Do you feel like something’s not real? Let the spirit move you again Are you leaving for the country?
I was sitting at that Public Hearing on the Eminent Domain proceeding for taking of Pine Bush on Rapp Road for the proposed transfer station to replace the Rapp Road landfill and haul all of Albany and surrounding communities garbage to a 10 acre expansion of the Franklin County landfill on the Canadian border next to the several state prisons about 15 miles north of Malone.
The Albany City Council hearing on the Eminent Domain proceeding was everything you would expect from the city, complete with rich looking lawyers like from Whiteman Osterman and Hannon or one of those big firms and of course Clough Harbour. We the environmentalists made the case for preserving the Pine Bush and the corporate lawyers for the city explained why they thought they were justified in the taking. They of course pointed out that the taking didn’t guarantee that the permits would be approved, but we all know what the presumption is though a very brave agency man or commissioner or judge could change everything.
It was the last regular city council meeting of the year, so there was a diverse group of individuals from the public to speak during the general comment period, many honoring a long-time city hall employee who recently passed away. And there were several homeless activists – and former homeless persons including a man who said he slept in the bushes behind the LOB many a cold night. I want to be an off-gridder, and I camp in wilderness many a night but I always have my heater and my truck to climb in if it gets too cold. Tough life on the street. I liked their proposal to turn some of the former Saint Rose dorm into housing for the homeless, and how difficult it is for many people to obtain the very limited social services that exist. Of course, some of it had to blend into my imagination from recently reading Edward Abbey’s The Fool’s Paradise.
I was sitting there as the meeting dragged on, flipping through my phone, doing mindless scrolling on Facebook which I told myself that I wasn’t going to do and it kept reminding me I was over my 30 minute self-imposed limit on Facebook. Pictures mostly of cattle and hogs, farms, solar and rural landscapes. The things I interact the most with, things that taste like silage and of vast open spaces of countryside. My mind floated away for a few minutes, as I looked the glory of the City Hall Chambers, not unlike the State Capitol but also still a bit run-down like most of the once opulent government buildings maintained on a shoe-string. I’m sure people looking over my shoulder in the cramped city hall gallery had to think what a hick I must be.
I didn’t stay for the whole meeting, though I had hoped to catch the vote on the final condemnation of the land, but it was getting late and I wanted to catch the 9 PM bus home as I’m usually asleep before then. I just leaned at the bus shelter, staring at the Capitol, the Empire Plaza Towers and the Alfred Smith Building. In many ways I miss working downtown, though I do transfer to the shuttle there everyday. But as I daydreamed a bit on the shelter, with the signs reminding people of No Loitering, I listened to more Ian and Sylvia and dreamed of the off-grid cabin, away from all the plastic and the garbage dumps and the endless ads and commercialism. No home internet, no TV, heat and electricity I made myself, waste I disposed of myself – returning it back to earth. Far away from the homeless and many urban problems, next to a nice warm woodstove in a dimly lit room as I sat before retiring to bed.
Twelve years from now I’ll be Age 55. In some how, I pretend in my mind that’s a kind of nirvana. Then I can focus full-time on building my off-grid homestead.
It’s that’s the earliest point I can retire from the state though at a pretty steep cost to my pension benefit if I fill for retirement immediately after leaving – 36% lifetime reduction of benefit – though that’s offset by additional years I would be collecting it as I wouldn’t have 30 years in at the system at that point, as I didn’t start until Age 24 and will have missed about 2 years in system due to Leave without Pay when I worked for the Democratic Party. Though maybe by later in my fifties it will have 30 years in and that will be a moot point, as I started at age 24 in 2007, lost about 2 years over my breaks in service and age 55 minus 24 minus 2 is 29.
The thing about is I will make more money working then in retirement, even with my pension and I don’t know if I’ll have enough credit to continue my health insurance, which unfortunately is very expensive and very necessary with accidents and illness even on the homestead. And I kind of like my job now, it keeps me busy and often comes with interesting situations that involve collecting data, writing code and delivering results. It’s great to get a call on phone, hmm and haw a bit, and then come up with a good solution using some reasoning like comparing names to tax rolls or lists of state employees. In the communications targeting business, you usually don’t have to be 100% exact if you reach mostly the people you want to talk to.
And I don’t know, my parents are getting old and probably won’t be with my much longer. My sister doesn’t necessarily want their homestead where I grew up, and while 5-acres and grid tied with neighbors nearby, some good ol’ boys, isn’t perfect, I probably can make it work for a while before I move to a freer state on a more remote parcel that’s totally grid-free with no near neighbors, without necessarily tying myself to that piece of land forever. Have goats, pigs, and other livestock, and even fires, as long as I’m careful not to throw anything too stinky or smokey in the fire. Maybe gain experience in animal husbrandy and crop growing on that land, build a grid-tied solar set up with battery storage myself – with appropriate approvals from an electricitian and the town building inspector. Still it seems like a such a compromise – 5 acres ain’t much land, there are still neighbors around to smell the smoke and hear your guns – and New York with all their stupid laws.
I don’t know. The thing that I fear much is that I’m quickly getting older, that 12 years really ain’t much time, and even age 70 isn’t that far from 55. And already I see myself slowing down a bit, my vacations and travel have been a lot less ambitious and more relaxed, and I worry if I wait too long I might not have an opportunity to do all I want in life. Yet, at the other hand, I see the value of time, how each year gives me an ability to save and invest more, and how the market continues to compound, which the growth in money gives me more flexibility in the future to buy more land, equipment, and protect myself.
A deep and dark December day as the sun rises later and later each day through January. It was a late night after leaving the City Council Meeting at 9 PM to catch the bus home and then have dinner and be just so jacked up after all that.
Slowly but surely I awoke out of bed 🧟♂️ and walked over to Stewart’s to get more milk in another plastic bottle soon enough to melt and turn into bright flames as it gets the cold and wet firewood burning. 🔥 I just get tired of all that plastic stuff and the lies that the media tells us about recycling and how we should just buy more stuff. 🎁 What do you want for Christmas? 🎄 Just some time in the wilderness to listen to Ian and Sylvia, smoke grass, burn shit, poop in a bucket and ride trail.
It’s fine I tell myself. 😀 If I can’t save the world, well I’ll just try to save myself as the hours wile away and I sing along with the old Ian & Slyvia record I discovered on the OpenTunes. So many of the folk standards but with a pentatonic tang that tastes like cattle and silage for my ears. 👂 Apparently I mentioned how much I enjoy audiobooks from the library, and now my feed is full of advertisements for Audible. 📚 But why would I pay for something that I get free? 📱 I was reading about subscriptions on the Internet, though I think the only subscriptions I have is my rent check, the electric and gas bill, insurance bill and my cellphone bill. 💵 Which are all costs, though I try to keep the electric and gas below $100 for 10 months out of year, though it’s difficult to keep below that in the winter with my drafty apartment when it’s below zero and 48 degrees isn’t warm enough to keep the pipes safe from freezing. ❄️
Tomorrow I got to take off to get my truck inspected. 🔎 I guess I could drop my truck off and ride to work and then leave early to pick it up but that seems like a lot of work, especially now that I work in Menands. Or I could I work from home. But I probably have hours to use up before the end of year, and maybe I’ll take off a few extra days around Christmas or New Years, though their giving us off already December 24-28 and January 1-4 so that’s plenty of time to get away for three night adventures if the weather holds up. ☔ Going to rain a fair bit on Thursday into Friday and be in the mid-fifties so that should eliminate the deep snow at many of the places I’d likely be camping 🏕️ if I head out of town.
Today on paper would be a good day to ride in 🚲 as I really haven’t been getting the exercise I need, but besides the Christmas Parties I still eat quite healthy as I don’t buy junk or processed foods both for health and for less plastic which can be kind of smelly and toxic when you burn it. But the bike trail still has snow and ice on it, and moreover I have yet another Pine Bush hearing to attend tonight. 🦋 I did walk laps around the Empire Plaza for an hour last night but it’s not the intense exercising that riding produces. But I also don’t love riding the Delmar Bypass or Corning Hill to work – it’s lacks the serenity of the bike path. Hoping after the warm and rain on Thursday into Friday, the bike path will be clear. Maybe Thursday I can ride in. What’s the worse that come happen? I get soaked riding back downtown? Sock it to me!
But other then that, listening to a little more of Ian and Sylvia, 🎸 then it’s shower time, pack lunch and off to work on the yokel local bus, 🚌 getting my hours in reading and thinking, 🤔 and inching my way to and from work. I do miss riding my bike to work but I do get more of a chance to read while I’m on the bus. 📖 That said, I usually listen to audiobooks when I ride to work. And thank you Audable for advertising on my blog. Need more money to buy more plastic wrapped crap. ♻️ Gotta recycle after all.
Earlier in the week, I was reading old Times Union articles about the old ANSWERS incinerator / state garbage to steam plant that heated and cooled the Empire Plaza. I also got reading about old articles about the closure of unlined town and city garbage dumps, and what people were saying about burn barrels back in the day long before New York State banned them in rural areas. There was a time not that long ago before curbside recycling and large, lined mostly commercially owned or at least operated landfills. Trash was just trash – something you burned and you buried. It’s still how it’s viewed in many deep rural communities, on farms and ranches and remote homesteads across the country and in wilderness.
The other day, I was walking around the old ruins of the old tannery at Fox Lair. I am sure that it was used as a dumping ground for the Youth Camp and later Police Camp into the sixties when such buildings were burned and pushed into the ground by the conservation department. Waste was burned and what didn’t burn was pushed into the ground. It was a much simpler way to think about waste. Such things are not uncommon even to this day on larger farms and ranches, and rural homesteads, especially out west. For the most part, there isn’t that many chemicals that mitigate far from household and farm trash pits, assuming most of liquids like oils are burned off before being buried. The remote nature means usually pollution is localized and unlikely to impact anybody once it’s pushed underground and covered with dirt and rock – especially if it’s free of organic matter that can rot, collapse inward or produce methane. Deep buried trash pits can be farmed over top or forests can grow back over top, to be long forgotten unless of course someone starts to dig there. Cities are built on trash and debris, often pulverized brick and concrete from previous generations.
Love Canal, where Hooker Chemical buried a variety of industry byproducts from plastics and chemical manufacture, often dominates the discussion about modern waste disposal infrastructure, and the importance of methane collection to avoid air pollution and explosions and liners for leachate collection to avoid water pollution. Certainly a valid concern for large town or city-wide dumping grounds, likewise the importance of pollution control for large incinerators in urban areas, burning a cities’ worth of garbage including old television sets, computers, plastics and household chemicals. Significant amounts of waste material can be kept out of urban landfills and incinerators. But in the remote country, I am not sure if that all matters or is relevant.
I don’t buy the argument that modern trash is more toxic then generations before. A lot of the worse offenders that came on the market generations ago have been phased out, both voluntary and by government regulation. Modern large landfills and incinerators generally do due a good job at minimizing pollution, and the small scale trash burns and pits on farms and ranches might stink or be ugly, but are mostly harmless. The fear of chemicals pouring out of poorly run municipal and commercial dumps is real, though government regulation is controlling them. But the tiny amounts of pollution from the remote homestead should not be compared to that of controlled city emissions, as population density and area to absorb pollutants is much greater.
