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My Gadsen Flag

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As much as horrifies my liberal friends I really love my Gadsden flag.

You don’t know how long I’ve wanted to own my own Don’t Tread on Me Flag but was too embarrassed to spend the $8 to buy it.

I’m a life long liberal Democrat who loves guns and burning things that government is involved in too much in our private lives.  I’ve always kind of liked the Tea Party message of defending the second amendment, individual empowerment and less government interference with the lives of private citizens.Government shouldn’t regulate individuals like it does large corporations. You might say my views are closer to Malcom X and Huey Newton then Donald Trump or Paul Ryan but I couldn’t find an inexpensive Black Panther flag that I liked. Moreover, nobody knows what the meaning of the Black Panthers is anymore. The Panthers flag just isn’t that nice color wise, especially next to my Blue Marble Earth Flag or now my Rainbow Flag. I thought about getting a Molon Labe flag but I didn’t like the colors or the military undertones. I’m not a war monger but I believe in citizen empowerment and the right of self-defense and self-reliance.

I’ve long flirted with the Tea Party because I love the Man (lol!) and his aerial highway patrols as much as the next person, but I also think that Obamacare has helped a lot of people even if I think that the subsidies should have been a lot more generous for middle class families. Why can’t government help people get healthcare and an affordable college education without spying on our emails or beating up on the farmers just trying to do their jobs? Animal rights and environmental extremists have gotten much too much control in our society today. People who are ill informed and act only emotion, have no role in our governing. I’m more concerned with air pollution from coal power plants and large landfills then marginal farmers in the mountains grazing cattle and rednecks burning trash and riding quads in the woods. Not every acre of land should be declared wilderness. We can have public lands with great backcountry camping and trails, hunting and fishing but we can also have logging and mineral production to help pay for upkeep of the land.

I believe we can have a government that works for the people and promote the common good without treading on people’s rights.

Grin

Thematic Map: Dodge and Ram Pickups

That craving for the hills I get some times … 😍

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I am a country boy at heart. I might live in the city, work downtown and take the bus every day but that’s not where my heart is.

Seeing those mountains in the distance, the forested hills and the little farms and homesteads carved out of the mountains just touches something inside me. The rundown trailers, the old tractors, the pigs, goats and cattle. The rusting away junk cars, the burn barrels and the brush / debris pile some day soon to be burned.

A lot of people call them ignorant hicks and hillbillies. But I don’t know, I think anybody who can scrape together a living either partially or entirety off the land is pretty damn smart and educated, even if it’s not through traditional channels.

They call it rural poverty. A lack of material stuff. Although I don’t think one can really call homesteading cheap when you look at the cost of machinery and feed. And many of rural people live a life much richer than city folk.

Hills Outside Petersburgh

How tiny of a cabin

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I am reading Charlie Wings’ The Tiny House Handbook. So much of the book is about tiny houses, as the name would suggest. I find tiny houses appealing though maybe not quite as small as the sub 400 square foot designs, especially those designed to be towed, suggest in much of the book.

Is a tiny home really a home, if it’s designed to be towed? In my mind such a structure is a trailer with a lot of things economized to fit the dimensions and weight limits of the road. The same can be said about many pre-fab structures. There is a lot of benefits to building a structure remotely in a warehouse or a factory – but also disadvantages of weight and size limits on what can be towed on the road, especially to remote sites.

At the same time, something on wheels or constructed off site seems to lack permanence. Truth is no building is permanent though there are many very old buildings still in active use. Obviously that is the most sustainable option. But it’s hard to see the plastic and plywood buildings that dominate the suburbs today having much permanence. Maybe an old house is better – if it hasn’t been hauled off to the local dumping grounds yet – then they must have done something right building it.

Building science is both fascinating and infuriating in my mind. Builders have many good ideas, they know what works and doesn’t. Durable materials aren’t always sustainable or easily disposed on site by burning or burying due to the toxic compounds used in them to provide a long life. Neighbors growing up when they got their new double wide to replace their old trailer burned the debris vinyl , siding scraps, waste materials and that sure burnt black and stunk. Decades before the burn ban! Wood just seems like a better option even if it involves covering it with toxic stains and paints.

I read a lot about sustainable building but I’m not sure what is real and what is woke glossy marketing. The sustainability community sure likes their toxic materials that maximize energy efficiency a lot. Even if it keeps drafts from leaking out, vinyl hardly seems like a good material to be using in building any more than the absolute necessary. What is going to happen to the vinyl eventually? Be burned? Be pushed back into the earth to leach plasticizers into the earth?

In many ways I do embrace the tiny house movement in that I crave simplicity, something like a very rustic hunting cabin. Something lit by a light bulb hung from a cord in the ceiling, heat by a basic woodstove , maybe no inner walls at all, just a simple brass or wooden bed like you might find in an institutional setting. For cooking, a simple camp stove or maybe upgrade to a small, old used gas oven converted to propane. Inexpensive electric refrigerator and freezer like everybody else has powered by solar. Outside shower and outhouse. When it’s too cold to crap outdoors a bucket works to be dumped in the poop hole. Rather than sending all that shit to the landfill.

Truth is that I hate how wires are hidden and even things like garbage cans are hidden in people’s houses. Heat comes from an invisible source, water is pumped in then disappears down a drain to a leach field or sewer with all the scum being collected to be eventually dumped in the landfill. I get how infrastructure is necessary but I hate how it’s all so hidden. If we could only go back to the way it was done 120 years ago, out in the country.

Map: Mountain House Trail and North Mountain
Thematic Map: Albany Art

Good things come to those who wait ⏳️

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I am often reminded of back in 2009 and 2010 when I started looking at replacing my Ford Ranger with a bigger, newer truck. I decided to hold off a few more years and was able to get a nicer truck with more money saved, and relatively low prices due to do the recession. I had originally looked at getting a stripped down work truck or something used, but I decided to throw some more money at the Ford Ranger, and keep it on road for a few more years, despite pushing over 140k miles and needing more parts and repairs. But I ended up getting Big Red, and then lifting it with a 6-inch lift during the beginning of 2015.

I so want to buy a house, and I’ve been looking but I concede I don’t want to buy or build in New York State if I can avoid it due to the gun laws and burn ban. Plus most of the houses locally are your run of the mill, plastic-coated, vinyl-sided suburban houses with gas heat and grid-tied electricity on a tiny piece of land. There are a handful of rural houses that pop up on the market, but they are mostly a variation of the suburban house some in neighborhoods that smell like cow shit with a longer commute. But if I hold out for a bit longer until I’m 55, I know I can have something much better.

I’ve been watching how much battery, inverter and solar technology has improved over the past decade, and it’s truly remarkable. With advanced electronics and LiON batteries – it’s such a different world then old fashioned lead acid batteries and old-style MPPT controllers like Midnight Solar ones. It’s only going to get better and cheaper in the next decade. Combined with more money saved, I can build or rebuild really the ultimate off-grid homestead that I actually want, not some crap suburbanite-lite house with a big blue bin and grid-tied solar panels on the roof and Tesla Swastika-Car on driveway. I don’t have to stay in Albany or New York forever, if I don’t buy here but just focus making through age 55.