Homestead mailing list

["Marie McHarry" <mmcharry AT gmail.com>]

 On Jan 23, 2008 2:06 PM, Gloria Morris <gloriamorris59 AT gmail.com> wrote:
> I can personally attest to what the affluent can do to destroy a rural
> location. My last homestead of 16 years was ruined by folks who moved in and
> built McMansions.

I live a bit further out from the local source of most jobs in our
post-industrial world than Gloria did at her last homestead. When a
local farmer bought the land around me and stopped by to tell me he
was going to farm it, I all but kissed him.

The thing that may save me is that this is a poor county, the majority
of people who live here are seriously cheap (as the local town said 30
years ago, Sewers, we don't need no stinkin' sewers, and they still
don't have them, which has seriously limited growth), and the price of
gasoline and diesel is going steadily up. I'm just hoping that I can
figure out how to retire before it costs more to commute to my
increasingly onerous day job than it's worth.

Before I was a cell thane, I was a freelance editor, and I'm hoping to
go back to that directly that I achieve a way to finance health
insurance. Yeah, yeah, I know James would tell me to stay healthy, and
I pretty much am except that I seem to have inherited the familial
balance problem, and I fall on my face on occasion. Which isn't bad,
but from time to time I break the fall with an arm instead of my face
and dislocate a shoulder and tear a rotator cuff.  My mother, who
lived right, had the same problem: she managed, however, to always
land on her face  (until she figured out what the problem was and
started using a walker, though she hated the GD walker), so she never
dislocated anything.

A guy I went to grade school with (back in the 50s when the world was
new) worked for IBM for many years. He retired, but his skills were
such that they lured him back to telecommuting, and he lives not far
from Gloria and never has to leave his house to supplement his
retirement with what -- he complains -- has become nearly full-time
work.

I know I can do that with freelancing because I've done it before. I
have high-speed Internet, which is the most pressing need for that
kind of work. All I need is insurance. In 5 years I will be eligible
for Medicare (and vested in the retirement system I'm in). If I live
that long, I'll be free again.

Marie