A quiet day ahead as I plan to stay around camp, as the morning started out wet and it will be showering on and off all day. I want to spend the day riding my mountain bike, laying back in the hammock with an e-book or two, then later on floating in my tube on Foster Pond. Couldn't get clams yesterday but that's fine.
By nine o’clock I want to be heading to Dresden to ride to Penn Yan via the Keuka Outlet so I can get candy store and touch both Seneca and Kueka Lakes with the front wheel of my bike.
That’s the major plan of the day. 🚲 It’s not the longest ride, each way might take an hour or so on the bike based on my experience last year. Plan to leave camp around 9 am, swing by Tops mostly to see the have clams 🦪 and I’ll stop and get sweet corn 🌽 and other produce on the way up to Dresden. After the ride, I’ll probably head back to the Glen and float for a while on Seneca Lake, ride some of Rock Cabin Road and explore Catharine Creek Marsh 🐸 and maybe get ice cream at Glen Dairy Bar. 🍦 I guess Spotted Duck 🦆 is better, it’s locally produced homemade ice cream but I think I like more of the traditional soft ice cream. Didn’t have a fire 🔥 last night, want to have one tonight both to cook up clams and roast sweet corn if possible but also take care of the overflowing garbage bucket with all the corn cobs and crap. Things I would mostly otherwise compost if I wasn’t in the wilderness. 🗑Plastic on the other hand, makes a good fuel for the fire. ♻ Don’t tell a liberal about life in BFE especially in Penna. 😂 On Tuesday night, a racoon got into the garbage and spread it all over, 🦝 probably due to the sardines cans.
Yesterday was a lazy day of reading 📖 and relaxing, thinking 💭 a lot about the world around me as I enjoyed some White Wedding 💒 far more than the Critical Mass pot. Rain showers mostly ended by mid morning. ☔ Though we had some rain mid afternoon while I was Potomac Ponds and ended up heading back to camp and napping. 💤Network tech from work called with more questions about the robo call system 📞and I shouldn’t have taken that call after spending that time with Puff the Magic Dragon 🐲. I realized it was a mistake once I hit connect as I couldn’t remember anything about work, but after I explained I was on vacation 🏖 he said he would follow up next week when I was back in the suburban office. 🏢
Floating on tube was a lot of fun on Foster Pond ⭕ watching the clouds in the sky. 🌤️ Fish 🐠 kept nibbling on me and yanking on my swim trunks, or was it the snapping turtle 🐢 or the muskrat which burrow along the shore. 🚵 Around seven o’clock I rode the No-Nan-Tanko, muddy from the rain but still fun. 🌇 Cows weren’t as interested in me last night but maybe because I had only been in one pasture so I didn’t pick up the smell from the other pasture. 🐮 Bike does smell like cow manure this morning. 💩 Sat by Ballard Pond for a while watching the stars ✨ appear in the sky as it darkened, listening to the bullfrogs, 🐸 crickets 🦗 cattle mooing. 🐄
It’s August. ☺ I have a lot planned for today before vacation is done, so best to get on it as today won’t be as lazy as yesterday and thunderstorms are bound to arrive by afternoon when it gets really hot out. I got my ten books 📚 out of Hoopla but after ordering them I wish I had got another book out about Cannabis and rebuilding old houses but I ten other books out to read first on homesteading, growing pot, computer programming, Appalachia and wilderness adventures with Edward Abby. And people accuse me of being a straight with my Don’t Tread on Me Flag. 🚩 Happy August!
One of the most pompous things that American governments like to do is describe its actions as the actions of “the people”. This has bothered me for a long time.
While America does host elections and public participation is an important part of American government, it’s a serious misnomer to claim the actions of the government are the actions of the people, especially the body politics of a whole. Those who choose and are allowed to vote in our country set the guard rails for how both legislators and government employees act but citizens as a whole have very little say in the day to day operations of government. They can protest against the actions of their government and put elected officials on notice that they may be voted out of office but ultimately have very little say in the day operations of government.
Even American Democracy isn’t necessarily cracked up to what it claims to be at times. American elections are almost a choice between a Democrat and a Republican. There are primaries but they are only open to party members. And even if you have a candidate you like who becomes elected to office he or she is just a compromise. Your unlikely to agree with all of their views. And elections are full of rules and regulations that bend the will of the voters, so things are much less democratic then one might think.
I am not saying we should get rid of democracy, but I do think the actions of the state are not the actions of its people but are the result of actions of the many bureaucrats and the regulations they promulgate both formally and through practice.
You know, I am not minding this sometimes rainy showery morning, taken slow, smoking a bit, reading a lot. Doing some short bike rides around the forest, observing nature and the landscape. I still have time to do some floating on Foster Pond too if I want.
Imagine growing cannabis, eating bacon and pork you raised, fresh eggs and rabbit meat, all the zucchini and fresh summer squash you could eat. And tomatoes, lots of them. Heat with wood, have bonfires whenever.
At one level it sounds like a lot of fun. But at the same time, it would mean I would give up a lot of my opportunity to travel and go places, camp out in the woods and spend most of my free time away from Albany. The thing is as it is, I can buy most of what I need, yet spend my weekends in the wilderness, burning shit and having fun. I do want to some day have a greater connection to the land, then my weekend adventures, but as things right now they are quite acceptable too in my mind.
As part of my study of the rural landscape and places I’ve considered purchasing to build my off grid home was one of the parcels on Woodstock Road that has been listed but I wanted to do a drive by before potentially contacting the real estate agent. They can be persistent SOBs if you give them your contact number and inquire about a property even if you’re not interested – especially the raw land, small cabin and run down properties out in the hinder lands I’m interested in that can be hard to sell – especially if they see you have assets that you could buy with cash tomorrow.
The thing is I’m not sold on 5 acre living. It’s not a lot of land and often it is a wasteful use of land – tacky vinyl houses with massive lawns that have to be mowed with power machinery. One of the greatest threats to viable agriculture and unbroken country is the 5 acre homesteads sprawling over the landscape. You can do a lot of homesteading on five acres, but many do not. Five acre plots lead to vicious consumption of land when everybody wants their five acres. And that property isn’t even a full five acres, and there is another property inset into it. Having neighbors so close doesn’t get you the true rural experience – you still have to be concerned with smoke, noise and odor complaints that you don’t have to deal with as much on a larger piece of land.
Really my vision is having more land than that far offset from other people. I want to be able to do whatever I want on my land within reason without impacting the neighbors or them impacting me. Agriculture zoning helps but it is by no means a guarantee or protection that having sufficient buffer can guarantee. Likewise a friendly political environment and keeping a low profile can help but it’s tough when you have people in close ear and eye shot. There are many 5 acre properties near the city – or within commuting distance – but true rural land without neighbors nearby is almost exclusively far more distant away.
I’m not a failure, I tell myself.
Yet it’s so hard not to feel that way at times, or that I’m at complete risk of loosing it all over some silly little thing. A fall so hard, that I will never recover, finding myself wandering the streets, struggling to stay alive.
I frequently will sit and stare at my business card, Andrew B. Arthur, Director of Data Services, Department of Communications and Information Services, New York State Assembly. I don’t know why I find it hard to believe but I do. I’ve worked hard to get to this position.
It was twenty years ago now that I was kicked at of the University at Albany for what was perceived to be threatening and abuse language in a passionate discussion of academic freedom. Maybe because I’m the only one who cares about freedom when most people would rather crouch in the corner, living in fear. Life would have been easier if I had said I was wrong, apologized, plead to a violation rather than he convicted of a misdemeanor crime and be forced to leave that college.
But I was resilient and able to build a better path in my life. I got myself back to school at Plattsburgh State, getting excellent grades and networking and volunteering everywhere I could. Learned a lot in Plattsburgh I would have never gotten from the big university, excelled in my internship, which I ended up with then Tourism chair Joe Morelle which connected me through with CIS. Volunteered and worked on many campaigns, and while I was passed over many times for promotions at first, eventually became an Assistant Coordinator, Coordinator, Senior Coordinator, Executive Coordinator, Deputy Director of Research Services and now the Director of Data Services. It took two decades to get here.
Yet, it doesn’t feel like much. There is so much more to do in life which is uncompleted. I still ride my bike to work most days of the week and when I’m not riding I’m taking the city bus to the shuttle to my suburban office. Still always looking to economize including on my bus fare. I don’t need to but I really don’t like driving into work, even with my office with acres of parking. I still live in that rundown moldy and drafty apartment in the suburbs, not because I’m forced to live there due to the relatively affordable rent but because it’s the life I want to live and I haven’t found the right place out in the country.
When I list things out and look at the hard numbers – what I have saved, my skills and knowledge, my work and future things really do look good. But it never feels like that. I see others who have gotten so much farther, have land and a life I’m jealous of them. I know often people live on less but I find it a struggle to get buy while investing in my future. Life is rarely simple or perfect.