They glamorize them, make the names well known and famous. They want the ad revenue as sad parents are riveting television which sells a lot of laundry soap and Korean cars. Police love mass shootings as it’s lots of overtime, plus it makes the case for more police officers, higher wages and better pension benefits because obviously it’s a dangerous job with all these shootings!
Let’s be honest if they didn’t cover these events they would be rare as nobody would be inspired to kill themselves or others in this way.
Telling people, See You in September seemed cute when vacation was still something in the future, when it seemed impossibly far away. But like anything, you can start seeing the final days of summer vacation falling into place, choices made and options eliminated from the running.
Today I am thinking of going to Sugar Hill State Forest, 🌲 parking off of Templar Road and hiking up the Finger Lakes Trail to the fire tower and central horse camp. 🐴 I was originally thinking this would be the Ithaca day to check one of the grass shops (as the advertising says, “Hope Speaks Louder then Addiction”) and then Cornell Botanical Gardens and get some Cornell Dairy Science Produced Ice Cream.🍦
In many ways I’m a bit frustrated about wiling the time away, and finding new, unique and memorable experiences in the area. 🏞️ It seems like I’ve pretty much done everything unique around the National Forest, and things like Elmira and even the Pine Creek Gorge are a pretty long drive from the National Forest. 🌲 On the other hand, I do enjoy the downtime, reading and thinking. 🤔 It is nice having the hours to study the cows 🐮 chewing on the grass, the pasture birds and the wildflowers. And despite the forecast predictions, it’s actually been a remarkably rainy time. I am really ready for this to be my final vacation int he Finger Lakes for the foreseeable future. It’s kind of same reason I’m not doing West Virginia this autumn – I am so bored with it. 🍁 Going back to the same place time and time again, seems not worthwhile or memorable. But then again, there are places I actually enjoy. Sometimes it’s difficult to find new places to explore, as most of the things I enjoy most just put blank faces on other people, and certainly the tourist bureaus have no information on such things. Maps sometimes include them, but maps often are missing details or hide things in plain sight. 🗺️
Yesterday, I started an audio book called Frugal Woods where a middle-class family gives up their corporate jobs to homestead. 📙 Previously, I was listening to a book about a young man who rebuilt an inexpensive cabin in Oregon, 🏡 and now are also reading a e-book on life on a Texas homestead. I also finished up Temple Grandins book on Humane Livestock Handling. I’ve been trying to stay off social media as much as possible, because it’s all more and more of the crap of “Man Fries Cat, Eats with Ketchup – ARREST HIM!!!” And other such silliness. 🙀 But I did hop on YouTube and the first suggestion was frugal used, old cheap cars that are reliable! 🚗 Don’t you just want that clunkers that will allow you to save so much money on your daily commute to your meaningless job in the corporate office plaza, next to the Old City Garbage dump and the North End Sewage Treatment Plant? Sorry, I was dreaming of going back home and no longer having the express bus to take to work and having to decide between transferring to the local and much longer commute home or driving to work. 🚍 Someday it will lead to goats 🐐 and a burning barrel out back. 🛢️ And watching that plastic bottle 🍶 melt into werid shapes before bursting into flames.
I want to be on the road by 9 AM to hike at Sugar Hill, so I have time in the evening for a quick swim at Watkins Glen pool 🏊 before the rain comes in. ☔ Tomorrow is going to be another wet morning, so I’ll probably stick around camp for one more day. Saturday or Sunday I’ll probably do Ithaca / Trumansburg, and I still have one more day to figure out. 🏕️ It’s not a bad thing to be around camp on Friday, I can watch as all the fools pile into the National Forest searching for that perfect camping spot for the Labor Day Weekend. I’ll have to keep my music down. 📻 I thought about the Pine Creek Gorge but I did that before, and it’s such a long drive in my creaky old truck. And I was down in Pennsylvania briefly on Tuesday, so I got to see the backroads with their blackened burn barrels 🛢️ where nobody cares about a little hillbilly incense. I watched as the Styrofoam egg tray melted away the other night when I had a fire. 🔥 It’s not like I sent any plastic or paper to dump or fake urban recycling at least since Memorial Day. ♻️ I should bring the handful of sardines cans 🥫 out to my parents house for urban recycling.
Yesterday was cold but I did a lot of reading, listening to audio books. 📚 The pasture walks were nice, as was doing some fishing 🎣 and just sitting by the various ponds up here in the National Forest. After watching the tail end of sunset from a pasture overlooking Seneca Lake, 🌇 I sat up at Foster Pond until 11 PM watching the stars. ✨ Saw only one shooting star though, but maybe I wasn’t paying careful enough attention. And just walking through the pastures, someday dreaming of having my own, watching livestock graze. 🐄 One of the graziers on the road up from here has an Off-Grid Farm without much plastic, and it’s pretty darn neat. I just don’t get the love of drywall and vinyl siding or a television in every room. 📺 But maybe I’m seriously mentally ill as I don’t embrace the corporate live-style, much poorly handled then the techniques that Temple Grandins suggests for cows and goats. Vacation needs to be about being relaxed. It’s hard to be though with so much troubling in this world. ☕ But I’ve been limiting the caffeine which does help with the jitters and the anxiety.
