COLD, LIFE AND DEATH, AND PREPS

Very cold outside this morning. Down in the high teens. Brrrr. The lake has a thin sheet of ice on it. Just right where a spring flows underwater is where there is still open water. Not much, but some. I haven't seen the ducks this morning. Those critters have found some place to hide out and will appear sooner of later. They always do. Not many birds out this morning. And there damn sure ain't any BUGS! I know bugs are important in the general scheme of things but I don't like them bothering me while I am out on the porch. They never seem to care one way or the other about how I feel. That's a damn bug for you.

The surrounding countryside is pretty quiet right now. Not much is moving at all. I finally spotted one small bird, though it was not too active. But it was alive and it was there. That counts for the birds I reckon. But the critters will be up and going pretty soon. They will just wait for some more light and maybe some warmth. They aren't stupid. But they must eat to live and they will be on the trail for food real soon. The world will get into horrible complications during the day but the animals will be doing very simple things. They will be hunting. For one thing to live another must die. That goes for all of us. And it does not matter what the food is, whether it be a one gram leaf of lettuce or a 1200 pound steer. It has to die so that others may live. Does that tell you anything about God? He made the system and set it up. It hasn't changed in millions of years. Something must die in order for something else to live. That is the natural way of things. It is natural and not spiritual. When we die of our natural bodies, when the old car is out of gas for the last time, we have a belief in a life beyond this plane. I cannot tell you what our death brings to life, other than our souls. I know the worms get to eat our carcass. Maybe that is our fate: Wormfood. Not a very high calling.

I get to thinking at times what I could pull off if I just had a large group of people who followed me. I'm sure I could set something up better than what we have now! But no one follows me except for maybe my wife and she questions my insane leadership once in a while. So I came again to thinking about God and how no one really wants to do his bidding unless it pleases them. And that is a doctrine I have not found in the Bible. When you get to wishing you were God you better dwell on the attitude of his people. It might be another humbling experience. But that would explain why our fleshly carcass is destined to be Wormfood. Maybe a human has no business asking God for more than that. Just a thought.

Treesong was wondering this morning how people would handle being at home and not doing much activity, just sitting and being quiet, maybe reading, communing with their cat. The day may be coming when a lot of people will be doing just that. Not much of anything. Do people like themselves enough to stay quiet most of the time? Some would, but I doubt that the majority accepts this as the inevitable way to go. You get set up and you do your little dab of chores in the morning during the Winter and then you sit. Probably won't be able to afford TV so that will be out of the question. If you are young and vigorous there will be sex to occupy your time but as you get older it ain't that big a deal anymore. So you sit. Maybe by a window where you can see the approach to your home and have the comforting presence of your 12 gauge real close to you. Never can tell when some interloper will come looking to rip you off. In this case you can help feed Brer Coon and Brer Possum and Brer Buzzard. Brer Crow will get in on the party too. If you can't stand that type of thinking then you may as well go off the deep end right now and save yourself the trouble later. Do it now and you get to pick and choose, do it later and your options are less.

There was a lot of discussion about 'junk' land this morning. Sounds like Jim Dakin has the crowd whipped up into a lather. Good for him!

'Junk' land can best be described as any old piece of dirt you can get for cheap. Jim Dakin is for CHEAP land. And I am too. We paid about $65 an acre for our original 86 acres here in the valley. It kept going up in the following years and is now valued at quite a sum. The land tax is now $50,000 per year. We had to raise our personal assessment to $15 per week per adult plus rent out land to sharecroppers in order to raise the money. But local, state and federal government are hard pressed for cash these days so they tax the land very heavily. 20 years ago we paid $13,000 per year in land taxes. This ain't crop land. This is timber country and the timber has been cut. It was cut to pay for the land. 40 or more years from now there will be more timber, if there is still a market. So while it is a great thing to have a lot of land with some good fields and many flowing springs and small lakes and a good creek, there are some drawbacks to it. Those taxes are the biggest drawback. And they keep raising the taxes. Damn but they like to raise the taxes.

There are all kinds of arguments against owning your own land. But the main positive is owning your own land. If you own your land you are not a refugee and if you are not a refugee you can't get hauled in to some camp somewhere and serve the government. That is what we have guns to insure. The system is failing. Their ideas are shot full of holes. Who in the hell wants to trust the system to care for and protect them? No one with half a brain wants to become a ward of the government. It is a lose-lose proposition. You lose your freedom and you lose the opportunity for some gain, for some profit in your life's work. If there is anything of profit left when these idiots get done. Growing food might be profitable. Running a Bartertown may be profitable. Cutting lumber may be profitable. Anything else? Doesn't seem like much in the window of the future except survival for those who planned, or had relatives who planned. And the old store up for the young, not vice versa. I don't know how much longer I will be on this earth but I am leaving my children a place to come when times get hard. And they were born here, you know. Raised here. Learned to read and write here. Rode horses and learned to shoot here. So get your land and have something for your kids to fall back on. They might not even appreciate it now, but they will someday.

So stay alive and keep prepping. The wife called from the Amish bulk store and they had one gallon jugs of corn syrup for $5. We got one. We will be getting more Spam today and some more emergency candles. Got to get ready. Might have an earthquake soon.

Michael

mboone@rtccom.net