The City Mouse in the Country

  When my wife and I bought this house nearly 6 years ago, we made some upgrades.   We put on a metal roof, replacing the original shingles, replaced the floor in the kitchen, both bathrooms and the downstairs den.  We ended up upgrading the pellet stove (twice!) and added some insulation; one of the jobs I want to do in the coming year is to insulate the garage, mostly to keep the freezers we have in the garage from becoming damaged. It's only in various home improvement shows that the work to improve your home is done all at once and somehow in 1 hour.  For most of us its an ongoing never ending project. One of the important improvements that I've been wanting to make but have kept putting off for various reasons has been solar panels.  Now, I'm thinking that it may be time to least do something. The main reason we have been putting off this improvement was cost and how long it would actually take us to pay off the panels.   I'm 60 years old now...

 This is not the America I grew up in.    It occurs to me that those days are long gone, and that I am probably looking back on those days with rose colored glasses as well.   However there was a time in America when, if two parties disagreed, they could hammer out some sort of compromise.   Where opposing viewpoints were respected.   Where, if a heated argument did break out the chance of violence was very low. I miss that America.    Recently I was threatened with physical violence for something that I posted online.   I ignored the comment, I didn't bother to respond to it.  Not because I feared the person - I've no idea who they were, etc. - but because I am a pacifist.  To respond to violence with more violence makes little sense to me.  Plus, it's been my experience that such people are paper tigers.   The anger that is felt however, by both the right and the left is very real.  I can no...

What you see is the front end of my previous car.   I spoke about buying it just a little over three years ago in an article that I called  Buyer's Remorse .  At the time I lamented having to buy a car in short period of time, due to an engine blowing up, and not being happy overall with my choices. At the time I was hoping to move into a hybrid or even an electric car.   I was not happy with the results as I felt that I got pushed into buying a used Toyota for cash. The other reason I was not happy was because the research I was doing into hybrid and electric cars was not showing much promise at that time.  Electric cars simply did not have the infostructure needed to make buying one worth while.  Three years ago charging stations were few and far between and I am happy to report that several gas stations near me now include several electric car charging ports in addition to the traditional gas pumps.  I take that as a positive. My current j...

I consider myself a smart and well read man, so up until recently I was surprised that I had never heart the the the concept of "This Inevitable Ruin" before.  It's an idea or concept that downfall and destruction is unavoidable.   That chaos is an unchangeable outcome no matter what actions we take.   That what ever victory we obtain will have a high psychological and moral price, and may be short lived.    As my own family, friends, and readers face an unknown future on so many fronts I wonder if  such "Inevitable Ruin" awaits us?  If it awaits our country or even our world? I am not a nihilist  but the concept has been ringing in my ears lately as we seem to careen from one crisis - be it personal, economic, local, state wide, natural or global.   This article has started and stopped many times, yet I can't seem to get it right.  I even played around with an AI program to see if it would help focus my thoughts, it did n...

** The majority of this column was written nearly two years ago, however for a lot of reasons, has been updated and ready for publication now.** Recently a friend of mine and I were talking about some changes in our area.  We have had three solar farms built recently and there is talk about a wind farm. She brought up how wind turbines are responsible for killing birds.  That's a known fact that everyone can agree to, however exactly how many birds and what to do about the bird strikes is up for debate.   This conversation tells us a bit about the type of people we want to be.  We are going to have to make trade offs in the future and we need to determine what those tradeoffs will be.   Wind turbine's are constructed in a location that meets certain criteria to meet it's full effectiveness.   What happens if location X is also the breeding ground of a nearly extinct bird?  Can they still breed if the tower, or solar panel or geothermal ...

 It's been a bit.   When I started this blog I was in a stable place and a stable condition.   I thought that I was done with moves and surprises.   I would have been perfectly happy to just work for another five or ten years till I retired.    If I'm being completely honest with you but since moving back to Western PA just about six years ago, things have been odd at best and difficult at worst.   I've questioned why we moved but for better or for worse, this is home. Then I lost Facebook and that was one of the drivers, if not the main driver that drove people to this site.   Then my job situation changed drastically.   At first it was fine but it was clear that the company really didn't have a spot for me, and as they transitioned from "work from home" to "return to the office" it became hard for me to justify a commute of over 100 miles each way.   The jobs that I worked after that were temporary in...

People are crazy and times are strange I'm locked in tight, I'm out of range I used to care, but things have changed Bob Dylan - Things have Changed It's been a while.   I never wanted to let this blog go for as long as I have but things happened.  First off for whatever reason we lost our Facebook accounts - both for this blog and my personal account.   I still don't have access to it and by now, I've reached the conclusion that I never will.    Most, if not all of my readership came from Facebook.    Then we had some changes in the job, some health problems.  Some things that made 2024 a mess, and before I knew it is the middle of November and I'm looking at a blank page and asking myself " What can I write about?" So, just to fill everyone in, I'm slowly but surely poking my head out and again.   I'm working in insurance again and even created my own website to help - ReppartWilson.com  - which will be my business site,...

 Before my mother passed back in October of 2020, she and my dad has basically consolidated their lives to a small 2 room apartment building.   In the brutal logic that both my mom and dad practiced it made sense.   Less to maintain as they grew older meant less to worry about. Their sons were married and had moved away from home a long time ago. They didn't need much or wanted much.  They lived simple lives and would rather spend their days on things they enjoyed like watching a family of deer romp in a field that their balcony overlooked.  Going out to dinner and spending time with loved ones and family. When she passed unexpectedly and Gary, my brother, and I cleaned out the apartment, we were still amazed by the junk they had accumulated.   Somehow, we managed to get through the days.  When my dad passed , it was a little easier to not only deal with his passing, but to clean what he had left in his bedroom. The original paint and d...

Life happens.   In this past month we have finally managed to paint a majority of the house.  We used a paint named "Cream in your coffee" on the walls now with an accent wall of grayish/green running throughout the length of the house. Suddenly our walls are lighter and more vibrant.  Our house seems more like our home and not the former owner's residence.   It's just a series of home improvements that we have been working on since buying the house in September of last year.   our original look Some of those jobs have been major, others not so much but each job has increased the value of our home.  Sadly, for most Americans the home is going to be the most valuable thing they own, and for Susan and myself there may come a time when we can no longer due the upkeep on the home, and when that time comes, we can relax in the knowledge that all the major work was done when we were young. I still want to do solar panels. During the past mon...

 Recently I've been giving some thought to invasive species.  I had received both positive and negative feedback on the blog post concerning kudzu and recently I came across a very well hidden, and very small, wild cherry tree while doing some yard work.  Since it's against the house it would have to be removed since the root systems could damage my foundation.   A buddy of mine at work was asking if I was going to transfer it, his logic being that it was a fruiting tree that would not only attract a variety of pollinator's but that the deer would eat the bark and cherries, keeping them away from the garden (which Sue and I swore we were not going to do this year).  It occurred to me that I was going to have to do a slightly better job of identification, since black cherries are native to America , where as other types of cherries are not.  Being able to make a precise identification would be helpful.   I used to be able to identify all these tre...

In the new TV show Fallout there is a great line.  " The Golden Rule of the wasteland is thou shalt be distracted by bullshit every single time." I've never played the game it is based on but the picture shows the two newest distractions in my life.  We have taken care of our former neighbors barn cats since he moved out nearly a year ago.   Long story short the mama cat gave birth in his barn that we we given access to.  We found four little black long hair kittens and decided to take them, as it would probably be the only time we would be able to catch them.   Much to our surprise after a day or so the mama came over and started to milk them laying on our kitchen floor.  She's comes in, feeds them and then goes back outside.  Once they are mature enough to have them fixed we are planning on doing so and then they will go to a good home.   That's the plan...but plans have a tendency to change as one or two of them are findi...

Hi. As the writer of the post and feel that I need to clarify something. I do not advocate the planting of invasive species. The point that I'm trying to make, and clearly didn't, is that perhaps we should be thinking about an invasive species in a different light. Apples, figs and other crops are clearly non native to America and Europe but are widely cultivated because they have use to humans as a food source, animal feed, etc. Kudzu is an edible plant and although it is clearly harmful can it be used someway by humans? It's a food source, it's been used as a cloth and is showing some use as a building material. All I'm trying to do is to create discussion on how we can use invasive plants in new ways.   It's mid April here in Western Pennsylvania and so far it's been warm and wet.  The buzz of lawnmowers fill the air as I gallivant through my back yard collecting dandelions to make some tea and bread with them.  I had always known that they w...

This blog was started because I had lived most of my life as an urban dweller; I wanted to record my adventures as I tried my hands at different things and I never pictured this blog would become what it did. Country life suits me in some ways.   I'm at a point in my life where I can appreciate looking up into the night sky and seeing thousands of stars, just like I did as a kid.   I just love how the moonlight bathes my beautiful sleeping wife in a creme colored light.   Country life is more peaceful and a lot more hard work than I would have ever expected.  While my neighbors and I may not agree politically or philosophically, my new lifestyle has given me insights on how they view the world. This brings me to my main point.   Here in rural America we simply don't have public transportation, nor do we have a lot of manufacturing or diversity or hospitals or even great education...and if we are going to move forward with a brighter greener f...