internet is spotty here, from my chair. it has something to do with the fact that the modem is in a metal house, and kids use up a lot of the bandwidth, and we are way out in the country. i try to load up blogger, and it gives it to me, but one step at a time. i have to wait for the handshake, and all this internal stuff, and under ordinary circumstances, boom, i'd be there. this way i should appreciate internet more.
actually, i should get more writing done, but i don't. my writing for the most part doesn't involve internet; it's entirely on word. i have a book, eighteenth century leveretts, which is almost done except i'm burnt out on it and can't even edit it any more; i have two books of short stories, one plain, or straight, and one, usually lovin' it: (20) short stories out of two million served, or something like that, depending on how many actually have been served, and, how many stories. i'm having fun writing mcdonald's stories, but i don't feel i'm as successful at integrating the red-and-yellow decor symbolism into the fabric of american life, as i was with the wal-mart short stories. it's similar to wal-mart in one way: i'm actually an admirer of mcdonald's, or at least of their marketing genius, and feel that they are at the center of so much small town life that they deserve to be a setting in and of themselves. so i can easily write 25 or 30 mcdonald's stories, and i find myself setting them in various ones abroad too: russia, china, maybe paris or latin america. i'll try not to rely too much on cliches when i do that: for example, what do i really know about the moscow mcdonald's? no more than what i've read. but i consider it an honor for the alamogordo mcdonald's to be in the same book as the moscow one. and they both, after all, are mcdonald's.
another problem i have is how much to delve into actual reality. for example, there is the coffee lawsuit. that was a real person, and she might take it wrong if i put her in a story. but it's tempting and i find it hard not to. when you get down to it, a lot of what happens at mcdonald's, and even in them, is somewhat mindless. the kids are working hard but concentrating on using skills they could never have developed anywhere else. the customers are either deciding what to order, waiting impatiently, or sitting down doing their various things, which include playing on phones, reading shallow newspapers, and spilling french fries on the floor. some old guy is walking around picking up trash from tables and busing them. that's about it. it's not exactly a microcosm or allegory of the modern u-s-a, unless i can figure out ways to make it that way. it's not really anyone's favorite meal, except maybe my son, and sometimes a few of the other kids hanging around. it just is what it is (as they say), i'll have to make the best of it.
we have some challenges driving around these wild mountain roads. the weather has been intense. a couple of snowstorms - they were supposed to be 1-3 inches, but ended up being more liek 6-8, and fast, and slippery, especially on the west slope going down to alamo, which fortunately is not a route we've been taking. instead we are more concerned about the road east down to the sixteen springs cutoff, and then up james ridge and over, and down into the sixteen springs canyon which is always about ten or twelve degrees warmer than cloudcroft, and sunnier. less snow too. but the problem is the james ridge itself, which is steep, has lots of cutback roads, and snow, when it comes quickly, tends to freeze on them under the tracks of various vehicles and even under plows when they plow through here. they do tend to plow, at least the paved, but the plow lays it down into a sheet of solid ice on a steep mountainside and that tends to make me nervous.
after driving on ice, today in a car that can't hold its charge in the battery, so that we apparently need a new battery or need whatever it is that is supposed to recharge that battery - i drove around on ice for a while, and then came home. i like to write - work on my stories and work on other stuff, but in general i find that hanging around while my wife cooks or gets anxious about our kids, is unproductive. if the internet is slow i should be writing, ok. and i have plenty of editing or just busy work that i could be doing, but, during the day when i'm most productive, it's hard to keep doing it. too many distractions.
so today i got outside and started moving wood and scrap tin roofing around, and that made me feel better. made me tired, yes, but the air was fresh, the snow was melting, the wind was substantial but mild, and in general i made the place look a lot better, i thought. i'm concentrating on making fewer piles of junk brush and scrap, and having them more out of sight, more out of the way. we have a ton of wood, and don't presently burn it, but i plan on changing that and starting to burn wood somewhere as soon as possible. the cabin has a good wood stove, but i don't use it, as the boy in there doesn't like it, doesn't want it. but we could; it works. it's small, but it works.
so goes my plan. we have a little acreage, and some buildings on it, and the beautiful forest all around, actually a forest barely cared for or protected, mostly left for the wild things to grow and wander around. sometimes the rancher's cows come through and drop big piles of poop which, if i were smart, could make good fertilizer to turn into the earth and keep things growing. as for the growing, i'm working on greenthread (navajo tea), and fruit trees. i don't expect much luck with other things, like for example, vegetables, as the wild animals are so hungry for such things, and skunks can get through the tiniest of fenceholes. i've found gardening in general to be like advanced fencing, but i'm a beginner. so far the animals have gotten most of what i put out there.
in the current climate it is very possible that medical mary jane becomes legal sooner rather than later; in fact, as medical, it's already legal here, and recreational will soon follow as new mexico hates to be losing so much money to colorado for anything. my point is that i have the facility to grow it, though not the permission; my wife has a card, and could get that permission, though we haven't tried or even thought about it much. things have changed a lot. the people that are rushing into the business, i kind of resent, as they are like ambulance chasers or the less desirable elements of society. yet i hand it to them: they are there with something that, though we didn't know it for forty or fifty years, we need. it's incredibly useful stuff, and, it makes you feel good.
i often say, i was a pot-head for about ten years, and gave up that solid chunk of my life because i was so busy chasing after a high or a toke here and there, good or bad, on the road or at home. it was a wild ride, with no other motivation, those ten to twelve years, or whatever, and i could never have kicked that habit without just leaving the country, which i did. over in korea, where i was working, i had no idea about the cultural implications of getting into illegal drugs, so i simply stayed away from them, but upon my return, i was in a trap as long as everyone knew me and knew my inclinations. finally i just shook it though. i just consistently never brought it up, and at the one point where i was forced to admit it, that yes, i smoked and had, for years, well, i just admitted it when i had to. it was so ridiculous, these people being put in jail, in some cases for years, just for getting high. it was a kind of made-up war on the hippies and the african-american community, to put everyone in jail, indefinitely, as torture, for simply being different. and in general, i stand by the claim that it's less harmful than alcohol. but that's because i know that alcohol is very harmful, whereas the green stuff is smoking in your lungs, but not really destroying them. it seems to be something the human lung system can adapt to. then again, i've been free of it now for about forty years. easy to say, huh?
in a sense, my heart is still in it, especially if i can ease my wife's pain a little, or do something that makes the world a little milder, gentler. i couldn't, in my right mind, go into business selling alcohol. in this case, i wouldn't even be selling anything, so much as using it for our own, or her own, consumption. one needs a lot of sunlight - but we have it. one needs fertile soil - well, ours is rocky, but there is a lot of cow poop all over the place. and finally, one needs to keep it out of one's cars, etc., as there are checkpoints all over the place, and it's still illegal. but we wouldn't be selling it, or even carrying it. we'd be transmitting that intense new mexico sunlight by photosynthesis, to something much more pleasant.
just a pipe dream, at this point, much like many other pipe dreams i've had. i tend to just sit on the ones that take too much preparation or take a strong motivational bump to get started. in this case i'd sit on it a while longer, just wondering what kind of permission would be necessary just to set it up. but the fact is, i'm out at the end of the road. i'm in a community where people like living away from civilization, where they tend to leave each other alone, and tend to honor the fact that we are in effect stewards of a wide swath of national forest that, day in and day out, are virtually untouched. i wouldn't be going out there; i wouldn't have to. i think people do care what kind of things are growing out in the national forest, even if they aren't there checking every day, or holding us neighbors accountable for our part of it. there are old stories about the helicopters finding the patches of wild hemp that still grew all over the midwest, and hassling the farmers who by and large had simply let it grow because they were too busy to pull it out. the hemp had been useful during the war and they even encouraged farmers to grow it, hoping that it could be used for rope or for a wide variety of things that it's good for. one of the primary ones is simply relieving anxiety, and since we have an abundance of that, maybe it could be time to start looking into ways to alleviate it.
actually, i should get more writing done, but i don't. my writing for the most part doesn't involve internet; it's entirely on word. i have a book, eighteenth century leveretts, which is almost done except i'm burnt out on it and can't even edit it any more; i have two books of short stories, one plain, or straight, and one, usually lovin' it: (20) short stories out of two million served, or something like that, depending on how many actually have been served, and, how many stories. i'm having fun writing mcdonald's stories, but i don't feel i'm as successful at integrating the red-and-yellow decor symbolism into the fabric of american life, as i was with the wal-mart short stories. it's similar to wal-mart in one way: i'm actually an admirer of mcdonald's, or at least of their marketing genius, and feel that they are at the center of so much small town life that they deserve to be a setting in and of themselves. so i can easily write 25 or 30 mcdonald's stories, and i find myself setting them in various ones abroad too: russia, china, maybe paris or latin america. i'll try not to rely too much on cliches when i do that: for example, what do i really know about the moscow mcdonald's? no more than what i've read. but i consider it an honor for the alamogordo mcdonald's to be in the same book as the moscow one. and they both, after all, are mcdonald's.
another problem i have is how much to delve into actual reality. for example, there is the coffee lawsuit. that was a real person, and she might take it wrong if i put her in a story. but it's tempting and i find it hard not to. when you get down to it, a lot of what happens at mcdonald's, and even in them, is somewhat mindless. the kids are working hard but concentrating on using skills they could never have developed anywhere else. the customers are either deciding what to order, waiting impatiently, or sitting down doing their various things, which include playing on phones, reading shallow newspapers, and spilling french fries on the floor. some old guy is walking around picking up trash from tables and busing them. that's about it. it's not exactly a microcosm or allegory of the modern u-s-a, unless i can figure out ways to make it that way. it's not really anyone's favorite meal, except maybe my son, and sometimes a few of the other kids hanging around. it just is what it is (as they say), i'll have to make the best of it.
we have some challenges driving around these wild mountain roads. the weather has been intense. a couple of snowstorms - they were supposed to be 1-3 inches, but ended up being more liek 6-8, and fast, and slippery, especially on the west slope going down to alamo, which fortunately is not a route we've been taking. instead we are more concerned about the road east down to the sixteen springs cutoff, and then up james ridge and over, and down into the sixteen springs canyon which is always about ten or twelve degrees warmer than cloudcroft, and sunnier. less snow too. but the problem is the james ridge itself, which is steep, has lots of cutback roads, and snow, when it comes quickly, tends to freeze on them under the tracks of various vehicles and even under plows when they plow through here. they do tend to plow, at least the paved, but the plow lays it down into a sheet of solid ice on a steep mountainside and that tends to make me nervous.
after driving on ice, today in a car that can't hold its charge in the battery, so that we apparently need a new battery or need whatever it is that is supposed to recharge that battery - i drove around on ice for a while, and then came home. i like to write - work on my stories and work on other stuff, but in general i find that hanging around while my wife cooks or gets anxious about our kids, is unproductive. if the internet is slow i should be writing, ok. and i have plenty of editing or just busy work that i could be doing, but, during the day when i'm most productive, it's hard to keep doing it. too many distractions.
so today i got outside and started moving wood and scrap tin roofing around, and that made me feel better. made me tired, yes, but the air was fresh, the snow was melting, the wind was substantial but mild, and in general i made the place look a lot better, i thought. i'm concentrating on making fewer piles of junk brush and scrap, and having them more out of sight, more out of the way. we have a ton of wood, and don't presently burn it, but i plan on changing that and starting to burn wood somewhere as soon as possible. the cabin has a good wood stove, but i don't use it, as the boy in there doesn't like it, doesn't want it. but we could; it works. it's small, but it works.
so goes my plan. we have a little acreage, and some buildings on it, and the beautiful forest all around, actually a forest barely cared for or protected, mostly left for the wild things to grow and wander around. sometimes the rancher's cows come through and drop big piles of poop which, if i were smart, could make good fertilizer to turn into the earth and keep things growing. as for the growing, i'm working on greenthread (navajo tea), and fruit trees. i don't expect much luck with other things, like for example, vegetables, as the wild animals are so hungry for such things, and skunks can get through the tiniest of fenceholes. i've found gardening in general to be like advanced fencing, but i'm a beginner. so far the animals have gotten most of what i put out there.
in the current climate it is very possible that medical mary jane becomes legal sooner rather than later; in fact, as medical, it's already legal here, and recreational will soon follow as new mexico hates to be losing so much money to colorado for anything. my point is that i have the facility to grow it, though not the permission; my wife has a card, and could get that permission, though we haven't tried or even thought about it much. things have changed a lot. the people that are rushing into the business, i kind of resent, as they are like ambulance chasers or the less desirable elements of society. yet i hand it to them: they are there with something that, though we didn't know it for forty or fifty years, we need. it's incredibly useful stuff, and, it makes you feel good.
i often say, i was a pot-head for about ten years, and gave up that solid chunk of my life because i was so busy chasing after a high or a toke here and there, good or bad, on the road or at home. it was a wild ride, with no other motivation, those ten to twelve years, or whatever, and i could never have kicked that habit without just leaving the country, which i did. over in korea, where i was working, i had no idea about the cultural implications of getting into illegal drugs, so i simply stayed away from them, but upon my return, i was in a trap as long as everyone knew me and knew my inclinations. finally i just shook it though. i just consistently never brought it up, and at the one point where i was forced to admit it, that yes, i smoked and had, for years, well, i just admitted it when i had to. it was so ridiculous, these people being put in jail, in some cases for years, just for getting high. it was a kind of made-up war on the hippies and the african-american community, to put everyone in jail, indefinitely, as torture, for simply being different. and in general, i stand by the claim that it's less harmful than alcohol. but that's because i know that alcohol is very harmful, whereas the green stuff is smoking in your lungs, but not really destroying them. it seems to be something the human lung system can adapt to. then again, i've been free of it now for about forty years. easy to say, huh?
in a sense, my heart is still in it, especially if i can ease my wife's pain a little, or do something that makes the world a little milder, gentler. i couldn't, in my right mind, go into business selling alcohol. in this case, i wouldn't even be selling anything, so much as using it for our own, or her own, consumption. one needs a lot of sunlight - but we have it. one needs fertile soil - well, ours is rocky, but there is a lot of cow poop all over the place. and finally, one needs to keep it out of one's cars, etc., as there are checkpoints all over the place, and it's still illegal. but we wouldn't be selling it, or even carrying it. we'd be transmitting that intense new mexico sunlight by photosynthesis, to something much more pleasant.
just a pipe dream, at this point, much like many other pipe dreams i've had. i tend to just sit on the ones that take too much preparation or take a strong motivational bump to get started. in this case i'd sit on it a while longer, just wondering what kind of permission would be necessary just to set it up. but the fact is, i'm out at the end of the road. i'm in a community where people like living away from civilization, where they tend to leave each other alone, and tend to honor the fact that we are in effect stewards of a wide swath of national forest that, day in and day out, are virtually untouched. i wouldn't be going out there; i wouldn't have to. i think people do care what kind of things are growing out in the national forest, even if they aren't there checking every day, or holding us neighbors accountable for our part of it. there are old stories about the helicopters finding the patches of wild hemp that still grew all over the midwest, and hassling the farmers who by and large had simply let it grow because they were too busy to pull it out. the hemp had been useful during the war and they even encouraged farmers to grow it, hoping that it could be used for rope or for a wide variety of things that it's good for. one of the primary ones is simply relieving anxiety, and since we have an abundance of that, maybe it could be time to start looking into ways to alleviate it.
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