I parted company with a number of persons and institutions in the last six months. And I did so in such haste that many are still owed a proper fare well.
Snow will fall in 16 hours, around noon tomorrow after which it will be too late for the tricky work of demolishing outbuildings. This solar heated place I have lived in with wife and kids for 30 years has been sold. The terms of sale require the junk and the decrepit shed to be gone. I must work in haste yet and through the night perhaps.
Arthritis rages in my joints, making me take my 60 years seriously, as a number to compare with the unknown number of years I may yet be active. What was I put here to do? Survive? That is a tautology and the most meager form of Darwin' imperative. But I will take it in the very un-Republican sense: do what I can, even at high personal cost, to see that my kids, my kin, my clan, my kind will live to find better answers than "survive".
My sons are PhD candidates with full scholarships. My daughter is a field biologist rescuing ecosystems for non profits that preserve California wilderness. My ex wife lives the settled urban professional life she always recognized as her proper milieu. My work as a defense contractor's software drone has so sickened soul I could not write a line of code...I retired early. Who needs me?
The users and the takers have multiplied and grown fat. Exxon's money is now thrown behind poisoning of water that gets in the way of their investment in Marcellus shale natural gas. So I bought farm land in Cayuga and Cortland counties, and moved to Tompkins county. Not ground zero of American gas holes and the dumb desperation of a market of the lazy fossil burners, but close enough. In these places divided by greed, poverty and heedless ignorance I will try to innovate for sustainable and localized energy and food production. I will have much good company and that cemented my choice of battle ground. It is probably a lost cause. All the money held by the apartment dwelling New York Times readers has been invited to invade upstate NY farms the better to provide nice yields and a bit of natural gas...What will a handful of nearly broke farmers be able to do?
Motley Fool had an article urging investors to assume crash positions...and hinted the hot tub of money called the stock market seems to have reached a healthy level because an elephant called the FED is in the tank buying. I am going to all cash in my 401K and buying land with my loose change...and timber and copper and...
Move0n members voted to tackle health care and let the environment and energy issues take a back seat...I part with them on this and chose to eschew health insurance lest any doubt my sincerity in pronouncing most health care expenses and programs to be a waste of money wrought by a nation as fat as Micheal Moore and neurotically attached to mortality. Better outcomes for less money are waiting for those who get rid of their cars.
I moved to a little commune, off the grid. Or rather I will move if I get the old shed torn down before the snow flies
[Just leave comments if you are interested in links or elaboration. I am wicked busy right now.]
2 comments:
It seems strange to describe something so plainspoken as "confusing," but I admit that I am a little confused, and curious.
But that's sort of irrelevant. Whatever it is you've undertaken, I'd wish you the best of luck. :)
My talents have a shelf life.
My fellow citizens fall mostly into the clueless consumers category.
the end of oil, the yetend of copper, the end of clean water .. all these and more symptoms of an over populated planet have not registered in a sufficient number of minds.
The end times that I foresee are not at all as the myth-ridden Christians or any peak-oil apocalypse. The machinery of markets and economies, give or take war, facilitate soft landings in a vast bog of shit and shortage.
I retired. But I am working harder than ever, building a self contained farm that could weather a barter based economy in which only Bill Gates and Warren Buffet and Rupert Murdoch can still get their grapes from Chile and their kiwi fruit fronm Sicily. I have spent two months just getting generators to work but I am picking up speed.
Some where in all those posts of the last few years lurk my resentments and realizations about my marriage. That was one storm that passed the minute I decided to call my own bluff about commitments. The one person who should have read those posts never did.
The good wishes are welcome.
Most of the sentences are plain enough... but they are more like every tenth sentence from a much longer post.
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