I recently heard, or read, a saying, “Dig the well before you need a drink”. Now that is good common sense compressed into a short phrase. It could be literal, meaning if you know you are going to need water, and we all do, then you need to make plans for obtaining water, before the need is at a “crisis” stage.
That puts me in mind of some of the basic things that we all should know, but seemingly, we let them slip away from our mind. It is hard to imagine anyone who heats with wood, as an example, who does not bother to get up a woodpile before winter sets in. But we see that very thing happen every year. I have a neighbor (and I trust he does not find this blog J ), but it appears that he must not have much of a woodpile. The reason I think this is because I hear him with his chainsaw and tractor down in his woodlot late at night, on cold nights too, cutting firewood. I happen to know the young man works like a ‘slave’, with a full-time job during the day, plus he milks a small herd of dairy cows and does other farming on the side. It is not as if he was too lazy to cut wood, he has just fallen into a very common condition of having too much work and not enough time. Thus, he must take care of what is most pressing at any given time, while everything else waits its turn. Yes, I have been there too often to want to remember.
This leads me to the ideal that we have a habit of getting ourselves entangled in so many things that, when it is all added up, we can’t get anything done properly. It is one thing to make plans that are necessary to our daily lives and well-being, but quite another when we find ourselves ‘buried under a load of details’ that we cannot possibly get done and still maintain our health and sanity.
I don’t claim that the condition is always avoidable. It is and has always been a challenge for working people to keep up with their workload at all times, in fact it is nearly impossible. Sometimes I have so many ‘details’ to attend to, I want to cry out, “Details, details, details, thousands of them, like a field of wheat, every little grain a “detail” that is screaming for attention.” But often enough, I have brought this condition upon myself by not attending to the details as they come up. Procrastination is not always a bad thing, but it can get you into a lot of complications.
Most often the term “procrastinate” is seen as a negative, and generally that would be true. However, there are some positives that can come from procrastination. For one thing, it can save you money, under some conditions. By putting off the purchase of some item you want or need, often you discover an alternative that works, and thus the item was not really needed, you just thought it was. For example, in my small lumber business I supply kiln dried lumber to furniture and cabinet shops. Many times the customer wants lumber that has been straightened on one edge. This I accomplished, most often, with what is called a “Straight Line Rip Saw”. Now that piece of equipment is very expensive, even used ones can fetch close to $10,000. That is too much, in light of the relatively small numbers of orders I get requiring a straight edge. But when I was getting my business off the ground it was an item I kept looking for in hopes of finding one at a reasonable price. By procrastinating on it, I found, by accident, a solution to the problem when I purchased a wood shaper. That is a piece of equipment used to put a design on the edge of the face of lumber. Once I had that piece of equipment I discovered that by buying a $100 cutter, that I could turn it into a “Straight Line Rip Saw” that answered the purpose very well. Procrastination paid off that time.
That is not always the case. Take auto maintenance. Most often procrastination does not work to ones advantage if we put off servicing our automobiles. For by delaying auto service we put not only our safety at risk, but can incur a lot of unnecessary expense. I would imagine most of us can think of our own examples to go along with that form of procrastination, I will spare you my painful confessions on that one.
Here is the some good advice that I have found to be helpful along the way. Whenever you have to make a major decision that involves ‘known choices’, but the consequences are important, do this. Take a sheet of paper and a pencil and draw a line down the middle. In one column write one of you choices. Under that choice list all the pros and cons you can think of by choosing that plan or decision. In another column or columns, write out other possible choices you have and list the pros and cons of those decisions. It is remarkable how we can clarify the choices we have, and thus, see more clearly the best choice to make.
As we go through life, we can make our trail a little easier by taking the Boy Scouts motto and making it our own; “Be Prepared”. The best preparation is made ahead of a crisis, when the mind is not under a cloud of pressure.
Naturally, we cannot foresee every ‘crisis’ that we will face in this world, but by training our thought process by sound reasoning and common sense, we develop a better ’instinct’ than by simply barging ahead in life, without any sense of direction or training in the decision making process.
It is remarkable that our education system has become so clouded over with so much ‘book learning’, that many young people leave school and have never been taught the necessity of “critical thinking”, which becomes so vital to a life that is well balanced and happy. What good is it to me, if I know all the “facts” of mathematical equations, but can’t balance a check book?
I have a lot of faith in our upcoming generation, from my place in history, that is people who are from 25 years old to 35 or so. Though we could point to a lot of “losers” in that age group, as we can in any age group, we also see a lot of good, well grounded people with ‘common sense’. I just hope they are the ones who take the “bull by the horns” and straighten out the mess that “my generation” has gotten our country in. It is going to take a “deep well” with lots of water, to clean up this mess of economic mismanagement and political corruption we are in. We need to dig the well deep and dig it now! It won’t be very long until we need the water.
Monday, December 5, 2011
Friday, December 2, 2011
Making it Through December
How can it possibly be December? Somewhere I have lost a couple months. Apparently it has to do with the mild weather we have experienced this fall. Most years by this time we have a good snow cover, the lakes are frozen solid enough to drive on and we have settled in for the long winter. This year is different. It is December 2nd and we don’t have snow, the lakes are not very much frozen over unless it happen last night, but I suspect the roaring wind we have had for the past 24 hours slowed the freezing process down, at least on the larger lakes.
Many people will attribute this mild year to “global warming”, that great evil caused by our modern society. I will agree that we are having a warming trend over the last quarter century or so, but I will not agree on the “cause” of it. I am also no scientist and would not represent myself as an “authority” on climate changes.
I do consider myself a ‘student of history’. It is history the convinces me that the earth’s warming and cooling trends are a natural phenomenon that occurs from time to time. But this is not the point of my post.
I think of December as the “old man of the year”. Whatever has taken place during the year is mostly “history” by the time December rolls around. Not that we have not had major events happen in December, but the mindset we develop is one of winding down the past year and making plans for the New Year. Naturally the holiday season from Thanksgiving through New Years also has an affect on the way we view December. There are a lot of holiday activities that take place during this time, more than any other time of the year.
For me December is generally a “hard month”. No, it is not from ‘holiday trauma’, as some might think, that would be those who know me. I pretty much ignore a lot of the hoopla that goes with the “Holidays”. Not that I don’t enjoy seeing children get gifts, that is a pleasure even to an “old scrooge”, such as myself will never tire of. I was a youngster once. You can have full assurance that I was as excited as anyone to get some “goodies” for Christmas and I have fond memories of that excitement. Furthermore, I can think of at least two items that my parents gave me for Christmas as a youth, that I still have in my possession and don’t plan to part with anytime soon. One, is an old .410 single shot H & R shotgun that I got for Christmas in 1969. It was used even then, but to a 12 year old ‘what-a-be’ hunter, it made not difference what sort of firearm it was, it was “mine”. It hangs in a place of honor on my wall. The other item came from the same Christmas and is what we called a “coal oil lantern”. It leaks oil if I try to use it, but it sits in an outbuilding and I have not seen fit to part with it yet. I have a lot of memories every time I see that old lantern. It was with that dim light that I remember going out to milk my cow on cold December mornings before school. For many years it was my main light for camping or any other dark outdoor activities. For children, Christmas is an exciting time and I am not one to throw cold water on the tradition.
December is stressful for other reasons. We lose a lot of daylight very quickly from the 1st of the month to the end of it. I suppose December must be the “darkest” month of the year. For people who have much of their work to be done in the great outdoors, daylight is a precious commodity. By mid-month in MN we are hard pressed to get a full 9 hours of daylight, it being almost 8 AM before it is light enough to see well enough to inspect lumber and by 4:30 PM, we will have our headlights on when driving. I suppose it is a good thing the month has the interruption of Christmas activities or people would go “batty”, even more than they do, in December.
One thing is sure, we have to endure the ’death of a year’ by having the month of December, in order to reach January, that first month a New Year, when so many people make all kinds of “short-lived” resolutions, even if they are made in total sincerity. For a long time, I have swore off making New Year’s resolutions, simply because it seems so “lame”, at least in my mind. For truth be told, if I want to resolve to ‘do something’, I find it is best to “do it now”, than put it off until a certain day on the calendar, for by the time that day arrives, I will likely have lost my motivation to make a change anyway.
There is one thing I like to do at the end of December. Rather than resolving to change habits or form new ones, I find it useful to go over in my mind the events of the year just past. Therein I am dealing with factual “history” rather than “fanciful plans”. By thinking over my past year, I do sometimes find helpful hints as to what I should do in the coming year and so approach the new year as if it was a “new day” to start fresh, but with some solid guidance by having the experience of recent history.
Being a self-employed person makes the reflection very personal. It is not as if I have an employer who will set my working hours and pay me accordingly. I am the ‘employer’ as well as the ‘employee’. That creates opportunities as well as ‘hazards’. The opportunity is that I can pretty much plan my own course of action to advance my business affairs and work just as hard as I want, in order to accomplish whatever new “bright ideal” I have for the coming work year. But on the same hand there is the “hazard”, and it is a “big hazard”, especially this year. The hazard of self-employment is that it is very easy to loose our ambition. The current state of economic reality makes it extremely hard to have a positive attitude that next year will hold any hope of a better economic environment than 2011.
At the end of every December I go over my business records and compare my sales and business activity to prior years, I don’t know if I have the “heart” to do that this year. I already know what it will look like, sort of like the “morning after” a train wreck. I have to ask the question; “will next year improve”? The answer is ‘blowing in the wind’, I have no reason to expect that it will and the “wishing well” does nothing to advance the course of reality. Do I make drastic changes? If so, what?
These questions are what make December a stressful month for me. Maybe it is a good thing that we have the “holiday season” to distract us from all the things, that we know, we are going to have to make decisions about.
I have reached an age that makes the decision process more difficult than it was when I was in the prime of my youth. During those years of our lives, for most people, we have lots of ambition and there is not much that can drag us down for very long, if we need to make drastic changes, it is just a matter of waking up one morning and putting into action our plan and the consequences will take care of themselves, we have all the confidence in the world that if we do make a miscalculation, we have plenty of time ahead of us to overcome whatever setback we might endure. Not so when we reach mid-50’s, with time speeding up, as if it went from a steam power, to jet engine speeds in just a few years time.
The joke is on us. When we are young we look at older folks, and think, they have lived their lives and are content to take to their rocking chair and enjoy the memories of their youth, while watching their children and grandchildren, to see how they get along in this “short life”. Now when I see that “rocking chair”, I want to throw it out the window! I have too many things to get done. That chair will be without me for the next 50 years! Of course, I don’t have 50 years, so the old chair will have to rock its own self, if it gets rocked. I have too many things to get done before the “grim reaper” gets the hook in me. But first, I have to make it through December!
Many people will attribute this mild year to “global warming”, that great evil caused by our modern society. I will agree that we are having a warming trend over the last quarter century or so, but I will not agree on the “cause” of it. I am also no scientist and would not represent myself as an “authority” on climate changes.
I do consider myself a ‘student of history’. It is history the convinces me that the earth’s warming and cooling trends are a natural phenomenon that occurs from time to time. But this is not the point of my post.
I think of December as the “old man of the year”. Whatever has taken place during the year is mostly “history” by the time December rolls around. Not that we have not had major events happen in December, but the mindset we develop is one of winding down the past year and making plans for the New Year. Naturally the holiday season from Thanksgiving through New Years also has an affect on the way we view December. There are a lot of holiday activities that take place during this time, more than any other time of the year.
For me December is generally a “hard month”. No, it is not from ‘holiday trauma’, as some might think, that would be those who know me. I pretty much ignore a lot of the hoopla that goes with the “Holidays”. Not that I don’t enjoy seeing children get gifts, that is a pleasure even to an “old scrooge”, such as myself will never tire of. I was a youngster once. You can have full assurance that I was as excited as anyone to get some “goodies” for Christmas and I have fond memories of that excitement. Furthermore, I can think of at least two items that my parents gave me for Christmas as a youth, that I still have in my possession and don’t plan to part with anytime soon. One, is an old .410 single shot H & R shotgun that I got for Christmas in 1969. It was used even then, but to a 12 year old ‘what-a-be’ hunter, it made not difference what sort of firearm it was, it was “mine”. It hangs in a place of honor on my wall. The other item came from the same Christmas and is what we called a “coal oil lantern”. It leaks oil if I try to use it, but it sits in an outbuilding and I have not seen fit to part with it yet. I have a lot of memories every time I see that old lantern. It was with that dim light that I remember going out to milk my cow on cold December mornings before school. For many years it was my main light for camping or any other dark outdoor activities. For children, Christmas is an exciting time and I am not one to throw cold water on the tradition.
December is stressful for other reasons. We lose a lot of daylight very quickly from the 1st of the month to the end of it. I suppose December must be the “darkest” month of the year. For people who have much of their work to be done in the great outdoors, daylight is a precious commodity. By mid-month in MN we are hard pressed to get a full 9 hours of daylight, it being almost 8 AM before it is light enough to see well enough to inspect lumber and by 4:30 PM, we will have our headlights on when driving. I suppose it is a good thing the month has the interruption of Christmas activities or people would go “batty”, even more than they do, in December.
One thing is sure, we have to endure the ’death of a year’ by having the month of December, in order to reach January, that first month a New Year, when so many people make all kinds of “short-lived” resolutions, even if they are made in total sincerity. For a long time, I have swore off making New Year’s resolutions, simply because it seems so “lame”, at least in my mind. For truth be told, if I want to resolve to ‘do something’, I find it is best to “do it now”, than put it off until a certain day on the calendar, for by the time that day arrives, I will likely have lost my motivation to make a change anyway.
There is one thing I like to do at the end of December. Rather than resolving to change habits or form new ones, I find it useful to go over in my mind the events of the year just past. Therein I am dealing with factual “history” rather than “fanciful plans”. By thinking over my past year, I do sometimes find helpful hints as to what I should do in the coming year and so approach the new year as if it was a “new day” to start fresh, but with some solid guidance by having the experience of recent history.
Being a self-employed person makes the reflection very personal. It is not as if I have an employer who will set my working hours and pay me accordingly. I am the ‘employer’ as well as the ‘employee’. That creates opportunities as well as ‘hazards’. The opportunity is that I can pretty much plan my own course of action to advance my business affairs and work just as hard as I want, in order to accomplish whatever new “bright ideal” I have for the coming work year. But on the same hand there is the “hazard”, and it is a “big hazard”, especially this year. The hazard of self-employment is that it is very easy to loose our ambition. The current state of economic reality makes it extremely hard to have a positive attitude that next year will hold any hope of a better economic environment than 2011.
At the end of every December I go over my business records and compare my sales and business activity to prior years, I don’t know if I have the “heart” to do that this year. I already know what it will look like, sort of like the “morning after” a train wreck. I have to ask the question; “will next year improve”? The answer is ‘blowing in the wind’, I have no reason to expect that it will and the “wishing well” does nothing to advance the course of reality. Do I make drastic changes? If so, what?
These questions are what make December a stressful month for me. Maybe it is a good thing that we have the “holiday season” to distract us from all the things, that we know, we are going to have to make decisions about.
I have reached an age that makes the decision process more difficult than it was when I was in the prime of my youth. During those years of our lives, for most people, we have lots of ambition and there is not much that can drag us down for very long, if we need to make drastic changes, it is just a matter of waking up one morning and putting into action our plan and the consequences will take care of themselves, we have all the confidence in the world that if we do make a miscalculation, we have plenty of time ahead of us to overcome whatever setback we might endure. Not so when we reach mid-50’s, with time speeding up, as if it went from a steam power, to jet engine speeds in just a few years time.
The joke is on us. When we are young we look at older folks, and think, they have lived their lives and are content to take to their rocking chair and enjoy the memories of their youth, while watching their children and grandchildren, to see how they get along in this “short life”. Now when I see that “rocking chair”, I want to throw it out the window! I have too many things to get done. That chair will be without me for the next 50 years! Of course, I don’t have 50 years, so the old chair will have to rock its own self, if it gets rocked. I have too many things to get done before the “grim reaper” gets the hook in me. But first, I have to make it through December!
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Simple Living- The Philosophy
To pick up on the theme of “simple living”. In an earlier post I discussed Simple Living- Economy, today I want to consider the philosophy of a simple lifestyle.
In my attempt to live simply, we might even say “sensibly”, I have learned that there are different ideals afloat as to what ‘simple living’ means. The spectrum runs anywhere from a primitive existence to a full-blown modern home.
I suspect that the true definition must fall into a broad range of living conditions. It is also true that what one person considers ’simple living’ would be very different from what others might consider as a simple life. There are no recognized “authorities” to define the term in such a way that becomes a ’standard’ for simple living. Each person is free to develop their own ideal of a simple life. But underlying all the different ideals is a common philosophy, that our lives need not be as complicated as they sometimes are.
If we are willing to admit a truth to ourselves, it is, that many of the complications we experience have been brought on ourselves by choices that we make or habits that we form. As a society, it would appear that we are prone to let others set the bar as to where and how we should live. This outside influence invariably has some kind of affect on our attitudes. The “American Dream”, which for too many, has now turned into a “nightmare”, may not be the best way for us to live. At one time that dream was defined by the ownership of a decent house and good car. Then came “Hollywood” and TV that showed us the lives of the ‘rich and famous’ to stir up envy in many people. Next came “easy credit”, whereby we all could access things that were impossible in a “pay as you go” economy. Now we have woke up from a dream to find ourselves in a nightmare of debt and frustration, not just in a few individuals, but nearly a whole nation is one paycheck from ‘bankrupt’.
There have been plenty of people who have resisted the “Jones movement” and a few examples have always been around to buck the tide, but we mostly never hear about them. All media sources must, by the very nature of things, promote consumerism. We don’t hear radio or TV commercials telling us we “don’t need all the things we see”. Rather the advertising business must make us think we “need” whatever item they are selling, or they won’t get paid for their advertising.
I should state once again, I am not anti-capitalism or anti-consumer. I will leave that up to some who call themselves ’environmentalists’. These people, who are down on the American capitalist system, show themselves to be hypocrites, for the most part. I do consider myself a conservationist in that I think we should show common sense when using our natural or any other resource. But some seem to think they have a monopoly on conservation by claiming we must “preserve” nature by restricting its use to a “chosen few”, which don’t include us common folk. So they set aside millions of acres for national preserves and then make access to that land so expensive that only the elite can enjoy it. That is not what conservation was in the eyes of the first Americans who promoted conserving natural resources, but I digress.
Simplicity is a state of mind
For those of us who do not want to spend the better part of our life trying to earn a lot of money to leave to the “tax man”, there is a better way of living. It must begin with our thinking process. How we look at life and the world around us. This leads to a philosophy of simple living whereby we find that the best things in life really are free. Each of our lives consist of “time” and, as I have observed before, there is 24 hours in a day, whether you are a rich person or a poor man. How we spend that time is what makes up the content of our lives.
From the time I was a youth it seemed to me a sad thing that so many people lived lives that they “hated”, simply because they did not believe there was a way to escape the ‘leg-hold trap’ that our society has laid for us. Admittedly, it is not a easy road to travel, but you won’t find much traffic on the highway of “volunteer poverty”. By that I mean, some of us are willing to live our lives at a lower than average “standard of living” if by doing so, we can escape the 40 hour a week salary trap. Of course, 40 hour weeks are rare for “salaried” workers these days. But the point is some of us want to live as self-employed persons, even if that employment does not pay as well as having what I refer to as a “real job”. Personally, I have not had such a job since the spring of 1988, that is going on 24 years. During this time I have had a lot of different kinds of income, but all of it as a self-employed person.
Another part of our societal thinking is that for one to be “self-employed” they must start a business that will eventually have employees. It is only reasonable to assume this is necessary if one wants to become ’wealthy’ or have what is called a “good business”. However, it was not my intention to trade an ‘employer’ for ‘employees’. For a person who wants some “freedom”, employees are not your best ‘investment’. Invariability the owner of such a “business” is more entrapped in his “job” than he was as an employee. It is a rare business man who can leave his place of business in the hands of someone else and continue to be successful. I see nothing “simple” about the lives of most small business people. I know too many of them to be deceived into thinking that this was my answer to a “simple life”.
If I had to define “one element” of our lifestyle that has made this life possible it would have to be “money management”. Most of the time, there was not that much money to manage! However, the key to maintaining our independent condition was in the fact that, very early in the experiment of living without a regular paycheck, we realized we had to save all the money we could for the “lean times” in my self-employment. By avoiding debt as much as possible and not spending all our money as it came in, we actually learned that we did not need to have as much money as we thought. The formula gets simple very quickly, when you don’t know when your next paycheck might come, you form a habit of holding onto some reserves instead of spending everything you earn. It is not a hard habit to form when you don’t know ‘when’ you will have free-lance work, which is what my self-employment consisted of. But on the other hand, people who feel “trapped” in a job that pays a regular wage, feel free to buy more on credit because they are confident they can make their payments. It becomes a vicious cycle of always reaching to have more and better things. It is understandable that hard working people feel they ’deserve’ to have the things they work so hard for, and they do, but until the cycle of debt and payments gets broken, there can be no real progress toward simplifying our lives. That is, if a simple life involves giving up a regular paycheck in order to spend our time at other pursuits than a “job”.
This modern “leg-hold trap” is hard to extract oneself from. It does become easier if you don’t have a very good estimate of what you will earn next month. A “budget” under those circumstances gets to be very basic. As in keeping track to the bills that you have to pay, like house and car payments, phone and things that are fairly predictable. I found out early on that it was vital to keep enough money in reserve to pay these necessary bills, whether I had income or not. In that situation it also became easier to save money. The motivation gets pretty high when you decide you would rather be independent than have the “latest” model of automobile, or any of the other items that we are told by society that we need.
Many types of self-employment jobs are affected by the seasons of the year, especially if it involves outdoor work. My particular work was as a Hardwood Lumber Inspector. My work activity was to inspect lumber for any number of different small sawmill operations. (I use the past tense, even though I still inspect lumber, but much less than in the past.) In MN most of the logging is done in the winter when the ground is frozen and timber is more accessible. Of course there is some logging that takes place year around, but generally speaking winter will see a much greater harvest of logs than any other time of the year. It was a tradition in times past for farmers to go logging in the winter, after their summer crop work was done. This is how the great “logging camps” operated in the hay-day of American expansion, roughly up until the 1st Great Depression. (We have not admitted the fact of the 2nd one yet, the government is better at ‘cooking the books‘ now.) They cut the logs in the winter and piled them up on the frozen ice. When spring breakup came, the logs would be floated downstream to the mills, where they would then be sawed into lumber.
Those logging camps are history, but a certain part of the tradition is still in practice, purely from the fact that timber is easier to get over frozen ground than any other time. Every year, at least for the last 25, come spring there is a rush of logs from the winter landings to the sawmills. Consequently there is a rush for the mills to get the logs sawed into lumber, inspected and sold before warm weather damages the fresh lumber. The inspection part is where my work comes in. Thus, from around January up until about April my work would be very steady, often in the early years when I was after all the work I could possibly make time for, I would find myself working 6 and, at times, 7 days a week. By late May things would start to slow down and often in June I was out of work entirely.
It only took a couple yearly cycles to see how this worked out in my particular line of work. Once I understood how things worked, it was rather a pleasure to see the first of June come. Because I learned to save some money from lots of work in the winter, I was able to enjoy the slow season, which just so happened to be the best time of year for fishing, which was one of my passions in years past.
Since I don’t intent to write a ‘biography’ here, I must find some way to close this post! So here is my take: Simple living is really a state of mind that everyone must define in their own terms. But if you find that you are constantly stressed, over worked or just plain discontented, maybe you should consider ways in which you can “simplify, simplify, simplify”!
In future posts I will discuss what I consider as necessary or helpful “Skills” to simple living.
wherein we attempt to live in such a way and within the means we can reasonably and honorable obtain, without destroying the rights of others to pursue their own dreams of what life should be. There are many people who are very good at creating wealth and who enjoy spending that wealth on a lifestyle that is far different than what most of us aspire to. I don’t fault them in the least, they are the people who have raised our standard of living by inventing all kinds of goods and services that makes living in the USA the envy of the world. What I resent, is the ideal that money is the end-all to a happy life. If that were the case, most of us would be out of luck, for it is not possible that everyone can be “equal” in a free society, as far as ‘wealth‘ is concerned. We should be equal in the ‘right’ to work toward whatever life we want, but the reality has always been that it is only a few, among the masses, that attain the upper levels of the wealth train. Our nation has, in its history of capitalistic freedom, produced more wealthy people than any nation in history, I would believe. In most cases, people become wealthy by a combination of hard work, exceptional skills, ambition and a desire to improve the state of their financial worth. I speak in terms of common people who create wealth by their own business or vision. I am not speaking of those who were born into wealth, nor of those who become wealthy by immoral activities. I say “immoral activities” rather than “legal activities”, because there are many “legal” methods of becoming wealthy that are by no means “moral”.
In my attempt to live simply, we might even say “sensibly”, I have learned that there are different ideals afloat as to what ‘simple living’ means. The spectrum runs anywhere from a primitive existence to a full-blown modern home.
I suspect that the true definition must fall into a broad range of living conditions. It is also true that what one person considers ’simple living’ would be very different from what others might consider as a simple life. There are no recognized “authorities” to define the term in such a way that becomes a ’standard’ for simple living. Each person is free to develop their own ideal of a simple life. But underlying all the different ideals is a common philosophy, that our lives need not be as complicated as they sometimes are.
If we are willing to admit a truth to ourselves, it is, that many of the complications we experience have been brought on ourselves by choices that we make or habits that we form. As a society, it would appear that we are prone to let others set the bar as to where and how we should live. This outside influence invariably has some kind of affect on our attitudes. The “American Dream”, which for too many, has now turned into a “nightmare”, may not be the best way for us to live. At one time that dream was defined by the ownership of a decent house and good car. Then came “Hollywood” and TV that showed us the lives of the ‘rich and famous’ to stir up envy in many people. Next came “easy credit”, whereby we all could access things that were impossible in a “pay as you go” economy. Now we have woke up from a dream to find ourselves in a nightmare of debt and frustration, not just in a few individuals, but nearly a whole nation is one paycheck from ‘bankrupt’.
There have been plenty of people who have resisted the “Jones movement” and a few examples have always been around to buck the tide, but we mostly never hear about them. All media sources must, by the very nature of things, promote consumerism. We don’t hear radio or TV commercials telling us we “don’t need all the things we see”. Rather the advertising business must make us think we “need” whatever item they are selling, or they won’t get paid for their advertising.
I should state once again, I am not anti-capitalism or anti-consumer. I will leave that up to some who call themselves ’environmentalists’. These people, who are down on the American capitalist system, show themselves to be hypocrites, for the most part. I do consider myself a conservationist in that I think we should show common sense when using our natural or any other resource. But some seem to think they have a monopoly on conservation by claiming we must “preserve” nature by restricting its use to a “chosen few”, which don’t include us common folk. So they set aside millions of acres for national preserves and then make access to that land so expensive that only the elite can enjoy it. That is not what conservation was in the eyes of the first Americans who promoted conserving natural resources, but I digress.
Simplicity is a state of mind
For those of us who do not want to spend the better part of our life trying to earn a lot of money to leave to the “tax man”, there is a better way of living. It must begin with our thinking process. How we look at life and the world around us. This leads to a philosophy of simple living whereby we find that the best things in life really are free. Each of our lives consist of “time” and, as I have observed before, there is 24 hours in a day, whether you are a rich person or a poor man. How we spend that time is what makes up the content of our lives.
From the time I was a youth it seemed to me a sad thing that so many people lived lives that they “hated”, simply because they did not believe there was a way to escape the ‘leg-hold trap’ that our society has laid for us. Admittedly, it is not a easy road to travel, but you won’t find much traffic on the highway of “volunteer poverty”. By that I mean, some of us are willing to live our lives at a lower than average “standard of living” if by doing so, we can escape the 40 hour a week salary trap. Of course, 40 hour weeks are rare for “salaried” workers these days. But the point is some of us want to live as self-employed persons, even if that employment does not pay as well as having what I refer to as a “real job”. Personally, I have not had such a job since the spring of 1988, that is going on 24 years. During this time I have had a lot of different kinds of income, but all of it as a self-employed person.
Another part of our societal thinking is that for one to be “self-employed” they must start a business that will eventually have employees. It is only reasonable to assume this is necessary if one wants to become ’wealthy’ or have what is called a “good business”. However, it was not my intention to trade an ‘employer’ for ‘employees’. For a person who wants some “freedom”, employees are not your best ‘investment’. Invariability the owner of such a “business” is more entrapped in his “job” than he was as an employee. It is a rare business man who can leave his place of business in the hands of someone else and continue to be successful. I see nothing “simple” about the lives of most small business people. I know too many of them to be deceived into thinking that this was my answer to a “simple life”.
If I had to define “one element” of our lifestyle that has made this life possible it would have to be “money management”. Most of the time, there was not that much money to manage! However, the key to maintaining our independent condition was in the fact that, very early in the experiment of living without a regular paycheck, we realized we had to save all the money we could for the “lean times” in my self-employment. By avoiding debt as much as possible and not spending all our money as it came in, we actually learned that we did not need to have as much money as we thought. The formula gets simple very quickly, when you don’t know when your next paycheck might come, you form a habit of holding onto some reserves instead of spending everything you earn. It is not a hard habit to form when you don’t know ‘when’ you will have free-lance work, which is what my self-employment consisted of. But on the other hand, people who feel “trapped” in a job that pays a regular wage, feel free to buy more on credit because they are confident they can make their payments. It becomes a vicious cycle of always reaching to have more and better things. It is understandable that hard working people feel they ’deserve’ to have the things they work so hard for, and they do, but until the cycle of debt and payments gets broken, there can be no real progress toward simplifying our lives. That is, if a simple life involves giving up a regular paycheck in order to spend our time at other pursuits than a “job”.
This modern “leg-hold trap” is hard to extract oneself from. It does become easier if you don’t have a very good estimate of what you will earn next month. A “budget” under those circumstances gets to be very basic. As in keeping track to the bills that you have to pay, like house and car payments, phone and things that are fairly predictable. I found out early on that it was vital to keep enough money in reserve to pay these necessary bills, whether I had income or not. In that situation it also became easier to save money. The motivation gets pretty high when you decide you would rather be independent than have the “latest” model of automobile, or any of the other items that we are told by society that we need.
Many types of self-employment jobs are affected by the seasons of the year, especially if it involves outdoor work. My particular work was as a Hardwood Lumber Inspector. My work activity was to inspect lumber for any number of different small sawmill operations. (I use the past tense, even though I still inspect lumber, but much less than in the past.) In MN most of the logging is done in the winter when the ground is frozen and timber is more accessible. Of course there is some logging that takes place year around, but generally speaking winter will see a much greater harvest of logs than any other time of the year. It was a tradition in times past for farmers to go logging in the winter, after their summer crop work was done. This is how the great “logging camps” operated in the hay-day of American expansion, roughly up until the 1st Great Depression. (We have not admitted the fact of the 2nd one yet, the government is better at ‘cooking the books‘ now.) They cut the logs in the winter and piled them up on the frozen ice. When spring breakup came, the logs would be floated downstream to the mills, where they would then be sawed into lumber.
Those logging camps are history, but a certain part of the tradition is still in practice, purely from the fact that timber is easier to get over frozen ground than any other time. Every year, at least for the last 25, come spring there is a rush of logs from the winter landings to the sawmills. Consequently there is a rush for the mills to get the logs sawed into lumber, inspected and sold before warm weather damages the fresh lumber. The inspection part is where my work comes in. Thus, from around January up until about April my work would be very steady, often in the early years when I was after all the work I could possibly make time for, I would find myself working 6 and, at times, 7 days a week. By late May things would start to slow down and often in June I was out of work entirely.
It only took a couple yearly cycles to see how this worked out in my particular line of work. Once I understood how things worked, it was rather a pleasure to see the first of June come. Because I learned to save some money from lots of work in the winter, I was able to enjoy the slow season, which just so happened to be the best time of year for fishing, which was one of my passions in years past.
Since I don’t intent to write a ‘biography’ here, I must find some way to close this post! So here is my take: Simple living is really a state of mind that everyone must define in their own terms. But if you find that you are constantly stressed, over worked or just plain discontented, maybe you should consider ways in which you can “simplify, simplify, simplify”!
In future posts I will discuss what I consider as necessary or helpful “Skills” to simple living.
wherein we attempt to live in such a way and within the means we can reasonably and honorable obtain, without destroying the rights of others to pursue their own dreams of what life should be. There are many people who are very good at creating wealth and who enjoy spending that wealth on a lifestyle that is far different than what most of us aspire to. I don’t fault them in the least, they are the people who have raised our standard of living by inventing all kinds of goods and services that makes living in the USA the envy of the world. What I resent, is the ideal that money is the end-all to a happy life. If that were the case, most of us would be out of luck, for it is not possible that everyone can be “equal” in a free society, as far as ‘wealth‘ is concerned. We should be equal in the ‘right’ to work toward whatever life we want, but the reality has always been that it is only a few, among the masses, that attain the upper levels of the wealth train. Our nation has, in its history of capitalistic freedom, produced more wealthy people than any nation in history, I would believe. In most cases, people become wealthy by a combination of hard work, exceptional skills, ambition and a desire to improve the state of their financial worth. I speak in terms of common people who create wealth by their own business or vision. I am not speaking of those who were born into wealth, nor of those who become wealthy by immoral activities. I say “immoral activities” rather than “legal activities”, because there are many “legal” methods of becoming wealthy that are by no means “moral”.
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Mosquitoes in Winter
Minnesota is a state well known for lots of mosquitoes in the summertime, that is to be expected with all the water we have. Although they are not as bad here on our farm as they were when we lived on the river, unless we step into the woods! There, from June to early September they will generally carry you off to eat you.
But here is my complaint against ‘mother nature’. How is it that we get blessed with a species of those critters that will live all winter in our house? We have seen them when it is 20 below zero. I have often commented that it just did not seem “fair” to have one of those flying vermin buzz my ear, when I could barely keep my blood warm! This is something that we have always noticed, but since we use wood for heat we always assumed the larva came in on the wood and the varmints hatched in the woodpile. This year we have more than normal and thought it was because of the extremely mild weather we are having this fall.
But my lovely wife has learned that this is not the case at all. There really is a specie of mosquito that survives through the winter outside the larva stage, but inside houses. A MN DNR publication calls them “house mosquitoes”, the Latin name is (Culex pipiens), which I am not going to look up. I know this fellow well enough without checking out his genealogy, history or places he likes to live. They are rather large and live in their adult stage over winter wherever they can find a warm place to stay. Thus explains a 24 year mystery.
This reminds me of the ‘snow flea’, but that will be for another time.
But here is my complaint against ‘mother nature’. How is it that we get blessed with a species of those critters that will live all winter in our house? We have seen them when it is 20 below zero. I have often commented that it just did not seem “fair” to have one of those flying vermin buzz my ear, when I could barely keep my blood warm! This is something that we have always noticed, but since we use wood for heat we always assumed the larva came in on the wood and the varmints hatched in the woodpile. This year we have more than normal and thought it was because of the extremely mild weather we are having this fall.
But my lovely wife has learned that this is not the case at all. There really is a specie of mosquito that survives through the winter outside the larva stage, but inside houses. A MN DNR publication calls them “house mosquitoes”, the Latin name is (Culex pipiens), which I am not going to look up. I know this fellow well enough without checking out his genealogy, history or places he likes to live. They are rather large and live in their adult stage over winter wherever they can find a warm place to stay. Thus explains a 24 year mystery.
This reminds me of the ‘snow flea’, but that will be for another time.
Monday, November 28, 2011
Monday Morning Courage
One thing we find in the USA is that Americans are on the move at all times. Most people cherish the weekends, but live in dread of Monday morning, yet when their alarm clock goes off, they are up on moving. Most people have to get into a vehicle, (the most dangerous thing around) and drive themselves to their workplace, braving all kinds of weather, road hazards and other tired, distracted commuters.
Once their they have to forget their "life" and get their mind on the job at hand. No matter what the occupation is, Americans get it done. We have a lot of loud voices criticizing our way of life, but on the same hand, we have thousands of people from all over the world, breaking into our country because they know we are still the place where opportunity exists to better their lives.
These days it is seldom that I am on the road early Monday morning, since most of my labor is done at home. Yet, whenever I am, it never fails to strike a cord of pride in my heart, that Americans are no afraid to work! In fact, most want to work in order to improve their circumstances in life. Sure, we have plenty of "bums", so will not life a hand to feed themselves, but they are another one of those small, but "loud" minorities that seem to get lots of attention by the media. I guess since they won't work, they have time to seek the attention of media types, that appear to be attracted to whiners, as if that makes a worthwhile story. But then, what kind of story would it make, if we saw on CNN that John, Joe etc. all were on their job early Monday morning?
For something to make "news", it must be 'different' or 'controversial'. They will cover a "work stoppage" as in "strikes", for then they can get some 'airhead' to make outlandish statements, that they can use for their Monday morning broadcast. They don't consider that a man or woman who has showed up at their workplace daily for many years, on time and ready for work, newsworthy. This is because it is commonplace, and that is not sensational enough to attract the attention of media minds.
On this Monday morning after the Thanksgiving holiday, millions of Americans are back on the job with courage and determination to "produce" something worthwhile to their employer.
Though I am moving later than most Monday morning workers, I too must muster the courage and ambition to "get on the job" and now.
May God Bless American workers on this Monday!
Once their they have to forget their "life" and get their mind on the job at hand. No matter what the occupation is, Americans get it done. We have a lot of loud voices criticizing our way of life, but on the same hand, we have thousands of people from all over the world, breaking into our country because they know we are still the place where opportunity exists to better their lives.
These days it is seldom that I am on the road early Monday morning, since most of my labor is done at home. Yet, whenever I am, it never fails to strike a cord of pride in my heart, that Americans are no afraid to work! In fact, most want to work in order to improve their circumstances in life. Sure, we have plenty of "bums", so will not life a hand to feed themselves, but they are another one of those small, but "loud" minorities that seem to get lots of attention by the media. I guess since they won't work, they have time to seek the attention of media types, that appear to be attracted to whiners, as if that makes a worthwhile story. But then, what kind of story would it make, if we saw on CNN that John, Joe etc. all were on their job early Monday morning?
For something to make "news", it must be 'different' or 'controversial'. They will cover a "work stoppage" as in "strikes", for then they can get some 'airhead' to make outlandish statements, that they can use for their Monday morning broadcast. They don't consider that a man or woman who has showed up at their workplace daily for many years, on time and ready for work, newsworthy. This is because it is commonplace, and that is not sensational enough to attract the attention of media minds.
On this Monday morning after the Thanksgiving holiday, millions of Americans are back on the job with courage and determination to "produce" something worthwhile to their employer.
Though I am moving later than most Monday morning workers, I too must muster the courage and ambition to "get on the job" and now.
May God Bless American workers on this Monday!
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Camping
How is it that we humans have the tendency to think of the things we want to do “next summer”, before the fall is over and before winter even sets in? Knowing full well that we have nearly 6 months to wait for any sign of summer weather, at least in MN we do.
I find it to be the case that every year, around the 1st of December, I begin to make my camping plans for the following year, with much more anticipation than “camping” merits, I might add. When I speak of camping, we are talking about the “old fashion” kind, a tent. Having had the joy of a modern 5th wheel camper, which was used for a 5 week vacation to Florida one winter, I do know the difference in “camping” the modern way and camping in a traditional manner. The cost and time to maintain a modern camper that is only used a few times a year just did not seem worth it, so I sold the thing and used the proceeds to transform our barn’s hayloft to a woodshop, which I spend far more time in than I would the camper. So now all my camping is back to a tent of some kind.
Remembering back to the first time I went “camping” as a child is a real treat. My children have camped from the time they were a few months old, so they will never have the same kind of memories as I dig up from the cobwebs of my mind, nearly 43 years ago. As is often the case in the things we remember, the “memory” is much more agreeable than the actual experience, for the simple reason that I woke up on the ground under a homemade quilt with my head chewed nearly off from mosquito bites. Other than that, I decided I liked “camping”.
I feel certain it was the summer of 68’ or 69’. My father gather up the whole family, which at that time included 5 children, to take us camping on a little farm pond that belonged to a man he was working for. Camping, most of the time, requires a body of water for the atmosphere to be proper, unless it happens to be a hunting trip, in which case the only water you need is for drinking and cleaning up. The tendency to camp near water also insures the company of many biting insects, and, as a general rule, insects really enjoy human companionship.
This pond was not very big, but I being a young fisherman, was in no way discouraged that my fishing prospects were somewhat limited. I don’t recall that we caught any fish. My clearest memory is of rolling up in my quilt by a campfire, with my father, mother and siblings doing likewise. There was a lot of grumbling from the female corner about the mosquitoes, but I was content enough in that I was “camping”. We did not have a tent in those days. By mornings light I remember my mother and maybe some sisters were found to have fled to the car seats to sleep, with the windows up tight!
My camping methods have advanced, somewhat, since that long ago night in southern Ohio. Now we use either a modern nylon tent, or a white canvas wall tent that even has a chimney hole, so that we can use a woodstove if it is cold. When backpacking and canoeing into the backcountry, a nylon tent is about the only good option, considering the weight and bulk of a canvas tent. For pure comfort, a canvas wall tent is hard to beat. They are roomy enough to set up cots to sleep on, plus they breath enough to have a heat source. Any heat in a nylon tent will soon give you a shower from the condensation that drops from the ceiling, besides if you try to use a woodstove in a nylon tent, it is nearly certain, that you will end up with a pile of melted nylon in short order!
My last noteworthy camping was this past spring (2011). It was a trip into the BWCA (Boundary Waters Canoe Area) of northeast MN. For those not familiar with the BWCA, it consists of a million acres of wilderness area laying on the Canadian border. It is a “controlled wilderness”, meaning that the “powers that be” will only permit a certain number of travelers to enter the wilderness on any given day. That has its own merits and criticisms, but it does reduce congestion along the travel routes, which are from lake to lake over portages that have been used for hundreds, if not thousands of years by traveling people in that area of the world. I have had the privilege of camping in the BWCA off and on since 1986, it is one of the unique places in our state where one can leave all modern modes of transportation or communication and lose themselves in a wilderness environment. There are no motors of any kind permitted beyond the outlying parts of the wilderness, so all travel will be by canoe or foot. Cell phones don’t work, at least in the areas that I have been to of late. All I can say about that is, I would not take one even if they did work, the experience could not possibly be the same if one had constant communication with the hectic outside world, which we are trying to escape from to begin with.
This last trip was also my most unforgettable trip into the BWCA. Due to unfavorable weather conditions. Even though it was in late May, a time when MN normally can expect the black flies and mosquitoes not to be out in force, they were on the first day. After that, they could not fly, being grounded by gale force winds! Now strong winds and canoe travel do not mix, but nature does not take into account the desires of travelers.
Part of the allure of wilderness camping is the ability, for a few days, to be transported, as a time machine, to the days before modern travel. I have found that for the average person, canoeing is one of the few ways to get into the wilderness and still enjoy some solitude. Backpacking is a natural alternative for those hardy enough to participate in that sport. But long before my ‘carcass’ began to fall apart, I decided that travel by canoe was ideal for my temperament. For starters I like to fish, that requires lots of water. Second, backpacking demands a minimal amount of gear, that requires a lot of sacrifice of comfort while encamped, to my opinion. Third, I get bored just “walking”, unless there is a better hiking environment than what I find in our great state. MN is full of great places, but hiking trails are not among our top attractions. After all, how many miles of “tundra” do you care to see? J But lakes! We have them by the thousands, according to our license plates, we are the land of ten thousand lakes, but the DNR assures us that this is a “low count” and there are many more than 10,000 lakes in our state. I would like to fish every one of them! Still working on that.
If you wonder what it is like to be in a canoe with white caps around a foot high, I can tell you it is “exciting”. It calls of a steady hand and careful navigation. You don’t let yourself get crossways to the waves, not unless you are wanting to go swimming. You must go with the waves or straight into them. As our good luck had it, on the day we really needed to travel the wind was to our back, so we rode the waves at a speed seldom seen before the steam engine. If we had been facing into that gale, more than likely we would have went into “camp” and waited for a calm. Travel speed into the wind is about as slow as a turtle on a greased road, there is a lot of energy put into the paddle, but very little forward progress.
Camping is not for everyone, especially ‘backwoods’ camping. But there are not many sports that can be done at such low cost in money as camping. Most of the equipment, if purchased wisely, will last a lifetime. No matter how the trip turns out, the memories are there to be dug out of the archive of our minds anytime we want them. Some of my most cherished memories are around a campfire somewhere beyond the roads, while the sun sets over a lake that has not seen a motor in 50 years. The moose and bear make it their home, the busy beaver is always at work, building dams or storing food for the long winter and the ‘haunting cry of the loon’ echoes across the water like a sound from another age in history.
Yep, I am going to make another trip into the BWCA next spring, but I am not going to carry enough food for a month! That is another story better left alone.
I find it to be the case that every year, around the 1st of December, I begin to make my camping plans for the following year, with much more anticipation than “camping” merits, I might add. When I speak of camping, we are talking about the “old fashion” kind, a tent. Having had the joy of a modern 5th wheel camper, which was used for a 5 week vacation to Florida one winter, I do know the difference in “camping” the modern way and camping in a traditional manner. The cost and time to maintain a modern camper that is only used a few times a year just did not seem worth it, so I sold the thing and used the proceeds to transform our barn’s hayloft to a woodshop, which I spend far more time in than I would the camper. So now all my camping is back to a tent of some kind.
Remembering back to the first time I went “camping” as a child is a real treat. My children have camped from the time they were a few months old, so they will never have the same kind of memories as I dig up from the cobwebs of my mind, nearly 43 years ago. As is often the case in the things we remember, the “memory” is much more agreeable than the actual experience, for the simple reason that I woke up on the ground under a homemade quilt with my head chewed nearly off from mosquito bites. Other than that, I decided I liked “camping”.
I feel certain it was the summer of 68’ or 69’. My father gather up the whole family, which at that time included 5 children, to take us camping on a little farm pond that belonged to a man he was working for. Camping, most of the time, requires a body of water for the atmosphere to be proper, unless it happens to be a hunting trip, in which case the only water you need is for drinking and cleaning up. The tendency to camp near water also insures the company of many biting insects, and, as a general rule, insects really enjoy human companionship.
This pond was not very big, but I being a young fisherman, was in no way discouraged that my fishing prospects were somewhat limited. I don’t recall that we caught any fish. My clearest memory is of rolling up in my quilt by a campfire, with my father, mother and siblings doing likewise. There was a lot of grumbling from the female corner about the mosquitoes, but I was content enough in that I was “camping”. We did not have a tent in those days. By mornings light I remember my mother and maybe some sisters were found to have fled to the car seats to sleep, with the windows up tight!
My camping methods have advanced, somewhat, since that long ago night in southern Ohio. Now we use either a modern nylon tent, or a white canvas wall tent that even has a chimney hole, so that we can use a woodstove if it is cold. When backpacking and canoeing into the backcountry, a nylon tent is about the only good option, considering the weight and bulk of a canvas tent. For pure comfort, a canvas wall tent is hard to beat. They are roomy enough to set up cots to sleep on, plus they breath enough to have a heat source. Any heat in a nylon tent will soon give you a shower from the condensation that drops from the ceiling, besides if you try to use a woodstove in a nylon tent, it is nearly certain, that you will end up with a pile of melted nylon in short order!
My last noteworthy camping was this past spring (2011). It was a trip into the BWCA (Boundary Waters Canoe Area) of northeast MN. For those not familiar with the BWCA, it consists of a million acres of wilderness area laying on the Canadian border. It is a “controlled wilderness”, meaning that the “powers that be” will only permit a certain number of travelers to enter the wilderness on any given day. That has its own merits and criticisms, but it does reduce congestion along the travel routes, which are from lake to lake over portages that have been used for hundreds, if not thousands of years by traveling people in that area of the world. I have had the privilege of camping in the BWCA off and on since 1986, it is one of the unique places in our state where one can leave all modern modes of transportation or communication and lose themselves in a wilderness environment. There are no motors of any kind permitted beyond the outlying parts of the wilderness, so all travel will be by canoe or foot. Cell phones don’t work, at least in the areas that I have been to of late. All I can say about that is, I would not take one even if they did work, the experience could not possibly be the same if one had constant communication with the hectic outside world, which we are trying to escape from to begin with.
This last trip was also my most unforgettable trip into the BWCA. Due to unfavorable weather conditions. Even though it was in late May, a time when MN normally can expect the black flies and mosquitoes not to be out in force, they were on the first day. After that, they could not fly, being grounded by gale force winds! Now strong winds and canoe travel do not mix, but nature does not take into account the desires of travelers.
Part of the allure of wilderness camping is the ability, for a few days, to be transported, as a time machine, to the days before modern travel. I have found that for the average person, canoeing is one of the few ways to get into the wilderness and still enjoy some solitude. Backpacking is a natural alternative for those hardy enough to participate in that sport. But long before my ‘carcass’ began to fall apart, I decided that travel by canoe was ideal for my temperament. For starters I like to fish, that requires lots of water. Second, backpacking demands a minimal amount of gear, that requires a lot of sacrifice of comfort while encamped, to my opinion. Third, I get bored just “walking”, unless there is a better hiking environment than what I find in our great state. MN is full of great places, but hiking trails are not among our top attractions. After all, how many miles of “tundra” do you care to see? J But lakes! We have them by the thousands, according to our license plates, we are the land of ten thousand lakes, but the DNR assures us that this is a “low count” and there are many more than 10,000 lakes in our state. I would like to fish every one of them! Still working on that.
If you wonder what it is like to be in a canoe with white caps around a foot high, I can tell you it is “exciting”. It calls of a steady hand and careful navigation. You don’t let yourself get crossways to the waves, not unless you are wanting to go swimming. You must go with the waves or straight into them. As our good luck had it, on the day we really needed to travel the wind was to our back, so we rode the waves at a speed seldom seen before the steam engine. If we had been facing into that gale, more than likely we would have went into “camp” and waited for a calm. Travel speed into the wind is about as slow as a turtle on a greased road, there is a lot of energy put into the paddle, but very little forward progress.
Camping is not for everyone, especially ‘backwoods’ camping. But there are not many sports that can be done at such low cost in money as camping. Most of the equipment, if purchased wisely, will last a lifetime. No matter how the trip turns out, the memories are there to be dug out of the archive of our minds anytime we want them. Some of my most cherished memories are around a campfire somewhere beyond the roads, while the sun sets over a lake that has not seen a motor in 50 years. The moose and bear make it their home, the busy beaver is always at work, building dams or storing food for the long winter and the ‘haunting cry of the loon’ echoes across the water like a sound from another age in history.
Yep, I am going to make another trip into the BWCA next spring, but I am not going to carry enough food for a month! That is another story better left alone.
Friday, November 25, 2011
Black Friday
Once again our suffering economy has 'pushed the clock' to get the public to shop early for the Christmas season. That the retailers are successful is only because we consumers are cooperative. Not all of us, naturally, but enough to make it seem worth the while of big stores to open at all kinds of odd hours, all determined to get the cream of the spending glut that inflicts the nation at this time of year. Anyone who knows me will already know that I will not be part of the shopping mob. Just out of principle if for no other reason. I just don't like hustle & bustle crowds, a personal taste that obviously is consider "strange" by a lot of folks, judging from what I hear on the news.
The facts are this. The largest, most competitive retail stores are desperate to sale a lot of products today, not next week, but today! How have they gotten themselves into such a state, that this one day greatly determines whether or not they will make a profit this calender year? Is something to be amazed at. We might even say "alarmed" about. What kind of economy have we created that depends on "over consumption", to the point that if Americans do not spend more money than they have, our whole economic system will go down the drain? Something, besides home mortgages, is upside-down!
Now I know a lot of my friends and relatives are participating in the great American tradition of shopping today on "Black Friday". My observation is not meant to be critical of 'shoppers', nor of capitalism, but rather to think reasonably about our nations economic future, if our great retailers are so over extended that they cannot expect to make any profits until the last 5 or 6 weeks of the year, this cannot be considered as a 'healthy economic system', but rather "fragile". Nor can it be healthy for an economy to "depend" on credit for a "healthy business" to operate. I mean the "credit" of the 'consumer'. When all of our retail industry is counting on the public to go into debt for Christmas shopping, it would seem to me we are walking frayed tight-rope.
How vulnerable has our economy become? What if there is a large scale terroist attack at this season? Or even a cyber attack that "scrambles" the major retailers or banking computer networks? Does this mean our national retail companies are so delicate that they would quickly be driven into bankruptcy if suddenly consumers cut back on their purchases during Black Friday or throughout the Christmas shopping season? I would suspect many of them are close to the edge as it is.
Here is a "common man's" opinion. From our top government officials, to our corporate heads, all the way down to the shopper on the street, we have lost our collective minds! Just as many people knew that the housing boom of 'recent collaspe' could not possibly continue, we ought to know that an economy built on a foundation of debt is always just one step from a major collaspe.
But cheer up, there is an answer to our economic vulnerability. But it will not start at the top of the food chain with government or big business. It must start at the very root of our economic system and that is with we the people, better know to retailers as consumers. If millions of Americans decide to give up the "debt addiction" and bring our personal finances back to solid ground, our whole nation will benefit, in the long term. It won't be so good for some of the more fragile retailers who are counting on us to keep their boat afloat by our personal debt, but as a nation, we will be better off with fewer companies that are healthy than a million big corporations existing on a thread. Let them go out of business and companies who do their job right will fill up the gap for the real demand.
I don't think it can be disputed that debt is necessary for business and individuals for certain big ticket items like homes, autos and such. How else can normal people finance such items? But those who keep records of such things tell us that our debt is far beyond "reasonable" and credit card debt it totally out of control for far too much of our poplulation.
Soon we will be in a new year. If you are make New Year's Resolutions, another questionable habit of Americans :), I would suggest, for your own peace of mind and the welfare of our country, you can't go wrong, if you to pay down your debt as much as possible. There is nothing we can do to help our economy more than by exercising some common sense restraint, when it comes to spending money that we don't have. It is a sure thing that our government is "not" going to cut their "overspending", after all, next year is an election year. The "powers that be", who have already ran the piggy bank dry, will not stop borrowing money to pacify all the "voters" who are screaming for more government "assistance", as long as they control the printing presses or can get "someone", even our enemies, to loan them money to keep themselves in office.
If on the other hand, you have money that you can spend without putting your personal economics in question, GO SHOPPING!
Happy Black Friday to all.
The facts are this. The largest, most competitive retail stores are desperate to sale a lot of products today, not next week, but today! How have they gotten themselves into such a state, that this one day greatly determines whether or not they will make a profit this calender year? Is something to be amazed at. We might even say "alarmed" about. What kind of economy have we created that depends on "over consumption", to the point that if Americans do not spend more money than they have, our whole economic system will go down the drain? Something, besides home mortgages, is upside-down!
Now I know a lot of my friends and relatives are participating in the great American tradition of shopping today on "Black Friday". My observation is not meant to be critical of 'shoppers', nor of capitalism, but rather to think reasonably about our nations economic future, if our great retailers are so over extended that they cannot expect to make any profits until the last 5 or 6 weeks of the year, this cannot be considered as a 'healthy economic system', but rather "fragile". Nor can it be healthy for an economy to "depend" on credit for a "healthy business" to operate. I mean the "credit" of the 'consumer'. When all of our retail industry is counting on the public to go into debt for Christmas shopping, it would seem to me we are walking frayed tight-rope.
How vulnerable has our economy become? What if there is a large scale terroist attack at this season? Or even a cyber attack that "scrambles" the major retailers or banking computer networks? Does this mean our national retail companies are so delicate that they would quickly be driven into bankruptcy if suddenly consumers cut back on their purchases during Black Friday or throughout the Christmas shopping season? I would suspect many of them are close to the edge as it is.
Here is a "common man's" opinion. From our top government officials, to our corporate heads, all the way down to the shopper on the street, we have lost our collective minds! Just as many people knew that the housing boom of 'recent collaspe' could not possibly continue, we ought to know that an economy built on a foundation of debt is always just one step from a major collaspe.
But cheer up, there is an answer to our economic vulnerability. But it will not start at the top of the food chain with government or big business. It must start at the very root of our economic system and that is with we the people, better know to retailers as consumers. If millions of Americans decide to give up the "debt addiction" and bring our personal finances back to solid ground, our whole nation will benefit, in the long term. It won't be so good for some of the more fragile retailers who are counting on us to keep their boat afloat by our personal debt, but as a nation, we will be better off with fewer companies that are healthy than a million big corporations existing on a thread. Let them go out of business and companies who do their job right will fill up the gap for the real demand.
I don't think it can be disputed that debt is necessary for business and individuals for certain big ticket items like homes, autos and such. How else can normal people finance such items? But those who keep records of such things tell us that our debt is far beyond "reasonable" and credit card debt it totally out of control for far too much of our poplulation.
Soon we will be in a new year. If you are make New Year's Resolutions, another questionable habit of Americans :), I would suggest, for your own peace of mind and the welfare of our country, you can't go wrong, if you to pay down your debt as much as possible. There is nothing we can do to help our economy more than by exercising some common sense restraint, when it comes to spending money that we don't have. It is a sure thing that our government is "not" going to cut their "overspending", after all, next year is an election year. The "powers that be", who have already ran the piggy bank dry, will not stop borrowing money to pacify all the "voters" who are screaming for more government "assistance", as long as they control the printing presses or can get "someone", even our enemies, to loan them money to keep themselves in office.
If on the other hand, you have money that you can spend without putting your personal economics in question, GO SHOPPING!
Happy Black Friday to all.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)