8-14 Day Outlook – Tuesday February 2
Apparently the deep state, as represented by the U.S. National Weather Service (NWS) is in cahoots with Punxsutawney Phil. #deepstate #weather #winter #groundhogday #stolenprediction
Ground Hog Facts
Between 1951 and 1969, the Punxsutawney Phil always saw his shadow. In comparison, between 2005 and 2025, the Punxsutawney Phil didn’t see his shadow 7 times. 🐻
The facts are simple — the Ground Hog is seeing his shadow less today then in years past. Long winters are becoming rarer.
I often find myself deeply conflicted by my semi-working class upbringing 👪
I am the child of two college educated parents, but they were homesteaders, and I grew up in a very working class rural neighborhood – and my parents had very working class jobs at the Center for Disability Services.
Having college educated parents that grew up in the suburbs always put me in a different social class then most of the more working class folks who parents graduated high school if even that. My parents had a professional mindset that really wasn’t even in the vocabulary of the hillbillies who lived in trailers down the street.
I was and still am super jealous of them. They always had four wheelers, lots of guns, and livestock. Pigs and cattle. Big bonfires. I’m well aware of what pig manure smells like or for that the distinctively pungent smell of kerosene used to keep their mobile homes warm in the winter – besides the woodstoves they had jerry rigged up. To say nothing of those slurry trucks from Stanton’s Dairy in Coeymans that would traverse the road a few times a year to fertilize the field up the road.
But at the same time, I found it difficult to find connections with them as they were so culturally different in their upbringings and beliefs – the hillbilly way of looking at the world was so foreign to the world I knew with post graduate educated parents. At the same time, despite my college education and professional career I find it difficult to connect with the more professional and educated types with my redneck and small town upbringing.
I want to go back to the country and not just for a weekend trip. Do real hillbilly shit, although I know damn well it will take money, as I don’t have the skills or even the grit and family connections to make it alone in the country. Now I don’t want to live in a fancy house – I’d rather have livestock and junk in my front yard and a garbage burner out back – I just know how important having money is to survive out in the country when you lack so much else that true country boys and girls have to survive and make a life off the land.
Linux is my primary computer environment
For twelve years now I’ve used Linux as my primary desktop operating system. I can’t imagine using any other operating system on my computer. Here’s why:
- It’s totally free with easy updates via apt-get. Distribution upgrades sometimes requires a bit of tweaking of files but are relatively easy to use. No fancy installers that block what you are doing or lots of windows to click through.
- Software all comes through the apt-get mechanism, you don’t have to go to risky websites to download software.
- Standard Unix programs and functions are easy to script in bash and pipe their output between processes.
- Most things nowadays are done on the web and the Linux web browsers are in most ways the same as the commercial platforms.
- OpenOffice is a fully functional and stable office platform for all my office software needs.
- QGIS as somebody who enjoys mapping and exploring land has become a killer geographic information system, especially in recent years. It takes full advantage of the GRASS platform and various Unix based GIS software.
- Great professional web development tools that are running in their native environment
- I am not a fan of overly glossy things, so I use the fast and simple XCFE desktop environment which is great because it never changes. Even Linux itself pretty much stays the same, although little things evolve over the years.
Why I don’t talk much about owning my own land and living off-grid these days 🚜
Sometimes the best thing to do with an automatic investment is to just let it run its course. Let the bimonthly deposits go in on schedule, let the markets grow, ignore the ups and downs, know that better days are ahead but don’t give it a lot of thought in the near term.
The truth is my hope and vision for the future hasn’t changed much though my expectations have been somewhat tempered watching the rate the markets grow, my quickly aging parents, the progress of my career. I realize probably within the next decade my parents are either likely to pass on or retire to a nursing home when they are no longer able to take on their homestead. My sister has little interest in their five acre property in Westerlo, so it will either get sold or I’ll take it up as my own home.
It’s not everything I would want in land but there is a lot of possibility with the property and it’s within commuting distance of my current job. Another thing two I’m considering is that I’m within 5 years from having twenty years in with the state retirement system at which point I will get a big bump in my retirement benefits. My current apartment isn’t great but it works well enough and is super convenient on the bus line and not a long ride to work.
On that land, if it’s someday mine I could rework it more into my own vision of the land.
What do I complain the most about? Change.
We live in a society that embraces change, especially technological change and the consumeristic possibilities that it makes possible for corporations to dove tail on and sell us things. To be anything but one who embraces change, is often seen as backwards, a luddite of sorts.
Change can be good and bad. We often describe change as progress, but is it not always the case. Sometimes a step forward really is two steps backwards. We should weigh both sides, realize that change has costs but also benefits. Change often involves the unknown. That, can be scary and threatening to one’s position and way of doing things.
Life would be boring if nothing would ever change. There would no opportunity for growth or progress. But I often get caught up in loss aversion, fearing what change means. I often over emphasize the negatives of change while ignoring the benefits. I can be a perfectionist, and when change doesn’t bring only the best be solely down on change. I’ll complain about all change brings and is below my expectations.
I don’t mean to be an eeyore, always complaining about how things are going to hell as the world changes not always for the better. Yet still, I can’t bring myself to always be looking out the happy window, embracing only the good while being blissfully ignorant of all that is lost with the change. But I do need to try to find some more balance in life, overcome my loss aversion while accepting both the good and bad of change.
Redneck as Vulgarity 🧑🌾
The other day I was talking with this guy who kept complaining about my use of the word redneck to describe good ol’ boy, hard-working, living off-the-land country people. He kept correcting me, saying the term redneck was patently offensive, in essence a “white nigger”, leaving aside the fact that some African Americans have adopted their own use of the word “nigger”. I’ve always though obscenity was kind of silly, as words only have as much meaning as you give them.
If you want to call yourself something offensive, is it offensive?
The best way to take a bite off obscenity is to use a word casually, like has long been common with the word “fuck”, in the sense of saying, that’s “really fucked up”. And indeed, a lot of rural people have long adopted the word redneck, not as an obscenity but a symbol of pride — self-reliance, hard working, not afraid of mud or muck. Not the backwards, racist meaning some give it.
I like the term redneck, as I think it describes a good lifestyle, one that is largely self-reliant and sustainable. One that isn’t based around high consumption, but making the best of the natural and mechanical resources available to you. Rednecks are often highly skilled in mechanical and natural systems, a point that is often ignored by the popular press. There is a lot of skill and knowledge that goes into farming and homesteading, to say nothing about mechanics. Just because a fix isn’t pretty, doesn’t mean it’s not real or effective.
I don’t buy that idea that calling somebody a redneck is a hate term, especially if they are more then willing to adopt the term. I don’t think the redneck lifestyle is pejorative or bad, indeed I would argue it’s good as it’s often more sustainable then the high-consumption lifestyle of the suburbanite — and closer to the land and realities of natural world. Sure, in the suburbs you have your soy-milk in your disposable plastic container, and maybe it looks good on a per-capita basis, but it’s not as real or close to the environment as a dairy goat or pig you’ve slaughtered yourself.
I don’t think calling a redneck a rural person has the same effect. There are plenty of yuppies and gentrified folk in Columbia County who raise sheep or horses. But they aren’t the same as the trailer-living, wrenching their own cars, pig-raising, hard-working country boys who live a life of mud and muck and grease, and aren’t such a distance from the land the live on.