Notes

Things were different back then I tell myself. Much different, I was a different younger person those 22 years ago when I got expelled and arrested for my comments in a discussion of academic freedom, forever to leave SUNY Albany and ultimately getting my degree at Plattsburgh State.

Truth is I was a lot more innocent back in those days, 🧒🏻 with my long curly hair looking like Bob Dylan, it was before the days of wearing the cowboy hat, working my way through college and eventually graduating two years later after the Assembly Internship. Three years of hell, probation officer visits, $15,000 in legal costs, working, getting back to college, graduating, and eventually getting a job that I’ve served in various rolls over the past 18 1/2 years. It’s been quite the journey, though there is much to do. I was ignorant, stubborn, if I had only agreed to plea to a violation and pay a fine, I could have avoided a long, expensive drawn our court fight and getting convicted of a crime. 🚨 All for 38 words in discussion over academic freedom. You can see why I’m kind of sympathetic to Trump’s efforts to reform academic. ⚖️ But it also got me much more interested in homesteading and the land, spending more time in the woods, especially as I lost more and more interest in computers and technology. 🐐 But I’ve also stayed in city all these years. I am sure I would be a lot more successful at my career if I was more willing to go along and not push back on things. I guess in many ways I’ve learned if you want to get along you have to go along – as the Lyndon Johnson slogan went – and I’ve become more agreeable while remaining committed to cre principals but it’s been a journey.

It really was such a different world 🌍 back then, two decades ago, back when the War on Iraq was raging, I had that summer job at the asbestos laboratory. 🔬 I was kind of an innocent country boy, I remember the bumperstickers and the slogans, “No War for Oil” and how it was a popular meme on the left to say, “How Many Lives Be Gallon”. ⛽ As people protested the enormous Hummer dealerships and those who drove Ford Excursions. And me after all these years is thinking of getting a Ford SuperDuty – you know an ginormous F-250 or F-350 three-quarters or one truck. But I make good money now, done well at investing, and I want a reliable engine without all the complicated things that frequently break that the EPA is mandating on passenger cars and trucks. 🛢️ Back then out in country, you could have a burn barrel, and plenty did burn most of their trash, nobody cared with the occasional wift of burnt plastic, got to get rid of the trash. The liberals were advocating for a ban, but the Republicans in the State Senate held the line until of course they lost with Obama wave 🌊 after the Great Recession. Hell, even back then I had a glimmer in my eyes for those big smelly diesel farm trucks, with memories of High School and all the farm kids, but it was a different world back then, And like that, I was pulled in different directions, though I used to believe far more in the CAFE standards and government mandates for fuel economy, before I learned how badly they are trashing the engines of modern cars.

It is kind of the deepest and darkest days of winter, 🌃 even though we are getting more daylight, February often has the coldest and bleakest days before spring starts. Maybe that’s what pushed me towards risks at SUNY Albany all those years ago, I really believed in freedom. ✊ By then I pretty much hitched my way to the Democratic Party, as that’s where the money is locally, made piece with liberal ideas after reading books about Adali Stevenson and the battles against those who believed in the Communist Scare. 🇨🇳 How things are so much more similar today with Trump in White House, though honestly I’m a bit undecided when it comes down to it all. I do believe in Second Amendment 🔫 and I think liberals can be very problematic in their own way, just like the Trumpster and conservatives are a problem. This climate change thing is real, we can’t ignore it forever, though I still want my big-assed SuperDuty truck.

Then I’m brought back to that phone call 📞 two years ago, when I learned my landlord had sold the building and in subsequent days learned my neighbor was moving out. I met the new landlord in the dark, after riding home from work that relatively warm and snow-free February two years ago, the burly construction worker and farmer dude 👷 with his big ol Dodge Ram one-ton. Just one of his income streams. My moving out neighbor was piling bags and bags of rotting garbage 🗑️ next to my unit, and I thought I had to find a new place to live. I really didn’t want to pay a lot more in rent – money forever lost – and new landlord hiked rent by $100 a month though by far it’s still the cheapest place around. I looked at the plastic houses and even some places out in the country, applied to some banks for mortgages, and even toured a house or two, 🏡 but honestly I like living the city and my truly dumpy old apartment.

I do dream of living deep rural though eventually. At one point, it did make sense to buy a house at that point, as that was the first year I had a six-figure income, and a fancy new title of Director of Data Services, but honestly I was turned off by how expensive both fuel to heat and light such an enormous house and cost in fuel and time to commute. Especially when I still wouldn’t be free to have a burn barrel 🔥 or fires whenever I wanted on my own land, as it’s still New York. Not to mention all the issues with gun control, and the hassles I’ve had in the past buying guns. I did look at some pieces of land, modular cabins and stick-built models, but land development is expensive, and you have to comply with all those New York State regulations, mostly designed by big city politicians which have no clue what it means to live close to the land. 🏕️ The truth is camping and spending times in wilderness is enough for me now, as I scrimp and save on most things on live beyond my big-assed pickups. I can’t believe I’m replacing Big Red 🛻 so soon, but time marches by so quickly. By the time I need to replace Godzilla, I will be thinking seriously about retirement and actually building that off grid cabin. 🏠 My parents will certainly be gone by then, who knows, I might end up in Westerlo again at old homestead, and maybe in mean time I’ll have goats and hogs. 🐽 Burn some paper but not too much plastic as it’s a more residential neighborhood, and yeah, New York.

It’s been a journey and I get super paranoid every time there is a Friday the 13th in February, ❄️ but I know it’s just a winter day like so many others. One of the off-grid Facebook groups I’m part of was talking about the high cost of dumpsters to clean up the land, while plenty of off-gridders chimed in to say, well I live on unrestricted wild land, we just burn everything, and what doesn’t burn,  🔥 we push into the ground, bury it, use it for fill, and build over it. A simpler life powered by dirt, rock and manure, and lots of diesel fuel for the farm equipment. 🚜 Having heavy equipment and being self-reliant is all the more important as climate change only makes chaos worse. You know it’s fun to look at myself in mirror, in my private office overlooking the old city dump, a mid-level director overseeing the Data Services department, managing 13.5 million records, powering an insitition’s communication stragety. 👴🏻 Growing old so quickly, learning a lot every day, my mind changing as the world evolves.