Thursday, December 21, 2006 7:18 PM
I have pictures from my bicycle adventure and will have them up tonight if I don't fall asleep first. It was a busy day. I spent about 5 hours searching for the petroglyphs and the Indian encampment. I returned with about 4 ounces of fuel, completely whipped, to find Phil here with a large number of his pieces to be scanned. They were borrowed from a private owner who has many of Phil's pieces and they loaned them to me to scan. They will be up tomorrow. After that, Mark, a friend is moving, has moved now, in near me on the LTVA with his motor home. I drove him out with him and drove his truck back before going to town to say goodbye (for Christmas) to Tom and Scott. I caught Tom but Scott was all packed and locked and gone. Back here now to talk to you and read your email.

Thursday, December 21, 2006 7:14 AM
False dawn, walked outside for minute, sharp cold, quiet. Thoughts rattling around this early morn. Russians value family above the state, the neighborhood, but even more important than family are a loose group of people who look out for each other constantly. In the Soviet era when it was hard to find any material goods, almost everything was acquired through these contacts. This group was large, it was often everyone you knew, and especially everyone who owed you a favor, or you them. A subset of that group were people who simply looked out for you because they loved you. Friends, that doesn't do it - it is deeper than that.
One day a Russian friend in Eugene was talking to me about our poverty here in America. I bristled, because whether you feel it in my feeble attempts at communication with your soul, I love my dirt, I cry for my country, I love America and the concepts that formed it. I simply love the dirt of my home.. He cut me off, "not money, ne dingi, poverty of friends. He told me that almost any Russian man has at least a dozen people he come to at 3 in the morning, knock on the door and be welcome. He wondered how many people I had like that. Gulp, none. These were the people without whom, during the Soviet era, you would die. Russians call these people, "my close people."
Close people. Roll that around for a minute. It is family, it is close friends, it is everyone you would go to when called. Who would you go to when called? How many close people do you have?
Years ago when traveling in my Airstream for the second time, my friend and fellow free chicken Gary and I discussed the formation of independent tribes. We were skirting around the issue of close people. We wondered if you could put together traveling RV bands (of which there are already many - for example the "Rangs" of Escapees). No formal membership but people checking on each other and providing the community that RVers often miss. A tribe of almost close people.

In our society, we can insulate, and isolate ourselves to whatever degree is comfortable. And many of us do to the extreme that we have no close people at all. I think as I look out on my empty visage of the Q mountain across Tyson wash, how many close people do I have. As an acculturated US American, how many do I want? What if they eat me alive with demands? I fear the closeness I crave. I don't think, in that, that I am unusual, here in this time.

I think we will need close people more than ever before as the material goods and cheap energy begins to dry up and become prohibitively expensive. I'll go out on a limb (how rare), I think the material goods are the narcotic with which we anesthetize ourselves because of our lack of close relationships. I think our lack may occur like this:
1.job with static group of same people (not talking about you Tedd).
2.job uses all the best time, the fresh brain and thinking time, and you are turned out at the end of the day like Robert Bly the poet often said, left with none of the beauty, only the irritation. That is what you bring home to your nuclear "close people."
3. You begin to isolate yourself to get rid of the pain of being tired, too much to do, all because your job has used you up, and your close people are choking you with demands.

I see down here in Q people who live outside the box. People who have created something unlikely, but sustaining at some level. But what I see most is people moving around talking to each other, having coffee, laughing, building tribes. Building the relationships that will become "close people." I just don't know how you can do that when you are working at a soul sucking job that has a mission that has NOTHING to do with your personal connections and everything to do with profit and the continuing life of the artificial person - the corporation you work for.

I bring this up because in the electrical solar project discussion of a day or two ago, one blog reader said that in a serious emergency, volcanoes and polar shifts and the earths plates crashing together, she might be thinking more of getting her community together. From the way she phrased it, I realized she meant bringing her "close people" physically close, them to her, or her to them.

I think this is something we all should all work on. This work, finding people to love and trust is not easy work. See, they won't look like they look on TV. They will be fat and ugly and have bad breadth, believe stupid things, irritate you, be slow, be too talkative (hah- me), too opinionated, too cheap, and generally NOT who you would have picked for your personal TV show, "my life" -which would look like a TV show cast in LA). But these people have the gold you seek. All the flaws, all the failures, all the irritations but everyone of them has the ability to love you in their way, to protect you in their way, to become a close person to you and fill your life, my life, and finally assuage the hunger that has driven us to buy more and more useless crap, until we can't close the garage door, looking for love and connection. What I have to remember is that I have to let them love me the way they are, not the way I wish they would. Free chickies, every iconoclast among you, every strutting pompous rooster (moi?) of us, will and needs now a a flock, for sure as hell when the shit hits the fan, these are the very people you will need, especially emotionally. Why do you think isolation is used as a punishment in prison?

Heavy topic for early morn, but I will never apologize. Hey if I piss you by what I write, and if you're a close person to me (and you know who each of you are), then write me and let me have it!. As a love of mine from many decades ago said, when I was telling her not to meddle in a friend's love life, "friends have opinions if they love their friends. If you don't say what you think you are just an acquaintance." You want to unload on me press the fucking button!

Click to see a bigger more legible picture

And to the person, Mike who said to Ed, this ain't George's blog, is it? Don't get me wrong, I love George's view of life. Just it seems to me he is hovering above, unsoiled by need, desperation, depression and all the other mainstays of modern life, and at some level I know we are not seeing the reality of his life. I want to know when he is mortified, frightened, sexually attracted, falling in love with a married woman, leaving a camping spot because he is afraid of who showed up. Just once I want him to slip and say "fuck." Then and only then does he have a right to counsel me. Whew, I need another cup of coffee. I'm looking for my picture of the GI with the coffee cup that says "how about another cup of shut the fuck up!" OK, enough (for now).

Wednesday, December 20, 2006 6:23 PM
Man it gets dark early now. Well I started pricing the solar project and made a list of parts - start reading here for those interested. The parts list is here. To the reader who sent me the Gore petition, I'm 100% want to put it up for the other like minded chicklets - a petition to get Congress to act on Global warming, but it comes up in your name when I follow the link. Can you see if there is a generic version? Thanks.
Also I'm working right now on the solar list and on the links for the future page - to put up some of the thinking that is beyond today, about how we will create this future where we fit with the world instead of eat it. That means that some of links will seem "out there." That's OK, we're all going to get very uncomfortable in the near future anyway so you might as well start now, and remember you can always click on http://www.bunnies.com where soothing pictures of cute baby rabbits will relax you so that you can get your next gluttonous big bite of what's what little our world has left. Maybe Santa will bring you what you really want, PROZAC, booze and Viagra! Party on!
I've been getting more reactions about the lists and who else must be a free chicken. I love hearing from you all and I'll always be careful with your name, etc. unless you specify otherwise.

I'm drinking coffee and working on solar systems. Pictures of yesterday will be up in a minute.

5:30am on a very cold desert December morn. Hey mommas, do you know where your children are? This momma's boy is freezing his ass off in his airstream at the north fucking pole, no, the Sonoran desert. I didn't sign up for this. I want my MTV. Stop whining. It's dry and a beautiful blue morning now. But if you can see in the low light picture - just light from the laptop screen (saving power) I've got my Russian hat on. The big furry ones with the ears that fold down. This one is from the Arbat in Moscow (one of the largest streets). I had my choice, you can get sable, about $20,000, or rabbit, about $70 for a good one, which is what I am wearing. But here it comes, do you know what most of them are that you see everyone wearing in the pictures of Red Square during the Mayday parades??? Ewww, dog, yes dogs. (further editorial content removed)

This is where I live. Wow. I've hooked the trailer up and going to town for boxes. I use them for storage and projects.	This is how I live - what a pig! Clean that desk (next day - no one's cleaned it yet,
This is my box store. I love AZ deserts. If I were back in Oregon they would all be wet. Not here.	Here is a little test I made out of a long box, paper and silver tape. I'm trying to increase the late afternoon sunlight on this little solar panel because as you see, the dish blocks it for about 2 hours in the afternoon.

I'm off to meet Ed for coffee via my bicycle. I'm wearing the Russian hat. Today I'm taking a laptop to Scott's or vice versa and I'll test some upload speeds. Sun's up, no rain in sight. Oh, every time I run to town and run around I rack up about 5 to 10 miles per trip. Yet I have yet to use a cup of gasoline in a day. I top up with a little bloop, blip, full. The little Robin-Subaru motor is really SWEET! I'll be back moving the solar stuff off of here and adding my initial designs as time permits. I also received an interesting comment on what is mandatory in an electrical survival situation that I think warrants some space and time to discuss. Wake up!

I also got some feedback from another reader whom who took umbrage over some of the choices people make, and me, in putting together our "must have electrical devices. Here it is:

I have to agree that in the long run, all those things will break, maybe even in the short run. Batteries will expire, chargers will malfunction and while we will probably have the ability to repair and extend the life of "gadgets" we probably will be busy doing other things that are much more satisfying: building our new world, working in the garden, building underground shelters, going to bed early, and digging the privy or building a compost pile. Of course the going to bed early sounds good too. I don't know if that is because I'm young enough to be horny or old enough to enjoy a nap (I do both, best of both worlds). Yes I am old enough to nap with pride, but back to the comment the reader made above. I think that many of these devices are enormously important during the transition from what we have to what we will want, or more exactly, what we are willing to do to have what we want. Many things will remain available no matter what form of crash, but the price in time/labor/trade may be more than we want care to pay. We will then find out the real value of an X-box. While an X-box might be repellent to someone my age, telling me I can't have any books would be a great stress for me, and that will come at a time when we need to be smooth and focused because there will plenty of other opportunities to test our flexibility and adaptability.

Hey how cold was it last night? So cold that still this morning . . . Do you remember Paul the naked bookseller in Quartzsite from two years ago? It was this time two years ago that I put his picture in the blog from his bookstore on West Main Street. He was as usual, nearly naked except for what is called a ball bag. Apparently a golfing term. He came to breakfast with shorts and a shirt on. I think I got a picture. I shot it over my head behind my back while talking to Ed. It seemed, I don't know, somehow indecent, since he had clothes on. I was embarassed and I think Ed was too.