Homestead mailing list

[EarthNSky <erthnsky AT bellsouth.net>]

bobf wrote:
> Bev, what You wrote below is descriptive of sudden personal
> enlightenment. 

I would not say it was sudden, though.
I grew up with a garden in a very frugal family.  I was changing brakes 
on a VW bus when I was ten, for example.  While my family lived in 
suburban Atlanta, I had relatives who farmed, and we visited them 
several times a year.  There were influences, in other words.  At the 
time, I just saw those influences not as a choice that someone made, but 
as a statement of lifestyle...they lived on a farm just as I lived in a 
neighborhood...it was all part of the variety of things.  In a similar 
way, I was always environmentally minded, but never thought about 
'living green'.  I just think there were a confluence of ideas that this 
list put together for me, and suddenly, I had a solution to the dreams 
that haunted me, but that solution also felt right.

> The game really is rigged.  To teach a child, today, about honesty
> and good will; forgiveness and trust is to turn that child into an
> easy mark. Those lessons should certainly be taught but with the
> proviso that they only apply with family and the familie's immediate
> circle of friends.  Outside that circle they should be taught the way
> the world really works.

I know you are not alone with that belief, but I am not that cynical 
yet.  It is a crazy, idiotic, mixed up world, but I still think you have 
to teach a child to do the right thing by people, even if they are 
outside the 'circle of trust'.<g>


> There are pitiful souls hoping that everything crashes, so that they
> will finally, for once in their mediocre life, be right.  But that is
> a fool's dream.  There will be no safety except in might, just as it
> has always been.  Go visit Atlanta on a Friday night, walk the
> streets -- you are looking at the future.

My best friend wants to introduce me to Ikea in downtown Atlanta on 
Thursday. I have no interest in going.
As to hoping that everything crashes, I do know that many 'survivalists' 
seem to want that, but I never did.  I was truly afraid that "whatever" 
would happen before I was prepared.  I certainly never wanted to be 
right, because life wasn't a bowl of cherries in my dreams.  It was more 
like Hell, pain and suffering-not something you wish for.

> People say "well, I 'll stay here protected by this silly hill, or
> I'll buy tons of ammo and beans.  These are the thoughts of foolish
> men

It is an illusion, really.
All the guns in the world won't stop a virus or a bacterial plague.  All 
the food is worthless once irradiated.  All the preparations are 
meaningless if the rest of your family is gone.


> Me; if things become that bad; I'll join up with the roughest group I
> can find, cheer right along with the leader as they pillage, and one
> night cut his g-dd-mn throat and take his place.

That's horrible, Bob.  I wouldn't have thought that of you.
I don't know what to say.

lready.
> I've seen 'pure' animalistic barbarity; it isn't something taught in
> civics courses.  I belive, at the rate I'm going , I'll be out of the
> city, next spring.  Like you wrote 'my eyes were opened'.  I will do
> what I must and what I choose.  If a rule or law inconveniences me,
> well, I just don't care anymore; I'll do as I please.

Careful there, or you will see the people you fear in the mirror.



> I have been steadily working on my refuge.  I figured out how to do
> it with absolutely no connection to me and where I will be; and I
> still have options as far as the destination.  It isn't easy,
> actually, it's pretty complicated, and a bit pricey.  But, I so long
> for absolute privacy, and now that I have developed a way to realize
> that mission, I'm working at it daily.

That sounds promising.  Want to share any details?

B

--
"Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will
not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius
will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the
world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone
are omnipotent. The slogan 'press on' has solved and always will solve
the problems of the human race"

~ Calvin Coolidge