Rain Dance

Mrs ERJ is an optimist.  She enjoys reading Guideposts magazines and books written by  Debbie MacComber and Jan Karon.  She looked at my latest book acquisition, One Second After, and said, "Oh, you are not reading those kinds of books again."

She worries that I will become negative and depressed.

We view life from a very different perspective.

The Wednesday before Thanksgiving

Information is not data

The Wednesday before Thanksgiving is the day that all turkeys in the United States have the most information regarding the benevolence of farmers and a trend toward an ever more benign future.

Mrs ERJ looks at those books and is concerned that I will wallow in negativity and become despondent.

Mrs ERJ looks at the information from her past and she looks at the people, books and radio shows that she uses like wallpaper to modify her environment.  The majority of the information in that environment suggests that most of our leaders are benevolent, that the future will be benign and that technology will eventually solve all of our issues.

I am less optimistic.

Rain dance

Primitive cultures engaged in "rain dances" during droughts.  Ostensibly, the purpose of the rain dance was to bring the rains.  Modern science suggests that they seldom worked, yet primitive cultures continued to have rain dances.  Why?  Because rain dances serve a secondary function.  Rain dances ease anxiety by providing the illusion of control.

Modern rain dances are to live in a "good" zipcode, get the right college degrees, wear peer accepted costumes, drive the most reliable brand of vehicle, trust the experts, go into debt and gobble fish-oil capsules.

My rain dance is a little bit different.  I plant gardens, graft and groom trees, reload ammo and plink with my gun(s).  I build social capital with neighbors.  I struggle to be physically fit and I try to shrink my resource footprint so I will not go catatonic if/when things tank.

Because if things go south for any one of a half a dozen reasons, then the Great Depression of the 1930s will likely be fondly renamed as the Civil Depression or the Gentle Depression.

In the mean time, I enjoy what I am doing and it does not cost much.  At least it does not cost much money as long as Powder Valley is out of powder and projectiles.   My efforts to shrink my footprint have been wildly successful.  A neighbor stopped by yesterday and gifted me with a large bag of gently used clothing.

I am both touched and amused.  I have great neighbors.