Come on over...

Just a warm invitation to my readers to come over to my new blog: http://taranjordan.wordpress.com.

As you know, I and many other Cotse.net users had been experiencing blockages when we tried to view Blogspot pages, including our own blogs. So I elected to move my writing to a more privacy-friendly environment. (The Google/Blogspot people have finally remedied this issue, but it's too late for me to want to come back.)

Wordpress.com is a delight to use, and made transferring my posts and comments a breeze. I'll have to redo my blogroll and links by hand, but these will soon be done.

I chose to merge all three of my Blogspot blogs into one cohesive site, too. So please update your bookmarks, drop on by, and let me know how you like the new digs. ;-)

Bye-bye, Blogspot!

Thoughts on Economic "Inevitability"

I just found this wonderful old article (link in post title) by one of my oddball heroes, Gene Logsdon - also known as The Contrary Farmer.

Just this morning I heard a nationally renowned agricultural economist on the radio make a prediction that I have a hunch will embarrass him greatly if he lives long enough. (Perhaps all our attempts at predicting the future would embarrass us if we lived long enough.) He said that an agriculture of huge grain farms and huge animal factories was "inevitable." He did not state that observation as his opinion, but as a fact that sentimental old fools like me had better get used to. He also seemed to think that inevitable carried with it the notion of forever.

Logsdon writes a lot about the fields of home. He himself wandered out into the wide world for decades before returning to the place of his boyhood to farm. And this piece vibrates with the resulting warmth, and uncanny, slightly surprising wisdom I always associate with him.

Thanks, Mr. Logsdon.

Blogspot/Google blocking proxy access

For the past week or so, maybe longer, I get a "503 - Connect failed" message every time I try to connect to a Blogspot.com blog through my SSH proxy.

I'd had this issue in the past, and then it seemed to go away. But now it's back, and I can't read Lewlew's or Morrigan's or Jefftoo's blogs - or any others hosted on Blogspot.com. (Including my own.)

Well, after going to the source (Doh!), I realized that this is an across-the-board issue between Blogspot and my proxy provider. Here's what I found (link in post title).

The good folks at Cotse.com and Cotse.net, in mulling over this dilemma, don't seem to be considering that perhaps Google (owner of Blogspot, and with whom they're having other issues) ain't interested in receiving connections from computers they can't catalog and trace back.

Looks like I might need to create some alternatives for my blog activities. Odd, that today I'm able to sign in here at Blogger.com through my proxy. I guess it's only the blog readers they're tracking - for the moment.

If you use Blogspot, whether to blog or to read, Cotse asks you to contact the Blogspot people to request that they remedy the situation. If you do blog here, you might be missing out on readership because of this issue.

"Opting out en masse"

What a refreshingly alive attitude from this Shenandoah Valley organic farmer, profiled in Mother Jones! (Thanks to Strike the Root for the article; link in this post's title.)

Farmer Joel Salatin says, in very small part:

“We don’t have to beat [the corporate food industry],” Joel patiently explained. “I’m not even sure we should try. We don’t need a law against McDonald’s or a law against slaughterhouse abuse—we ask for too much salvation by legislation. All we need to do is empower individuals with the right philosophy and the right information to opt out en masse.

“And make no mistake: it’s happening. The mainstream is splitting into smaller and smaller groups of like-minded people. It’s a little like Luther nailing his 95 theses up at Wittenberg. Back then it was the printing press that allowed the Protestants to break off and form their own communities; now it’s the Internet, splintering us into tribes that want to go their own way.”

Food (yes, pun intended) for thought - worth savoring every bite.

"wholly sundered from the obscene and baleful..."

It's fascinating (but not really surprising) how many items I find end up being so relevant to both this blog and my other, The Freedom Outlaw.

The other day, I posted this on TFO:

Tax protester extraordinaire David Gross has established a page on his website devoted to Henry David Thoreau's Slavery in Massachusetts, written in 1854. It's a passionate piece and a great read.

But, as I read more deeply into the Thoreau essay, I found the conclusion to be a beautifully-written statement of the gulcher's mindset:

I am surprised that the man whom I just met on horseback should be so earnest to overtake his newly bought cows running away — since all property is insecure, and if they do not run away again, they may be taken away from him when he gets them. Fool! does he not know that his seed-corn is worth less this year — that all beneficent harvests fail as you approach the empire of hell? No prudent man will build a stone house under these circumstances, or engage in any peaceful enterprise which it requires a long time to accomplish. Art is as long as ever, but life is more interrupted and less available for a man’s proper pursuits. It is not an era of repose. We have used up all our inherited freedom. If we would save our lives, we must fight for them.

I walk toward one of our ponds; but what signifies the beauty of nature when men are base? We walk to lakes to see our serenity reflected in them; when we are not serene, we go not to them. Who can be serene in a country where both the rulers and the ruled are without principle? The remembrance of my country spoils my walk. My thoughts are murder to the State, and involuntarily go plotting against her.

But it chanced the other day that I scented a white water-lily, and a season I had waited for had arrived. It is the emblem of purity. It bursts up so pure and fair to the eye, and so sweet to the scent, as if to show us what purity and sweetness reside in, and can be extracted from, the slime and muck of earth. I think I have plucked the first one that has opened for a mile. What confirmation of our hopes is in the fragrance of this flower! I shall not so soon despair of the world for it, notwithstanding slavery, and the cowardice and want of principle of Northern men. It suggests what kind of laws have prevailed longest and widest, and still prevail, and that the time may come when man’s deeds will smell as sweet. Such is the odor which the plant emits. If Nature can compound this fragrance still annually, I shall believe her still young and full of vigor, her integrity and genius unimpaired, and that there is virtue even in man, too, who is fitted to perceive and love it. It reminds me that Nature has been partner to no Missouri Compromise. I scent no compromise in the fragrance of the water-lily. It is not a Nymphaea Douglasii (ed. note: believed to be a reference to 1850s politician Stephen A. Douglas).

In it, the sweet, and pure, and innocent are wholly sundered from the obscene and baleful. I do not scent in this the time-serving irresolution of a Massachusetts Governor, nor of a Boston Mayor. So behave that the odor of your actions may enhance the general sweetness of the atmosphere, that when we behold or scent a flower, we may not be reminded how inconsistent your deeds are with it; for all odor is but one form of advertisement of a moral quality, and if fair actions had not been performed, the lily would not smell sweet. The foul slime stands for the sloth and vice of man, the decay of humanity; the fragrant flower that springs from it, for the purity and courage which are immortal.

A rich resource for gulcher types

The Dollar Stretcher is an amazing website with a free weekly newsletter if you're interested. Many thanks to Gary Foreman, the site's editor, and to the good folks at Simple Living Network who provided me the link.

Some topic areas covered in their vast archives of past articles: Automobiles, Babies, Children, Debt, Groceries and Food, Making Extra Money, Natural Living, One-Income Families, Weddings.

The Making Extra Money category alone contains over three hundred articles! Wow! And great, useful stuff, too.

Possum Living

Tax protester extraordinaire David Gross found this gem (link in post title) written circa 1976 that purports to explain "How to Live Well Without a Job and With (almost) No Money."

Says Gross: "Dolly Freed was 19 when she wrote the book, based on her and her father’s experiences living on the cheap. It’s some unusually wise reasoning on the front-end, and some good practical advice on ways to make ends meet on the other."

I've just begun reading the online book, so can't comment fully yet. But I'm already hooked on the attitude shining through this teenager's words. For instance:

Income tax wasn't listed on the budget, as you may have noticed. We don't pay any, because we never have enough income to require paying. Do you realize what a luxury that is? The rotten swindlers in Washington aren't lining their pockets with my money. I'm not paying the welfare chiselers to breed like flies. The idiotic federal giveaway programs don't cost me anything. You can't imagine what a difference it makes blood-pressure-wise if one is a taxpayer or not while one is reading the news!

We pay property taxes, because we have to (they really will sell [a place for nonpayment of] taxes). When the man came around about the "Occupant headtax," we simply told him we didn't live here--we're just here fixing up the place as a rental. He never came back. About two years ago we got a form in the mail about an "occupation tax," but since we don't have an occupation, we figured it didn't concern us.

I'm really looking forward to reading more...