.linuxcontainers.org/](https://images.linuxcontainers.org/), ubuntu (release versions of Ubuntu), and ubuntu-daily (daily images). The images on linuxcontainers are unofficial, but the Debian image I used worked perfectly. There's also Alpine, Arch CentOS, Fedora, openSuse, Oracle, Palmo, Sabayon and lots of Ubuntu images. Pretty much every architecture you could imagine is in there too. 
+
+I created a Debian 9 Stretch container with the amd64 image. To create an LXC container from one of the remote images the basic syntax is `lxc launch images:distroname/version/architecture containername`. For example:
+
+~~~~console
+lxc launch images:debian/stretch/amd64 debian-base
+Creating debian-base
+Starting debian-base
+~~~~
+
+That will grab the amd64 image of Debian 9 Stretch and create a container out of it and then launch it. Now if we look at the list of installed containers we should see something like this:
+
+~~~~console
+lxc list
++-------------+---------+-----------------------+-----------------------------------------------+------------+-----------+                                                                                         
+|    NAME     |  STATE  |         IPV4          |                     IPV6                      |    TYPE    | SNAPSHOTS |                                                                                         
++-------------+---------+-----------------------+-----------------------------------------------+------------+-----------+                                                                                         
+| debian-base | RUNNING | 10.171.188.236 (eth0) | fd42:e406:d1eb:e790:216:3eff:fe9f:ad9b (eth0) | PERSISTENT |           |                                                                                         
++-------------+---------+-----------------------+-----------------------------------------------+------------+-----------+  
+~~~~
+
+Now what? This is what I love about LXC, we can interact with our container pretty much the same way we'd interact with a VM. Let's connect to the root shell:
+
+~~~~console
+lxc exec debian-base -- /bin/bash
+~~~~
+
+Look at your prompt and you'll notice it says `root@nameofcontainer`. Now you can install everything you need on your container. For me, setting up a Django dev environment, that means Postgres, Python, Virtualenv, and, for this site, all the Geodjango requirements (Postgis, GDAL, etc), along with a few other odds and ends. 
+
+You don't have to do it from inside the container though. Part of LXD's charm is to be able to run commands without logging into anything. Instead you can do this:
+
+~~~~console
+lxc exec debian-base -- apt update
+lxc exec debian-base -- apt install postgresql postgis virtualenv
+~~~~
+
+LXD will output the results of your command as if you were SSHed into a VM. Not being one for typing, I created a bash alias that looks like this: `alias luxdev='lxc exec debian-base -- '` so that all I need to type is `luxdev <command>`.  
+
+What I haven't figured out is how to chain commands, this does not work:
 
 ~~~~console
-lxc info --show-log local:debian
-If this is your first time running LXD on this machine, you should also run: lxd init
-To start your first container, try: lxc launch ubuntu:18.04
+lxc exec debian-base -- su - lxf && cd site && source venv/bin/activate && ./manage.py runserver 0.0.0.0:8000
+~~~~
+
+According to [a bug report](https://github.com/lxc/lxd/issues/2057), it should work in quotes, but it doesn't for me. Something must have changed since then, or I'm doing something wrong.
 
-Error: Get http://unix.socket/1.0: dial unix /var/lib/lxd/unix.socket: connect: permission denied
+The next thing I wanted to do was mount a directory on my host machine in the LXC instance. To do that you'll need to edit `/etc/subuid` and `/etc/subgid` to add your user id. Use the `id` command to get your user and group id (it's probably 1000 but if not, adjust the commands below). Once you have your user id, add it to the files with this one liner I got from the [Ubuntu blog](https://blog.ubuntu.com/2016/12/08/mounting-your-home-directory-in-lxd):
+
+~~~~console
+echo 'root:1000:1' | sudo tee -a /etc/subuid /etc/subgid
 ~~~~
 
-I after a bit of searching I figured out the permissions problem has to do with privileged vs unprivileged containers. I skipped a part in the initial setup on Arch. Out of the box on Arch you'll need to jump through a few extra hoops to run unprivileged containers, which seem odd and even backward to me because as I understand it that exactly what you want to run. For now I have skipped those extra steps until I better understand them. In the mean time I used the workaround suggested in the Arch wiki, which is to append `-c security.privileged=true` to the end of the `launch` command we used a minute ago. However, I believe this defeats one of the major security benefits of containers, by, uh, containing things. So I wouldn
+Then you need to configure your LXC instance to use the same uid:
 
 ~~~~console
-sudo lxc launch images:debian/stretch/amd64 debian -c security.privileged=true 
-Error: Failed container creation: Create container: Add container info to the database: This container already exists                                                                                              
+lxc config set debian-base raw.idmap 'both 1000 1000'
 ~~~~
 
-Okay, so even though we couldn't connect in our previous effort, we did create a container with that name so we need to get rid of it first. Let's see what we have.
+The last step is to add a device to your config file so LXC will mount it. You'll need to stop and start the container for the changes to take effect.
 
 ~~~~console
-sudo lxc list
-+--------+---------+------+------+------------+-----------+
-|  NAME  |  STATE  | IPV4 | IPV6 |    TYPE    | SNAPSHOTS |
-+--------+---------+------+------+------------+-----------+
-| debian | STOPPED |      |      | PERSISTENT |           |
-+--------+---------+------+------+------------+-----------+
+lxc config device add debian-base sitedir disk source=/path/to/your/directory path=/path/to/where/you/want/folder/in/lxc
+lxc stop debian-base
+lxc start debian-base
 ~~~~
 
-Yup, there's our debian container. Now the question is how do delete a container using the `lxc` command? Curiously, the command `lxc-delete`, which you'll discover if you type `man lxc` errored out for me. After a bit of searching I found the LXD equivelant is `lxc delete`:
+That replicates my setup in Vagrant, but we've really just scratched the surface of what you can do with LXD. For example you'll notice I named the initial container "debian-base". That's because this is the base image (fully set up for Djano dev) which I clone whenever I start a new project. To clone a container, first take a snapshot of your base container, then copy that snapshot to create a new container:
 
 ~~~~console
-sudo lxc delete debian
+lxc snapshot debian-base debian-base-configured
+lxc copy debian-base/debian-base-configured mycontainer
 ~~~~
 
-Okay, not back to our create command:
+Now you've got a new container named mycontainer. If you'd like to tweak anything, for example mount a different folder specific to this new project you're starting, you can edit the config file like this:
 
 ~~~~console
-sudo lxc launch images:debian/stretch/amd64 debian -c security.privileged=true
+lxc config edit mycontainer
 ~~~~
+
+I highly suggest reading through Stéphane Graber's 12 part series on LXD to get a better idea of other things you can do, how to manage resources, manage local images, migrate containers, or connect LXD with Juju, Openstack or yes, even Docker.
+
+#####Shoulders stood upon
+
+* [Stéphane Graber's 12 part series on lxd 2.0](https://stgraber.org/2016/03/11/lxd-2-0-blog-post-series-012/) - Graber wrote LXC and LXD, this is the best resource I found and highly recommend reading it all.
+* [Mounting your home directory in LXD](https://blog.ubuntu.com/2016/12/08/mounting-your-home-directory-in-lxd)
+* [Official how to](https://linuxcontainers.org/lxd/getting-started-cli/)
+* [Linux Containers Discourse site](https://discuss.linuxcontainers.org/t/deploying-django-applications/996)
+* [LXD networking: lxdbr0 explained](https://blog.ubuntu.com/2016/04/07/lxd-networking-lxdbr0-explained)
+
+
+[^1]: To be fair, I didn't need to get rid of Vagrant. You can use Vagrant to manage LXC containers, but I don't know why you'd bother. LXD's management tools and config system works great, why add yet another tool to the mix? Unless you're working with developers who use Windows, in which case LXC, which is short for, *Linux Container*, is not for you.