Homestead mailing list

[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

As has been pointed out before, this list is more a list of homesteaders 
rather than so much a list for homesteading.  Actual homestead issues are not 
the 
bulk of the posts, the atmosphere doesn't promote it.  There are other lists 
which deal with actual homestead energy, animal husbandry, gardening, 
horticulture, etc. because, I'd say, the list M. O. embraces the concept that 
"If you 
do A, you get the results of A, and if you do B you get the results of B."  
This allows for useful anecdotes and data to be discussed and one takes from 
it 
what is useful.  That is, the "you're wrong but you think you are right" is 
thereby avoided.  

On those lists and even on this one I have been amazed at the number of 
people with whom I've gotten into a private correspondence about raising 
rabbits, 
growing carrots, brewing beer, preventing rot in wooden buildings, sharpening 
tools, etc. (all the bits and pieces of everyday homestead life) only to find 
out later, sometimes years later, just what handicaps they were laboring 
under. 
 They never mentioned it and when it would finally come up privily, they 
extracted a promise that I was never to mention it.  I very deeply admire 
those 
people. A number of them are no longer with us.
 
Their philosophy, and what we try to follow here, is much as the reply the 
Spartans made when they stood in defense against the Persians.  The message 
was 
sent to the Spartans, "You will not see the sun for the number of our 
arrows." 
  Their reply was not fear, self pity, or excuses.  They didn't say "Well, 
yeah, you've got us outnumbered more than five thousand to one.  Yeah, we're 
tired now from having fought six days in a row."  Instead their reply as 
recorded 
by Cicero was, "In umbra igitur pugnabimus" (Then we will fight in the shade!)

Everyone is laboring under circumstances and limitations to some degree or 
other.  No one on this list knows what "shit" the Clan works around and 
overcomes because we don't talk about it.  It doesn't matter.  It doesn't 
make us any 
better nor does it contribute to improve the lot of anyone else.  

More than thirty years ago when I was finishing up a course of technical 
study, my (older) brother-in-law signed up to begin the same course.  In the 
beginning it required no more math than elementary arithmatic.  He stared at 
the 
work blinking but uncomprehending.  Finally he said, "When I was in the thrid 
grade they made fun of me in math class."  Yes, fine, that was twenty years 
go, 
now let's look at this example here, it shows two devices in series each 
having a  value of ten.  You just add them,  So the total effect would be 
...?  
(Eyes never looked at the page).  "You've got to understand, I have a hard 
time 
with math because they made fun of me in the third grade."

Fine.  Here at just past sixty years of age, he is still stocking cans at the 
grocery store.  He's had a good enough life.  But he chose to let his 
experience dictate his actions and he lived the result.  It has been a 
comfortable 
place for him.  It is apparently a comfortable place for many.  Rather than 
set 
aside our limitations and infrimities and circumstances and go on to do the 
best we can AND dwell on what we CAN do rather than wallow in what we CAN't 
do, 
many find it a more comfortable and rewarding life to always be the victim.

And this would be no particular problem except those who want to float 
comfortably on a sea of limitations soon find that they can manufacture 
limitations 
and have all the bigger sea to float in.   This doesn't work for the 
achiever, 
we can't manufacture more achievements and success in our heads, we have to 
fight in the shade for them.  So at every turn there is this and that which 
thwarts them and they can do nothing about it or nothing apart from it.  

There is a deep smouldering resentment then when list of limitations is 
paraded out to be lauded and commended and by example there is another 
standing by 
who has waded out of those same limitations and actually has something of 
substance to show for it.  Then begins the gnashing of teeth and rending of 
garments that those who are constantly seeking a better life, improvement, 
overcoming of limitations.... that these people are harsh and cruel because 
they won't 
say "poor baby, of course you can't add ten and ten, you were ridiculed in 
the 
third grade."

That is a very dismal and misantropic view of human beings.

Here we continue fighting fighting in the shade.