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diff --git a/scratchold.txt b/scratchold.txt deleted file mode 100644 index aefff2f..0000000 --- a/scratchold.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,2078 +0,0 @@ -The energy of chaos is required to change the existing order. - -# Scratch - - - ---- - -There is an underground movement of people united around a common goal of relocalizing life. Many, probably not all, but the examples I know of anyway, of the people driving this movement have embraced what is sometimes called a front porch culture. That is, a culture of staying in one place all your life, of being a part of your community, and so on. I completely support this, which might seem odd for someone who lives in an RV, but I see what we do as a similar kind of localization. Localization need not be literal, at least not for everyone. Every culture everywhere - ---- - -And stupidity combined with greed and arrogance is frankly more dangerous than deliberate evil. Someone who's evil and smart usually has the common sense to know when the risk of blowback is getting too high, and backs down fast when that happens in order to save his own skin so he can enjoy his nasty pleasures and ill-gotten gains. Somebody who's arrogant, greedy, and stupid doesn't do that, and such people go charging ahead and create major disasters that cause much more suffering and misery, and get dragged down with their victims. - ---- - -Art is the transmission of a feeling across time. The artist feels something that drives him or her to make something and then the viewer experiences a feeling when they see or read or otherwise interact with that thing that the artist made. Those may be very different feelings, the feeling in the artist and in the viewer, but that thing that is making that connection is, I think, art as we define it in western culture. There are different conceptions of art. Even our culture at earlier periods had different definitions. And there are still artists who would probably disagree with this and say that the purpose of art is actually the expression of the divine, but I would still argue that it's the feeling of the divine that drives the artist to create. So it may not be that they're trying to communicate their own feeling, but that feeling is still the driving impulse behind the creation of the thing. And then, like I think of cooking, and I think well, at it's best cooking is exactly what I just described, but then also other times I am just scrambling these eggs so the kids can eat before Corrinne starts work at the table. - ---- - -Working in Crawford quote: - -Matthew Crawford's Shop Class as Soul Craft captures this feeling in a way that no other books I've read manages. Crawford defines this desire, this need to be capable of repair as a desire to escape the feeling of dependence. What he called the Spirited Man, becomes a kind of archetype of the antidote to passive consumption. Passive consumption displaces agency, argues Crawford. One is no longer master of one's stuff because one does not truly understand how stuff works. "Spiritedness, then," writes Crawford, "may be allied with a spirit of inquiry, through a desire to be master of one’s own stuff. It is the prideful basis of self-reliance." - -In the years since Shop Class was published I have witnessed a convergence of two worlds, the collision of the spirit of inquire that looks to books and the spirit of inquiry that wants to works in the real world, to fix things, to get one's self moving down the road again. I see this in the work of Van Neistat, who explicitly took the Spirited Man mantle and ran with it. But also in the thousand people without filmmaking skills who are quietly working in their yards, in their garages, at the side of the road. Shade tree mechanics. Tinkerers. Spirited men and women who want first and foremost to understand, to expand their understanding of the world around them, to know how to use the tools we toolmakers have created for ourselves. - -I think this goes the heart of the question of existence... why are we here? Are we here to optimize our days in service to some unknown thing are we here to be entertained? Or are we here to understand the world around us, to take part in the co-creation of our world? Are we along for the ride or are we standing at the helm, trimming the sails and pointing the bow into uncharted territory? - -Crawford writes that the spirited man "hates the feeling of dependence, especially when it is a direct result of his not understanding something. So he goes home and starts taking the valve covers off his engine to investigate for himself. Maybe he has no idea what he is doing, but he trusts that whatever the problem is, he ought to be able to figure it out by his own efforts. Then again, maybe not—he may never get his valve train back together again. But he intends to go down swinging." - -This was the spirit in which I set off in the bus. I had no idea how the engine worked or if I would be able to keep it running, but I intended to go down swinging. - - - - -Passive consumptions displaces agency. One is no longer masters of one's stuff but a servant of its makers. - ---- - -I don't want to report stories, I want to live them. - -Have your own code. Not a contractors code. Not any organizations code. Your own code that means something to you, that makes you take pride in your work. - -When you live in a small space you have to be organized. Everything needs a place. Even if that place is to just shove it in a messy cabinet and close the door quickly. Otherwise you space will be unbearable. - -I think after a while the novelty of anythin wears off. even living on the road. or perhaps its that I felt the need to dial back the novelty a little. first we returned to places we'd already been, but that wasn't the answer. Then we went to new places, but moved much slower. settled in a bit. but that wasn't entirely the answer either. it wasn't until we enrolled the kids in juijitsu that i realized, oh, this is what i am supposed to do. i am supposed to look more closely at these places. to befriend the people within in them, to understand them to a greater degree. I do not know why, I just know that this is part of it. i still do not have all of it, it is still not perfected, but every day that passes i get new ideas and things fit more. - -as a spin off of the moving slower idea i came to realize that okay, i have achieved the thing I set out to do. we live on the road. now what? it wasn't until i sat twith this question for a long time in meditation that something like an answer began to form. and a big part of the answer was, now you make stuff. now you write, now you build, now you create, now you fix. now you do all the things you have always done, but you find a way to do them on them within the constraints of how you life now. Fewer tools, less space, in some cases i've added some ttools that seem strange at first glance. - -the answer is to put the art back in. to blend the books and the life and use them to make some kind of art. mechanical, analog art. and digital recordings to supplement it. but that mechnaical stuff needs to happen. it has been missing too long. - ---- -Safety mania and death phobia are signs of a disconnection from purpose and passion. If you have nothing more important than your own life, then preserving life is left as the only purpose. Because our civilizational answer to “Why are we here?” has unraveled, many of us individually have trouble answering that question too, for the individual story draws from the collective. - -OK, I realize I may have risen to too high an altitude for the practical purpose of preventing the next bout of pandemania. So I will end with this: We can reduce our general susceptibility to fear-mongering by reducing the levels of fear current in society. A society ridden with fear will acquiesce to any policy that promises them safety. How do we reduce ambient levels of fear? There is no single answer. Besides, each one of us already knows how. - -https://charleseisenstein.substack.com/p/pandemania-part-5 - ---- - -For Midgley, the post-Enlightenment myths that orient us in the modern world are so potent because they base their authority, paradoxically, on the myth of mythlessness. That is, the Enlightenment project was, among other things, committed to overcoming the restrictive chains of religious dogma, inherited belief systems, and, yes, grand narratives of mythology. But this was only to change one set of answers to our biggest questions for a host of others. We can’t escape myths; we only exchange them. And some of the post-Enlightenment myths by which we continue to live tell a tale of humans as autonomous and atomized beings, of an inert world of knowable laws scrutinized by the detached and disinterested rational gaze, of an environment whose value is reduced to commodification and utility, and of a human species that is on some ineluctable frog-march of progress. - -But myths are not just intellectual abstractions. They manifest in the real. The industrial—and arguably now digital—revolutions and the built world of mass manufacturing, global trade networks of shipping lanes and rail lines and interstate highways, and the ever-increasing consumption of fossil fuels and the mining of scarce and precious resources in whose name we will even wage international war are, in part, the physical embodiment of this deeply ingrained post-Enlightenment mythology. What we make reveals to us what we love and believe. And over centuries, these lived, incarnated mythologies shape our posture and stance to the world. - -https://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2022/08/what-in-the-world-is-the-world-a-review-of-this-sacred-life-humanitys-place-in-a-wounded-world/ - ---- - -Early in my blogging days, I reflected a bit on the nature of technology criticism. In my view, the technology critic was not necessarily motivated by a love of their object in the same way that a food critic or film critic might be. “The critic of technology is a critic of artifacts and systems that are always for the sake of something else,” I observed. To put it another way, we run into problems precisely when we start treating technology as an end rather than a means to an end. This is not to say that we can’t be legitimately impressed with technical achievements on their own terms, of course, or admire the skill that makes them possible. But we do well to also judge technologies according to the greater ends they help us realize and critique them to the degree that they undermine the achievement of such ends. - -https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/what-is-to-be-done-fragments - ---- - -Paul Kingsnorth on solutions: - -Climate change is a great example of that. It’s really interesting to me that we talk about climate change as if it were somehow disconnected from all the other things that are happening to the planet. The industrial economy’s assault on the earth, which has been going on for a couple hundred years, has basically wrecked the health of the planet in all sorts of different ways. And there are a lot of things happening — large rates of extinction, soil erosion, ocean pollution, a changing climate, all sorts of smaller, subtler things as well — but it’s climate change that’s just a one-off, almost self-contained phenomenon that has somehow grabbed the headlines and has become this enormous thing that we somehow have to stop. That’s the problem, so what’s the solution? And the solution inevitably is always technological, because nobody can think about anything else. That’s the way we think in our culture: we’ve created the problem with technology, so we must have to solve it with technology. So the issue has boiled down to, the wrong kind of gas is going up into the atmosphere, so we need a fuel technology that doesn’t put it up there, as if that were the problem, rather than the way we’re living our lives, the entirety of the economy, the value system that it’s based on. It’s the kind of notion that we’re extractive individuals and we just live in a market system. All of these complex things have happened over the last hundred years where we’ve completely retooled the way we live — we’ve disconnected ourselves from nature and culture and community, and we’ve made ourselves consumer individuals living in a machine. And the problem then is seen as, the Machine is using the wrong fuel, so let’s do something else. It’s not going to work, anyway, but even if it did work, what would the solution look like? Is that the world we want to be living in? Are the values correct? Is our disconnection okay as long as it doesn’t pollute the atmosphere? Is it okay to live in this kind of radical individualistic machine world as long as we’re not putting carbon up into the air? - -It’s very difficult to ask the bigger questions because, as you say, relentlessly, as soon as you do, there’s an immediate backlash, which usually comes in completely familiar clichéd language —“So you’re saying we should go back and live in caves?” etc. And there’s not really much you can do with that. - -it’s not neutral technology, it’s only designed for one thing. A gun only does one thing. But a smartphone is not neutral technology. If you use that thing, you are going to get addicted to that thing, you’re going to be taken into a certain way of life, you’re going to be acting in a certain way, you’re undoubtedly going to have your brain rewired by your use of it. Yeah, sure, you could be using it to promote organic farming rather than pornography, but you’re still on your phone all day, and so is everybody else who has to do that, and you’re still pumping carbon into the atmosphere — but more to the point, you rewire your whole life. Nobody has time to go folk dancing when they’re on their phone all the time. It doesn’t matter how well-intentioned you are. - -I perpetually would like to get the internet out of my house, but then I wouldn’t be able to earn a penny, so I can’t. So there it is! So we have to make these choices. I would genuinely like to live without the internet, but I have no idea how I would feed my children, so I can’t at the moment. So there it is. But you know, maybe it’s just the process of drawing lines, like it is with anything else. You just say, okay, I’m not going over this line. It’s just a thing I’m not going to do. So I’ve said for a long time I’m not having a smartphone. I’m just not going to have one. And I don’t care what that means. It’s inconvenient for me in all sorts of ways, but I’m just not going to do it, so that’s that. I don’t have to think about it. And that’s one of my lines. There are things I’m just not going to do, that I’m not going to compromise on, and then there are other things I go, Well, okay, I have to do that because we’re all living in the world. So I think that’s probably the way to think about it. - -https://mereorthodoxy.com/following-christ-in-the-machine-age-a-conversation-with-paul-kingsnorth/ - ---- - - - - -# Stories to Tell - -## What Happened to 'How Are You'? - -One used to meet up with an old friend and ask, “How are you?” And get a little recap of how that person has actually been. Today, when we ask how someone is, it’s quite common to get back a “BUSY!” Yes, of course. Busy. - -I’m not asking about the tempo of your life, I’m asking about you. I’m interested in you. Tell me about you. - -We’ve come to somehow equate worth with how harried we are. We are the VIPs of our own little worlds, engrossed in the importance of our serious affairs. Busy! So busy! To me, this busyness is evidence of a mismanaged life. If all I can say to someone when they ask me what’s happening in my life is, “BUSY!” I’m doing a poor job of it. It’s like a thermometer with the temperature climbing, a little tell of something going askew. - -We can have much to do, deadlines and meals and kiddos and never ending tasks, but that doesn’t mean we need to feed the busy monster. We don’t have to allow frenetic energy to drive us into that whirlwind of tasks. It’s not helpful. I’ve learned that my perspective truly does determine how I show up in my life. Who I am to my people. How I experience my time here. By a shift in that perception - say from focusing on the overwhelm to one of gratitude, everything changes. - -## Fire Notes: Seeking the Sun - -People have forgotten how important the sun is. You can die from lack of sun. - -## Gurdjieff Do It By Hand - - -Gurdjieff notion that you should do a task by hand. if you have to dig a ditch you should do it and dig it by hand because there's an opportunity there for spiritual growth. if you're offloading it to a machine you're losing that opportunity for spiritual growth. if we offload tasks to machines we lose the opportunities that they have for spiritual growth and we may not fully understand the consequences of offloading things to technology because we'll never go through it to see what Spiritual Development we might have had if we had done it ourselves - -## Collapse notes ---- -Other Owen, and for good reason! But that’s an important part of what I was talking about. A market economy depends on the fundamental agreement that the seller will provide the buyer with a product worth buying. Now that corporations by and large no longer do this, the market is collapsing, and they have no idea what to do about it — since listening to consumers and providing them with what they need and want is nowhere in the modern corporate vocabulary. --JMG - - -Making sense of the ideas of one great culture from within another great culture is notoriously hard. (It’s an interesting detail of history, for example, that the first two European scholars to study the I Ching both went incurably insane.) Thus I don’t claim to be able to sound the depths of either of the two future cultures I’ve sketched out here; I was raised in a culture weighed down by the Faustian veneer, and I live in a region that mediates between western Europe and the North American heartland. (The ground under my feet is part of the same long-vanished continent as the western half of Britain.) Being who, when, and where I am, I’m poised unsteadily between two great cultures, the fading Faustian culture and the future American culture. That’s part of the hand I was dealt when I was born. - -That awkward position, between the dissolving forms of the Faustian vision and the first stirrings of tamanous culture, seems to be becoming common among my American and Canadian readers, for what it’s worth. (I haven’t yet seen it among my European readers, which comes as no surprise—again, each great culture is rooted in its own land.) Here in North America, the Faustian veneer seems to be cracking very rapidly just now, outside those classes that have adopted Faustian thoughtways as the basis for their identity and their power. The widening gap between the Faustian managerial caste and the post-Faustian masses is among the major facts in American public life today, and it accounts for a great deal of the total incomprehension with which each side regards the other. - -One of the chief questions in my mind right now is how that gap will evolve in the years ahead. Most great cultures, once they leave their ages of reason, wind up their creative eras, and settle into stasis, can expect a long slow decline—in cases such as ancient Egypt and traditional China, this lasted for many centuries. The surge toward infinity is so central to the Faustian ethos, however, that the total failure of the will to power that drives it may send the nations of the West down another, harsher route. We’ll talk about that in two weeks. --JMG - ---- - -## November Sun - -We had an uneventful drive down from Dallas. We took it easy, making leisurely lunch stops in small towns along way. In the end it took two days, we stopping off in the middle at a place called Lake Somerville State Park. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-11-05_133349_goose-island-sp.jpg" id="image-3195" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-11-06_090224_goose-island-sp.jpg" id="image-3196" class="picwide" /> - -It was somewhat warmer that first night out of Dallas, but the real heat started the next day. By the time we rolled into the low country around Corpus Christi it was hot and humid. I was ready to dive into the ocean and cool off. - -We rolled into Goose Island State Park in the midst of a November heat wave. Goose Island is actually on the bay side of Port Aransas, which dashed my hopes of a quick dip, but it was the only place we could get a campsite on short notice. The actual Gulf beaches were a 20 minute drive, with a quick ferry ride, away. There's nothing quite like a warm November day at the beach to make you feel like you're doing something right. Even the water temps were still in the 70s. - -<img src="images/2022/DSC08506.jpg" id="image-3197" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/DSC08507.jpg" id="image-3198" class="picwide" /> - -Unfortunately, shortly after we arrived the girls came down with a bit of a cold, and then Corrinne got sick too. To get the kids out of the bus a little (being sick in the bus is a crowded, unhappy experience), in the evenings I'd take them over to a place near the campground called The Big Tree. - -It was a bit like [the octopus tree in Huntington Beach](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2022/01/huntington-beach-birds), but the kids said the trees here were even better for climbing. The namesake tree was fenced off, but there were several others around that were fair game. We'd go over in the evenings for an hour or so, watch the sunset through the trees, and then walk over to watch the moon rise over the bay, before heading home to make dinner. - -<img src="images/2022/B0222465.jpg" id="image-3201" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/B0222468.jpg" id="image-3202" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/B0222475.jpg" id="image-3203" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-11-07_181356_goose-island-sp.jpg" id="image-3204" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-11-07_183606_goose-island-sp.jpg" id="image-3200" class="picwide" /> - -It's always funny to me how we fall into these little routines even on the road. Do the same thing three or four days in a row and it starts to feel like what you've always done. But weather like this, and sunsets like that, are a routine I'd never argue against. - - -## Halloween in the Big City - -After a few days relaxing, and catching our breath, so to speak, out at Lake Arrowhead, we headed into Dallas to visit family. Seems like a simple thing, drive 100 miles or so. I'm at the dump station adjusting the idle on the carburetor because it was running a little high. I do this in drive because if I pull the idle screw out too much I stall at lights. I get it where I want it, then I reach over and move the shifter into park. The shifter goes into park, but the transmission definitely does not. Sigh. - -I shut it off, chock the wheels so it won't go anywhere and finish dumping. I need to get out of the dump station in case someone else comes along to use it, but I'm in gear, so I can't just start the engine. I jump the relay with a screwdriver to get it going and limp over to an empty campsite. Take a deep breath, get to work. Everyone stood around and watched as I unscrewed the shifter from the dash. - -Once I got it off the dash I could see what had happened. The cable runs from the sifter to the transmission inside a sleeve, the sleeve clamps into the back of the shifter. A piece of metal had broken and the sleeve had slipped out so that when you moved the shifter, everything moved. All we needed to do was get the sleeve to stay in place again. The kids started offering ideas on how to hack it back together to get to Dallas. It was Halloween and they wanted to trick or treat with their Aunt and Uncle. If they had to figure out how to get the bus running again, then so be it. - -After playing around with it for a bit, I found that if I held it in place with one hand, I could shift with other. Not ideal, but it would get us down the road to Halloween so that's what we did. It's an automatic, so it's not like I shift much. We made it into town without incident. I shut off the engine and we got down to the important stuff, visiting with family, and of course, carving pumpkins. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-10-31_141334_halloween-plano.jpg" id="image-3183" class="picwide" /> - -This wasn't arbitrary carving either, there was a plan and then they went out and executed that plan. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-10-31_142848_halloween-plano.jpg" id="image-3185" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-10-31_142728_halloween-plano.jpg" id="image-3184" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-10-31_182601_halloween-plano.jpg" id="image-3187" class="picwide" /> - -The area Corrinne's sister lives in does Halloween at a level we had never really experienced before. Decorations all over the place, crowded streets. I went in the house below and can honestly say it was better decorated than any amusement park I have ever been in. At one point later in the night it was so crowded the kids had to get in line at each house just to get to the door to say tick or treat. It was fun, but that was about when we called it a night. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-10-31_185309_halloween-plano.jpg" id="image-3186" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-10-31_183857_halloween-plano.jpg" id="image-3188" class="picwide" /> - -"Can we do one with less drama?" - -<img src="images/2022/2022-10-31_183859_halloween-plano.jpg" id="image-3189" class="picwide" /> - -After Halloween I got busy figuring out how to fix the shift cable. It had obviously been welded once already. What broke was a piece of metal someone else had bent over and drilled out many years before. Redoing that would have been the way to go, but I didn't have access to a welder. I ended up cutting a piece of aluminum and screwing it in on both sides. So far, so good. When we stop later this year to pull out and rebuild the engine and transmission I'll probably weld up something more secure. - -We spent the week hanging out with family and visiting, lots of swimming, somehow there always seemed to be a dog or cat around for the kids to play with. I think this is the hardest trade off for them about living the way we do, they'd really like to have a dog. At least they get to visit with plenty dogs. - - - -## Going Down Swinging - -When we broke down in Lamar I kept thinking about a book I read almost a decade ago: *Shop Class as Soul Craft* by Matthew Crawford. The gist of the book is that the only way to escape a dependency on stuff is to be able to take it apart and repair it. There is empowerment in knowing how things work -- your stuff will never fail you because if it does break, you can repair it. - -Crawford calls this person who wants to fix their own stuff, The Spirited Man. Crawford writes: - ->[The Spirited Man] hates the feeling of dependence, especially when it is a direct result of his not understanding something. So he goes home and starts taking the valve covers off his engine to investigate for himself. Maybe he has no idea what he is doing, but he trusts that whatever the problem is, he ought to be able to figure it out by his own efforts. Then again, maybe not—he may never get his valve train back together again. But he intends to go down swinging. - -I kept staring at the bus's valve covers thinking about that line. Could I get my valve train back together again? There was only one way to find out. Still, I don't think I would have done it if Corrinne hadn't insisted that I could do it. The kids also seemed to think I could do it. You can do a lot more when people believe in you. So I decided I had to try, to go down swinging at least. - -After a week of thinking it over, weighing other options, and realizing no one else was going to do it for me, I dove in. The valve covers came off. - -Well, first I messaged my Uncle Ron and asked for advice before I dug in. He gave me some helpful pointers -- take lots of photos, label everything, keep track of where each rod came from, clean it all up with soap and water, coat it with a light coat of oil. Check. The best mechanics he told me are the ones that were patient and methodical -- take your time. Patient. Methodical. Check. - -I grabbed the four wrenches I'd need and started taking things apart. I pulled off the electrical components first. That's when I remembered the alternator problems I'd yet to deal with. Since I had to drain the radiator anyway, I decided to pull it out completely which would give me easier access to the alternator. I removed the alternator (the most difficult, stubborn bolt in the whole job) and had the local Napa bench test it. Dead. I ordered a new alternator. If you're going to go all the way, you better go all the way. - -Then I pulled off the carburetor and then the valve covers. I took a lot of photos, I cleaned and labeled everything. I pulled off the intake manifold (which was so much heavier than I expected), and then I took out the valve trains (the bus's are all on a long rod, which I took out as a single piece, so they stayed together nicely). Finally, the only thing left was the head. Ten more bolts and then I'd know. I won't lie, I was a little scared that I'd find a blown cylinder in there, but I didn't. The head came off and there was the gasket burnt through in pretty much the exact same place it blew last time. - -That told me something was wrong with more than the gasket. - -At Ron's suggestion I tested it with a feeler gauge, which is just a bunch of strips of metal of precise thicknesses, and discovered that the head and the block are each slightly warped in that spot. That's why we blew the gasket again, and it's why we'll blow the new one I installed eventually too. If there'd been a machine shop around I might have pulled the other head and had them both ground down, but there wasn't. Machine shops that were over 200 miles away in big cities told me it would be at least two weeks before they could get to it. - -All I wanted to do was get us back on the road and keep us there for a few more months. I *do* plan to rebuild or replace the engine next year, but now that I've done the head gasket, I feel like I want to do a rebuild myself too. But I want to do it where I can work on it without being stuck somewhere we don't really want do be. In the mean time we just need to squeeze a few thousand more miles out of it. In the end I put some copper coat on the block, the gasket, and the head to help seal it a little better and hoped for the best. - -Once I had everything I needed, I reversed everything I'd done, working from my notes, photos, and some videos, to get it all back together. It took me three days to get everything back in, though I imagine I could do it in two now that I have a better idea of how it all works. - -Then came the evening when I first fired it up. Deep down I knew it was going to work, but it was still a stressful moment. Especially with the amount of oil that had to burn off... so much oil... for a moment I thought we'd failed. It was too windy that day to go for a drive, but the next day after work I drove into town and filled up the tank before going down the highway for about 20 minutes. Amazingly, everything seemed to work. Well, almost everything. I must have bumped a wire somewhere because the headlights don't come on anymore, but if that's the only thing I screwed up... I can live with (and fix) that. - -Two days later we hit the road south. Unfortunately we had to abandon our plans to go to Tucson. There are too many hills between here and there. We didn't want to push it. If we're going to squeeze more life out this engine as it is, we're going to have to stick to the flat areas. So we pointed south, to Texas. It was a long drive to Amarillo, probably the longest, most nerve-wracking drive I've ever done in the bus. Dead into a 20-30 mile per hour headwind the whole way, with me obsessively opening the doghouse hatch, sure I would see the telltale smoke blowing out again... but I never did. We made it to Amarillo. We checked into The Big Texan RV park and took the kids to swim at the indoor pool. It was almost like a normal day on the road for us. - -With more wind in the forecast the following day we got a very early start, hitting the road when the light was just enough to not need headlights anymore. We got three hours of driving in before the wind came up hard again, but by then we were only an hour from Lake Arrowhead State Park, where we planned to spend the weekend. I managed to relax a little, I only lifted the doghouse half a dozen times on the drive. There was never any smoke coming out. So far so good. A few thousand more miles and I'll start to trust myself. - -We set up camp at Lake Arrowhead State Park, which was deserted, and settled into something we haven't had in a long time: silence. There was just the wind in the trees and the sounds of the kids playing. I forgot how peaceful it could be out here. It's good to be back. - - - -## Rodeos and Forts - -Three weeks flew by in Lamar, Colorado. It took a week just to figure out what we wanted to do about the engine and find someone willing to do it. Every mechanic was booked at least two weeks out, so we had plenty of time on our hands. I got caught up on work (and this site), but we also got out to see some of the local sights, like the local end-of-the-season rodeo. - -The community college in town has a rodeo team (natch) and hosts this rodeo, which pulled in competitors from all over the place -- Wyoming, South Dakota, there was even a contestant from Australia. We missed the first day, but Saturday I took the kids over to watch their first rodeo. - -We saw everything from goat tying and barrel racing to bull wrestling and riding, but I think the favorite was the bronco and bull riding. There's something about watching someone try to stay on a bucking animal that I think everyone can relate to, at least metaphorically. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-10-09_111708_lamar-rodeo.jpg" id="image-3153" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-10-09_113624_lamar-rodeo.jpg" id="image-3155" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-10-09_112450-1_lamar-rodeo.jpg" id="image-3154" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-10-09_120545_lamar-rodeo.jpg" id="image-3156" class="picwide" /> - - -It had been a long time since I'd been to a rodeo and forgot how physically brutal it is -- by the end of the day my spine was hurting from just watching those guys get thrown around like rag dolls. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-10-09_121155_lamar-rodeo.jpg" id="image-3157" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-10-09_131358_lamar-rodeo.jpg" id="image-3158" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-10-09_131633_lamar-rodeo.jpg" id="image-3159" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-10-09_132136_lamar-rodeo.jpg" id="image-3160" class="picwide" /> - -The first day we went no one managed to stay on a bull for the full 8 seconds. We had so much fun the kids insisted we go back Sunday morning to watch the final rounds of all the events, where the top three finishers from Fri and Sat squared off. This time one young man -- and only one -- managed to stay on for the full 8 seconds and went home with a trophy. - -The next weekend we headed about an hour west of Lamar to see something called Bent's Old Fort. Fort is a bit of a misnomer though, it was really a trading post, the largest on the mountain branch of the Santa Fe Trail. The only really. From the last signs of city in Missouri, to well into Mexico, Bent's Fort was the only permanent settlement. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-10-15_133823_lamar-bents-fort.jpg" id="image-3165" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-10-15_134203_lamar-bents-fort.jpg" id="image-3166" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-10-15_134406_lamar-bents-fort.jpg" id="image-3167" class="picwide" /> - -The fort was abandoned in 1849, primarily due to a bad cholera outbreak. The original adobe structure long ago crumbled to dust, but at one point it housed a young man who recorded all the dimensions and architectural details in a journal. That was used as the basis for rebuilding the structure for Colorado’s centennial in 1976. There were only two when we were there, but much of the year it's well-staffed with historical re-enactors as well. - -I am going to sound like a broken record here, but once again what made Bent's Old Fort such a great experience was the fact that it isn't all roped off. The kids could touch things, feel the furs, try on a hat, pick up the super-sharp two-tined fork, walk up to the stove, work the blacksmith's bellows and loads more. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-10-15_125924_lamar-bents-fort.jpg" id="image-3161" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-10-15_134702_lamar-bents-fort.jpg" id="image-3169" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-10-15_130137_lamar-bents-fort.jpg" id="image-3163" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-10-15_130109_lamar-bents-fort.jpg" id="image-3162" class="picwide" /> -<div class="cluster"> - <span class="row-2"> -<img src="images/2022/2022-10-15_135840_lamar-bents-fort.jpg" id="image-3170" class="cluster pic66" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-10-15_130835_lamar-bents-fort.jpg" id="image-3164" class="cluster pic66" /> - </span> -</div> -<img src="images/2022/2022-10-15_140106_lamar-bents-fort.jpg" id="image-3171" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-10-15_141930_lamar-bents-fort.jpg" id="image-3174" class="picwide" /> - -It was quite a contrast to our other recent historical building visit, which was in Theodore Roosevelt National Park where you can walk in Teddy's original cabin and... look at all the stuff behind the plexiglas walls. That was so uninspiring I didn't even mention it. Apparently it pays to come to out of the way places if you want to interact with them. - -I particularly enjoyed the kitchen, the blacksmith's shop, and the carpenter's shop for this reason. All the tools were there, or in the case of the blacksmith, the tools to make the tools. The kitchen actually incorporated the original limestone fireplace stones into the floor, which were worn smooth from years of cooks working over them. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-10-15_141242_lamar-bents-fort.jpg" id="image-3173" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-10-15_140241_lamar-bents-fort.jpg" id="image-3172" class="picwide" /> - -The spider pans and cast iron pots were mostly period correct, though I did notice a couple of Lodge brand skillets. Cast iron hasn't changed much over the years though so there isn't much difference between what they had in the 1840s and what I have in the bus right now. - -The other room I found fascinating was the council room, the room you would have been taken to when you first arrived at the fort, especially if you were from a local tribe or up from Mexico. The purpose was to sit down and present gifts to the visiting traders. This was expected, though where that expectation comes from I'm not quite sure. I assume it was just how the tribes had always done business. The purpose was to establish at least a business relationship, but often, from what I have read, friendships. - -It reminded me of some of my experiences in [India](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/india/) and [Nepal](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/nepal/), and for that matter much of the world. Commerce is not just an exchange of currency for goods, but a kind of relationship. You go in a shop in India or Nepal and you will have to bargain to establish a price, and you usually bargain over tea. If the shopkeeper thinks you might spend a lot of money you might also get some bread and chutney. - -These days it's very fashionable to hates capitalism, and I am not here to defend the current brand of capitalism, especially in the form of online commerce, but I do think it's worth remembering that where we are isn't the only place we could be. The free market was absolutely the driving force behind any frontier trade (the nearest regulatory body being thousands of miles away), and yet somehow what seems to have emerged is a system of exchange that had elements of a gift economy and elements of more traditional barter. Personally it sounds a lot nicer than what we have. I'd rather sit around a fire on bear skins talking than stare at a screen, clicking buttons until a bunch of plastic crap is delivered to my home. - -My contention would be that we will get back to Bent's Old Fort style trading sooner or later. The totally lack of humanity in today's commerce makes it deadening to our souls. That's usually a sign of something that's not long for the world. In some ways there are aspects of the old ways lingering in our current system. A lot of the hardware stores and auto parts stores I end up at have a bunch of older men sitting around on stools, talking. I've always preferred Napa auto parts for exactly this reason, you come in and pull up a stool. That's inviting. Except in smaller communities most of the stools are taken. There's a gathering of some kind in progress whenever I come in. Perhaps those men came in to buy some little thing, but I think mostly they're there to talk. I imagine those relationships may have started a little like the old council room gatherings at Bent's Old Fort, where there may have been a commercial origin to the relationship, but it didn't have to end there. - -Of course while musing on all this I ordered a bunch of engine gaskets from Rock Auto rather than going to the Napa just down the road. In my defense, Napa wanted almost double what I paid, and for inferior gaskets. I'm sure some traders never made it past the council room, after all. Not every deal is a good one. Still, after our trip out to the trading post, and thinking about these things, I started buying what I could locally here in Lamar, sitting on a stool in Napa. Sometimes I know I did pay more, but it was more enjoyable and if we want to find our way back to commerce with a bit of humanity, we might have to pay a little extra. I mean, who really wants to win a race to the bottom anyway? - - - - -## Broken Down In Lamar - -From Bear's Lodge we continued south, bound eventually for Tucson though we had a few weeks to get there. Unfortunately there isn't much between northern Wyoming and New Mexico. Or, let me rephrase that. Taking into account that the bus doesn't climb into the mountains, and Colorado is ridiculously expensive and crowded, there isn't much between northern Wyoming and New Mexico. - -The first night out we spent at a random fairground in southern Wyoming. The next day we drove onto to Brush, CO were we camped in a city park for the night. At that point we had originally planned to head to Trinidad to camp and then maybe take a day trip into the Rockies. As we talked about it though we realized our heart really wasn't in it. We decided to cut east and down into New Mexico that way instead. - -We were just outside of Lamar CO when the bus suddenly lurched and hesitated. At this point that's happened enough that I immediately knew the fuel pump was shot. Again. I pulled over and confirmed that there was air spitting into the fuel filter. I don't know if it's poor manufacturing, the amount of ethanol in gasoline or what, but I've been through three fuel pumps in five years. These days I carry a spare. I got under the bus and half and hour later the fuel system was back to normal. - -When I was changing the fuel pump I noticed the wind was blowing much harder than I thought and we were headed straight into it. According to the local weather it was blow 25 miles and hour. Still, there wasn't much we could do about that. We hit the road again. - -About ten minutes later I smelled smoke, specifically the smell of burning oil. I lifted up the doghouse and sure enough there was smoke coming out the value cover vent. I pulled over again. When I opened up the air filter I found a good bit of oil, along with an oil soaked filter. I try not to jump to catastrophic conclusions, but at this point I know this engine pretty well, and this had happened once before, when we blew our head gasket. - -We were about 20 miles outside of Lamar CO, but the next town was a good 60 miles away and it was already 3:30 in the afternoon. I hated to do it, but we had to turn around. We found an RV park in Lamar and pulled in for the night. - -The next morning I got up and started troubleshooting. I like to be optimistic so I started by replacing the PCV valve, but unfortunately, that did nothing. At least I have a spare PCV valve now. I moved on to a dry compression test. The results were... not good. Not only did I have two adjacent cylinders with compression at 65 PSI, which is a pretty good sign of a blown head gasket, not a single cylinder was actually at the compression it should be. As my uncle put it when I texted him the results, "your cylinders are rattling around in there like a bunch of old coffee cans." - -The fact of the matter is this engine is worn down and need to either be rebuilt or replaced. - -It's been nearly two weeks now and I still can't tell you which of those things we're going to end up doing, but whichever it is we're looking at a minimum of six weeks. We couldn't even get a mechanic to look at it for two weeks. And that mechanic is in Amarillo. Currently our plan is to—if it's possible -- just fix the head gasket and keep going for a couple of months. Then this spring we can either rebuild or replace the engine. - -Either way, we're stuck in Lamar Colorado for the next two weeks. Worse, when that two weeks is up we're looking at spending over a month without our home. That's stressful, expensive, and not at all what we want to be doing. This is the part of travel that your favorite YouTube stars don't tell you about (actually, the good ones do, see our blogroll for some of those), but it's part of travel. - -There are always challenges that make you think, oh god, how are we going to handle this? How are we going to get out of this? What are we going to do? Those are good questions you're going to have to answer if you want to keep going. I like to write them down and then write down answers. And then change the answers when my first ideas don't work out. And keep updating my answers until something finally works. That's all there is to it really, you put your head down and you get to work fixing things. - -This particular time is proving mostly to be a test of patience. I'm not sure if it's a parts shortage, staff shortages, or what, but mechanics are slammed with business. Could I pull the heads here and put in a new gasket? Yes, I could. Maybe I should, but so far I haven't. Work has been consuming most of my time and so here we sit. - - - - -The other temptation I am prone to in these situations is to stick my head in the sand and try to pretend it hasn't happened. I'll just take the kids to the park, make dinner, read a book, go to bed and pretend everything is normal. This is also not the way out. You have to do all that, but you also have to keep throwing solutions at the wall until you find the one that sticks. - -That time out in Colorado we threw a whole bunch of shit at the wall before we even had a hint that anything was going to stick. But it did. Wasn't the things I thought would stick, but we got out. you always do. Until you don't. and then it doesn't matter anyway. there you are. - - -An alternative to the front porch culture. it think we went wrong when we became to sedentary, it made us see the world as fixed, unchanging, things as they are become things as they have always been. I think the connectedness and community that you find in people who want to create a front porch culture is the right way forward, but I don't think that a rootedness to place is what drive that. I think that's a conscious human decision. I don't think it organically springs into a being. I think people have to want it, and I think so long as there is television, the internet, screens, that will not happen. the culture from afar is too strong, to universal and too enslaving to overcome. it's not until that culture has run its course that something new will arise. that doesn't mean of course that you can't free yourself from screens, from the culture of afar. That's not too difficult. But you aren't going to free the whole of culture. - - -1) find out if we can stay here without an engine, if not where? -2) find out when the mechanic can pull the engine, -3) We have to find someone to rebuilt the engine, can they do a rush job? -4) somehow get it a crate and send it to the rebuilder or drive it to dallas -5) get towed back here into a site. -6) wait -7) get towed back to the shop to put the new engine in. -8) leave - - -## Under The Bear’s Lodge - - -From Theodore Roosevelt National Park we headed south. Originally we'd planned to go through South Dakota and then down into Colorado, but the day before we left we noticed that if you west around the Black Hills, instead of east like we'd planned, you pass right by a place none of us had every been—Devil's Tower. - -I'll confess that my chief association with Devil's Tower is *Close Encounters*. And yes, we made mashed potatoes the night we arrived. I mean, you have to right? - -Devil's Tower is either a poor translation or a deliberately wrong translation of the local name, Bear's Lodge Butte. That name comes from the fact that it really does look like a tree that bear has gone to town on, and the constellation of the bear is always nearby, above the Butte. I don't see a bear when I stare up in the sky, but then I don't think I'd see a dipper either (the big dipper is part of the bear) if people hadn't been pointing it out all my life. Constellations aren't my strong suit. Whatever the case I think Bear's Lodge is a better name for this place. It stops me from confusing it with [Devil's Postpile](https://www.nps.gov/depo/index.htm). - -We'd planned to just stay a night, maybe two, but then we ended up staying a week because we liked it. It's always interesting to stop for a while in places that most people come, see the thing, and then leave. Every morning the campground would empty out, but then every night it was full again. When that happens you notice the people who don't leave, and those often turn out to be people in the same situation—people who aren't seeing the sights, but are moseying their way around the world like we do. We met a few of those and enjoyed our extra time in Bear's Lodge. - -One of the great things about living this way is the fluidity you can bring to plans. That cuts both ways. Sometimes you *have* to be flexible. Sometimes you *get* to be flexible. The flexible part is the constant. Fortunately in Bear's Lodge we got to be flexible. Though we also got a little hint of how we might have to flexible soon. - -The day we pulled in I ran over to the only store around and bought some ice. I noticed the check engine light in our Volvo was on. I didn't think too much of it, it happens when you don't properly tighten the gas cap. Usually it goes away when you re-tighten the gas cap. I did that and forgot about it for a few days. - -But a few days later I went to get some groceries in a town down the road and the light was still on. Damn. Well then. I stopped for gas and opened the hood to see if anything was amiss. It took me a minute, but then, next the oil filler cap I noticed a plastic hose that had broken. I wasn't sure what it did, but I assumed it was probably involved in the vacuum system somehow. - -I took a closer look when I got back to camp the plastic hose promptly disintegrated. So much for patching a crack. Now I needed to rig up some kind of temporary hose or we were stuck. I dug through my considerable collection of hoses and came up with some fuel line that fit at both ends, and then I telescoped that up to some extra PCV valve hose I had lying around. I anchored it all together with hose clamps and wedged it in place with a hose clamp at the bottom and some blue RTV gasket maker at the top. Then I waited 24 hours. - -The next morning it started up fine and seemed to run, so we hit road with it, figuring I'd pick up a replacement hose at the next Napa. About 3 hours into the drive, the check engine light went off. - - -## Ease Down the Road - -We set out from Washburn, bound for Arizona via North Dakota. We wanted to see Theodore Roosevelt National Park, and then we figured we'd head south and maybe catch some of the fall colors in the Rockies on our way. - -It's pretty rare for us to drive more than 200 miles a day. We're not in any rush and that's about how far you can go in the bus before it starts to feel like a chore. That said, we decided to blast our way across Minnesota and North Dakota doing back-to-back 300 mile days. We spent the night at a city park in Fargo the first day and then pushed on for Theodore Roosevelt National Park. It was a lot of driving, but there just weren't many places to stop in between. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-09-16_141824_drive-to-dakotas.jpg" id="image-3115" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-09-16_134205_drive-to-dakotas.jpg" id="image-3114" class="picwide" /> - -Theodore Roosevelt has a fairly nice campground, but we opted to stay at a more remote boondocking spot in the Little Missouri Grasslands. Although it was well outside the park, and off by itself, it was actually closer to town and made a good base for exploring the area. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-09-16_151155_missouri-grassland.jpg" id="image-3116" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-09-16_162322_missouri-grassland.jpg" id="image-3117" class="picwide" /> - -The Grasslands themselves were in some ways more interesting than the national park, though if you want to see bison you have to go into the park since a fence keeps them in. The kids loved having some badlands for a backyard. They'd disappear up into the hills in the mornings while Corrinne and I worked, returning only for food. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-09-16_163516_missouri-grassland.jpg" id="image-3118" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-09-16_155612_missouri-grassland.jpg" id="image-3132" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-09-19_194953_missouri-grassland.jpg" id="image-3125" class="picwide" /> - -The kids and I hiked a ways out on a trail that runs through a petrified forest. We were mostly looking for birds since the petrified forest was farther than anyone wanted to walk. The kids had been looking over the bird list we picked up at the visitor center, deciding ahead of time what they wanted to see—the Sharp-tailed Grouse was their top pick. I gave them the usual caution that one doesn't really pick which birds they're going to see, to have patience, and so on. - -Naturally, the first thing we see, after less than 10 minutes of walking, was a Sharp-tailed Grouse. It reminded me of the time I explained to them that fishing requires patience and then less than two minutes after casting [Lilah was reeling in a fish](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2018/01/almost-warm). Maybe it's just me. Maybe everyone else is always seeing birds and catching fish. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-09-17_002345_missouri-grassland.jpg" id="image-3121" class="picwide" /> - -We're not just bird and fish people these days, we also go in for rocks. Some of us anyway. Whatever the case there's a river just over the Montana border that is the place to find eponymous agates. We made the hour long drive and came back with more Montana agates than anyone living in a 26-foot bus should really have. - -It was nice to spend a day beside the river though. The current was pretty strong, but we managed to get a little swimming in. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-09-18_115628-1_missouri-grassland.jpg" id="image-3123" class="picwide" /> - -And yes, we did drive into Theodore Roosevelt National Park one day. The kids like to get junior ranger badges whenever we're anywhere national, so they did that while I wandered around the visitor center. Men like Theodore Roosevelt aren't very popular these days, but it seems to me that might actually be most of our problem. We could use some leadership just now and boy it's been a while since politicians were leaders. Try to imagine one of our current "leaders" taking a bullet and then refusing to stop his speech just because he'd been shot. - -We also wanted to see the bison herd that lives in the park. Our best view though turned out to be this one, which was off by himself, standing right beside the road. Maybe, I thought while I was taking the picture, if you can't be a leader, at least don't be a follower. Maybe just stand off by yourself, mind your own business, eat grass, and stare at the tourists. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-09-17_155530_missouri-grassland.jpg" id="image-3122" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-09-20_163735_missouri-grassland.jpg" id="image-3129" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-09-20_164453_missouri-grassland.jpg" id="image-3130" class="picwide" /> - -We also made a stop at the cowboy museum in the nearby town of Medora, where the kids learned a little about rodeo culture. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-09-20_104432_missouri-grassland.jpg" id="image-3126" class="picwide" /> -<div class="cluster"> - <span class="row-2"> -<img src="images/2022/2022-09-20_110610_missouri-grassland.jpg" id="image-3128" class="cluster pic66" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-09-20_110315_missouri-grassland.jpg" id="image-3127" class="cluster pic66" /> - </span> -</div> - -Mostly though we spent a lot of time just hanging out at the campsite. The landscape here is such a stark contrast to the last few months that we were all happy to just wander around under that vast, seemingly endless western sky. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-09-16_163650_missouri-grassland.jpg" id="image-3119" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-09-18_185406_missouri-grassland.jpg" id="image-3124" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-09-16_201159_missouri-grassland.jpg" id="image-3120" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-09-20_215737_missouri-grassland.jpg" id="image-3131" class="picwide" /> - -Part of what made our campsite nice and our time in the grasslands so enjoyable was that we happened to hit a gap between storms. For five days we had virtually no wind. On the sixth day though we got a taste of what this place is like most of the time. With a 20 MPH wind blowing dust around all day, and a storm bearing down on us that promised a 40 MPH headwind for our next drive, we decided to it was time to hit the road again. - -## Goodbye Big Waters - -Leaving is always a bustle of activity. We go from spending our days relaxing in the sun to frantically making lists and scrambling to get everything done before we hit the road. You'd think by now we'd plan ahead and know how to do it well, but not really. I always end up wit a task list that's far more than I can possibly do in however long we have left. I think this is my way of dealing with pain of leaving somewhere—overwhelming myself with tasks so there's no time to feel. - -Because yes, there is always a pain in leaving. Heading toward new possibilities, while exciting, still means closing off old ones. This isn't something that's unique to travel, all of us are always changing, always leaving things behind. New jobs, new homes, new grades in school, something is always left behind as we move down the river of time. - -For reasons I have not completely figured out, we seemed to have sunk deeper into the life of this place than anywhere else we've stopped in our travels. In all we were here nine weeks, which is actually less time than we spent in the Outer Banks, but I felt more a part of this place. Perhaps it is the open and welcoming people of the area, the [giddiness of summer](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2022/07/washburn) up here, or maybe we're getting better at settling in. Perhaps some combination of these things and more. - -We are making a bigger change than we have yet on this leg of our journey (which I count as starting when we left the [100 acre woods]()). For ten months now we have lived by the water—[coastal South Carolina](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2022/02/ice-storm), [the Outer Banks](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2022/05/ocracoke-beaches), and now [the shores of Lake Superior](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2018/08/superior) -- and now we're headed west to the plains, mountains, and deserts. - -After [our backpacking trip in the Porcupine Mountains](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2022/09/porcupine-mountains-backpacking) we had two more weeks in Washburn, which we spent visiting with friends we've made, hiking up to a waterfall in the hills, re-visiting Little Girl Point, stocking up on local favorite foods, and readying the bus for the next leg of our journey. - - - -Leaving is always bittersweet. The kids will miss their new friends, and so will we. Up here the pain of leaving is eased by the fact that few of the people we met spend the winters here anyway, so everyone is leaving soon. We will also very likely be back next summer, so this time around while we did say out long midwestern goodbyes, they were really see you next years. - - - -## Porcupine Mountains Backpacking - -There are only a few small stands of old growth forests left on this continent. I have been to couple of smaller old growth stands—one in the west, one in the south -- but I've never really spent much time in them. When I found out that the Porcupine Mountains were the second largest old growth Hemlock forest left in the U.S., I knew we had to go. - -This time I wanted to spend some time, so I put together a another family backpacking trip. We left the bus in its site in Washburn and headed up into the mountains of Michigan[^1]. Well, elsewhere they might be called hills, but up here they're mountains. - -We drove a couple of hours around Superior to the Porcupine Mountains, picked up our permit, and hit the trail. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-30_125052_porcupine-mountains.jpg" id="image-3086" class="picwide" /> - -The kids were able (and wanted) to carry more weight compared to [our last trip in North Carolina](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2020/10/walking-north-carolina-woods), but of course what they think they can carry and what they can actually carry depends on the distance. - -We wanted a destination to hang out at, so we opted for the trail to Mirror Lake—three miles in from the east, three miles back out to the west. We started with the eastern portion of trail, which went over Summit Peak. We wanted to get the hard stuff over with at the start. For about a half a mile it was straight up -- about half of that was stairs -- to a tower that brought you above the tree tops for a view of Lake Superior. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-30_130152_porcupine-mountains.jpg" id="image-3087" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-30_120356-1_porcupine-mountains.jpg" id="image-3085" class="picwide" /> -<div class="cluster"> - <span class="row-2"> -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-30_130547_porcupine-mountains.jpg" id="image-3088" class="cluster pic66" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-30_130559_porcupine-mountains.jpg" id="image-3089" class="cluster pic66" /> - </span> -</div> - -It wasn't until we were almost to the lake that we finally stepped into the old growth Hemlock. Much of the old growth forest in the Mirror Lake area was knocked down in a storm in 1953 when 5,000 acres of old growth forest—thousands upon thousands of trees -- came down in a matter of hours. Two high school kids out fishing near Mirror Lake got caught in the storm (and lived), which must have made for an exciting morning. Wind shear like that is not unheard of up here, but that's a pretty extreme example (that is weirdly undocumented online, you can read about it at the visitor center though). - -It was dark and cool in the old growth, little sun made it down to the forest floor, which was a deep bed of needles. The thing that really jumped out about the old growth though was how quiet it was in those portions of the forest. I noticed the silence before I really registered anything else. I'm not sure why, but I have never been anywhere so utterly silent. The birds were mostly gone, headed south for the winter, that was definitely part of the silence, but it was also just quieter among the hemlocks than in the younger stretches of forest we passed through. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-09-01_094641_porcupine-mountains.jpg" id="image-3104" class="picwide" /> - -We made it to camp by mid afternoon. I will confess I am fascinated by the modern hiking crowd who seem to love nothing better than 20 mile days. If the people I see on YouTube and Instagram are in fact representative of modern hikers. I am just about the opposite. Even if I didn't have kids... I like three mile days and lounging around camp, swimming, fishing, birding, cooking. The walking part? Meh, it's fine, but it's not why I am here. Walking is just the necessary ingredient to reach the last few spots on earth with some solitude. - -Whatever the case, we set up camp, and spent the afternoon lounging around. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-30_153953_porcupine-mountains.jpg" id="image-3090" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-31_093826_porcupine-mountains.jpg" id="image-3095" class="picwide" /> - - -I have two regrets from this trip. The first is that we did not bring the hammock. Always bring the hammock. Well, if there are trees around. - -My second regret is that we did not bring more real food. Five steaks really would not have added that much weight to our pack and would have 100 percent been worth that added weight. I am done with the whole dehydrated food thing. Some is fine when you're doing longer walks, but there's nothing like a steak in the backcountry. At least in my imagination there is nothing like a steak in the backcountry. Which isn't to say that we ate poorly, just that, well, steaks and bacon and eggs would have been better. Next time. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-30_174525_porcupine-mountains.jpg" id="image-3092" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-30_173223_porcupine-mountains.jpg" id="image-3091" class="picwide" /> - -At least we got to have fires, something that's increasingly rare, not just in the backcountry, but everywhere. Long periods of poor forest management, combined with dry weather, have left much of the west forced to ban open fires. I am working on a longer piece about the importance of the fire, especially the outdoor fire, but suffice to say that it was very nice to have one in the backcountry. We even almost got something like a decent family photo. Almost. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-30_184129_porcupine-mountains.jpg" id="image-3093" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-31_065645_porcupine-mountains.jpg" id="image-3094" class="picwide" /> - -The next day we did a little day hiking around the lake and little swimming when we got back to camp. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-31_115020_porcupine-mountains.jpg" id="image-3096" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-31_125719_porcupine-mountains.jpg" id="image-3099" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-31_115414_porcupine-mountains.jpg" id="image-3097" class="picwide" /> -<div class="cluster"> - <span class="row-2"> -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-31_132928_porcupine-mountains.jpg" id="image-3101" class="cluster pic66" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-31_125223_porcupine-mountains.jpg" id="image-3098" class="cluster pic66" /> - </span> -</div> -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-31_130033_porcupine-mountains.jpg" id="image-3100" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-31_134317_porcupine-mountains.jpg" id="image-3102" class="picwide" /> - - - -[^1]: We originally intended to go canoeing in the Boundary Waters, but couldn't get the permits for the areas that were doable with kids (everything was booked). In hindsight, I am glad we didn't. - - -## Grandparents - -My parents flew out to visit us in Washburn. Somehow they managed to find a rental house outside of town (there isn't much besides hotels and camping in the these parts) with a spectacular garden. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-23_141236_parents.jpg" id="image-3076" class="picwide" /> - -We took them out to Madeline Island for the day, which meant the kids got a second trip on the ferry, always a popular way to spend the day. We'd do it more regularly if it wasn't so ridiculously expensive. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-19_153339_madeline-island-parents.jpg" id="image-3075" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-19_123846_madeline-island-parents.jpg" id="image-3071" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-19_123343_madeline-island-parents.jpg" id="image-3070" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-19_124138-1_madeline-island-parents.jpg" id="image-3072" class="picwide" /> - -Mostly we had nice weather while they were here, but one day while we were parking in Bayfield it started to rain, so we ducked into the nearby Bayfield Heritage Museum. If we hadn't recently been the Milwaukee Public Museum, I'd say the Bayfield Heritage Museum is the best museum we've been to. As it is, it's pretty close, for one simple reason—the kids could touch everything. - -The woman working even came over and told the kids to open the turn of the century oven, the dresser drawers, the kitchen cabinets and the rest. That's really all it takes to make children totally enthralled by anything, just let them do what they want. - -Down in the basement there was a very detailed model of Bayfield at the height of the timber industry. There was a scavenger hunt that involved finding ten little scenes in the model. We found everything but the happy hobo, the host had to help us with the happy hobo. - -<img src="images/2022/IMG_20220818_131559.jpg" id="image-3077" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/IMG_20220818_132312.jpg" id="image-3079" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/IMG_20220818_131627.jpg" id="image-3078" class="picwide" /> - -One of the great things about having visitors come is it gives you a reason to do some of the things you just never seem to get around to otherwise. The Houghton Falls is less than two miles from the campground, but for whatever reason—maybe because it was too close by -- we never made it until my parents came. - -It turned out to be a great little trail. Judging by the wood planks on the trail, it is probably boggy and miserably buggy in the early season—maybe it's a good thing we waited until August -- but it was dry and nice when we went. After wandering through the forest for a quarter mile, the trail drops down to the river bed which has cut a deep gorge through pre-Cambrian sandstone. The result is a wonderland of caves and pools with plenty of climbing to keep the kids busy. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-21_112147_washburn.jpg" id="image-3081" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-21_113404_washburn.jpg" id="image-3082" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-21_113840_washburn.jpg" id="image-3083" class="picwide" /> - -The namesake falls are a bit back from the lake, but there was no water anyway. The trail ends at Lake Superior, just beyond a shallow bay where the river finally empties into the lake. There's a little rock outcropping about 10 feet off the water that looked pretty good for jumping. I actually would not have gone if the kids hadn't been gung ho about it. But then they were less so after I jumped and they saw how far down it was. I ended up being the only one to jump. Next time I'll talk them into it. - -## August Jottings - -***August 2*:** Already I feel the end of summer heading toward us. There's a fleetingness to the warm days now, an inevitability to the cold that comes in the evenings and is slower to go again in mornings. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-12_054139_washburn.jpg" id="image-3052" class="picwide" /> - -I miss the merlins. Every morning since we arrived the first thing I heard in the morning was five or six merlin chicks shrieking and playing in the pines around our campsite. Today I heard nothing. They've gone. Or they all died. Either way the bird life here as changed. The small birds are back. Nuthatches and chickadees are the morning sounds now, with occasional crows and blue jays. - -The pileated woodpeckers were through again this morning, you can never fail to notice that flaming-red crest streaking through the trees. It sounds like a jackhammer when they beat on the bark. Such a massive bird for something that spends most of it's time clinging to the side of a tree. This morning there were three. One stayed on the ground, which I had never seen a pileated do before. At first I thought it might be injured, but eventually it took off to join its fellows in the trees. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-07-27_084517_washburn.jpg" id="image-3051" class="picwide" /> - -***August 6*:** Strange mayfly hatch this morning. The bathroom building is completely covered in mayflies. Thousands of them, inside and out. Camp host tried blowing them with a leaf blower but it didn't work, they hung on. Reminded me of [the night in New Orleans when the termites hatched](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2017/05/new-orleans-instrumental-number-2), (which I didn't actually write about in that post, not everything makes out of the journal). Fortunately we were far enough away this time that nothing ended up swarming in the bus. - -***August 8*:** The kids started sailing camp this morning. I picked them up at lunch time and managed to see the girls sailing, Elliott was already in. Their first day on the water and it was probably the windiest we've had in quite a while. Can't reef an [Optimist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimist_(dinghy)). I guess you just go fast. They spent most of the day practicing knots and righting flipped boats so they knew what to do, but according to them no one flipped in the stiff breezes. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-09_112805_sailing-camp.jpg" id="image-3053" class="picwide" /> - -I've been challenged to many a knot tying contest this afternoon. I have lost almost all of them. I used to be able to tie a bowline one-handed without thinking about it. Now I have to sit there and tell myself the rabbit story to get it right. - -***August 12*:** Final day of sailing camp featured a sail by for the parents followed by a potluck lunch. Unfortunately there was very little wind so it was more a drift, crank-the-tiller-back-and-forth by. Still, it was good to see them out on the water, having fun and making new friends. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-12_111237_sailing-camp.jpg" id="image-3054" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-12_111629_sailing-camp.jpg" id="image-3055" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-12_111643_sailing-camp.jpg" id="image-3056" class="picwide" /> -<div class="cluster"> - <span class="row-2"> -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-12_112257_sailing-camp.jpg" id="image-3057" class="cluster pic66" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-12_112622_sailing-camp.jpg" id="image-3058" class="cluster pic66" /> - </span> -</div> - -***August 13*:** Heading to the country fair later today. We're suckers for a local fair, but we're used to fairs in October. Yet another reminder that cold comes early up here. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-13_140027_county-fair.jpg" id="image-3059" class="picwide" /> -<div class="cluster"> - <span class="row-2"> -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-13_145435_county-fair.jpg" id="image-3061" class="cluster pic66" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-13_145423_county-fair.jpg" id="image-3060" class="cluster pic66" /> - </span> -</div> -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-13_152157_county-fair.jpg" id="image-3062" class="picwide" /> - -Years ago at the [Elberton Fair](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2019/10/elberton-county-fair) Elliott was too short to ride some of the rides with his sisters. This year Olivia was too tall to ride some of the rides with her siblings. We can't seem to completely win. At least there was a lumberjack show, complete with crosscut saws and log rolling exhibitions. - -***August 13*:** Cooler this morning. 54 on the gauge. Blue-gray fog bank on the far show enshrouding the hills. Crows are unhappy about something this morning. Red-breasted nuthatches seem unconcerned. - -Signs of winter are increasing. The weather has shifted, more birds are passing through. Cape may warblers are already headed south from wherever they've been north of here. On the way to the store today I saw the city had pulled out it's snow plows and was giving them a wash. Seasons remain a strange thing to this Los Angeles native. I like the idea of them, I like the transitions between them, but we are not sticking around to live in them. - -## Around Washburn -One weekend I took the kids over to Madeline Island again. The museum was have a trading post-style reenactment., and we are suckers for a good reenactment festival. - - - -We got to see some real birch bark canoes, and some artifacts like trade blankets, early compasses and navigation tools, even early pharmacy tools, including a pill-making board the kids got to try out, making some playdough pills. - -Most of the reenactment stuff was things Voyageurs would have used in the fur trade, though there were a couple of people there representing local tribes. One man in particular was really great at show the kids various tools and demonstrating how they worked. He was so good I forgot to take any pictures, which I realized later is kind of the highest praise I can (accidentally) give. - - - -## Ten - -I was thinking the other day about some friends I haven't talked to since I left Los Angeles for good in 1999. I was thinking how astounded they would probably be to know that I had managed to keep two children alive and well for ten years now. What they would probably say is, *I think you mean your wife has managed to keep two children alive and well for ten years*. And of course they'd be right. - -Whatever the case, somehow, our twins are ten. Double digits. Decades old. And all that. - - - -## Midsummer -We pulled into Memorial Park Campground in Washburn, Wisconsin just before lunch on a Thursday and grabbed one of the few spots left in the campground. It was just a few sites down from where we [stayed four years ago](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2018/08/island-golden-breasted-woodpecker). We love a good first-come, first-serve campground, especially one with no stay limits. We unfurled the awning and settled in for the summer. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-07-08_200436_washburn.jpg" id="image-3017" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-07-08_174443_washburn.jpg" id="image-3016" class="picwide" /> - -For us, these days, settling in means signing the kids up for Jui Jitsu, getting library cards, and figuring out the best places to get in whatever body of water is nearby. Washburn, and nearby Ashland, provide all that and more, perhaps most importantly, reasonable temperatures all summer, little in the way of crowds, and the kind of hospitality you really only find in small towns anymore. - -At their first Jui Jitsu class one of their classmate's mother invited us to a midsummer party. Summer is bigger deal up here than it is in say Florida. When something is so fleeting you appreciate it more I think. Whatever the case, we showed up and had a great time. There was music, flower wreaths, comedy, even sack races. The kids danced late into the night. It was a good way to celebrate midsummer, something I've never celebrated before. - -<div class="cluster"> - <span class="row-2"> - <img src="images/2022/2022-07-16_165753_washburn.jpg" id="image-3019" class="cluster pic66" /> - <img src="images/2022/2022-07-16_171809_washburn.jpg" id="image-3020" class="cluster pic66" /> - </span> - <img src="images/2022/2022-07-16_175425_washburn.jpg" id="image-3021" class="cluster picwide" /> - <img src="images/2022/2022-07-16_190818_washburn.jpg" id="image-3022" class="cluster picwide" /> -</div> - -While Jui Jitsu, libraries, and swimming holes are all we really need, we do appreciate there being good Mexican food, and as of this summer, Washburn has that. All this corner of the world needs now is for the shifting climate to mellow out the winters a bit. - -<div class="cluster"> - <span class="row-2"> -<img src="images/2022/2022-07-24_124345_washburn.jpg" id="image-3023" class="cluster pic66 caption" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-07-25_153047_washburn.jpg" id="image-3024" class="cluster pic66" /> - </span> -<img src="images/2022/2022-07-26_072037_washburn.jpg" id="image-3025" class="cluster picwide" /> -</div> - -I think if we'd been closer to Washburn in 2020 when the U.S. shut everything down, we'd have rented a place around here. But of course that's not where we were so we'll likely never know how we'd handle a winter up here. For now though, it's a pretty great place to spend your summer. - - - -## Away From the Crowds - -We would have stayed longer at Harrington Beach State Park, and we would have loved to head up into the Door Peninsula, but we were facing every full time RVer's least favorite holiday: Fourth of July weekend. Everything was booked. So, we loaded up our still-not-installed awning and headed north, where the crowds are fewer and we knew of at least one first come first served campground. - -You can't just show up at a first come first serve campground on the Friday of fourth of July weekend though. Corrinne does 90 percent of the camp planning and she, marvel that she is, found a campground somewhere in the middle of Wisconsin that was somehow not already booked for the fourth and was on our way. We had reservations the day before and hit the road Friday. - -Now, you might be asking yourself, what sort of campground *isn't* full on America's most popular camping weekend? How awful is it that no one wants to go there? Actually it was quite nice. I think no one wants to go there in part because it's in a very rural area and when you have wild acreage, camping isn't really something you care about as much. At least that was our experience living in a 300-acre pine forest. Whatever the case Governor Thompson State Park was nice and we were happy to have a spot to park for the holiday weekend. - -Admittedly, there wasn't much to do at Governor Thompson if you don't have a boat (it's on a lake). One fellow vintage camper owner we met ventured over to the swim beach one day and called it the saddest little thing he'd ever seen. We never went to find out for ourselves. We just relaxed, did a lot of reading, and finally had the space to get our new awning installed. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-07-02_153235_gov-thompson-sp.jpg" id="image-2999" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-07-02_180645_gov-thompson-sp.jpg" id="image-3000" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-07-02_182710_gov-thompson-sp.jpg" id="image-3001" class="picwide" /> - -After putting on the window awning on the other side I was dreading the full size patio awning. Fortunately for me, the installation process was different, so my fears proved unfounded. In some ways I think it was easier to install the patio than the window awning, though there were a couple of awkward moments. But now have plenty of shade to sit around and relax (and work, and play) in. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-07-03_120708_gov-thompson-sp.jpg" id="image-3004" class="picwide" /> - -I'd forgotten how nice it is to have that under the awning space. We used to live in that shade, but we stopped using our old awning because it was so beat up and gross. Sitting under it was not a pleasant experience the last few months. With the Zipdee we've reclaimed that space. We have a wonderfully warm yellow light bathing the bus from all angles, and we've been spending a lot more time outside. Zipdee awnings aren't cheap, but well worth the money in my opinion. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-07-03_115523_gov-thompson-sp.jpg" id="image-3002" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-07-03_115524_gov-thompson-sp.jpg" id="image-3003" class="picwide" /> - -With the holiday weekend behind us we continued north, bound for the shores of Lake Superior. We stopped off at a place called Copper Falls for a couple of nights. It's supposedly one of the highlights of the area, but our experience was that it's buggy and there's not much to do other than hike to see the falls. They are nice waterfalls, but you can't get near them and the mosquitoes and black flies were bad enough that it would have made Yosemite miserable. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-07-04_182326_copper-falls.jpg" id="image-3007" class="picwide" /> -<div class="cluster"> - <span class="row-2"> -<img src="images/2022/2022-07-04_152815_copper-falls.jpg" id="image-3008" class="cluster pic66" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-07-04_154726_copper-falls.jpg" id="image-3006" class="cluster pic66" /> - </span> -</div> -<img src="images/2022/2022-07-04_154339_copper-falls.jpg" id="image-3005" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-07-04_182533_copper-falls.jpg" id="image-3009" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-07-04_191019_copper-falls.jpg" id="image-3010" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-07-04_191036_copper-falls.jpg" id="image-3011" class="picwide" /> - -I never like to complain too much about anywhere because it's an incredible experience to be able to live the way we do and a few bad nights for us is a tiny price to pay (and Copper Falls wasn't even that bad), but I was glad to hit the road again. - -And our plan worked. We pulled into the first-come first-serve campground in Washburn WI on a Thursday morning, snagged the best site, and settled in for the summer. - - -## Hello Milwaukee - -The drive up to Harrington Beach State Park wasn't far, about 50 miles, but somehow that 50 miles changed everything. Once we were past Milwaukee (Harrington Beach is about 30 minutes north of Milwaukee) the last traces of heat disappeared. There were cheese curds at every gas station—a sure sign you're in Wisconsin -- and the world felt quieter, more relaxed, more natural. Even the lake seemed somehow wilder. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-06-27_151631_harrington-milwaukee.jpg" id="image-2974" class="picwide" /> - -Last time we were here I [wrote about the yellow warblers](https://luxagraf.net/dialogues/yellow-warbler) that were everywhere in our campsite. This time was no different, one even came in the bus to check it out. - -<div class="cluster"> - <span class="row-2"> -<img src="images/2022/2022-06-28_110935_harrington-milwaukee.jpg" id="image-2977" class="cluster pic66" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-06-28_110933_harrington-milwaukee.jpg" id="image-2995" class="cluster pic66" /> - </span> -</div> - -We came back to Harrington because it's a good place to camp and access Milwaukee. We don't spend much time in cities anymore. We avoid them actually, especially large cities. Driving into the Chicago to get the awning was a nightmare I'd just as soon never repeat. Smaller cities like Milwaukee are more tolerable, though still not our thing anymore. - -That said, we made an exception here because we actually like Milwaukee and we have some friends living here that we wanted to catch up with, however briefly. We had also promised the girls we'd get some sushi and cupcakes, and then go to a museum for their birthday since we'd be spending their actual birthday somewhere without sushi. - -We started with cupcakes of course. - -<div class="cluster"> - <span class="row-2"> -<img src="images/2022/2022-06-29_103614_harrington-milwaukee.jpg" id="image-2979" class="cluster pic66" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-06-29_103541_harrington-milwaukee.jpg" id="image-2978" class="cluster pic66" /> - </span> -</div> - -Then we had a sushi lunch and popped into a bookstore that was pretty amazing, but, despite having a seemingly endless number of books, did not have the one that the girls wanted. - -<div class="cluster"> - <span class="row-2"> -<img src="images/2022/2022-06-29_123150_harrington-milwaukee.jpg" id="image-2980" class="cluster pic66" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-06-29_123221_harrington-milwaukee.jpg" id="image-2981" class="cluster pic66" /> - </span> - <span class="row-2"> -<img src="images/2022/2022-06-29_131256_harrington-milwaukee.jpg" id="image-2982" class="cluster pic66" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-06-29_131312_harrington-milwaukee_bzc4u7m.jpg" id="image-2983" class="cluster pic66" /></span> -</div> - -The next stop was the Milwaukee Public Museum, which is such a vague name we didn't really know what to expect except that it had some dinosaur exhibit of some kind. I think that was a good way to go in, not knowing anything (the opportunity for you to go not knowing anything is about to be ruined) because now that I've been, I am still not totally sure what the Milwaukee Public Museum is, beyond, the very generic: really fun. - -The specimen collection in the lobby area reminded me of [La Specula in Florence](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2011/06/natural-science), and set the tone of the place. It's a throw back the museums of old: big dioramas, lots of signs and welcome absence of any screens, or QR codes, or any of the ridiculous digital gimmicks that pass for content in modern museums. Instead it was interactive in the original sense—the kids could touch the buffalo fur and ride a penny farthing and even let butterflies land on them. - -<div class="cluster"> - <span class="row-2"> -<img src="images/2022/2022-06-29_135459_harrington-milwaukee.jpg" id="image-2984" class="cluster pic66" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-06-29_135612_harrington-milwaukee.jpg" id="image-2985" class="cluster pic66" /> - </span> -<img src="images/2022/2022-06-29_182409_harrington-milwaukee.jpg" id="image-2990" class="cluster picwide caption" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-06-29_141216_harrington-milwaukee.jpg" id="image-2986" class="cluster picwide caption" /> -</div> - -The natural history portion of the Milwaukee Public Museum was extensive and full of great dioramas, though I have to take some exception the tiny little section devoted to the south. The south is apparently little more than a footnote here and can be adequately represented by a banjo, a musket, a few ears of corn, and a flag none of us recognized. - -What the Public Museum does a far, far better job with is the history of Milwaukee, which is set up in a lifesize replica of Milwaukee through the ages, though most of it is done up like the late 19th century. This was by far the most fun to walk around. It was lit with the equivalent of old gas lamps so it's a very dark exhibit that you can get lost in. - - - --- roughly the technological level I suspect my grandkids will live in. - - - -## Illinois Beach - -I think it's important to remember that it's fun to do something for no reason at all. That is, not everything needs a reason beyond simply the freedom to do it. - -This is what Sir Edmund Hilery was hinting at when he was asked, *why do you want to climb Mount Everest,* and he answered, *because it's there*. Because the freedom of the will to choose and act and do, the freedom for you to do something for no other reason than you happen to want to do it, is irreducible, unassailable base on which all human delight is built. - -That has nothing to do with how we came to be at Illinois Beach State Park, on the far northern reaches of Chicago, or what we did there, but I think it's worth saying things from time to time about the meta-journey if you will and one of the key things I've learned from this adventure is that life isn't so serious as it seems, perhaps especially when it seems most serious. The universe is a whimsical place after all, how else do you explain the giraffe? Or this strange, abandoned concession center in the middle of Illinois Beach State Park looking for all the world like it was plucked out of a 1950s Soviet seaside resort and plopped here in Illinois? - -<img src="images/2022/2022-06-21_065427_illinois-beach.jpg" id="image-2970" class="picwide" /> - -One of the things I was most looking forward to about coming back to the Great Lakes area was replicating the day we [drove out of the heat and into the wonderfully cool summer of Wisconsin](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2018/06/wisconsin). Alas, that did not happen this time (you can [never go back](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2008/06/you-cant-go-home-again)). - -The heat wave followed us up through Chicago, where I stopped off at the Zipdee factory to pick up two awnings we'd ordered several months ago. With the giant, fifteen foot tubes on the floor of the bus, I hit the road again bound for Illinois State Beach, on the shores of Lake Michigan. - -Thankfully the heat wave only lasted two more days, and we had the nice clear, cool waters of Lake Michigan to keep us cool in the mean time. Almost any day spent on the water is a good day in my book, though the temperature extremes were more than we're used to—100 in the air, 53 in the water. Stay in for more than a few minutes and you're shivering, but by the time you're out two minutes you're ready to cool back down again. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-06-20_174403_illinois-beach.jpg" id="image-2972" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-06-20_174406_illinois-beach.jpg" id="image-2971" class="picwide" /> - -Fortunately after the weekend the air temp settled back down to a nice 80 degrees, making it a bit for fun to sit (and play) on the beach. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-06-21_103522_illinois-beach.jpg" id="image-2968" class="picwide" /> -<div class="cluster"> - <span class="row-2"> -<img src="images/2022/2022-06-21_105102_illinois-beach.jpg" id="image-2967" class="cluster pic66" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-06-21_105937_illinois-beach.jpg" id="image-2966" class="cluster pic66" /> - </span> -</div> - -<img src="images/2022/2022-06-21_173023_illinois-beach.jpg" id="image-2965" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-06-22_190901_illinois-beach.jpg" id="image-2964" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-06-22_194625_illinois-beach.jpg" id="image-2963" class="picwide" /> - -The abandoned concession stand wasn't the only odd thing in Illinois State Beach, in fact there were quiet a few oddities. My favorite was the pair of Sandhill Cranes that strolled through the campground every day utterly unconcerned with any humans that might be around. In fact they would march right up to people looking for food, I saw one sneak a hot dog off a picnic table and proceed to eat it before any of the people around noticed. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-06-21_102538_illinois-beach.jpg" id="image-2969" class="picwide" /> - -However odd it might have been, Illinois State Park was perfectly suited to the real reason we came—to install our new Zipdee awnings and get rid of our old. No one complained about the sawing and the remains of the old one fit nicely in the dumpster. In the end rain stopped me from getting the big awning installed here, but I got our new side awning on at least. - - - -It keeps the afternoon sun out of the window and allows us to have the window open even if it's raining, but really we just like it... because it's there. It makes the bus a little more fun, a little more delightful if I do say so myself. - -"" - -## Birding - -I spent most of the afternoon today watchng a least tern fish in the waters of Hatteras island in the outer banks of North Carolina. The tern hovered, fluttering like a sheet of white paper in the wind, ducking and diving in the currents until it tucked in its wings and dropped like a rock into a wave. It was too far away to see if it got anything. - -An osprey I watched was heavier, weightier in the air, purposeful until it too tucked its wings and dove. In that moment of freefall both seemed no longer in control. Only gravity was in charge at the moment. The osprey came up empty, but did something I've never noticed a bird doing before, it shook itself as it hovered over the waves, skaing and ruffling its features to shed the water it had picked up when it dove. And then with a few quick strong wingbeats it roase up, gaught and updraft and drifted down the shoreline, scan the waves for fish. - -Bird watching isn't really anything more than deciding to pay great attention to birds. Bird watching is really a never ending process of turning something that is always happening in the background to something you're focused solely on. It's the process of learning that that brown and white bird likes to sit on the top of the myrtle in the morning and sing, but spends its afternoons rather silently, scratching at the ground in search of grubs and seeds. These days birdwatchers call it a brown thrasher, or Toxostoma rufum, but that there are many other names for it, the rusty mockingbird, the brown thrush. The Ojibwe call it apagaande-ikwewinini. - - - - -This process of turning your full attention to something not only outside yourself, but not even human is I think a large part of what makes bird watching so popular. I don't think we were made to live in a wholly human world, and I think much of what ails us these days has roots back in this entirely self-reflexive world we've trapped ourselves in. Birds offer a way outside of ourselves, our culture, our species. - - -To pay attention to anything in great detail is a rewarding thing. This is why I like make this site, I like to pay attention to things and then I like to do something with the results of that attention. Sometimes I write things only for myself in my journal, sometimes I take photographes, sometimes I sketch something in pencil or pen, sometimes I write things and put them up here. All of these are outlets for the accumulated results of paying attention to something, be it birds, the shape and rythem of waves, the wind in the leaves, the movement of clouds or what my kids are doing around me. - ---- - -I know there's other reasons for the popularity of birdwatching. I'd be lying if I said there wasn't some competitive aspect to it to for me. Would I like to have a life list in the 1000s? Sure, but not because I want to have seen more than you or anyone else, but because that would mean that I'd have paid attention to over 1000 birds. - - - - -Cameras are increasingly designed to remove the human factor from the act of taking a picture. With the addition over the last several decades of features like autofocus, auto white balance, and auto light metering, the engineering effort of most camera manufacturers has gone into replacing the learned choices of the individual photographer with algorithms. These algorithms turn the act of producing a great image into something that’s no longer a challenge you must rise to or adapt to, but a series of options you can choose between. - -To repair is to join a community. - -The right to repair the need to repair the desire to repair is fundamentally a communal desire it's a hierarchical desire hierarchical community of experience being handed down but it's fundamentally communal you can't get this knowledge without it being handed down to you whether that is through books through more experienced people through YouTube through any number of other means of disseminating information it has to come down 3 time from someone hierarchical a above you with more skills than you and it takes humility to become part of that system so you have humility and community and these are two things that are fundamentally opposed pictures of dominant worldview of the modern world - - -## Possible use for about Atlanta -One of the interesting things about living the way we do is that we're subjected to very little advertising. We don't have a television, we don't go out to eat (and see TVs there), and we seldom drive on interstate highways, subject to billboards. There are some billboards on the backroads we favor—I don't think it's possible to escape billboards completely, save in Vermont, Maine, Alaska and Hawaii, all of which have outlawed them -- but not that many. I think the main place we encounter advertising is at the gas pump and that's pretty easy to ignore because I don't think I've ever put gas in the bus without having a conversation with someone passing by. - -Despite the gas pumps, it seems safe to say that, living as we do in the bus, we are subjected to very little advertising. This is something I generally spend absolutely zero time thinking about until we come into major American city—something we try to avoid doing -- and I am awestruck by how much advertising there is -- it absolutely saturates the environment. - - -# Birds - -## Carolina Wren -I have so many Carolina wren stories it's hard to know where to start. - -If you're ever in the eastern woods and you hear a bird singing and you think *that's beautiful, what bird is that?* there's a good chance it's a Carolina wren. - -These little gregarious, brown, slightly hook-billed birds are champion singers and, insatiably curious. According to my kids we've had about ten birds come in the bus in five years of traveling. Nine of them have been Carolina wrens[^1]. Several of them have ended up having to be rescued by hand. - -<img src="images/2022/wreninhand.jpg" id="image-2792" class="picwide" /> - -Before that they used to come in our house in Athens from time to time. This one would sit on the corner of the roof singing every morning for years. - -<img src="images/2022/bird-feeder_2015-01-10_112302_01.jpg" id="image-2774" class="picwide" /> - -Well, it seemed like the same bird, but who knows. Birds do have individual songs, especially Carolina wrens, so if I had been paying attention I might know if it really was the same bird, but I didn't pay that much attention back then. Life before the road tended to run together, I lacked focus and attention. Which isn't to say the days don't sometimes run together on the road, or that I live in a state of constantly heightened awareness, just that there are more markers by which to measure on the timeline of our travels. - -To tell the truth I didn't pay much attention to Carolina wrens until we started to travel. They were so ubiquitous I found them overwhelming. I've always thought of wrens as the more solitary creatures of the desert southwest, where canyon wrens are a familiar sound in the red rock country of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado. But they're a familiar sound you usually hear by itself, not a chorus like you get with the Carolina wrens. - -It wasn't until they started flying in the bus that I really started pay attention to the Carolina wren. - -[^1]: Regardless of the actual number, only one has not been a wren, that much I know. It was a chickadee. For whatever reason, all these happened on the east coast. Perhaps western birds are more wild? - -- tree swallow -- black capped chickadee -- cedar waxwing -- kingbird -- that hawk on the ground -- willet -- gold crowned kinglet -- blackthroated green warbler - - - -## Quotes - -Almost every article you'll ever find on attention will at some point repeat Simone Weil's statement that "Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. - -"It seems to me that we all look at nature too much, and live with her too little." -Oscar Wilde, De Profundis - -The average person spends 87% of their time indoors and another 6% in enclosed vehicles https://indoor.lbl.gov/sites/all/files/lbnl-47713.pdf - - - -# Notes - -## No Risk -Whatever one’s opinion of the response to the disease, what is undeniable is that so many people of influence took for granted that safety must always trump social relations and that the human being is not the center of a web of loyalties and commitments but is rather a physical fact needing technical management. Nothing, it was revealed to us, is worth risking life for—nothing. If other occasions for risk remain, this is evidently only because administration has not yet found the means to quash them. It was revealed that no danger is greater than death. It was revealed that life is sheer matter and not something else, for example, the capacity for love. -https://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2022/06/atoms-and-the-void-review-of-interventions-2020/ - -## Travel Cheaper - -Ways to reduce travel spending: - * better planning means more boondocking and less money on camping - * change of diet from mexico means less on food - - no more sausage for breakfast - - more tortillas, less bread for lunches - + bread is special occassions - - use oat/rice flour from bulk bins for pancakes - - shop mexican markets, asian markets - - go meatless twice a week - - drop organic/grass fed, eat less of it - * having propane fridge would mean less trips for ice, longer away from money spending opportunities - * doing bucket laundry to get by, with full laundry once a month would do the same (again, fewer money spending opportunities) - * no more lenses, amazon orders, ever. - * use local libraries - * have corrinne get meds down here. - * start with forays into mexico, but gradually reverse—here becomes our home base with forays into the states - - * how much less? Don't know but I think we could do - - $1200/month groceries - - $500/month camping (if we go over, better hole up and boondock) - - $400/month gas (if we're headed over, better hole up) - - $500/month repairs and incidentals - * So at reliable $3000 a month we can get by pretty much anywhere - - Need the ability to take a serious breakdown and keep going, what does that look like? - - maybe $5000- $8000 savings for repairs - -## Systems - -Complex systems are inherently fragile. The optimization that makes the system "easy" to use, also generally eliminates the redundancies and graceful degadation that makes a system resilient. -## Midlife - -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. - -The other major task in midlife is to recognize the ciclical nature of, well, nature. - - - -## No Reason At All - -"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." - -## Margins - -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. - -The margins are where you want to be though, this is where everything happens, it's where life is, where growth is. Go deep in the forest and everything gets soft and quiet, but come out to the edge and you'll find the berries and the birds and the deer and all the rest of life—inhabiting the margins. In ecology this is sometimes called a liminal zone. It's where life is in transition and biodiversity is greatest. It's where the action is and it's where you want to be. - -I've learned that the future will get here at the same steady pace as it always does whether you worry about it or not. - -There's a third principle I'm still meditating on, but my suspicion is that the first principle of not changing the environment around you, extends well beyond you and your immediate environment to encompass, well, everything. The ripple effects of any action are significant and we spend very little time considering them, and this is troubling. - -The less you alter the environment of you, the less you need to alter the environment of your home. The less you need alter the environment of your home, the less you need to alter your neighborhood, and so on. I suspect that this cascades in positive ways far beyond just turning off the air conditioning. At the same times, I suspect it cascades in negative ways as well, which is why I am still thinking on it. - -I saw, and still see, living in the bus as a first step in a transition away from life as a "consumer". In the bus we consumed much less, that's good, but I've come to think that it's not good enough. I think I can (and should) go much farther than that. What that looks like is still taking shape, but one thing we all have right now is plenty of time to sit and think. - - -## Sustainable vs regenerative - - - -sustainability is about keeping things as the are, regeneration is about making things better than they are. - - - - - - - -## Close - -Y'all are going to be very close. - -That's what an inspector said to me once when we were selling our house and I told him what we were doing after it sold. That comment stuck in my head the whole time we traveled because he was right. Spend twenty-four hours a day every day with someone and you will be close. And we are. - - - - -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. - -Now, mind you, "ok" doesn't mean happy as a clam, totally unaffected, no bad feelings ever. On the contrary, it means letting go of the reigns, opening myself up to the unknown and trusting that I had the ability to see myself through it. That's basically welcoming a whole heap of tough stuff to happen to ya. And it has. And I'm ok. Heck, I'm more than ok. I'm better than before. This whole endeavor, from the word go, has done nothing but affirmed my suspicions that we are stronger and more malleable than we ever give ourselves credit for. And no matter what, we will adjust and find a way to be ok. - -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. - -## Alt Medicine - -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. - -I will likely never write a rebuttal because for one thing it would be publishable as anything other than Op/Ed. I am not scientist by training and, lack credentials, not allowed into the debate on equal footing. - -I don't hold this against science as a method of inquire, but I do very much hold it against scientists, who have become a modern priesthood controlling public discourse, just as the Catholic church did through the middle ages, the high priests of Set did in ancient Egypt, and so on through any other culture you want to cite. - -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 hold opinions, beliefs, customs, what have you, that are considered unacceptable to the current priesthood. - -## Present - -How do I make this while still being present. Here. Right now. In this bus, on this night, feeling this feeling? - -This turns out to be a very difficult problem to solve. - -Writing inherently pulls you out of the moment. It has to all reflective thinking is, well reflecting on something rather than something. So there's that. But I accept that. I've been writing for so long now I've long ago forgotten what it would be like not to always be compising things in my head. There may be some negative consequences to this habit, but for me, it was what it is and I am okay with it. - -I am less okay with the performative aspects of creating things based your experiences. This enters a peculiar gray zone in which one must be very careful. For me, it is fine if the desire to write about something drives me to go to a place that I might not otherwise have gone to. For example I doubt I would ever have gone to tk, except I wanted to write about it. But wanting to write about it is a kind of wanting to go. - -The danger lies in pulling yourself out of the experience of being there by performing for the imagined audience. I try to avoid this. It works for some people. Some people are able to think about getting a great image while still enjoying themselves. I am not. I have to lose myself in those moments or whatever I try to produce from them suffers. - -Which is to say I almost universally miss the great shot because I am too busy watching whatever it might be unfold. - - -Things need edges, edges are a kind of contract with things. The book ends when you close it. Begins when you open it. In between there is no contract. Or not much of one? - -I think we have our edges wrong. Things that should have softer, indistinct edges, like our homes, have hard edges that divide us from the world. Things that should have hard, distinct edges, like tools for communicating, have no edge at all, the loops are always running, never closing off. - -Adding edges to the loops closes them. - ----- - -Solutions I have seen work, and that I am experiementing with: - -All communication happens in loops, you say something, there is a response, you respond to that response and so on. This is the communication loop. How long is the loop? I find that the longer the loop is, the better the thing I am able to produce. So where instagram has loops measured in minutes, maybe hours, maybe at the most days, I find that loop overwhelming and short. The most I can do there is put something out, I can't and don't partake in the loops there. - -A website I control is an infinite loop potentially. Or rather I have to create the loops, I have to set the pace. And I generally do not do well at that. - - - -Consolidate data on a schedule, publish one thing on a schedule. - - -## Step Back, Detach, Ask Better Questions -The consumer education system has conditioned you to think in terms of products, you need to step back in ask bigger questions to find more interesting and sustainable answers. For example, the question, *should I buy this camera?* has no good answer without first asking *how to I create photos that make me happy?* It may be that some particular camera really does help in that quest, but more likely, it doesn't. More likely what you need to learn is technique and acquire skills like composition and reading light. - - -##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. - -Lopez's thought jumped out at me because I catch myself telling stories the wrong way these days. More and more I notice how much of the stories I tell are not what happened, but where it happened. I have developed a need to locate the past in space as well as time. I have to watch out for this because I've noticed many people find it annoying. I can watch their minds wander as I talk. I lose them. - -You gain a sense of place by merging into it, however briefly, in way that can only be done by giving up familiarity. Novelty sharpens the experience of place. Perhaps because we evolved to be wary of the novel, to be on edge in experiencing the unfamiliar. All that grass doesn't matter, that one part where it's novel, that one part where there are no shadows when there should be shadows. That's a lion. Novelty is bad in that sense. - -Now the evolutionary threat is largely gone though novelty becomes useful. It a grindstone sharpening your experience of place until it comes to the foreground. You notice what was not there yesterday. It's not a lion anymore, but still you notice. - -## Maps - -“Some for one purpose and some for another liketh, loveth, getteth, and useth Mappes, Chartes, & Geographicall Globes.”—John Dee, - -source: https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2019/oct/20/the-perfect-combination-of-art-and-science-mourning-the-end-of-paper-maps - - -## Immersing yourself - -In his book, <cite>Written in the West</cite> Wim Wenders talks about improving photography by completely immersing yourself in what you see, "no longer needing to interpret, just looking." I find that it's not just photography that can be enhanced this way, but all of life. All you need to do is let go and look. Let go of any agenda and just walk (or sit) and watch the world around you. The world is endlessly fascinating. Even the parts you don't like, like Texas. Step back from the things you want, the things you think you need, the things you think you should do, and a new range of possibilities opens up. - -## travel with kids - -"As with any thing, the needs of small people are different, and the same, as big people. They thrive on novelty, on the right amount of ease and challenge, and struggle with boredom. They find it hard to regulate when hungry or tired. These needs are simply scaled down. Adults, especially adults who have been around a bit, like to see what is between two mountains by viewing it from all sides. Little people and their minds are content with seeing the two mountains via their emissaries, the little rocks which have fallen off into the valley in between. Little people almost do well getting outside and having an adventure, again, today, but once things proceed much beyond a few miles the wants of the little become subservient to those of the big. - -Which reminds us that adventure, especially in the internet age, is always found in the mind anyway. There is nothing more adventurous than trying, really trying, the impossible task of understanding another person. Is this task more weighty with progeny than with a spouse? Your answer tells everything. - -Understanding the two of them at home is simply easier, if by easier I mostly mean more predictable. With answers readily accessible. Beyond that, after deciding have we the adults sufficient energy, sufficient motivation, sufficient bravery to take everyone and everything important out into the woods this weekend, it becomes a question of matching big person ambition and rules to little person energy. " - https://bedrockandparadox.com/2019/08/31/the-veneration-of-lameness/ - -## Universal Druid Prayer - -It appears in several forms; the one most often used in AODA runs like this: - -Grant, O Holy Ones, thy protection -And in protection, strength; -And in strength, understanding; -And in understanding, knowledge; -And in knowledge, the knowledge of justice: -And in the knowledge of justice, the love of it; -And in that love, the love of all existences; -And in the love of all existences, the love of Earth our mother and all goodness. - -And yes, it's a good intro to any sort of communion with the deities. - -## difference between in the streets and closed door cultures - -> Go to Africa, Latin America, the backwoods of China, SE Asia … it’s easy to make friends: all you need to do is walk down the street with your head up. These are “in the streets” cultures. Europe, on the other hand, is a “closed door” culture. That doesn’t mean that people are not nice. It’s just that they don’t have the social avenues that allow for on the fly engagements with people they don’t know. Talk with someone there and they ask the question, “What does this guy want? Why is he talking to me?” Start talking with someone you don’t know in Haiti and it’s just something normal and ordinary — everybody is talking with everybody anyway. -Wade Shepard - - -## Octavio Paz quote - -> Modern man likes to pretend that his thinking is wide-awake. But this wide-awake thinking has led us into the maze of a nightmare in which the torture chambers are endlessly repeated in the mirrors of reason. When we emerge, perhaps we will realize that we have been dreaming with our eyes open, and that the dreams of reason are intolerable. And then, perhaps, we will begin to dream once more with our eyes closed. <cite>–Octavio Paz</cite> - -## Stopping travel - -Full time travelers who stop traveling, regardless of how long or why, tend to feel like we've failed somehow. Which is silly, but I'm no exception. I feel it anyway. I have been feeling it lately. - -I like living on the road for two main reasons. One, we spend more time outside. There is nothing so valuable as spending all day outside. Two, it satisfies a pretty basic curiosity: what does it look like around that bend? What is the view like from the other side of the hill? What does the river sound like down in that valley? What is like to wake up in middle of the desert? How does it feel to fall asleep in the sand listening to the sea? How does it feel sitting in the shade of a sandstone overhang where someone else sat thousands of years ago? What's the scent of an aspen forest in a downpour? How does the sandstone feel on your fingertips after the thunderstorms pass? - -So to answer that question everyone keeps asking me: yes I miss living in the bus. And to answer the follow up question, yes, we're going to get back to that eventually. At the moment we're in San Miguel. - - -We were going to spend the winter down here, stay warm, improve our Spanish a bit and go back to the bus when it warmed up a little. Then we were going to spend spring traveling the southwest desert, see some areas of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah that we hadn't seen yet, and then head up to Wyoming, Idaho and Montana when it got hot, and spend summer at higher, cooler elevations. Good plan right? Well. - -When we parked the bus last year we knew that before it went much further it was going to need some work. Significant, time and money-eating work. To get to the places we want to get, we need more power and less worry. The only way I've come up with to get to that point is to either drop in a bigger engine, a 440 or the like, or rebuild the 318 to get better compression, which means boring out the engine, new pistons, maybe new manifolds, probably a new transmission and quite a few other things that are not cheap. It's all doable, but it takes time and money. There's also the possibility we could move to a different rig[^1], but that again is time and money. - -Time and money we don't have right now. - -I think now that true sweetness can only happen in limbo. I don't know why. Is it because we are so unsure, so tantative and waiting? Like it needs that much room, that much space to expand. The not knowing anything really, the hoping, the aching transience. This is not real, not really, and so we let it alone, let it unfold lightely. Those times that can fly. That's the way it seems now looking back. - -[^1]: I have never liked driving with a trailer, but it probably makes more sense for the way we travel. We like to set up camp and then spend a few weeks roaming an area. Certain things about trailers make them better for this, like the ability to haul out your black water and go fetch fresh water without breaking camp. The other marked advantage of the trailer and tow vehicle is that when you do need a mechanic's help, you don't lose your house. But pretty sure my family would abandon me if I tried to sell the bus. - - -## Bird watching as a way to get out - - -"Looking for birds, in this case, means seeing the private gardens of the brightly-colored houses in a small mountain town, with their fiery pink and orange blossoms, their mango and papaya trees, and their tangled blooming vines. Birding gets you to places you can’t otherwise go, or never thought to see. It gives you access to new foods and flavors. For example, birding gives you unparalleled access to taste rare fruits and other micro-local foods." - https://www.notesfromtheroad.com/neotropics/tapir-valley.html - - - -I don't want you to be like me. I want you to figure out who you are, how to think your own thoughts and maybe, if you're lucky, figure out what you're supposed to be doing. One of the easiest ways to get the kind of perspective you need to figure these things out is to travel, particularly outside your own culture - -## Failure of materialism - -I have become increasingly dissastified with the scientific materialist view of the world. I don't disagree with it, I just don't think it's the whole story. Which is to say that science provides a wonderful toolkit for exploring one of the worlds we live in, but it's a terrible toolkit for exploring the other worlds we live in. Now you could say, but we don't live in other worlds. But you're wrong. Imagine for a moment your favorite place, the warm sand of a beach, the wind through the pines on a ridge of mountains, the still heat of an afternoon in the desert, what have you. See it clearly in your mind. Hear it, the waves crashing the shore, the wind in the pines, the crunch of shoes as you walk through the gravel of the desert. Smell the salt, the pines, the sagebrush. Make it real in your mind. - -What world is that? It's not the world scientific materialism describes. Add a unicorn to your favorite place. See, easy. Easy because it's a different world. It's the world of imagination. There are other worlds too. Depending on which tradition of thought you find best describes your experience there might be three worlds, or five, for ten. The model that's always made the most sense to me happens to have five world, but it's just a model. - -Borges said the map is not the territory, and, while that's true, it should bear some scaled down resemblance to the territory otherwise it's not going to make a very helpful guide to the territory. - - - -## On Writing - -What I love most about writing is the thinking that happens first, it frees your mind from itself, it gives your mind something to turn over and over, it becomes like an old friends. You look at it this way, you look at it that way, you try to figure out why it's there. For a long time it's just there. It's there when I'm putting the coffee in the moka, it's there when I stand in the shower, feeling the water on my back, it's there when I walk up the hill, threading my way around concrete telephone polls and women selling nopales and tortillas. - -And then some part of it, suddenly you know why it's there, you know where it leads, you know what that bit is going to do and you move on to the next part. - -Some times unfortunately it can take years to figure things out, which makes it hard to feed a family writing. I have done it, but I have done it by writing terrible, terrible things. Book summaries for something like Cliff's Notes, which would have been a find job if it had paid more than $.03 a word, to blog posts for people trying to get people sliding down some slimy mailing list funnel. It was all unpleasant work, but in some ways it made me a better writer. Not at craft, but at volume. If you want to feed your family using words, plan to use a lot of them. One month I wrote 80,000 words. I averaged 60,000 for an entire year and nearly starved to death. - -You have to love to write, and you have to have the disciple to write even what you don't love. If I were you, I would get a job. If anyone had hired me, I would taken a job, but no one ever did. So I kept writing. - -## Work - -"Well, it depends on how much you love your work. - -After all, we’re really dealing with two separate things: - -The purpose of work is to create. It is to fuel your soul. - -Whereas the purpose of earning money is to have enough of the stuff. How much is enough? Whatever you need to max out your happiness potential. After that, more money will not make you any happier."—MMM - - -Greek Proverb which says, “A society grows great when the old people plant trees, even when they know they will never get to enjoy their shade.” - - -## An Invitation - - -In 1993 I headed off to college to a quiet little town called Redlands, CA, which had a college of the same name. It was at the base of the mountains and edge of the desert. At the time all I wanted to do was spend as much time hiking, climbing and skiing as I could. Redlands was a good base camp for all that. It was also one of a handful of colleges around the country that allowed you to write your own major. I originally went because I planned to write a major that was half studying photography and half writing about nature. Basically this was when I concieved luxagraf, I just had to wait ten years for the technology that would make it possible to become widespread. - -Before I dropped out of Redlands, which I did after two semesters, my advisor mentored my first class in my self- written major, which was a kind of Nature Writing 101, reading and reacting to authors I'd mostly already read and reacted to, all the usual American suspects, Thoreau, Abbey, Dillard, Lopez, Stegner, and so on. My professor was more knowledgable about this area than me though and he threw a few authors I did not know on the list. The one that's relevant now is one that remains largely overlooked by the canon of American nature writing, Mary Hunter Austin. - -Austin traveled and lived in the Mojave desert for 17 years, studying native life, as well as spanish-american immigrant life in the region and writing defenses of both 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 playing the role of Thoreau's pond. - -It's a good book, one that made me appreciate the Mojave much more than I did at the time. Since I lived in Redlands, not far from the Mojave, I was able to go out and explore quite a bit of what she wrote about. Recently, in searching for new books for the kids I discovered that Austin also wrote a children's book, called simply <cite>The Trail Book</cite>. Imagine Night in the Museum, but with Native American tales and you've got the idea. Finding this sent me off searching for more Austin, and somewhere in the early hours of the morning, bleery-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." - -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 a the friends of a long year. - - - -## Hard Times - - -It was a hard time. My wife took a job teaching English to Chinese five year old. It was a degrading business for someone with a master's in education, dancing like a monkey (I mean that literally) for tech companies whose "training materials" had more typos than a teenager's messaging logs. It was a dark time, but one you have to put somewhere else so your children don't realize how thin the line between having food and not can be because that's stress you try to keep your children from, even if you ultimately can't. Better your child be hungry than be hungry and have to wrestle with why. There's a surface level of why, the obvious, the because we have no job, that's easy enough to explain and we did, what's harder is to look the whole system in the eye and consider it, this thing humans have built where in fact there needs be nothing of the sort. Why force people to earn paper tickets, really electronic tickets these days, not even real tickets, that can be exchanged for food, shelter, etc. Why allow such a small number of humans to own all the land? Why allow anyone to own the land at all? These are much harder questions for children to face, for anyone to face. The rest of us have time and effort already invested in ignoring these questions, in pretending that the way things are is the only way they could be, that we don't have to face them the way children do, we simply look the other way and hang our heads and dance like monkeys for the foriegn kids and collect our digital tickets and buy food for our children, or try anyway. - -The stupid thing is we know this isn't the only way. The status quo only seems inevitable if it's all you know and we, creators of a culture that is obsessed with past cultures, know for absolute surety that there are other ways. Pretty much any tribal society for instance—which is a huge negative value judgment in that phrase that I'll be coming back to -- - - - - -## Meditation - -Like many people who practice meditation, it has been transformative for me. I don't talk about it much because who the hell wants to hear their friends talk about how meditation has been transformative? Even I don't want to hear that. But I'll put it here for total strangers on the internet. Weird. But anyway. - -I have experimented with many different forms of meditation, Vipassanna, mindfulness, zazen, transcendental, and others, but the one that actually did something for me, and which I continue to practice today, is discursive meditation. This is different than the mind-emptying meditation popular in the west just now. It's not mind-emptying, but rather focused, purposeful thinking (usually the full systems of thought from which the mind-emptying meditation techniques have been lifted have this sort of meditation as well, often under the name "contemplation" or similar). - -Discursive meditation does not require anything, but a comfortable place to sit, which might be part of the reason it's not very popular in this gear-obsessed age. A nice wooden chair works well for sitting, but anywhere you can get comfortable and relaxed works. I live in RV and don't have a nice wooden chair, so I can tell you with some authority that you need nothing more than a comfortable place to sit. No expensive retreats, no fancy buckwheat-filled pillow cushions, no special pants. Just sit down, breathe and call up whatever image or theme you're meditating on. - -What you meditate on varies by tradition and person. I recommend using some form of established tradition in the beginning, this will give you a place to turn when unexpected things happen. And they will. Eventually. The tradition I follow is that of hermeticism, which includes spiritual, ritual and other components as well, but discursive meditation was once [a big part of Catholicism](), and [druids](http://aoda.org/publications/articles-on-druidry/discursivemeditation/) practice it as well, which should give some idea of the range of appeal. - -The ability to think deeply and purposefully is one of those skills that, once you have it, you'll wonder how you ever got by without it. - - -## family in mexico - - -I've never lived in a culture that was so hard working an so devoted to family. These are things that I grew up hearing people talk about—hard work and family—but I've never actually seen it like I see it here. Which is not meant to denigrate people in other places, hard work is not a zero sum game, but here work and life flow together with no real strong boundaries like you'd find in the States, for example. - -My favorite example of this is bus drivers. In the United States if you drive a bus, you wear a uniform and, aside from your face and body shape, you are largely indistinguishable from whomever is driving the next bus. Chances are, when you get off you park the bus and go home. It's not in any meaningful way, your bus or even your work, you are by design an meaningless cog in a profit wheel where most of the profits go to someone other than you. I could make a good case that this is an awful way to live, severely limits your humanity, leads to depression and dissatisfaction with your work and life, and is one of the more profound and overwhelming problems in American culture, but we won't get into that here. - -Instead consider the Mexican bus driver. His bus is his bus. Her bus is her bus. The dashboard is given over to shrines of La Virgen de Guadalupe, or whomever their patron saint might be, along with photos of family, friends, wives, children, what have you. Usually there's a crucifix and some pithy quotes about god, country and most importantly, family. Mi familia, Mi Trabajo, Mi Vida, was one I saw. I don't know where the buses get parked at night, but I do know that the next day the same person is driving the same bus. Mi familia, Mi Trabajo, Mi Vida. - -For me this helps to make sense of - - - - - -## doing nothing - -I'm not going to pretend to know what Wallace Stevens was referring to by the Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is, but it has always reminded me of the fact that there are myriad complex worlds around us to which we are wholly ignorant. Not because we don't pay attention, though that may be part of it, but because we can't pay attention. There are vast existences too small to see with the naked eye. Ponds full of pond scum that have their own version of stressful jobs, political and social situations, and whatnot just as we do. They're just having it all on a very different scale, from us and happen to use chemicals instead of words to communicate. - -For all you know that puddle you didn't even notice on your way into work this morning is home to a population of microbes undergoing an extremely stressful existence which they would desperately like to escape just as much as you would desperately like to escape your cubicle. - -By the same token, the nothing that is has also always reminded me that it's entirely possible, likely even I would argue, that there are some beings out there to which our existence is about the same as the pond scum. Not insignificant or unimportant, just too small to really pay any kind of meaningful attention to. After all, pretty much everyone and everything has its own set of problems to worry about. - - -Staring at nothing isn't doing nothing. It so happens that watching the world in silence isn't something our culture considers valuable and so you and I have been trained to casually dismiss it as "doing nothing". But the more I've done it, the more I realized that sitting, "doing nothing" is actually, possibly, the secret of the world so to speak. Whatever it may be, I can say from experience that it's incredibly valuable to me now and has helped me grow by leaps and bounds as a person. - -I also think it offers a practical, easy way out of many of the social messes we've created for ourselves. - -There's a lot of windbags out there criticizing the internet, especially social media, for fostering narcissism, consumer culture, intellectual bullying, and whatever other social ill gets their particular goat as it were. But it's rare that said windbags have any good ideas on how we can counteracting these forces beyond turning off the TV and internet. - -To be fair, that does work. Especially turning off the TV. Few things will improve your life so dramatically as throwing your TV out the highest window you can find (making sure there's no one below). - -The internet though is more neutral in my view. It can be good, it can be bad, it all depends on you and how you use it. In my case I have to use it, it's how I make money to live this way. And sure I can say oh I'm only going to look up whatever technical thing I need to look up to solve a particular problem, but that ideal is very different from the messy relaity that the internet is full of interesting stuff to stare at. - -\l - -Observing nature is not nothing. - -Which is to say all the things we as a culture don't want to talk about right now. - -You and I find ourselves born into a declining culture. A culture that is what Spengler would call the end of an abstraction phase that will soon start swinging toward - - -is a bit more complex than that. If you want to still use social media, try first developing humility. One easy way to do that is to create an active practice cultivating humility, for example, pending time in quiet observance of nature. Spend some time realizing that most of life care not at all what humans think, say or do, is helpful in - -seems like it would require an active practice. - -## quotes borrowed - - -But as we struggle through this crisis of legitimacy, what is left over when the abstractions start to wear thin? When I decide I don’t want to become an opiate addict and need to find something else? What about when it’s more serious than just a headache – what if it turns out to be cancer, and I don’t want to follow the standard ‘cut, poison, burn’ protocol? For me, it sometimes feels like there’s only a smoking crater where my brain should be. My mind often feels like it’s just a collection of Other People’s opinions and regurgitated sound bites. Even if I do try to pay attention to my own experiences, what I am able to perceive is limited by my analysis of the information coming in to my brain, which is itself conditioned by the habits of thought I learned from other people and my society. I filter out the information to which I am exposed. So there really is no objective truth out there! -https://www.ecosophia.net/the-truths-we-have-in-common/#comment-17128 - -It’s when you realize that most of your opinions and ideas belong to other people that you can begin the central work of an age of reflection — the work of learning how to think your own thoughts, and assess other people’s opinions and ideas and your own with a set of critical tools that don’t depend on checking their fit to some collectively approved set of abstract generalizations. JMG - -ipalm fronds, whirls, fans, crisp browned tips, peeling trunks as if the whole tree were some giant alien flower, other with trunks smooth and stalk straight leading up to bunches of fronds that look like pineapples on stilts. The can be so absolutely still when the ind doesn't blow.. The slash pine mixed in, it too has a very stright trunk, shedding its lower branches as it grows so that the long, delicate needles grow in tuffs and clumps of needle fans near the top of the tree. Here and there an oak, never a big one in the palm-dominated areas, but vaguely sickly looking oaks scratching out an existence in this sandy soil. - -Twilight is soft yellow that gradually fades up to a cool white that gets cooler and cooler blow as it climbs up the sky until it reachs the rich coblant I see up through the faint waiving of pine tops in the wind, the deep rich blue of twilight, the spirit who guides the stars into the night. The sand looks gray and soft when the sun is gone, the coean grows dark and seems to settle it's restlessness a bit as the light disappears. - - -Moo Krob Nam Ma Prow - -having grown up in mid-twentieth century suburbia — and then escaped! — I have a very low tolerance for the kind of boring world that comes from excess conformity and obedience to authorities. As for ways to sort through the abstractions — ah, we’ll be getting to those. - ecosophia, greer - - -> In a home I need walls, roof, windows, and a door that can be opened and closed. I also need a place to cook, a place to eat, a place to sleep, a place for a guest, and a place to write. More space is not better... more space attracts more stuff which eventually means less space. - -> Some things make life easier, but more things do not make life more easy. More things mean more things that can break down and more time spent fixing or replacing them. - -> Comfort is freedom and independence. Comfort is having the sweat glands and metabolic tolerance to deal with heat and cold. It is not central heating or air conditioning which may fail or be unavailable. It is not plushy seats but a healthy back. Luxury is not expensive things. It is a healthy and capable body that moves with ease with no restraints because something is too heavy, too far, too hard, or too much. It is a content and capable mind that can think critically, solve problems, and form opinions of its own. - -> Success is having everything you need and doing everything you want. It is not doing everything you need to have everything you want. If so then you do not own your things, instead your things own you. I do not need to own a particular kind of vehicle. I need to go from A to B. I do not need fancy steak dinners, rare ingredients, or someone else to prepare my meals whether it is a pizza parlor, a chef, or an industrial food preprocessor. I need food to live. Food to fuel my body and brain. Luxury is not eating at 5 five star restaurants. Luxury is being able to appreciate any food. Comfort is eating the right kind and the right amount of food. Not whatever I want. Eating and moving right prevents diseases, pains, and lack of functionality. I am what I eat and I look what I do. Everybody is. It is the physiological equivalent of integrity. To say what I mean and mean what I say. This too makes life more comfortable. Money is opportunity. Opportunity is power. Power is freedom. And freedom means responsibility. Without responsibility, eventually there is no freedom, no power, no opportunities, and no money. More importantly, freedom is more than power. Power is more than opportunity. Opportunity is more than money. And money is more than something that just buys stuff. It is simple to understand but hard to remember, but do remember this if nothing else. - -http://earlyretirementextreme.com/manifesto.html - -The Labyrinth of Solitude -Juana Inés de la Cruz. Her superb book "Poems, Protest, and a Dream" -Mariano Azuela's "The Underdogs" -## Podcasts - -podcasts are great because you can do other things while you listen right? Like you can be doing the dishes or gardening or working on your car and listening to a podcast and that's like giving you that time that you would have spent in a book or video and now you can spend it doing two things. Now is that divided attention as good as the focused attention? probably not. so for me, I tend to combine two low lift things. I listen to a podcast on tk when I'm doing the dishes but something that requires a good bit of focus I might save for a drive. But either way this opens up a way to kind of double time your life. You want to learn about something new, but you need to weed the garden right? Well, now you can. - -## Monohull must haves -Here are *my* must haves for a monohul, if you want to live aboard for extended stays: - -Head and galley right down at the companionway. -You don’t want to go halfway through the boat, let alone pass through cabins to reach their ensuite head, with dripping wet oilies in a heavy seaway. It has to be right at the bottom of the stairs. - -If you like to eat in the cockpit, it’s very nice to be able to pass food directly from the galley without walking around with it. -Also, the area in front of the companionway is usually the most stable one of the boat. Best for cooking at sea. - -A separate shower stall. -Usually we like to wash from the stern but when anchorages are crowded or the weather is a little cooler it’s very nice to be able to wash inside without splashing all over the head and the sink. - -Seats 4 at the indoor table without having to unfold table leaves or hampering mobility inside. - -All lines, especially reefing, lead aft to the cockpit so you can do the heavy weather sailing without ever leaving the cockpit. - -Walk through transom to facilitate boarding from the dinghy with your hands full of groceries. Also the nicest way to take a swim, or for washing yourself as mentioned above. - -One of the smallest boats corresponding to the above whilst sporting 3 cabins, is the Beneteau Oceanis 361 that I’ve owned and loved very much. Crossed the Atlantic twice with it. You may want a Jeanneau Sun Odyssey 40 from around 1999 (the 3 cabin - 1 head layout) for a bit more payload and space in the forward cabin and twin cockpit wheels that facilitate mobility to and from the walk through transom. Otherwise a very similar boat. These are two ‘budget’ options, which seem to be the prudent choice given the description of your means. Better spend far less on the initial acquisition cost than you think you can afford. - -### Forward Wind Scoop - -Forward wind scoop: a bit of triangular canvas strung over a forward hatch between two scasions, sloping down to the deck as you move aft with a tension line to the rigging above to keep it taunt. Doubles as forward windshade and forces air down into the hatch to keep below decks cool. Keeps the air moving through. Saw this on Allied Seawind 30 on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRHskbdRFFs -## CC - -When I first saw you I was just trying to get a cup of coffee. But then I decided I'd rather have you. -That proved more difficult that I thought. Once You sat in my lap once at Jason and Christy's house -but I was pretty sure you were dating someone else and I was positive I was so that didn't go far -but I found I rather enjoyed you in my lap. Another time we went to prom and you made out with me -I know I was dating someone else then too but I didn't care. For years I made you many a spinach salad with salmon on it, -even when you were eating with someone else. Then you became a picture on my refrigerator for 3 years. - -Once when I try to meet up with you you ditched me. Then you decided to marry someone else I went traveling the world for years -I didn't think about you very much for a while, but when I got back I met you again at Nancy's house -I spilled Sangria on your dog but still you said it could be okay for me -to visit you in Charleston. We ate lots of seafood without going far -We went skinny dipping in your pool, in hindsight I'm surprised you did it. -the first night was a little rough, I had to fight the dog, she didn't want me, she wanted you. - -And then I considered once what I would do without and found I could not imagine life without you. -As Donne wrote, "All joys are thanks to you" and somehow I convinced you of it -I might redo them now, those standard vows we read, or listen to out back of our house -If I could do it over I'd tell you I'll love you forever, forever ever, years, -even beyond death, for I've walked many of the happy roads that take you round the world and far -away and have found them good, so long as you are with me. - - ---- - - -From "Valentine" by John Fuller - -The things about you I appreciate -May seem indelicate: -I'd like to find you in the shower -And chase the soap for half an hour. -I'd like to have you in my power -And see your eyes dilate. -I'd like to have your back to scour -And other parts to lubricate. - -I'd like to find a good excuse -To call on you and find you in. -I'd like to put my hand beneath your chin, -And see you grin. -I'd like to taste your Charlotte Russe, -I'd like to feel my lips upon your skin -I'd like to make you reproduce. - -I'd like you in my confidence. -I'd like to be your second look. -I'd like to let you try the French Defence -And mate you with my rook. -I'd like to be your preference -And hence -I'd like to be around when you unhook. -I'd like to be your only audience, -The final name in your appointment book, -Your future tense. - ---- - - -Have you forgotten what we were like then -when we were still first rate -and the day came fat with an apple in its mouth - -it's no use worrying about Time -but we did have a few tricks up our sleeves -and turned some sharp corners - -the whole pasture looked like our meal -we didn't need speedometers -we could manage cocktails out of ice and water - -I wouldn't want to be faster -or greener than now if you were with me O you -were the best of all my days - -# Essays - -## tk - - - - -Once you accept that there is no cavalry coming, or perhaps more conservatively, that you don't need a cavalry to come, or, at the very least make the decision that you want to life your life in such a way that you don't *want* to need a cavalry, the question arises: what then do I do? How do I get from where I am, to that state of mental, physical, and spiritual security? - -Another way to put this would be: How do I begin to take responsibility for and become accountable for myself, my family, my world? - -I have no idea. Which is to say that I know what I am doing for those things, but I don't know what you should do -- that's for you to figure out. If I told you what to do you'd just be dependant on me, no better off than being dependant on the cavalry. - -No one can tell you how to get on the path to self-dependency because no one other than you knows what your path to self-dependency looks like. You have to find it. And you'll know when you have. Find it is the fun part. Don't worry if it takes a while. It took me the better part of two decades. But I know people who figured it out much quicker. - -So I am not going to prescribe some recipe for how you can take responsibility for your world, but I am going to tell you something that might help you figure out your own path: you first have to reclaim your time. One of the things that keeps us dependant on the cavalry is our perceived lack of time to do anything about it. How are you going to learn how to rebuild your leaf blower motor when you work 9-5 and spend an hour on each side of that commuting? From 8-6 you have no time for leaf blowers. Throw in breakfast and dinner and suddenly from 7-7 you have no time for anything else. - - - -How do you find time to build relationships with your neighbors when you spend 12 hours (or more) of your waking day working? - - -In the first essay on this subject I suggested that you stop using money to meet all your needs. That is, begin to build relationships with people such that you can begin to meet some of your needs by offering something of yourself to others. I don't know what that might look like for you, but here's a quick example: when we lived out in woods in South Carolina much of the land surrounding our house was leased to a hunt club. In exchange for keeping an eye on the area, we were free to hunt. Actually we were offered other people's deer, though we had to decline for lack of freezer space. - -If you live in Manhattan this scenario isn't going to come up. But if you start trying to meet people, to listen to them, you will build relationships that lead to things like this. Perhaps not free food, perhaps it will end up being chess lessons or tk, but it will be something and your life will be richer, and slightly, ever so slightly less dependant on the system of The Machine. - -This will also give you agency. You are the one with the connection to others, nothing is mediating that. This is agency. Agency reduces stress. It helps you to see bad things, bad situations for what they are: bad situations. When you have agency and the self-confidence that it, along with experience, give you, you begins to see that with sufficient resources -- time, effort, knowledge, money, etc -- any problem can be solved. - - - -## The Cavalry Isn't Coming - -The Cavalry isn't coming. This is the lesson 21st century America is trying to teach us. We are going to have to re-learn how to depend on ourselves and on each other. There is no one else. That's okay. We don't need anyone else. - -Self-reliance backed up by tight community bonds used to be the norm. You depended on yourself, your family, your community, because who else was there? So far as I can tell from reading history this was most people's outlook until roughly the middle of the 20th century. That's when a number of things happened that changed how people saw themselves and their communities. - -Around then things began to centralize and as they did the solutions people had always relied on weren't suddenly found wanting. Self-appointed experts stepped in to tell us how things should be done. How we should eat. How we should live. How we should love. Sometimes the experts had good ideas. But often they did not. And even when their ideas were good, there was an unintended consequence to listening to the experts: communal bonds were weakened, people were deprived of skills, people questioned their instincts. Soon people believed they needed experts for everything. - -The world according to experts is a world that depends on those experts, the cavalry. The people we mean when we say "they'll think of something." - -Except that as we've all witnessed in the last twenty years, they won't think of something. They're out of ideas. Worse, the old ideas don't work anymore. The world of the expert is collapsing all around us. The cavalry isn't coming because the cavalry doesn't know how to ride anymore. - -For four years we've been driving around the United States, passing through all its unique regions (except New England and the Pacific Northwest) and I've noticed not only the experts are failing us, but that there are some places where that has had little to no effect on life. - -It took me a long time to figure this out because this shift, from the local community as the hub of life, to there being no hub, happened long before I was born. That is to say, the disconnected lives we all lead, depending on experts to tell us everything from what to eat to how to fix our cars, was normal to me. It was the water I lived in and I never noticed it. What I did notice pretty early on was that some places were decidedly different. Northern Wisconsin. Okracoke. Parts of the Florida Panhandle. - -We were drawn to these places and continue to return to them in part I think because they resisted the shift to expert authority that happened everywhere else. Self-reliance, independent businesses, and close knit communities still thrive in these places. These places somehow escaped the chain-storification of the world. It was refreshing. It was different. These places felt like what I wanted the future to be. - -I have read enough books of the American road to know that everywhere used to be like this, but I never gave much thought to how or why that changed. I assumed that chain stores took over. And they did. But I think there's considerably more underlying that simple observation, and I think understanding how it happened, how we got into this mess, is going to help us get out of it. - -I think it happened because not enough people resisted it. We were swept along and did not stand up to it. It's hard to avoid shopping at Walmart. So we did. And so on, until the old ways were swept aside. We prized newer bigger better because we lost sight of what life is really about. - -Singular cause and effect cannot explain how an entire culture shifts, that's a subtle and multifaceted process, but it begins and ends with the choices of individuals. Millions of individuals, all of whom have different beliefs, different desires, different wills. It's important to keep this in mind because the kind of thinking that says "here's the problem, here's how to fix it" is the kind of thinking that made the problem. - -And now here we are, waiting for the other shoe to drop. We're a bit like Wile E. Coyote when he's run off the edge of the cliff but doesn't realize it yet. Ignorance of his true situation keeps him from plunging down right away, but there's always that moment when it starts to sink in. The cartoonists let his ears droop just before he confronts his situation and falls. That's about where I see modern America just now. Our ears are drooping and we know what's coming, but no one knows how high we are or how hard we'll fall. - -That is a pretty dismal place to be. But I believe we can still exercise some control over that descent. We have to fall, but there are branches we can grab onto, things that can slow us down. Not as a culture, but as individuals. We can descent gradually and with some degree of grace perhaps. - -Everywhere will be different, and the solutions will be different for everyone. That's what five years living on the road has taught me. There is no collective anything. There is just you and me and the rain. When I say we have to figure this out without the cavalry, don't mistake me for some alternate cavalry. I don't know what you need to do. I know some of what I need to do, but you are different. You have your own path. We need to work together, help each other, but work together and help each other down our own paths. The balance between individualism and community that has been lost, we have to restore it one person at a time. The good news is that I think we still have a chance to land at the bottom of that descent without too much damage. To understand what I mean, let me tell you a little story about an engine. - ---- - -At the end of 2017, after we'd been traveling in the bus for about nine months we were [climbing up Tehachapi Pass](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2017/12/terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-week) to get out of California's central valley. About halfway up the incline there was a loud bang from the engine and the smell of burning oil. The leaking head gasket we didn't know about had leaked enough that one piston shattered and we were dead in the water. I didn't know that at the time. All I knew was that something was very, very wrong. - -I called a tow truck and we were towed over the pass down to Mojave, CA, where we spent three weeks and over $6,000 replacing that piston and head gasket. We had no choice. While I knew how to fix some things, I was a long way from knowing how to take apart an entire engine. But, when I was signing that credit card receipt for six grand, I decided, never again. Whatever happens from here on out, I am going to fix it or we're going to sell it and find some other way to travel. - -The bus has never been to a mechanic since. This is not meant as a slight of those mechanics who have worked on it over the years. Some did good work. Some did not. But none of them love this engine the way I do. Why should they? It's not their engine. If you love something you learn how to take care of it yourself. - -So I set about trying to educate myself on how to repair a Chrysler 318 LA engine. This was not easy. The aspirated 318 with LA heads hasn't been in a production vehicle since the late 1970s. Even mechanics in their mid 50s might never have actually worked on one. Slowly though I began to stumble across people working on them. The [Mopar A-body forums](https://www.forabodiesonly.com/mopar/) have been helpful, and several YouTube channels have taught me a ton, especially [Uncle Tony's Garage](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9SzQNYLqsPQGY_nbHogDDw). - -But while strangers could provide some framework and theory, which it comes to figuring out what's wrong I've mainly turned to my uncle Ron who has an uncanny knack for being able to diagnose problems over the phone with very little to go on. Without him I would not know half of what I know today (which is still disappointingly little, but enough to get by). - -Somewhere along the way I started to wonder what was driving me. It was partly curiosity, partly necessity, but also partly something more. Matthew Crawford's *Shop Class as Soul Craft* articulates this something more far more eloquently than I've been able to. Crawford sees the need to be capable of repair as more than just a desire to fix things. He sees it as a desire to escape the feeling of dependence on stuff. The more I began to work on the bus the more I understood what Crawford meant. There is empowerment in knowing how things work. Your stuff will never again fail you because if it does break, you can repair it. Empowerment in this case means removing the expert between you and your stuff. Your stuff is more yours, you are more in control of your stuff. - -Crawford calls the person who wants to fix their own stuff, the Spirited Man. In his book this figure becomes the antidote to passive consumption. Passive consumption displaces agency, argues Crawford. One is no longer master of one's stuff because one does not truly understand how stuff works. "Spiritedness, then," writes Crawford, "may be allied with a spirit of inquiry, through a desire to be master of one’s own stuff. It is the prideful basis of self-reliance." - -Crawford writes that the spirited man "hates the feeling of dependence, especially when it is a direct result of his not understanding something. So he goes home and starts taking the valve covers off his engine to investigate for himself. Maybe he has no idea what he is doing, but he trusts that whatever the problem is, he ought to be able to figure it out by his own efforts. Then again, maybe not—he may never get his valve train back together again. But he intends to go down swinging." - -In the time since I read that I have literally done exactly that. I have decided I'd rather go down swinging, taking apart my valve train, rather than seeking the help of a professional. It’s not just me. YouTube and other sharing sites are littered with people teaching each other how to fix stuff. Then there are the thousands people without social media who are quietly working in their yards, in their garages, at the side of the road. Shade tree mechanics. Tinkerers. Spirited men and women who want first and foremost to understand, to expand their understanding of the world around them, to know how to use the tools we toolmakers have created for ourselves. - -I think this goes to the heart of our existence... why are we here? Are we here, as the technomedia landscape would have it, to be passively entertained and coddled from birth to death? Or are we here for something more? I don't know about you, but I don't think we're just along for the ride. We’re here to stand at the helm, trim the sails and steer the ship. - -I think rejecting the world of passivity, of getting off our butts and taking matters into our own hands, of asking our neighbors and like-minded strangers how to fix things, how to build things, what's working and what isn't. All of this is on the path to rebuilding a life of value and meaning. - ---- - -We eliminate our dependence on the cavalry by becoming the cavalry for ourselves, for our families, and for our neighbors. *Être fort pour être utile* *. Be strong to be useful. - -Eliminate the central conceit of modernism—that there is a group of people you need to save you from... the world, yourself, your shortcomings, your neighbors, your neighbors' shortcomings and on down the line -- by taking responsibility for yourself and the expanding that responsibility outward to your family, to your community. - -The message of modernism is that you're helpless and you need saving. If you want to dig deep into the psychology of this I'd say it's about what you'd expect to get when a culture takes the gods out of its religion and replaces those gods with administrative systems. We're not the first. The Romans went down this path, so did the Chinese. Read Oswald Spengler or Arthur Toynbee if the history interests you. All you really need to know though is that there's a long history showing it doesn't work. Look around you, is stuff working? No, no, it is not. - -Everything requires high specialized skills and knowledge. This is a choice. Things don't have to be built this way. Culture doesn't have to be arranged this way. It didn't use to be this way. Even 100 years ago there were very few "experts" telling you how to live. Now even lightbulbs have to include instructions on how to change them. - -Once you needed to be able to do a bit of everything yourself—help your neighbors build their homes, raise and butcher animals, preserve your food, fight fires, fix stuff, pull a tooth, deliver a child. All the things Robert A. Heinlein famously suggested a human being out to be able to do: "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." - -Prior to the coming of the machine age, we were able to do this stuff. It was no factor. - -But I know, I know, industrialization relies on specialization. Specialization means highly trained workers. Professionals are better than self-taught amateurs. Their skills can develop everything to increasing levels of complexity. And look, there are aspects of this that are good. It would take me years to learn how to machine a camshaft. I'm happy to let an expert do that because their expertise has allowed them to develop better tools and using those tools requires skills that only those experts have. Not everyone had a mill at their house. Not everyone could forge a great blade. There has always been specialization. It's the degree of specialization that's the problem. Our problems are the problems of overspecialization. - -The problem with the specialization model isn't so much the specialization as the exclusion. As Christopher McDougall so eloquently puts it in *Natural Born Heros*, over time, "a subtle cancer spread: where you have more experts, you create more bystanders. Professionals did all the fighting and fixing we used to handle ourselves; they even took over our fun, playing our sports while we sat back and watched." - -When was the last time you played baseball? When was the last time you watched it? I know I listened to a game last week. The last time I played was in the previous century. That's sad really. I like playing. Life is playing. Not watching. What are we here for? To play or to watch? I think that will become central question of our age, at least for those that haven't found their gods. - -I believe the disconnection that comes from watching life instead of participating in it is responsible for just about all our problems. Our mental health problems, our physical health problems, our cultural problems. All these things stem from being disconnected from life, from each other, from ourselves. - -How did we get here? We got here because we allowed other people to tell us what was good for us. And they were wrong. From diet and health to design and visions of the future, they were wrong. - -It's time we stopped listening to them and went back to fixing stuff ourselves, taking care of each other, taking care of ourselves. - ---- - -The question becomes, how do we get back to where our grandfather's were? - -There isn't one answer to this. I am not here on high telling you how to find your path because that top-down model is what caused the problem. I'm not even going to tell you what I am doing because even in that I think there's a tendency to see it as a recipe. - -I would suggest that the first and most important thing is the realize that no one else is going to figure it out for you. The top-down, expert provides a solution system *is* the problem. - -I would suggest that reclaiming control of your life, your community, your world is actually easier than you think. You are already more skilled than you think. And you are surrounded by skilled people. Find something that interests you and get better at it. Connect with other people who share your interests. - -Early drafts of this had a few suggestions on specific things you could do, but again, I don't want to give you a recipe. That said, there is one thing that I think isn't intuitive, but will really open doors for you: **stop using money to meet all your needs**. - -Find one problem, one thing, that you pay for now that you can either make/do yourself, or, even better can be borrowed or done with help from friends and family. The goal is to find something that puts you in a debt of gratitude to someone else. This is the basis of community—gratitude. When you are grateful to the world, you become more helpful to the world. Gratitude is a powerful motivator. It subverts one of the most powerful outside, centralized structures that we're eventually going to have to do without: currency. - -Your great grandparents fixed things for people, made things for people, and were grateful to receive the same from others. This formed much of the basis of community that held life together before the coming of centralization. It isn't the only thing, but it's a place to start and that's what we need to do. Start. Remember, we don't want to change the world, that's the top down thinking that got us in the mess. The goal here is to change the only part of the world you can: you. - - -etc etc. suggestions - -Trust yourself. - -Get outside - -Talk to your neighbors - -Start walking - -Find religion - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -The solutions being proposed by the people who champion this idea are the same as they've always been: more technology, more bureaucracy, more centralized control (and not coincidentally more jobs for more experts). - -We know where these ideas get us and we're done. - -It's popular these days to say that politics is downstream from culture, which is to say we get the politics of our culture. But as John Michael Greer often says, "it needs to be remembered in turn that culture is downstream from imagination." We have the power here because we are limited only by our imaginations and our bodies' ability to make our imaginings true. - - -https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2019/11/land - - ---- - -Virtues require cultivation, but our culture has left us with somewhat untended gardens. We have undisciplined minds, undisciplined debates, and undisciplined media consumption habits. - - ---- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -I'll be honest, I don't have a lot to add that you can't find in the writings of Jacques Ellul, Ivan Illich, Lewis Mumford, Neil Postman, Wendell Berry and others who've been trying to warn us for over a century now (I also think Tolkein's Lord of the Rings is an overloked, very subtle critique of technological society that's well worth reading from that angle). If I do nothing else than inspire you to read them, I will call that success. However, I think that I'm in a somewhat unique position to observe things in a variety of places and make connections that others might not be able to see, and so here we are. - - - - - -People in the United States ignore such proposals because we tried that experiment and found out just how badly it worked. In 1961, the new presidential administration of John F. Kennedy set out to improve US foreign policy by staffing the State Department with “the best and the brightest,” which meant in the context of the time a bevy of intellectuals fresh out of Ivy League universities, full of the latest fashionable ideas in international relations. Those experts promptly led America straight into the quagmire of the Vietnam War, while loading the military with a flurry of contradictory demands that made victory impossible and withdrawal unacceptable. - -One of the precepts of the last couple of centuries is that there is one answer to every problem and it is the right answer and it is the answer you are going to choose like it or not. This is more or less the central premise of what is generally called liberalism or later, when people tried to distance themselves from the failures of liberalism, neo-liberalism. - - -I want to connect the story of taking apart the bus to the individualism and closed community of the west to the idea that we have to depend on ourselves and each other, not outside help coming from on high. The old order is collapsing and those of us farthest from its center are going to lose it first. The new world starts out here on the edges, the fringes the forgotten corners of the country where the old order has never held much sway. - -I recently told a story about my decision to replace the bus engine's head gasket. It was a small thing really, when you consider the realm of human possibilities, but for me it was a big thing. Still, I didn't really want to do it. - -In that piece I made a somewhat flippant comment about no one ever stopping to help us when we're at the side of the road out west. That's been true, but it doesn't mean no one has helped us. It helps to remember that the west was built on deceit. The original inhabitants were decieved with treats that have not been honored, the people who came after them were decieved by the government and the railroads who needed them to farm in a country both knew well would never support farming. They recruited people from all over the world, people to whome the notion of living alone in a vast landscape was appealing and then, when those people turned out to want to do their own thing, not what the government wanted them to do (shocking that these independant spirits who surviced out here didn't want to do anyone's bidding) they were deceived again. And again. Perhaps the most eloquent recounting of these desceptions is the book Bad Land. I think it is important to remember these things when you are out here. - -That is I think, why no stops to help us. First and foremost, we are outsiders and in the current west there is more distrust of outsiders than anywhere else we've been. Justifiably I'd say. - - -## Rules for Screens, Part One - -I have a strange page about [technology](/technology) buried on this site. Still, people find it. Something must link to it? I'm not sure how or why, but it seems to get a lot of traffic. Or at least it generates a fair bit of email. About a dozen people a year take the time to email me about the first line of that article: - -**The less technology your life requires the better your life will be.** - -I get a mix of responses to this ranging from the occasional "who are you to judge me, how dare you tell me not to play video games" (which I don't usually respond to), to the more frequent, and thoughtful, "hey, I feel the same way but I can't seem to get technology out of my life". - -In crafting a response to the most recent person who wrote some variation of that comment, I accidentally wrote a massively long post I am breaking into a three-part series, retracing how I came to use screens so little, despite editing photos, writing for this site, and working for an online publication, all of which do in fact require a screen. I use screens when it makes sense to do so, but the rest of the time I avoid them. - -We're going to start with the basic stuff. I did most of the steps in this part back in 2016 when we were getting ready to move into the bus. This is actually all the hardest things to do, because these will free up enough time that you'll find yourself staring into the void for the first time since you were a kid. Don't worry, it's good for you. Anyway, on with it. - -**Luxagraf's rules for screens, part one.** - ---- - -## **Rule One: Throw Your Television in the Nearest Dumpster** - -Yup, we're going to start with the hardest one. You'll notice that I am more sympathetic to not going cold turkey with other things below. Not this one. This is the absolute requirement. Kill your television. Now. Tough love people. - -But... but. Look. Here's the thing. You have this gift of life for, on average, around 73 years. 73 YEARS. You won't even last as long as the average hardwood tree. And you're going to spend that precious time watching television? No. No you're not. Not anymore. You're going to live. Find a dumpster. Put your TV in it. - -Okay, you don't want to put your $1,200 TV in the dumpster. Then find an old sheet or blanket and cover it up. Put some low-tack painters tape on there, make it hard to take off. That'll work for now. But get ready to eBay that thing. Or find a dumpster. - -Now cancel Netflix, Hulu, or whatever other subscriptions you had. If you subscribe to two streaming services, that's just under $30 a month. That's $360 a year. That's $1,800 every five years. That's crazy. But now you have about $30 a month you can either save or spend on something you want. Something tangible. I mean, reward yourself if you really do this. At least buy some ice cream. - ---- - -## **Rule Two: Make Something** - -If you watched television for 3 hours in the evenings, congrats you were already watching less than most people—and you stop doing that you have just reclaimed 15 hours a week. FIFTEEN HOURS! That's enough to get a part time job somewhere. It's enough time to do, lord, there's no limit to what you could do really. Start a business, write a book, read the entire canon of Russian literature. The paradox of choice can get you here and you'll end up watching YouTube for hours on your laptop. I know, I've done it. - -You have to start creating something. I strongly suggest you create something real and tangible. Something you can hold in your hands. Cook yourself a fancy dessert if you like. Yeah you can even look up a recipe on a screen, don't worry about it. The internet is incredibly helpful for learning things. That's another idea. Find something you really love and learn more about it. Read everything you can about agates if that's your bag (it's my wife's bag). But do it by checking books out from the library, not by reading on your phone. - -Do what you want, but do something. Deliberately carve out some time to make something. And I know everyone says, I'm not a creative person, I don't know what to make. Start small. Write a card to your closest relative. Write a postcard if a card is too much. Make dessert for your family, your significant other, yourself, whatever. Just make something. Except maybe don't make a fancy dessert every night. That won't end well. If all else fails, just go for a walk. - ---- - -## **Rule Three: Delete Social Media Apps** - -Yeah, now we're getting real. I know it's going to be hard. But you know what, take easy, start small. You probably have Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, a bunch of stuff in other words, on your phone. Just pick one and delete it for one week. You can always reinstall it so it's not like there's too much to lose here. - -But we're not done. - -Get a piece of paper and a pen. Fold the paper up so it's small enough to fit in your pocket. Put it in your pocket, or otherwise keep it on you. Now, every time you feel like checking whichever social network you deleted, instead of checking it, pull out your paper and pen and write down why you wanted to check it. It doesn't need to be an essay, just write like "wanted to see what Mark was up to" or whatever the source of the urge was. - -Do that for one week. At the end of the week look back over what you wrote down and decide for yourself if those things you were planning to do are worth your time. If they are then re-install that app and be on your merry way. If they aren't, or more likely, if you aren't sure, do the experiment for another week. - -If you decide that this wasn't the best use of your limited time on earth, repeat this process with the next social app on your phone. When you've deleted all the unnecessary apps from your phone you're done with this step. - -Oh, and the ones you keep, don't feel bad about those. If you're feeling a sense of guilt about them still it might be worth repeating this experience, but if you really do enjoy them then don't feel guilty about them. - -## **Rule Four: Track What You Do When You Use a Screen** - -Far to much of our lives are lived in a kind of automated mode. Think back over everything you did in the last five minutes before you started reading this. If you're like me, you probably struggle to remember what it was you were doing or how you ended up precisely here at this moment. Some of this autopilot living is a good thing, especially, I've found, morning routines, but I do it far too much. - -So I started keeping closer track of what I was doing and why. I'm not suggesting you do that. That's actually advanced level stuff, what I am suggesting is very simple: every time you use a screen, remember to do it consciously. Don't judge yourself for it, just note that hey, I am using a screen. That's all. Now if you're somewhat obsessive like I am you might want to write down whatever notes you can, about why you're using a screen. - -Unlike the steps above, this is not really a rule. It's a process. It's an ongoing process that will probably never end, at least in my case. I like to be conscious of when I use a screen, so although I started this years ago, I still do it today. - -That brings me to the final point I will leave you with: everything is a process. To paraphrase Alan Watts, you are not a thing, you are a happening. Which is to say, all of life is a never ending process, there may be goals, there maybe markers along the way, but it's not like you get to place where you never have to do anything again. The goal, at least at this very basic level of using less screens, is to build systems and processes that will help you do things other than stare at a screen. - -Now go kill your television. - - - -## Rules for Screens, Part Two - -Last time we hurled our televisions out the window into a dumpster. If you actually did that, like I did once in college, you know that the sound of that crunch and exploding screen was awesome. Well maybe not, CRT screens aren't around anymore. Anyway, if you didn't actually hurl it out a window, well, hopefully you at least sold or gave away your TV. Remember, you can have a television or you can have a life. - -Televisions are not the screen everyone wrings their hands over these days though. That's a little odd to me because according to statistics on screen time, that's where most us spend our time. But the evil de jour is phones. You phone is doing all kinds of things to you and will probably eventually be a direct contributor to the collapse of western culture if you believe everything you read. Which is sign you're using your phone too much. - -I don't love phones, and I do think we should all use them less. If you've feel addicted to your phone, well, um, you're right. You are. Everything about the design of the apps on your phone is engineered to create dopamine pathways that make sure you experience physical withdrawal when you go without them. That's addiction pure and simple. - -But. Did you know that culturally we've been wringing our hands over the distractions in our lives for centuries? Meister Eckhart, writing around 1307, calls "distraction" the second most powerful thing preventing communion with God. In 1550s Swiss scientist Conrad Gessner worries that the printing press will worsen the problem of distraction with a "confusing and harmful" amount of data "unleashed on the unsuspecting." To pick a more recent, and revealing, example consider writer Italo Calvino's 1983 account of [his daily newspaper habit](https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2027/the-art-of-fiction-no-130-italo-calvino): - -> Each morning I already know I will be able to waste the whole day. There is always something to do: go to the bank, the post office, pay some bills... always some bureaucratic tangle I have to deal with. While I am out I also do errands such as the daily shopping: buying bread, meat, or fruit. First thing, I buy newspapers. Once one has bought them, one starts reading as soon as one is back home—or at least looking at the headlines to persuade oneself that there is nothing worth reading. Every day I tell myself that reading newspapers is a waste of time, but then... I cannot do without them. They are like a drug. - -Note the use of the phrase, "like a drug," which we're still using today to describe our latest and most powerful distraction, phones. - -I point this out not to downplay the addictive, attention-steal nature of screens, but to remind you that being distracted is not new. Think of it slightly differently, the desire for distraction is not new. All that's happened over the last century is we've created ever more engrossing mediums to distract ourselves with. This strongly suggests that if we just reduce our exposure to the current symptom without addressing the underlying desire for distraction we're just switching one thing for another, like alcoholics chugging coffee and chain smoking at AA meetings[^1]. - -And I bring up AA in part because I think that phones are a problem partly for the same reason alcohol is a problem: they're culturally acceptable. No one pulls our a syringe in the middle of four star restaurant and shoots up heroin, but no one bats an eye when someone orders a bottle of wine in the same situation. Both are addictive, destructive drugs (arguably alcohol is much worse on your body), but one is culturally acceptable and one is not. This makes a world of difference when it comes time to stop. You don't have to work hard to avoid heroin, but you'll run into alcohol, and screens, at every turn. - -Our phones aren't just addictive, they're also completely culturally acceptable in the west. No one cares if you pull one out in the middle of dinner. Well, I will. You might. But the cultural message seems to be that it's okay. In some places and some situations the cultural message might even be that you're an oddball if you're *not* staring at a screen. - -Let's assume though, that, like people who email me, you want to use your phone less. Here are some tricks to help with that, most of which I used to cut back on my own screen use. - -**Luxagraf's Rules for Screens, part deux.** - -## Rule Five: Know Yourself - -If you want to use your phone less, you need to know how much you use it. There are some tools to figure this out built-in to both iOS and Android, but I never bothered to figure those out because I had already downloaded and used Your Hour ([Android App Store](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mindefy.phoneaddiction.mobilepe)). Space appears to offer similar features and [works on iOS too](https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/space-break-phone-addiction/id916126783). The app isn't really important, just get something that records how much time you spend and how often you unlock your phone. - -That will give you a baseline and let you know how much you use your phone. Personally I disabled tracking for maps and music/podcasts because although I'm using my phone, I'm not really staring at the screen. There's an element of gamification to these apps that's easy to get sucked into. I had Your Hour on my phone for about a week before I got pretty obsessed with how little I could use my phone in a day. - -## Rule Six: Adapt to Yourself - -If, like me, you discover that you use your phone to check the time throughout the day, consider getting a watch. Or, if you hate wearing a watch, and live in a small bus with your family like I do, just encourage everyone else to wear a watch and ask them what time it is. - -The point is, most likely Rule Five will reveal some habits that you can break, but are too idiosyncratic to you for me to solve for you. My general advice is, if you have some behavior that involves the phone that could involve some analog thing, like a watch for instance, replace those screen checks with a watch. Not a smart watch or fitness tracker, just a watch. - -A few things I have heard of people doing include, putting your phone in a bag to make it more of a pain to pull out and use, using it as a coaster so you can't pick it up, and using a pen and paper to make notes rather than using your phone. - -## Rule Seven: Turn Off All Notifications - -I think the reason we are bothered by how much we use our phones has to do with agency. We like to think we are the rulers of our days and are conscious of all our decisions and actions and phones are stark reminder that we are not that guy/gal. The best way to grant yourself back some agency is to get rid of all notifications. - -Notifications are really just little serotonin agitators. Check your email when you feel like it, not when a notification badge agitates your serotonin level past the point of resistance. Turn them off, all of them. - -## Rule Eight: Practice Doing Nothing - -This does not mean meditating. It means doing nothing. Or at least do nothing productive. When you were a child you were probably happy to lie in the grass all afternoon doing nothing. At most you might pick out shapes in the clouds, but you were fine doing nothing. Or at least if you're over 35 and actually had a childhood then you might remember doing nothing. If not. Well, learn. Practice. - -Of all the rules in this list, this is the hardest for me. I have this need to always be making something. I am ill at ease doing nothing. I read a good bit, I also practice discursive meditation, but neither of those qualify. The only time I really do nothing, is lying in a hammock, so I make sure to get some time in the hammock at least a couple times a week. - -It might take some time to figure out the way you do nothing the best. If you do get stuck on this one, I highly recommend a hammock. - -## Rule Nine: Record Your Practice - -Write down when you do nothing. Write down when you don't do nothing. Write down how you miss notifications if you do. Write how you overcome your strange screen habits and most of all, write down when you still use screens. Don't judge yourself for it, step back, detach and just record what happened, what you did, and for how long. Try to be a disinterested observer of yourself, this will be much more helpful than berating or congratulating. - -## Rule Ten: Get After It - - - - -[^1]: This is not meant to disparage AA or anyone struggling with alcoholism. Most AA members I know are fully aware of the irony of swapping one addiction for another, but when alcohol has taken over your life to that point, it's not a bad trade to make. - -## Rules for Screens, Part Three - -Did you know there's a Reddit for people who want quit staring at screens so much? Also a true story. - - - -## Buying Used - -I can't recall the last time I bought something new. We almost always buy electronics used, mostly off eBay. We also rarely buy new books. We generally pick up books at used bookstores around the country, but when we can't find what we want we use Thriftbooks. - -Buying used has several advantages over buying new. The obvious one is that it's almost always cheaper. But beyond that there are other appealing aspects. Buying used means you're not contributing as much to the waste stream of modern economies, and you're (potentially) removing things from that waste stream by finding a use for them. Used items, especially electronics, tend to be functionally superior to new ones[^1] both because they are farther back on the curve of [diminishing returns](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/law%20of%20diminishing%20returns) and because they have stood the test of time. There are exceptions of course, but buy and large last year's model is as good, and sometimes better, than this year's model. - -Buying used also enables you to take advantage of little curiosities of time. For example all the really good low-noise sound recording devices seem to have been made between 2007-2016. Why? No idea. But everyone who needs low noise recording seems to agree, and high end recorders from that era sell for more than they did when they were new. Which is to say that buying used isn't always cheaper, but when it's not it generally means you're getting something superior. And not something that the manufacturer thinks is superior, but something the people using it the most think is superior. - -This is why the only affiliate links on luxagraf.net lead to either eBay or Thriftbooks, my two preferred marketplaces for buying used stuff. - -Anyone using affiliate links is trying to sell you something—that includes me—and you should always be suspicious about that. I know my motives are simple, to make some money to pay for this website and maybe some tea for myself, but you have every right to skeptical. Really though, I don't want you to buy anything you don't need. But if you do need something, please buy it used. And if you're going to buy something I've recommended based on my experiences with it, then the affiliate links will help support this website. - -[^1]: The odd mixture of capitalism and our culture's worship of "progress" means that new things must constantly be released, but the law of diminishing returns suggests that newer/bigger/better/faster eventually fails to deliver any meaningfully improvement. This is most obvious in software, where the most feared phrase in any software user's heart is "please restart to update", but this lack of improvement over previous versions is increasingly painfully obvious in hardware as well. -## Essay on Will - -If you want control over what you consume, you're going to have to strengthen your will. So long as you are surrounded by signals that are trying to get you to spend money on crap, it is going to be an uphill battle. If you can I strongly suggest removing yourself from the signals—think about where your attention is going and how you can redirect it to craft rather than stuff. - -but there are things more powerful. The most important of those is your will. - - -If, like most people, you can't pick and move to foreign country for a month then you're going to have to try to change in the midst of the battle so to speak. While possible, this is much much harder. And again, while I like to think I have mastered this, my spreadsheet says otherwise, so take this advice with a grain of salt. Chances are good that this actually much harder than you or I think and you're going to need to put in more effort than I'm suggesting. - - - - - - -The most important thing is to develop your will. I am serious. Start doing exercises to develop your will. For example, force your self up out of the chair right now, turn away from the computer and walk to the nearest wall. Touch it. Come back and sit down. Repeat this at random during the day. Is it pointless? Absolutely. So is lifting weights. The principle is the same. So choose a deliberately pointless thing to do, and do it. Then do another one. Then do the same thing every morning for a week. - -One will-building exercise I do periodically is what I call, for lack of a better phrase, micro travel. It works like this: pick a place at random in the city you live, somewhere you've never been. Choose a time and make an appointment with yourself. Now go work out all the details of getting there, if possible use public transit or walk. Then meet yourself there and make sure you're there on time. Now enjoy a few minutes exploring the area and head home. - -I'll leave thinking up other exercises to you, but the point is to develop your will, to have control over your life. It takes a little time to see and feel the effects of this, it's quite subtle, but it will cascade throughout your life in a number of interesting ways, I promise. One will be better control over your impulses. When you walk into, say Target, to buy a new toothbrush your newly developed will will make it easier to walk past everything else and only buy the toothbrush. - -Eventually your will may help you recognize that stores that have everything are too much for your will. It would be cleverer to buy that toothbrush at a smaller store with fewer things, because it's easier to remove temptation than resist it. Think of it like dieting. If you're trying to eat less ice cream it's much easier to not walk down the ice cream aisle at all than it is to walk down it and without buying anything. - -This also leads into my second suggestion for buying less stuff: change your habits. It's convenient to go to Target and get everything you need in one place, but chances are you're going to spend more than you intended without realizing it. In fact the entire experience of being in Target has been engineered to increase the chance you'll spend more than you intended. Every time you enter a store you are entering a hostile environment designed to extract your life energy from you. - -Oh sure it's all abstracted so you don't have think of it that way. Still, strip the abstraction and relationship is pretty clear, you trade hours of your life for shit you buy at Target. You get up the morning and go to work. That's a day of your life you just traded for paper tickets. Why do you need those tickets? To put a roof over your head and food in your stomach. Pretty much everything after that is not strictly necessary. So once those basics are met you're in th realm of swapping your existence on earth for stuff. - -The less stuff you buy, the less you need to work. By extension, the less time you spend in places designed to extract money from you, the less of your life you'll have to trade for stuff. - -That's a habit you can break—going to all-in-one-place stores—but there are other habits you can build that will help immensely as well. - - - -One of the things I've been at pains to avoid is making it sound like we don't like the United States. In fact we do very much, it's one of the most beautiful places in the world and has some of the wildest and safest wilderness you're ever going to enter. - -Unfortunately, the United States is not the best travel value for us. Without an income we'd have to dip heavily into savings to travel the states in the bus. - - - -# Pages -## Technology - -The less technology your life requires the better your life will be. - -That's not to say technology is bad, but I encourage you to spend some time considering your technology use and making sure you *choose* the things you use rather than accepting everything marketed at you. - -This is not my idea. I stole it from the Amish. The Amish have a reputation for being anti-technology, but they're not. Try searching for "Amish compressed air tool conversion" if you don't believe me. The Amish don't rush out and get the latest and greatest, that much is true. They take their time adopting any new technology. They step back, detach, and evaluate new technology in a way the rest of us seldom do—they're arguably more engaged with technology than you and I -- and this allows them to make better informed decisions. - -That's what I try to do. I take my time. There's very little latest and greatest on this page. And I am always trying to get by with less, if for no other reason than this stuff costs money. There's no affiliate links here, no links at all actually. I'd really prefer it if you didn't buy any of this stuff, you probably don't need it. Again, I could get by with less. I should get by with less. I am in fact always striving to need less and be less particular about what I do need. - -Still, for better or worse. Here are the main tools I use in building this site and living on the road. - -## Writing - -### Notebook and Pen, Pencil and Paper - -My primary "device" is my notebook. I don't have a fancy notebook. I do have several notebooks though. One is in my pocket at all times and is filled with illegible scribbles that I attempt to decipher later. This one I mainly write in pencil, and I stick post-it notes into the actual notebook so that I can then move the post-it notes to the larger notebook where I write them in pen. This larger notebook is a mix of notes, as well as a sort of captain's log, though I don't write in with the kind regularity real captains do. Or that I imagine captains do. Then I have other notebooks for specific purposes, meditation journal, fiction notebook, and so on. - -I'm not all that picky about notebooks, if they have paper in them I'm happy enough. I used to be very picky about pens, but then I sat down and forced myself to use basic cheap, black ink, Bic-style ballpoint pens until they no longer irritated me. And you know what? Now I love them, and that's all I use—any ballpoint pen. Ballpoint because it runs less when it gets wet, which, given how I live, tends to happen. Pencils are a more recent development for me. I adopted the Pentel P209 with .9mm lead because someone on the internet said the led didn't break. This has proved true, so I've stick with it. - -### Laptop - -I recently retired my trusty Lenovo x270. I still love it, but it just wasn't up to editing video. I ended up getting an HP Dev One, which I generally like, though the screen is a little glare-prone. This computer is probably overkill for me, and it costs $1,000, but I use it for work so it ends up paying for itself that way. - -The laptop runs Linux because everything else sucks a lot more than Linux. Which isn't too say that I love Linux, it could use some work too. But it sucks a whole lot less than the rest. I run Arch Linux, which I have [written about elsewhere](/src/why-i-switched-arch-linux). I was also interviewed on the site [Linux Rig](https://linuxrig.com/2018/11/28/the-linux-setup-scott-gilbertson-writer/), which has some more details on how and why I use Linux. - -## Photos - -### Camera - -I use a Sony A7Rii. It's a full frame mirrorless camera which makes it easy to use the legacy lenses I love. I bought the A7Rii specifically because it was well suited to using with the old lenses that I love. Without the old lenses I find the Sony's output to be a little digital for my tastes, - -The A7 series are not cheap cameras. If you want to travel you'd be better off getting something cheaper and using your money to travel. The Sony a6000 is very nearly as good and costs much less. In fact, having tested dozens of cameras for Wired over the years I can say with some authority that the a6000 is the best value for money on the market period, but doubly so if you want at cheap way to test out some older lenses. - -### Lenses - -All of my lenses are old and manual focus, which I prefer to autofocus lenses. I am not a sports or wildlife photographer so I have no real need for autofocus. Neither autofocus nor perfect edge to edge sharpness are things I want in a lens. I want, for lack of a better word, *character*. I want a lens that reliable produces what I see in my mind. - -One fringe benefit of honing your manual focus skills[^1] is that you open a door to world filled with amazing cheap lenses. I have shot Canon, Minolta, Olympus, Nikon, Zeiss, Hexanon, Tokina, and several weird Russian Zeiss clones. - -These days I have whittled my collection down to these lenses: - -* Minolta 50mm f/2 -* Minolta 55mm f/1.7 -* Minolta 100mm f/1.7 -* Olympus 50mm f/1.8 -* Olympus 100mm f/2.8 -* Pentax 35 f/3.5 -* Pentax 20 f/4 - -Yes, that's a lot of lenses. I used to keep the Minolta 50 f/2 on there about 90 percent of the time, but these days I actually shoot with all of these pretty regularly. None of these lenses are over $200. - -I also have a Tokina 100-300mm f/4 which happens to be Minolta mount so I use a Minolta 2X teleconverter with it to make it a 200-600mm lens. It's pretty soft at the edges. That's a nice way of saying it's utter garbage at the corners, but since I mostly use if for wildlife, which I tend to crop anyway, I get by. I also have a crazy Russian fisheye thing that's hilarious bad at anything less than f/11, but it's useful for shooting in small spaces, like the inside of the bus. - -## Video - -In addition to the photo gear above, which I also use for video, I have GoPro Hero 10. I mostly use it while driving the bus and have yet to actually make a movie out of any of the footage I shoot. But it piles up on my hard drive and I keep telling myself, one of these days. - -## Audio - -I like to record ambient sound. I use an Olympus LS-10 recorder, which has the lowest noise floor I can afford (it was $100 on eBay). I use a couple of microphones I made myself and occasionally a wireless Rode mic. - ---- - -And there you have it. I am always looking for ways to get by with less, but after years of getting rid of stuff, I think I have reached something close to ideal. - -[^1]: If you've never shot without autofocus don't try it on a modern lens. Most modern focusing rings are garbage because they're not meant to be used. Some Fujifilm lenses are an exception to that rule, but by and large don't do it. Get an old lens, something under $50, and teach yourself [zone focusing](https://www.ilfordphoto.com/zone-focusing/), use the [Ultimate Exposure Computer](http://www.fredparker.com/ultexp1.htm) to learn exposure, and just practice, practice, practice. Practice relentlessly and eventually you'll get there. - -## Code - -Driving gives you plenty of time to think. Somewhere in that thinking I decided I needed to clarify my basic approach to life. To know what I was doing and why. I hesitate to call these rules because it's not like I know what I'm doing and I modify these all the time as I learn and adapt. Anyway, this is mostly for me, but I mentioned them in a post once and someone asked me to write them down. So here they are. - -###1. Everything is a Practice - -There is no finish line. There's no winning, no losing. Not in human terms anyway. Individual projects may come to an end, but the practices that made them possible do not. Most things worth doing do not have a stopping point. There is no point where you've written enough, you've worked out enough. Everything is a practice. Embrace it. The practice is never done, which means you get to keep improving. - -###2. Do It Yourself - -It's probably cheaper and easier to buy most things, but when I can I'd rather make things myself. What else are you going to do with your life if you aren't making stuff? Watch TV? Stop buying stuff and hiring people for everything and give yourself a chance to solve the problem first. Contrary to what it says on the label, professionals and experts aren't necessary. They'll do it faster and better than you will, but you'll learn and improve every time you do it yourself. - -###3. Adapt to Your Surroundings - -No matter where you go you will not fit in when you get there. The climate will be different, the people will be different, the food will be different. Don't expect the place to adapt to you and don't get bent out of shape when it doesn't. - -One great way to do this is to simplify your life. Depending on a lot of stuff makes it hard to adapt. My favorite practical example is air conditioning. If you depend on air conditioning you aren't able to adapt to climate changes as well as someone who doesn't. As Jakob Lund Fisker [succinctly puts it](https://earlyretirementextreme.com/manifesto.html) "Comfort is having the sweat glands and metabolic tolerance to deal with heat and cold. It is not central heating or air conditioning which may fail or be unavailable." - -###4. Make Something You Like Everyday - -In the world as it once was I think this need to create was fulfilled by hunting and to some extent farming. With those gone we're left with kind of a void[^1]. I have found that filling that void with creative endeavors is very satisfying. Other people find that studying something in detail fills that void. For me it's making stuff. - -Digital stuff (like this site) is okay, but I prefer to make tangible stuff most of the time. Could be a delicious meal, could be some little thing around the bus, could be a paper airplane for the kids. *What* doesn't matter so much as the practice of making things. See also, rule 1. - -###5. Retain Agency - -Retaining agency means rejecting the passive. In some ways this is what you get when you practice rules 2, 3, and 4. You are the driving force behind your thoughts and actions, do not outsource them to others without carefully considering what you're giving up. - -Agency is not control though, it is not bending the world to your will (see rule 3), it is merely ensuring that one's ideas and tools are one's own[^2]. - -###6. Prefer the Analog - -I find that the digital world isn't very satisfying. I have a rather outlandish theory about why. I think it lacks the rhythm of the natural world. I believe your body and spirit know the difference between the rhythms of the world they evolved in and the more recent additions. Don't get me wrong, I love the rhythm of a piston-driven engine, but I also think that the truly great engines are the ones that manage to mimic natural rhythms. - -###7. Don't Report Stories, Live Them - -I have no training as a journalist. I studied philosophy, religion, and literature, but somehow I end up writing for journalism outlets. I have no real problem with journalists—the few left who actually do journalism, almost none of whom are published by major publishers -- but I also have no desire to be one. - -The stories I tell are ultimately about me because that is what I know. The idea that you can tell other people's stories seems fundamentally wrong to me. They are not your stories, let other people tell their own stories. - -###8. Novelty Wears Off, Routines Carry You Through - -The novelty of new places, new people, new food, new whatever doesn't last long and ultimately isn't that exciting. It has an addictive nature too. If you always need the new something has gone astray I think. I think the novelty of travel lasts about two years, and then you look around and start thinking, well, now what? - -My experience has been that the answer to *now what* means reaching back to your old life and finding the things that made you happiest there and bringing them on the road with you. Doing your thing becomes your routine that you bring to a new place, and now you have something to offer that place: you. You're no longer just traveling to see the sights, you become, in a small way, for a short time, a part of that place. - -###9. Live Small, Venture Wide - -I stole this line from Pat Schulte of [Bumfuzzle](https://www.bumfuzzle.com/). The basic idea is that I am happiest owning very little and living in small spaces, which makes it easier to move through the world. - - -###10. Try Everything Twice. - -As the Aussies would say, "have a crack at it." There are two parts here though. The first is a call to experience. Try it. But recognize that some things suck the first time you try them, so you might want to have a second crack at it. - -[^1]: To borrow some ideas from Jacques Ellul et al, humans need goals, they need to put forth some effort in pursuit of those goals and they need to at least occasionally attain them. Ellul, and later Ted Kaczynski, have fun splitting hairs about what should fulfill these needs. I don't see much point in that, but I am going off personal experience here and, again, you might find otherwise. - - -[^2]: Matthew Crawford's *[Shop Class as Soul Craft](https://bookshop.org/books/shop-class-as-soulcraft-an-inquiry-into-the-value-of-work/9780143117469)* very much influenced my thinking on this subject. Crawford digs into why people like to repair things and concludes that this need to be capable of repair is part of a desire to escape the feeling of dependence, to reassert their agency over their stuff. He calls the individual who prizes his own agency the Spirited Man. This becomes a kind of archetype of the antidote to passive consumption. Passive consumption displaces agency, argues Crawford. One is no longer master of one's stuff because one does not truly understand how stuff works. "Spiritedness, then," writes Crawford, "may be allied with a spirit of inquiry, through a desire to be master of one’s own stuff. It is the prideful basis of self-reliance." Exactly. -# SRC -## Scratch - - - - -I know several people who take tech holidays. I understand this urge, probably it's the only solution to what I think is the central problem of modern times—distraction and the inability to do deep work. That said, I am going to try other things to tame the beast. - -I don't think this is an entirely new problem, I'm not even sure it's any worse than it ever was, it's just that anyone in any age facing this problem is daunted and it somehow makes one feel better I think to fall back on the belief that it's worse than ever, even if perhaps it is not. - -Whatever the case, whatever the diagnosis may be doesn't really interest me. I am most interested in a cure that works for me. That's not to be overly selfish, but to recognize that what works for me isn't going to work for everyone. I am writing it down mainly in case it does prove helpful to you. - -The first step is to eliminate your ability to multitask. - -I used to be a fan of browser tabs, but lately I have come to think that the tab model, the conception of their being other stuff right there on the screen next to what you're trying to focus on is actually a huge distraction. I stumbled on this idea quite by accident. I was on Ocracoke Island for a while and the cell reception was awful[^1]. I struggled to load page. Like type in a URL, go boil water for tea, make tea, come back and the page still hasn't loaded. - -At some point I thought I wonder if I could at least get the text gist of what I'm after by loading the page in w3m, the text-only cli-based web browser Linux users like us install out of habit but rarely use. At least I rarely used it. But I opened it up and low and behold, it worked. It rendered the text I needed, and it didn't take long using the exact same connection that wouldn't load in a graphical browser. - -That's not surprising I know, but yet it *was* surprising. - -The downside to w3m was that I didn't have a clue how to use it. In particular I didn't know how to open links in the background, something I've relied on in the browser for who know how many years? I typed man w3m and started reading. I quickly discovered that like Vim, w3m uses the concept of the buffer. While it does support tabs, I've never felt the need for tabs in Vim so I thought maybe I don't need them in w3m either. I like the buffer concept. It's like a stack of things, where only the top thing is visible. To find the other things you have to call up a list and read through it. As far as I know while typing this, this document is the only one open in this application. That's a powerful way to focus. There is nothing else on the screen to distract me. - -Here's a screenshot of what my desktop looks like when working this way with Vim: - -This way of working helps my focus on the task as hand. There is nothing else anywhere on the screen and that's how I find I do my best work. I can quickly and easily call up a list of all the other files I've edited recently and see something like this: - - -But all that information is not visible to me the rest of the time. - - -[^1]: With the 3G spectrum shutdown this is increasingly the case in remote locations like Ocracoke. - -I still use them. I keep open some tabs for the stock market because those are really applications running the browser. - -## Intentional computing. - - -"We want to complexify our lives. We don’t have to, we want to. We wanted to be harried and hassled and busy. Unconsciously, we want the very things we complain about. For if we had leisure, we would look at ourselves and listen to our hearts and see the great gaping hold in our hearts and be terrified, because that hole is so big that nothing but God can fill it. - -"Man is obviously made for thinking. Therein lies all his dignity and his merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought. Now the order of thought is to begin with ourselves, and with our author and our end. Now what does the world think about? Never about that, but about dancing, playing the lute, singing, writing verse, tilting at the ring, etc., and fighting, becoming king, without thinking what it means to be a king or to be a man. - -"I have often said that the sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room." - Blaise Pascal - -############# - -I believe that screens are a distraction from life. - -There is no life in a screen. Life is what happens when we look away from this screen at the actual world around us. Perhaps it is strange to say this on a screen. Still, it feels like a truth we all know. We all used to know. At least, anyone over 35 knows. It is our task to carry this memory through. I am writing this for other people who want to spend less time staring at screens and more time not. - -## Rules for Screens, Level Two - -### Rule One: Prefer the Analog. - -Here's the basic idea: only use a computer when you absolutely have to. Every time I reach for my laptop or phone I force myself pause and think—do I need to do this right now? Yes? Okay, but could I do whatever it is I am about to do *without* a screen? Quite often the answer is yes. So that's what I do. I use some analog tool instead. - -I write for a living, so when I am going to open my laptop chances are, I am about to write. For work, I do write on the laptop. There's too much to reference and link to not use a laptop. When I'm writing for myself though, I prefer to write things like this in a notebook with a pen. - -### Rule Two: Batch Your Queries - -Writing is as least as much research as it is actual typing, and this tends to be where I really get sucked in to the endlessness of the network. In an effort to cut down on the amount of time I spend "researching" stuff that I probably don't really need to research, I now write down questions on paper instead of immediately typing them in duckduckgo. Only later do I set aside some time to go back to this list and actually look things up. - -From this I have learned something important: I am not a very good judge of what is important to me. - -A lot of the things, *a lot*—like almost all -- of the things I go to look up on the internet are utterly trivial things I don't really care about once the two seconds where I did care have passed. I am forced to confront this every time I go over my day's list of stuff to look up later. Of all the things I write down in my notebook to look up later, I actually end up looking up maybe one in twenty. Probably less. I have no real way to catalog how much screen time this has saved me, but it feels like it must be ages. - -Once I've exhausted all avenues of analog deferment I still give myself one more ultimatium that I call the Outkast ultimatum: forever ever? Is it really really that important? Right now? Really, really? It might pass. It will probably pass. No? Okay then. - -## Rule Three: Single-Task Computing - -At the end of the day.What greets me when I open my laptop is an entirely blank screen. Well, actually it's a gloomy, slightly blurry picture I took a long time ago somewhere deep in the lagoons of the Florida panhandle. The point though is that I don't leave any applications open, ever. This encourages what I call single task computing: open an application, complete a task, close the application and then the laptop. The task is done, the last page has been reached so you shut the book, so to speak. - -This is the opposite of how we approach computers much of the time, but I find that trying to multitask on a computer ends up with me distracted by all things shiny and next thing I know an hour has gone by. Single task computing prevents this, but you have to be vigilante. Applications encourage the opposite—especially web browsers, where the tab essentially functions as an ever expanding task list. - -Here's where I will suggest something heretical: hide your tab bar. Go into the browser's View menu and disable the tab bar. One tab, one task. - -To understand how this can be powerful I have to take a technical detour. The application I do my writing in is called Vim. It is very old. Old enough that it predates the idea of a tab. Instead it has something it calls buffers. They're similar to the tabs in modern applications, but with one important difference: a buffer is a stack of pages with *only the top one visible*. - -Tabs are always visible. Tabs are a todo list you don't need. Tabs will will steal your attention. Buffers will not. To change buffers requires a conscious decision and effort on your part. You have to call up a list of buffers and then switch to one. You will never accidentally switch to another buffer. I have used this to my advantage as a way to focus when writing for years. - -You know that expression out of sight out of mind? That's buffers. For example I am typing this right now on a screen that looks like this: - -That is about as uni-tasky as I've been able to make a screen. - -What I've really done here is recreate the typewriter, and no one has ever accuse a typewriter of stealing their attention. - -**Rule four: Use The Machine Lest It Use You** - -The reason for single task computing is to make sure you always have a task when you sit down to your laptop. Do not use the machine if you don't need to. When you do that the machine is using you. There is no such thing as entertainment. Entertainment is a word designed to hide the truth: you are poring precisions hours of your life into the machine. Why does the machine want your life? I have no idea, but observation suggests it does. Don't give your life away. - -**Rule 5: Balance the digital with the Analog** - -This started as a throwaway ending, but in the months since I started experimenting with this I've come to believe that this is the most important rule: every time you interact with the digital, make a point to spend the same amount of time not interacting with the digital. If I edit photos for this site for 30 minutes, then I go and either make something tangible, write in a notebook, draw a postcard, whatever it may be for 30 minutes. If you don't feel like making something than go for a walk or play with your kid, or lie down in your yard if you have one. Read a book in a hammock. Just do something that does not involve a screen. And do it for the same amount of time you spent on the screen. - -When I started doing this I found myself at a loss for what to do with myself, which was kind of terrifying. Was I really that used to mindlessly staring at a screen that I had nothing else to do? What did we use to do before we had screens? This is the advantage of being part of an analog generation—the last of those for a while -- you can think back to the pre-digital era, retrace your steps as it were. This ended up unlocking a whole flood of memories that I walked through in great detail in meditation, most of that is not relevant here, but one thing that came back to me was that we used to publish zines. Now that's one of the things I've been doing with what I think of as "my analog time". Another things I did was type, on a typewriter. I'm on the hunt for a good super compact model. Yeah, I know it's like the worst hipster cliche. I don't care. I'm craving that analog pounding of the keys. The sound of something happening in the world. - - - -In order to tell you how I have managed to reduce my screen time it helps to look at the bigger picture. Let's start with the book. - -If the screen is a distraction from life than so is a book. A good book is every bit as hard to put down and distracting from the shared human existence we call life as a screen. And yet the book feels less problematic. I think this is because a book has borders. I has hard limits. - -A book is a single world. The boundary of its world is well-defined. A book ends on the final page. Its depth is limited. We known our way in, we find our way out just as easily. - -The story on the screen offers unlimited depth. A world without beginning or end. There is no final webpage. This is why we fret over the distractions of screens and never worry about books. - -Two things started me on a path to less screen time. One was the birth of my children, which were a kind of sledge hammer reminder that nothing on a screen matters. None of it actually exists and none of it matters. The people in front of you, they matter. Not just the people though, the tangible world, the world of artifacts you can hold in your hand. This is what matters. I have not watched a television show or movie since they were born. That screen was easy to stop. - -The other thing that really changed my relationship to the screen world was moving into the bus. This was another sledge hammer reminder that the physical world is what matters. Given a choice between staring at a computer screen at night and sitting around a fire, staring up at the night sky, is, well, not even a choice. - -These two things greatly reduced how much time I spent using a screen. But then we left the road and rented a house for a year and something happened. I went back to staring at the screen way too much. All that distance I thought I had created? Gone with single change of behavior. I slid right back into those old habits of tucking the kids in and sitting down at my desk to stare at a screen. - -I could defend myself and say that I wrote a novel in that time, but that only really accounts for maybe half the time I spent staring at that screen. And now that we're back in the road, I've once again had to wean myself off. I still pick campfires over screens, but like most of us I imagine, I still spend way to much time on a screen. - -So how do you stop yourself from getting sucked into a world without end? -I want to spend less though, and so I've been working at this for some time, finding ways to not just get off the screen, but handle the things that I used to do on a screen, without needing a screen. This time I don't want to relapse should I be away from life on the road for some reason. - -To lessen the time I spend using a screen I realized I needed to turn it into a book. I needed to put boarders on it and make sure it has a last page. In order to defeat that time sucking endless form of the network we're going to have to put some endings in place. - -What I've done is to create many endings. Endings for every beginning. The best ending in this case is the beginning that never begins. Here are my five rules for avoiding the digital. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -I have no way to measure how much time browsing in a single window with buffers bidden away until I need them has saved me, but again I believe it is significant. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Now I do leave some background tabs open, mostly investing related tabs because I am a fairly active trader and I like to run through my charts every morning. But the rest of the day, I don't see those tabs. - -I got to thinking about this recently because I was out on Ocracoke Island in the Outer Banks for a while where the cell reception was awful[^1]. It was a struggle to load a webpage. I would type in a URL, go boil water for tea, make the tea, come back and the page still hasn't loaded. It was bad enough that I pulled out w3m, the text based browser that started life in 1995 and hasn't changed much since. I opened it up and low and behold, it worked. It rendered the text I needed, I got the info I wanted, and it didn't take long using the exact same connection that wouldn't load in a graphical browser. - -Enthused I set out to figure out how to use w3m. How, for example, did I open a link in a tab? Well, you can do that, but before I figured out how I learned that w3m uses the concept of buffers, much like Vim. Because I am lazy and familiar with buffers from Vim, I just configured a shortcut to show the w3m buffer list and I was on my way. I never open links in a new tab anymore, I know that all the previous tabs I've visited are there in the buffer list. - -Now buffers might seem like tabs in some since, and perhaps like browsing history in another sense. They're actually neither for a variety of reasons, but the most important difference is that a buffer is a stack of pages with *only the top one visible*. Tabs are always visible. Tabs will steal your attention, buffers will not unless you choose to view the list of them. You know that expression out of sight out of mind? That's buffers. I have no way to measure how much time browsing in a single window with buffers bidden away until I need them has saved me, but again I believe it is significant. - - -prefer analog over digital -batch your queries before going digital -single task computing - buffers are better than tabs - get in and get out. - - - -single task computing. open an application, do a task and then close it. I think this is ostly a web browser problem for most people, bug for me it's a terminal problem as well, there is always something I could be doing in a terminal, there is always one open. Just like there is always a browser windows open. But what if I worked differently, what if I close out that windows when the task was done? What if I put an edge on it? Gave it a shape that also meant an end to it? Would that just be more beginnings and endings, or would that maybe mean a greater space between myself and the machine? - - - -Fail gracefully when possible (an elevator is still stairs even when broken mitch hedburg joke) - -Complex systems are inherently fragile. The optimization that makes the system "easy" to use, also generally eliminates the redundancies and graceful degadation that makes a system resilient. - - -Much ink was spilled, many hands wrung, many complaints lodged about our addiction to screens. All this worry though, about what? I think the answer is distraction. This is what western philosophers—and ordinary people like you and I -- have worried about for centuries. The only difference to day is the degree for distraction. Why distraction? I think distraction bothers us because it keeps us from attending to the adventure of human existence. - -At least I for one, want to spend more time attending to the adventure of shared human existence than I do screens. Screens are ultimately both addictive and boring. - -Interestingly though, what's true of a screen is also true of a book. After all a good book is every bit as hard to put down and as distracting from shared human existence as a screen. And yet the book feels less problematic. I think this is because a book has borders, has hard limits, has edges. - -A book's distraction from life is much less consuming than a computer screen. It is a single story. Its depth is limited. A book ends on the final page. The boundary of its world is well-defined. We known our way in, we find our way out just as easily. - |