Tuesday, March 6, 2007 7:13 AM
It has been a gorgeous morning so far - clouds and moisture in the air have created a dramatic sunrise of pinks and strobing sunlight on Q mountain. For a while the creosote, thorns, and palo verde were diffused with a soft pink light. Oh, big news, my dove who has been sitting six feet away is now not sitting on eggs. Two LARGE babies that I can count have been tumbling around for a preferred position under her. She can only fluff herself out so much, but she is trying. She continues to watch me, but less intently now as she is busy. Maybe she's been reading the blog?
Today I'll be moving the three cheap solar panels on the canopy of the truck. With the five large panels on the airstream, from above the truck and Safari will appear as one big solar panel in motion. I bought the brackets yesterday and the installation will be very straight forward. Pictures later.
Willits California - this is a place you might check out. A local doctor showed the "Death of Suburbia" movie there, I think when it was first out - I believe two years ago, and there was such a big local response that they showed it three times, then got busy doing something about it. What I'm most interested in on the current website is the structure of the response they envision. Here is their link: Willits Economic Localization.
We need examples of communities, besides Cuba, that are implementing responses now to serve as the pathways for other communities. I guess it is somewhat hard to change from Empire to a cooperative earth solution. Who would have guessed? Stories lead our thoughts and create expectation, and each of us in our expectation creates our mutual future. Expect more chicklets. You free chickens are the revolution!

Sunday, March 4, 2007 8:00 PM

My found knife and Barstick share quality time with my Grandfors Bruks Swedish hatchet while drying..

Left: The first of the petroglyphs on Barstick and on my found knife handle. Tomorrow I will buff them to remove the larger carbon chunks (my grinding still could use some trick I'm missing) and finish with a lighter second coat of tempura. After the second coat has dried for a few days I will put on several layers of Varathane to seal the glyphs. I am almost sure, well fairly sure, that the two media - alkyd and egg will not react together in any destructive way. Tempura as you've read here before is egg yolk, water, and pigment. Many other things can be put into it to tint it or stop it from being attacked by bacteria, or to improve it's flow characteristics. One thing added to darker pigment tempura is blood which is an excellent bonding agent in it's own right and served as a primitive binder for some cave art, lasting a long, long time. So you know what I did right? Yea. I choose the most dominant vertical petroglyph from "my" petroglyph site where mother lion waits. The knife handle petroglyph is upside down, meant to be viewed with the point UP, the same petroglyph. I usually am somewhat resistant to adding any links that you could have found on your own, but I suspect these two are germane and need linking. Sometimes other people just say it better than I ever will. Both are about things you can do right now about peak oil, first personally, and the second as a small community. How do you prepare for Peak Oil's effect? and the second is Ten ways to prepare for post peak oil. This one has a more preemptory tone, but it is Kuntsler and he has the research and brains.

I soaked the leather for a few minutes in tepid water. Wrapped the knife in saran wrap and tape and wrapped the leather around the knife, laying flat on the board. I wanted the back flat and the front to be bumped up. I used heavy staples to hold the leather and let it dry for two days.

Removed the knife and used linen unwaxed thread, I think waxed would have held tighter on each stitch. I used a saddle stitch with two needles. Linen dental floss is the thread. The stitching is far from perfect and as many holes as you see here, that many are in my fingers. Good thing I'm used to it. I used a sharp nail and hammer to make the holes before stitching.

The leather is a little thin, and I have not yet made the piece that will allow my belt loop to go through it. I did put a small spacer piece of leather between the leather fold above - so that the knife blade wouldn't be right on the stitches. That got to be a handful and I tried to use glue as I went but it was messy. It took hours for me to stitch this. I didn't expect that. I'll finish the back and darkent the stitches then varnish the outside of the sheath, but not the back. That will help the light leather keep it's shape. I will also trim down the top of the sheath to expose the handle just a little bit to make it easier to remove and replace the knife.
The knife handles have had two coats of varnish and sanding and will get their last coat today. Finding out that the solar over cures the varnish in just 2 hours has really speeded up this process.

Saturday, March 3, 2007 6:03 AM
I have one more large project to do before I move down south in just under three weeks. I will be moving the Harbor Freight solar panels onto the roof of the canopy of the truck. The safest place for solar panels is up up and bolted down. I'll finish the welding cart this week and install it in the truck as a back up power source and then in two weeks I'll take down la Casa Blanca.
Tuesday of next week is forecast to be the beginning of HEAT, with temps going into the 80s which means the trailer will try to reach 100F in the afternoon. By moving south to Imperial Dam I will put myself close to the water and spend as much time as I can in my Kayak for those next couple of weeks. It is very hilly there so my walking exercise can continue, I haven't missed a day climbing Q mountain in one month, and now I'll be able to work on my shoulders and upper arms (yeah, and nap in the kayak).
It is the half way point of my six months off and I've been introspective for the last three days. It has been a very different trip this time. I've been focused on building a path for myself and the people I care about to a more sustainable, less insane future, and studying art, writing many of you a lot, and calling some. I have been less disconnected than I was last year, yet I have had much more alone time in the desert this year. Even the mountain lions have added a different flavor. The point to myself is, I guess, that change comes both slow and fast, but comes inexorably.

Writing to and for such a diverse group of people has stretched my ability to perceive this world in a cohesive manner. So much so that I have given up trying to sew a single cloth from all this fabric. Some of you believe and express in letters and conversation the need not to focus on danger and death of this future change that comes because I make you depressed, or more germane, that in focusing on it I make it come true. Some of you wonder why I don't focus on evacuation plans, enumerating the trigger incidents of the beginning of collapse. Some of you just want to know what to put in the trunk. Others of you want to know how best to store your assets so that you will be able to carry your security through whatever comes, to maintain your status and privilege in then future (good luck with that).

I mention these widely disparate viewpoints to explain that I am fractured by diversity of belief because I see it all those ways too, but it does not help to have guilt about creating what I fear, and trying to focus on creating what I love at the same time I'm building weapons and cleaning my Makarov. I finally found a little peace yesterday afternoon.

I had several conversations in the morning with two free chicks and an ex. I had to be gumby to stretch over all of them but the one that shorted me out for a while was a conversation in which I was reminded that what I think I create- via the laws of attraction. If I'm feeling bad or having a bad experience the question for me is, why did I manifest this, why did I create it? So you could see where my short circuit would be, by trying to create a path through the rubble of a die off of 4.5 billion people, am I creating, making real, reinforcing the rubble and the die off itself? Am I creating it?

For example, I believe in the math and science of cause and effect and repeatability. If it hit myself in the head with a hammer and it hurts I deduce it will hurt next time. If I put two rocks together and then add a third, I expect that I will turn around in 10 seconds and find three rocks there. I also suspect that no matter how hard I try to imagine that there are four rocks, or even pray for four rocks, or simply believe in four rocks, I will turn around and there will be three rocks. I know this is because I believe in that math and science at my core, thus four rocks can never exist for me. I don't rule out your ability to create the fourth rock though. So I have separate belief systems in my head and it hurts.

But the way to a peaceful disarmament inside me came to me late in the afternoon yesterday. I am not one just to "forgetaboutit". This is a koan, a riddle not solvable in the same plane of existence that it is postulated. I cannot both exist in the world I have created by my thoughts and expectations, and attempt to remove my physical self from the consequences of the reality of all your thoughts and creation, or even my own previous expectation and creation. Only by removing myself from this moment can I say, I will visualize a future that makes sense and work toward it. And I believe that makes a big difference, focusing on a positive outcome to these changes.

HOWEVER, today when I get out of this bed and make my coffee I will be immersed in a reality that was created by me and you and it is real. Maybe the mountain lions exist because I "expected" them and thought them into existence, but if one shows up today it could decide to eat me and that would be real. I would be done with this physical world. So in the reality of my new day should one show up and not be dissuaded by noise and cold logic, I will shoot it and kill it. The same applies in the uncertain future. I must respond to what is on the plate today, and first. Regardless of whose fault it is, or whether I created it by expectation, I must still deal with what is at the door today.

I have read so many times that every group of people and in each person individually, there are times you need the warrior and there are times you need the philosopher. In every daily moment, I am the warrior and actuator of my living life. In my thoughts here to you and in my introspection, I am the philosopher. I create my world, and having done that I live within the physical consequences of it. I cannot let the philosopher distract the aim of the warrior. Both are me, and both are required. Oddly, that gave me some peace yesterday. And it still does this morning.

If any local chickies made it through this long haul drudgery wipe your feet off, and if you have time meet me for coffee at the BK. I'll be having coffee from the Mobile side and reading my new book at and scarfing down a whopper junior with cheese at 8:15am. Pictures are coming and happy mcnalan is just around the corner (so isn't the collapse, don't get comfortable).

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