The City Mouse in the Country

These last few days have convinced me that I need to get off my proverbial ass and find a work from home position, or failing that; one that only needs me in the office two or three days out of the week. My 2012 Kia Soul (stock photo) The reason is that recently I "threw a rod" in my car.   This is basically the worst type of engine failure possible.  My starter also died at roughly the same time, which means that they can't even turn over the car to try to determine the extent of the damage or what exactly failed.  A new starter won't be in for a week.   Now this type of engine disaster can be fixed but it's going to take anywhere between two to three weeks at minimum even if I can get the parts in a timely manner. Living out in the "boondocks" requires that my wife and I have two cars.  We work in two different parts of the county and two different schedules, so it is just a requirement. There is no public transportation, no car sharing services...

When I first started this blog some three years ago I didn't have an audience.  I wasn't even sure who or what I was writing for.  Did I want to write a personal blog about life in the country?   I was playing around with the idea of homesteading and self sufficiency...did I want to write about that? In some ways over the last several months I think that I finally found a focus and an audience for this blog.  In a way I finally felt like I had found its purpose and focus.  My readership has slowly been improving over the last few months and I appreciate that. Thank you. However I published something that I knew would not go over well with the particular readership that I had been reaching.  I published it anyway because I know in my heart of hearts that I was correct in my conclusions.  The backlash I received I was not prepared for.  I did however attack a central tenet of the belief system of my intended audience.   Frankly the b...

 Generally speaking I don't trust the government when it comes to climate.  Here in America we basically have an Oligarchy - where a few rich asssholes are more concerned with maintaining their own power than doing what is best for the country overall.   This has not given me much hope for the future.  In fact, I've reached the conclusion that we simply will not be able to relay on the government going forward.  I'm not a doomsayer but the government at the highest levels simply isn't functioning the way it should and because of that it's simply not going to be able to handle the environmental and other climate related challenges in the future - such as massive immigration caused by failing crops.  Due to their age, most of our leaders are living in a world that no longer exists. So, why does President Biden's American Climate Corps pigued my interest? Two reasons really, it is an understanding that we have to do something sooner than later.  Wel...

Years ago when I lived in Charlotte, North Carolina I was teaching 7th and 8th grade science.  One lesson in particular I remember very well.   It was on the uses of technology and I hoped to impress upon those kids one thought and one thought only.    Technology is neutral; it's what you do with it that matters. At that time there were no computers in the classroom and cell phones were still big bulky devices.  However these kids would be one of the first generations to deal with the technology we now take for granted.  So it was important that they at least an inkling of the promise of technology,  and how to deal with those consequences of technology. I still have my concerns about how we as a society approach technology and what, if anything, we have learned about it. We can learn from the past of course, but that's always jaded.   If only we had a real world example in the here and now that could serve as a guide on how t...

  I t's easy to think that we are living in the proverbial end times.  Smoke pours across our borders from unchecked Canadian wildfires, across the world the temperatures continue to rise and records are broken daily.  Deaths due to heat related issues are reported in monotone voices by our news anchors.   Nearly everyone admits that climate change is real and that we are experiencing it.  You have many that think it's to late, and see no reason to change their lives.  I used too be one of them.  Change however is inevitable and our species has a knack of getting itself into trouble only to find a way out of that trouble. For example in this week alone we learned of reclaimed coal mining land where 1 acre is feeding 2000 people , while it is certainly a green washing piece for the company - I'm going to concentrate on the positive.  The fact that 1 acre of land is feeding 2000 people and that restoration is occurring at all.   Ther...