I Wish...

...that I could write nifty little stories like my son.

Well done, Coop

My Song

Drift on
lonesome son of a hundred names
see: the past has forgotten you already.

Time is your enemy
and the Reaper his master.

How much more have you to see?
How many moments
can be spent in any one place
or with any one person?

The wanderlust calls, quiet vagabond
and you must answer.

And do your parents
your brothers
know where you are?

And if they knew would you be in their thoughts
or in the thoughts
of the women you have loved, and lost?

Move quickly, for time follows close
with Death at the leash
and when the Reaper sings to you of eternity
who will mourn for thee?

Age, growing old, is like a war between wisdom and bitterness.

                               Stephen Baxter, Manifold Time

Updates, Current Activities, Schedule

The Jupiter Project, as originally and still conceived, is an effort to relocate to a less densely settled part of the country; become a part of a smaller, local community; and return to a way of life that at its core fulfills the following values:

• Self-reliance and resilience to the impacts of climate change, resource depletion, and population overshoot;
• A slower, less frenetic pace of life but one that involves - and values - real, physical labor alongside intellectual labor and lifelong learning;
• The application of labor to real capital in order to provide for basic needs of the self, the family and the community without stripping the land of resources in an effort to maximize profit;
• The replacement of non-sustainable, energy intensive technologies, such as large scale automobile use, by re-localizing the production of basic human needs and making basic resources locally available by walking or animal borne-travel;
• The retention of valuable, sustainable technologies that enhance human life, such as communications devices, the Internet, and medical science;
• Avoidance, to the extent possible, of corporate and governmental (and really, aren't they the same thing in this grand new oligarchy of ours?) influences over my life;
• Doing this in such a way that when the need arises others - and in particular our children, descendents, and community members - are provided opportunities to exchange labor for resources that meet their needs and fairly share in whatever modest profits we might produce

The Project is entering it's third phase.  The first phase involved the decision to adjust our lifestyle and move to a suitable location; the securing of resources, chiefly land and basic tools; and the move itself.  This phase did not end as planned - an attempt to build a home on the land we purchased ended when we determined we could not afford the proposed structure.

The second phase included the purchase of a home near our land, with the intent to occupy it while we developed the land.  The purchased home required more repairs than expected.  In response, we returned to paying jobs to acquire cash to finance the repairs, and at the same time began modest improvements to the land and began adjusting our lifestyle to include more manual labor, the self-production of some food, and heating exclusively with manually self-produced firewood.  This phase is now ending successfully.

I will (very thankfully) leave full time corporate service on July 3rd, and will return my full attention to furthering the goals of the Jupiter Project.  In the short term, I have several tasks that will fully occupy my time over the next several weeks:

• Involvement with the local chapter of the VFW has required increased participation in veteran's events; In addition to regular meetings and activities, I have been asked to speak at an event on Memorial Day, and in late June to attend an opening ceremony for a fundraiser whose proceeds benefit veterans disabled by their wounds.
• Involvement with the Village Planning Board.  Our Village Plan is fifty years old and in need of updating.
• I have jury service on May 19th; if seated I will have a number of grand jury sessions to attend over the course of the following three months.
• The closing out of multiple projects at work.
• Time allocations to fuel production and gardening.

Commencing on July 4th, my personal Independence Day, I will begin attending to the following projects that will mark the opening of the third phase of the Jupiter Project. 

• Competing final work to the house - tiling and trimming the kitchen, replacing the existing kitchen window, and sundry small tasks elsewhere that have been bypassed while primary renovations have been ongoing.
• Arranging for and accepting part-time labor for pay or barter in and around the community.
• Clearing portions of the land in order to prepare them for the construction of outbuildings for the storage and maintenance of equipment and on-site business office space.
• Clearing portions of the land that we intend to return to active agriculture.
• Improvement of the existing road, bridge, and proposed homestead site.
• Research and training with respect to suitable crop selection, production and marketing.
• Forest management, chiefly thinning to encourage the growth of desirable species and individual trees.
• Developing foot paths throughout the land and bridges across several small streams on the land.

At this time we are not prepared to hire employees, but any children of ours that would like to participate in this effort are welcome to discuss the matter with us. 

Next year we hope to begin small-scale crop production on Creek Road, with an eye toward scaling up over the coming years to the point where we become a community resource that provides produce, forest products, and employment to the local community.  We hope to open a road-side stand on Creek Road where we will sell our own produce, and perhaps permit others to sell non-competitive products alongside our own.

My intention also is to return to this blog after Independence Day, to again chronicle in words and pictures our progress, and to engage in conversation and debate with Connor Stiles, my son and fellow author on this blog.  Until then, I will be reading, re-reading, and pondering his thoughts and words.

Meanwhile, later today I will exchange the front end loader that is currently mounted on my tractor, and too large for the tractor itself to handle, for a three bottom plow.  I'll let you know how it goes.

Saintgermane

Thinking

Whatever else, things need to move along to the next thing.

Welcome Cooper

Cooper -

I hope this message reaches you and that you are now an author on this blog.  This means you can add posts, and they will show up as posts coming from you that others may read and comment on.

Be prudent in your posts, and thoughtful.

It's clear you've gone to good lengths to educate your self and expand your conceptual and knowledge bases.  Here now is a place where we can discuss and debate and comment. 

Be welcome, love,

dad

Observations

So I'm going to turn this into more of a true journal than a forum for essays.  I may still essay, but I will also log notes and items of interest.  Too much going on for long, thought-out commentary.

There is a certain dualism at work in my life at present, in that I have been in touch with my old cadre of friends from my teenage years - Kevin, Steve, Frank, Ed, Roger, Mark.  Some of these guys I haven't seen in oh, twenty eight years or so.

At the time, I considered us a crew of misfits - the crew that hung together because they had no one else with whom to hang, and so enjoyed each others company.   But there is a bond there - these are all intelligent men, some in more than one way.

But each of us is very different.  The most common shared interest is motorcycles, but there are several members of the group (myself among them) who have never owned motorcycles.  I was perhaps the most misfit of all.  A foster child, ridiculed in a new school in the midst of an unfamiliar culture, I nonetheless found in these men - and they were men, even then, the way men should be: independent and clear thinking and gracious to others, even strangers.

So I was, and am each time we get together for a few beers, surrounded not by others like me, but others unlike me, and more importantly, unlike each other, but very accepting of each other for the value they brought to the group (I wonder what my contribution was). 

This was and is anew quite different from my military experiences and my banking experiences.

Military experiences for obvious reasons; banking experiences because I worked in a bank that was until fairly recently locally owned, and so there was a kinship there.  But in that case, I was the outsider in a room full of people familiar with, and very much identifying with, each other.

It was an experience of the South, as well, with it's uneasy peace between the races.  This lack of trust causes each community to tend toward greater internal homogeneity.  The reason for this should be clear: each has a defined 'other', and in human experience, 'other' often means or is perceived to mean 'threat', which is often then met with hostility.  It is therefore important not to be seen as 'other' and thus to work hard being part of one's culture.  Race trumps class, in the South, for the most part.

For this reason, the South seems to me to have a dualistic nature, and there is precious little space for someone not of either camp.  We're tolerated, if we remain in our place.

Here in the Finger Lakes, it's different.  I am surrounded by sub-cultures, each as different and distinct as the friends I have re-met.  The same level of tolerance is there, and acceptance of each group by all other groups - even groups with whom they may deeply disagree - is an expected part of life in this broad community.

This is a strength, undermined somewhat by what my observations suggest is a widespread myopia with respect not to others' viewpoints, but to each subculture's viewpoint.  Each seems almost critically unable to perceive the possibility for a larger synthesis in which their views, strengths and skills are brought to bear not as ideals, but as perspectives.

Most groups appear quite hostile to even modest challenges to their particular platform, even when facts are brought to bear.

I intend to pay closer attention to this issue as time passes.