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[bobf <bobford79 AT yahoo.com>]

Well James; you are certainly entitled to your opinion.  When you speak of 
fences and goats, and plowing , and such, you have only a few equals.  When 
you expound upon how the entire country , except for the few, such as 
yourself, will be starving and moaning and totally at aloss at how to deal 
with life; you sound ridiculous.

You seem to have honestly deluded yourself into thinking that soon, the 
successes, fair or not, built by those all around you will dissappear into 
the ether.  In three years, I'll still be on this list, and if you are , I 
can bet you will be predicting, again, how , soon, everyone but you will lose 
evrything, for only you are smart enough to predict the truth of the future 
(like our present oil shortage).

In those three years, people in your community will still have bass boats, 
and tractors and other machinations which you enjoy ridiculing.  They will go 
about their lives, maybe with less; just as you will go about yours; 
'already' with less.

In the homesteading sense, there is much about you to be admired.  And I have 
tried to learn from you, to take the workable parts.  But, James, I would 
never 'choose' to live like you.  I don't know a reasonable person with any 
get-up -and-go who would.   And, if you weren't hidden away from society; if 
you had what some might call an interesting or worldly existence, you, too, 
might care about your privacy and what the loss of that privacy could entail.

You have chosen a spartan life of intentional poverty.  Fine.  That is not 
something to which most people would aspire. I certainly don't. And you have 
never answered the questions from other list members about how you plan to 
keep your land, your Eden, in the face or a serious family medical problem or 
other liabilty.  The fact is you don't have an answer.  You have, on that 
front, just been lucky.  Luck, James, Luck is your rule.

My homesteading mind-set is not the same as yours.  In many ways , mine is 
much more progressive and responsible.  No, I'm not a susteanance farmer, and 
don't want to be, though you say that is the only path.  generally, I just 
roll my eyes and agree with you when you proclaim thus.  

James, why do you waste your time belittling me and others on the list.  In 
the past 14 years you have casued more people to leave this list thann 
everyone else combined.  When it comes to sustenance farming , you are a 
genius.  When it comes to life knowledge, you are just another guy with an 
oversized sense of self-imporatnce.

Why do you spend so much of your valuable time finding fault with others.  
because, you do spend a 'lot' of time doing just that.  Could it be that your 
time isn't really a valuable as you have led us to believe?

I have pleanty of obstacles in life, from the gov't, to business, to health 
concerns; compared to all of that, you are just a gnat .........bobford

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--- On Fri, 12/19/08, Clansgian AT wmconnect.com <Clansgian AT wmconnect.com> wrote:

> From: Clansgian AT wmconnect.com <Clansgian AT wmconnect.com>
> Subject: Re: [Homestead] big agri-biz
> To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
> Date: Friday, December 19, 2008, 8:00 AM
> > >No James, it isn't a deal.  I think that you
> know I have a life;
> 
> I know no such thing.
> 
> I have observes a curious phenomenon on this list over the
> 14 years or so 
> I've been reading it.  There is a very different point
> of view from the 
> homestead.  It has been observed, especially when a
> newcomer remonstrates that this 
> list often talks about everything BUT homesteading, that
> this is more a list of 
> homesteaders rather than a list about homesteading per se.
> 
> And well it should be, there's plenty of nuts and bolts
> lists out there that 
> forbid or discourage any subjects except cabbages and
> goats.  The most 
> instructive thing I've found about this list is that a
> few times (alas all too few) 
> there will be someone participating on the list who is NOT
> on a homestead but 
> after a few years or so they manage to get there.    The
> timbre and nature of 
> their posts change radically when they are made from that
> different 
> perspective.  
> 
> So I have always found the value of this list to be a
> source of points of 
> view from the homestead, from the corn patch, from the
> woodpile, from stretching 
> fence wire from the far flung rural corners.  Views and
> opinions on the news, 
> books, movies, music, life the unvierse and everything is
> different when it 
> comes from a homestead.
> 
> While people who are not homesteading have always had
> things to contribute to 
> this list.  Most of them have been in the nature of
> inquiries and analyses 
> into this homesteading mindset.    I would be much
> surprized if most of the 
> hardscrabble folk here don't automatically muse when
> hearing pronouncements from 
> outside the world of homesteading, "I wonder what
> they'd think if they were 
> here, seeing things from this point of view?"
> 
> I bring this up, Bob, against a background that scanning
> back over the last 
> few months of this list with some dozen to score of regular
> posters, more than 
> four out of every ten posts are from Bob.  On a list where
> I (and perhaps 
> others, who knows?) come to express and read what the world
> looks like from the 
> vantage point of the homestead life, pushing toward half
> the total volume of 
> posts are from another view point entirely.  In some
> e-circles that borders on 
> trollish behavior.
> 
> The practical upshot is that I've been having to delete
> whole threads (and it 
> doesn't help that we have the bad habit of preserving
> the subject line 
> althought the subject might change seven times in a long
> thread) because of the 
> volume of the list.  It's getting harder and harder to
> know what to read and what 
> to delete in order to keep the focus on how things in the
> world look from the 
> homesteading mindset.
> 
> So, Bob, I'm on this is to examine and experience what
> the world looks like 
> from the point of view and mindset of the homestead.  That
> will include a great 
> many diverse subjects, literature, religion, medicine,
> science, food, 
> philosophy, and all and sundry.  The common thread among
> them being what do all those 
> things look like from a homesteading mindset.
> 
> A person doesn't, I'd think, even have to BE on a
> homestead to have that 
> mindset.  
> 
> But the general black-helicopter consipracy,
> 'they're out to get me', sort of 
> thing is NOT the homestead mindset I am refering to.  
> 
> A good humorous comeback is a good thing.  To go fishing
> from a totally 
> unrelated thread for a crude quip is boorish and yet easily
> overlooked .... if it 
> weren't for the sheer volume of such.  
> 
> So you have a life, Bob. Pray, do tell us about it and how
> it relates to 
> homesteading.  Getting a thrill out of imagining that there
> is some paramount 
> importance in peeking into your windows and rifling through
> your credit card 
> receipts that would provoke "them" to want to do
> it to you continuously is not, 
> says I, in any way related to homesteading.
> 
> 
> 
> James
> 
> 
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