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  • From: Clansgian AT wmconnect.com
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Optogeorgia
  • Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2008 10:20:45 EST

>OMG, I really am a homesteader because I think this way!!! <g>



This, Bev, is what I’ve been trying to tell you.









>Can I not be both, that is can I not have half baked or fearful views about
things and still wear muck boots to bed?

Look back on all your posts and comments and see if you can find one that
does not ooze and drip with homestead muck. You are ruined for life, Bev.
No
matter how much the world tries to hose you, it will never wash out that last
bit of homestead muck.

>All I am saying is that we are on a journey, James. You may be at your
destination, where you want to be, but some people have never started,some
people
have taken baby steps, and some people are struggling tokeep their waterers
unfrozen.

Having made some progress above, let me be emboldened to see if I can build
on those gains. We are all involved in different aspects of homesteading and
to different degrees. It would be a mistake, says I, to view that as a
continuum, an unbroken inline from the kitchen gardener to the backwoods
luddite.
No such continuous line exists. There are no destinations. My list of
changes
and new projects is just as long as yours.

So, yes, there are people who are just starting out. But it is an entirely
different matter to be a beginner than to be a wannabe. The word ‘wannabe’
is
ostensibly a contraction of ‘want to be’ but it has taken on a much more
specialized meaning. For example, someone who buys a guitar and signs up for
lessons is a beginner. But someone who learns two chords and one turn-around
and
five years later that’s still all they know, yet at every opportunity they
have some comment on the subtle differences between this and that brand of
string and the effects of placing the pickup 1/32nd inch to the left, etc. is
a
wannabe. That is, someone who gets their jollies from basking in the guitar
world and injecting themselves into it any time they can, but has no
intention of
disciplining themselves to actually learn the instrument.

Can you tell me that you do not see a stark difference between the posts and
comments on this list from people for whom homesteading is an art and a
lifestyle they are pursuing and those who want to talk a good game so long as
it is
a good distance from any actual muck?

>Well, from recent conversations, I think you might be referring to Bob

here, but I am pretty verbose so maybe you mean me, too. I do however ,

post homestead type stuff more than not, I think, although I will admit

that in the past year, I have gotten a bit off track and posted about

politics and my fears and now, tonight, personal health information that

I probably shouldn't have posted.



Bev, those ‘out of the blue’ posts are a good example. Try as you might,
everything you post has the squish of boots in the muck as a background
noise.
To wit, this is from the ‘out of the blue’ thread"



"I gotta get healthy, like yesterday. Sick of this."



---and---

"It would be so wonderful if I were healthy and did not need all this

medicine. He could woodwork and build boats from home..it would be
freedom-for both of us."
---and---
others

Can you appreciate how 180 degree different this is than those posts we used
to get here from others who were constantly demanding that we validate that
they were great and noble for planting a radish in spite of the terrible pain
in all the diodes down their left side?

> You just can't paint everyone into ahomesteader/nonhomesteader-with us or
against us-right or wrong kind of model as there are shades of gray because
people are at different places in life.

However, I can, and have, made the distinction between the genuine neophyte
homesteader and the rank wannabe. I once knew someone who was having a hard
time adjusting to life after a felony conviction. It was the oddest thing
that
he latched onto an identification with Viet Nam vets. The foul reception
that
the vets received seemed to strike a resonant note with what he perceived and
expected as his own reception would be like. Yet he had nothing at all in
common with the vets.

Like that Wannabe Bob seems to see us homesteaders as fleeing and hiding from
society and authority and we represent to him the sort of escape he is
seeking. It’s as if the essence of homesteading is not a continuous and
enduring
muck filled life of prosperity by our own work, but rather a matter of sewing
some gold coins into the lining of one’s coat and disappearing off the radar.

Alas, homesteading has nothing whatever to do with that. More often just the
opposite.



There are few on the list, I’d expect, that do not understand what I am
saying and have not observed the same thing. If one wants to pretend for
decorum’s
sake that it isn’t so, that the essential difference in the points posed by
Wannabe Bob and those actually making some movement toward homesteading isn’t
stark, that’s fine. For you. But I’m not that good a pretender.





James






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