Today’s the day for voting in your friendly local woke education operation 🚸
I think I’ll wait until after work to vote. I do early vote by mail for my regular elections, but school elections it’s just next door so I can ride my bike over after work and be all good.
Honestly, I was pretty disappointed with my High School Education 📚 it seemed like 99% of what I learned in High School was imaginary numbers, about the Holocaust, the Hutus and Tutus, the complicated wars in Boznia-Herzovia, and Greek tragedy. All things that have zero bearing on the world we live in today, unless you are planning to become and industrial electrician or a professor of Classic Greek, high-voltage electricians dealing with kVA and real power or an international diplomat. It’s my one chance in the year to just say no, and cast my protest vote ❎. I just felt like my college courses and things I learned about there were far more valuable then the BS classes I had to take in High School, and I didn’t even get a Regents Diploma as my grades were so piss poor.
Another hot day ahead, 🥵 though maybe not quite as hot as yesterday, then colder for Wednesday. Yesterday after work, I rode out to Five Rivers. It was fine, but I still don’t have the derailuer adjusted right, I pushed it in more to reduce clicking but then it through the chain down shifting on the hill by the Slingerlands Elementary School. At least it didn’t break, and I’m keeping a careful eye on the chain link to make sure it’s tight. Adjusted the derailuer again. I should just admit it’s worn out and bent and get another one, indeed, I plan to do that next if the chain brakes again. Hopefully won’t happen.
Five Rivers was fine last night, 📚 it was hot, and I was tired and stayed there just mostly reading and hanging out until around 8 PM. Came home, played with the black light bulb I got the other day, had some pinto beans with maple syrup, 🍁 frozen strawberries 🍓 and an avocado 🥑 and called that dinner. Got the big box fan out of the closet. Slept well, 🛏️ but then around 4 AM I found myself listening to some news 📰 report on BBC I found interesting but after waking up I don’t actually recall what it was about. Probably another quiet day in the office, 🏢 then I’ll ride home if it’s not too ungodly hot and my bike running fine, stop at Hannaford, have a cold meal of rice and lentils that I cooked this morning, 🫕 and maybe wander over to the High School to vote in school election. I need still decide who I am going to vote for County Court Judge in Democratic Primary, probably the ACDC endorsed candidate as I don’t love the idea of electing the alternatives – a yuppie suburbanite or prosecutor to a judgeship. Judge races are hard to decide on. Tom DiNapoli for State Comptroller, I don’t know how anybody could against the happy-go-lucky guy who seems to do a good job. I’d like to decide soon and send my ballot in the next few days. 🚵♂️ The frustration over the bike is not what I need now, though I’m pretty sure the quick link is secure and I have derailuer adjusted, it just still doesn’t seem quite right.
Maybe it’s the heat that is bothering me. 😰 I don’t know why it’s so annoying this year, I don’t have to pay for the air conditioning, but it really made me feel beat by the time I was out to Five Rivers, it could have been I was dehydrated as I got home, drank a ton of water but didn’t really have to piss until morning. Maybe it’s the unknown about he truck cap. I am waiting and wating for it, I am sure the shop will call any day now. 📞 I should ring Andy Ruth to see if he has an update, but I don’t want to face the bad news, and I honestly didn’t necessarily expect it to be installed this week. Going rain all weekend, 🌧️ so it would be bad weather for either wiring the cap up or heading out to camp. The following weekend might be better for doing the wiring and getting things set up, and maybe heading out of town starting June 6th after work, but I can’t take that Friday off but maybe I’ll take that Monday off. Or wait another weekend. Depends on the weather. 🏕️ I felt like in years past when it was this hot out, I just was either on vacation or working remote. Well maybe when the summer proper comes, with my campaign committee work, I can’t really be in the state office working, 🖥️ but I can certainly do that stuff remote from anywhere in wilderness with my new rig.
Essentially a “suburbanite house that smells like cow shit” 🐮 🏠 💩
This has lately become one of my favorite phrases to mock the ever so common home for sale posting I see on Zillow and other sites – buy this rural house with a long commute on one acre of land!
You might ask where I came up with such a phrase, but it really go back to my days in my youth as a Boy Scout in Clarksville, that small hamlet in the Town of New Scotland off NY 443. We met at Clarksville Church, and during times in spring and the fall when either Meadow Brook Dairy’s Van Wie or Tommell Cattle where spreading, it could definately be pungent at times from the dairy-air. I just remember the look at that farm kid whose dad picked them up, after quite apparently working with silage and not showering after. Now pungent! As boy scouts, and young people we made a lot of jokes, mostly very mean spirited about farm folks and smell of cattle.
Clarksville is very much a small town, hamlet. It smells like cow shit at times, and it is quite small and walkable, though there are few businesses one can actually walk to as general store is long gone and they’ve struggled to even keep a pizza place open. But truth is there is probably some appeal to living in a small town, like you probably know your neighbors and there aren’t the issues of big cities like homeless and drug addicted people. Not that you see much of them outside of downtown. But also so many of those houses, especially in the hamlet, are so close together. Rural living but not without a lot of land.
Rural hamlets reminds me a lot of campgrounds. I guess it’s camping to sleep in a tent or a camper on a driveway packed right in next to another camper. I mean, I guess camping in a campground in strictest sense is camping, it’s not the same as sitting in a house or an apartment downtown, though many of the tow-behind campers are essential miniature homes on wheels. And in many cases, people who build their own homes, or need inexpensive living in a rural location live in those RVs.
But at least in my mind, that’s not camping. It’s certainly not the kind of camping I enjoy, where in most cases the nearest campsite is a 1/4 mile or farther away, per the requirements of the Adirondack State Land Master Plan, or just the general terrain of the back country. Places where I can shoot guns, listen to music, have a roaring fire and even burn a plastic trash or smoke some grass without anybody caring one way or the other. I have to say all my time camping in remote back country, far away from people kind of informs how I want to live, and even 5 acres, much less 3 or less acres, just seems much too close to live to anybody else. Yet, it’s hard to find places like that – just like it’s hard to find places that I like camp at that are less then hour, and often as much as two hours away from home.
The thing is so many even rural houses, are essentially suburban these days with high-speed internet, large televisions, propane or oil climate control, curbside weekly garbage pick-up and of course essentially unlimited grid-powered electriciiy. If a rural house is not actively homesteading or farming, it is almost completely divorced from landscape, except maybe when they step out their door and take a deep breathe of the dairy air in spring time. And much like camping in a crowded campground, with RVs and tents back to back, what do you get with such living, besides a long commute, quickly tired and junked automobiles and large gas bills for your 4×4 pickup driven to city every day?
