tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-99608492024-03-23T05:44:55.191-05:00Compass RoseThat was Zen...This is Taolostinthewoodshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06638690912925773954noreply@blogger.comBlogger706125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9960849.post-57759974330413182532023-11-11T10:19:00.001-06:002023-11-11T10:26:45.612-06:00As I sit staring out of the window in the woods, birds flutter by...Veterans' Day 2023<p> With wars and conflicts raging in multiple locations, I'm living in relative peace now. </p><p>I went to the Wikipedia page to see how many deaths have occurred in ongoing wars. I started to annotate them but was soon exhausted. The numbers of deaths throughout the world are escalating, many of these deaths are non combatant civilians who are just trying to look out their windows and see birds flutter by. I'm disheartened. At one time I had so much hope that humans could reach a helping hand, putting down weapons. It seems, even in this nation, that there are conflicts and anger from the top down...politicians and "leaders" shouting and demeaning. </p><p>In my three quarters of a century on this nurturing mother earth of ours, I've felt warmth and love, fear and death, a chill down into the depths of my spirit. I know it's cliche, but "why can't we all just get along?". Better yet, why can't we all lend a helping hand?</p><p>I walk these woods, missing many of my friends. Two leggeds, four leggeds, winged, rooted. </p><p>I hear, "Thanks for your service." Instead I just wish, if acknowledged at all, "thanks for speaking peace, and trying your best to live each day in the truth of that!"</p><p>I feel more and more an observer. A very tired, saddened observer.</p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaAITcoGbys-GuidqvcoYd3nPGhU3iugcPbVRkJCM5F9RqppMJHeSkDaCXlejO-SHDPhkPEdINGRGzh5pPhgOEj-_FmQkn1z30cR7g2vdckyI9T5ztXqBnY7cVmv3vbOSSeAARDNi9s9dxXBI0UWvyR4SsQ9gCNoYZNYV5rBEsDU2elmxftoyPRQ/s4800/fox.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3380" data-original-width="4800" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaAITcoGbys-GuidqvcoYd3nPGhU3iugcPbVRkJCM5F9RqppMJHeSkDaCXlejO-SHDPhkPEdINGRGzh5pPhgOEj-_FmQkn1z30cR7g2vdckyI9T5ztXqBnY7cVmv3vbOSSeAARDNi9s9dxXBI0UWvyR4SsQ9gCNoYZNYV5rBEsDU2elmxftoyPRQ/s320/fox.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>lostinthewoodshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06638690912925773954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9960849.post-86156291244008606622023-07-02T11:18:00.002-05:002023-07-02T11:18:06.905-05:00<p> <span style="color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Small center thinks big</span></p><div style="animation-name: none !important; transition-property: none !important;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; transition-property: none !important;"><div class="x1iorvi4 x1pi30zi x1swvt13 xjkvuk6" data-ad-comet-preview="message" data-ad-preview="message" id=":r6r:" style="animation-name: none !important; padding: 4px 16px; transition-property: none !important;"><div class="x78zum5 xdt5ytf xz62fqu x16ldp7u" style="animation-name: none !important; display: flex; flex-direction: column; margin-bottom: -5px; margin-top: -5px; transition-property: none !important;"><div class="xu06os2 x1ok221b" style="animation-name: none !important; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-top: 5px; transition-property: none !important;"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; display: block; line-height: 1.3333; max-width: 100%; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; transition-property: none !important; word-break: break-word;"><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs x126k92a" style="animation-name: none !important; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; transition-property: none !important;"><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; transition-property: none !important; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Park Rapids’ Nemeth Art Center has risen from humble beginnings to become a widely respected arts organization.</div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; transition-property: none !important; white-space-collapse: preserve;">By JENNA ROSS • jenna.ross@startribune.com</div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; transition-property: none !important; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Pao Houa Her's photographs have been shown at the Walker Art Center, Paris Photo and the Whitney Biennial in New York.</div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; transition-property: none !important; white-space-collapse: preserve;">After that? Park Rapids, Minn., pop. 4,100.</div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; transition-property: none !important; white-space-collapse: preserve;">On a Friday evening in May, Her talked with folks about the portraits of Hmong American veterans hanging from the walls of the Nemeth Art Center in north central Minnesota, near the headwaters of the Mississippi River. She ended up here because, months ago, sculptor and Nemeth board member Aaron Spangler, who lives nearby, gave her a call. "I have a crazy idea," Her remembers him saying.</div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; transition-property: none !important; white-space-collapse: preserve;">The two didn't know each other. But they knew one another's work. And she knew the Nemeth's reputation.</div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; transition-property: none !important; white-space-collapse: preserve;">"The center is amazing," she said. "They've had so many really wonderful shows. Dana Schutz, Alec Soth — really important American artists."</div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; transition-property: none !important; white-space-collapse: preserve;">For a dozen years, the little nonprofit Nemeth has been exhibiting contemporary artists, some early in their careers, some collected by major museums. Recently, the art center has teamed up with the Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation in Ojai, Calif., connecting Midwestern artists to the wider art world.</div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; transition-property: none !important; white-space-collapse: preserve;">The center's new executive director, Mark Weiler, has visions of creating "cultural collisions," of appealing "to both the townie and the traveler."</div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; transition-property: none !important; white-space-collapse: preserve;">But for Spangler, 51, the place's mission is personal: "The audience is us when we were kids," he said.</div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; transition-property: none !important; white-space-collapse: preserve;">An acclaimed artist whose work stands in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, Spangler grew up here. "I used to get dragged to the Nemeth," he said. To a rural kid, the place was a gift, "but it was always the same stuff right on the wall."</div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; transition-property: none !important; white-space-collapse: preserve;">He was more inspired, as a teenager in the late '80s, by meeting his friend Bruce Brummitt, a Vietnam War veteran who along with other hippies was living off the land in an off-grid house he built by hand. Still is. That's where Spangler learned to build, learned to think.</div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; transition-property: none !important; white-space-collapse: preserve;">"That community was my way out," Spangler said. "It really, for me, opened my mind."</div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; transition-property: none !important; white-space-collapse: preserve;">He and chef and cookbook author Amy Thielen, his wife, started their careers in New York City before returning full time in 2009 to the cabin Spangler constructed — and later expanded — on 150 acres of woodland in tiny Two Inlets, about 15 miles outside of Park Rapids.</div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; transition-property: none !important; white-space-collapse: preserve;">The Nemeth sits in the second story of what was once an old downtown courthouse. The nonprofit was formed in the late 1970s after a group of citizens, most of modest means, borrowed money to buy the 16th- and 17th-century paintings collected by fine art restorer Gabor Nemeth, who had a summer home nearby.</div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; transition-property: none !important; white-space-collapse: preserve;">They're no masterworks, the Nemeth notes, but were made by those who studied under masters.</div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; transition-property: none !important; white-space-collapse: preserve;">"It has a history, but it was kind of in a lull when we moved back," Thielen said. "Let's show contemporary work. Put those old works away, because everybody at that point had seen them."</div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; transition-property: none !important; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Spangler joined the board and starting calling friends.</div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; transition-property: none !important; white-space-collapse: preserve;">'They want the story'</div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; transition-property: none !important; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Minutes before the May reception, Weiler was stuffing a binder with the show's catalog. A board member arrived with crackers. Another loaded a Polaroid camera with film.</div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; transition-property: none !important; white-space-collapse: preserve;">The Nemeth is small and seasonal, with a budget of $107,000 in 2022. So board members make it work, running art programs for teens in addition to putting on summer shows.</div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; transition-property: none !important; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Spangler and Weiler hauled and hung Her's photographs, as well as works by Mary Ann Papanek-Miller, also on view.</div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; transition-property: none !important; white-space-collapse: preserve;">"It is a jewel," said Anna Arnar, a professor of art history at Minnesota State University Moorhead, who biked down for the reception. "They bring quality shows that are well curated, well installed."</div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; transition-property: none !important; white-space-collapse: preserve;">That's partly because of Spangler: "Aaron, of course, is a force of nature." She also credits Minnesota's arts funding: "Could this exist in the middle of Nebraska?"</div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; transition-property: none !important; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Nemeth's leaders are learning that this rural spot, surrounded by lakes and woods, is part of the draw. While in town, artists have stayed with Spangler and Thielen, or at an artists' place nearby, enjoying meals cooked outdoors by Thielen, a James Beard Awardwinner. For years, Thielen provided hospitality informally; now she's on the board.</div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; transition-property: none !important; white-space-collapse: preserve;">This summer, the Nemeth teamed up with the Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation to present an exhibition of 17 artists at the Ojai Institute in Ojai, Calif. All had shown — or were about to — at the Nemeth. Among them are many Minnesotans, including painter Julie Buffalohead and ceramicist Ginny Sims.</div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; transition-property: none !important; white-space-collapse: preserve;">The foundation honors Glasoe Bailey, who started her first gallery at 19 in her hometown of Minneapolis and died at 46 after battling glioblastoma brain cancer. She believed that "Minnesota artists needed to be recognized outside of the state before collectors, mainly other Minnesotans, would pay attention to their careers," according to the foundation. So she co-founded a gallery in the Chelsea art district in New York City, where she sold work for Spangler and some of his friends.</div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; transition-property: none !important; white-space-collapse: preserve;">The California and Minnesota centers, in rural idyllic locations, function as intergenerational and societal connectors, said Frederick Janka, the foundation's executive director. "We also share a passion for the decentralization of the art world that re-centers the rural, the regional, as a site for artistic development and of the future.</div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; transition-property: none !important; white-space-collapse: preserve;">"Oh, also the food!" he said.</div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; transition-property: none !important; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Each year, the foundation brings a group of supporters and collectors to spend time in Park Rapids and visit galleries and museums in Minneapolis. "We are blessed with the culinary talent that is Amy Thielen and the warm and gracious host Aaron who welcomes everyone to the table."</div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; transition-property: none !important; white-space-collapse: preserve;">The Ojai show with Nemeth, on view through July 30 , will fund an artist residency exchange that's in the works.</div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; transition-property: none !important; white-space-collapse: preserve;">West Coast artists are interested in experiencing the winter, Spangler said, an increasingly rare phenomenon as the world warms.</div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; transition-property: none !important; white-space-collapse: preserve;">"They want the story," Weiler said. "They want to catch a muskie."</div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; transition-property: none !important; white-space-collapse: preserve;">'For my friend Bruce'</div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; transition-property: none !important; white-space-collapse: preserve;">All roads seem to lead back to Spangler.</div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; transition-property: none !important; white-space-collapse: preserve;">The Nemeth's current show features Brad Kahlhamer , a Brooklyn-based multimedia artist who had an opening in Spain before settling in for a monthlong residency in Park Rapids. For decades, he and Spangler have played music together.</div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; transition-property: none !important; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Her's exhibition, too, is wrapped up in Spangler's relationship with Brummitt, who continues to inspire Spangler's work, including a trio of his sculptures shown at the Walker in 2011. When Spangler first saw Her's portraits, at the Minneapolis Institute of Art in 2015, he said, "I wanted to bring that show here for my friend Bruce."</div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; transition-property: none !important; white-space-collapse: preserve;">A mix of family, friends and fellow artists stopped by the reception in May. A baby in a carrier. A puppy on a leash. Spangler's parents were there, too.</div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; transition-property: none !important; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Brummitt got close to the photographs, looking up.</div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; transition-property: none !important; white-space-collapse: preserve;">In the formally posed, largescale portraits, Hmong American men wear uniforms and military fatigues, some with medals and ribbons — "all things they went out and bought for themselves," Her said. The men served in the Vietnam War, but the United States doesn't recognize that service.</div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; transition-property: none !important; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Brummitt had served as a liaison in Vietnam, often working with Hmong soldiers, he told Her. He decried the U.S. government for failing to recognize them. "I'm so proud to have known some of these men," he said, "and I'm so honored that it's being shown on Memorial Day."</div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; transition-property: none !important; white-space-collapse: preserve;">"Thank you so much," Her said.</div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; transition-property: none !important; white-space-collapse: preserve;">"Thank you," Brummitt replied.</div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; transition-property: none !important; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Then he went to the back of the gallery and gave Spangler a hug.</div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; transition-property: none !important; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Jenna Ross &bull; 612-673-7168</div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; transition-property: none !important; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; transition-property: none !important;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space-collapse: preserve;">https://www.startribune.com/nemeth-art-center-small-town-park-rapids-minnesota-aaron-spangler-pao-houa-her/600286521/</span></div></div></span></div></div></div></div></div><div style="animation-name: none !important; font-family: inherit; transition-property: none !important;"><div class="x168nmei x13lgxp2 x30kzoy x9jhf4c x6ikm8r x10wlt62" data-visualcompletion="ignore-dynamic" style="animation-name: none !important; border-radius: 0px 0px 8px 8px; font-family: inherit; overflow: hidden; transition-property: none !important;"><div style="animation-name: none !important; font-family: inherit; transition-property: none !important;"><div style="animation-name: none !important; background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; transition-property: none !important;"><div style="animation-name: none !important; font-family: inherit; transition-property: none !important;"><div class="xq8finb x16n37ib x3dsekl x1uuop16" style="animation-name: none !important; border-top: 1px solid var(--divider); font-family: inherit; margin-left: 12px; margin-right: 12px; margin-top: 12px; transition-property: none !important;"><div class="x9f619 x1n2onr6 x1ja2u2z x78zum5 x2lah0s x1qughib x1qjc9v5 xozqiw3 x1q0g3np x150jy0e x1e558r4 xjkvuk6 x1iorvi4 xwrv7xz x8182xy x4cne27 xifccgj" style="align-items: stretch; animation-name: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-flow: row nowrap; flex-shrink: 0; font-family: inherit; justify-content: space-between; margin: -6px -2px; padding: 4px; position: relative; transition-property: none !important; z-index: 0;"><div class="x9f619 x1n2onr6 x1ja2u2z x78zum5 xdt5ytf x193iq5w xeuugli x1r8uery x1iyjqo2 xs83m0k xg83lxy x1h0ha7o x10b6aqq x1yrsyyn" style="animation-name: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex: 1 1 0px; font-family: inherit; max-width: 100%; min-width: 0px; padding: 6px 2px; position: relative; transition-property: none !important; z-index: 0;"><div aria-label="Like" class="x1i10hfl x1qjc9v5 xjbqb8w xjqpnuy xa49m3k xqeqjp1 x2hbi6w x13fuv20 xu3j5b3 x1q0q8m5 x26u7qi x972fbf xcfux6l x1qhh985 xm0m39n x9f619 x1ypdohk xdl72j9 x2lah0s xe8uvvx xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x2lwn1j xeuugli xexx8yu x4uap5 x18d9i69 xkhd6sd x1n2onr6 x16tdsg8 x1hl2dhg x1ja2u2z x1t137rt x1o1ewxj x3x9cwd x1e5q0jg x13rtm0m x3nfvp2 x1q0g3np x87ps6o x1lku1pv x1a2a7pz x5ve5x3" role="button" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; align-items: stretch; animation-name: none !important; background-color: transparent; border-bottom-color: var(--always-dark-overlay); border-left-color: var(--always-dark-overlay); border-radius: inherit; border-right-color: var(--always-dark-overlay); border-style: solid; border-top-color: var(--always-dark-overlay); border-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; cursor: pointer; display: inline-flex; flex-basis: auto; flex-direction: row; flex-shrink: 0; font-family: inherit; list-style: none; margin: 0px; min-height: 0px; min-width: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: inherit; touch-action: none; transition-property: none !important; user-select: none; z-index: 0;" tabindex="0"><div class="x9f619 x1n2onr6 x1ja2u2z x78zum5 x1r8uery x1iyjqo2 xs83m0k xeuugli xl56j7k x6s0dn4 xozqiw3 x1q0g3np xn6708d x1ye3gou xexx8yu xcud41i x139jcc6 x4cne27 xifccgj xn3w4p2 xuxw1ft" style="align-items: center; animation-name: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-flow: row nowrap; flex: 1 1 0px; font-family: inherit; height: 44px; justify-content: center; margin: -6px -4px; min-width: 0px; padding-left: 12px; padding-right: 12px; padding-top: 0px; position: relative; text-wrap: nowrap; transition-property: none !important; z-index: 0;"><div class="x9f619 x1n2onr6 x1ja2u2z x78zum5 xdt5ytf x2lah0s x193iq5w xeuugli x150jy0e x1e558r4 x10b6aqq x1yrsyyn" style="animation-name: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-shrink: 0; font-family: inherit; max-width: 100%; min-width: 0px; padding: 6px 4px; position: relative; transition-property: none !important; z-index: 0;"><span class="x3nfvp2" style="animation-name: none !important; display: inline-flex; font-family: inherit; transition-property: none !important;"><i class="x1b0d499 x1d69dk1" data-visualcompletion="css-img" style="animation-name: none !important; background-image: url("https://static.xx.fbcdn.net/rsrc.php/v3/yf/r/74Pj-Qwkf9j.png"); background-position: 0px -202px; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: 26px 628px; display: inline-block; filter: var(--filter-secondary-icon); height: 18px; transition-property: none !important; vertical-align: -0.25em; width: 18px;"></i></span></div><div class="x9f619 x1n2onr6 x1ja2u2z x78zum5 xdt5ytf x2lah0s x193iq5w xeuugli x150jy0e x1e558r4 x10b6aqq x1yrsyyn" style="animation-name: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-shrink: 0; font-family: inherit; max-width: 100%; min-width: 0px; padding: 6px 4px; position: relative; transition-property: none !important; z-index: 0;"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen x1s688f xi81zsa" dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; color: var(--secondary-text); display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; font-weight: 600; line-height: 1.3333; max-width: 100%; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; transition-property: none !important; word-break: break-word;"><span style="animation-name: none !important; font-family: inherit; transition-property: none !important;">Like</span></span></div></div><div class="x1o1ewxj x3x9cwd x1e5q0jg x13rtm0m x1ey2m1c xds687c xg01cxk x47corl x10l6tqk x17qophe x13vifvy x1ebt8du x19991ni x1dhq9h" data-visualcompletion="ignore" style="animation-name: none !important; border-radius: inherit; font-family: inherit; inset: 0px; opacity: 0; pointer-events: none; position: absolute; transition-duration: var(--fds-duration-extra-extra-short-out); transition-property: none !important; transition-timing-function: var(--fds-animation-fade-out);"></div></div><div aria-label="React" class="x1i10hfl x1qjc9v5 xjbqb8w xjqpnuy xa49m3k xqeqjp1 x2hbi6w x13fuv20 xu3j5b3 x1q0q8m5 x26u7qi x972fbf xcfux6l x1qhh985 xm0m39n x9f619 x1ypdohk xdl72j9 x2lah0s xe8uvvx xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x2lwn1j xeuugli x16tdsg8 x1hl2dhg x1ja2u2z x1t137rt x1o1ewxj x3x9cwd x1e5q0jg x13rtm0m x3nfvp2 x1q0g3np x87ps6o x1lku1pv x1a2a7pz x4r51d9 x1d0ri9u x4uap5 x1ug4tga xkhd6sd xnfr1j xzpqnlu x179tack x10l6tqk x5ve5x3" role="button" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; align-items: stretch; animation-name: none !important; background-color: transparent; border-bottom-color: var(--always-dark-overlay); border-left-color: var(--always-dark-overlay); border-radius: inherit; border-right-color: var(--always-dark-overlay); border-style: solid; border-top-color: var(--always-dark-overlay); border-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; clip-path: polygon(0px 0px, 0px 0px, 0px 0px, 0px 0px); clip: rect(0px, 0px, 0px, 0px); cursor: pointer; display: inline-flex; flex-basis: auto; flex-direction: row; flex-shrink: 0; font-family: inherit; list-style: none; margin: 0px; min-height: 0px; min-width: 0px; outline: none; padding: 13px 0px; position: absolute; right: 6px; text-align: inherit; top: 1px; touch-action: none; transition-property: none !important; user-select: none; z-index: 0;" tabindex="0"><i class="x1b0d499 x1d69dk1" data-visualcompletion="css-img" style="animation-name: none !important; background-image: url("https://static.xx.fbcdn.net/rsrc.php/v3/yL/r/u8bNjwO9qk5.png"); background-position: -108px -154px; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: 190px 186px; display: inline-block; filter: var(--filter-secondary-icon); height: 16px; transition-property: none !important; vertical-align: -0.25em; width: 16px;"></i><div class="x1o1ewxj x3x9cwd x1e5q0jg x13rtm0m x1ey2m1c xds687c xg01cxk x47corl x10l6tqk x17qophe x13vifvy x1ebt8du x19991ni x1dhq9h" data-visualcompletion="ignore" style="animation-name: none !important; border-radius: inherit; font-family: inherit; inset: 0px; opacity: 0; pointer-events: none; position: absolute; transition-duration: var(--fds-duration-extra-extra-short-out); transition-property: none !important; transition-timing-function: var(--fds-animation-fade-out);"></div></div></div><div class="x9f619 x1n2onr6 x1ja2u2z x78zum5 xdt5ytf x193iq5w xeuugli x1r8uery x1iyjqo2 xs83m0k xg83lxy x1h0ha7o x10b6aqq x1yrsyyn" style="animation-name: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex: 1 1 0px; font-family: inherit; max-width: 100%; min-width: 0px; padding: 6px 2px; position: relative; transition-property: none !important; z-index: 0;"><div aria-label="Leave a comment" class="x1i10hfl x1qjc9v5 xjbqb8w xjqpnuy xa49m3k xqeqjp1 x2hbi6w x13fuv20 xu3j5b3 x1q0q8m5 x26u7qi x972fbf xcfux6l x1qhh985 xm0m39n x9f619 x1ypdohk xdl72j9 x2lah0s xe8uvvx xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x2lwn1j xeuugli xexx8yu x4uap5 x18d9i69 xkhd6sd x1n2onr6 x16tdsg8 x1hl2dhg xggy1nq x1ja2u2z x1t137rt x1o1ewxj x3x9cwd x1e5q0jg x13rtm0m x3nfvp2 x1q0g3np x87ps6o x1lku1pv x1a2a7pz" role="button" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; align-items: stretch; animation-name: none !important; background-color: transparent; border-bottom-color: var(--always-dark-overlay); border-left-color: var(--always-dark-overlay); border-radius: inherit; border-right-color: var(--always-dark-overlay); border-style: solid; border-top-color: var(--always-dark-overlay); border-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; cursor: pointer; display: inline-flex; flex-basis: auto; flex-direction: row; flex-shrink: 0; font-family: inherit; list-style: none; margin: 0px; min-height: 0px; min-width: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: inherit; touch-action: manipulation; transition-property: none !important; user-select: none; z-index: 0;" tabindex="0"><div class="x9f619 x1n2onr6 x1ja2u2z x78zum5 x1r8uery x1iyjqo2 xs83m0k xeuugli xl56j7k x6s0dn4 xozqiw3 x1q0g3np xn6708d x1ye3gou xexx8yu xcud41i x139jcc6 x4cne27 xifccgj xn3w4p2 xuxw1ft" style="align-items: center; animation-name: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-flow: row nowrap; flex: 1 1 0px; font-family: inherit; height: 44px; justify-content: center; margin: -6px -4px; min-width: 0px; padding-left: 12px; padding-right: 12px; padding-top: 0px; position: relative; text-wrap: nowrap; transition-property: none !important; z-index: 0;"><div class="x9f619 x1n2onr6 x1ja2u2z x78zum5 xdt5ytf x2lah0s x193iq5w xeuugli x150jy0e x1e558r4 x10b6aqq x1yrsyyn" style="animation-name: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-shrink: 0; font-family: inherit; max-width: 100%; min-width: 0px; padding: 6px 4px; position: relative; transition-property: none !important; z-index: 0;"><i class="x1b0d499 x1d69dk1" data-visualcompletion="css-img" style="animation-name: none !important; background-image: url("https://static.xx.fbcdn.net/rsrc.php/v3/yf/r/74Pj-Qwkf9j.png"); background-position: 0px -162px; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: 26px 628px; display: inline-block; filter: var(--filter-secondary-icon); height: 18px; transition-property: none !important; vertical-align: -0.25em; width: 18px;"></i></div><div class="x9f619 x1n2onr6 x1ja2u2z x78zum5 xdt5ytf x2lah0s x193iq5w xeuugli x150jy0e x1e558r4 x10b6aqq x1yrsyyn" style="animation-name: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-shrink: 0; font-family: inherit; max-width: 100%; min-width: 0px; padding: 6px 4px; position: relative; transition-property: none !important; z-index: 0;"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen x1s688f xi81zsa" dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; color: var(--secondary-text); display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; font-weight: 600; line-height: 1.3333; max-width: 100%; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; transition-property: none !important; word-break: break-word;">Comment</span></div></div><div class="x1o1ewxj x3x9cwd x1e5q0jg x13rtm0m x1ey2m1c xds687c xg01cxk x47corl x10l6tqk x17qophe x13vifvy x1ebt8du x19991ni x1dhq9h x1wpzbip" data-visualcompletion="ignore" style="animation-name: none !important; background-color: var(--hover-overlay); border-radius: 4px; font-family: inherit; inset: 0px; opacity: 0; pointer-events: none; position: absolute; transition-duration: var(--fds-duration-extra-extra-short-out); transition-property: none !important; transition-timing-function: var(--fds-animation-fade-out);"></div></div></div><div class="x9f619 x1n2onr6 x1ja2u2z x78zum5 xdt5ytf x193iq5w xeuugli x1r8uery x1iyjqo2 xs83m0k xg83lxy x1h0ha7o x10b6aqq x1yrsyyn" style="animation-name: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex: 1 1 0px; font-family: inherit; max-width: 100%; min-width: 0px; padding: 6px 2px; position: relative; transition-property: none !important; z-index: 0;"><div aria-label="Send this to friends or post it on your timeline." class="x1i10hfl x1qjc9v5 xjbqb8w xjqpnuy xa49m3k xqeqjp1 x2hbi6w x13fuv20 xu3j5b3 x1q0q8m5 x26u7qi x972fbf xcfux6l x1qhh985 xm0m39n x9f619 x1ypdohk xdl72j9 x2lah0s xe8uvvx xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x2lwn1j xeuugli xexx8yu x4uap5 x18d9i69 xkhd6sd x1n2onr6 x16tdsg8 x1hl2dhg xggy1nq x1ja2u2z x1t137rt x1o1ewxj x3x9cwd x1e5q0jg x13rtm0m x3nfvp2 x1q0g3np x87ps6o x1lku1pv x1a2a7pz" role="button" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; align-items: stretch; animation-name: none !important; background-color: transparent; border-bottom-color: var(--always-dark-overlay); border-left-color: var(--always-dark-overlay); border-radius: inherit; border-right-color: var(--always-dark-overlay); border-style: solid; border-top-color: var(--always-dark-overlay); border-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; cursor: pointer; display: inline-flex; flex-basis: auto; flex-direction: row; flex-shrink: 0; font-family: inherit; list-style: none; margin: 0px; min-height: 0px; min-width: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: inherit; touch-action: manipulation; transition-property: none !important; user-select: none; z-index: 0;" tabindex="0"><div class="x9f619 x1n2onr6 x1ja2u2z x78zum5 x1r8uery x1iyjqo2 xs83m0k xeuugli xl56j7k x6s0dn4 xozqiw3 x1q0g3np xn6708d x1ye3gou xexx8yu xcud41i x139jcc6 x4cne27 xifccgj xn3w4p2 xuxw1ft" style="align-items: center; animation-name: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-flow: row nowrap; flex: 1 1 0px; font-family: inherit; height: 44px; justify-content: center; margin: -6px -4px; min-width: 0px; padding-left: 12px; padding-right: 12px; padding-top: 0px; position: relative; text-wrap: nowrap; transition-property: none !important; z-index: 0;"><div class="x9f619 x1n2onr6 x1ja2u2z x78zum5 xdt5ytf x2lah0s x193iq5w xeuugli x150jy0e x1e558r4 x10b6aqq x1yrsyyn" style="animation-name: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-shrink: 0; font-family: inherit; max-width: 100%; min-width: 0px; padding: 6px 4px; position: relative; transition-property: none !important; z-index: 0;"><i class="x1b0d499 x1d69dk1" data-visualcompletion="css-img" style="animation-name: none !important; background-image: url("https://static.xx.fbcdn.net/rsrc.php/v3/yf/r/74Pj-Qwkf9j.png"); background-position: 0px -222px; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: 26px 628px; display: inline-block; filter: var(--filter-secondary-icon); height: 18px; transition-property: none !important; vertical-align: -0.25em; width: 18px;"></i></div><div class="x9f619 x1n2onr6 x1ja2u2z x78zum5 xdt5ytf x2lah0s x193iq5w xeuugli x150jy0e x1e558r4 x10b6aqq x1yrsyyn" style="animation-name: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-shrink: 0; font-family: inherit; max-width: 100%; min-width: 0px; padding: 6px 4px; position: relative; transition-property: none !important; z-index: 0;"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen x1s688f xi81zsa" dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; color: var(--secondary-text); display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; font-weight: 600; line-height: 1.3333; max-width: 100%; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; transition-property: none !important; word-break: break-word;">Share</span></div></div><div class="x1o1ewxj x3x9cwd x1e5q0jg x13rtm0m x1ey2m1c xds687c xg01cxk x47corl x10l6tqk x17qophe x13vifvy x1ebt8du x19991ni x1dhq9h x1wpzbip" data-visualcompletion="ignore" style="animation-name: none !important; background-color: var(--hover-overlay); border-radius: 4px; font-family: inherit; inset: 0px; opacity: 0; pointer-events: none; position: absolute; transition-duration: var(--fds-duration-extra-extra-short-out); transition-property: none !important; transition-timing-function: var(--fds-animation-fade-out);"></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="x1jx94hy x12nagc" style="animation-name: none !important; color: #1c1e21; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 4px; transition-property: none !important;"></div></div></div></div>lostinthewoodshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06638690912925773954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9960849.post-19347071403337885072022-09-17T13:47:00.001-05:002022-09-17T13:47:32.237-05:00Conservation and Solar Energy<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBtgnJv0UxPQsDKCgcRpK6hHr_VI-6gzdjfiOP9gtsWwaPYbAgPjBrNxW7WtU0v7ls02RtcoWkiYRBPFUznY7c63NWEJsnRi1ucLzBrG-mCqqmPSIJFZ9xmbCvp-E1OBHF-tuz-hgUCAVPPECBSiC0nfPcyhzoc6oJWTcnhUvHpxhccNtlDdk/s640/earth%20and%20snow%20shelter.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBtgnJv0UxPQsDKCgcRpK6hHr_VI-6gzdjfiOP9gtsWwaPYbAgPjBrNxW7WtU0v7ls02RtcoWkiYRBPFUznY7c63NWEJsnRi1ucLzBrG-mCqqmPSIJFZ9xmbCvp-E1OBHF-tuz-hgUCAVPPECBSiC0nfPcyhzoc6oJWTcnhUvHpxhccNtlDdk/s320/earth%20and%20snow%20shelter.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="background-color: #fff9ee; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 24px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0.75em 0px 0px; position: relative;"><br /></h3><div class="post-header" style="background-color: #fff9ee; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 12.6px; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><div class="post-header-line-1"></div></div><div class="post-body entry-content" id="post-body-777719876861245306" itemprop="description articleBody" style="background-color: #fff9ee; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px; line-height: 1.4; position: relative; width: 570px;">I originally had two small solar panels I purchased from an 'Energy Sciences' advert in the back of a Mother Earth News Magazine...about 1980/81...I'd fussed around with a 6 volt windcharger back in the mid 70s...and with these panels, it was a real 'wow' moment. When I built my current home, no mailbox, no phone, no electric...no bills...a postal box in town...those two panels and a large truck battery gave me a light in my bedroom, a light in the kitchen and a light in the 'living' room...a 12volt JVC combo SW/AM/FM dual cassette recorder/player and record player...and a 9 inch 12 volt tv...which gave me three channels...rambo, dumbo and bimbo...18 bucks a year for my property taxes, a root cellar/pantry for refrigeration...no meat unless it was killed that day...(an occasional rabbit/grouse/woodchuck/squirrel)... It was very freeing... My wants grew as my income grew, over time...many people mention to us how green we live...but, thinking back to those times...I really lived green, with a much smaller footprint... Can't turn back the clock, but I remember and kick myself back into shape every now and again. We've become much more spoiled over time. I remember thinking...not what I was doing without...but the luxury of what I had...no bills/no ties...no 9 to 5... Conservation is the key...and quelling our desires. I'm in the process of using more efficient products...such as LED lights...but, they are products, which means...they had to be produced...and there are ramifications in the production of anything. I think I'm lecturing myself as much as posting about conservation and solar energy.</div>lostinthewoodshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06638690912925773954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9960849.post-39684724288749656572022-09-17T13:43:00.002-05:002022-09-17T13:43:43.058-05:00A Story of Us<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKvHI2-heiBGrANVkgKFED2yZFu5rfr5w0fuxjbTyUFJOXbCSiO3ViAY2uVaiXau-wQIKDHkMzvd4AylqyleXoetEgk_T7Jnk_CegLIL8_iwHZ8u-Dp10umv-chVGU5xrkQGzaovm34kEtp8NsByhxKocP53Dmcs523cKu1WGQTWHYP_MfwrE/s474/matt%20musky,%20bnc%20hippy%20001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="441" data-original-width="474" height="298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKvHI2-heiBGrANVkgKFED2yZFu5rfr5w0fuxjbTyUFJOXbCSiO3ViAY2uVaiXau-wQIKDHkMzvd4AylqyleXoetEgk_T7Jnk_CegLIL8_iwHZ8u-Dp10umv-chVGU5xrkQGzaovm34kEtp8NsByhxKocP53Dmcs523cKu1WGQTWHYP_MfwrE/s320/matt%20musky,%20bnc%20hippy%20001.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><div class="l7ghb35v kjdc1dyq kmwttqpk gh25dzvf jikcssrz n3t5jt4f" style="animation-name: none !important; background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; transition-property: none !important; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; font-family: inherit; transition-property: none !important;">Over four decades ago, I looked for the cheapest place I could afford that would give me shelter and provide a place to grow some food...in an area where I could support myself with odd jobs. Nowadays I wouldn't know where to go, but back then it brought me to Northern Minnesota via a Strout Realty Catalog advertising a one room school house on 5 acres with a stream acting as the western boundary. With a well, septic system and two bathrooms (boys and girls).. I <span style="animation-name: none !important; font-family: inherit; transition-property: none !important;"><a style="animation-name: none !important; color: #385898; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; transition-property: none !important;" tabindex="-1"></a></span>bought it for 3000 dollars cash. Built a little barn (really little) out of milled slab wood, was given two milk goats, a dozen chickens, a pig, two geese and then began creating my garden by cleaning out the barn of a family dairy about a mile away. Used their tractor and manure spreader and pitchfork, and my back, arms and legs to create a fertile 1/6th acre garden. The pig had a moveable pen 8 X 8, and he helped to create more garden space. Voila...homesteading on a shoestring. I sold the schoolhouse 3 years later after finding and buying 10 acres of forested land within a state forest (which has since grown to 50)...the money I got from the sale allowed me to get a good jump start on my current homestead, underground house (that school house was out and out drafty)...solar electricity (rudimentary, at first)...more gardens and more solitude. Fruit trees, etc. It's an evolving process. I was not "going back" to some idealised past where people grubbed for food with primitive implements and burned each other for practicing witchcraft. I was going forward to a new and better sort of life...a life that is more fun than the over-specialised office or factory job...a life that brings challenge and daily initiative back to work...and variety...and occasional great success and occasional abysmal failure. It means the complete acceptance of what you do or don't do...and a true joy comes from the creation of your homestead...it is striving for a higher quality of life...food which is fresh and organically grown...for the health of body, mind and spirit. Humans should not exploit, but rather 'husband' the land around them...This planet is not exclusively for our own use...there are many life forms with whom we should co exist in celebration. Simple elegance. Living simply and sanely. Then in 1988 I met a woman who is a true testimony to the possibilities of life. Married to that woman since 1989 who is a testament to the fact that there is beauty and grace in the world. And became a person who made this homestead flourish.</div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; font-family: inherit; transition-property: none !important;">***</div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; font-family: inherit; transition-property: none !important;">Y'know...money is an odd thing, and people are odder yet. The year that I met my wife (which was 1988) I made 1900 dollars working odd jobs, etc. I lived alone and spent 700 dollars total for the year. That included my property taxes. I had no phone and no bills. No internet back then, no tv...gardens for food and dry beans and rice. I was quite content...saved 1200 bucks for the year. Most people would scoff at that being a possibility, much less a reality. 3500 dollars for my house (my land cost another 2500 dollars) back in 1984...that included putting in a road, clearing land that I'd logged, having manure and topsoil hauled in, digging 3 foot deep garden beds 4 ft wide by 25 ft long, creating Hugelculture gardens before I'd ever heard of them..backfilling my building after it was built...another 400 dollars built my small garage. The 3500 dollars included two small solar panels, a battery and some lights...it included my wood stove. It included some lumber from the local mill for flooring, joists and sheathing. Most all of the materials in my house were gleaned locally...logs peeled, stones rolled... Labor is the expense, and it was done out of my love, not money... It was kinda like building a fort, or doing an art project...or both. The labor of those days returns to me each sunrise...it shelters me, it nurtures me, it gives me sustenance. I love, it loves back...very easy, very sane. The details are less important than the mantra...keep it simple. As Charles Mingus said: Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity. Or E. F. Schumacker: Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius—and a lot of courage—to move in the opposite direction. Hans Hofmann: The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.</div></div><div class="l7ghb35v kjdc1dyq kmwttqpk gh25dzvf jikcssrz n3t5jt4f" style="animation-name: none !important; background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; transition-property: none !important; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; font-family: inherit; transition-property: none !important;">Then in 1994, after a tour of the country seeking alternatives methods to build The Feral One a studio on our land, we settled on straw bale construction and accomplished that in the summer, so she no longer needed to work out of someone else's office as a Wholistic Therapist. That's a whole 'nother chapter.</div></div>lostinthewoodshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06638690912925773954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9960849.post-76411251800422265892022-09-17T13:40:00.001-05:002022-09-17T13:40:12.683-05:00Bodhisattva<p> <span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Que le vaya bien, Bebe.</span></p><div class="l7ghb35v kjdc1dyq kmwttqpk gh25dzvf jikcssrz n3t5jt4f" style="animation-name: none !important; background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; transition-property: none !important; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; font-family: inherit; transition-property: none !important;">bodhisattva</div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; font-family: inherit; transition-property: none !important;">bō″dĭ-sŭt′və</div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; font-family: inherit; transition-property: none !important;">noun</div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; font-family: inherit; transition-property: none !important;">An <span style="animation-name: none !important; font-family: inherit; transition-property: none !important;"><a style="animation-name: none !important; color: #385898; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; transition-property: none !important;" tabindex="-1"></a></span>enlightened being who, out of compassion, forgoes nirvana in order to save others.<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrGkhzRrs0VZKTJ6Bvu8M64VNt_siUClGnI1Lr4Bw3dqbAe-Q4AunKJfNPLHNiNn1bGPqIaw2o9mgXZ7aivOUGdk8OkDsDRDxudmg7PvwzuaQlU2vx7I1ucNDS0OaXKz2ubAgxGu0JmwzxwL3NCudqdHSInqw-NgbsDSWd07L5wH3HL6637B8/s2048/bebe.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrGkhzRrs0VZKTJ6Bvu8M64VNt_siUClGnI1Lr4Bw3dqbAe-Q4AunKJfNPLHNiNn1bGPqIaw2o9mgXZ7aivOUGdk8OkDsDRDxudmg7PvwzuaQlU2vx7I1ucNDS0OaXKz2ubAgxGu0JmwzxwL3NCudqdHSInqw-NgbsDSWd07L5wH3HL6637B8/s320/bebe.jpg" width="240" /></a></div></div></div>lostinthewoodshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06638690912925773954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9960849.post-33779894461934700222021-10-07T10:09:00.003-05:002021-10-07T10:09:49.870-05:00 How Do You Run Away From "It All"?<p><br /></p><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; transition-property: none !important; white-space: pre-wrap;">If I may try to answer such an all inclusive question...I 'ran away' to this place back in 1980. Knew no one, came alone. I, like the Hopi, was looking for a place which I didn't have to fight for...a place no one else much wanted. The abundant water, oxygen giving forests, and lakes which felt little pressure from overfishing were a bonus. I had much in common with the 'old-timers', many of whom lived pastoral lives and some who still spoke the language of their native scandinavian countries...having a font of natural knowledge in the guise of Ojibwe elders, who knew methods of harvesting wild food and herbs was another bonus. Gravity and attraction brought me in touch with other hippie homesteaders at various stages of their growth. The nearly three decades that have passed since then have wrought many changes. Some have left their homesteads for the 'glitter and the rouge' of other places...many of the younger generations of Ojibwe have rejected their elders' path...the pastoral farms have been bought up by ag interests...center pivot irrigators and row crops have replaced small dairy and sheep farms in the valley...second and third homes have been built for the 'trickle down' wealth from Reagan/Bush/Bush policies and Clinton's .com/globalism and stock market booms. The price of land has escalated from 100 bucks per acre...to thousands of dollars per acre. Small subdivisions are sprouting on 40 acre parcels near lakes and forests. We've been relatively immune, but weekends find noisy, polluting, gas guzzling 4 wheelers 'enjoying' the forest roads at 60 mph...green for forests and blue for water all they are able to discern. Our homestead is an eden to us. If I was deaf and didn't leave home ever...I'd have little idea of what was happening beyond a mile of us. We've traveled extensively, and have often thought we may leave here to find a place away from what we see as a growing fascism and militaristic imperialism in this country...not wanting to be a part of an empire with troops in 130 countries of the world, and yet portraying itself as the arbiter of freedom and the perpetual victim. But...being an observer of history...a traveler through time and space...I can set myself apart from the complicity of all that...make my stand here and try to create as much change by example and by speaking out as I can. I know this place...deep in my psychic soul...the trees and the waters and the animals know me...we are friends, kindred spirits...and that is all I can ask for.</div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; transition-property: none !important; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; transition-property: none !important; white-space: pre-wrap;">Though with the changes, it would break my heart to leave here, someday I will, as ashes or dust or perhaps of my own volition. </div>lostinthewoodshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06638690912925773954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9960849.post-11171230290581474922021-05-08T09:49:00.000-05:002021-05-08T09:49:00.520-05:00The Endless Madness of Capitalism<p> <span style="background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;">When I built my homestead this forested area was filled with towering pines and old growth maple/basswood/oak which felt much like a sanctuary. The state legislature at that time mandated the DNR to log no more than 5 contiguous acres. There were no other homes in the area. I've felt secure and at home on our 50 acres within 72 square miles of forest and wildness. In the past number of years, Republicans have wrested control of our state legislature and slowly upped the number of acres which could be logged. Actually they mandated that logging increase to support the activities of the DNR and to subsidize the counties. Now they have been logging 80 contiguous acres...and leaving very little buffer. They've put the forest on a 30 year rotation, so everything is logged over time. Plus a number of ATV and snowmobile trails have been put through the woods, a couple of subdivisions have been or are being planned near here and a 50 space RV park catering to ATV riders to tear up the forests. I've been here since I built in 1984, am in my 70s now...and we're thinking of leaving, although we're at a loss to where. Seems the dilemma isn't limited to the Bay Area...and there are a lot of people who are flush with cash buying up everything. The Earth is shaking, and as it does it's shaking people from their roots.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;">There is no safety from the madness of capitalism, I'm afraid...predicated on endless growth and with it the burden on the Earth...I feel so deflated.</span></p>lostinthewoodshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06638690912925773954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9960849.post-13058525748313238802021-01-19T12:46:00.000-06:002021-01-19T12:46:49.074-06:00<p> <span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">It was the spring of 1994 and we had returned from a round about tour of everywhere from Utah to Arizona and New Mexico...visiting folks who had used some type of alternative method in construction...Met Bill and Athena Steen on our journey, just before they finished "The Straw Bale House" book. They had built a very small place at the time, and it was great to chat with them. Met other folks in Gila, New Mexico area who had built homes from Straw Bales...Visited Black Rock Range Lodge where "Out on Bale" was being published. </span></p><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; transition-property: none !important; white-space: pre-wrap;">We got to preparing the south forty to build a straw bale studio for Cheryl...she worked from it until her retirement 5 years ago, when we turned it into a full fledged cottage, complete with bedroom, outdoor sauna, summer shower, summer laundry house, outdoor biffy...of course, it's also where our pit greenhouse and lower gardens are...with solar pumped irrigation. I'm going to try to include two albums here...one of the construction. We had two work/play parties on two different days...to get people to understand the concept...while I cooked food in our solar oven. We had a full moon hay ride, too, through the adjacent forest roads. Then, another album of how the studio became a cottage.</div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; transition-property: none !important; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; transition-property: none !important; white-space: pre-wrap;">Album One:</div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; transition-property: none !important; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6Jay7X-UJTxyByYIfqL25JJy0MUVl6vrNCcU2jf4lR4GKr1tspym6Xlq4LpNvy0LE4RkYTpcc8M1jbK-lroWrj9HcGq6inZMef986VgUBI9lL3Ze3DqoFTTM8HL_BWWbyYLgrJg/s960/1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6Jay7X-UJTxyByYIfqL25JJy0MUVl6vrNCcU2jf4lR4GKr1tspym6Xlq4LpNvy0LE4RkYTpcc8M1jbK-lroWrj9HcGq6inZMef986VgUBI9lL3Ze3DqoFTTM8HL_BWWbyYLgrJg/s320/1.jpg" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpWFAfLXQ_W2Q85xiMi6KwvIy38hF7LJrbNfmuulMnhOCwDIuczErMCbGJB0XEpAnRSOdvCwPjxanACgQxN-qd76wFgRoEZgOwKnqqiiWNjEdc_a3nl-HkclgUKVQFcsxo01tpGQ/s960/2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpWFAfLXQ_W2Q85xiMi6KwvIy38hF7LJrbNfmuulMnhOCwDIuczErMCbGJB0XEpAnRSOdvCwPjxanACgQxN-qd76wFgRoEZgOwKnqqiiWNjEdc_a3nl-HkclgUKVQFcsxo01tpGQ/s320/2.jpg" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCpz519DgXuSRfui6y2keecpWTfDMNeaxdHkHhdabGsAaCmqZE8OzY78yNcWn2FwjVM2YhmRx7kS1leNncz8eflfWBrFfDq9JlrXHYW7mU0CLB9s4gnhGdtpcvogIbtdTTa2w9dA/s960/3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCpz519DgXuSRfui6y2keecpWTfDMNeaxdHkHhdabGsAaCmqZE8OzY78yNcWn2FwjVM2YhmRx7kS1leNncz8eflfWBrFfDq9JlrXHYW7mU0CLB9s4gnhGdtpcvogIbtdTTa2w9dA/s320/3.jpg" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3QV3ps6XxtEjQz36VuCc7mVsfBYylp-0M2dHMGGlPD6AXiub1mgHZDj-Sp_mXJb32eIwQiMISLNe8nqtCcDb8HeIezrbLoBSmV92CZG4ic7JtBoXWyZozhZtCpI8SXID9bjHnPg/s960/4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3QV3ps6XxtEjQz36VuCc7mVsfBYylp-0M2dHMGGlPD6AXiub1mgHZDj-Sp_mXJb32eIwQiMISLNe8nqtCcDb8HeIezrbLoBSmV92CZG4ic7JtBoXWyZozhZtCpI8SXID9bjHnPg/s320/4.jpg" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFhguMqjYVsh2lVTaCqUVdz37UsKszrwU_K0OOrW97XxIqi0ejnROjuwjdiOdk5sfvUak8mwcFeEmPu1mShL_EWAOPcVgSGK3Vfm-fjmFqCJYB7xQcCaeu794OExzunc17S3h16w/s960/5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFhguMqjYVsh2lVTaCqUVdz37UsKszrwU_K0OOrW97XxIqi0ejnROjuwjdiOdk5sfvUak8mwcFeEmPu1mShL_EWAOPcVgSGK3Vfm-fjmFqCJYB7xQcCaeu794OExzunc17S3h16w/s320/5.jpg" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcOlaibPtEIfQAvE3WAWuxYnl1Q3LTKskJFZiS1LumqWbgstDk-04z2Su_hBRVzWkALOegdV3yAjUv8_6OTCZpW685M2JOzolvDJBx9fvhhDU0NQIMMBm3-7lqSNVjKnBHAdcVqQ/s960/6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcOlaibPtEIfQAvE3WAWuxYnl1Q3LTKskJFZiS1LumqWbgstDk-04z2Su_hBRVzWkALOegdV3yAjUv8_6OTCZpW685M2JOzolvDJBx9fvhhDU0NQIMMBm3-7lqSNVjKnBHAdcVqQ/s320/6.jpg" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqdtiYkYQE4KMrSWLtA5x8G-_rDBZ_n6kv4qhichzMOkUDu6XuRrOcYtxMXwRN8pEAVzUOOiTORAc_wOwHr9h50CB09WlvD6mhwnKwjJFn_PswAATcCOl27jhmZBHYd3t-dTAybw/s960/7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqdtiYkYQE4KMrSWLtA5x8G-_rDBZ_n6kv4qhichzMOkUDu6XuRrOcYtxMXwRN8pEAVzUOOiTORAc_wOwHr9h50CB09WlvD6mhwnKwjJFn_PswAATcCOl27jhmZBHYd3t-dTAybw/s320/7.jpg" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi78l3fNWjLST2LCPPUqDA1R3chlhioHcKsomOoleYelpBe56ITYV4e85tgGyv3MTJvnSF5PxAY3wMv9t5LRhjsAB5b7HvwW4sDaTOv5IYMjTN_xMxzqMjaaWuf9NLAaar00ta74A/s960/8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi78l3fNWjLST2LCPPUqDA1R3chlhioHcKsomOoleYelpBe56ITYV4e85tgGyv3MTJvnSF5PxAY3wMv9t5LRhjsAB5b7HvwW4sDaTOv5IYMjTN_xMxzqMjaaWuf9NLAaar00ta74A/s320/8.jpg" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBDE2R5gNLPAf28LmMTcQaKnvUw4J_jjZ5M0rFF2qcj8BCEIVu7xGiTwaCtE_kdpK-AmVWPRY2124x3tbQE6KkVCuzOQH0IWULYo084kb-BtgUTsUsWN0a5w92OX6YC0cXzMijnA/s960/9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBDE2R5gNLPAf28LmMTcQaKnvUw4J_jjZ5M0rFF2qcj8BCEIVu7xGiTwaCtE_kdpK-AmVWPRY2124x3tbQE6KkVCuzOQH0IWULYo084kb-BtgUTsUsWN0a5w92OX6YC0cXzMijnA/s320/9.jpg" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMl5VQfq18auz0j04VbgpT83CI1-NTAvxHDADiXkCovMqBanTyTZFkmxKKA0dAnCOI2Vmu0R1cIpXgorzXX7WCcpOKpCfyK6eAAH6D_DLfI3_Dt6Gva1HalAwvJwbLwQI6qsXR1A/s960/10.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMl5VQfq18auz0j04VbgpT83CI1-NTAvxHDADiXkCovMqBanTyTZFkmxKKA0dAnCOI2Vmu0R1cIpXgorzXX7WCcpOKpCfyK6eAAH6D_DLfI3_Dt6Gva1HalAwvJwbLwQI6qsXR1A/s320/10.jpg" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh47iqoifsQ3XS2qVI-9bij3jnOt8wlmSpUdfWdTXrF0FUWTdiwrSwlEe1PqlAsfXMEe_iW84pMXGq0cb6qoWGKJ2ZopdtRvaJ7hU5JAX9g3VSZDX3Ypnd_0k2YB5Wo-tqxUBwd0g/s960/11.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh47iqoifsQ3XS2qVI-9bij3jnOt8wlmSpUdfWdTXrF0FUWTdiwrSwlEe1PqlAsfXMEe_iW84pMXGq0cb6qoWGKJ2ZopdtRvaJ7hU5JAX9g3VSZDX3Ypnd_0k2YB5Wo-tqxUBwd0g/s320/11.jpg" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdoruYhE2RstYem5oxNGDoPynKybEvXXRrJsXZofUjyR_RnXruR9J3chaSghfrSurZS5ddLQCFISzyOm_9LMXsadAfjQ4LzbG6xBZG-QJI2l-kudbwk5pP8j4r_fbyMHpVA-y8OA/s960/12.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdoruYhE2RstYem5oxNGDoPynKybEvXXRrJsXZofUjyR_RnXruR9J3chaSghfrSurZS5ddLQCFISzyOm_9LMXsadAfjQ4LzbG6xBZG-QJI2l-kudbwk5pP8j4r_fbyMHpVA-y8OA/s320/12.jpg" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXxkysal6MrcKVJKsJBw-MYt7Rp4IoDULzOznK3soJ-Aar3O2znfgFyihjBh7474FiSs3JD8oJCde51xk-XSY6eHdaAnRRJMZg5QNJyCC4bfXJOLFNu08wkOhyF-KzCEQWwDLuOw/s960/13.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXxkysal6MrcKVJKsJBw-MYt7Rp4IoDULzOznK3soJ-Aar3O2znfgFyihjBh7474FiSs3JD8oJCde51xk-XSY6eHdaAnRRJMZg5QNJyCC4bfXJOLFNu08wkOhyF-KzCEQWwDLuOw/s320/13.jpg" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDB7HvMakeEjfqAp-6pgi3cvI5T6sODVyjriqDBX6hHqtdqAxLxl8XKGjUa0AEGj6WcCp2QHQHrU3I-GLH9VdvLG8T4AKGmwvGXg-LeOyXYULYjaVxTP5z0ahg39OOYka1PM8djg/s960/14.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDB7HvMakeEjfqAp-6pgi3cvI5T6sODVyjriqDBX6hHqtdqAxLxl8XKGjUa0AEGj6WcCp2QHQHrU3I-GLH9VdvLG8T4AKGmwvGXg-LeOyXYULYjaVxTP5z0ahg39OOYka1PM8djg/s320/14.jpg" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDqNcFNT0LPap08k-7KFURsYVFe2gP7JtK5aYj-2LkA2A3eFGn_v4ED2z_51LJh_KjzE96i_XDCAjvtmfdQ1cqmZ-lRyjTRMJX4u65i_LvABJvGBXGg1neZum0YBCzc_OCteB2bw/s960/15.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDqNcFNT0LPap08k-7KFURsYVFe2gP7JtK5aYj-2LkA2A3eFGn_v4ED2z_51LJh_KjzE96i_XDCAjvtmfdQ1cqmZ-lRyjTRMJX4u65i_LvABJvGBXGg1neZum0YBCzc_OCteB2bw/s320/15.jpg" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlGJsU33Cf7Nqj-OIB7L4-q7t9g-Ac54KCQgNT1iHl17wp_6mpEgS-XLbRyBQUTQLnFnF8E-Onv6qdMy1mUs3zTjzEt2wpH8zV3ISkBum7d4K_ALwCTLQB5pgDO91El1-Qw1KvUQ/s960/16.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlGJsU33Cf7Nqj-OIB7L4-q7t9g-Ac54KCQgNT1iHl17wp_6mpEgS-XLbRyBQUTQLnFnF8E-Onv6qdMy1mUs3zTjzEt2wpH8zV3ISkBum7d4K_ALwCTLQB5pgDO91El1-Qw1KvUQ/s320/16.jpg" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhg2N4bfsiAKpoBo1YWWNWWhMraieeYzwe2d02-gNh4slnoyB17u4FrWycW6YjifRd_jTAUaYyaZP_J8cHRSOUtQ-viihuws2lpS9vo4yxZvUGwmgV8vmjJTkcRl2rmaLCYRwypvw/s960/17.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhg2N4bfsiAKpoBo1YWWNWWhMraieeYzwe2d02-gNh4slnoyB17u4FrWycW6YjifRd_jTAUaYyaZP_J8cHRSOUtQ-viihuws2lpS9vo4yxZvUGwmgV8vmjJTkcRl2rmaLCYRwypvw/s320/17.jpg" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBEBDvmClShfz-ydfIUNHdDPmWoyv3zJYTNufEkEWgZ1QfsijjD9bb9JoS0c9gWc8z4q54jnWT4LDw8xDB4LgmhWE55hSHT13cZB_IwMiWfCwmcOiDohs9bkxEekXy0IDGAcPYQQ/s960/18.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBEBDvmClShfz-ydfIUNHdDPmWoyv3zJYTNufEkEWgZ1QfsijjD9bb9JoS0c9gWc8z4q54jnWT4LDw8xDB4LgmhWE55hSHT13cZB_IwMiWfCwmcOiDohs9bkxEekXy0IDGAcPYQQ/s320/18.jpg" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwJCksu9DdWuhfxsi6zz_qvAVk7EcqoEuKJi-k9YT7t7n55UXanUN0EfMg5QEOEdx8lMvdcS68kzGhPr0ber1GMyXnVJXOqdy7nGCeQPQGgmPLhQIdZZNTKg3PghPzqAPXTG5WLw/s960/sb1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwJCksu9DdWuhfxsi6zz_qvAVk7EcqoEuKJi-k9YT7t7n55UXanUN0EfMg5QEOEdx8lMvdcS68kzGhPr0ber1GMyXnVJXOqdy7nGCeQPQGgmPLhQIdZZNTKg3PghPzqAPXTG5WLw/s320/sb1.jpg" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYI5NPDt5p_yV1I3uOJ_3A3CzpCfgprLuZ0xOsfg09L6HF3Pt2344URCtsDSANE8Ah9NSjAS6DFPDfpfLlysHmSRpNMybpPJiRGNrcWtNG5t77-akNRmAFSYnsNcBYNZjRH3fBEg/s960/sb2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYI5NPDt5p_yV1I3uOJ_3A3CzpCfgprLuZ0xOsfg09L6HF3Pt2344URCtsDSANE8Ah9NSjAS6DFPDfpfLlysHmSRpNMybpPJiRGNrcWtNG5t77-akNRmAFSYnsNcBYNZjRH3fBEg/s320/sb2.jpg" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ-2WjJQF_9EH1FqfTAUbc23ENaqkZLZ_Q9patE2p5WSzru0n-yB2wdHKwgVLrMPeiQtOwcZMw2ihxEGxR8WZd20lI0wkVXPtpPymGnKm8HGk0mpfsunAtYJDf4oRWkHLrgrvKqQ/s960/sb3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ-2WjJQF_9EH1FqfTAUbc23ENaqkZLZ_Q9patE2p5WSzru0n-yB2wdHKwgVLrMPeiQtOwcZMw2ihxEGxR8WZd20lI0wkVXPtpPymGnKm8HGk0mpfsunAtYJDf4oRWkHLrgrvKqQ/s320/sb3.jpg" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjURwp_yRPWBbNum2COVtlPmUPkk4PN_xU1qZHsBepYY-h0NQxFkfeqlfHeJqSTSlVoKrWkUrWgngVbjifxngM5Sg6WLNtx-nssjOM-hSDKUunG-kdK0HUJK5rbtL7stVLk2ovk6g/s960/sb4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjURwp_yRPWBbNum2COVtlPmUPkk4PN_xU1qZHsBepYY-h0NQxFkfeqlfHeJqSTSlVoKrWkUrWgngVbjifxngM5Sg6WLNtx-nssjOM-hSDKUunG-kdK0HUJK5rbtL7stVLk2ovk6g/s320/sb4.jpg" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtYdQJMS0Ii-rw-1EIXe3bJSHm3rsjt_7fD_eLw7E7jWN_gQVh6VCa5zxoq0rc4QZFHCTdFXhyBL4ubiwxZQ7VloG5bvgfnGC6TegQ9DolZ7S3B1El8QQeawE5tl7Nuf80JKEaDA/s960/sb5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtYdQJMS0Ii-rw-1EIXe3bJSHm3rsjt_7fD_eLw7E7jWN_gQVh6VCa5zxoq0rc4QZFHCTdFXhyBL4ubiwxZQ7VloG5bvgfnGC6TegQ9DolZ7S3B1El8QQeawE5tl7Nuf80JKEaDA/s320/sb5.jpg" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCf-e0yxJA1cChAwsYzwD4Qjt4UmmksQ9hPAM0Kysx4S8jPf6-ByzfTnIX5WeqeZnG7bRJJnpDzjqQR5YVxFUbNAySObOPRyPHqMtlCf1K4WJTRY1jj17F7mtSASjIVdMsPJbBXg/s960/sb6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCf-e0yxJA1cChAwsYzwD4Qjt4UmmksQ9hPAM0Kysx4S8jPf6-ByzfTnIX5WeqeZnG7bRJJnpDzjqQR5YVxFUbNAySObOPRyPHqMtlCf1K4WJTRY1jj17F7mtSASjIVdMsPJbBXg/s320/sb6.jpg" /></a></div><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjS1gk5soU6iM412usRQjfUV1VyacFs6cs1bN_3-0pDnIxL5rr18H-T3N-ZQ19EYfgXhxe-9vpswhOct7hCUWtR3irMqT6bB_c8EAHbQuEGzD5IzG3KuNJ3sWFTAJhRN4jJkdea5Q/s960/19.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjS1gk5soU6iM412usRQjfUV1VyacFs6cs1bN_3-0pDnIxL5rr18H-T3N-ZQ19EYfgXhxe-9vpswhOct7hCUWtR3irMqT6bB_c8EAHbQuEGzD5IzG3KuNJ3sWFTAJhRN4jJkdea5Q/s320/19.jpg" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5UCgJceT3VkmeP64xbX_B-6PIJUiBhdVP1oYepj9aMhRUwDgLGLwZrUF53SN2gjuxH7-5jPPR97aX6soAnmQ58vnqU1g4BtUzfxZaID7umfChj0adZ4ItWjqUfcU0GuoSzBVcjw/s960/20.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5UCgJceT3VkmeP64xbX_B-6PIJUiBhdVP1oYepj9aMhRUwDgLGLwZrUF53SN2gjuxH7-5jPPR97aX6soAnmQ58vnqU1g4BtUzfxZaID7umfChj0adZ4ItWjqUfcU0GuoSzBVcjw/s320/20.jpg" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgB2-uFEmIvuOpXq4BIrrlPpxHAyJKx437NcR192Aw7TahNO2zIWfsTuKkXlGuAs0oaU8ndngdsmInaq7-x-SceDMwhtGF1lmfPHU9F-bBRq5FlMbiwhvo6xdWZPoCexKbWO1YZPw/s960/21.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgB2-uFEmIvuOpXq4BIrrlPpxHAyJKx437NcR192Aw7TahNO2zIWfsTuKkXlGuAs0oaU8ndngdsmInaq7-x-SceDMwhtGF1lmfPHU9F-bBRq5FlMbiwhvo6xdWZPoCexKbWO1YZPw/s320/21.jpg" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij8n_eow30SQn7SQQiQ53du5PpAQPJtmZyoxqf7r_u-3ezam4RIoOFp-PHisLjKh5IpIch4EqCpkfKNkGANjvG-e303fKn19c2QQ9mw33XA3cwO-2o5Bg1ulRMgzVXE4IfYb1ngw/s960/22.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij8n_eow30SQn7SQQiQ53du5PpAQPJtmZyoxqf7r_u-3ezam4RIoOFp-PHisLjKh5IpIch4EqCpkfKNkGANjvG-e303fKn19c2QQ9mw33XA3cwO-2o5Bg1ulRMgzVXE4IfYb1ngw/s320/22.jpg" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjklp1XWwIrRPiw-U4XddSDK3w_RNGOlN5JMWmtgd3dZ9Z1tmZ8mhsMf3nNTYWBrpMQvV0Jxey6AqIey85zPN3PmN9aksUoQ2N82ZahDq0PL8gLHnfn9SW59x6o77yw1dCr6EQCpQ/s960/23.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjklp1XWwIrRPiw-U4XddSDK3w_RNGOlN5JMWmtgd3dZ9Z1tmZ8mhsMf3nNTYWBrpMQvV0Jxey6AqIey85zPN3PmN9aksUoQ2N82ZahDq0PL8gLHnfn9SW59x6o77yw1dCr6EQCpQ/s320/23.jpg" /></a></div><br /><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; transition-property: none !important; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></div>lostinthewoodshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06638690912925773954noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9960849.post-19157713758081744782019-12-24T11:09:00.001-06:002019-12-24T11:09:15.615-06:00Myers-Briggs Personality Type<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px;">
Based on my Myers-Briggs personality type I am an owl, not surprising:</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-top: 6px;">
INTPs are analytical and thoughtful individuals who prefer to work alone and who are often ill at ease in social situations. They are impatient with hierarchies and politics and would prefer that leaders prove their worth with merit, rather than with charisma and influence. Although they are not particularly social, they do have razor sharp wit (and claws), and are often surprised to learn that people do enjoy their company.</div>
<div>
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">https://www.16personalities.com/free-personality-test</span></span><div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-top: 6px;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-top: 6px;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="background-color: white; display: inline; font-size: 14px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">https://personalitygrowth.com/myers-briggs-spirit-animals/</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-top: 6px;">
<br /></div>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-top: 6px;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtb6d-EOJwLjcy46WvFU9N3R_cuuJKDj7F54cl1ryejWDohTJkF463ePlgzezaAid8mGfV8YMN3iVwfJrbUeoUhh2Yf-vtKECoRYA3Z68hzLh_p9OUfJTGaxvhCVZDLhSEl-6alA/s1600/IMG_4681.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="860" data-original-width="600" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtb6d-EOJwLjcy46WvFU9N3R_cuuJKDj7F54cl1ryejWDohTJkF463ePlgzezaAid8mGfV8YMN3iVwfJrbUeoUhh2Yf-vtKECoRYA3Z68hzLh_p9OUfJTGaxvhCVZDLhSEl-6alA/s320/IMG_4681.JPG" width="223" /></a></div>
<div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-top: 6px;">
<br /></div>
</div>
</div>
lostinthewoodshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06638690912925773954noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9960849.post-7023789875974673852019-10-16T13:07:00.002-05:002019-10-16T13:07:34.045-05:00From a friend in the late 80s still relevant <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
In<br />
*<br />
This Mongrel Diarist<br />
is voluntarily disenfranchised<br />
from the enveloping unfolding paradigm.<br />
I am in cultural introversion<br />
considering a chaos of questions<br />
from mongrels, heathens, pagans<br />
and other diverse earthlings.<br />
I seek understanding of the<br />
pathologically driven, alien abducted, genetically modified and hypnotized<br />
collective of mongrel slaves of Empires.<br />
This is all crossing<br />
☞ Bridges of Chaos ☜<br />
in the oft prophesied and frequently maligned<br />
☞ Unfolding Dark Age. ☜<br />
I’m pondering such aforementioned questions here at<br />
The Home of the Marginally Dysfunctional and Voluntarily Disenfranchised<br />
where I am the janitor and an occasional volunteer for<br />
The Whimsical Gardening Club<br />
in the service of<br />
The College of Industrial Salvage<br />
I feel responsible to encourage and inspire similar musing within<br />
☞ The Church of the Wholly Unconvinced ☜<br />
That they would consider the advice of<br />
☞ The Sceptical Omega Brotherhood ☜<br />
of the Apocalypse<br />
and such other Alone Rangers... in caves... smelting words ...<br />
into silver bullets to dissolve weapons of mass destruction..<br />
while encouraging<br />
Einsteinian tools in Newtonian realms,<br />
for<br />
Quixotic and Arthurian goals<br />
of noble and passionate earthlings<br />
to build revolutions without bloodshed<br />
in unfolding wilderness garden-cities.<br />
***</div>
lostinthewoodshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06638690912925773954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9960849.post-80842562094130943152019-09-27T12:05:00.003-05:002019-09-27T12:05:49.467-05:00Government Whore<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: body-font; font-size: 40px; margin-bottom: 0.6em; margin-top: 0.6em; padding: 0px 151.913px 0px 0px;">
The gallery is pleased to present its first solo show by Minnesota-based artist <b style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Aaron Spangler</b> entitled <i style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Government Whore</i>.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: body-font; font-size: 40px; margin-bottom: 0.6em; margin-top: 0.6em; padding: 0px 151.913px 0px 0px;">
The exhibition features a new series of three carved wood bas-relief sculptures painted with black gesso and rubbed with graphite, which has become the artist’s signature. Displayed atop welded steel pedestals that evoke the optimism of the Industrial Revolution or the utopian notions of Constructivist architecture, the roughly hewn yet detailed scenes reveal a more complicated picture of the rural American landscape. Drawing upon the stories of his friends, the artist considers the often-overlooked contributions that our multigenerational community of post-combat veteran soldiers makes to the political, religious, familial culture of middle America.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: body-font; font-size: 40px; margin-bottom: 0.6em; margin-top: 0.6em; padding: 0px 151.913px 0px 0px;">
<i style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">I spent two years on a foreign shore<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Bein’ a government whore<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />I sold my body, they stole my mind<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Tellin’ me, “Boy, now you’re mine.”</i><br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />– Bruce Brummitt</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: body-font; font-size: 40px; margin-bottom: 0.6em; margin-top: 0.6em; padding: 0px 151.913px 0px 0px;">
Bringing to mind Winslow Homer’s “The Veteran In A New Field”, Spangler’s “Government Whore” portrays a shell-shocked war veteran amid the comforts of home, yet still clinging to his SKS rifle while in bed contemplating past sins. Flowers, bundles of sage, a Bowler hat, and a farm house are juxtaposed with a cow skull, animal claws, palm leaves, and an ascending soldier to create a dreamlike sequence of the rivaling environments of Vietnam and the United States.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: body-font; font-size: 40px; margin-bottom: 0.6em; margin-top: 0.6em; padding: 0px 151.913px 0px 0px;">
<i style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Some people say a man is made outta mud<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />A poor man’s made outta muscle and blood<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Muscle and blood and skin and bones<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />A mind that’s a-weak and a back that’s strong<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />You load sixteen tons, what do you get<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Another day older and deeper in debt”</i><br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />– Merle Travis</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: body-font; font-size: 40px; margin-bottom: 0.6em; margin-top: 0.6em; padding: 0px 151.913px 0px 0px;">
In “I Owe My Soul To The Company Store,” the artist employs the narrative within Merle Travis’ classic coal miner’s tale to encourage free associations between America’s history of debt bondage and military enlistment; emblematic images of corrugated cardboard boxes spill out onto a fallen soldier, whose clinched fist clasps the wooden upright of a farm shed – all to the backdrop of what appears to be a Trojan horse jettisoning out of a wooded hillside.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: body-font; font-size: 40px; margin-bottom: 0.6em; margin-top: 0.6em; padding: 0px 151.913px 0px 0px;">
<i style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Your loyalty is not to me<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />But to the stars above.<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />One more cup of coffee for the road,<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />One more cup of coffee ‘fore I go<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />the valley below.</i><br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />– Bob Dylan</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: body-font; font-size: 40px; margin-bottom: 0.6em; margin-top: 0.6em; padding: 0px 151.913px 0px 0px;">
“The Valley Below” celebrates the peace, beauty, idealism, and magic of the undomesticated life “off the grid”, which has often become the destination of many in the hippie movement following wartime. A prominent Barn Owl, which is known to actively hunt for prey only under the cover of darkness, seems to beckon the viewer back to the land and its groves in search of a simpler way of living.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: body-font; font-size: 40px; margin-bottom: 0.6em; margin-top: 0.6em; padding: 0px 151.913px 0px 0px;">
<b style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Aaron Spangler</b> (b. 1971, Minneapolis, MN) lives and works in Park Rapids, MN. He received a BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Minneapolis, MN. His work has been featured in solo exhibitions at Galerie Michael Janssen, Berlin and Zach Feuer Gallery, New York. He has been included in group exhibitions at the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, The Netherlands; The Rubell Family Collection, Miami, FL; and the New York Academy of Art, New York. He is in the permanent collections of the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto and the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA. His work has been featured in <i style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The New York Times</i>, <i style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Artforum</i>, <i style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Flash Art</i>, among others.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: body-font; font-size: 40px; margin-bottom: 0.6em; margin-top: 0.6em; padding: 0px 151.913px 0px 0px;">
—–</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: body-font; font-size: 40px; margin-bottom: 0.6em; margin-top: 0.6em; padding: 0px 151.913px 0px 0px;">
<i style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Selected Writings by Bruce Brummitt</i></div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: body-font; font-size: 40px; margin-bottom: 0.6em; margin-top: 0.6em; padding: 0px 151.913px 0px 0px;">
I spent two years on a foreign shore<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Bein’ a government whore<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />I sold my body, they stole my mind<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Tellin’ me, “Boy, now you’re mine.”</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: body-font; font-size: 40px; margin-bottom: 0.6em; margin-top: 0.6em; padding: 0px 151.913px 0px 0px;">
Those two years ‘neath the southern cross<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Turned out to be my country’s loss<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Kill commies for Christ, the Chaplain told me<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />As I prayed on a wounded knee.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: body-font; font-size: 40px; margin-bottom: 0.6em; margin-top: 0.6em; padding: 0px 151.913px 0px 0px;">
Cuz, “Might makes right, can’t you see boy?”<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />It’s “Our country tis of thee, boy”<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />But killin’ people to set ’em free…boy,<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />seemed like fuckin’ for virginity.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: body-font; font-size: 40px; margin-bottom: 0.6em; margin-top: 0.6em; padding: 0px 151.913px 0px 0px;">
What do you know when you’re only 18<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Twelve years of school’s the only life you’ve ever seen<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Always taught from government books<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Always caught in propaganda’s hooks</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: body-font; font-size: 40px; margin-bottom: 0.6em; margin-top: 0.6em; padding: 0px 151.913px 0px 0px;">
So I moved to the woods, where I tried to forget<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />I had to admit I just didn’t fit<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />I fight the war most nights in my dreams<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />I wake myself to the sound of my own screams<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />But the country didn’t seem to learn from our mistake<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />They’re still fightin’ wars for big money’s sake<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Yellow ribbons decorate our stores<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />We all have become the government’s whores</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: body-font; font-size: 40px; margin-bottom: 0.6em; margin-top: 0.6em; padding: 0px 151.913px 0px 0px;">
What do we learn when we watch our televisions?<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />We’re lettin’ other people make all of our decisions<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Our name’s on the government’s books<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />And we’re all caught in propaganda’s hooks…</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: body-font; font-size: 40px; margin-bottom: 0.6em; margin-top: 0.6em; padding: 0px 151.913px 0px 0px;">
***</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: body-font; font-size: 40px; margin-bottom: 0.6em; margin-top: 0.6em; padding: 0px 151.913px 0px 0px;">
At night, rivers of memories, images swollen as if by rains of the monsoon. I’m drawn into a torrent, dragged downstream…impossible to grasp onto branches of now to pull myself safely to shore. Fog overcomes me. Smoke smelling of gunpowder, diesel, burning hair and flesh. Mere pinholes of light burned into the camera obscura of my soul.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: body-font; font-size: 40px; margin-bottom: 0.6em; margin-top: 0.6em; padding: 0px 151.913px 0px 0px;">
I’m on a mountainside looking through field glasses at the valley below. Nine men in NVA uniforms are walking single file along the berm of a rice paddy. I adjust artillery. A marking round falls 100 meters in front of them. They turn and run the opposite direction. An explosive round falls 50 meters in front of them. They turn and run again. I’m giddy. It’s ducks at the carnival. Explosions fall on top of them. Arms and legs become separated from torsos.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: body-font; font-size: 40px; margin-bottom: 0.6em; margin-top: 0.6em; padding: 0px 151.913px 0px 0px;">
I’m on a small forward support base, a landing zone above the ville of Hiep Duc. It’s my duty to receive grid coordinates of suspected enemy targets and check to be certain there are no friendlies located there. The radio crackles, the warble of a chopper pilot’s voice requesting clearance to engage “three military aged males with packs and weapons evading”. I’ve heard that terminology so often, standard jargon. Shorthand. Usually a cursory glance of maps reveal there should be no friendlies there and I give my permission to fire. This time I hesitate. I ask the pilot his altitude. He says, “three thousand feet, over”. I ask him to take a closer look and call me back. A few minutes later he tells me to disregard his previous transmission. I ask the true nature of his intended target. “A mamasan and two babysans, doing laundry by the river.” My heart pounds out of my chest. How many times had I given my permission to kill mamasans and babysans? How many?</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: body-font; font-size: 40px; margin-bottom: 0.6em; margin-top: 0.6em; padding: 0px 151.913px 0px 0px;">
Asleep in my 8 foot by 10 foot ammo box and sandbag bunker. My first night on the hill. Explosions send sand into my eyes. I sit bolt upright with a deafening ring in my ears. Grabbing bandolier and rifle I dash out of my hootch toward a large boulder. Rounding the corner I run smack dab into another man/child. Vietnamese. The enemy. His eyes mirror the terror in my own. Running away from each other, I hide behind the rock. All hell has broken loose. Machine guns on the hill outside the perimeter are firing for the other team. The wire has been breeched. A man is on fire, dead on his feet. An aircraft named Puff the Magic Dragon is firing mini-guns indiscriminately downward, killing, wounding without regard of faction. My rifle remains silent. By dawn’s early light, our flag was still there. Bodies were laid out like trophy deer at hunting camp. Various grinning men have polaroids made with the kill. I stumble about, staggering, gagging…my senses overwhelming. I seek the chaplain, himself stumbling and staggering…dressed only in his olive drab boxers and steel helmet, dogtags and crucifix. I ask the meaning of all this. “Where is God?”… He, a father figure, an officer… man of the cloth…he must know. But he stares, hypnotically, into the distance…shaking his head and repeating, over and over again…”I don’t know!” I realise, at that moment, no one knows.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: body-font; font-size: 40px; margin-bottom: 0.6em; margin-top: 0.6em; padding: 0px 151.913px 0px 0px;">
***</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: body-font; font-size: 40px; margin-bottom: 0.6em; margin-top: 0.6em; padding: 0px 151.913px 0px 0px;">
upstream from white sand beaches<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />are hamlets, paddies and canyons<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />bombshells unexploded<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />cratered land<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />cratered faces<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />mangled extremities<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />defective births…<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />the villages have memories<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />nightmares and visions<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />the countryside still echoes</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: body-font; font-size: 40px; margin-bottom: 0.6em; margin-top: 0.6em; padding: 0px 151.913px 0px 0px;">
we returned to the comfort<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />of our politics and rhetoric<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />leaving a legacy of disfigurement…<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />scarring persons and landscape<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />poisoned food chain<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />poisoned minds<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />blackened hearts…</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: body-font; font-size: 40px; margin-bottom: 0.6em; margin-top: 0.6em; padding: 0px 151.913px 0px 0px;">
a righteous nation<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />hands over hearts<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />reciting the pledge<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />still preaching to the world<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />hands over ears and eyes<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />still speaking the lies<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />making the guilt safe and tucked away<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />in hospitals and dead-end jobs<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />in parades and sunday services<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />in vfw and legion halls<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />in broken homes<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />in shattered illusions<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />in battered women’s shelters<br style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />in cemeteries</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: body-font; font-size: 40px; margin-bottom: 0.6em; margin-top: 0.6em; padding: 0px 151.913px 0px 0px;">
***</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: body-font; font-size: 40px; margin-bottom: 0.6em; margin-top: 0.6em; padding: 0px 151.913px 0px 0px;">
Out of these nightmares, these screams, I found solace when I returned to the world…but not in the cities’ streets of my youth, or a connection to our nation state…but off, into the countryside, where I’d learned from the peasantry in that foreign land we’d occupied. Connection to the earth, to the cycles of the seasons…the rains, the droughts, the wildness of the forest creatures. Without a piece of land on which I could build a simple dwelling out of the natural materials on hand…the logs, the stones…I would have been homeless, continuing to wander as I did when I first returned. I found that the myth of the rugged individual, man as an island, is a lonely, bitter existence. I learned from so many others who had emigrated away from cities and into the countryside in those days of turbulence…some victims of police brutality during war protests, others abused by families and the system. However they got to the rural areas of America, they sought a simpler existence and some semblance of true freedoms. The immediate actions of chopping wood and carrying water kept us in the now. Seeking shelter and food. Relearning from others that which wasn’t available from our kinfolk…I shoed logging horses in Oregon, cut firewood and made western shirts on a treadle sewing machine in the mountains of Arizona. I was in and out of relationships, struggling with my memories…drugs, alcohol, anger…Only the connection to the earth I found and the home in the earth that I built…the gardens, fruit trees and flowers, brought me some stability, some sanity. And finally allowed me to find a stable relationship with a woman who walks in grace. ..who herself is a veteran.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: body-font; font-size: 40px; margin-bottom: 0.6em; margin-top: 0.6em; padding: 0px 151.913px 0px 0px;">
Four decades have passed and yet I still awaken to the sounds of my own screams…I wonder and ponder, still. What is it all about? To me it is about the directness of my needs, and the connection to others in the greater community of souls. The dying trees we cut to make firewood for heat or cooking. The solar panels we have added over the years to replace kerosene lamps. The music we make around campfires and the meals we share.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: body-font; font-size: 40px; margin-bottom: 0.6em; margin-top: 0.6em; padding: 0px 151.913px 0px 0px;">
The angst that is felt by so many because of wars and intrigue…because of the rhetoric of politics…has become the history of the countryside…and is not unique to our nation state. I already see the waves of a new generation of wanderers, finding their way to a sense of place.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: body-font; font-size: 40px; margin-bottom: 0.6em; margin-top: 0.6em; padding: 0px 151.913px 0px 0px;">
Our home huddled safe in the womb of the earth, its simplicity, its soft, interdependent harmony. A blackened kettle steaming on the fire, drinking coffee…talking of this and that. A feeling, an opinion, a fact.</div>
</div>
lostinthewoodshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06638690912925773954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9960849.post-69264656344301704682019-09-11T10:29:00.001-05:002019-09-11T10:29:07.517-05:00Eighteen Years Ago Today. 9/11/2001<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px;">
As I see it, 9/11/2001 was a real turning point for the US and the world. 19 men with box cutters were able to hijack jetliners and fly them into the WTC and the Pentagon...these men were on Visas from Saudi Arabia, for the most part. Xenophobia raised its ugly head and Nationalism gained a strong foothold. At the time, the budget was in surplus for the second or third year, the CBO had stated that at that rate the entire national debt would be paid off by 2015. Instead, we took a war footing, following PNAC's stated ambitions of a few years earlier...they had been given their "new Pearl Harbor". We attacked Afghanistan, where we are still at war 18 years later (the longest war in our history), and then amped up a war against Iraq under some lies about their having Weapons of Mass Destruction. That government and those people are now ruled by their Shia majority, aligned more closely with Iran. Halliburton and Blackwater (Cheney and Prince) raked in our national treasures. Yes, we elected a black man as President, but about the same percentage of people who support Trump now felt his was an illegitimate presidency...fueled by birthers like Trump himself. Now look at the fine mess this country has gotten itself into. The 9/11 victims' compensation fund wasn't fully authorized until two months ago, after Jon Stewart and many attorneys gave testimony after testimony in Congress.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
I am saddened for the missed opportunity we had...I'm in grief for my country which has taken a turn towards nationalism and has concentration camps set up along the border, with children separated from their families held in cages still to this day. We have Bahamians turned away at our coastline after their country was devastated by a category 5 hurricane which settled over them for days.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
We, at least half of us, are better than this...I don't know how to get to the people who still support nationalism and white supremacy...but, we're all in this sinking boat together...please help bail, literally and figuratively.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
Eighteen years ago, I interrupted <a class="profileLink" data-hovercard-prefer-more-content-show="1" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/user.php?id=100003174665094&extragetparams=%7B%22__tn__%22%3A%22%2CdK-R-R%22%2C%22eid%22%3A%22ARCwqf7J7FnBwGdV6gP5Rp-U7XujXf6nyJO7gMrS4sYV2soX0IfxLSaQJIU0tuUqh6U5KDCXCPofu5l_%22%2C%22fref%22%3A%22mentions%22%7D" href="https://www.facebook.com/cheryl.valois.9?__tn__=%2CdK-R-R&eid=ARCwqf7J7FnBwGdV6gP5Rp-U7XujXf6nyJO7gMrS4sYV2soX0IfxLSaQJIU0tuUqh6U5KDCXCPofu5l_&fref=mentions" style="color: #385898; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Cheryl Valois">Cheryl</a> and her client at the strawbale studio...I brought a small 12 volt television over and plugged it in, adjusted the antenna and the three of us looked on in disbelief.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
On Monday, August 6, 2001, GW Bush's Presidential Daily Brief warned, 36 days before the September 11 attacks, of terrorism threats from Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, including "patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for a hijacking" of US aircraft. This was ignored.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
"At least a dozen Air Force and National Guard bases were within a few moments of flight time to the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Why weren't fighter planes scrambled as soon as it became obvious that the airliners had been hijacked?"</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
The air traffic control system keeps track of all commercial flights and is in continuous radio contact with the pilots. All of these communications are recorded. It would have been immediately apparent to the controllers that something had gone wrong when the planes deviated from their course and radio contact ceased. Why were jet fighters not scrambled to intercept the hijacked planes? Why are transcripts of the pilots' communications with air traffic controllers not released to the public?</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
American Airlines Flight 77, the jet which U.S. officials say crashed into the Pentagon, was hijacked shortly before 9 a.m. -- approximately 15 minutes after the first plane crashed into the World Trade towers. Why were no jet fighters scrambled to intercept the flight?"</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-top: 6px;">
May all the victims Rest in Peace.</div>
</div>
lostinthewoodshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06638690912925773954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9960849.post-70197987318041495222019-01-08T11:55:00.002-06:002019-01-08T11:55:55.586-06:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">“From that time forth he believed that the wise man is one who never sets himself apart from other living things, whether they have speech or not, and in later years he strove long to learn what can be learned, in silence, from the eyes of animals, the flight of birds, the great slow gestures of trees.” </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">― Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br /></span>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnI35B24bxpDx4CxL2r__9yDeNXTKqmqCv4ndGkIQ283fOGoC0RHxDNXMFmec5Z-lVpma4szuxxrW12rLozx3KDZLcXRaM3f-JaPv_WqPu2AB18pAXNK4igZaWpRi_MLONIf8D9Q/s1600/49585651_2028002117288555_2125181214271733760_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="719" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnI35B24bxpDx4CxL2r__9yDeNXTKqmqCv4ndGkIQ283fOGoC0RHxDNXMFmec5Z-lVpma4szuxxrW12rLozx3KDZLcXRaM3f-JaPv_WqPu2AB18pAXNK4igZaWpRi_MLONIf8D9Q/s320/49585651_2028002117288555_2125181214271733760_n.jpg" width="239" /></a></div>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></div>
lostinthewoodshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06638690912925773954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9960849.post-83825069365788113702018-11-20T12:06:00.003-06:002018-11-20T12:06:49.462-06:00Ode to the fires.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I thought I might share this writing from a friend who lost her home in the Taos area many years ago...In light of all the destruction and deaths from fires and the changing climate.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="_3x-2" data-ft="{"tn":"H"}" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">
<div data-ft="{"tn":"H"}" style="font-family: inherit;">
<div class="mtm" style="font-family: inherit; margin-top: 10px;">
<div style="font-family: inherit; position: relative;">
<div class="_5cq3 _1ktf" data-ft="{"tn":"E"}" style="font-family: inherit; margin-left: -12px; position: relative;">
<a ajaxify="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10156142204645889&set=a.54477675888&type=3&eid=ARCJS0am5Wz0oVIyzb_eBwZgpG2hw95VHE3cbJdtw3Xi_CERS3_gOlFp3i7wRIpjC6oKvGukR_Iaamtw&size=960%2C720&source=13&player_origin=story_view" class="_4-eo _2t9n" data-ploi="https://scontent-ort2-2.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/46477138_10156142204660889_4608264071953776640_n.jpg?_nc_cat=103&_nc_ht=scontent-ort2-2.xx&oh=e1a10ae16631abe5025c1620c23dcaa2&oe=5C77DD02" data-render-location="permalink" href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10156142204645889&set=a.54477675888&type=3&eid=ARCJS0am5Wz0oVIyzb_eBwZgpG2hw95VHE3cbJdtw3Xi_CERS3_gOlFp3i7wRIpjC6oKvGukR_Iaamtw" rel="theater" style="box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.05) 0px 1px 1px; color: #365899; cursor: pointer; display: block; font-family: inherit; position: relative; text-decoration: none; width: 500px;"></a></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<br />
<div class="_5pbx userContent _3576" data-ad-preview="message" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id="js_1l" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 6px; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 6px;">
I am an early bird, blessed with an innate affinity with morning. Dawn is my church. First light is a touchstone, a sacred time that spreads a nourishing flood of grace throughout my bones and blood. At dawn, I am filled with the quiet light of hope.</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin: 6px 0px;">
This morning, I see and smell the lingering smoke from far away fires. Even in the midst of this, I feel the sacredness and hope. This feeling does not come lightly, for I have a very personal history with fire. I too have lost from it. Two dear homes were burned to the ground, one by a forest fire. And a third time, there was a near escape when my partner and I took down our tipi shortly before a fire swept through the canyon where we lived.</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin: 6px 0px;">
I have never lost a beloved person to fire, and am not speaking to that. But I have lost much. I have seen my earthly abode and possessions turned to ash. I saw forests of familiar trees turned to regiments of black sticks. The fragrant, earthly landscape of my neighborhood became inescapably grey and lunar. The bitterly pungent smell that lingers after a fire is indelible in me.</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin: 6px 0px;">
My heart is with those who have lost. I will repost a story/poem I wrote about the Lama Fire, which happened some twenty or so years ago. It is dedicated to you, to those who love you, and to our beloved land and all the creatures that have lived upon it.</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin: 6px 0px;">
“a storm of its own"</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin: 6px 0px;">
she awakens<br />to a windy spring day<br />with the wisp of a dream<br />lingering:<br />the dark arm of a neighbor,<span> </span><br />his hand sharply motioning<span> </span><br />away! time to go!</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin: 6px 0px;">
puzzled,<span> </span><br />she brushes the dream aside<br />and rises,<span> </span><br />looking out the window,<br />up the strong and familiar mountain<br />furred by a multitude of trees.</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin: 6px 0px;">
she is drawn outside,<br />into the sage filled yard,<br />a bowl of corn porridge cradled in her hand.<br />she sits in the rocker<br />and eats in the sun.</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin: 6px 0px;">
the wind<span> </span><br />has an irritating edge<br />as the morning moves on.</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin: 6px 0px;">
her dog barks, tail wagging,<br />and she gets up to greet a visitor.<br />in the midst of a hug,<span> </span><br />a glimpse of smoke<span> </span><br />on the horizon--<br />and deep inside<span> </span><br />she feels the stirrings<br />of change.</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin: 6px 0px;">
up the ladder to the roof,<br />they scan with binoculars,<br />then call neighbors,<br />and trundle down the dirt road<span> </span><br />for a closer look.<br />the smoke is coming from behind a ridge<br />several miles away,<br />but the wisp is<br />turning into a blackening column,<br />quickly gathering power,<br />spun on<span> </span><br />by the wind.</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin: 6px 0px;">
the possible loss of a well loved home,<br />of years of work,<br />is not something the mind<br />willingly contemplates.<br />it stays in a safely distant orbit<br />while arms carry furniture and clothes to the truck,<br />while children<br />are gathered in,<br />while animals are herded<span> </span><br />down the mountain.</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin: 6px 0px;">
before driving away,<br />she turns and takes<span> </span><br />one look back:<br />the column of smoke<br />is now a staggering, sweltering phenomena,<br />a mighty hiroshima mushroom, dwarfing<br />the immense desert and mountain<span> </span><br />landscape.</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin: 6px 0px;">
as her eye lingers,<br />out of the roiling cloud<span> </span><br />a broad, glinting bolt of lightning<br />strikes.</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin: 6px 0px;">
the fire<span> </span><br />has created a storm<span> </span><br />of its own.</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin: 6px 0px;">
neighbors gather at the bottom of the road<br />at the side of the gray highway.<br />they look up,<span> </span><br />eyes and mouths solemn and closed<span> </span><br />or wild and wide,<br />some crying and clinging,<br />others clutching anger<span> </span><br />like a solitary shield.<br />they have known each other<span> </span><br />long and well.<br />as they stand together,<span> </span><br />this witnessed power,<span> </span><br />roaring and unquestionable,<br />heaves the earth beneath their feet.</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin: 6px 0px;">
days later,<span> </span><br />when the roadblock is removed,<br />she goes home.<br />her driveway is a dirt track<span> </span><br />through a powdery gray moonscape.<br />the adobe house<br />a lone chimney<span> </span><br />surrounded by debris<br />and fallen walls.<br />even the wood stove, so stout,<br />built to hold fire,<br />is hopelessly warped.</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin: 6px 0px;">
out of habit, her feet<span> </span><br />start off down the path,<br />onto her usual morning walk through the forest.</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin: 6px 0px;">
she is dreading this,<br />and expects the sadness of the trees<br />to engulf her.</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin: 6px 0px;">
down through the gulch,<span> </span><br />scrub oaks gone,<span> </span><br />up the other side, to the ponderosas:<br />miles and rolling hills of straight black sticks<br />silently standing<br />in gray ash.</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin: 6px 0px;">
in pure quiet,<br />she listens.</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin: 6px 0px;">
she has never questioned<span> </span><br />the cycles of life and nature...<br />the expanding creation<br />of art and gardens and children,<span> </span><br />the dutiful and detailed maintenance<span> </span><br />of daily life...<br />but now, she has been yanked<br />into the edgy territory<span> </span><br />of destruction<br />and death.<br />she stands still,<br />and finally sees<br />its fierce necessity<span> </span><br />and stark beauty.<br />and the sorrow she expects to find<span> </span><br />in this former forest<br />is instead<span> </span><br />an immense feeling<span> </span><br />of clarity and relief.<br />the accumulated years of weighty growth<br />are gone.<br />the place<span> </span><br />is clean.</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin: 6px 0px;">
she moves out of the burnt forest and into the fields,<br />to the place that was her earthly church.<br />she sees her cherished grandmother tree,<br />now fallen.<br />one more letting go.</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin: 6px 0px;">
she looks down the fields<br />toward where her home once stood<br />and the green of the irrigated alfalfa<br />is shocking against the miles of blackness.<br />her eyes travel down the slope of them<span> </span><br />and are caught<br />by a slight movement...<br />she moves toward it,<span> </span><br />through the moist grassiness,<br />then stops<span> </span><br />at this sight:<br />an old man in blue jeans and plaid shirt<br />is crying.<br />he is on his knees,<span> </span><br />his eyes<span> </span><br />on a cream colored mare<span> </span><br />standing in emerald clover,<span> </span><br />her new foal, bright and white,<br />standing daintily beside her.</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin: 6px 0px;">
they are brilliantly set<span> </span><br />against the black remains<br />of a landscape,<br />on the fragile, sacred border<br />between beginning<br />and end.</div>
<div style="display: inline; font-family: inherit; margin: 6px 0px 0px;">
***<br />robin whitley<span> </span><br />la lama, new mexico<br />9/27/2009</div>
</div>
</div>
lostinthewoodshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06638690912925773954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9960849.post-81168785384630117692018-08-17T10:59:00.003-05:002018-08-17T10:59:38.720-05:00From a long ago classmate of mine...a conservative.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Security Clearances Primer: When my husband retired from The Pentagon, he kept his super secret top security clearance. It allowed him to continue his classified work in what we call "The Dark World" of classified programs for Defense protecting those who protect all of you out there reading this. He met with Generals, Congressmen, testified in Washington before committee's, etc. about the work on classified programs. He may be retired but all that classified information </span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">still resides in his head. The Armed Forces committee could call him tomorrow to come testify about any of his programs. His colleagues can consult with him. Just because he retired, doesn't mean the programs he led ended. There is one and only one reason to revoke a security clearance- the individual in some way failed to keep their security oath. I won't bore anyone with the ways that can happen but suffice to say, criticizing the President is NOT one of them. For all of you who keep cheering Trump on no matter what he does, stop and think how you would have responded if President Clinton, Bush, or Obama had abused their power this way. Few of you have any idea of the national security damage and the risk to our intelligence and other sectors he just caused. But we do at our house. Wake up People! This is what dictators do. They silence people who speak out against them by whatever means are at their disposal. What's next? Jailing people? He has crossed the line and it doesn't matter what the state of our economy is or our job markets or your 401K. This is an assault on the institutions that protect YOUR freedom.</span></div>
lostinthewoodshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06638690912925773954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9960849.post-36698810618200757302018-07-15T10:54:00.002-05:002018-07-15T10:58:51.031-05:00The Birth of Predatory Capitalism<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="section-inner sectionLayout--insetColumn" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.84); font-family: medium-content-sans-serif-font, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Open Sans", "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 20px; margin: 0px auto; max-width: 740px; padding-left: 20px; padding-right: 20px; position: relative; width: 740px;">
<h1 class="graf graf--h3 graf--leading graf--title" id="77c0" name="77c0" style="--margin-top-multiplier: 0; font-family: medium-content-sans-serif-font, "Lucida Grande", "Lucida Sans Unicode", "Lucida Sans", Geneva, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 42px; letter-spacing: -0.015em; line-height: 1.04; margin: 0px 0px 0px -2.63px; padding-top: 5px !important;">
</h1>
<h2 class="graf graf--h4 graf-after--h3 graf--subtitle" id="6ac0" name="6ac0" style="--baseline-multiplier: 0.22; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.54); font-family: medium-content-sans-serif-font, "Lucida Grande", "Lucida Sans Unicode", "Lucida Sans", Geneva, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 28px; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: -0.012em; line-height: 1.22; margin: 5px 0px 22px -1.75px;">
How the Free World Took Four Giant Leaps to Self-Destruction</h2>
</div>
<div class="section-inner sectionLayout--fullWidth" style="background-color: white; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.84); font-family: medium-content-sans-serif-font, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Open Sans", "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 20px; position: relative; width: 1519.2px;">
<br />
<br />
<figure class="graf graf--figure graf--layoutFillWidth graf-after--h4" data-scroll="native" id="c685" name="c685" style="box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; margin: 44px 0px 80px; outline: 0px; position: relative; user-select: auto; z-index: 100;"><div class="aspectRatioPlaceholder is-locked" style="margin: 0px auto; position: relative; width: 1519.2px;">
<div class="aspectRatioPlaceholder-fill" style="padding-bottom: 855.3px;">
</div>
<div class="progressiveMedia js-progressiveMedia graf-image is-canvasLoaded is-imageLoaded" data-height="1080" data-image-id="1*1win0l8kirK3zFv-yy7D5Q.jpeg" data-scroll="native" data-width="1920" style="background: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; height: 855.3px; left: 0px; margin: auto; max-width: 100%; position: absolute; top: 0px; transition: background 0.2s; width: 1519.2px;">
<canvas class="progressiveMedia-canvas js-progressiveMedia-canvas" height="41" style="backface-visibility: hidden; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; height: 855.3px; left: 0px; margin: auto; opacity: 0; position: absolute; top: 0px; transition: visibility 0s linear 0.5s, opacity 0.1s 0.4s; vertical-align: baseline; visibility: hidden; width: 1519.2px;" width="75"></canvas><img class="progressiveMedia-image js-progressiveMedia-image" data-src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/2000/1*1win0l8kirK3zFv-yy7D5Q.jpeg" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/2000/1*1win0l8kirK3zFv-yy7D5Q.jpeg" style="backface-visibility: hidden; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; height: 855.3px; left: 0px; margin: auto; opacity: 1; position: absolute; top: 0px; transition: visibility 0s linear 0s, opacity 0.4s 0s; visibility: visible; width: 1519.2px; z-index: 100;" /></div>
</div>
</figure></div>
<div class="section-inner sectionLayout--insetColumn" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.84); font-family: medium-content-sans-serif-font, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Open Sans", "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 20px; margin: 0px auto; max-width: 740px; padding-left: 20px; padding-right: 20px; position: relative; width: 740px;">
<div class="graf graf--p graf-after--figure" id="a2f3" name="a2f3" style="--baseline-multiplier: 0.17; font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58; margin-top: 38px;">
A (successful) American politician who cries: <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://How Predatory Capitalism Was Born How the World Took Four Steps to Self-Destruction American politicians who cry “God is a white supremacist!” Neo-nazis in the Bundestag. Denmark making immigrant ghettoes. How did we get here? To a world where the forces of intolerance, illiberalism, and rage are on the rise, and those of decency, wisdom, and civilization? Is something like a new Dark Age falling? I think it has everything to do with predatory capitalism, and so I want to tell you a story. Of how it came to be born, in four steps, which span three decades. During the 2000s, the economy of the rich world underwent something like a phase transition. It became “financialized”, as the jargon goes—which simply means that finance came to make up a greater and greater share of the economy. Hedge funds and investment banks and shady financial vehicles of all kinds went from a modest portion of the economy, to making up a huge chunk of it—around half, in some countries. Now, what was “financialization” for? What were all these bankers, hedge fund managers, investors, and so on, doing? The answer is: nothing. Nothing of value, anyways. They were simply placing bets…with each other. Bets on bets on bets, meta-bets. Economists, who have something like an inferiority complex, envious of swashbuckling bankers, bought their marketing pitch hog, line, and sinker: “we’re going to reduce risk! Everyone will benefit!” But no such thing was happening—and anyone could see it. Risk was being massively amplified, in fact, because every time a speculator made a billion dollar bet with another, they were both betting with the same pool of money, essentially. Whose money? It wasn’t theirs—it was everyone’s. Pensions, savings, bank accounts, earnings, retirement funds. All that being bet on bets on bets on bets…which amounted to nothing. But what if all the bets went south at once? First, I want you to really understand that what was happening was a zero-sum game, where one had to lose for another to win. Imagine there are three of us, in a little stone age tribe, with a hundred pebbles each. We spend all day every day finding new ways to lend pebbles to each other, to bet them on who’ll blink first, or even bets on those bets, and so on. In our little economy, does anyone ever end up better off? Does anyone, for example, discover antibiotics, or even invent the wheel? Nope. We’re just fools, who’ll never accomplish, learn, or create anything, sitting around playing a zero-sum game, in which no real value is ever created. The pebbles never become anything more valuable, like, for example, books, symphonies, knowledge, or medicine. All that is exactly what was happening during the phase of financialization. But financialization didn’t just have a direct cost—no value being created, just men in shiny suits betting pebbles on who’d blink first. It also had an opportunity cost. As finance grew to be a larger and larger share of the economy, so the wind got sucked out of the sails of the “real economy”, as American economists put it, which simply means people doing the work that actually does create value—teachers, nurses, engineers, artisans, bakers, small-town factories, and so on. Think about it simply: the more money that was burned up in speculating, the less that was available for making things of genuine value. So the incomes of all these people—those in the “real economy”— began to stagnate. New schools and hospitals and energy grids and so on weren’t built—all the money was going towards speculating on the backs the old ones, sometimes, often, on their failures. A black hole was growing at the heart of the economy—but according to pundits, it was the sun itself. Everything was upside down. The bets were indeed about to all go south at once—only no one knew understood how or why yet. How was the real economy to survive, then? Another hidden effect of financialization was super-concentration—the second force in the rise of predatory capitalism. Mom-and-pop capitalism is a healthy and beautiful thing, an economy of a million little shops, bakeries, artisans—but it takes only a modest attachment to a profit motive. But thanks to the rise of massive, global speculation, only aggressive quarterly profit-maximization was allowed. CEO earnings were hitched to share prices, and your share price only went up if your earnings did, relentlessly, illogicaly, crazily, every single quarter, instead of stabilizing at a happy, gentle amount—and so the only way left, in the end, to achieve it, was to build titanic monopolies, which could squeeze people for every dime. Once the economy had Macy’s, JC Penney, K-Mart, Toys-R-Us and Sears. Now it has Walmart. The story was repeated across every single industry. Amazon, Google, Apple. A new age of monopoly arose. But monopolies had an effect, too. The third force in the rise of predatory capitalism was the implosion of the institution formerly known as the job. Now, just before peak financialization, beginning in the 1990s, many jobs were “offshored.” That’s a polite way to say that the speculators above discovered that companies were more profitable when they evaded as much of human civilization as possible. Find a country with no labour laws, no protections, no standards, no rule of law at all, in fact—and send jobs there. That way, you wouldn’t have to pay for pensions, healthcare, childcare, insurance, and so on. Cost savings! Efficiency! Synergies, even—you could make everything in that one sweatshop. We’re used to thinking that offshoring “took” jobs in rich countries. But the truth is subtler—and more ruinous. They blew apart the idea of a job as we used to know it. As jobs went to countries without good governance, decent labour laws, a boomerang effect happened. The machine discovered that it could do in rich countries what it had done in poor ones—and so it began stripping away everything that made a job “a job.” Because the economy was increasingly composed of monopolies, giant companies, banks, and investors had the power to do so with impunity. Speculators began raiding pension funds. Managers began stripping away benefits of every kind, from childcare, to vacations, to healthcare. Until, at last, in a final triumph, the “at-will job” and the “zero-hours contract” were created—social contracts that were only “jobs” in name, but offered less than no stability, security, mobility, or opportunity. People who didn’t have benefits could now be fired on a whim—and so now they bore all the risk. But the risk of what, precisely? Remember those speculators? Taking huge risks, betting billions with each other, on exactly nothing of real value? Risk had come full circle. Now it was the average person in the real economy who bore all the risks of these bets going bad. If the bets with south, who’d take the hit? All those people with zero benefits, no protection, no safety, all those people for whom “a job” now meant something more like “a temporary soul-crushing way to avoid destitution.” They’re the ones who’d be fired, instantly, lose what little savings they had, have their already dwindling incomes slashed, be ruined. And then the bets went bad. As bets tend to do, when you make too many of them, on foolish things. What had the speculators been betting with each other on? As it turns out, largely on property prices. But people without the stable jobs that had kept such a huge property bubble going didn’t have growing incomes anymore. Property prices couldn’t keep rising. Bang! The financial system fell like a row of dominoes. It turned out that everyone had bet property prices would go on rising—and on the other side of that bet was…everyone else. All of them had been betting on the same thing—“we all bet prices will keep rising forever!” The losses were so vast, and so widespread, that the whole global financial system buckled. The banks didn’t have the money to pay each other for these foolish bets—how could they have? Each one had bet the whole house on the same thing, and they all would have gone bankrupt to each other. LOL—do you see the fatal stupidity of it all yet? So in had to step governments. They bailed out the banks—but didn’t “restructure” them, which is to say, fire their managers, wash out their shareholders, and sell off the bad loans and bets. They just threw money at them—and took those bad bets onto the nation’s books, instead. It was the most foolish decision since the Great Depression. Why? Well, now governments had trillions in—pow!—sudden debt. What were they to do? How would they pay it off? Now, you might think that Presidents are very intelligent people, but unfortunately, they are just politicians. And so instead of doing what they should have done—printing money, simply cancelling each others’ debts to each other, which were for fictional speculation anyways—they decided that they were “broke”. Bankrupt, even—even though a country can’t go bankrupt, anymore than you could if you could print your own currency at home, and spend it everywhere. What does a bankrupt have to do? Liquidate. So governments began to slash investment in social systems of all kinds. Healthcare systems, pension systems, insurance systems, media and energy systems. This was the fourth step in the birth of predatory capitalism: austerity. But people’s incomes were already dwindling, thanks to the first three steps—as jobs not just disappeared in quantity, but also imploded in quality, as monopolies grew in power, and as pointless, destructive, zero-sum speculation sucked the life out of the real economy. The only thing keeping the real economy going at this point was investment by the government—after all, the speculators were speculating, not investing for the long run. It was governments that were effectively keeping economies afloat, by providing a floor for income, by anchoring economies with a vast pool of stable, safe, real, secure jobs, and investinging dollars back in societies short of them. And yet, at the precise moment that governments needed to create more of precisely that, they did just the opposite. Snap! Economies broke like twigs. The people formerly known as the middle class had been caught in between the pincers of these four forces—financialization, monopoly, the implosion of the job, and austerity. Together, they shattered what was left of rich economies—to the point that today, incomes are stagnant across the rich world, even in much vaunted Scandinavia, while living standards are falling in many rich countries, like the US and UK. What do people do as hardship begins to bite—especially those who expected comfortable, easy lives? They become reactionary, lashing out violently. They seek safety in the arms of demagogues. That doesn’t mean, as American pundits naively think, that “poor people become authoritarians!” Quite the opposite. It’s the once prosperous but now imploded middle which turns on the classes, ethnicities, groups, below it. The people who expected and felt entitled to lives of safety and security and stability—who anticipated being at the top of a tidy little hierarchy, the boss of this or that, the chieftain of that or this, but now find themselves adrift and unmoored in a collapsing society, powerless. That gap between expectation and reality is what ruinous. They retain a desperate need to be atop a hierarchy, to be above someone, the entitled imploded middles—and what has happened in history, time and again, is that they turn to those who promise them just that superiority, by turning on those below them. Even if, especially if, it is in the extreme, irrational, yet perfectly logical form of supremacy and dominion over the weak, the despised, and the impure. And that is what all today’s reactionary movements—which I call the Faction—really are. And so here we are, you and I. On the cusp of something like a new dark age. A time where the shadows in human hearts shine as bright and blinding as suns. And once again, it is the folly of wise men that led us here. Umair July 2018 but this was also an effect of financialization—“stock markets rewarded” companies for doing it, which is another way to say that" href="http://how%20predatory%20capitalism%20was%20born%20how%20the%20world%20took%20four%20steps%20to%20self-destruction%20%20american%20politicians%20who%20cry%20%E2%80%9Cgod%20is%20a%20white%20supremacist%21%E2%80%9D%20neo-nazis%20in%20the%20bundestag.%20denmark%20making%20immigrant%20ghettoes.%20%20%20how%20did%20we%20get%20here/?%20To%20a%20world%20where%20the%20forces%20of%20intolerance,%20illiberalism,%20and%20rage%20are%20on%20the%20rise,%20and%20those%20of%20decency,%20wisdom,%20and%20civilization?%20Is%20something%20like%20a%20new%20Dark%20Age%20falling?%20%20I%20think%20it%20has%20everything%20to%20do%20with%20predatory%20capitalism,%20and%20so%20I%20want%20to%20tell%20you%20a%20story.%20Of%20how%20it%20came%20to%20be%20born,%20in%20four%20steps,%20which%20span%20three%20decades.%20%20During%20the%202000s,%20the%20economy%20of%20the%20rich%20world%20underwent%20something%20like%20a%20phase%20transition.%20It%20became%20%E2%80%9Cfinancialized%E2%80%9D,%20as%20the%20jargon%20goes%E2%80%94which%20simply%20means%20that%20finance%20came%20to%20make%20up%20a%20greater%20and%20greater%20share%20of%20the%20economy.%20Hedge%20funds%20and%20investment%20banks%20and%20shady%20financial%20vehicles%20of%20all%20kinds%20went%20from%20a%20modest%20portion%20of%20the%20economy,%20to%20making%20up%20a%20huge%20chunk%20of%20it%E2%80%94around%20half,%20in%20some%20countries.%20%20%20Now,%20what%20was%20%E2%80%9Cfinancialization%E2%80%9D%20for?%20What%20were%20all%20these%20bankers,%20hedge%20fund%20managers,%20investors,%20and%20so%20on,%20doing?%20The%20answer%20is:%20nothing.%20Nothing%20of%20value,%20anyways.%20They%20were%20simply%20placing%20bets%E2%80%A6with%20each%20other.%20Bets%20on%20bets%20on%20bets,%20meta-bets.%20Economists,%20who%20have%20something%20like%20an%20inferiority%20complex,%20envious%20of%20swashbuckling%20bankers,%20bought%20their%20marketing%20pitch%20hog,%20line,%20and%20sinker:%20%E2%80%9Cwe%E2%80%99re%20going%20to%20reduce%20risk!%20Everyone%20will%20benefit!%E2%80%9D%20But%20no%20such%20thing%20was%20happening%E2%80%94and%20anyone%20could%20see%20it.%20Risk%20was%20being%20massively%20amplified,%20in%20fact,%20because%20every%20time%20a%20speculator%20made%20a%20billion%20dollar%20bet%20with%20another,%20they%20were%20both%20betting%20with%20the%20same%20pool%20of%20money,%20essentially.%20Whose%20money?%20It%20wasn%E2%80%99t%20theirs%E2%80%94it%20was%20everyone%E2%80%99s.%20Pensions,%20savings,%20bank%20accounts,%20earnings,%20retirement%20funds.%20All%20that%20being%20bet%20on%20bets%20on%20bets%20on%20bets%E2%80%A6which%20amounted%20to%20nothing.%20But%20what%20if%20all%20the%20bets%20went%20south%20at%20once?%20%20%20%20First,%20I%20want%20you%20to%20really%20understand%20that%20what%20was%20happening%20was%20a%20zero-sum%20game,%20where%20one%20had%20to%20lose%20for%20another%20to%20win.%20Imagine%20there%20are%20three%20of%20us,%20in%20a%20little%20stone%20age%20tribe,%20with%20a%20hundred%20pebbles%20each.%20We%20spend%20all%20day%20every%20day%20finding%20new%20ways%20to%20lend%20pebbles%20to%20each%20other,%20to%20bet%20them%20on%20who%E2%80%99ll%20blink%20first,%20or%20even%20bets%20on%20those%20bets,%20and%20so%20on.%20In%20our%20little%20economy,%20does%20anyone%20ever%20end%20up%20better%20off?%20Does%20anyone,%20for%20example,%20discover%20antibiotics,%20or%20even%20invent%20the%20wheel?%20Nope.%20We%E2%80%99re%20just%20fools,%20who%E2%80%99ll%20never%20accomplish,%20learn,%20or%20create%20anything,%20sitting%20around%20playing%20a%20zero-sum%20game,%20in%20which%20no%20real%20value%20is%20ever%20created.%20The%20pebbles%20never%20become%20anything%20more%20valuable,%20like,%20for%20example,%20books,%20symphonies,%20knowledge,%20or%20medicine.%20All%20that%20is%20exactly%20what%20was%20happening%20during%20the%20phase%20of%20financialization.%20%20But%20financialization%20didn%E2%80%99t%20just%20have%20a%20direct%20cost%E2%80%94no%20value%20being%20created,%20just%20men%20in%20shiny%20suits%20betting%20pebbles%20on%20who%E2%80%99d%20blink%20first.%20It%20also%20had%20an%20opportunity%20cost.%20As%20finance%20grew%20to%20be%20a%20larger%20and%20larger%20share%20of%20the%20economy,%20so%20the%20wind%20got%20sucked%20out%20of%20the%20sails%20of%20the%20%E2%80%9Creal%20economy%E2%80%9D,%20as%20American%20economists%20put%20it,%20which%20simply%20means%20people%20doing%20the%20work%20that%20actually%20does%20create%20value%E2%80%94teachers,%20nurses,%20engineers,%20artisans,%20bakers,%20small-town%20factories,%20and%20so%20on.%20Think%20about%20it%20simply:%20the%20more%20money%20that%20was%20burned%20up%20in%20speculating,%20the%20less%20that%20was%20available%20for%20making%20things%20of%20genuine%20value.%20So%20the%20incomes%20of%20all%20these%20people%E2%80%94those%20in%20the%20%E2%80%9Creal%20economy%E2%80%9D%E2%80%94%20began%20to%20stagnate.%20New%20schools%20and%20hospitals%20and%20energy%20grids%20and%20so%20on%20weren%E2%80%99t%20built%E2%80%94all%20the%20money%20was%20going%20towards%20speculating%20on%20the%20backs%20the%20old%20ones,%20sometimes,%20often,%20on%20their%20failures.%20A%20black%20hole%20was%20growing%20at%20the%20heart%20of%20the%20economy%E2%80%94but%20according%20to%20pundits,%20it%20was%20the%20sun%20itself.%20Everything%20was%20upside%20down.%20The%20bets%20were%20indeed%20about%20to%20all%20go%20south%20at%20once%E2%80%94only%20no%20one%20knew%20understood%20how%20or%20why%20yet.%20%20How%20was%20the%20real%20economy%20to%20survive,%20then?%20Another%20hidden%20effect%20of%20financialization%20was%20super-concentration%E2%80%94the%20second%20force%20in%20the%20rise%20of%20predatory%20capitalism.%20Mom-and-pop%20capitalism%20is%20a%20healthy%20and%20beautiful%20thing,%20an%20economy%20of%20a%20million%20little%20shops,%20bakeries,%20artisans%E2%80%94but%20it%20takes%20only%20a%20modest%20attachment%20to%20a%20profit%20motive.%20But%20thanks%20to%20the%20rise%20of%20massive,%20global%20speculation,%20only%20aggressive%20quarterly%20profit-maximization%20was%20allowed.%20CEO%20earnings%20were%20hitched%20to%20share%20prices,%20and%20your%20share%20price%20only%20went%20up%20if%20your%20earnings%20did,%20relentlessly,%20illogicaly,%20crazily,%20every%20single%20quarter,%20instead%20of%20stabilizing%20at%20a%20happy,%20gentle%20amount%E2%80%94and%20so%20the%20only%20way%20left,%20in%20the%20end,%20to%20achieve%20it,%20was%20to%20build%20titanic%20monopolies,%20which%20could%20squeeze%20people%20for%20every%20dime.%20Once%20the%20economy%20had%20Macy%E2%80%99s,%20JC%20Penney,%20K-Mart,%20Toys-R-Us%20and%20Sears.%20Now%20it%20has%20Walmart.%20The%20story%20was%20repeated%20across%20every%20single%20industry.%20Amazon,%20Google,%20Apple.%20A%20new%20age%20of%20monopoly%20arose.%20%20%20But%20monopolies%20had%20an%20effect,%20too.%20The%20third%20force%20in%20the%20rise%20of%20predatory%20capitalism%20was%20the%20implosion%20of%20the%20institution%20formerly%20known%20as%20the%20job.%20Now,%20just%20before%20peak%20financialization,%20beginning%20in%20the%201990s,%20many%20jobs%20were%20%E2%80%9Coffshored.%E2%80%9D%20That%E2%80%99s%20a%20polite%20way%20to%20say%20that%20the%20speculators%20above%20discovered%20that%20companies%20were%20more%20profitable%20when%20they%20evaded%20as%20much%20of%20human%20civilization%20as%20possible.%20Find%20a%20country%20with%20no%20labour%20laws,%20no%20protections,%20no%20standards,%20no%20rule%20of%20law%20at%20all,%20in%20fact%E2%80%94and%20send%20jobs%20there.%20That%20way,%20you%20wouldn%E2%80%99t%20have%20to%20pay%20for%20pensions,%20healthcare,%20childcare,%20insurance,%20and%20so%20on.%20Cost%20savings!%20Efficiency!%20Synergies,%20even%E2%80%94you%20could%20make%20everything%20in%20that%20one%20sweatshop.%20%20%20We%E2%80%99re%20used%20to%20thinking%20that%20offshoring%20%E2%80%9Ctook%E2%80%9D%20jobs%20in%20rich%20countries.%20But%20the%20truth%20is%20subtler%E2%80%94and%20more%20ruinous.%20They%20blew%20apart%20the%20idea%20of%20a%20job%20as%20we%20used%20to%20know%20it.%20As%20jobs%20went%20to%20countries%20without%20good%20governance,%20decent%20labour%20laws,%20a%20boomerang%20effect%20happened.%20The%20machine%20discovered%20that%20it%20could%20do%20in%20rich%20countries%20what%20it%20had%20done%20in%20poor%20ones%E2%80%94and%20so%20it%20began%20stripping%20away%20everything%20that%20made%20a%20job%20%E2%80%9Ca%20job.%E2%80%9D%20Because%20the%20economy%20was%20increasingly%20composed%20of%20monopolies,%20giant%20companies,%20banks,%20and%20investors%20had%20the%20power%20to%20do%20so%20with%20impunity.%20Speculators%20began%20raiding%20pension%20funds.%20Managers%20began%20stripping%20away%20benefits%20of%20every%20kind,%20from%20childcare,%20to%20vacations,%20to%20healthcare.%20Until,%20at%20last,%20in%20a%20final%20triumph,%20the%20%E2%80%9Cat-will%20job%E2%80%9D%20and%20the%20%E2%80%9Czero-hours%20contract%E2%80%9D%20were%20created%E2%80%94social%20contracts%20that%20were%20only%20%E2%80%9Cjobs%E2%80%9D%20in%20name,%20but%20offered%20less%20than%20no%20stability,%20security,%20mobility,%20or%20opportunity.%20People%20who%20didn%E2%80%99t%20have%20benefits%20could%20now%20be%20fired%20on%20a%20whim%E2%80%94and%20so%20now%20they%20bore%20all%20the%20risk.%20But%20the%20risk%20of%20what,%20precisely?%20%20Remember%20those%20speculators?%20Taking%20huge%20risks,%20betting%20billions%20with%20each%20other,%20on%20exactly%20nothing%20of%20real%20value?%20Risk%20had%20come%20full%20circle.%20Now%20it%20was%20the%20average%20person%20in%20the%20real%20economy%20who%20bore%20all%20the%20risks%20of%20these%20bets%20going%20bad.%20If%20the%20bets%20with%20south,%20who%E2%80%99d%20take%20the%20hit?%20All%20those%20people%20with%20zero%20benefits,%20no%20protection,%20no%20safety,%20all%20those%20people%20for%20whom%20%E2%80%9Ca%20job%E2%80%9D%20now%20meant%20something%20more%20like%20%E2%80%9Ca%20temporary%20soul-crushing%20way%20to%20avoid%20destitution.%E2%80%9D%20They%E2%80%99re%20the%20ones%20who%E2%80%99d%20be%20fired,%20instantly,%20lose%20what%20little%20savings%20they%20had,%20have%20their%20already%20dwindling%20incomes%20slashed,%20be%20ruined.%20%20And%20then%20the%20bets%20went%20bad.%20As%20bets%20tend%20to%20do,%20when%20you%20make%20too%20many%20of%20them,%20on%20foolish%20things.%20What%20had%20the%20speculators%20been%20betting%20with%20each%20other%20on?%20As%20it%20turns%20out,%20largely%20on%20property%20prices.%20But%20people%20without%20the%20stable%20jobs%20that%20had%20kept%20such%20a%20huge%20property%20bubble%20going%20didn%E2%80%99t%20have%20growing%20incomes%20anymore.%20Property%20prices%20couldn%E2%80%99t%20keep%20rising.%20Bang!%20The%20financial%20system%20fell%20like%20a%20row%20of%20dominoes.%20It%20turned%20out%20that%20everyone%20had%20bet%20property%20prices%20would%20go%20on%20rising%E2%80%94and%20on%20the%20other%20side%20of%20that%20bet%20was%E2%80%A6everyone%20else.%20All%20of%20them%20had%20been%20betting%20on%20the%20same%20thing%E2%80%94%E2%80%9Cwe%20all%20bet%20prices%20will%20keep%20rising%20forever!%E2%80%9D%20%20The%20losses%20were%20so%20vast,%20and%20so%20widespread,%20that%20the%20whole%20global%20financial%20system%20buckled.%20The%20banks%20didn%E2%80%99t%20have%20the%20money%20to%20pay%20each%20other%20for%20these%20foolish%20bets%E2%80%94how%20could%20they%20have?%20Each%20one%20had%20bet%20the%20whole%20house%20on%20the%20same%20thing,%20and%20they%20all%20would%20have%20gone%20bankrupt%20to%20each%20other.%20LOL%E2%80%94do%20you%20see%20the%20fatal%20stupidity%20of%20it%20all%20yet?%20%20So%20in%20had%20to%20step%20governments.%20They%20bailed%20out%20the%20banks%E2%80%94but%20didn%E2%80%99t%20%E2%80%9Crestructure%E2%80%9D%20them,%20which%20is%20to%20say,%20fire%20their%20managers,%20wash%20out%20their%20shareholders,%20and%20sell%20off%20the%20bad%20loans%20and%20bets.%20They%20just%20threw%20money%20at%20them%E2%80%94and%20took%20those%20bad%20bets%20onto%20the%20nation%E2%80%99s%20books,%20instead.%20It%20was%20the%20most%20foolish%20decision%20since%20the%20Great%20Depression.%20Why?%20%20Well,%20now%20governments%20had%20trillions%20in%E2%80%94pow!%E2%80%94sudden%20debt.%20What%20were%20they%20to%20do?%20How%20would%20they%20pay%20it%20off?%20Now,%20you%20might%20think%20that%20Presidents%20are%20very%20intelligent%20people,%20but%20unfortunately,%20they%20are%20just%20politicians.%20And%20so%20instead%20of%20doing%20what%20they%20should%20have%20done%E2%80%94printing%20money,%20simply%20cancelling%20each%20others%E2%80%99%20debts%20to%20each%20other,%20which%20were%20for%20fictional%20speculation%20anyways%E2%80%94they%20decided%20that%20they%20were%20%E2%80%9Cbroke%E2%80%9D.%20Bankrupt,%20even%E2%80%94even%20though%20a%20country%20can%E2%80%99t%20go%20bankrupt,%20anymore%20than%20you%20could%20if%20you%20could%20print%20your%20own%20currency%20at%20home,%20and%20spend%20it%20everywhere.%20%20%20What%20does%20a%20bankrupt%20have%20to%20do?%20Liquidate.%20So%20governments%20began%20to%20slash%20investment%20in%20social%20systems%20of%20all%20kinds.%20Healthcare%20systems,%20pension%20systems,%20insurance%20systems,%20media%20and%20energy%20systems.%20This%20was%20the%20fourth%20step%20in%20the%20birth%20of%20predatory%20capitalism:%20austerity.%20%20But%20people%E2%80%99s%20incomes%20were%20already%20dwindling,%20thanks%20to%20the%20first%20three%20steps%E2%80%94as%20jobs%20not%20just%20disappeared%20in%20quantity,%20but%20also%20imploded%20in%20quality,%20as%20monopolies%20grew%20in%20power,%20and%20as%20pointless,%20destructive,%20zero-sum%20speculation%20sucked%20the%20life%20out%20of%20the%20real%20economy.%20The%20only%20thing%20keeping%20the%20real%20economy%20going%20at%20this%20point%20was%20investment%20by%20the%20government%E2%80%94after%20all,%20the%20speculators%20were%20speculating,%20not%20investing%20for%20the%20long%20run.%20It%20was%20governments%20that%20were%20effectively%20keeping%20economies%20afloat,%20by%20providing%20a%20floor%20for%20income,%20by%20anchoring%20economies%20with%20a%20vast%20pool%20of%20stable,%20safe,%20real,%20secure%20jobs,%20and%20investinging%20dollars%20back%20in%20societies%20short%20of%20them.%20And%20yet,%20at%20the%20precise%20moment%20that%20governments%20needed%20to%20create%20more%20of%20precisely%20that,%20they%20did%20just%20the%20opposite.%20%20Snap!%20Economies%20broke%20like%20twigs.%20The%20people%20formerly%20known%20as%20the%20middle%20class%20had%20been%20caught%20in%20between%20the%20pincers%20of%20these%20four%20forces%E2%80%94financialization,%20monopoly,%20the%20implosion%20of%20the%20job,%20and%20austerity.%20Together,%20they%20shattered%20what%20was%20left%20of%20rich%20economies%E2%80%94to%20the%20point%20that%20today,%20incomes%20are%20stagnant%20across%20the%20rich%20world,%20even%20in%20much%20vaunted%20Scandinavia,%20while%20living%20standards%20are%20falling%20in%20many%20rich%20countries,%20like%20the%20US%20and%20UK.%20%20%20What%20do%20people%20do%20as%20hardship%20begins%20to%20bite%E2%80%94especially%20those%20who%20expected%20comfortable,%20easy%20lives?%20They%20become%20reactionary,%20lashing%20out%20violently.%20They%20seek%20safety%20in%20the%20arms%20of%20demagogues.%20That%20doesn%E2%80%99t%20mean,%20as%20American%20pundits%20naively%20think,%20that%20%E2%80%9Cpoor%20people%20become%20authoritarians!%E2%80%9D%20Quite%20the%20opposite.%20%20%20It%E2%80%99s%20the%20once%20prosperous%20but%20now%20imploded%20middle%20which%20turns%20on%20the%20classes,%20ethnicities,%20groups,%20below%20it.%20The%20people%20who%20expected%20and%20felt%20entitled%20to%20lives%20of%20safety%20and%20security%20and%20stability%E2%80%94who%20anticipated%20being%20at%20the%20top%20of%20a%20tidy%20little%20hierarchy,%20the%20boss%20of%20this%20or%20that,%20the%20chieftain%20of%20that%20or%20this,%20but%20now%20find%20themselves%20adrift%20and%20unmoored%20in%20a%20collapsing%20society,%20powerless.%20That%20gap%20between%20expectation%20and%20reality%20is%20what%20ruinous.%20They%20retain%20a%20desperate%20need%20to%20be%20atop%20a%20hierarchy,%20to%20be%20above%20someone,%20the%20entitled%20imploded%20middles%E2%80%94and%20what%20has%20happened%20in%20history,%20time%20and%20again,%20is%20that%20they%20turn%20to%20those%20who%20promise%20them%20just%20that%20superiority,%20by%20turning%20on%20those%20below%20them.%20Even%20if,%20especially%20if,%20it%20is%20in%20the%20extreme,%20irrational,%20yet%20perfectly%20logical%20form%20of%20supremacy%20and%20dominion%20over%20the%20weak,%20the%20despised,%20and%20the%20impure.%20%20And%20that%20is%20what%20all%20today%E2%80%99s%20reactionary%20movements%E2%80%94which%20I%20call%20the%20Faction%E2%80%94really%20are.%20%20And%20so%20here%20we%20are,%20you%20and%20I.%20On%20the%20cusp%20of%20something%20like%20a%20new%20dark%20age.%20A%20time%20where%20the%20shadows%20in%20human%20hearts%20shine%20as%20bright%20and%20blinding%20as%20suns.%20And%20once%20again,%20it%20is%20the%20folly%20of%20wise%20men%20that%20led%20us%20here.%20%20Umair%20July%202018%20%20%20%20but%20this%20was%20also%20an%20effect%20of%20financialization%E2%80%94%E2%80%9Cstock%20markets%20rewarded%E2%80%9D%20companies%20for%20doing%20it,%20which%20is%20another%20way%20to%20say%20that" rel="noopener" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.54); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.68) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%); background-position: 0px 1.07em; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 0.1em; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">“God is a white supremacist!”</a>Neo-nazis <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&ei=UH87W739Moi5gQbr6YbYCg&q=afd+nazis+&oq=afd+nazis+&gs_l=psy-ab.3..0i22i30k1l10.13459.13459.0.13681.1.1.0.0.0.0.103.103.0j1.1.0....0...1c.1.64.psy-ab..0.1.103....0.KMU21pFVYZU" href="https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&ei=UH87W739Moi5gQbr6YbYCg&q=afd+nazis+&oq=afd+nazis+&gs_l=psy-ab.3..0i22i30k1l10.13459.13459.0.13681.1.1.0.0.0.0.103.103.0j1.1.0....0...1c.1.64.psy-ab..0.1.103....0.KMU21pFVYZU" rel="noopener" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.54); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.68) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%); background-position: 0px 1.07em; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 0.1em; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">in the Bundestag</a>. The <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&ei=qX87W-X3N5PwgQby8IygAg&q=Italy+far+right&oq=Italy+far+right&gs_l=psy-ab.3..0l9.21895.22910.0.23079.9.4.0.5.5.0.144.487.0j4.4.0....0...1c.1.64.psy-ab..0.9.763...0i131k1j0i67k1j0i10k1.0.fFrALmrsHtM" href="https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&ei=qX87W-X3N5PwgQby8IygAg&q=Italy+far+right&oq=Italy+far+right&gs_l=psy-ab.3..0l9.21895.22910.0.23079.9.4.0.5.5.0.144.487.0j4.4.0....0...1c.1.64.psy-ab..0.9.763...0i131k1j0i67k1j0i10k1.0.fFrALmrsHtM" rel="noopener" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.54); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.68) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%); background-position: 0px 1.07em; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 0.1em; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">extreme right rising in Italy</a>. Poland’s authoritarians <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&ei=wX87W73yN6vGgAb3k5eACQ&q=poland+supreme+court+judge+fired&oq=poland+supreme+court+judge+fired&gs_l=psy-ab.3..33i22i29i30k1l2.25788.31376.0.31462.32.22.0.10.10.0.223.3148.0j17j4.21.0....0...1c.1.64.psy-ab..1.31.3588...0j0i131k1j0i67k1j0i131i67k1j0i10k1j0i22i30k1j0i22i10i30k1j0i13k1j0i30k1.0.tg-FXiym1q8" href="https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&ei=wX87W73yN6vGgAb3k5eACQ&q=poland+supreme+court+judge+fired&oq=poland+supreme+court+judge+fired&gs_l=psy-ab.3..33i22i29i30k1l2.25788.31376.0.31462.32.22.0.10.10.0.223.3148.0j17j4.21.0....0...1c.1.64.psy-ab..1.31.3588...0j0i131k1j0i67k1j0i131i67k1j0i10k1j0i22i30k1j0i22i10i30k1j0i13k1j0i30k1.0.tg-FXiym1q8" rel="noopener" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.54); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.68) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%); background-position: 0px 1.07em; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 0.1em; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">purging its Supreme Court</a> .</div>
<div class="graf graf--p graf-after--p" id="de73" name="de73" style="--baseline-multiplier: 0.17; font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58; margin-top: 29px;">
How did we get here? To a world where the forces of intolerance and indecency are on the rise, and those of decency, wisdom, and civilization are waning? Is something like a new Dark Age falling?</div>
<div class="graf graf--p graf-after--p" id="3638" name="3638" style="--baseline-multiplier: 0.17; font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58; margin-top: 29px;">
I think it has everything to do with predatory capitalism, and so I want to tell you a story. Of how it came to be born, in four steps, which span three decades.</div>
<div class="graf graf--p graf-after--p" id="2eac" name="2eac" style="--baseline-multiplier: 0.17; font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58; margin-top: 29px;">
During the 2000s, the economy of the rich world underwent something like a phase transition. It became “financialized”, as the jargon goes — which simply means that finance came to make up a greater and greater share of the economy. Hedge funds and investment banks and shady financial vehicles of all kinds went from a modest portion of the economy, to making up a huge chunk of it — around half, in some countries.</div>
<div class="graf graf--p graf-after--p" id="cc0e" name="cc0e" style="--baseline-multiplier: 0.17; font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58; margin-top: 29px;">
Now, what was “financialization” for? What were all these bankers, hedge fund managers, investors, and so on, doing? The answer is: nothing. Nothing of value, anyways. They were simply placing bets…with each other. Bets on bets on bets, meta-bets. Economists, who have something like an inferiority complex, envious of swashbuckling bankers, bought their marketing pitch hog, line, and sinker: “we’re going to reduce risk! Everyone will benefit!” But no such thing was happening — and anyone could see it. Risk was being massively amplified, in fact, because every time a speculator made a billion dollar bet with another, they were both betting with the same pool of money, essentially. Whose money? It wasn’t theirs — it was everyone’s. Pensions, savings, bank accounts, earnings, retirement funds. All that being bet on bets on bets on bets…which amounted to nothing. But what if all the bets went south at once?</div>
<div class="graf graf--p graf-after--p" id="266f" name="266f" style="--baseline-multiplier: 0.17; font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58; margin-top: 29px;">
First, I want you to really understand that what was happening was a zero-sum game, where one had to lose for another to win. Imagine there are three of us, in a little stone age tribe, with a hundred pebbles each. We spend all day every day finding new ways to lend pebbles to each other, to bet them on who’ll blink first, or even bets on those bets, and so on. In our little economy, does anyone ever end up better off? Does anyone, for example, discover antibiotics, or even invent the wheel? Nope. <span class="markup--quote markup--p-quote is-other" data-creator-ids="41e01d325219 anon" name="86f512e63a6e anon_3c06ffb22189" style="background-color: transparent !important; background-image: linear-gradient(rgb(233, 253, 240), rgb(233, 253, 240)); cursor: pointer; transition: background-color 0.2s;">We’re just fools, who’ll never accomplish, learn, or create anything, sitting around playing a zero-sum game, in which no real value is ever created.</span> The pebbles never become anything more valuable, like, for example, books, symphonies, knowledge, or medicine. All that is exactly what was happening during the phase of financialization.</div>
<div class="graf graf--p graf-after--p" id="2132" name="2132" style="--baseline-multiplier: 0.17; font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58; margin-top: 29px;">
But financialization didn’t just have a direct cost — no value being created, just men in shiny suits betting pebbles on who’d blink first. It also had an opportunity cost. As finance grew to be a larger and larger share of the economy, so the wind got sucked out of the sails of the “real economy”, as American economists put it, which simply means people doing the work that actually does create value — teachers, nurses, engineers, artisans, bakers, small-town factories, and so on. Think about it simply: the more money that was burned up in speculating, the less that was available for making things of genuine value. So the incomes of all these people — those in the “real economy” — began to stagnate. New schools and hospitals and energy grids and so on weren’t built — all the money was going towards speculating on the backs the old ones, sometimes, often, on their failures. A black hole was growing at the heart of the economy — but according to pundits, it was the sun itself. Everything was upside down. The bets were indeed about to all go south at once — only no one knew understood how or why yet.</div>
<div class="graf graf--p graf-after--p" id="4222" name="4222" style="--baseline-multiplier: 0.17; font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58; margin-top: 29px;">
How was the real economy to survive, then? Another hidden effect of financialization was super-concentration — the second force in the rise of predatory capitalism. Mom-and-pop capitalism is a healthy and beautiful thing, an economy of a million little shops, bakeries, artisans — but it takes only a modest attachment to a profit motive. But thanks to the rise of massive, global speculation, only aggressive quarterly profit-maximization was allowed. CEO earnings were hitched to share prices, and your share price only went up if your earnings did, relentlessly, illogicaly, crazily, every single quarter, instead of stabilizing at a happy, gentle amount — and so the only way left, in the end, to achieve it, was to build titanic monopolies, which could squeeze people for every dime. Once the economy had Macy’s, JC Penney, K-Mart, Toys-R-Us and Sears. Now it has Walmart. The story was repeated across every single industry. Amazon, Google, Apple. A new age of monopoly arose.</div>
<div class="graf graf--p graf-after--p" id="1fe0" name="1fe0" style="--baseline-multiplier: 0.17; font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58; margin-top: 29px;">
But monopolies had an effect, too. The third force in the rise of predatory capitalism was the implosion of the institution formerly known as the job. Now, just before peak financialization, beginning in the 1990s, many jobs were “offshored.” That’s a polite way to say that the speculators above discovered that companies were more profitable when they evaded as much of human civilization as possible. Find a country with no labour laws, no protections, no standards, no rule of law at all, in fact — and send jobs there. That way, you wouldn’t have to pay for pensions, healthcare, childcare, insurance, and so on. Cost savings! Efficiency! Synergies, even — you could make everything in that one sweatshop.</div>
<div class="graf graf--p graf-after--p" id="18a7" name="18a7" style="--baseline-multiplier: 0.17; font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58; margin-top: 29px;">
We’re used to thinking that offshoring “took” jobs in rich countries. But the truth is subtler — and more ruinous. They blew apart the idea of a job as we used to know it. As jobs went to countries without good governance, decent labour laws, a boomerang effect happened. The machine discovered that it could do in rich countries what it had done in poor ones — and so it began stripping away everything that made a job “a job.” Because the economy was increasingly composed of monopolies, giant companies, banks, and investors had the power to do so with impunity. Speculators began raiding pension funds. Managers began stripping away benefits of every kind, from childcare, to vacations, to healthcare. Until, at last, in a final triumph, the “at-will job” and the “zero-hours contract” were created — social contracts that were only “jobs” in name, but offered less than no stability, security, mobility, or opportunity. People who didn’t have benefits could now be fired on a whim — and so now they bore all the risk. But the risk of what, precisely?</div>
<div class="graf graf--p graf-after--p" id="b040" name="b040" style="--baseline-multiplier: 0.17; font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58; margin-top: 29px;">
Remember those speculators? Taking huge risks, betting billions with each other, on exactly nothing of real value? Risk had come full circle. Now it was the average person in the real economy who bore all the risks of these bets going bad. If the bets with south, who’d take the hit? All those people with zero benefits, no protection, no safety, all those people for whom “a job” now meant something more like “a temporary soul-crushing way to avoid destitution.” They’re the ones who’d be fired, instantly, lose what little savings they had, have their already dwindling incomes slashed, be ruined.</div>
<div class="graf graf--p graf-after--p" id="b2b9" name="b2b9" style="--baseline-multiplier: 0.17; font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58; margin-top: 29px;">
And then the bets went bad. As bets tend to do, when you make too many of them, on foolish things. What had the speculators been betting with each other on? As it turns out, largely on property prices. But people without the stable jobs that had kept such a huge property bubble going didn’t have growing incomes anymore. Property prices couldn’t keep rising. Bang! The financial system fell like a row of dominoes. It turned out that everyone had bet property prices would go on rising — and on the other side of that bet was…everyone else. All of them had been betting on the same thing — “we all bet prices will keep rising forever!” The losses were so vast, and so widespread, that the whole global financial system buckled. The banks didn’t have the money to pay each other for these foolish bets — how could they have? Each one had bet the whole house on the same thing, and they all would have gone bankrupt to each other. LOL — do you see the fatal stupidity of it all yet?</div>
<div class="graf graf--p graf-after--p" id="66ef" name="66ef" style="--baseline-multiplier: 0.17; font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58; margin-top: 29px;">
So in had to step governments. They bailed out the banks — but didn’t “restructure” them, which is to say, fire their managers, wash out their shareholders, and sell off the bad loans and bets. They just threw money at them — and took those bad bets onto the nation’s books, instead. It was the most foolish decision since the Great Depression. Why?</div>
<div class="graf graf--p graf-after--p" id="a663" name="a663" style="--baseline-multiplier: 0.17; font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58; margin-top: 29px;">
Well, now governments had trillions in — pow! — sudden debt. What were they to do? How would they pay it off? Now, you might think that Presidents are very intelligent people, but unfortunately, they are just politicians. And so instead of doing what they should have done — printing money, simply cancelling each others’ debts to each other, which were for fictional speculation anyways — they decided that they were “broke”. Bankrupt, even — even though a country can’t go bankrupt, anymore than you could if you could print your own currency at home, and spend it everywhere.</div>
<div class="graf graf--p graf-after--p" id="676c" name="676c" style="--baseline-multiplier: 0.17; font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58; margin-top: 29px;">
What does a bankrupt have to do? Liquidate. So governments began to slash investment in social systems of all kinds. Healthcare systems, pension systems, insurance systems, media and energy systems. This was the fourth step in the birth of predatory capitalism: austerity.</div>
<div class="graf graf--p graf-after--p" id="ca3f" name="ca3f" style="--baseline-multiplier: 0.17; font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58; margin-top: 29px;">
But people’s incomes were already dwindling, thanks to the first three steps — as jobs not just disappeared in quantity, but also imploded in quality, as monopolies grew in power, and as pointless, destructive, zero-sum speculation sucked the life out of the real economy. The only thing keeping the real economy going at this point was investment by the government — after all, the speculators were speculating, not investing for the long run. It was governments that were effectively keeping economies afloat, by providing a floor for income, by anchoring economies with a vast pool of stable, safe, real, secure jobs, and investinging dollars back in societies short of them. And yet, at the precise moment that governments needed to create more of precisely that, they did just the opposite.</div>
<div class="graf graf--p graf-after--p" id="5a84" name="5a84" style="--baseline-multiplier: 0.17; font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58; margin-top: 29px;">
Snap! Economies broke like twigs. The people formerly known as the middle class had been caught in between the pincers of these four forces — financialization, monopoly, the implosion of the job, and austerity. Together, they shattered what was left of rich economies — to the point that today, incomes are stagnant across the rich world, even in much vaunted Scandinavia, while living standards are falling in many rich countries, like the US and UK.</div>
<div class="graf graf--p graf-after--p" id="8626" name="8626" style="--baseline-multiplier: 0.17; font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58; margin-top: 29px;">
What do people do as hardship begins to bite — especially those who expected comfortable, easy lives? They become reactionary, lashing out violently. They seek safety in the arms of demagogues. That doesn’t mean, as American pundits naively think, that “poor people become authoritarians!” Quite the opposite.</div>
<div class="graf graf--p graf-after--p" id="27e1" name="27e1" style="--baseline-multiplier: 0.17; font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58; margin-top: 29px;">
It’s the once prosperous but now imploded middle which turns on the classes, ethnicities, groups, below it. The people who expected and felt entitled to lives of safety and security and stability — who anticipated being at the top of a tidy little hierarchy, the boss of this or that, the chieftain of that or this, but now find themselves adrift and unmoored in a collapsing society, powerless. That gap between expectation and reality is what ruinous. They retain a desperate need to be atop a hierarchy, to be above someone, the entitled imploded middles — and what has happened in history, time and again, is that they turn to those who promise them just that superiority, by turning on those below them. Even if, especially if, it is in the extreme, irrational, yet perfectly logical form of supremacy and dominion over the weak, the despised, and the impure.</div>
<div class="graf graf--p graf-after--p" id="eae2" name="eae2" style="--baseline-multiplier: 0.17; font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58; margin-top: 29px;">
And that is what all today’s reactionary, extremist movements — <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="https://medium.com/eudaimonia-co/the-faction-and-the-sect-706d7d5b10a8" href="https://medium.com/eudaimonia-co/the-faction-and-the-sect-706d7d5b10a8" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.54); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.68) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%); background-position: 0px 1.07em; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 0.1em; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">which I call the Faction </a>— really are. Predatory capitalism imploding into strange, new forms of old diseases of the body politic —ultrauthoritarianism, theosupremacism, kleptofascism, neofeudalism, biodominionism, hatriarchy, technotalitarianism, novel and lethal forms of ruin for a new dark age.</div>
<div class="graf graf--p graf-after--p" id="d6f3" name="d6f3" style="--baseline-multiplier: 0.17; font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58; margin-top: 29px;">
And so here we are, you and I. On the cusp of that age. A time where the shadows in human hearts shine as black and blinding as midnight. And once again, it is the folly and hubris of wise men that led us here.</div>
<div class="graf graf--p graf-after--p graf--trailing" id="e894" name="e894" style="--baseline-multiplier: 0.17; font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58; margin-top: 29px;">
Umair<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
July 2018</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
lostinthewoodshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06638690912925773954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9960849.post-43452098448433879192018-05-22T07:23:00.001-05:002018-05-22T07:23:55.175-05:00As the world burns<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Vietnam:</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">As an advisor and liaison I lead native troops but nonetheless was looked upon as the "supreme local power", way too much power for a very young man, just out of adolescence. I used my power as a good soldier at first, fighting who was perceived and inculcated in me as the enemy. . .and if I didn't do it, I had the definite impression that very little would get done. . .However, after nine months I had an epiphany in the form of a chopper pilot asking for permission</span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"> to engage, "Three military aged males with packs and weapons evading"...rote, scripted, common parlance. For some reason it was too pat, too familiar. I asked for his altitude, to which he replied some distance which would make identification of packs and weapons or gender nigh on to impossible. I suggested he go closer to find the true nature of his target. I didn't hear back from him for an inordinate length of time. So, I keyed the mike and asked if he'd identified his intended target. He responded, "Yes, disregard...it was a mamasan with two baby sans doing their laundry by a river." How many times in the past had I cleared requests to fire? Never again in any time of uncertainty would I be so gullible. I became the meanest bastard in my area of operations...unless there was contact, I generally denied requests for fire. I became very anti-war at that moment...always before it had been a song at camp, an idea...not a mind blast of reality. I was forever changed.</span></div>
lostinthewoodshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06638690912925773954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9960849.post-57327176853900577682018-02-28T10:43:00.001-06:002018-02-28T10:43:53.447-06:00Winter is passing<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
It has been since autumn that I’ve written anything. I feel...no, I know that a coup has been stag d in this country. But, from my vantage point it is only a matter of a worsening of an already very bad sc ne. More and more I live my life on the margins, by choice I am an outsider. Some don’t have that luxury. Being a white man in America is so different than being a POC. Indigenous peoples, who I have always lived near and with, regardless of it was in Arizona or in Minnesota, are the truest outsiders. The connection I feel to our Mother Earth and her creatures, her very being, is so important as I stand at the threshold of my elder years. Not that many years from ashes and dust, I long to step through the veil and regain the majick. My thoughts are fill d with the cries of the forests, the sadness of the winged and four legged. The trophies of man’s ego. From the margins I see more than from the outside, but I long to once again step out. To be a part of her beauty, to be apart from war and the incessant anger and fear. </div>
lostinthewoodshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06638690912925773954noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9960849.post-35645554003609174732017-09-19T12:09:00.002-05:002017-09-19T12:09:38.014-05:00The River<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="background-color: #f6f7f9; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">upstream from white sand beaches are hamlets, paddies and canyons bombshells unexploded, cratered land, cratered faces </span><br style="background-color: #f6f7f9; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: #f6f7f9; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">mangled extremities, defective births... </span><br style="background-color: #f6f7f9; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: #f6f7f9; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">the villages have memories nightmares and visions </span><br style="background-color: #f6f7f9; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: #f6f7f9; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">the countryside still echoes... </span><br style="background-color: #f6f7f9; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: #f6f7f9; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">we returned to the comfort of our politics and rhetoric </span><br style="background-color: #f6f7f9; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: #f6f7f9; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">leaving a legacy of disfigurement... </span><br style="background-color: #f6f7f9; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: #f6f7f9; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">scarring persons and landscape </span><br style="background-color: #f6f7f9; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: #f6f7f9; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">poisoned food chain </span><br style="background-color: #f6f7f9; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: #f6f7f9; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">poisoned minds </span><br style="background-color: #f6f7f9; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: #f6f7f9; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">blackened hearts... </span><br style="background-color: #f6f7f9; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: #f6f7f9; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">a righteous nation </span><br style="background-color: #f6f7f9; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: #f6f7f9; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">hands over hearts reciting the pledge still preaching to the world </span><br style="background-color: #f6f7f9; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: #f6f7f9; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">hands over ears and eyes still speaking the lies </span><br style="background-color: #f6f7f9; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: #f6f7f9; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">making the guilt safe and tucked away in hospitals and dead-end jobs </span><br style="background-color: #f6f7f9; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: #f6f7f9; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">in parades and sunday services </span><br style="background-color: #f6f7f9; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: #f6f7f9; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">in vfw and legion halls </span><br style="background-color: #f6f7f9; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: #f6f7f9; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">in broken homes </span><br style="background-color: #f6f7f9; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: #f6f7f9; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">in shattered illusions </span><br style="background-color: #f6f7f9; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: #f6f7f9; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">in battered women's shelters </span><br style="background-color: #f6f7f9; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: #f6f7f9; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">in cemeteries... </span><br style="background-color: #f6f7f9; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: #f6f7f9; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: #f6f7f9; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">rather than learning from our mistakes we adopt a new battle cry... </span><br style="background-color: #f6f7f9; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: #f6f7f9; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">"next time we'll only fight if they'll let us win"... </span><br style="background-color: #f6f7f9; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: #f6f7f9; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">as if that excuses our interventions</span></div>
lostinthewoodshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06638690912925773954noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9960849.post-72860217862883812932017-08-03T10:38:00.002-05:002017-08-03T10:38:36.106-05:00We got too big for the world<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Kohr’s claim was that society’s problems were not caused by particular forms of social or economic organization, but by their size. Socialism, capitalism, democracy, monarchy—all could work well on what he called “the human scale”: a scale at which people could play a part in the systems that governed their lives. But once scaled up to the level of modern states, all systems became oppressors. Changing the system, or the ideology that it claimed inspiration from, would not prevent that oppression—as any number of revolutions have shown—because “the problem is not the thing that is big, but bigness itself.”</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><a href="http://lithub.com/we-got-too-big-for-the-world/" target="_blank">http://lithub.com/we-got-too-big-for-the-world/</a></span></div>
lostinthewoodshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06638690912925773954noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9960849.post-63419757634084578222017-07-16T09:59:00.001-05:002017-07-16T09:59:17.974-05:00Out and about on the homestead<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJNn0SBaxwa5nG4qN1ERCQ_Z3jn0lz0TVBOmU9Ygp8aAwI6-eeeuVrpISbcmMg7UhT2uEDg_1h96Wms7S6TkKCWPIQGNM7OIrv0d32oeYtS0_2_IFHFUvjeRWUIXgNwE9eGaiuKA/s1600/19399226_10212791568000239_6701587014884072169_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="960" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJNn0SBaxwa5nG4qN1ERCQ_Z3jn0lz0TVBOmU9Ygp8aAwI6-eeeuVrpISbcmMg7UhT2uEDg_1h96Wms7S6TkKCWPIQGNM7OIrv0d32oeYtS0_2_IFHFUvjeRWUIXgNwE9eGaiuKA/s320/19399226_10212791568000239_6701587014884072169_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhexCSYkNifbzowShyJSLxAVBSah6Da5v62XUtek48Iohaoi60Wwn7vHlLo4srmp_Hmv_nt-zA_L_kWqRA3FsQdl1xTX4CDnt_V_DN4WU_uTfIA1qAFsYTEfBzziQUnZ6wD7J6Vwg/s1600/19420444_10212822324449131_8557567127489708038_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhexCSYkNifbzowShyJSLxAVBSah6Da5v62XUtek48Iohaoi60Wwn7vHlLo4srmp_Hmv_nt-zA_L_kWqRA3FsQdl1xTX4CDnt_V_DN4WU_uTfIA1qAFsYTEfBzziQUnZ6wD7J6Vwg/s320/19420444_10212822324449131_8557567127489708038_n.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigtlmKwkx7kkZVRTG6R2JypP6-NUwnUBygTLWUnOlnCcn-z40XmdkeuVE0yO-K3S9vHST4uWjWi4D7sbFI4ZY7MZFmAeetJ3ZHHsGka_0qbN_gZMhHEmBMeN3S9RdpmTxL734MIw/s1600/19437793_10212831817446450_526621606374823353_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigtlmKwkx7kkZVRTG6R2JypP6-NUwnUBygTLWUnOlnCcn-z40XmdkeuVE0yO-K3S9vHST4uWjWi4D7sbFI4ZY7MZFmAeetJ3ZHHsGka_0qbN_gZMhHEmBMeN3S9RdpmTxL734MIw/s320/19437793_10212831817446450_526621606374823353_n.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB2766NStj6E31hXq-otEsfqCq1bLDPhTaHBPIGqOQ5Wo1p89_rhuebWcqrfjcXH7XXcAH58WlR8GhJ9cVKpIICSdLH5Y2bhhDHJ4-lRRMghOV6hPxcpT3lCNwwzV7KjcykUAxSw/s1600/19511269_10212831940649530_3169044678341390863_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="555" data-original-width="960" height="185" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB2766NStj6E31hXq-otEsfqCq1bLDPhTaHBPIGqOQ5Wo1p89_rhuebWcqrfjcXH7XXcAH58WlR8GhJ9cVKpIICSdLH5Y2bhhDHJ4-lRRMghOV6hPxcpT3lCNwwzV7KjcykUAxSw/s320/19511269_10212831940649530_3169044678341390863_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghqJ6b9ol9ZUgimLugUlSw1M4JtcUZUZZhevSil_lDKa-dCbffCndIjfg5TApLda3t27kjWJou45KlzlMpfzUy1a82VxIxamkUG4o1eXy58Dz0RKbmmxig92lhSXWMaAZNd9Gapw/s1600/19511497_10212867164290099_2009125661559026470_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghqJ6b9ol9ZUgimLugUlSw1M4JtcUZUZZhevSil_lDKa-dCbffCndIjfg5TApLda3t27kjWJou45KlzlMpfzUy1a82VxIxamkUG4o1eXy58Dz0RKbmmxig92lhSXWMaAZNd9Gapw/s320/19511497_10212867164290099_2009125661559026470_n.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipQ19TbrAclzRdDhXDJTkRJWjoplqJqMKhmzYmrB2PgkaNfsDH1OX8jJ31Ea-Gp_nvl5Vg4WLr_EXKsQ_6uePIC0UFUaOsVySSpXhGY7vlX-2acyayQUZkLwsmjmUl-tWg5tICXQ/s1600/19554265_10212890700238483_7261975804455160813_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipQ19TbrAclzRdDhXDJTkRJWjoplqJqMKhmzYmrB2PgkaNfsDH1OX8jJ31Ea-Gp_nvl5Vg4WLr_EXKsQ_6uePIC0UFUaOsVySSpXhGY7vlX-2acyayQUZkLwsmjmUl-tWg5tICXQ/s320/19554265_10212890700238483_7261975804455160813_n.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6fOH4Ylz8d1VFkZn4ph0-tqmxG5Lr4kVtNU_00_YXl91AUghll8GCTtEovRnNrcpeqipw2CNLj6UvqQnZUrGUIelAyw8cureAQdAT4dHwx3LRKHd1ySDKXQsX9yLrtRK-t7z7uA/s1600/19554632_10212929259602443_143338403874203315_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6fOH4Ylz8d1VFkZn4ph0-tqmxG5Lr4kVtNU_00_YXl91AUghll8GCTtEovRnNrcpeqipw2CNLj6UvqQnZUrGUIelAyw8cureAQdAT4dHwx3LRKHd1ySDKXQsX9yLrtRK-t7z7uA/s320/19554632_10212929259602443_143338403874203315_n.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf2_T5H_H9w-YgVUXxkVDeOhOs63d9htaowz3Km-28rKBVkNa6ZnpMwo4ZPxTXW7WMNN1tzjPny8qTwHNpmcHzbm2LGgN3HijacLm4FazdZhL_4lfjvxcOUyRNVhADlzn1TsfIbQ/s1600/19598466_10212890699798472_1394111140276208223_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf2_T5H_H9w-YgVUXxkVDeOhOs63d9htaowz3Km-28rKBVkNa6ZnpMwo4ZPxTXW7WMNN1tzjPny8qTwHNpmcHzbm2LGgN3HijacLm4FazdZhL_4lfjvxcOUyRNVhADlzn1TsfIbQ/s320/19598466_10212890699798472_1394111140276208223_n.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXVY9DGXQEOug3lKAVMqcO0SaMiqabcMQHQ7V1eTouH06ploMS-ibLZG6m8Reqof9pkRCWvzcCRQN3a5T1D6wIqZivwJP_MHclI4zepRhaBfnH3-pYdDvgRQhI7hXX90tOJBOudA/s1600/19601261_10212890699998477_1554992522500197874_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXVY9DGXQEOug3lKAVMqcO0SaMiqabcMQHQ7V1eTouH06ploMS-ibLZG6m8Reqof9pkRCWvzcCRQN3a5T1D6wIqZivwJP_MHclI4zepRhaBfnH3-pYdDvgRQhI7hXX90tOJBOudA/s320/19601261_10212890699998477_1554992522500197874_n.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDdcWAu7AhNOWXSTZ-D6Bv8x6CEbwGSkza3ZiEc58Z5ZxGd5T4LEughiz9JfjcULDZyDpx7T1VhbFwYgMAe6Rij9C1vWk9hpH0kobx5P5uSwNHht4jF2OCc-2PA2-dDrTxm9q0cQ/s1600/19665623_10212890700478489_6739957301523598358_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDdcWAu7AhNOWXSTZ-D6Bv8x6CEbwGSkza3ZiEc58Z5ZxGd5T4LEughiz9JfjcULDZyDpx7T1VhbFwYgMAe6Rij9C1vWk9hpH0kobx5P5uSwNHht4jF2OCc-2PA2-dDrTxm9q0cQ/s320/19665623_10212890700478489_6739957301523598358_n.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrzIRu9YGkb-u4idhLnLO6b4wnSj4FwnNuO7lDF5m8Wh_pJX4oqRidJ97gZqv1AjX9Jg2SVED4uyn-5Hfy9lVxp8HOahnVbelVf3QW12cAIDIISNhtVTcFWLGhKVVK8mU5IrzVuQ/s1600/19702067_10212880158574948_4316986110901705202_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrzIRu9YGkb-u4idhLnLO6b4wnSj4FwnNuO7lDF5m8Wh_pJX4oqRidJ97gZqv1AjX9Jg2SVED4uyn-5Hfy9lVxp8HOahnVbelVf3QW12cAIDIISNhtVTcFWLGhKVVK8mU5IrzVuQ/s320/19702067_10212880158574948_4316986110901705202_n.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsssrZxP0ITXWLkl9EqPsgRhr-FMdImvCwVNCpfTFUEuanaPW0pCoiwWoB_GZVmoPs9v0qO9PvBUNcuM-jclcIkcBP8EqbIWmJGl6TD7vk5exnk8boFfKMOfBVbl7nDghBymaOjQ/s1600/19875387_10213014374850271_1821991093388216580_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsssrZxP0ITXWLkl9EqPsgRhr-FMdImvCwVNCpfTFUEuanaPW0pCoiwWoB_GZVmoPs9v0qO9PvBUNcuM-jclcIkcBP8EqbIWmJGl6TD7vk5exnk8boFfKMOfBVbl7nDghBymaOjQ/s320/19875387_10213014374850271_1821991093388216580_n.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6J9MyTuD3NfKRgmb8NgMe3Njpz7b-hpj-rBWsIWmGQHq_XjOsGk8gkndOzwHTu9KL8FjXS4o-yAvo1K7Fmsmxq_gn7PwoaZtYShJZRi_NO1zeNg_w9tZDDzi8I3edp7kyssvF-Q/s1600/19961393_10213014074722768_8560435514626685078_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6J9MyTuD3NfKRgmb8NgMe3Njpz7b-hpj-rBWsIWmGQHq_XjOsGk8gkndOzwHTu9KL8FjXS4o-yAvo1K7Fmsmxq_gn7PwoaZtYShJZRi_NO1zeNg_w9tZDDzi8I3edp7kyssvF-Q/s320/19961393_10213014074722768_8560435514626685078_n.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgapSScffCoYRZB92CPLr87HJS4LiPoYv1frpKHAmER7EaGqZifNiDIgX6TA8v7S-eXTFwdenK2WOm7fcNtdBT8EDqMfp3ysSF9i-KImEbU8hOv0ZgQOgfooQkRZ-15nVT1pNr7Ww/s1600/19961659_10213015492798219_3163471101224867818_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgapSScffCoYRZB92CPLr87HJS4LiPoYv1frpKHAmER7EaGqZifNiDIgX6TA8v7S-eXTFwdenK2WOm7fcNtdBT8EDqMfp3ysSF9i-KImEbU8hOv0ZgQOgfooQkRZ-15nVT1pNr7Ww/s320/19961659_10213015492798219_3163471101224867818_n.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAtDrzg2YSpWTWXhLCbSjQmutYcv2B9cyveQYKvTUqt1xWEujZj2-DoZyJwwqGe2xivn7qL_87NF3dfxq5r6EcijpKHmeVF7rUD1XG5Kfkys_svoh_cecBC6hIJ4aY3xua2exs2A/s1600/19989239_10212973782475487_5702311053666846991_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAtDrzg2YSpWTWXhLCbSjQmutYcv2B9cyveQYKvTUqt1xWEujZj2-DoZyJwwqGe2xivn7qL_87NF3dfxq5r6EcijpKHmeVF7rUD1XG5Kfkys_svoh_cecBC6hIJ4aY3xua2exs2A/s320/19989239_10212973782475487_5702311053666846991_n.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjDE3mNU3ubioVdubMzPif2r2gsZUzKSW0ezxugWTFb-Q2ihdWi2taUCqH_xrA4dJHnUyIjnlV7S7ZWlEV-qFcuRF-v-B9awgGeaEXl6rXuuPFgAUQ8UTHIF663ZbA-PalzUH2jw/s1600/20031976_10213014374610265_8505479738053793704_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjDE3mNU3ubioVdubMzPif2r2gsZUzKSW0ezxugWTFb-Q2ihdWi2taUCqH_xrA4dJHnUyIjnlV7S7ZWlEV-qFcuRF-v-B9awgGeaEXl6rXuuPFgAUQ8UTHIF663ZbA-PalzUH2jw/s320/20031976_10213014374610265_8505479738053793704_n.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<br /></div>
lostinthewoodshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06638690912925773954noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9960849.post-24417912640031043072017-07-16T09:53:00.001-05:002017-07-16T09:53:13.500-05:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">We have a dear friend, living relatively near to us, who is fairly housebound with oxygen...maintains a jovial demeanor, though. Has a beautiful view of the forest and a lake with otters, loons, bald eagles, beavers...we were in town yesterday and picked up groceries for her and ran some errands...Cheryl made up a bouquet of cut flowers from our yard...for a friend...and we went and visited for a while...Cheryl is a constant help to our "shut in" friend...(although she does get out now and again)...</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br /></span>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixSiLhLftwX7_QwipvabU3cRxSnvKOr5tQYZ3NBZEf5cJ53Nrv7tpLcAiMofcVYw_U0Dz_YhV0nwBfJICaFKccGBLQ1dY-O9VrOOSZoqjR2hWtjMekWgMODVvrIwjbRudP8SX0eg/s1600/19989552_10213039458837355_3802352448017482782_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixSiLhLftwX7_QwipvabU3cRxSnvKOr5tQYZ3NBZEf5cJ53Nrv7tpLcAiMofcVYw_U0Dz_YhV0nwBfJICaFKccGBLQ1dY-O9VrOOSZoqjR2hWtjMekWgMODVvrIwjbRudP8SX0eg/s320/19989552_10213039458837355_3802352448017482782_n.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></div>
lostinthewoodshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06638690912925773954noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9960849.post-49182016711875319592017-06-12T10:37:00.003-05:002017-06-12T10:37:43.043-05:00Simplify...it's a global imperative now.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px;">
We make choices, we decide what our priorities are, and we give up certain things to gain others. Adding more and more to our list of “have to’s” is killing us. Because if everything matters, then nothing matters. The beauty of life lies in its finitude—everything is fleeting, so everything is more precious. Living in light of that reality helps us to choose what matters most in each moment.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
As Charles Mingus said: 'Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the c<span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline; font-family: inherit;">omplicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.' Or E. F. Schumacker: 'Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius—and a lot of courage—to move in the opposite direction.' Hans Hofmann: 'The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.'</span></div>
<div class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6px;">
Simplification can be very elegant.</div>
</div>
</div>
lostinthewoodshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06638690912925773954noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9960849.post-53198633842428487532017-05-29T09:41:00.004-05:002017-05-29T09:41:55.234-05:00Memorial Day weekend on the homestead<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioAHBTEXO90c00p2d9HapsJDfDu9AzRI1S98O9_LihyKLvDGtvzFKOHE7WlgTFhDKC1XR0FRUSA2t57U6qY_ycK4eJJLTuL9xAbrhzsb2EqnUMpRNtTrPmN7YEmGXRIxXxz2D3tw/s1600/18620285_10212518134364569_8576133566999711112_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioAHBTEXO90c00p2d9HapsJDfDu9AzRI1S98O9_LihyKLvDGtvzFKOHE7WlgTFhDKC1XR0FRUSA2t57U6qY_ycK4eJJLTuL9xAbrhzsb2EqnUMpRNtTrPmN7YEmGXRIxXxz2D3tw/s320/18620285_10212518134364569_8576133566999711112_n.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjH05TUETBYwa-9hvws1ozO07McX2MzAXBahTCndgk8nwZPcDfxmga4WGRV5HUFn3MZmdYZ3l37ssIhqcmyKnFkBHjPdL3cbGm_UzZkDCxyw3uaKi61UiMwKhuOtgW_ooAtCGD1Qg/s1600/18671231_10212545429566932_3796251398858873820_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjH05TUETBYwa-9hvws1ozO07McX2MzAXBahTCndgk8nwZPcDfxmga4WGRV5HUFn3MZmdYZ3l37ssIhqcmyKnFkBHjPdL3cbGm_UzZkDCxyw3uaKi61UiMwKhuOtgW_ooAtCGD1Qg/s320/18671231_10212545429566932_3796251398858873820_n.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3k-X1SYKItSiNKnH8_uBl1E4RU01a0gHZyroKQRTnmHzeCRD4r8WZuvfNXkwAOtotCgroAKKwCvKj7ZDAS_zo6Cj7AD82YJt0F70jboQ3bZ5zci6sNE1-UKvvHvFHiYSKkBtuEA/s1600/18671263_10212510298608680_3567179606995897725_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3k-X1SYKItSiNKnH8_uBl1E4RU01a0gHZyroKQRTnmHzeCRD4r8WZuvfNXkwAOtotCgroAKKwCvKj7ZDAS_zo6Cj7AD82YJt0F70jboQ3bZ5zci6sNE1-UKvvHvFHiYSKkBtuEA/s320/18671263_10212510298608680_3567179606995897725_n.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmnzaoE7LsxZQMQhfjvIfjpNToI6FfPkWO5ni9Dmz-jFutBSErAibEdAdLbpY17cASAhO2gVDEIFlIs4dWcfqKENsdLWVHMIqfRWcjckYcZx9hTJuQO5A2f6idbZsIWCPis8-9Ag/s1600/18697994_1302843103164833_391963857070980167_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="960" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmnzaoE7LsxZQMQhfjvIfjpNToI6FfPkWO5ni9Dmz-jFutBSErAibEdAdLbpY17cASAhO2gVDEIFlIs4dWcfqKENsdLWVHMIqfRWcjckYcZx9hTJuQO5A2f6idbZsIWCPis8-9Ag/s320/18697994_1302843103164833_391963857070980167_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqeq4V3NERzsQDS3o5hb1pDJ8sJ_YFdmdtxT2sNrVhpNFHu_w6AJtbOZzbV4Z22blkaKm6s-qrzK9fAwugvVLiWDHw0rRsCyQbo4KQz7FH8CBrpBjgRQXQ-1i-MPTP3m_alBGBFA/s1600/18698492_1302843069831503_1680242249045174996_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqeq4V3NERzsQDS3o5hb1pDJ8sJ_YFdmdtxT2sNrVhpNFHu_w6AJtbOZzbV4Z22blkaKm6s-qrzK9fAwugvVLiWDHw0rRsCyQbo4KQz7FH8CBrpBjgRQXQ-1i-MPTP3m_alBGBFA/s320/18698492_1302843069831503_1680242249045174996_n.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGWRwwxkbUpIf3oO7YDGpCLzcywobYc4t4fReUW2k6hI-9DjID8kUv5h8nvXmGa65dWIyXhyYKwonbmawF6ew6-o8fu0X5DwAHaTRxjkCNCVaI-xttXg40r9yZL2M2UkFeJWxFSA/s1600/18739979_10212545059677685_4164296544125747542_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGWRwwxkbUpIf3oO7YDGpCLzcywobYc4t4fReUW2k6hI-9DjID8kUv5h8nvXmGa65dWIyXhyYKwonbmawF6ew6-o8fu0X5DwAHaTRxjkCNCVaI-xttXg40r9yZL2M2UkFeJWxFSA/s320/18739979_10212545059677685_4164296544125747542_n.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUo1BgoGx73MyF5I2ZL7l3iBwAEIvt8SCnXJ5WEjAE6nIV5d2SSLK9XhKkgZjMC9JjXkgSygzlCIBP6xicnctwXIzxzEkcXXjrTHqpkRlkp0zxxHOpAIxB9umrSEj1MkYa8TGRYA/s1600/18740099_1302844539831356_2197194222207806089_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="719" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUo1BgoGx73MyF5I2ZL7l3iBwAEIvt8SCnXJ5WEjAE6nIV5d2SSLK9XhKkgZjMC9JjXkgSygzlCIBP6xicnctwXIzxzEkcXXjrTHqpkRlkp0zxxHOpAIxB9umrSEj1MkYa8TGRYA/s320/18740099_1302844539831356_2197194222207806089_n.jpg" width="239" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEip0qEQw3503VlCsTyAhK6SUYFyCy2cyvFPMOYnyq0HwQVkOxEwAF5GnTV5AGgs4E8EBKqwbQxlpbMCr2PL85F4DkhH44qCVlRvpig-idrqWLA50vGNTdAf_wUW2LErXIlyBu2YNA/s1600/18767688_10212544803511281_118796559604694263_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEip0qEQw3503VlCsTyAhK6SUYFyCy2cyvFPMOYnyq0HwQVkOxEwAF5GnTV5AGgs4E8EBKqwbQxlpbMCr2PL85F4DkhH44qCVlRvpig-idrqWLA50vGNTdAf_wUW2LErXIlyBu2YNA/s320/18767688_10212544803511281_118796559604694263_n.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<br /></div>
lostinthewoodshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06638690912925773954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9960849.post-19048906970265562622017-05-22T07:48:00.002-05:002017-05-22T07:48:38.012-05:00Tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, squash, etc...rarin' to get out of the greenhouse and into the garden<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPfQnXQIR46QZ9q3S95wTx3BNkwq57BnCfweYMpD-7XjIc8rlhHzAYH80ICJI34RZwT8LKdxK4eni8IwTcN9xdC8fm99SS_7haozMlUpFMOQ8cWQxxjJdQ84-IMaPLz789Y67iEw/s1600/1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPfQnXQIR46QZ9q3S95wTx3BNkwq57BnCfweYMpD-7XjIc8rlhHzAYH80ICJI34RZwT8LKdxK4eni8IwTcN9xdC8fm99SS_7haozMlUpFMOQ8cWQxxjJdQ84-IMaPLz789Y67iEw/s320/1.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyIGdPSE3m3yToQMrqSqyMLPtJrWTOzGGT-TvU_hPQznG1G2y5wVX-uebIi7luK3WFO5-lYb08LiuGx5GfvWhmLCpCtE9wE01IiBtgh5T6sALzHzpCJgbGlwRl3nzMGOUc2zqtIw/s1600/2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyIGdPSE3m3yToQMrqSqyMLPtJrWTOzGGT-TvU_hPQznG1G2y5wVX-uebIi7luK3WFO5-lYb08LiuGx5GfvWhmLCpCtE9wE01IiBtgh5T6sALzHzpCJgbGlwRl3nzMGOUc2zqtIw/s320/2.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpz9YoVInXUsEvHHaBMKhxkwM6T2ZpePm43lJbPrRnb6rITYG6mOgbzAsY963-MPx_wq9SxrFNyEj3hoKhsa5UG3NnxN9-Cns4O-m2jqpJeAz8p75UPHv7cIkCwKDCrBMNpzUaXQ/s1600/3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpz9YoVInXUsEvHHaBMKhxkwM6T2ZpePm43lJbPrRnb6rITYG6mOgbzAsY963-MPx_wq9SxrFNyEj3hoKhsa5UG3NnxN9-Cns4O-m2jqpJeAz8p75UPHv7cIkCwKDCrBMNpzUaXQ/s320/3.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlLlEmIEVVvCPTXFashx6HQH5af3H1-P9KJ1sio81hMfwxdOKnLCCcm-xBxRTgZUqciBrwFSrmgzh4zl3NJdkugkFRVttaeYBRv5mPW15-NcFrfIACA9EMnLMZzFGvmiqcdsQLsg/s1600/18557398_10212483782345790_1152368924163749859_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlLlEmIEVVvCPTXFashx6HQH5af3H1-P9KJ1sio81hMfwxdOKnLCCcm-xBxRTgZUqciBrwFSrmgzh4zl3NJdkugkFRVttaeYBRv5mPW15-NcFrfIACA9EMnLMZzFGvmiqcdsQLsg/s320/18557398_10212483782345790_1152368924163749859_n.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<br /></div>
lostinthewoodshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06638690912925773954noreply@blogger.com0