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| -rw-r--r-- | TODO | 53 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | book--how-to-travel/book.txt | 61 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | books/beyond-your-head.txt (renamed from beyond-your-head.txt) | 0 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | books/books-to-do.txt (renamed from books-to-do.txt) | 0 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | covid-notes.txt | 7 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | covid.txt | 36 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | dialogues/violet-crowned-hummingbird.txt (renamed from violet-crowned-hummingbird.txt) | 0 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | eight.txt | 1 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | essays/best-shoes-ive-ever-worn-are-hardly-shoes-all.txt | 29 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | how I set up arch.txt | 3 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | invitation.txt | 50 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | lttr/lttr-01.txt | 38 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | meditation-notes.txt | 5 | ||||
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| -rw-r--r-- | pages/1969-dodge-travco-motorhome.txt | 25 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | published/2006-05-01-closing-time.txt | 45 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | published/2019-10-09_bird-watching.txt (renamed from birds.txt) | 0 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | published/2020-03-04_high-water.txt (renamed from high-water.txt) | 6 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | published/2020-03-11_distant-early-warning.txt (renamed from equinox.txt) | 13 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | published/2020-03-18_pre-apocalyptic-driving-adventures.txt (renamed from pre-apacholyptic-adventures.txt) | 0 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | published/2020-07-01_wouldnt-it-be-nice.txt (renamed from sufficient.txt) | 19 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | published/2020-07-08_windfall.txt (renamed from by-hand.txt) | 8 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | published/2020-07-15_eight.txt | 63 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | published/2020-09-23_summer-teeth.txt | 38 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | published/2020-10-01_light-is-clear-in-my-eyes.txt | 61 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | published/2020-10-28_walking-north-carolina-woods.txt | 57 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | published/2020-11-04_halloween.txt | 44 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | published/2020-12-02_learning-to-ride-bike.txt | 33 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | scratch.txt | 69 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | src/how-use-websters-1913-dictionary-linux-edition.txt | 39 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | src/kindle-hacking.txt (renamed from kindle-hacking.txt) | 0 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | src/qutebrowser-notes.txt (renamed from qutebrowser-notes.txt) | 0 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | src/solving-common-nextcloud-problems.txt | 92 | ||||
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50 files changed, 708 insertions, 304 deletions
@@ -1,18 +1,24 @@ birds to write about: -carolina wren -tree swallow -black capped chickadee -cedar waxwing -kingbird -that hawk on the ground -willet -gold crowned kinglet -blackthroated green warbler +- carolina wren +- tree swallow +- black capped chickadee +- cedar waxwing +- kingbird +- that hawk on the ground +- willet +- gold crowned kinglet +- blackthroated green warbler --- -post on living outside, tiny homes mean you're outside more. public spaces are more important, you end up living in public much more. +- history of american nature writing, listing some more obscure authors and themes + - list of nature writing books, + - where is the thoreau of africa? + - Is there a thoreau of russia? + - what is the relationship of other literatures to nature? + +--- "It seems to me that we all look at nature too much, and live with her too little." -Oscar Wilde, De Profundis @@ -21,7 +27,6 @@ The average person spends 87% of their time indoors and another 6% in enclosed v --- ## GUIDES - - How to travel as a woman alone in RV - The best camp stoves - How to make great Coffee - Health Insurance @@ -36,29 +41,3 @@ The average person spends 87% of their time indoors and another 6% in enclosed v - Boondocking - Birdwatching https://www.adventure-journal.com/2019/10/how-to-choose-binoculars-a-guide-for-the-optics-curious/ - Road schooling - - - -## ESSAYS - - Panasonic Lumix S1R Field Test - ** tasks: - - create CSS of inline picture stories ala CM - - create referal link callout at top of the page - - - - TNF essay - - history of american nature writing, listing some more obscure authors, (themes therein?) - - list of nature writing books, - - where is the thoreau of africa? - - Is there a thoreau of russia? - - what is the relationship of other literatures to nature? - -## JRNL - - Birthday quickly followed by Summertime rolls - - Invitation to mailing list - - - -# Completed - - Sounds of mexico 2019-03-12 - - Blessing of the seeds Candelaria 2019-03-20 - - Eggs in the jardin 2019-03-26 diff --git a/book--how-to-travel/book.txt b/book--how-to-travel/book.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 83ec439..0000000 --- a/book--how-to-travel/book.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,61 +0,0 @@ -## Get a side hustle. - -There are literally thousands, tens of thousands of ways to make a little extra money on the side. Hit up Google for a few thousand examples. Except that copying someone else's side hustle doesn't always work out for you the way it did for them. Markets change, early movers -- i.e. the people whose ideas you're thinking of copying -- have advantages you do not. Markets mature and pricing tends to decline over time. Once upon a time you could make a boatload of cash drop shipping Miracle Fruit (that berry you eat that makes lemons taste sweet). It was a novelty that no one was really importing. Then 1000 people were and the proverbial bottom dropped out. - -The takeaway isn't that side hustles therefore are impossible, rather than copying someone else's side hustle isn't always a good idea. - -That said there are some patterns or types of side hustles that you can copy. I'm going to tell about two that helped earn my family and I an average of about $300 extra a month and required about 4 hours or so a week of effort (I say average because there are $50 months and there are $500 months). We could in fact have made much more than that if we'd been willing to put in more time, but we weren't. - -### Master Ebay/Craiglist - -Ebay, Craiglsist and others that offer simple ways to sell things are a gold mine for making money on the side. They require almost no effort on your part and formula is very simple: buy low, sell high. - -The bit question is *what* should you sell. The answer is, pick a market that either is appealing enough for you to do research on or that you already know well enough to know what's low and what's high. - -My wife buys and sells children's shoes and brings in about $100-$300 a month doing so. The process is pretty simple, she goes to the local thrift stores and second hand clothing stores and buys shoes for about $1-$3 and then sells them on Ebay for $10-$20 plus shipping. The net profit then is anywhere from $7 - $19, occasionally more. It's not earth shattering, but she spends about 3 hours a week on it, an hour at the thrift store, a couple hours taking photos and listing everything. She sells about 5 pairs a week, bringing in an average of $50 week (I know this because I averaged it out using the Paypal admin). It's not paying the bills, that's why I call it a side hustle, but an extra $1000 to $3000 a year is 25 percent of our annual living expenses on the road. If you're single $3000 can last you six months in many parts of the world. - -And remember this is just one thing that took about four hours a week. Doubling out input time would have doubled the output (I know this because for three months we did double the input time and the income did in fact double), though after that there are probably diminishing returns. In other words 4x the input would not be earning us $12,000 a year. - -Now I know what you're thinking. *Okay, that's great, but I know nothing about children's shoes...* Me either, so this might not be the best choice for you or I. Again, it's the idea, no the details that I want you to focus on. - -That said, it's worth pointing out that my wife didn't know much about children's shoes when she started. In fact our kids weren't even wearing shoes yet when she started. Corrinne came up with idea because she was in a Facebook group of parents buying and selling kids clothes and toys and stuff. She was getting things cheap for our girls and in course of doing that she noticed that parents spend absurd amounts of money on children's shoes. - -My wife is much smarter than me so where I just made fun of people for wasting their money on something their kids would out grow in six months, she saw an opportunity. - -Because kids outgrow shoes very quickly the shoes typically have very little wear. However, people who spend $60 on kids shoes that will last three months also seem to not make much effort to re-sell them. Apparently if you have that kinds of money you just chuck them in the donate pile and send them off. That means thrift stores often have very popular shoes with almost no wear and tear at rock bottom prices. - -At the same time there are lots of parents around the country who do not buy expensive new shoes, but still want their kids to have to the "coolest" shoes. These parent haunt eBay and are willing to spend roughly 50-60% of retail value. - -So you buy low at the thrift stores and used clothing shops and then turn around and sell high on eBay. The spread is yours to squirrel away for plane tickets to Buenos Aires. - -When Corrinne started she bought and sold brands she already new, Converse and other big names like that, but as she got more involved in the market she began to pick up other names and now she knows what to look for, what can turn the biggest profit and what to avoid. As an added bonus our kids have very cool shoes, not that they care, but if you ever see photos on luxagraf rest assured the shoes were bought used on th super cheap. - -What's the take away? Simple: buy low, sell high. - -In many cases you can do the entire buy low, sell high on eBay. As I was writing this chapter my wife yelled from the other room to tell me a a pair of shoes she bought on eBay for $11 just re-sold for $23. Technically "flipping" these shoes was not the plan, they were in fact for our daughter Olivia, but they didn't end up fitting so my wife relisted to recoup the money and ended up more than doubling her money. - -There are ways to buy low and sell high all within eBay, no leaving the house necessary. Sometimes you just get lucky, as my wife just did, but there are actually some tricks you can use to increase your luck. One great way to do this is to search common misspellings of the items you want to flip. Because these listing have typos they don't show up in searches, get very few bids and (sometimes) that means they sell well below their actual value. There are dozens of sites you can use to automate this process, but I use [TypoHound](http://typohound.com/). It's pretty simple, you just enter a search term and it generates a link to an eBay search based on common misspellings and typos. You can then follow that search on eBay and keep track of items that are misspelled. I don't actually flip things this way, but I do use this whenever I buy something for my own use. - -If you want to try something similar start by shopping for something on eBay or Craigslst. Ebay is more useful at this stage because you can look at finished auctions to get an idea of what things actually sell for. Don't forget that you can ask anything on eBay, the only thing that matters is what people actually pay and to see that you only want to look at finished auctions. - -Once you have a niche selected and general idea of what the high price is, the question is can you get it for less? One of the great advantages of Ebay over craigslist is that Ebay reaches a national audience. That means you can leverage the fact that your town's thrift stores are stuffed full of old Patagonia rain gear and people in San Francisco will pay top dollar for those jackets (I made that example up, but you get the idea). One persons junk is another person's treasure and you if you can connect those two people and make the spread you will make money. - -Another approach if you're a handy person is to buy things that are broken and then fix them and sell for a profit. There's more effort involved in this and there's ahigher potential risk (if it turns out you can't fix it, you're screwed), but there's a correspondingly higher payoff as well. The internet abounds with people who've made many thousands of dollars flipping things on eBay and Craigslist. I find [Ryan Finlay's ReCraigslist.com](http://recraigslist.com/) to be one of the most helpful. He even has an entire [online course](http://applianceschool.com/) on how to flip appliances like he did. - -That's not an endorsement by the way, just an example of how a little side hustle can actually turn into a very lucrative income. Now our goal isn;t to build a brick and morter business, pretty much the opposite in fact, but it is certainly possible to make a tone of money this way. - -That said, one thing I hate about overly enthusiastic sales pitches is that they pick a few (possibly outlier) examples and make it seem like you can do it to, you plunk down the money and then... nothing. You fail. What's wrong with you? Nothing really, I failed too. - -Before I get all pep talkish on you and lay out the excercises for this chapter, let me tell you a little bit about my failure to make money on ebay. I used to collect books. I lived in western Masschusetts for three years (three loooong winters) and as anyone who lives in NEw England can tell you that area is a treasure trove of used book stores. AT one point I had something in the neighborhood of 1000 volumes. I sold about half of them before I traveled around the world the first time, but I stored the rest and still had them when we were getting ready to make the move to our current mobile lifestyle. - -Watching my wife bring in tidy sums of money on shoes I thought, hey, no problem, I'll just unload all these books. Except that no bought my book. I listed them at pretty good deal, then at great deals, then, just to see what happned I listed a few a $.99. Not one sale. Why? I don't know. And that's why I failed. I did no research, I didn't know the market, I didn't even check to see if there was a market for books on eBay (turns out, not really). I ended up having a book sale in front of our house and did quite well there, so it was not a total loss, but I recount it hear to illustrate a point: do not assume you understand a market, get out there and do your research, watch auctions, look at finished auctions and find the selling price. Then look for the lowest possible buying price. - -### Exercises - -1) Go sign up for an ebay account and a paypal account. Connect them up so you're ready to sell. - -2) Find something in your house that's - - - -## Side Hustle #2: Use your skills. diff --git a/beyond-your-head.txt b/books/beyond-your-head.txt index e2cacf6..e2cacf6 100644 --- a/beyond-your-head.txt +++ b/books/beyond-your-head.txt diff --git a/books-to-do.txt b/books/books-to-do.txt index 671d6e4..671d6e4 100644 --- a/books-to-do.txt +++ b/books/books-to-do.txt diff --git a/covid-notes.txt b/covid-notes.txt deleted file mode 100644 index b500080..0000000 --- a/covid-notes.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,7 +0,0 @@ -While I agree people need to get back to work, and I look forward to them being able to do so (I am fortunate to work from home and so far, have been able to continue), I do worry about some of the findings that suggest there may be long term consequences to covid-19, even among the asymptomatic, e.g., lungs are affected even though people didn't even know they had the disease: - -https://pubs.rsna.org/doi/10.1148/ryct.2020200110 - -I've seen other less formal reports of lingering damage to the heart and kidneys as well. I think this hits a big blindspot in American thinking regarding the virus (conceiving of the future isn't our nation's strong suit). On one had perhaps there's nothing to be done, no way to avoid that longer term impact and we just have to bear it collectively. On the other I wonder how considering this might change our individual responses? If we knew there was - -I know for me, meditating on this over the course of the last few weeks has made me consider my choices in the light of future impacts. But maybe that's just me, I've always been on the collapse now, avoid the rush bandwagon (I found you years ago from a link in a permaculture forum when I was first experimenting with hügelkultur beds). diff --git a/covid.txt b/covid.txt deleted file mode 100644 index fe67407..0000000 --- a/covid.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,36 +0,0 @@ -"I wish travel in the widespread recommendation sense was understood and in a wider or more metaphorical sense. Try out new things. Different ways of living. Associating with different socioeconomic classes. Different kinds of works. Different faiths. Different politics. Different ways of providing for yourself. Testing boundaries." - - -At the risk of pointing out the obvious, life is not on pause. Culture is on pause. - - - -This seems to be something that becomes whatever the politicians want it to be. This is no longer about health and science. - - - - - - -This is the same sort of paradox Michael Pollan identified regarding food: we are the first generation to have obesity and malnourishment simultaneously. - - - - -• 104 nuclear reactors in 31 states, operated by 30 different companies. Every single one “temporarily” storing high-level waste that will be lethal for 10,000 to 24,000 years - -• 40,000 to 80,000 (exact number unknown) chemical factories producing or processing materials with multiple “compounds known to be carcinogenic and/or mutagenic” - -• More than 40 weapons-testing facilities and 70,000 nuclear bombs and missiles - -• 104,000,000 cubic meters of high-level radioactive waste from weapons-testing activities alone - -• 925 operating uranium mines - -• 20 to 30 times the average historical background rates of mercury in rain - -• 2,200 square miles of excavated valleys and leveled mountains in Appalachia alone - -• 478,562 active natural gas mines in the United States in 2008, with 1,800 expected to be drilled in the Marcellus Shale of Pennsylvania alone in 2010 - -• 18,433,779,281 cubic feet of trash per year, or 100,000 acres of trash one-foot deep per year, or about 250 square miles, with trash 400 feet deep diff --git a/violet-crowned-hummingbird.txt b/dialogues/violet-crowned-hummingbird.txt index 35e779e..35e779e 100644 --- a/violet-crowned-hummingbird.txt +++ b/dialogues/violet-crowned-hummingbird.txt diff --git a/eight.txt b/eight.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 33e83dc..0000000 --- a/eight.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1 +0,0 @@ -I feel like these days call for a reminder that it's okay to be happy. diff --git a/essays/best-shoes-ive-ever-worn-are-hardly-shoes-all.txt b/essays/best-shoes-ive-ever-worn-are-hardly-shoes-all.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..97780aa --- /dev/null +++ b/essays/best-shoes-ive-ever-worn-are-hardly-shoes-all.txt @@ -0,0 +1,29 @@ +The Z-Trail sandals from footwear maker Xero are true "barefoot" shoes. The [sandals](https://xeroshoes.com/shop/gender/mens/ztrail-men/) are so thin of sole, so minimal of strap, I routinely forget I'm wearing them. Which is the whole point: Instead of protecting your feet from the ground, barefoot shoes bring the feel of the ground through the sole to your feet. + +Barefoot shoes—a design that has gained a sizable following among runners and outdoors enthusiasts, particularly those of us inclined to believe that modernity creates more problems than it solves—take everything you think you know about shoes and inverts it. + +A growing body of evidence [suggests](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090724091339.htm) that the padding in the modern shoe [isn't good for your feet](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24500535/). Allowing your feet to bend, twist, flex, stretch and otherwise do [what feet evolved to do](https://www.nature.com/articles/nature08723) can reduce injuries and improve balance and agility. The more information your feet can convey to your brain, the better you can navigate the terrain. + +Still, there's something undeniably quixotic about paying real money for footwear with almost no support or cushion. While emerging science appears to be on the side of bare feet, for me the barefoot shoe is about something more than the purely physical benefits. I have had a lifelong love affair with being barefoot, because to be barefoot is to be free. + +Not free in any political sense of the word, but free in the way you were free as a child. Free to run and jump and play. Free of obligation. Free to do whatever you wanted for no reason at all because that freedom is the foundation of all human delight. + +Remember when school first let out for the summer? Your feet had been imprisoned in shoes all through the year and suddenly they were free. You'd head to the pool or the beach or the park and jump out of the car with bare feet, ready to play. Of course, it hurt. The burning hot asphalt singed your bare soles. But it hurt so good. Walking across the hot blacktop was nothing compared to the boredom of staring at a blackboard all day. That pain would be gone after a few weeks—your feet are remarkably adaptable body parts—but that sense of freedom remained. + +This carries into adulthood. What do we do at the end of the long day? We take off our shoes. If you're barefoot, it's unlikely you're working. (And if you can do your job barefoot, congratulations, you win.) If you're barefoot, you're also unlikely to have any pressing tasks. You're more likely to be in the backyard or at a pool or at the park or at the beach. You're probably outside and free, or at least doing something delightful. + +There was only one thing that ruined those barefoot summers. It was that sign you'd always see at the entrance to the mini mart: "No shirt. No shoes. No service." Ah, commerce, enemy of freedom. + +That's where the Z-Trails come in. I'm not ten anymore. I want my freedom *and* I want to go into the store. The soles of the Z-Trails are 10 millimeters thin, and the shoes are enough that I don't even notice them in my bag. (They're a favorite camp shoe among ultralight backpackers.) Walking around, I still feel like I'm barefoot. My feet stretch and flex and bend and roll the same way they would even if I wasn't wearing the sandals. + +While I had already tried a few barefoot shoes, I wasn't sold on the idea until I tried the $80 Z-Trails. Every other "barefoot" design I had tried felt too much like a regular shoe. Then Xero sent me a pair of the sandals to test for a barefoot shoes buying guide I'm working on. I distinctly remember putting them on and going outside to walk around the yard for a bit. I remember following my kids around the yard, and when they headed into the brambles at the back of the house, I hesitated. I thought I wasn't wearing shoes. Then I looked at my feet, and surprise, I *was* wearing shoes. I plowed right into the brambles. Twenty minutes later, I was on the Xero Shoes website buying myself three pairs. Since that day, I have worn next to nothing else on my feet. + +Barefoot shoe advocates would probably prefer I extol the science behind the benefits of barefoot shoes rather than sounding like a hippie chasing childhood memories down flower strewn trails, but you can discover that yourself by starting with the links I put at the top of this piece. I will also say that an increasing body of evidence shows that, while comfortable shoes make life easy on our feet, they make life much harder on the rest of our body. Balance and coordination decline over time, injuries become more likely. + +More compelling to me, the Xero Z-Trails are the type of shoes people have worn for most of human history. The materials may be new, but the design is very nearly as old as human feet. Put on these sandals and you will walk like your ancestors. Their tactility creates a positive feedback loop between your feet and your brain. You step on a rock, your brain tells your muscles to adjust. Your balance improves, you stumble less. Your feet grow tougher too. + +The benefits of barefoot shoes cascade over time, but if you decide to dive in, start slowly. *Very* slowly. Xero founder Steven Sashen suggests anyone curious about barefoot shoes should begin by going outside and walking about ten steps in bare feet. Yes, just ten. Then tomorrow, walk 20 steps. If there's no pain, keep increasing the daily step counts from there. + +I should probably say there may still be some circumstances where padded shoes are better. In October, I spent three days of hiking some of the most brutal, root-strewn, leaf-covered [rocky trails the North Carolina mountains](/jrnl/2020/10/walking-north-carolina-woods) have to offer with 50 pounds on my back and barefoot shoes on my feet. I chickened out and did not wear the Z-Trails backpacking. Instead, I wore [Xero's HFS road running shoe](https://xeroshoes.com/shop/shoes/hfs-men/). It doesn’t offer any more padding than the sandal, but since it's an actual enclosed shoe, it’s better at keeping your foot situated over the sole. Even though I was worried my feet would slide around too much in the Z-Trail sandals, the HFS turned out to be overkill. I missed my sandals. + +In fact, the only thing better is letting my bare feet free. That’s the point after all—to feel the world. So even if I haven't convinced you, and even if you never buy a pair of barefoot shoes, take a moment every now and then to delight in that child-like joy of feeling the ground beneath your feet, the earth between your toes. Your soles will thank you. diff --git a/how I set up arch.txt b/how I set up arch.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2a91095 --- /dev/null +++ b/how I set up arch.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +espeak +yay +vivaldi-snapshot diff --git a/invitation.txt b/invitation.txt index 2310397..9ac6cab 100644 --- a/invitation.txt +++ b/invitation.txt @@ -1,49 +1,51 @@ -In 1993 I moved to the sleepy little college town of Redlands, California. Wedged between two mountain ranges, the Mojave desert, and Los Angeles, Redlands was a good base camp for the hiking, climbing, skiing and body surfing I hoped to get out of college. +**TL;DR**: I started a club in the form of an email newsletter. I call it *Friends of a Long Year*. We meet once a month, digitally, in your email. If you'd like to join, drop your email address in the box below. If you'd like to know why you might want to join, and where the name comes from, read on. -Redlands was also one of a handful of colleges where you could write your own degree program, which I thought sounded like a swell idea. It turned out to be a good deal more work than I imagined, but I originally planned to write a major that was one part photography and one part "nature writing". +<iframe target='_parent' style="border:none; background:white; width:100%;" title="embedded form for subscribing the the Friends of a Long Year newsletter" src="/newsletter/friends/subscribe"></iframe> -I still think it was a good idea, one I could never let go. Luxagraf is more or less the third draft of this idea. +Late last year I got it into my head that I should start a club, a good old fashioned club, like the Elks or the Masons. -The first draft did not take off. I dropped out after two semesters. Before slinking back down the freeway to Los Angeles I did manage to write and complete a couple of classes. One was akin to Nature Writing 101, if such a thing existed[^1]. I tried to keep it simple, I had a lot of photography and climbing and hiking to do as well. So I read and wrote about authors I'd already read before. I didn't get too creative, mostly the usual American nature writing suspects -- Thoreau, Abbey, Dillard, Lopez, Stegner. +But then, we travel, how the heck would that work, traveling while trying to have a club that has meetings? Hmmm. Well, then, a digital club. But what does that look like? And what is a club really? Why would you join one? -Fortunately, my advisor in this project, who looked like a heavier-set John Muir, threw in a few authors I was not familiar with. I remember thinking damn, I *am* going to have to do some work. But that's how I first heard of Mary Hunter Austin. +There's actually [a really good book][1] about this, but I think it boils down to getting together with people and talking, building a community, usually around a common interest or theme. A good club is a way of bringing together people from all walks of life who have some thing in common. -Austin lived and travel in the Mojave desert for 17 years, studying the wildlife, as well has human life. She documented native and immigrant life in the region long before anyone else. But she is probably best known for a book called <cite>The Land of Little Rain</cite>, her <cite>Walden<cite>, with the Mojave desert starring in the role of Thoreau's pond. +[1]: https://bookshop.org/books/bowling-alone-the-collapse-and-revival-of-american-community-9781982130848/9781982130848 -Perhaps she came to early. The west, especially the Mojave desert, wasn't fully settled when Austin went exploring and writing. She began traipsing around the desert in the 1890s, no one wanted to think about anything but silver and gold and pick axes and railroads. Austin's sensibility as a writer was colored by three things that flew in the face of her time, and to an unfortunate degree, ours as well. Mary Austin was three things that a nature writer shall not be: a woman, a mystic, and a defender of rights and lives of native people. It was the middle thing that intrigued me then, and it still does today because, I think it's what grew out of the other two things. +Around the same time I was thinking that I should start a club, I pitched (but later abandoned) an article about the email culture of the early 2000s, what now looks like the golden age of email. Perhaps you remember that time? The days when you would email friends just to say hello, just because frictionless simplicity of email was still new and exciting. -Recently, in searching for new books for the kids, I was re-united with Austin. Austin wrote several children's books. I stumbled across one, <cite>The Trail Book</cite>, that the girls loved. Exhibits in the Natural History Museum in New York come to live for two children and various adventure ensue. Finding this sent me off searching for more Austin, and somewhere in the early hours of the morning, bleary-eyed and half-asleep at the keyboard, I ran across a digital copy of a collection of Austin's short stories called <cite> Lost Borders</cite>. What caught my eye was the dedication, "to Marion Burke and the Friends of a Long Year." +I distinctly remember the emails my friend Mike used to send. He was traveling around Southeast Asia in those days. He didn't *blog* about 13 Things You Have to Do in Thailand or some bullshit. He emailed us. Like we were people, not *readers* or *supporters*. He didn't write to an audience, he wrote to *us*, his friends, his club if you will. He wrote about the things he did, riding elephants, walking on beaches, visiting ruins. They were little things these emails, but they were great. I looked forward to those emails more than I look forward to anything on the internet of today. -Who were the friends of a long year? What were the friends of a long year? When were the friends of a long year? It's hard to tell from the typesetting if Austin capitalized Friends of a Long Year or not, but I like to think she did, I like to think it was some kind of club. I did a little research before I dragged myself to bed and dreamed of the friends of a long year. +This is all I want to do with this club, to bring a little bit of joy back to your inbox. -<hr /> +So this club is an email newsletter in the spirit of Mike's emails[^1]. I call it *Friends of a Long Year*. -As several people have noted, I've been writing for luxagraf less than previously. There are partly practical reasons for this, but also I've been suffering from the feeling of writing into a black hole. +I know what you're thinking, that's not much of a club there Scott, that's just you email us. And, well... that's true. I do have some additional plans. More things to build, which takes time. But as they say, you have to start. You have to overcome the inertia. First email. Then the world. -Now I know a few thousand people a month stop by this site, and I know that several hundred of them appear to actually read things, or perhaps they go off to make coffee and forget to close the tab. Either way I guess I can say I know there are readers out there. +Now, that name. What is *with* that name? -Unfortunately, I've recently come to realize I don't really want to have readers, I want to have conversations. +The name comes from Mary Hunter Austin, and we need to say some things about Austin because I think she might be the sort of beacon we need just now. Certainly she will be the guiding beacon of this newsletter. -I spend most of my time on the internet interacting with communities, sometimes through forums, occasionally through the comments on websites, but what I like is having conversations. +Mary Hunter Austin was an explorer, botanist, desert rat, author, mystic, misfit. She was also far ahead of, and out of step with, her time. All qualities we could use more of just now. -And I've come to think that websites might not be such a good way to have a conversation. They're rather one-sided. And leaving comments here is kind of a pain because I have to moderate them, you have to come back to see if I responded and so on. Technology is getting in the way of the conversations. +Austin lived in, explored, and wrote about the Mojave desert of Nevada and California at the turn of the 20th century. What makes her writing special is that she saw things other people did not. At a time when most people saw the Mojave desert as a wasteland to be mined, Austin saw a thing of raw, majestic beauty. -But wait, Scott, this problem has been solved. You can post on Facebook or Twitter. Those are great for conversations! +Most people in her day hurried across the desert to the central valley of California to farm. Mary Austin stayed behind to wander the desert. She dug down, got to know the sand. She wrote about the sand. She wrote about dry, cracked, brutal expanses of sand. She wrote about the hills rising out of the desert heat, about the mountains above the hills. She wrote about the natives calling this strange place home. She wrote about the immigrants trying to make it home. -Well. So. No. Those are not the conversations I want to have. +She saw what no one else around seemed to notice because she paid careful attention to details. She did not hurry through. She did not gloss over. -Conversations in public become strangely twisted by the knowledge of the audience watching. The same thing happens when you record a conversation. People change, slide that public persona mask on. +These are qualities we need more of. We need more adventurers, explorers, more curiosity, more DIYers, more attention to details, more mystics, more misfits digging in the sand. -So, in casting about for some solution to this problem I considered building a forum. I may still do that, but then I happened to think of these really long emails my friend Mike used to send when he was traveling around Southeast Asia decades ago. He'd send them to a group of us, people would respond, threads would form, conversations would be had, things were learned, plans were made. +I think it's possible Austin and friends founded our club. Austin's collection of short stories, <cite>Lost Borders</cite>, is dedicated "to Marion Burke and the Friends of a Long Year." -I don't think I've ever given my friend Mike the credit he deserves for propelling me on the trajectory that my life has been on since 2005. But he does deserve credit. And some of it goes to those emails. +It's a mysterious dedication. Who were the friends of a long year? What were the friends of a long year? When were the friends of a long year? I like to think it was some kind of club. Some kind of gathering of explorers out in the wilds of the desert. -So I decided to start a newsletter in the spirit of Mike's emails, about things Mary Austin would have enjoyed talking about, deserts, mountains, trees, walking, photography, and yes, mystics. If you'd like to join the Friends of a Long Year, you can do so right here: +So I decided the *Friends of a Long Year* is the club we will build, or perhaps rebuild. In the spirit of Mary Austin. And Mike's emails. +I don't know exactly what it will be, or where it will go, but it will be done in the spirit of the emails we used to send back in the early 2000s, it will strive to bring joy to your inbox. It will be about things Mary Austin would have enjoyed talking about: deserts, mountains, trees, oceans, misfits, mystics, and marvels of the mundane. If you'd like to join *Friends of a Long Year*, you can do so right here: +<iframe target='_parent' style="border:none; background:white; width:100%;" title="embedded form for subscribing the the Friends of a Long Year newsletter" src="/newsletter/friends/subscribe"></iframe> -Two things to note. Until the list gets to large for it I plan to send these by hand in such a way that you can reply directly to me, no one else will see your response. I encourage you to do so, that's the point after all. Mailing lists are for introverts, we can have a conversation without the rest of the world looking on and I think that's a good thing. +Two things to note: First, I [built my own mailing list software](). This was an adventure (natch) and took a lot longer than I expected, but it was worth it. I looked around for some existing software that respected your privacy, the way email did in the early 2000s, but found nothing. So I made my own. There are no tracking codes, no pixels, no sneaky links, nothing. It's just an email. I will have no idea if you read them or not. +The only way I will even know you got the email is if you hit reply, and I encourage you to do so. It's set up in such a way that you are only replying to me. There's no way to accidentally reply to the whole list -- we all have a painful story about that happening. Don't worry, that can't happen here, no one else will ever see your response. And I encourage you to respond, that's the point after all. -[^1]: Nowadays it does, perhaps not under that name, and not at every school, but it's out there. -[^2]: Not that I don't find it interesting +[^1]: I don't think I've ever given my friend Mike the credit he deserves for propelling me on the trajectory that my life has been on since 2005. But he does deserve credit. And some of it goes to those emails. diff --git a/lttr/lttr-01.txt b/lttr/lttr-01.txt index 07b137e..b3fa3b8 100644 --- a/lttr/lttr-01.txt +++ b/lttr/lttr-01.txt @@ -1,19 +1,43 @@ Greetings Friends! -In case you've forgotten, you signed up for this mailing list at luxagraf.net. <https://luxagraf.net/newsletter/> +In case you've forgotten, you signed up for this mailing list at [luxagraf.net](https://luxagraf.net/newsletter/friends/) and you can unsubscribe just as easily, no hard feelings, there's a link at the bottom of this email. -It's raining and I'm sitting in the bus watching the water run down the windows. I'm feeling a little smug because, so far as I can tell over the last hour or so, there is only one leak. One leak is pretty good for fifty-year-old rubber seals. But as I often say, people who claim their RVs don't leak are really saying they don't know *where* their RVs leak. +Hello from the early days of December, where it is finally, genuinely cold. What we call cold around here anyway. +My desk is just to the right of the front door, which no one uses, and there's a window next to the door that I look out. But it's cracked and leaks cold air. It's 26 degrees F outside. There's a good chance it's colder wherever you are, but here in South Carolina, that counts as cold. -The other thing I did while I waited for the rain to stop, was publish an essay on using a waffle iron as an oven. It's a slightly different version of something I write for WIRED. This one isn't as breathlessly excited, since that's WIRED, not me. But I enjoy it more I think. Did you know you can make just about anything in a waffle iron? True story: +It's strange how relative temperature is though -- there were days when I lived in Massachusetts when 26 F would count as warm. Cold depends on what you're used to. Most things depend on what you're used to. Habit is a force to be reckoned with. -<https://luxagraf.net/essays/waffle-world> +I should really do something about the cracked window. The wafts of arctic air are terrible for the monthly electric bill. Right now though, I rather enjoy it. The cold keeps me more awake, gives me that slight discomfort that reminds you you're a human, in a body. Best not to forget that. -Until next time... +--- --s +<img src="images/2020/DSC03568_O1GZTQr.jpg" id="image-2526" class="picfull" /> + +Earlier today I did something I have never done in my forty-five years of living: I cut down my own Christmas tree. + +It was like temporarily living in a Norman Rockwell painting. We traipsed through the forest in search of an appropriate tree. There was no snow, but it was suitably cold at least. We ended up cutting down a tree much larger than we needed and then just using the top. Small trees turn out to be scraggly things, unless they're spruce or fir, neither of which grow around here. + +It sounds simple enough when I write it, but imagine it would have been hilarious to watch. + +The only hand saw I have is a mitre saw, which is terrible for cutting down trees. It took an embarrassingly long time to get through a 6-inch diameter tree trunk. Then you'd have seen us dragging and pulling, grunting and sweating our way out of the forest and back to the house where we quickly realized it was still far too large. We have 12-foot ceilings here, but even with that I had to go back at it with the saw, taking off another foot or two from the base. + +Then we dragged it in the front door and tried to stand it up only to realize it was still way too tall. I cut another foot off right in the living room, sawdust piling on the floor. Tried to stand it up again. Still too tall. Sigh. More sawdust. + +Eventually we got it down to size, but it's still so tall I can't reach the top of it. + +Somewhere in the midst of all that sawing I started wondering how it was we ended up cutting down trees for Christmas anyway. Rituals that involve destruction of the natural environment around you tend to make for short-lived civilizations. Just ask an Easter Islander. + +It turns out Christmas trees are a relatively recent ritual. At least cutting them down. That habit was imported by the Germans about 150 years ago. Decorating with evergreen boughs -- a more sustainable approach -- goes all the way back to Greek times, possibly further. Of course the Greeks were celebrating the Winter Solstice, not Christmas. + +Massachusetts, place of bitter cold and, historically, bitterness, once outlawed any Christmas celebration other than a church service. A win for sustainability and trees, but a loss for, well, everything else. People were fined for hanging evergreens or decorating in any way. Because who wants all that joy around them? Not Massachusettians of days past. Christmas trees were too much fun for Puritans. Or maybe they just hated trudging out in the woods to get one. There were witches in those woods. + +We don't have any witches in our woods. So far as I have been able to observe anyway. Still, I wonder about these rituals we stumble through. I suspect they're far more important than we give them credit for. These stories we tell ourselves about ourselves shape us, they determine our behavior, our destiny to some degree, perhaps to a large degree. They feel like the kinds of things we should spend more time considering, but we don't. Or I don't. Not often anyway. + +That's what gives them their power. Those stories are there, shaping our existence whether we stop to consider them our not. For me it usually takes something to jar me into questioning my habits, like being tired of sawing. Why am I sawing again? What are we doing out in this forest full of witches in the (relative) freezing cold? --- +Technical note: the software that I wrote to generate, mail, and archive these letters may be a bit rough around the edges, for which I apologize in advance. I am sending this a week late because I needed to fix some last minute issues. But if you see anything completely, bizarrely wrong looking. Or you get 300 copies. Please do let me know. -You can unsubscribe from this newsletter whenever you like, just reply with the word "unsubscribe" and you'll be removed, no hard feelings, no questions asked. +-s diff --git a/meditation-notes.txt b/meditation-notes.txt index 604a763..e69de29 100644 --- a/meditation-notes.txt +++ b/meditation-notes.txt @@ -1,5 +0,0 @@ -take structure and code of notes site, apply it to organizing MM archive -luxagraf essay tracing history of american nature writing, listing some more obscure authors, (themes therein?) -luxagraf list of nature writing books, where is the thoreau of africa? Is there a thoreau of russia? and so on. what is the relationship of other literatures to nature. - -"the joy of travel, in this case, had less to do with the actual motion of travel than escaping the 9-to-5, suburban, consumer-capitalist world of which I’d been a clock-punching member from the beginning. My escape proved life-affirming and necessary." https://rolfpotts.com/ken-ilgunas/ diff --git a/motivational.txt b/motivational.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..73f76cd --- /dev/null +++ b/motivational.txt @@ -0,0 +1,21 @@ +At the risk of sounding like a motivational poster, I feel like these days call for a reminder that it's okay to be happy. + +It's been a very different year, a terrible one for some people. But it's possible, it's okay to have sympathy for those people, while still being happy yourself. Happiness is not a zero sum game, you being unhappy on someone else's behalf does not make them any happier. + +In fact, about the only thing I can say for sure is that sitting around bemoaning the state of the world doesn't help anyone or anything. If you're not happy that's okay, but sit down and figure out why. Then see if there's something you can do about it. Unless you're reading this from prison, there's probably something you can do to make yourself feel better. It might be something really simple, like petting your dog or making raspberry studdle bars, but there's probably something. + +If you're like a lot of people I know, you're probably in a kind of shock that the world took a turn you weren't expecting. I feel you. This year has actually been pretty good to me, but the world took several turns in 2019 that I was not expecting and frankly, did not like. No, they sucked. I did not like those turns. I opposed those turns. A year ago I was spending most of my time feeling like people I know are feeling right now. + +I was probably worse though. I was whiny and feeling bad for myself because the future arrrived and did not look at all like I planned for it to look. + + that assuming the future will be whatever it is we want it to be has always been an unwise, baseless assumption. The future will be whatever it damn well pleases, our task is to navigate it. + + +I feel like these days call for a reminder that it's okay to be happy. + + +Sometimes when I start writing I don't really have a plan about where what I'm writing will end up, this is one of those pieces I considered putting on Wired, but thought no, wrong, albiet much larger, audience. Sometimes it's better to reach the right 10 people than thousands of the wrong people. + +I got an ad the other day that instead of back to school, said back to learning. As if learning were a thing that didn't happen all the time. And sure, it's just an ad, ads exist to make you feel bad about yourself in some way so that you'll buy something to try to assauge that pain. That said, it's a sad slogan. + +When I said that living in a bus didn't help prepare us for a pandemic, I did acknowledge that working from home and homeschooling our kids definitely *did* helpi @@ -1,3 +1,31 @@ + + + +This is the same sort of paradox Michael Pollan identified regarding food: we are the first generation to have obesity and malnourishment simultaneously. + + +From Ben Falk's book: + +• 104 nuclear reactors in 31 states, operated by 30 different companies. Every single one “temporarily” storing high-level waste that will be lethal for 10,000 to 24,000 years + +• 40,000 to 80,000 (exact number unknown) chemical factories producing or processing materials with multiple “compounds known to be carcinogenic and/or mutagenic” + +• More than 40 weapons-testing facilities and 70,000 nuclear bombs and missiles + +• 104,000,000 cubic meters of high-level radioactive waste from weapons-testing activities alone + +• 925 operating uranium mines + +• 20 to 30 times the average historical background rates of mercury in rain + +• 2,200 square miles of excavated valleys and leveled mountains in Appalachia alone + +• 478,562 active natural gas mines in the United States in 2008, with 1,800 expected to be drilled in the Marcellus Shale of Pennsylvania alone in 2010 + +• 18,433,779,281 cubic feet of trash per year, or 100,000 acres of trash one-foot deep per year, or about 250 square miles, with trash 400 feet deep + + + ## Novelty and place It's one Barry Lopez spends some time on in *Artic Dreams*, noting that for natives of the Arctic Circle, "land does... what architecture sometimes does for us. It provides a sense of place, of scale, of history." Architecture has never done much for me, but I've been known to try constructing a cathedral of words to describe simple things, the way a blade of grass bends in the wind. diff --git a/pages/1969-dodge-travco-motorhome.txt b/pages/1969-dodge-travco-motorhome.txt index 97e5776..4ebae98 100644 --- a/pages/1969-dodge-travco-motorhome.txt +++ b/pages/1969-dodge-travco-motorhome.txt @@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ We found this 1969 Dodge Travco Motorhome on Craigslist in June of 2015. We drov ### What's it like to live in a 1969 Dodge Travco Motorhome? -Lots of people ask some variation of this question -- they want to know what it's like for two adults and three kids to squeeze into 90 square feet for years on end. Some people seem predisposed to think it's all great with endless epic adventures. Other people clearly have images of us living in the proverbial van down by the river. +Lots of people ask some variation of this question -- they want to know what it's like for two adults and three kids to squeeze into 90 square feet for years on end. Some people seem predisposed to think it's all an endless epic adventure. Other people clearly have images of us living in the proverbial van down by the river. Neither of those are entirely accurate. If you really want to know what our life is like, [read the site](/jrnl/). Sign up for [the email list](/newsletter/) or [subscribe to the RSS feed](/jrnl/feed.xml) to get notified when I post something. What I try to record here is what our life is like. @@ -14,11 +14,11 @@ Neither of those are entirely accurate. If you really want to know what our life We love the way we live and wouldn't want to live any other way. But we're not you and this isn't for everyone. It just works for us. -To answer a few random questions that pop up regularly in conversations curious people: Yes it's crowded. No we don't mind that. Yes we are close. No, our kids aren't perfect. Yes, there are days when I wish I lived some other way. Being sick in the bus is awful. +To answer a few random questions that pop up regularly in conversations curious people: Yes it's crowded. No we don't mind that. Yes, we are close. No, our kids aren't perfect. Yes, there are days when I wish I lived some other way. Being sick in the bus is awful. Most of the time though, we're not in the bus. -When you live in a small space you invert your spacial relationship with the world. You spend your time outside rather than in, and that was one of the main reasons we did this, to be outside more. To be part of the larger world. I wrote about this at some length for a travel magazine, in piece about [why we live in a vintage RV](/essays/why-a-vintage-rv). +When you live in a small space you invert your spacial relationship with the world. You spend your time outside rather than in, and that was one of the main reasons we did this, to be outside more. To be part of the larger world. I wrote about this at some length for a travel magazine, in piece about [why we live in a vintage RV](/essay/why-a-vintage-rv). <img src="images/2018/2018-08-25_181026_pawnee-grassland.jpg" id="image-1668" class="picwide" /> <img src="images/2017/2017-10-25_190827_trinity-alps.jpg" id="image-933" class="picwide" /> @@ -30,9 +30,9 @@ The best part of the way we live is waking up in the morning and stepping outsid <img src="images/2018/2018-08-26_190122_pawnee-grassland.jpg" id="image-1673" class="picwide" /> <img src="images/2017/2017-05-12_200059_new-orleans.jpg" id="image-454" class="picwide caption" /> -I think it's worth pointing out that everything is not always sunsets and adventures. We struggle the same as anyone living in a house. Our challenges and struggles are just different. For example, when we owned a house I had to mow the lawn and clean the gutters. Now I have to change the oil and maintain an engine instead. In the end, it's probably about the same amount of work in either case. +I think it's worth pointing out that everything is not always sunsets and adventures. We struggle the same as anyone living in a house. Our challenges and struggles are just different. For example, when we owned a house I had to mow the lawn and clean the gutters. Now I have to change the oil and maintain an engine instead. In the end, it's <span class="strike">probably about the same amount of work in either case</span>. Just kidding, it's way more work to maintain a house. I had forgotten. So yeah, we have challenges, but not nearly as much maintenance as a house. -For me though, maintaining the Travco is more challenging, and therefore more fun. I'm still not an engine expert. I can't listen to a knock or ping and figure out what's going on right away. I have to spend more time thinking it through, asking people more knowledgable than me. And I end up turning to mechanics more than I'd like. But I'm learning, and that's what I enjoy in life, being challenged, solving problems, getting outside my comfort zone so I can expand it. +Besides, for me, maintaining the Travco is more challenging, and therefore more fun and rewarding than mowing the lawn. Again. I'm still not an engine expert. I can't listen to a knock or ping and figure out what's going on right away. I have to spend more time thinking it through, asking people more knowledgeable than me. And I end up turning to mechanics more than I'd like. But I'm learning, and that's what I enjoy in life, being challenged, solving problems, getting outside my comfort zone so I can expand it. Still, the bus is our home and when it breaks down, well, sometimes we camp on a mechanic's driveway. @@ -40,31 +40,30 @@ Still, the bus is our home and when it breaks down, well, sometimes we camp on a Or I spend hours at the side of the road listening to the radiator boil over or getting covered in power steering fluid, transmission fluid, brake fluid. To live this way you have to be able to let go of the idea that there is anywhere else you need to be, anywhere else you *can* be. More than anything else, a vintage vehicle will teach you patience. Or you will lose your mind and sell it. -<img src="images/2017/2002-12-08_120000-4__.jpg" id="image-1018" class="picwide" /> <img src="images/2017/20170928_121417.jpg" id="image-894" class="picwide caption" /> <img src="images/2018/2018-05-29_113845_mousetail-landing.jpg" id="image-1381" class="picwide caption" /> ### You don't have to be rich. -The other question everyone asks is *how can you travel all the time*? What am I some kind of rich asshole? Trust fund kid? Thankfully I'm neither. Most of the trust fund kids I've known have been pretty screwed up people. We're not rich, we're comfortably lower middle class. But as noted rock climber Eric Beck once quipped, "there's a leisure class at both ends of the economic spectrum." +The other question everyone asks is *how can you travel all the time*? What am I some kind of rich asshole? Trust fund kid? Thankfully I'm neither. Most of the trust fund kids I've known have been pretty screwed up people. We're not rich, we're comfortably lower-middle class I guess. But as noted rock climber Eric Beck once quipped, "there's a leisure class at both ends of the economic spectrum." -Which is to say that if you discard the value system of upper middle class America, you can find an amazing amount of time and money that you can use to do more interesting things than buying stuff. Yes, you need some money to live the way we do, but not much really. We live on about $40k a year. That's not much within the spectrum of US earning possibilities. +Which is to say that if you discard the value system of upper middle class America, you can find an amazing amount of time and money that you can use to do more interesting things than buying stuff. Yes, you need some money to live the way we do, but not much really. We live on about $36k a year. That's not much within the spectrum of US earning possibilities. -I do recognize that the ability to make that kind of money while traveling is not available to everyone. There are more opportunities to do it today than at any point in human history, but that doesn't mean it's possible for everyone. I happen to be a writer and computer programmer, both which can be done from just about anywhere, so that's how I do it. And no, we don't have much in the way of insurance, we have some money set aside to cover the basics, but if something catastrophic happened, we, like many of you I'm sure, would be in trouble. These days I'm not sure that would be any different even if I had an office job, but either way, like I said earlier, living this way is not for everyone. +I do recognize that the ability to make that kind of money while traveling is not available to everyone. There are more opportunities to do it today than at any point in human history, but that doesn't mean it's possible for everyone. I happen to be a writer and computer programmer, both which can be done from just about anywhere, so that's how I do it. And no, we don't have much in the way of insurance. We have some money set aside to cover the basics, but if something catastrophic happened, we, like many of you I'm sure, would be in trouble. These days I'm not sure that would be any different even if I had an office job. Either way, like I said earlier, living this way is not for everyone. -For most people the difficult part of living this way is letting go of that value system that says you need to own a house, have amazing health insurance, a nice car, a bunch of stuff, and a huge savings for some perfect future when you can stop working. For me that ideology just never took hold for whatever reason, so I never had to escape it, but I watched others escape it and it did not look easy or fun. +For most people the difficult part of living this way is letting go of that value system that says you need to own a house, have amazing health insurance, a nice car, a bunch of stuff, and a huge savings for some perfect future when you can stop working. For me that ideology never really took hold for whatever reason, so I never had to escape it, but I watched others escape it and it did not look easy or fun. -I've spent a good bit of time trying to figure out why I never cared about that stuff. Maybe I read Thoreau too young. Maybe I listed to too much punk rock. Maybe it was that I took those people at their word, that I accepted their values at face value: that complaining does no good, you do what you need to do and you do it yourself. You do it yourself so you can do it exactly the way you want, the way that works best for you, not the way someone else thinks you should do it and in the end it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks so long as you're able to look yourself in the eye at three AM and know that all is well. +I've spent a good bit of time trying to figure out why I never cared about that stuff. Maybe I read Thoreau too young. Maybe I listed to too much punk rock. Maybe it was that I took those people at their word, that I accepted their values at face value: that complaining does no good, you do what you need to do, and you do it yourself. You do it yourself so you can do it exactly the way you want, the way that works best for you, not the way someone else thinks you should do it, and in the end it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks so long as you're able to look yourself in the eye at three AM and know that all is well. It's hard to write about these things without coming off like a jerk to some people, but I suppose that's okay. You can't please everyone. I'll assume since you've made it this far that you're good with it. -The problem is a lot of people see my values as a comment on their own. Like I am somehow sneering down at people from the top of the #vanlife heights. Again maybe this doesn't come off right, but really, I don't care how you live. If you love living in a house, that's awesome. I am glad you have found what makes you happy. If you hate living in a house and want to escape it, well, I guess to some extent I'm here to say it can be done. Maybe. +The problem is a lot of people see other values as a comment on their own. Like I am somehow sneering down at people from the top of the #vanlife heights here. Again maybe this doesn't come off right, but really: I don't care how you live. If you love living in a house, that's awesome. I am glad you have found what makes you happy. If you hate living in a house and want to escape it, well, I guess to some extent I'm here to say it can be done. Maybe. ### Why live this way? Because the worst part is going home. The why part two: I wanted to give my kids something close to the childhood I wish I'd had. -Which is not to imply I didn't have a good childhood. I've had an incredible life. I have to pinch myself sometimes to make sure this isn't a dream (which now maybe you're thinking oh god, what as asshole, and I know, I know, but really I have nothing to complain about, my life has been grand. If I die tomorrow, I would miss my family, but I would at least feel like I had lived deliciously well). +Which is not to imply I didn't have a good childhood. I've had an incredible life. I have to pinch myself sometimes to make sure this isn't a dream (which now maybe you're thinking oh god, what an asshole. And I know, I know it sounds cliche, but really I have nothing to complain about. My life has been grand. If I die tomorrow, I will miss my family, but I would at least feel like I had lived deliciously well). I grew up traveling a lot, something I'm very grateful to have experienced because those were always my favorite moments. Mostly I remember camping and hiking. The mountains, the beaches, the deserts. I remember being outside, the smell of pine needles, the dust in your nose as you step out of the tent to see what was for breakfast. I remember living outside for a week, sometimes two, and then going home. It was always such a drag to go home. diff --git a/published/2006-05-01-closing-time.txt b/published/2006-05-01-closing-time.txt index 88690a3..d69dc60 100644 --- a/published/2006-05-01-closing-time.txt +++ b/published/2006-05-01-closing-time.txt @@ -1,30 +1,37 @@ ---- -template: single -point: 7.0586452366957175,98.53981016694692 -location: Koh Kradan,Trang,Thailand -image: 2008/thailandtrain.jpg -desc: This moment, on this train. This is the last time I'll post something from Southeast Asia for a while. Sadness -dek: Headed back to Europe: I started to write a bit of reminiscence, trying to remember the highlights of my time in Asia before I return to the west, but about halfway through I kept thinking of a popular Buddhist saying — be here now. Most of these dispatches are written in past tense, but this time I want to simply be here now. This moment, on this train. This is the last time I'll post something from Southeast Asia. -pub_date: 2006-05-01T00:14:23 -slug: closing-time -title: Closing Time ---- +The morning was a blur. The early morning boat ride in to the mainland was rough. Not the sea, which was choppy, but not to bad, but I was still suffering from an over celebration of ANZAC day the previous evening. Peter was the only Australian at Lost Paradise, but we wouldn't have wanted him to celebrate alone so we pitched in. What are friends for? -<span class="drop">A</span>fter spending the better part of the day running about Trang, from the customs house to immigration and then Tesco and other warehouse stores for Wally's supplies, I was dropped off near the train station. I had been feeling a bit drab, far too much celebration of ANZAC day the previous evening (which is an Australian holiday to remember a battle on the first world war and was technically only appropriate for Peter the only Australian at Lost Paradise, but we wouldn't have wanted him to celebrate alone). +<img src="images/2006/Thailand_Ko_Kradan__4_20-26_06_30_t5iCw14.jpg" id="image-2486" class="picwide" /> -I spent the remainder of the afternoon wandering around downtown Trang, a pleasant little provincial riverside town. The train left just before sunset, sliding smoothly, far more smoothly than an India train, out of the station, through the suburbs of Trang and into the countryside with its banana trees and coconut palms and tamarind trees and bamboo thickets and jungly undergrowth of vines, some of which, if I'm not mistake, were Kudzu. The sky was a dull grey overcast with some strikingly dramatic cloud formations on the eastern horizon. I was lucky and had the two-person berth to myself for the majority of the journey. I sat by the window and watched the scenery slide by thinking about Wally and the rest probably motoring past Ko Muk or perhaps already back on Kradan unloading the weeks supplies into the cycle cart (Ko Kradan bus service) or maybe already back at the restaurant lounging under the thatched roofs telling stories over cold Chang. Barbeque orders would be placed and Ngu would be grilling or tinkering about with the one remaining generator. The dogs would be prowling about begging for scraps, the puppies wrestling in the yard, Tang and Blondie still off at the beach, lying in the shade, bellies full of chicken carcasses and pork scraps begged off the tourists that had lunch on the beach. +I spent the better part of the day running errands around Trang with Wally and crew. After the customs house and immigration, we moved on to Tesco, and other warehouse stores for Wally's supplies. I stocked up on snacks for the train ride, and after lunch they dropped me off near the train station downtown. -Children in backyards leaned over the fence watching the train as it passed. I thought also of the fact that my time in Southeast Asia was nearly over. Four days in Bangkok to do a bit of last minute work, maybe buy some bootleg DVDs and then poof it disappears from me for now. But it's less the place I will miss that the people, both the locals I've met and the travelers. I'll miss you Southeast Asia, you've changed my whole outlook on the world and shown me things I never dreamed I'd see. +I spent the remainder of the afternoon wandering around downtown Trang, a pleasant little provincial riverside town. The train left just before sunset, sliding smoothly, far more smoothly than an India train, out of the station, through the suburbs of Trang and into the countryside with its banana trees and coconut palms and tamarind trees and bamboo thickets and jungly undergrowth of vines, some of which, if I'm not mistake, were Kudzu. + +<img src="images/2006/Thailand_Trang_4_26_06_03.jpg" id="image-2487" class="picwide" /> + +The sky was a dull grey overcast with some strikingly dramatic cloud formations on the eastern horizon. I was lucky and had the two-person berth to myself for the majority of the journey. I sat by the window and watched the scenery slide by thinking about Wally and the rest probably motoring past Ko Muk or perhaps already back on Kradan unloading the weeks supplies into the cycle cart, or maybe already back at the restaurant lounging under the thatched roofs telling stories over cold Chang. + +Barbeque orders would be placed and Ngu would be grilling or tinkering about with the one remaining generator. The dogs would be prowling for scraps, the puppies wrestling in the yard, Tang and Blondie still off at the beach, lying in the shade, bellies full of chicken carcasses and pork scraps begged off the tourists that had lunch on the beach. Life everywhere continues as it was without you. + +<div class="cluster"> +<span class="row-2"> +<img src="images/2006/Thailand_Trang_4_26_06_02.jpg" id="image-2488" class="cluster pic66" /> +<img src="images/2006/Thailand_Trang_4_26_06_07.jpg" id="image-2489" class="cluster pic66" /> +</span> +<img src="images/2006/Thailand_Trang_4_26_06_04_EMjnGk1.jpg" id="image-2491" class="cluster picwide" /> +</div> + +Children in backyards leaned over the fence watching the train as it passed. My time in Southeast Asia is nearly over. Four days in Bangkok to do a bit of last minute work, maybe buy some bootleg DVDs, and then poof, it disappears from me for now. It's less the place I will miss than the people, both the locals I've met and the travelers. + +I'll miss you Southeast Asia, you've changed my whole outlook on the world and shown me things I never dreamed I'd see. Like the evening light now falling on the hillsides just north of Trang, a quiet, relaxed light that falls like one of Winslow Homer's washes over the green hills and white thunderheads turning them a golden orange against the distant blackness of a storm over the gulf of Thailand. Thailand in this light becomes a softer, subtler place, less dramatic and harsh than in the glare of the midday sun. I started to write a bit of reminiscence, try to remember the highlights of my time in this part of the world before I return to the west, but about halfway through I kept thinking of a popular Buddhist saying—be here now. Most of these dispatches are written in past tense, but this time I want to simply be here now. This moment, on this train. This is the last time I'll post something from Southeast Asia. There is no way I could sum anything up for you, no way I can convey what I've seen and done and even what I have written of is only about one tenth of what I've actually done. So I'm not going to try. -I know it's hard to do when you're at home and working and everything is the same shit happening over and over again, but it really is true, that bit about tomorrow… that bit about yesterday… one is gone forever and the other will never arrive. There is only now. But I'm not very good at this sort of thing; instead I'll leave you with some thoughts from others: - -<p class="quote">"To the intelligent man or woman, life appears infinitely mysterious. But the stupid have an answer for every question." – <cite>Edward Abbey</cite></p> +I know it's hard to do when you're at home and working and everything is the same shit happening over and over again, but it really is true, that bit about tomorrow... that bit about yesterday... one is gone forever and the other will never arrive. There is only now. But I'm not very good at this sort of thing; instead I'll leave you with some thoughts from others: -<p class="quote">"The most wasted of all days is one without laughter." – <cite>e.e. cummings</cite></p> +"To the intelligent man or woman, life appears infinitely mysterious. But the stupid have an answer for every question." – <cite>Edward Abbey</cite> -<p class="quote">"What do we live for if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?" – <cite>George Eliot</cite></p> +"The most wasted of all days is one without laughter." -- <cite>e.e. cummings</cite> +"What do we live for if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?" – <cite>George Eliot</cite> diff --git a/birds.txt b/published/2019-10-09_bird-watching.txt index 3b81b39..3b81b39 100644 --- a/birds.txt +++ b/published/2019-10-09_bird-watching.txt diff --git a/high-water.txt b/published/2020-03-04_high-water.txt index a194d3a..3fabcb2 100644 --- a/high-water.txt +++ b/published/2020-03-04_high-water.txt @@ -2,7 +2,7 @@ After a winter in Georgia, we were ready for some warmer climes. We managed to b <img src="images/2020/DSC_1860.jpg" id="image-2326" class="picwide" /> -This part of the country, and upriver of here, has out-rained even the pacific northwest so far this year, and it showed. The river was ten feet over flood stage. It was difficult to even tell where the river was, it looked more like a lake. Another three feet and and campground would have been under. There wasn't much land to explore, we settled for an early fire and some marshmallows. +This part of the country, and upriver of here, has out-rained even the pacific northwest so far this year, and it showed. The river was ten feet over flood stage. It was difficult to even tell where the river was, it looked more like a lake. Another three feet and the campground would have been underwater. There wasn't much land to explore, we settled for an early fire and some marshmallows. <div class="cluster"> <span class="row-2"> @@ -22,7 +22,7 @@ Civilization falls away as you drive. The road winds through alternating stretch It's not some idyllic world out here of course. The land and people here are abused like they are everywhere. Environmental destruction and the deep, unsolvable poverty that follows it linger everywhere in the shadows. The ruin of modern systems is always more obvious out here at the leading edges, the places where the supposed benefits never quite reached, just inexhaustible desires. These are the places from which life was extracted to enable comfort in some other place. -There's a divide. I notice it every time we come down here. You cross a high bridge over the ICW onto Edisto Island proper and everything after that is magically fine, derelict buildings hidden away, poverty pushed off the main highway to some backroad most of us will never take. +There's a divide. I notice it every time we come down here. You cross a high bridge over the Intercoastal waterway onto Edisto Island proper and everything after that is magically fine, derelict buildings hidden away, poverty pushed off the main highway to some backroad most of us will never take. Life here is different let's say. And we'll leave it at that. @@ -60,4 +60,4 @@ I did it every chance I got, which alas was not quite as much as the last time w The water was cold, biting cold when the wind hit you after you came up. But you have to get in. And not just when it's easy, not just when everyone is swimming. -You have to get in even on the days when you don't want to. Even when it's so cold your teeth are chattering before you even get your shirt off. Those are the times when you have to reach down inside and find some way to get out there. The ocean makes me do it. It's part of an old deal we have. I'd to it anyway though. You have to or you'll look back and spend the rest of your days facing the worst question of all -- I wonder what it would have been like? +You have to get in even on the days when you don't want to. Even when it's so cold your teeth are chattering before you even get your shirt off. Those are the times when you have to reach down inside and find some way to get out there. The ocean pulls me in, it's part of an understanding I've reached with it, with myself. There are certain rituals that must be performed or the world stops working. And so you get in. When it's cold. When it's not. It doesn't matter. Just get in. diff --git a/equinox.txt b/published/2020-03-11_distant-early-warning.txt index bfbb06c..41027e8 100644 --- a/equinox.txt +++ b/published/2020-03-11_distant-early-warning.txt @@ -1,4 +1,4 @@ -There is nothing like a good storm by the sea. The smell of salt on the wind, the slash and clatter of palms and the wind comes ashore. The muffled *thick thick think* of the first drops spitting on the sand. The lightning flashing far out at sea is always visible long before you hear any hint of a rumble. It blinks like christmas lights on the horizen. +There is nothing like a good storm by the sea. The smell of salt on the wind, the slash and clatter of palms as the wind comes ashore. The muffled *thick thick think* of the first drops spitting on the sand. The lightning flashing far out at sea is always visible long before you hear any hint of a rumble. It blinks like Christmas lights on the horizon. The waves of wind begin to swing ashore, it's then that you can sense the life in the storm, the personalities, the intentions. Storms are alive too. They have a path to follow just like us. Just because something only lasts a few days, does not mean it doesn't have intentions. Just because you can't decipher the intentions doesn't mean they aren't there. @@ -6,11 +6,11 @@ The waves of wind begin to swing ashore, it's then that you can sense the life i Tonight I sat by the fire feeling the barometer drop, feeling the stir of wind, watching the whirl of embers as the fire died down and the wind came up. I could feel it coming, I could sense its presence. -This storm comes from the southwest, a mix a southern and western personalities, a storm we all know in this part of the world. I never worry about storm unless is comes from the north. Storms from the north aren't more dangerous exactly, but they're chaotic and unpredictable. You never know what a north wind will bring. Though around here the ones you really have to watch out for are the east and southeast winds. But we're months from those. +This storm comes from the southwest, a mix a southern and western personalities, a storm we all know in this part of the world. I never worry about a storm unless it comes from the north. Storms from the north aren't more dangerous exactly, but they're chaotic and unpredictable. You never know what a north wind will bring. Though around here the ones you really have to watch out for are the east and southeast winds. But we're months from those. This one we watched arrive. Storm clouds sweeping up from the southwest all day. One or two at first, floating lazily along. Then more, as if they were forming up around some kind of a plan. Whatever the plan was, it didn't involve Edisto. Despite spitting rain a little during the night it was back to sunshine the next day. -I love a good storm, but not when I have to drive. That morning we headed down the coast a couple hours to Hunting Island State Park.The drive was sunny, fortunately. Uneventful. Beaufort proved to be a charming little coastal southern town. Or it looked that way anyway. By the time we drove through, the rest of the country was starting to lock down over the coronavirus. South Carolina remained in a state of blissful ignorance, but having watched the virus spread via stories of friends and family on the west coast, I wasn't about to head out and wander that streets. +I love a good storm, but not when I have to drive. That morning we headed down the coast a couple hours to Hunting Island State Park.The drive was sunny, fortunately. Uneventful. Beaufort proved to be a charming little coastal southern town. Or it looked that way anyway. By the time we drove through, the rest of the country was starting to lock down over the coronavirus. South Carolina remained in a state of blissful ignorance, but having watched the virus spread via stories of friends and family on the west coast, I wasn't about to head out and wander the streets. I'd just as soon strangers always keep a six foot distance from me. But South Carolina wasn't about to make rules regarding that or anything else. South Carolina is the south's "live free or die" state. There still aren't helmet laws here, which I think is great actually. But a virus is not a motorcycle. A virus is not something you choose to do. A virus really has nothing to do with "rights". A virus is a good reminder that rights are a thing conferred by communities of people to members of those communities. There are no "natural" rights. @@ -35,9 +35,8 @@ The beach here was not nearly as forthcoming with treasures. There were shells, <img src="images/2020/2020-03-16_150934_hunting-island.jpg" id="image-2351" class="picwide" /> <img src="images/2020/2020-03-16_153017_hunting-island.jpg" id="image-2353" class="picwide" /> -And then our options began to fade. North Carolina shut down its parks, which killed our next plan, which was head to the outer banks for a few months. Then Florida shut down its state parks and we were starting to feel the squeeze. Competition for what few camping spots remained became much more intense. We full timers may fly under the radar for most people, but there are far more of us than you know. Take away public camping and the options get thin quickly. We decided it was time to get out of South Carolina. +And then our options began to fade. North Carolina shut down its parks, which killed our next plan, which was head to the Outer Banks for a few months. Then Florida shut down its state parks and we were starting to feel the squeeze. Competition for what few camping spots remained became much more intense. We full timers may fly under the radar for most people, but there are far more of us than you know. Take away public camping and the options get thin quickly. We decided it was time to get out of South Carolina. -Here's the thing. Maybe you can get Covid-19 and be fine. But what if you can't? Do you really want to find out right now when there's no treatment and hospitals are crowded? When we don't even really understand what the virus does, [especially any long term effect](https://mobile.twitter.com/lilienfeld1/status/1251335135909122049)? Just because you survive it does not mean you go back to normal. Ask anyone who lives with Lyme, RSV, chronic fatigue syndrome, or any of the other virus-borne diseases with long term consequences. Viruses are nothing new, sickness and death are nothing new, but that doesn't means we should run full speed toward them without a care. +At the time most people were not taking the virus very seriously. Here's the thing. Maybe you can get Covid-19 and be fine. But what if you can't? Do you really want to find out right now when there's no treatment and hospitals are crowded? When we don't even really understand what the virus does, [especially any long term effects](https://mobile.twitter.com/lilienfeld1/status/1251335135909122049)? Just because you survive it does not mean you go back to normal. Ask anyone who lives with Lyme, RSV, chronic fatigue syndrome, or any of the other virus-borne diseases with long term consequences. Viruses are nothing new, sickness and death are nothing new, but that doesn't mean we should run full speed toward them without a care. -We decided to take steps we felt would best help us avoid coming in contact with SARS-CoV-2. -Unfortunately that meant changing our plans. But it's hardly the first time we've had to change plans. These things happen. Traveling around in RV isn't a right you know, it's a privilege that we've enjoyed, but right now it isn't possible. A big part of travel is waiting, so that's what we're doing right now, just like everyone else. +We decided to take steps we felt would best help us avoid coming in contact with SARS-CoV-2. Unfortunately that meant changing our plans. But it's hardly the first time we've had to change plans. These things happen. Traveling around in RV isn't a right you know, it's a privilege that we've enjoyed, but right now it isn't possible. A big part of travel is waiting, so that's what we're doing right now, just like everyone else. diff --git a/pre-apacholyptic-adventures.txt b/published/2020-03-18_pre-apocalyptic-driving-adventures.txt index 53b52e9..53b52e9 100644 --- a/pre-apacholyptic-adventures.txt +++ b/published/2020-03-18_pre-apocalyptic-driving-adventures.txt diff --git a/sufficient.txt b/published/2020-07-01_wouldnt-it-be-nice.txt index 358f149..d955164 100644 --- a/sufficient.txt +++ b/published/2020-07-01_wouldnt-it-be-nice.txt @@ -1,8 +1,10 @@ Perhaps the strangest thing for us about these times is the number of people who have said to us something along the lines of, "well, you had three years to prepare for this, huh?" Or "not much of a change for you, eh?" -I've had plenty of time to meditate on these statements, but I am still puzzled about what people mean by them. On the one hand, thanks so much for thinking we have any idea what we're doing, ever. +I've had plenty of time to meditate on these statements, but I am still puzzled about what people mean by them. -On the other hand, let's be clear: there's nothing about living in an RV that prepares you for illness, nationwide shutdowns, supply chain disruptions, or anything else we've all dealt with in the past six months. If anything, living in an RV makes you much more vulnerable to these things[^1]. Where are you going to camp when public lands close (which has [happened to us twice now](/jrnl/2018/01/eastbound-down))? +Let's be clear. There's nothing about living in an RV that prepares you for illness, nationwide shutdowns, supply chain disruptions, or anything else we've all dealt with in the past six months. If anything, living in an RV makes you much more vulnerable to these things[^1]. Where are you going to camp when public lands close (which has [happened to us twice now](/jrnl/2018/01/eastbound-down))? + +<img src="images/original/2018/2018-01-22_145014_texas-driving.jpg" id="image-1070" class="picwide caption" /> When people say these things I think maybe they're referring to the fact that I've always worked remotely, and we homeschool our children, but that was true long before we started living in an RV. The other thing I've considered is that, historically, people who are willing to leave at the drop of a hat, tend to survive upheaval better than those who are dug in, but I don't think that's what the comments above are getting at. @@ -16,11 +18,13 @@ At first glance I thought, well, that does describe luxagraf fairly accurately, We think self-sufficient is a singular thing when in fact it's a spectrum on which we all live, where at one end you have the floating chaise-lounge bound people in the movie Wall-E and at the other you have children raised by wolves. That there are more people at the Wall-E end of the spectrum right now seems indisputable, and any effort you can make to slide yourself down toward the wolf children is worth making in my opinion. -But just because you can get a month's worth of groceries at CostCo does not mean you're self-sufficient for a month. It means you can plan ahead, that's all. Similarly, if you think living in an RV is going to make you completely self-sufficient you are in for a learning experience. I know this because that's how I envisioned living in an RV, and I have personally learned the hard way how wrong that vision was. +But just because you can get a month's worth of groceries at Costco does not mean you're self-sufficient for a month. It means you can plan ahead, that's all. Similarly, if you think living in an RV is going to make you completely self-sufficient you are in for a learning experience. I know this because that's how I envisioned living in an RV, and I have personally learned the hard way how wrong that vision was. + +The easiest example of this is solar power. I need about three minutes of conversation to discover whether the person I'm talking to has ever actually lived entirely off solar power. Which is to say that, while I love solar power, it does not make you self-sufficient. Having solar slides you down the spectrum a bit closer to the wolf kids, but honestly the lifestyle changes you have to make to live with limited solar power do a lot more for your self-sufficiency than the actual solar panels (which don't last forever, and have to be made in a clean room -- got one of those in your RV?). -The easiest example of this is solar power. I need about three minutes of conversation to discover whether the person I'm talking to has ever actually lived entirely off solar power. Which is to say that, while I love solar power, it does not make you self-sufficient. Having solar slides you down the spectrum a bit closer to the wolf kids, but honestly the lifestyle changes you have to make to live with limited solar power do a lot more for your self-sufficiency than the actual solar (which doesn't last forever, and has to be made in a clean room -- got one of those in your RV?). +<img src="images/2017/2017-10-02_185729_carson-city-washoe-lake.jpg" id="image-903" class="picwide caption" /> -Typically people hear solar power, and think, oh cool, you're self-sufficient for energy. And sure, we can run our freezer, lights, and charge all our devices with nothing more than the sun. That *is* pretty cool. In fact there are times when I pinch myself because it still seems so science fiction to me. Solar is awesome. When it works. But sometimes the sun [doesn't come out for five or six days](/jrnl/2017/10/pacific), or we're camped in a deep valley with only a few hours of sun a day, or we're [camped under trees](/2018/07/trees), or a fuse blows, or a wire frays, or the [alternator goes out and you don't realize it until it's too late and you batteries are dead because you never installed the isolator](/jrnl/2017/10/through). These are not hypothetical scenarios. All of these things have happened to us. +Typically people hear solar power, and think, oh cool, you're self-sufficient for energy. And sure, we can run our freezer, lights, and charge all our devices with nothing more than the sun. That *is* pretty cool. In fact there are times when I pinch myself because it still seems so science fiction to me. Solar is awesome. When it works. But sometimes the sun [doesn't come out for five or six days](/jrnl/2017/10/pacific), or we're camped in a deep valley with only a few hours of sun a day, or we're [camped under trees](/2018/07/trees), or a fuse blows, or a wire frays, or the [alternator goes out and you don't realize it until it's too late and your batteries are dead because you never installed the isolator](/jrnl/2017/10/through). These are not hypothetical scenarios. All of these things have happened to us. And you know how we have saved ourselves every single time solar power has let us down? By connecting to the power grid. By admitting that we're not self-sufficient and using the available shared resources of our times. @@ -28,9 +32,12 @@ Want another example? Water. We can carry just under 80 gallons. We can stretch Then there's food. Food is the best case scenario. We can easily store two weeks worth of food. I believe we could probably go about a month, though it might be a little grim and vegetable-less by the end. I'm super interested in trying to grow some veggies in the bus[^3], but so far we have not tried this. +<img src="/images/2018/2018-08-26_190930_pawnee-grassland.jpg" id="image-1675" class="picwide caption" /> + + The single biggest limitation on our self-sufficiency is waste. I'd guess this is true for all RVers, but I do know that five people on a single black tank is somewhat extreme, even by RV standards. Under normal circumstances we can go about three days without dumping the tank. If we're camped somewhere that it's okay to dump grey water (AKA, dish and washing water), we can stretch our tank to six days. Six days. That's the hard limit. Anything beyond that, and you are full of shit. -So for everyone thinking, damn, those RVers were really ready for this lockdown, yeah, not so much. If it seemed that way it's simply because full time RVers to started abiding by the rules later and stopped abiding by them sooner. And I think in most cases they did that not because they didn't think the virus was a problem, but because really they had no choice. And that's not were you want to be. +So for everyone thinking, damn, those RVers were really ready for this lockdown, yeah, not so much. If it seemed that way it's simply because full time RVers started abiding by the rules later and stopped abiding by them sooner. And I think in most cases they did that not because they didn't think the virus was a problem, but because really they had no choice. And that's not were you want to be. This is actually something I spend a good bit of time thinking about though. I am with you people who think RVs are self-sufficient. I *wish* there were a way to make an RV more self-sufficient. But I've yet to come up with a way to do that without going to extremes that are impractical. We could, for example, put out tarps and harvest rain water when it rains, and dew when it's damp, but that's way more hassle than it's worth when you're going to have to dump the tanks anyway. And this is the core of why an RV will never be very far to the self-sufficient end of the spectrum. diff --git a/by-hand.txt b/published/2020-07-08_windfall.txt index 710cc5b..dcc2b7c 100644 --- a/by-hand.txt +++ b/published/2020-07-08_windfall.txt @@ -13,7 +13,7 @@ Thankfully I did keep my desk. We also kept a dining table. No chairs though. No For the most part though, even months later, we are camping in a house. -We try to spend most of our time outdoors anyway. Early on in the spring this worked great, but as the summer wore on, without much water the swim in, the heat drove us in. +We try to spend most of our time outdoors anyway. Early on in the spring this worked great, but as the summer wore on, without much water to swim in, the heat drove us in. <div class="cluster"> <img src="images/2020/2020-07-03_133106_water-slide.jpg" id="image-2394" class="cluster picwide" /> @@ -24,9 +24,9 @@ We try to spend most of our time outdoors anyway. Early on in the spring this wo <img src="images/2020/2020-06-13_161120_mcphail-yard-misc.jpg" id="image-2392" class="cluster picwide caption" /> </div> -While we did buy some furniture, there were certain things we just did not want to spend money on. Like a wash machine. What an insanely boring thing to spend money on. No one needs a wash machine. What we all need are clean clothes. +While we did buy some furniture, there were certain things we just did not want to spend money on. Like a washing machine. What an insanely boring thing to spend money on. No one needs a washing machine. What we all need are clean clothes. -I assumed Corrinne would not stand for this line of thinking, so I said we'd get a wash machine off Craigslist. To get us by until that happened, I bought a hand washing plunger and a couple of five gallon buckets. The house came with, as any house dating from the 19th century should, a clothes line. +I assumed Corrinne would not stand for this line of thinking, so I said we'd get a washing machine off Craigslist. To get us by until that happened, I bought a hand washing plunger and a couple of five gallon buckets. The house came with, as any house dating from the 19th century should, a clothes line. If you've followed luxagraf for long you probably know where this story is headed. Yes, six month later, we're still hand washing all our clothes. In a bucket, with a plunger. It sounds crazy, but the things is... we like it better. Our clothes get just as clean, very little money was spent, and, as a nice added bonus we get healthier because we've built a little exercise into our day. At this point, if I were going to buy anything, it'd be a clothes dryer. @@ -37,7 +37,7 @@ If you've followed luxagraf for long you probably know where this story is heade </span> </div> -I think this little fringe benefit, of exercise, is a bigger deal than it seems at first glance. Maybe it's just me, but I really dislike "working out". I don't dislike the effort or process, actually, truth be told I love lifting weights, but the whole idea of "exercise" bothers me. That I should stop my life and go to a gym or go do *something* other than just daily living, feels fundamentally unnecessary to me. It feels like a symptom of much deeper problem. Why does my daily life not provide enough physical exertion to keep me healthy? Doesn't that see odd? +I think this little fringe benefit, of exercise, is a bigger deal than it seems at first glance. Maybe it's just me, but I really dislike "working out". I don't dislike the effort or process, actually, truth be told I love lifting weights, but the whole idea of "exercise" bothers me. That I should stop my life and go to a gym or go do *something* other than just daily living, feels fundamentally unnecessary to me. It feels like a symptom of much deeper problem. Why does my daily life not provide enough physical exertion to keep me healthy? Doesn't that seem odd? There are certain habits and customs of modern life that only seem sane because we've been so deeply indoctrinated into them. I believe this is one of those. The idea that you should stop your actual life and "exercise" says a lot about our lives. Life has become so physically easy for most of us these days that we become unhealthy living this way. If this is true, and most evidence suggests it is, I posit there is something seriously wrong with our lives, and the effects probably go far beyond needing to exercise. diff --git a/published/2020-07-15_eight.txt b/published/2020-07-15_eight.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4181d9a --- /dev/null +++ b/published/2020-07-15_eight.txt @@ -0,0 +1,63 @@ +Happy birthday girls. I can't believe it's been only eight years since you arrived. It feels like you have always been here, like we have all always been here. I can't remember what I did without you, but it couldn't have been much fun. + +I know we weren't able to celebrate your birthday where or how we'd intended this year. But I also know you've already learned that the world is always turning, and you know how to roll with it. + +One thing that doesn't change though is the waking up before dawn. As per birthday request we ate crepes for breakfast, and as per usual, we ate in the early morning twilight. + +<div class="cluster"> +<span class="row-2"> +<img src="images/2020/DSC_3001.jpg" id="image-2426" class="cluster pic66" /> +<img src="images/2020/DSC_2990.jpg" id="image-2425" class="cluster pic66" /> +</span> +<img src="images/2020/2020-07-11_052514_lo-8th-birthday.jpg" id="image-2410" class="cluster picwide" /> +<img src="images/2020/2020-07-10_210043_lo-8th-birthday.jpg" id="image-2404" class="cluster picwide" /> +</div> + +We skipped the balloons this year. As a birder I've always had hesitations about balloons, an alarming amount of which end up in seabird stomachs. This year we decided to retire that tradition. + +<div class="cluster"> +<img src="images/2020/2020-07-11_060538_lo-8th-birthday.jpg" id="image-2414" class="cluster picwide" /> +<span class="row-2"> +<img src="images/2020/DSC_3003.jpg" id="image-2427" class="cluster pic66" /> +<img src="images/2020/DSC_3010.jpg" id="image-2428" class="cluster pic66" /> +</span> +<img src="images/2020/2020-07-11_073914_lo-8th-birthday.jpg" id="image-2422" class="cluster picwide" /> +<img src="images/2020/2020-07-11_072231_lo-8th-birthday.jpg" id="image-2419" class="cluster picwide" /> +</div> + +My favorite part of their birthdays, especially as they get older and more thoughtful, is watching them give each other gifts + +<div class="cluster"> +<img src="images/2020/2020-07-11_062224_lo-8th-birthday.jpg" id="image-2415" class="cluster picwide" /> +<img src="images/2020/2020-07-11_062255_lo-8th-birthday_5LMt1x1.jpg" id="image-2418" class="cluster picwide" /> +<img src="images/2020/2020-07-11_072619_lo-8th-birthday.jpg" id="image-2420" class="cluster picwide" /> +</div> + +Then there's this boy who somehow has certain relatives convinced that he too should get some gifts on his sister's birthday. + +<img src="images/2020/2020-07-11_052552_lo-8th-birthday.jpg" id="image-2411" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2020/2020-07-11_052623_lo-8th-birthday.jpg" id="image-2412" class="picwide" /> + +Our original plan for the year was to spend a few months exploring the Carolina coasts, then cross the Allegheny Mountains, and head across Ohio, up the thumb of Michigan and back to the Great Lakes. Part of the motivation behind this was that the girls really wanted to spend their birthday at Lake Superior again. + +Obviously that didn't happen. Instead we are here, deep in the Carolina pine forests, making the best of it again. Mostly I am fine with this, but on their birthday, I did feel like I had failed them. I felt it even more so when I went to add the related entries to the bottom of this post and I saw the last four years: train rides, nearly private lakes, white sand beaches, even the swimming pool in Texas looks pretty appealing in the stifling summer heat of South Carolina. But it is what it is, and I don't mean to imply we have a hard life or anything like that. It's just harder to let go of some plans than others. + +On the bright side, we had an oven to bake an actual cake in. We still [love our waffle cake](/essay/waffle-world), but sometimes you need to change it up. Unfortunately, the kids weren't willing to wait for the cake the cool, so the frosting got runny and the cake split on us, something you don't have the worry about with waffle cake. No one cared but me. + +<div class="cluster"> +<img src="images/2020/2020-07-11_032911_lo-8th-birthday.jpg" id="image-2407" class="cluster picwide" /> +<img src="images/2020/2020-07-11_032831_lo-8th-birthday.jpg" id="image-2406" class="cluster picwide" /> +<span class="row-2"> +<img src="images/2020/DSC_3031.jpg" id="image-2429" class="cluster pic66" /> +<img src="images/2020/DSC_3066.jpg" id="image-2432" class="cluster pic66" /> +</span> +<img src="images/2020/2020-07-11_042557_lo-8th-birthday.jpg" id="image-2408" class="cluster picwide" /> +<img src="images/2020/2020-07-11_042848_lo-8th-birthday.jpg" id="image-2409" class="cluster picwide" /> +<span class="row-2"> +<img src="images/2020/DSC_3045.jpg" id="image-2431" class="cluster pic66" /> +<img src="images/2020/DSC_3032.jpg" id="image-2430" class="cluster pic66" /> +</span> +<img src="images/2020/2020-07-11_153309_lo-8th-birthday.jpg" id="image-2424" class="cluster picwide" /> +<img src="images/2020/2020-07-10_214322_lo-8th-birthday.jpg" id="image-2405" class="cluster picwide" /> +<img src="images/2020/2020-07-11_073856_lo-8th-birthday.jpg" id="image-2421" class="cluster picwide" /> +</div> diff --git a/published/2020-09-23_summer-teeth.txt b/published/2020-09-23_summer-teeth.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..df550db --- /dev/null +++ b/published/2020-09-23_summer-teeth.txt @@ -0,0 +1,38 @@ +I am so far behind telling these stories I am giving up and skipping a few things in the interest of catching up. + +I spent most of the summer unable to write. Or unable to write what I wanted to write. Unwilling perhaps? I'm not sure, all I know is I didn't do anything I had planned to do when we got here. Like most people I imagine, I was in a bit of a funk most of the summer. + +Opportunities were all around, but I just sat back and listened to the whooshing sound they made as they flew past me. + +Despite having a chance to work on the bus without deadline or the inconvenience of living in it while tearing it up, I did absolutely nothing. I didn't even wash it. I didn't even go in it for months. The coronavirus situation provided me with a nice excuse to be lazy. If the world's shut down anyway, what's the point of doing anything? + +Those bigger, longer writing projects [I said I was going to work on](/jrnl/2020/06/hands-on-the-wheel)? Nah, didn't touch them. I squandered months. The most I managed to do was help Corrinne plant a few things in a small garden plot. But by mid summer I'd lost interest in that too. Corrinne kept at it though. We managed to get a good tomato harvest at least, along with one lonely, but pretty delicious, watermelon. + +<img src="images/2020/2020-08-07_175620_watermelon-yard.jpg" id="image-2434" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2020/2020-08-07_175936_watermelon-yard.jpg" id="image-2435" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2020/2020-08-07_180059_watermelon-yard.jpg" id="image-2436" class="picwide" /> + +It was a strange summer. I think we were all longing for some beach time, some wide open stretches of sand and water instead of lawns and humidity. But even if there had been beaches open to go to, I'm not sure I'd have made the effort. Something in me was deeply in retrograde this summer. I couldn't even bring myself to post things here. Normally I write things for luxagraf like I breathe, without thinking about it. Not this summer. + +Maybe it was the heat, maybe it was the transit of the stars, maybe it was just me. Whatever the case, I did finally snap out of it and start doing the work that needs to be done (more on that later). But for those few months I, we, maybe the whole world to some degree, moved like a somnambulist. + +That's not to say we just lay around in daze. We got out and picked wild berries growing down the road. The kids rode their bikes, built wooden weapons, and explored the world around them as they always do. From their point of view, this summer was undoubtedly different, maybe a little boring, but they still had fun. + +<img src="images/2020/2020-08-29_152513_misc-mcphail.jpg" id="image-2438" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2020/DSC_3509.jpg" id="image-2444" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2020/2020-09-06_081424_misc-mcphail.jpg" id="image-2440" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2020/2020-09-03_121556_misc-mcphail.jpg" id="image-2439" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2020/2020-09-06_131337_misc-mcphail.jpg" id="image-2441" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2020/2020-08-29_100516_misc-mcphail.jpg" id="image-2437" class="picwide caption" /> + + +And lest you think I am so self-aware, let me be clear: I didn't notice any of this as it happened. It wasn't until the heat broke one day in early September that I suddenly sat up and thought wait, what the hell just happened? How is it September? Why am I not doing anything? + +I don't know for sure what it was that snapped me out of it, but I distinctly remember sitting on the porch, watching the kids reading in the hammock, and suddenly thinking *what am I waiting for? Whatever it is, clearly it isn't coming. I need to get going, now*. + +<img src="images/2020/2020-09-06_090647_around-house.jpg" id="image-2443" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2020/2020-09-07_151640_misc-mcphail.jpg" id="image-2442" class="picwide" /> + +So I did. There is really no magic to writing. It's like anything else you want to do, at some point you have to force yourself to sit in the chair and do it. Even when you don't want to. Especially when you don't want to. I forced myself into the chair and got to work. That effort cascaded. Start one project and it's easier to start another. And another. + +In some ways, though I look back on it mostly in disgust with myself for falling into a trap of my own thinking, my own lack of will, perhaps my summer malaise was necessary. Perhaps I needed to get the bottom of the barrel I'd been wallowing in for a while. Perhaps you never wake up until you have an uncomfortable collision with the ground beneath you. diff --git a/published/2020-10-01_light-is-clear-in-my-eyes.txt b/published/2020-10-01_light-is-clear-in-my-eyes.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7d95e47 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/2020-10-01_light-is-clear-in-my-eyes.txt @@ -0,0 +1,61 @@ +Summer heat never bothers me. It's the humidity. The irony is that I moved back here two decades ago because I loved the humidity. I wanted to sweat, I wanted to suffer that overbearing presence of the world, air so thick you could cut it with a knife. Sometimes I still do. I'll take a humid night in New Orleans over a cool one in Chicago any time. But increasingly I find myself itching for that first day when the humidity breaks and you can feel Autumn in the air. + +You can see it too. There is a quality of light in dry air that is cleaner, crisper, more revealing. The world sparkles more, feels more brilliantly alive. + +<img src="images/2020/2020-09-06_090549_around-house.jpg" id="image-2459" class="picwide" /> + +I've come to think lately that it's not Autumn that I was wanting, but the dry western air of my youth. That dryness is calling me back home. Technically speaking, I grew up by the beach, the air was rarely dry like the desert. Still, it was never as humid like it is here. + +I miss the desert. But I miss the balance between extremes even more. I miss the damp foggy mornings that give way to warm, but crisp clear afternoons. Around here the damn foggy mornings give way to... damp foggy afternoons. + +<img src="images/2020/DSC_4020.jpg" id="image-2447" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2020/DSC_3966.jpg" id="image-2449" class="picwide" /> + +At least it's cool and we can get outside again. We'd gone soft over the summer. We lived inside. Cheated the heat. Lured into the air conditioned nightmare. It's hard to escape it without some serious effort of will. It also helps to have something worth going outside for -- white sand, red rock, cool mountain forests, waves, tacos, something. + +The minute the humidity broke though we went back out. The hammock went up, the camp chairs moved back by the fire pit, the rope swing got pulled out of the branches where it had hung, unused through the summer heat. Life is good again. + +<div class="cluster"> +<img src="images/2020/DSC_38772.jpg" id="image-2445" class="cluster picwide" /> +<span class="row-2"> +<img src="images/2020/DSC_3984_ZlWmumM.jpg" id="image-2448" class="cluster pic66" /> +<img src="images/2020/DSC_3838.jpg" id="image-2450" class="cluster pic66" /> +</span> +<img src="images/2020/2020-07-19_094945_watermelon-yard.jpg" id="image-2433" class="cluster picwide" /> +<span class="row-2"> +<img src="images/2020/P1000200.jpg" id="image-2446" class="cluster pic66" /> +<img src="images/2020/DSC_3475_TW8Lf1M.jpg" id="image-2452" class="cluster pic66" /> +</span> +<img src="images/2020/DSC_4038.jpg" id="image-2460" class="cluster picwide" /> +<img src="images/2020/2020-09-19_152103_misc-mcphail.jpg" id="image-2456" class="cluster picwide" /> +</div> + +I've said for years living indoors was killing us. All of us that is. This year, for the first time, I've seen quite few other people saying the same, albeit for different reasons. Stale, recycled building air is especially bad if you're trying to stop the spread of a virus, but it's bad for a host of other reasons too. Long after this virus is a distant memory, spending all your time indoors will still be bad for you. Get outside more if you can. Spend a little time every day under the open sky and you'll feel better. No roof but stars. + +<img src="images/2020/DSC03249.jpg" id="image-2463" class="picwide" /> + +With the heat gone I finally got to work cleaning and fixing up a few things on the bus. I replaced the exhaust manifold gaskets, flushed the radiator, bled the brakes, replaced the starter relay (again), and cleaned up some wiring. There's a considerable amount of exhaust leaking though and I think I am going to take it in to get that looked at. I have neither the tools nor skills to redo all the exhaust pipes and joints. I did finally get started washing and waxing it though. + +<img src="images/2020/2020-09-27_045554_around_house.jpg" id="image-2455" class="picwide caption" /> + +I also started on some interior work. I installed a new MPPT solar controller that is a thousand times better and cheaper than the PWM controller we had previously. It's amazing how much the price of solar components have come down in the past five years. Even LiPO batteries are about half the price they were two years ago. + +Next I tore out an entire wall, taking out the couch, and pulling down my custom made cabinet. I also removed a good portion of the ceiling. I did all that primarily so I could fix a water leak where the wires from the solar panel came in. I added a proper cable entry cover to stop the water leak. + +<img src="images/2020/DSC03244.jpg" id="image-2462" class="picwide" /> + +I decided not to drill for the cover, opting instead for some high strength polyurethane adhesive. It makes me a little nervous, but I thought this made a good test since if it fails, the wires will keep the cover from flying off. It definitely solved the leak anyway, how it holds up over the years remains to be seen. + +<img src="images/2020/DSC03243.jpg" id="image-2461" class="picwide caption" /> + +I figured as long as the wall was torn up I might as well make a few improvements as well. I installed some heavier wire coming down from solar setup so we can add a couple more panels down the road if we want. I also ran some coaxial cable up to the roof for a Wi-Fi antenna. The I added a shunt to the batteries and ran some wired up through the wall so we can monitor the battery state without Bluetooth (which is handy, but will inevitably fail). + +<img src="images/2020/2020-10-17_134042_self-portraits.jpg" id="image-2453" class="picwide" /> + +Since I was tearing up the ceiling I also decided to test how my initial ceiling panel installation strategy worked. I deliberately left some strategic gaps (which are covered by the metal strips you see in the photos) so I could remove the tongue and groove panels without removing all of them. I'm happy to say this did work, perfectly in fact. I was able to easily pull out a couple panels over the stove to fix the ground wire on the light there, which had been flickering annoyingly for years now. + +After a summer in which I was unable to do much of anything, working on things again felt good. When we were on the road I tended to work in small bursts when time and circumstances permitted (or at the side of the road when circumstances required). Now though I can get a little bit done everyday, which gives me a sense of slow steady progress that I rather prefer to the burst and then nothing workflow. + +I find this interesting because I was once a fan of the extremes of things: everything and then nothing at all. I still see the merit in this for some things, but the danger is that time spent doing nothing at all comes the vastly outweigh the time spent in intense bursts of work. Everything or nothing too often turns out to be nothing at all. + +I've come to appreciate that steady, little-bit-every-day approach. The secret is to never take a day off whatever it is, make it a habit. Do something every day. It doesn't matter how much, just do something. Sometimes it's hard to tell you're making any progress, but if you just force yourself to sit in the chair and do the work anyway, then one day you look back and realize how far you've come. diff --git a/published/2020-10-28_walking-north-carolina-woods.txt b/published/2020-10-28_walking-north-carolina-woods.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e69ffa1 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/2020-10-28_walking-north-carolina-woods.txt @@ -0,0 +1,57 @@ +I started traveling with my feet, walking out the front door as a kid to go exploring. There was a tract of vacant land not far from my house I would walk to in the early days. It had a cluster of Eucalyptus trees that offered shade in the summer, and from mid way up, a view of the sea. + +I started going farther and farther afield as I got older, until I was sneaking off to catch the southbound PCH bus, carefully horded change heavy in my pocket, often ending up twenty or more miles from home at the age of twelve[^1]. + +Later I spent a lot of time on the trails of the Sierra Nevada, the White Mountains, the Trinity Alps, the Arizona desert, the western slope of Colorado, and the canyon lands of Utah. And then one day, I stopped walking around. + +It wasn't a conscious decision, stopping. I just didn't make the time for walking anymore. What you don't make time for, doesn't happen. And it didn't for over a decade, until I decided it was time to plan a walk. It just popped into my head one day, *you should go for a walk*. + +<img src="images/2020/2020-10-20_125807_backpacking-shining-rock.jpg" id="image-2464" class="picwide" /> + +So I pulled up a map and plotted a trip to the mountain trails of North Carolina, a place called Shining Rock Wilderness. I'd intended to go alone, but my kids got wind of my plan and wanted in. It took some scrambling to find enough gear for us all, but I managed. I'm glad I did, walking with my kids made it better in every way. + +<img src="images/2020/2020-10-22_093539_backpacking-shining-rock.jpg" id="image-2482" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2020/2020-10-20_132310_backpacking-shining-rock.jpg" id="image-2465" class="picwide" /> + +It wasn't a long walk, but it was our kind of walk. We followed a river side trail a few miles up a thickly forested valley, under a canopy of yellow birch, oak, and beach, with buckeye and tulip poplar beneath. The forest was decked out in autumn colors. Red, orange, yellow, and brown leaves rained down with every shuddering breeze. + +We set up camp in the fading light the first evening, and there we stayed. We played by the river, exploring upstream the first morning to see where another river cut in and the valley opened up some. Mainly though we spent our time in our little neighborhood of river valley. + +<img src="images/2020/2020-10-21_103349_backpacking-shining-rock.jpg" id="image-2479" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2020/2020-10-21_093148_backpacking-shining-rock.jpg" id="image-2477" class="picwide" /> + +It was a fine river, babbling calmly in some places, but turning to a tumbling cataract in others. It had the perfect clarity of western rivers. Even in pools six feet deep, we could see the rocky, leaf-strewn bottom below. In the shallows thin ribbons of clear water slid over the black granite rocks, shimmering like heat waves on a desert horizon. You wanted to lay down and drink it right off the rocks. + +We didn't of course, but there is something tremendously calming about laying down by the water. It was cold, but not unbearable. We tossed our clothes on the rocks and went swimming one afternoon, laying afterward on the black granite shore, letting the warmth of the afternoon sun on the rocks chase away the chill. + +<img src="images/2020/2020-10-20_171455_backpacking-shining-rock.jpg" id="image-2467" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2020/2020-10-20_171957_backpacking-shining-rock.jpg" id="image-2468" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2020/2020-10-20_172009_backpacking-shining-rock.jpg" id="image-2469" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2020/2020-10-20_155851_backpacking-shining-rock.jpg" id="image-2466" class="picwide" /> + +In the evenings we would cook dinner down by the river on our tiny stove. We made all our own food in the dehydrator ahead of time and rehydrated it in camp. Mac and cheese, a chicken curry we named Shiny Rock Curry. Rehydrated canned chicken is better than it sounds. And everything is better when you eat it in the wild, next to a river. + +<img src="images/2020/2020-10-21_085528_backpacking-shining-rock.jpg" id="image-2476" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2020/2020-10-20_172051_backpacking-shining-rock_BJp4SQV.jpg" id="image-2471" class="picwide" /> + +Every night after dinner we walked a little way up the river and stashed our bear canister well away from the tent. On the way back we'd lie down on our backs and watch the pink sunset through the yellow leaves of the trees. Then the bats would dart overhead, silhouetted against the twilight sky. + +<img src="images/2020/2020-10-20_190151_backpacking-shining-rock.jpg" id="image-2473" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2020/2020-10-20_190354_backpacking-shining-rock.jpg" id="image-2474" class="picwide" /> + +The kids didn't seem to mind the deep darkness of the forest at night. Although, for once I didn't encounter any resistance to going to bed. They may not have been afraid of the dark forest, but they weren't terribly eager to remain out in it either. A campfire would likely have helped, but sadly, there are no fires allowed in the Shiny Rock Wilderness right now. + +One night I got up in the early morning darkness and unzipped the tent to a panorama of stars, with Orion perfectly framed in the one treeless spot of sky. It was cold, but I sat out on a log, watching the clouds drift past the glow of the moon, hidden somewhere behind the ridge. I couldn't help wondering how many problems might be solved if we all had a chance to more regularly see the stars. It's hard to take yourself too seriously when the stars are always there to remind you what's real and what's theatre. + +<img src="images/2020/2020-10-21_073838_backpacking-shining-rock.jpg" id="image-2475" class="picwide" /> + +Early mornings on the river are magical. Get up when the light of the world is still soft and gray and stand and listen to the water. There is nothing better than morning twilight beside a river. + +We were up early every morning. The kids would play on the rocks while I made coffee in the close company of a trio of rock wrens that were our only real visitors the whole trip. They seemed genuinely curious about what we were doing. They studied us with cocked heads, watching as we ate our breakfast burritos. They left when I made hot chocolate, though even later, when we were racing leaf boats in the eddies, I heard them chattering somewhere in the thicket of mountain laurel across the river. + +<img src="images/2020/2020-10-22_075925_backpacking-shining-rock.jpg" id="image-2480" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2020/2020-10-21_094849_backpacking-shining-rock.jpg" id="image-2478" class="picwide" /> + +The last morning we packed up our gear and headed home. None of us wanted to though. I was kicking myself for not taking more time off, I had plenty to spare. I just hadn't anticipated how much we would all want to stay. The kids spent much of the hike back plotting ways to come back, times to come back, what would it be like in spring? Was it hot in summer? As I listened to them talk about it I found myself wondering how long it would be before they were counting their change and looking up bus schedules. + +[^1]: Kids don't do this any more. I'm not sure I'd want mine to, but it was a different time. And my parents were never, so far as I know, aware that I did this. The bus riding was mostly done in the company of a friend or two, mutual support was needed to travel far at that age. diff --git a/published/2020-11-04_halloween.txt b/published/2020-11-04_halloween.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..34263c6 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/2020-11-04_halloween.txt @@ -0,0 +1,44 @@ +Our kids look forward to Halloween the way I used to look forward to Christmas. They'll sit around in May plotting different things they can be for next Halloween. Then they'll ask *when is Halloween?* the way some kids ask *are we there yet?* + +It's fun for Corrinne and I to listen to all their costume ideas. In the course of a year we hear dozens of plans tossed around. I encouraged the more outlandish ones, though those tend to be abandoned the fastest. I've always wanted to see if Corrinne could figure out a way to make some of their more creative ideas into costumes, like "a haunted pine tree" or a siren. + +<div class="cluster"> +<img src="images/2020/2020-10-31_142442_halloween.jpg" id="image-2501" class="cluster picwide" /> +<span class="row-2"> +<img src="images/2020/2020-10-31_142603_halloween.jpg" id="image-2505" class="cluster pic66" /> +<img src="images/2020/2020-10-31_142538_halloween_ouHhM2u.jpg" id="image-2504" class="cluster pic66" /> +</span> +<img src="images/2020/2020-10-31_142347_halloween.jpg" id="image-2500" class="cluster picwide" /> +<span class="row-2"> +<img src="images/2020/DSC_4063.jpg" id="image-2512" class="cluster pic66" /> +<img src="images/2020/DSC_4095.jpg" id="image-2513" class="cluster pic66" /> +</span> +</div> + +This year costumes that are also pajamas were all the rage. I support this rage because costumes should be worn for at least the next six months, ideally much longer. Our kids are still playing with the fairy wings they [wore for Halloween when we were in Patrick's Point](/jrnl/2017/11/halloween-and-big-trees) three years ago. + +Elliott somehow found out about these pajama costumes and discovered one that was a flying squirrel. But then his sister chose to be a rock star (specifically, [Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs](https://karenomusic.com/biography), because Lilah's imagination is always very detailed and precise), so he decided to be a rock star flying squirrel. Then the same thing happened to our erstwhile leopard, who became a rock star leopard. + +The funny thing about this is our kids really have no idea what a rock star is, not that such things matter. They just want to get dressed up, eat candy, and dance around all night. Are there even rock stars anymore? I have a hard time picturing Keith Richards or Mick Jagger getting away with their antics in today's world. + +<img src="images/2020/2020-10-31_142616_halloween.jpg" id="image-2506" class="picwide caption" /> + +We skipped the trick-or-treating this year, as I imagine most people did. For us there wasn't really anywhere to go anyway. Our nearest neighbors are cows, which are notorious for only having tootsie rolls, good and plenty, and other candy no one wants. + +We played it safe and celebrated by having a Halloween candy scavenger hunt and decorating some sugar cookies. The scavenger hunt was all Corrinne's doing, I lack that sort of festive creativity. + +<img src="images/2020/2020-10-31_142338_halloween.jpg" id="image-2499" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2020/2020-10-31_150303_halloween.jpg" id="image-2508" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2020/2020-10-31_131251_halloween_Gn6Bkkp.jpg" id="image-2498" class="picwide" /> + +Black frosting turns out to be tough, we settled for gray. Otherwise though the kids made out like bandits with cookies *and* plenty of candy squirreled away for the rest of the week. + +I always try to get them to eat all their candy on Halloween. I am a big believer in the binge -- just get it over with. Somehow they never fall for this. They have rather remarkable restraint in that way. Elliott always tells me he can't eat anymore or he'll get a stomach ache. No way I was smart enough to let that stop me when I was his age. + +<img src="images/2020/2020-10-31_144011_halloween.jpg" id="image-2507" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2020/2020-10-31_151650_halloween.jpg" id="image-2510" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2020/2020-10-31_153344_halloween.jpg" id="image-2511" class="picwide" /> + +One change from bus life, we have an oven so we got to roast our pumpkins seeds this year. It got me thinking, *hey now, I could fix the oven in the bus while we're sitting around here.* + +I'm not entirely sure I want to fix it though. Somehow it feels like abandoning our [waffling ways](/essay/waffle-world). Then again, there are things you can't waffle. Like pumpkin seeds. But is that worth the trouble? I don't know. I'm still mulling it over. Maybe by next Halloween we'll have it sorted out. You don't want to rush into these things after all. diff --git a/published/2020-12-02_learning-to-ride-bike.txt b/published/2020-12-02_learning-to-ride-bike.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b08d4be --- /dev/null +++ b/published/2020-12-02_learning-to-ride-bike.txt @@ -0,0 +1,33 @@ +We gave Elliott a bike for [his birthday last year](/jrnl/2019/12/birthday-beach), but I've been slow in teaching him how to ride. When we got back from our [walk in the woods](/jrnl/2020/10/walking-north-carolina-woods), I made it a point to give him a chance to practice every day. + +The road in front of our house sees four or five cars a day at most. It's generally a safe place to ride. We'd make a couple trips back and forth, up and down the hill with me running along beside him, holding on to the back of his seat. We'd do this two or three times before my back started to hurt and he'd want to go back to his scooter. He was faster on the scooter and he didn't have dad loping along behind him the whole time. I'd sit at the side of the road and watch the kids, the girls on bike Elliott on his scooter. The only condition was that we had to do the two laps on the bike. + +After doing this for a few weeks, my fingers getting ever lighter in their grip, he had it down. I'd let go for extended distances and he was riding his bike. He just didn't know it yet. He was cruising along in that blissful space where he had no idea that he could fail. In his mind, no matter what happened, I was there to catch him so he could relax and be free. + +One evening his sister noticed me letting go. She squealed in excitement and started to say something, but I managed to keep her quiet. I knew she'd tell him that night though -- they're very loyal to each other -- but I didn't want him to discover it while he was doing it. It's better to find out after the fact I think, to have that realization of not only can I do this, I already did it. + +<img src="images/2020/2020-11-07_152651-1_elliott-riding-bike.jpg" id="image-2528" class="picwide" /> + +The next day he asked me if it was true and I said yes. He smiled and got on his bike and asked me for a push and he was off riding. For a couple days I needed me to give him a little push to get him started, but then one day I went to do that and he said no, "I don't need any help." And there you go. + +<img src="images/2020/DSC03440.jpg" id="image-2536" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2020/2020-11-20_155057_leica-bw_Ynl1LD6.jpg" id="image-2534" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2020/2020-11-15_140612-1_elliott-riding-bike.jpg" id="image-2529" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2020/2020-11-15_141351-3_elliott-riding-bike.jpg" id="image-2530" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2020/2020-11-20_154630-7_leica-bw.jpg" id="image-2532" class="picwide" /> + +--- + +If you know me or Corrinne it should come as no great surprise that our kids love to read. People often ask what we do out here in the woods all day, well, one answer would be: we read. These days nothing goes unread -- packaging, labels, fine print, everything gets read. + +<img src="images/2020/DSC_4539.jpg" id="image-2545" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2020/DSC_38772.jpg" id="image-2445" class="picwide" /> + + +This got me thinking about parenting. I've always said, half jokingly, that all you really need to teach your kids is basic human kindness and how to read. The rest is information and experience they can seek out for themselves using those tools. Be kind and read the signs is the modus operandi of life. + +I've since added cooking, spreadsheet formulas, compound interest, and edge cases in American tax code to my basic human curriculum, but I haven't changed my overall approach, which has always been that the main job of being a parent is to keep your kids alive and stay out of their way as much as possible. + +I've tried to do that, though sometimes it is hard. Mistakes have been made. One of my daughters is still getting over a fear of boats because I thought she'd be fine sitting on the floor of a canoe for a short paddle. She was not. She's coming around though. This spring we'll try again. + +Sometimes you have to hold onto the seat. No one just rides a bike. No one just reads. But I remain convinced that you should let go as soon as you can, probably sooner than you think you should. diff --git a/scratch.txt b/scratch.txt index d1152ed..97f32e9 100644 --- a/scratch.txt +++ b/scratch.txt @@ -1,20 +1,23 @@ -It would seem that while you can take the travelers off the road, you cannot to some extent take the +We underestimate our capabilities. Not in the grand sense. In the grand sense we probably overestimate our capabilities. But in the personal sense most of us have been trained to underestimate ourselves. We underestimate what we can do when we combine vision, will, and work. -We are camping in our house. It is a long term campsite to be sure. We don't have to worry about where we're going to go next for quite a while, but without meaning to do it, we noticed that we are essentially camping in our house. +The strange thing is we seem to admire other people who are able to do this, but never think that we ourselves can do the same. -There is very little furniture, for the first two months the only places we had to sit were six chairs I bought for $30 at a local antique store. We're used to sitting on the ground, so we just sat on the ground. Even now that we've added two couches, we still sit on the floor more often than not it seems. -It's not that we can't get more furniture, we could. But once you learn to live with less, there is no need for more. I know that sounds kind of self-righteous perhaps, but it's not a conscious thing. We don't sit around thinking, oh, we get by on so little. That would silly. Getting by with less isn't worth building an identity around, but once you internalize it you will find life is much easier. +--- + + +I think there are two major tasks to be undertaken in the middle of your life, one is coming to terms with the reduced possibilities of the future, letting go of the ones you are sure aren't happening to focus on the one's that could still happen. I will never make the U.S Olympic rowing team and rather than have that missed goal rattling around somewhere in the back of my mind going, I have to address it. Rather than sitting around mumbling about how I could have been a contender I have to accept that no I could not, I tried and literally could not, and let that go so that other goals become more feasible. -There's a saying that used to be a way of life: use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without. Every time you're about to buy something, consider that saying for a moment first. +The other major task in midlife is to recognize the ciclical nature of, well, nature. -Whatever the case, +--- +"It's fun to do something for no reason at all because freedom is the foundation of all human delight... freedom of the will, the capacity to choose and act and attend for no other reason than that we happen to want to." You learn to live your life on the margin, that strange zone between what is known and what is not. There are some answers here, but not many, and you have to make that place your home. @@ -46,31 +49,7 @@ Another ancillary benefit (goal?) of traveling in the bus was getting to see all --- -We tossed around possibilities. We considered buying a house. We considered buying a boat. But then we stepped back and considered what it was we liked about traveling in the bus. There are many answers to this question, but some of the big ones are: nature, the lack of modern human noises, cars, planes -- I love it when my kids say the birds woke them -- and the self-reliance. - - -Just when we were considering packing it in, a pandemic shuts down the country. Just when were thinking of not packing it in, but carrying on for another year everyone and their mother decides to go camping. When everyone zigs, the only smart thing to do is zag. - -The joy of living in the bus has less to do with the actual travel and more to do with escaping the trappings of the 9-to-5, suburban, consumer-capitalist world. We're still part of the world in plenty of ways, and propped up by it in many ways -- we wouldn't be able to travel this way without that world -- but out there in the woods we just felt better. - -If you put these things in a spreadsheet, as I do, the things that jump out at you are that you don't actually need to travel to get all this stuff. So a confluence perhaps. At the time it's difficult to travel by land in the US, perhaps we don't need to? - -One day a house came up for rent not too far from where we were. It was an old farmhouse sitting on a few acres, but more importantly it was surrounded by hundreds of acres of forest. I called and talked to the landlord. We met. We talked. A few days later after he had told us we could rent it, he said he was sorry but his wife had rented it to someone else. - -We shrugged. These things happen so much when you travel you cease to worry about them for more than a couple hours. That confluence maybe wasn't meant to happen just now. Other confluences had me thinking. - -It is very hard to do anything other than travel when you are traveling. To create things on the road is a challenge. The updates I post here is the most I have ever managed beyond notes scribbled in one of the many notebooks I lug around. - -If you want to write a book about traveling, you have to stop traveling. If you want to do anything that requires sustained effort over weeks, months, traveling just gets in the way. This is one of the reasons I think long term travelers leave behind very little in the way of written legacy. The flip side of this is that the writers we think of as writing about traveling often haven't traveled all that much. -I always think of *On The Road*, of which the actual time on the road is vanishingly small. The *Air Conditioned Nightmare* is based on a single cross country trip lasting a couple of months. *Blue Highways* takes place over nine weeks. In *Travels with Charley* Steinbeck spends about 75 days on the road. *Wild America* spans barely a season. The only real exception I've found is *Kingbird Highway*, which does record a tremendous amount of travel sustained over many years. - -Do I want to write a book about our trip? Honestly, I am not sure. Possibly. But I have an unrelated book I very much want to write (and am). I have some other projects I'd like to tackle that would be tough to do while traveling. - - - - ---- Y'all are going to be very close. @@ -80,10 +59,6 @@ That's what an inspector said to me once when we were selling our house and I to - - - - I want to be tested in ways I can't imagine and try to be ok no matter what happens. I looked forward to disasters, I looked forward to having to get out of tough situations. @@ -94,15 +69,7 @@ Now, mind you, "ok" doesn't mean happy as a clam, totally unaffected, no bad fee Cycles. Loops. Close them where you find them. For example, heres an energy loop: sun, plants, animals, waste, plants animals, waste. Find yourself in that. For example, the sun helps plants grow, hogs eat some of those plants, hog get slaughtered and made into bacon, I eat the bacon, I crap out the bacon into a composting toilet that eventually becomes soil for the plants that grow so the hogs can eat them... this is a minimally wasteful loop. I don't want to call it closed because there are variables (water, sunlight, not having a plague of locusts decend on your plants, etc), but it is robust on scale that swings from robust to totally batshit crazy, which would be the cycle that puts bacon in a package you buy from the store. - - - - - - - - - +--- A while back someone at work mentioned wanting to write about how there is little to no regulation in the realm of "alternative" medicine and its rife with scams. I volunteered to write a rebuttal, because I'm glad alternative medicine is not regulated. I did not elaborate and I forgot all about it until someone brought it up again, this time specifically asking why I was glad there were no regulations. @@ -112,21 +79,7 @@ I don't hold this against science as a method of inquire, but I do very much hol There is always a priesthood setting the limits of acceptable discourse, what matters is how that priesthood (and the culture more broadly) handles dissent. How much room is there for discourse outside the acceptable? We're very fortunate to live in a culture where for the most part there are no limits placed on dissenters. I can write this, publish it where anyone can read it, and there are (currently) no consequences. I will not be burned at the stake, exiled or any number of horrible things visited on those with "unacceptable" ideas in various cultures throughout the ages. There is some risk of publishing these opinions and having them come back to haunt me at some point in the future of course, but ultimately all I am advocating for is that we continue to not punish, or censor people who old opinions, beliefs, customs, what have you, that are considered unacceptable to the current priesthood. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - +--- How do I make this while still being present. Here. Right now. In this bus, on this night, feeling this feeling? diff --git a/src/how-use-websters-1913-dictionary-linux-edition.txt b/src/how-use-websters-1913-dictionary-linux-edition.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..12898f3 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/how-use-websters-1913-dictionary-linux-edition.txt @@ -0,0 +1,39 @@ +I suspect the overlap of Linux users and writers who care about the Webster's 1913 dictionary is vanishingly small. Quite possible just me. But in case there are others, I am committing these words to internet. Plus I will need them in the future when I forget how I set this up. + +Here is how you install, set up, and configure the command line app `sdcv` so that you too can have the one true dictionary at your fingertips in the command line app of your choosing. + +But first, about the one true dictionary. + +The one true dictionary is debatable I suppose. Feel free to debate. I have a "compact" version of the Oxford English Dictionary sitting on my desk and it is weighty both literally and figuratively in ways that the Webster's 1913 is not, but any dictionary that deserves consideration as your one true dictionary ought to do more than spit out dry, banal collections of words. + +John McPhee writes eloquently about the power of a dictionary in his famous New Yorker essay, *[Draft No 4](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/04/29/draft-no-4)*, which you can find in paper in [the compilation of essays by the same name](https://bookshop.org/books/draft-no-4-on-the-writing-process/9780374537975). Fellow New Yorker writer James Somers has [a brilliant essay on the genius of McPhee's dictionary](http://jsomers.net/blog/dictionary) and how you can get it installed on your Mac. + +Remarkably, the copy of the Webster's 1913 that Somers put up is still available. So go grab that. + +However, while his instructions are great for macOS users, they don't work on Linux and moreover they don't offer access from the shell. I write in Vim, in a tmux session, so I wanted an easy way to look things up without switching apps. + +The answer is named `sdcv`. It is, in the words of its man page, "a simple, cross-platform text-based utility for working with dictionaries in StarDict format." That last bit is key, because the Webster's 1913 file you downloaded from Somers is in StarDict format. I installed `sdcv` from the Arch Community repository, but it's in Debian and Ubuntu's official repos as well. + +Once `sdcv` is install you need to unzip that dictionary.zip file you should have grabbed from Somers' post. That will give you four files. All we need to do now is move them somewhere `sdcv` can find them. By default that's `$(XDG_DATA_HOME)/stardict/dic`, although you can customize that by add thing Environment variable `STARDICT_DATA_DIR` to your .bashrc. I keep my dictionaries in `~/bin/dict` folder so I just drop this in .bashrc: + +~~~bash +STARDICT_DATA_DIR="$HOME/bin/dict/ +~~~ + +### How to Lookup Words in Webster's 1913 from the Command Line + +To use your new one true dictionary, all you need to do is type `sdcv` and the word you'd like to look up. Add a leading '/' before the word and `sdcv` will use a fuzzy search algorithm, which is handy if you're unsure of the spelling. Search strings can use `?` and `*` for regex searching. I have never used either. + +My use is very simple. I wrote a little Bash function that looks like this: + +~~~bash +function d() { + sdcv "$1" | less +} +~~~ + +With this I type `d search_term` and get a paged view of the Webster's 1913 entry for that word. Since I always write in a tmux split, I just move my cursor to the blank split, type my search term and I can page through and read it while considering the context in the document in front of me. + +### But I Want a GUI + +Check out [StarDict](http://www.huzheng.org/stardict/), there are versions for Linux, Windows, and macOS, as well as source code. diff --git a/kindle-hacking.txt b/src/kindle-hacking.txt index 064c700..064c700 100644 --- a/kindle-hacking.txt +++ b/src/kindle-hacking.txt diff --git a/qutebrowser-notes.txt b/src/qutebrowser-notes.txt index 584a47a..584a47a 100644 --- a/qutebrowser-notes.txt +++ b/src/qutebrowser-notes.txt diff --git a/src/solving-common-nextcloud-problems.txt b/src/solving-common-nextcloud-problems.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b32a629 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/solving-common-nextcloud-problems.txt @@ -0,0 +1,92 @@ +I love [NextCloud](https://nextcloud.com). Nextcloud allows me to have all the convenience of Dropbox, but hosted by me, controlled by me, and customized to suit my needs. I mainly use the file syncing, calendar, and contacts features, but Nextcloud can do a crazy amount of things. + +The problem with NextCloud, and maybe you could argue that this is the price you pay for the freedom and control, is that I find it requires a bit of maintenance to keep it running smoothly. Nextcloud does some decidedly odd things from time to time, and knowing how to deal with them can save you some disk space and maybe avoid syncing headaches. + +I should note, that while I call these problems, I **have never lost data** using Nextcloud. These are really more annoyances and some ways to prevent them than *problems*. + +### How to Get Rid of Huge Thumbnails in Nextcloud + +If Nextcloud is taking up more disk space than you think it should, or your Nextcloud storage space is just running low, the first thing to check is the image thumbnails directory. + +At one point I poked around in the Nextcloud `data` directory and found 11-gigabytes worth of image previews for only 6-gigabytes worth of actual images stored. That is crazy. That should never happen. + +Nextcloud's image thumbnail defaults err on the side of "make it look good in the browser" where as I prefer to err on the side of keep it really small. + +I did some research and came up with a few solutions. First, it looks like my runaway 11-gigabyte problem might have been due to a bug in older versions of Nextcloud. Ideally I will not hit that issue again. But, I don't admin servers with hope and optimism, so I figured out how to tell Nextcloud to generate smaller image previews. I almost never look at the images within the web UI, so I really don't care about the previews at all. I made them much, much smaller than the defaults. Here's the values I use: + +~~~bash +occ config:app:set previewgenerator squareSizes --value="32 256" +occ config:app:set previewgenerator widthSizes --value="256 384" +occ config:app:set previewgenerator heightSizes --value="256" +occ config:system:set preview_max_x --value 500 +occ config:system:set preview_max_y --value 500 +occ config:system:set jpeg_quality --value 60 +occ config:app:set preview jpeg_quality --value="60" +~~~ + +Just ssh into your Nextcloud server and run all these commands. If you followed the basic Nextcloud install instructions you'll want to run these as your web server user. For me, with NextCloud running on Debian 10, the full command looks like this: + +~~~bash +sudo -u www-data php /var/www/nextcloud/occ config:app:set previewgenerator squareSizes --value="32 256" +sudo -u www-data php /var/www/nextcloud/occ config:app:set previewgenerator widthSizes --value="256 384" +# and so on, running all the commands listed above +~~~ + +This assumes you installed Nextcloud into the directory `/var/www/nextcloud`, if you installed it somewhere else, adjust the path to the Nextcloud command line tool `occ`. + +That will stop Nextcloud from generating huge preview files. So far so good. I deleted the existing previews and reclaimed 11-gigabytes. Sweet. You can pre-generate previews, which will make the web UI faster if you browse images in it. I do not, so I didn't generate any previews ahead of time. + +### How to Solve `File is Locked` Issues in Nextcloud + +No matter what I do, I always end up with locked file syncing issues. Researching this led me to try using Redis to cache things, but that didn't help. I don't know why this happens. I blame PHP. When in doubt, blame PHP. + +Thankfully it doesn't happen very often, but every six months or so I'll see an error, then two, then they start piling up. Here's how to fix it. + +First, put Nextcloud in maintenance mode (again, assuming Debian 10, with Nextcloud in the `/var/www/nextcloud` directory): + +~~~bash +sudo -u www-data php /var/www/nextcloud/occ maintenance:mode --on +~~~ + +Now we're going directly into the database. For me that's Postgresql. If you use Mysql or Mariadb, you may need to adjust the syntax a little. + +~~~bash +psql -U yournextclouddbuser -hlocalhost -d yournextclouddbname +password: +nextclouddbname=> DELETE FROM oc_file_locks WHERE True; +~~~ + +That should get rid of all the locked file problems. For a while anyway. + +Don't forget to turn maintenance mode off: + +~~~bash +sudo -u www-data php /var/www/nextcloud/occ maintenance:mode --off +~~~ + +### Force a File Re-Scan + +If you frequently add and remove folders from Nextcloud, you may sometimes run into issues. I usually add a folder at the start of a new project, and then delete it when the project is finished. Mostly this just works, even with shared folders, on the rare occasion that I used them, but sometimes Nextcloud won't delete a folder. I have no idea why. It just throws an unhelpful error in the web admin and refuses to delete the folder from the server. + +I end up manually deleting it on the server using: `rm -rf path/to/storage/folder`. Nextcloud however, doesn't always seem to notice that the folder is gone, and still shows it in the web and sync client interfaces. The solution is to force Nextcloud to rescan all its files with this command: + +~~~bash +sudo -u www-data php /var/www/nextcloud/occ maintenance:mode --on +sudo -u www-data php /var/www/nextcloud/occ files:scan --path="yournextcloudusername/files/NameOfYourExternalStorage" +sudo -u www-data php /var/www/nextcloud/occ maintenance:mode --off +~~~ + +Beware that on large data directories this can take some time. It takes about 30 seconds to scan my roughly 30GB of files. + +### Mostly Though, Nextcloud is Awesome + +Those are three annoyances I've hit with Nextcloud over the years and the little tricks I've used to solve them. Lest anyone think I am complaining, I am not. Not really anyway. The image thumbnail thing is pretty egregious for a piece of software that aims to be enterprise grade, but mostly Nextcloud is pretty awesome. + +I rely on Nextcloud for files syncing, Calendar and Contact hosting, and keeping my notes synced across devices. Aside from these three things, I have never had a problem. + +####Shoulder's Stood Upon + +* [Nextcloud's documentation](https://docs.nextcloud.com) isn't the best, but can help get you pointed in the right direction. +* I tried a few different solutions to the thumbnail problem, especially helpful was this post on [Understanding and Improving Nextcloud Previews](https://ownyourbits.com/2019/06/29/understanding-and-improving-nextcloud-previews/), but nachoparker. +* The [file lock solution](https://help.nextcloud.com/t/file-is-locked-how-to-unlock/1883) comes from the Nextcloud forums. +* The solution to scanning external storages comes from the [Nextcloud forums](https://help.nextcloud.com/t/automate-occ-filescan/35282/4). diff --git a/vagrant-custom-box.txt b/src/vagrant-custom-box.txt index d73019d..d73019d 100644 --- a/vagrant-custom-box.txt +++ b/src/vagrant-custom-box.txt diff --git a/src/why-i-built-my-own-mailing-list-software.txt b/src/why-i-built-my-own-mailing-list-software.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b9877cf --- /dev/null +++ b/src/why-i-built-my-own-mailing-list-software.txt @@ -0,0 +1,52 @@ +This is not a tutorial. If you don't already know how to write the code you need to run a mailing list, you probably shouldn't try to do it yourself. Still, I wanted to outline the reasons I built my own mailing list software in 2020, when there are dozens of commercial and open source projects that I could have used. + +At the core of my otherwise questionable decision is the notion that we ought to completely understand the core infrastructures in our lives. Why? Because it adds value and meaning to your life in the form of understanding. And that understand doesn't stop with the thing you understand either, it becomes part of you, you will find other places this understanding helps you. + +It's also just not that hard to do things yourself. It makes maintaining the system easier, and it often saves time (or money) in the long term. + +The only way to really understand a thing is to either build it yourself from scratch or completely disassemble it and put it back together. + +This is true for software as well as the rest of the world. I ripped all the electrical, propane, plumbing, and engine systems out of my home ([a 1969 RV](/1969-dodge-travco-motorhome)) because I needed to know how every single piece works, and how they all work together. + +I understand those systems now because I built them myself (with expert help when needed), and that makes maintaining them much easier. Otherwise I would always be dependant on someone else to keep my home running and that's no way to live. + +The same is true with software. If the software you're considering is a core part of your personal or business infrastructure, you need to understand every single part of it and how all those parts fit together. + +The question is, should you deconstruct an existing project or write your own from scratch? The answer depends on the situation, the right choice won't always be the same in every case. I do a mix a both and I'm sure most other people do too. There's no one right answer, which means you have to think things through in detail ahead of time. + +When I decided I wanted to [start a mailing list](/jrnl/2020/11/invitation), I looked around at the software that was available and very quickly realized that I had different goals than most mailing list software. That's when you should write your own. + +The available commercial software did not respect users privacy and did not allow me any control. There are some services that do provide a modicum of privacy for your subscribers, but you're going to be working against the software to enable it. + +*If you know of a dead simple commercial mailing list software that's built with user privacy in mind, please post a link in the comments, I'd love to have somewhere to point people. * + +I also wanted to be in complete control of the data. I host my own publishing systems. I consider myself a writer first, but publisher is a close second. What sort of publisher doesn't control their own publishing system?[^1] What makes email such a wonderful distributed publishing system is that no one owns the protocols that dictate how it works. That's great. I don't want to control the delivery mechanism, just the product at either end. + +Email is more or less the inverse of the web. You send a single copy to many readers, rather than many readers coming to a single copy as with a web page. The point is, there's no reason I can't create and host the original email here and send out the copies myself. The hard part -- creating the protocols and low-level tools that power email -- was taken care of decades ago. + +With that goal in mind I started looking at open source solutions. I use [Django](https://www.djangoproject.com) to publish what you're reading here, so I looked at some Django-based mailing list software. The two I considered most seriously were [Django Newsletter](https://django-newsletter.readthedocs.io/en/latest/) and [Emencia Django Newsletter](https://github.com/emencia/emencia-django-newsletter). I found a few other smaller projects as well, but those seem to be the big two in what's left of the Django universe. + +Those two, and some others influenced what I ended up writing in various ways, but none of them were quite what I wanted out of the box. Most of them still used some kind of tracking, whether a pixel embedded in the email or wrapping links with individual identifiers. I didn't want either of those things and stripping them out, while staying up-to-date with upstream changes would have been cumbersome. So, DIY then. + +But running a mail server is... difficult, risky, and probably going to keep you up at night. I tried it, briefly. + +One of the big problems with email is that, despite email being an open protocol, Google and other big corps are able to gain some control by using spam as a reason to tightly control who gets to send email[^2] That means if I just spin up a VPS at Vultr and try to send some emails with Postfix they're probably all going to end up in, best case, you Spam folder, but more likely they'd never be delivered. + +So while I wrote the publishing tools myself, host the newletter archive myself, designed everything about it myself, I handed off the sending to [Amazon's SES](https://aws.amazon.com/ses/), which has been around long enough, and is used by enough big names that mail sent through it isn't automatically deleted. It may possibly still end up in some Spam folders, but for the most part in my early testing (thank you to all my friends who helped out with that) that hasn't been an issue. + +In the end what I have is a fairly robust, loosely-joined system where I have control over the key elements and it's easy to swap out the sending mechanism down the road should I have problems, or just find something better (preferably something not owned by Amazon). + +###Was it Worth It? + +So far absolutely not. But I knew that when I started. + +I could have signed up for Mailchimp, picked some pre-made template, and spent the last year sending out newsletters to subscribers, and who knows, maybe I'd have tons of those by now. But that's okay, that was never the goal. + +I am and always have been playing a very long game when it comes to publishing. I am building a thing that I want to last the rest of my life and beyond if I can manage it. + +I am patient. I am not looking for a ton of readers, I am looking for the right readers. The sort of people who are in short supply these days, the sort of people who end up on a piece like this and actually read the whole thing. The people for whom signing up for Mailchimp would be too easy, too boring. + +I am looking for those who want some adventure in everything they do, the DIYer, the curious, the explorers, the misfits. There's more of us than most of us realize. If you're interested feel free to [join our club](/newsletter/friends). + +[^1]: Sadly, these days almost no publisher retains any control over their systems. They're all beholden to Google AMP, Facebook News, and whatever the flavor of year happens to be. A few of them are slowly coming around to the idea that it might be better to build their own audiences, which somehow passed for revolutionary in publishing today. But I digress. +[^2]: Not to go too conspiracy theory here, but I suspect that Google and its ilk generate a fair bit of the spam themselves, and do nothing to prevent the rest precisely because it allows for this control. Which is not to say spam isn't a problem, just that it's a very *convenient* problem. diff --git a/abundance.txt b/unused/abundance.txt index bf9ab1a..bf9ab1a 100644 --- a/abundance.txt +++ b/unused/abundance.txt diff --git a/bird-watching.txt b/unused/bird-watching.txt index 349d5ca..349d5ca 100644 --- a/bird-watching.txt +++ b/unused/bird-watching.txt diff --git a/camera.txt b/unused/camera.txt index 508b04c..508b04c 100644 --- a/camera.txt +++ b/unused/camera.txt diff --git a/fear.txt b/unused/fear.txt index 9121a8b..9121a8b 100644 --- a/fear.txt +++ b/unused/fear.txt diff --git a/fict-book.txt b/unused/fict-book.txt index 50df2e1..50df2e1 100644 --- a/fict-book.txt +++ b/unused/fict-book.txt diff --git a/flying.txt b/unused/flying.txt index 3014bd3..3014bd3 100644 --- a/flying.txt +++ b/unused/flying.txt diff --git a/hard.txt b/unused/hard.txt index 7ef9c5e..7ef9c5e 100644 --- a/hard.txt +++ b/unused/hard.txt diff --git a/instant.txt b/unused/instant.txt index 78a452c..78a452c 100644 --- a/instant.txt +++ b/unused/instant.txt diff --git a/june.txt b/unused/june.txt index 5975eea..327a7ba 100644 --- a/june.txt +++ b/unused/june.txt @@ -2,22 +2,6 @@ Abundance is the natural state of the world. If you leave something alone, it thrives. Anyone who thinks that life is a competitive battlefield filled with individuals struggling, clawing at each other to survive, needs to get outside more. -That's not what life is, and the first time you sit still and listen to the forest, pause in a grassy meadow in the moonlight, or crouch in the crook of hard red sandstone halfway up the canyon wall, you'll realize that the conception of the world as struggle is flat wrong. It's flat wrong for many reasons, but the one that's come to interest me the most is that that boundary between individual and environment is not nearly so neat and clean as we like to imagine. - -That is to say, in order for there to be competition there must be individuals and, when you start looking closely, the line between you and everything is indistinct at best. - -There is a harmonic resonance between the world and forms that fill it. There is a kind of vibrating, edge-blurring, feedback loop. Things move, change, do what they need to do, others dissolve, morph, recombine in new ways. Nothing is still, nothing is static, nothing is cut off from anything else. We're still not sure where a tree ends: is it the roots? The mats of fungi feeding nutrients to the roots, without which the tree would die? Where is the beginning and end? - -The better question might be, why are we looking for these things? Where did we get the idea that things begin and end? - -If you do pause somewhere and sit and be still and watch, listen, smell, taste, you'll also notice something very important: you are part of this harmonic dance going on around you. The grass presses against your feet, the gnats explore your skin, the carpenter bees' wings announce their arrival to you. - -Many don't even think of themselves as part of the environment at all, which is part of why they know nothing of the abundance of the world. When we separate ourselves in our minds, when we see ourselves as separate from the ecosystem, the abundance goes away. - - - - - When you get out in it, that's not what life is. That might be what we have made our lives, but it's not what life *is*. Sit still and listen to the forest. Pause at the edge of grassy meadow in the moonlight and listen. Crouch in a crook of red sandstone halfway up the canyon wall and listen. Here the insects, the birds, the wind. The conception of the world as struggle did not come from observation of the world. diff --git a/ko-kradan-wally.txt b/unused/ko-kradan-wally.txt index 2ae4344..2ae4344 100644 --- a/ko-kradan-wally.txt +++ b/unused/ko-kradan-wally.txt diff --git a/leopold-essay.txt b/unused/leopold-essay.txt index 2bb8c0b..2bb8c0b 100644 --- a/leopold-essay.txt +++ b/unused/leopold-essay.txt diff --git a/new-job-essay.txt b/unused/new-job-essay.txt index 5d8399b..5d8399b 100644 --- a/new-job-essay.txt +++ b/unused/new-job-essay.txt diff --git a/not-traveling.txt b/unused/not-traveling.txt index 5746c18..5746c18 100644 --- a/not-traveling.txt +++ b/unused/not-traveling.txt diff --git a/se-renta.txt b/unused/se-renta.txt index 48690af..48690af 100644 --- a/se-renta.txt +++ b/unused/se-renta.txt |