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[EarthNSky <erthnsky AT bellsouth.net>]

First, Gene, this "final turn" stuff sounds like you are on your 
deathbed!! :)

Gene GeRue wrote:
> I am currently spending my last winter here in Phoenix. In the spring,  
> Chris will quit her job--if her job has not quit her first--and we  
> will transport every last cup and nail to Heartwood. Right now, at  
> this time of transition, expectancy and pause, I have time on my hands  
> and I am musing over what has been, what will be, and how things came  
> to be as they are.

When I was perusing the archives a few weeks ago, I noticed that you had 
made another post several years ago, talking about your last year in 
Phoenix, but alas, that was at the beginning of the housing industry 
crisis.  I see that that has taken you off your intended timetable, 
putting you several years behind.  Or does this work better for you?

> It seems to me that the keys to a happy life are finding one's path,  
> being true to oneself, developing a general and flexible plan, then  
> finding and fitting the pieces that will contribute to the plan. Then  
> sustained focus and persistence, the tried and true paradigm for  
> success.

I think that might be the smartest and most universally true thing you 
have ever written here.


> Something increasingly important, I think, is learning to eschew  
> extraneous chatter: the so-called news that gushes forth from  
> television sets each night, the news roundups and round tables and  
> interviews and inquisitions cast upon us ad infinitum and ad nauseam.  
> With the Internet, unlimited offerings of every level of information.  
> With blogs, universal voices, where each sovereign soul may share  
> their thoughts with the world. The primary distraction is the  
> mainstream media, trolling and chumming, those with the connection  
> going for the bait. Certainly the action can be entertaining, even  
> instructive, but it can also be a huge waste of time and a great  
> distraction from one's focus. The greater society will always have  
> roller-coaster concerns. At issue is the ability to make those  
> concerns largely irrelevant to one's own life.

Go back and read Al Toffler<sp> Future Shock if you haven't read it in a 
while.  He talks specifically about this 'noise' and how things change 
so fast that we can't adapt to it..


> Media distraction has been a contributing factor to my slow journey to  
> the permanent homestead. Too many interests, too many side journeys.  
> Too easily diverted from the main path.

Please explain more.
Also Gene, I know you are in your seventies.. was there a time in your 
life when you did homestead full time, year around?


> Yet, at Heartwood, on the homestead, we will live better than they.  
> And it came to me and I said, the reason is not that we will live the  
> pure homestead life and subsist on only homegrown food, cook and warm  
> ourselves only with home-produced fuel nor because our pleasures and  
> entertainment are very low-cost. It will not be because we deprive  
> ourselves. It will because there is no mortgage or rent payment and no  
> car payments and very low taxes. It will be because the plan has  
> finally come together.

I can't wait until this mortgage is paid.

> Learn what conditions make you most happy and make a plan to secure  
> those things. Find land. Pay for your land with city jobs if you must.  
> But tools. Learn skills. Follow your passions.

Now, this sounds more like your book. ;)


> It is ironic that in the land of plenty, the country seen as the most  
> advanced the world has ever known, that so many people are so upset,  
> so angry, so disillusioned--that their lives are so precarious. We  
> have been for too long looking to others to show us what is important  
> and how to get it. That ability is within each of us. We have only to  
> look inward and to be true to ourselves.

That is very true.

Bev, with days and nights mixed up now.


--
The true significance of Sacajawea's involvement in the Lewis & Clark
expedition is that it was the first documented trip in history where men
asked a woman for directions and followed them, allowing them to arrive
at their destination.