Signing Off

The photo to the right, a television test pattern perhaps remembered by any older readers, was placed on screen while the station was off the air. Regrettably, I too am going "off the air," having decided that words no longer matter; what matters is work on things that grow, things that are real, not abstractions.

The Western world seems to me to be circling the drain in a death spiral of despair that I have chosen to avoid to the degree possible. I have moved to a rural zone in a so-called Third World country in which modern consumerism is far, far away. I am every day more content with the choice I have made and hope to live out my life on this small plot of ground which I've been permitted to use for my needs on this pilgrimage. I till this land and it produces food, if all goes well. I manage to earn enough money to subsist, though at a level well below that of poverty level in "developed" countries. My needs are small, and I make a constant effort to reduce them still further.

I thank all those who have read what I've written here, and hope I may have been of some service to those who have written me with questions. I can offer no more suggestions, save that
for those who have ears, let them hear that the footsteps seem to be growing louder... and closer. Act accordingly. Best of luck and Godspeed.

This is Ripley, last survivor of the Nostromo, signing off.

I'll Be Good, I Will!I Will!

Too much time has passed since the last entry and guilt is eating away at me. What's more, today is Labor Day in the U.S.A., and I feel as if I must do some work. I have been remiss, and in the long-remembered promise of the childhood hero pictured at right: "I'll be good, I will, I will."

Caveat: Froggy the Gremlin was a notorious liar.


I am adding a link at right for those who might wish to test themselves as agricultural workers here in Argentina: http://www.wwoofargentina.com/. This link will be placed permanently om the site sidebar as well. I may include the Catacombs as a host farm at some point, but I am not quite ready to do so. Persuade me!

I am hoping against hope that the cold south wind will die down and tonight's threatened frost not occur, as all my fruit trees are in glorious blossom, the veggies growing like mad, and there is much work to be done here. In fact, the chores have kept me from the computer these past two weeks, about which I'm not complaining, mind: it's healthy!

Things out in the wider world seem to be worsening weekly, folks, and I'm redoubling my preparations for what I expect to be some hard times ahead.

Vanishing Point

The preceding entry features a photo of a grim urban street receding to what is known as a "vanishing point" in terms of artistic perception. Perhaps the best known early example of this technique can be found in Myndert Hobbema's 1689 "Avenue at Middelharnis," a large canvas that immediately draws the eye down the avenue as soon as one enters the room in which the painting is hung in London's National Gallery.

Forty five years have passed since I first entered the room in which the 40 3/4" x 55 1/2" (103.5 x 141 cm) canvas held pride of place, and I can see it in my mind's eye as clearly as if it were yesterday that I saw it, so strong was its impact.

What I saw yesterday is pictured above, beneath the Hobbema painting. This is an avenue of poplars in Mendoza province, where poplars abound both as windbreaks and for their value as lumber.

This particular view lies along Route 146 between Goudge and Monte Comán in the San Rafael "Department" (similar to a county). Sunday, Aug 16th, was the village feast day in Monte Comán, so things were jumping when I arrived at "La Vaca" a little after one p.m. As promised, here is a photo of this delightful little roadside oasis.

When the rush subsided, I had a chat with Manolo (the owner) about the Catacombs project, mentioning that the San Rafael Department seemed a good possibility for Catacombers, based on the fertility of the land, the prices I'd seen in La Veloz, a local classified ad sheet, and proximity to San Rafael city, a pleasant place with a small town feel in spite of its recent growth spurt. Manolo is a lifelong resident of the area and La Vaca is a Monte Comán landmark, so his collaboration with the project is most welcome.

When will northern hemisphere residents begin to consider that the vanishing point for the old paradigm has nearly been reached? What will it take? Must the stock market collapse? How many banks need to fail before panic sets in? What kind of damage might a drought do to food production? What would fuel shortages mean to distribution systems? How many new and oppressive laws must be passed before travel is restricted, capital export controlled, housing and nearly every other aspect of life become so highly regulated that freedoms which have been taken for granted themselves reach the vanishing point?

The northern hemisphere nations as constituted fifty years ago are no more, at least not with respect to the sort of societies they were. Those simpler, sounder societies have passed the vanishing point and disappeared into the mists of time and the memories of those of us who have survived to become elders. But a new societal vanishing point has appeared on the horizon, and what lies beyond it does not bear close contemplation.

Harsh weather in Patagonia led me to postpone my trip to the monastery and the surrounding area, but I am quite pleased with the preliminary findings in the San Rafael area, particularly with respect to the area between San Rafael and Monte Comán, an area in which in addition to truck crops for the home vegetable larder, it is possible to grow olives, grapes and a considerable variety of fruit trees, which in good years can yield profits of "a Hilux (the popular Toyota 4 x 4 pickup truck) or two," in the words of a San Rafael farmer.

The area is certainly not overpopulated! While driving the 220 km (137.5 miles) between Monte Comán and San Luis, I saw 14 vehicles: four trucks, nine cars and a motorcycle. I also saw come right down to the edge of the road a pair of peccaries, but before I could stop and get the camera out, they'd scurried away back into the underbrush.

While opportunities for the good life may be approaching the vanishing point in the northern hemisphere, down here in Catacombs country they seem to be making an appearance.

Recce

Time to go forth from the Catacombs and explore other potential Catacomber relocation centers.

Tomorrow Traslasierra will be left behind for a week to ten days and To the Catacombs will be silent during that time. First stop will be in the province of Mendoza, at a tiny four table restaurant called La Vaca (The Cow) which doubles as a tiny grocery store. I have been eating there for two years now, whenever I pass through Monte Coman, the ghost town in which La Vaca is located. I came upon the place coincidentally: I was passing through at lunchtime, and Monte Coman is about four hours from Catacombs Headquarters. To give you an idea what sort of country this is, once I had passed through the nearby town of Villa Dolores, some twelve miles from here, there was not another traffic light to be seen for the duration of the 280 mile (448 km) journey.

La Vaca is a classic road food joint, and photos of it will appear in the not-too-distant future.

We (my son is here) will then go on to Real del Padre, where the father of a friend (if you read Spanish, check out his Museo Comechingon site) will meet us to give us some good old fashioned local guidance for the San Rafael area. An English couple who classify as Catacombers will also be visited. Hopefully, I will return with good news about available land for those ready to make the move.

Next on the itinerary is El Bolsón, down at the 42nd parallel, where the price of gasoline is cut in half and one can think of oneself as truly being In Patagonia. There we will go visit the monks at what I have nicknamed Leibowitz Abbey, then see if we can get together with the folks at nearby La Confluencia. We will likely go down into the province of Chubut, to Cholila (refuge of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid), Trevelyn (settle by the Welsh and still a supplier of good scones) and Esquel, keeping our eyes skinned for Catacomber possibilities.


The news from the North continues to alarm me, so much so that I find myself listening more often to the now twenty five years old Third World anthem El Sur También Existe. Is the USA fated to go the way of the USSR? Is there a North American Union in the offing? Is Europe destined to become a perverted remake of the Roman Empire? Questions, questions...

My answer was to voluntarily devolve to a simpler standard of living, a simpler way of life, and it suits me well so far. Yes, I still have a car and will enjoy the use of it for as long as is possible. Yes, I have electricity and broadband, wireless internet, and a freezer and power tools, but no, I don't have television, no, I don't have air conditioning or non-wood heating, and no, I don't have a cell phone or a Blackberry or even an electric razor.

This reconnaissance mission will be the first of a number to be undertaken with the intention of finding likely sites for Catacomb creation. Please don't forget me while I'm away, and stop back in a week or so to see what I've turned up in my travels.

Meanwhile: ¡Vaya con Dios!

Rebuilding Bountiful

Hint: the neighborhood pictured on the right is not within my community-of-the-mind called Bountiful. Look down that road between the people-coops, how it recedes in perfect perspective to a vanishing point beyond which lies a lights-out horizon, wastelands, badlands, no-man's lands... but most definitely not the lane that leads to Bountiful.

The "Bountiful" I have in mind is a simple community that was the object of a fictional journey--one might even say pilgrimage--portrayed in the 1986 movie The Trip to Bountiful on which a Depression-era elderly lady wants to return to her childhood home just once more before the Reaper comes a-callin'.

"Bountiful" to me calls to mind the cornucopia, the fabled horn of plenty, rich harvests and rural life. It calls to mind life on the land with trips to town or village, trips made on foot or bike or horseback, trips that provide time to smell the sweet grass, the rich, newly turned earth, ripened fruits, autumn leaves...

Rebuilding Bountiful requires a devolution (yes, you read that correctly: "devolution" with a "d," not "revolution" with an "r") that diminishes the megalopoli and does away with industrial agriculture. Rebuilding Bountiful requires a return to religiosity--I'm suspicious of so-called "spirituality--and a reverence for life and its bounty. My own pilgrimage of the soul led me to Traditional Catholicism, the Social Teachings of which merit much further study than is currently accorded them, but The Catacombs here in the Southern Cone are non-sectarian, non-denominational and non-discriminatory, though the coordinator is firm in his faith and beliefs and pleased to proselytize when permitted.

There is no guarantee that "returning to Bountiful" will provide an idyllic life, but staying behind in the cities is almost certain to ensure that an idyllic life will not be on one's agenda.

Defender el Garbanzo

See the simple chick-pea, the garbanzo in Spanish, a legume now believed to have medicinal properties akin to the widely used anti-depressant drug Prozac: garbanzos produce serotonin, the so-called "happiness hormone," though strictly speaking, it is not a hormone.

The title of this entry translates literally as "defend the chickpea," but it is a figure of speech formerly used in Spain which stood for "earning a living." The garbanzo, you see, was the staple food of country folk, particularly in the south, in Andalucia (though by no means only there), before the advent of the mass tourism, building boom and sea-of-plastic greenhouses that changed the character of the place through a kind of "progress" that has in the final accounting perhaps brought less happiness than the garbanzo.

Never a popular food item in northern countries, the chickpea began to attract attention with the introduction of the Middle Eastern staple hummus, a preparation now often used as a dip. Recipes abound, but in essence, it consists of chickpeas run through a blender with olive oil, garlic, cumin and lemon juice.

Garbanzos are not difficult to grow. I plan to try a patch this year.

Earning a living growing things is no easy matter, less so now that such monstrosities as the Codex Alimentarius are being introduced to eliminate once and for all the independent farmer, the yeoman, the peasant who was the backbone of the West for most of its history. Social engineering has successfully brainwashed most of today's urban and suburban dwellers into believing the peasant was an ignorant, backward brute who led a dreary and brutish life, but this is far from the truth.

A society not based on the land is not a healthy society. One does not have to make much of a leap to conclude based on observation that most contemporary societies--consumer-based societies in particular--are sickening, perhaps sickening unto death, as natural law is flouted and an ever-greater detachment from all that is natural has infected entire societies.

Grow a patch of garbanzos, harvest them, eat them: beats a prescription for Prozac.

Dirt

"Plain as dirt," people will say contemptuously. "Dumb as dirt."

Really?

Dirt is as important as air and water; without it, we die. And not just any dirt, either: humankind depends on arable dirt, dirt in which plants grow that can in turn support animal life.

That's my dirt to the right, dirt enriched with hundreds of pounds of dried sheep poop and kept moist so that in spite of the one-week-long nighttime freezes (in the 20s) we've been having, those broad beans are doing quite well, thank you, as of this morning, as the date stamp (European style: date first, then the month) shows.

When I left the northern hemisphere behind, I'd made up my mind to sacrifice a certain degree of comfort, convenience and city/suburban style consumer variety for good dirt. Say what you will: when the chips are down, few things compare with twenty inches of good topsoil.

I found my topsoil here in Traslasierra, far from the flaccid, overfed kine that wobble down the Wal-Mart aisles snatching at gaudily packaged snacks they can stuff in their gobs while, glassy-eyed, they gape at the flickering flat-screen, oblivious to the elitists' yoke sliding down upon their thick, wattled throats. They come in all shapes and sizes, all creeds and colors, male and female, young and old, of all political persuasions, though economically, rich and poor rarely applies: these are the poor, the near-poor and the remnants of the lower middle class, the plebs, the lumpen, the Great Unwashed, unlettered and barely able to do simple math. Naturally, neither you nor I belong to this rabble; we are above all that. Those people, after all, are dumber than dirt.

They may be, but then again, so may be the Greenwich Gang, the Hamptons Hideaway crew, shallow materialists who in spite of their money piles live lives of stunning superficiality bounded by status and a narcissistic wound that not even scads of money can scab over, never mind heal. I live far from them too, far from the Social Register listees whose identity and self-worth must be reaffirmed by looking at a hardbound telephone book in black and red, folks who drop names and brands as often as bats in a cave drop guano.

Far from leftist loonies fossilized in the amber of the Sixties, spouting the same tired slogans, their eternal whine-a-thon tempting one to borrow a pair of bovver boots from the nearest skinhead for a quick game of kick-the-cranium. The intellectual elite--left, right, center--seldom takes anything more than an academic interest in dirt, though there are exceptions, among whom I like to include (hem, hem, kaff-kaff) myself, but only because I am such a smart fellow according to my credentials. Well, all right: I believe I'm bright enough to have done a lot of reading, retained a great deal of what I've learned, and managed to assemble this montage of factual info into an integrated worldview that led me to conclude that my place in the sun was not in an academic or financial ivory tower, but down here in the dirt far, far from the madding crowd.

Dirt.

This is about dirt, and how it behooves the Paradigm Changer to seek out the best dirt s/he can find. How 'bout that! Gender-neutral language! Hope everyone likes it and my effort is appreciated. Personally, gender-neutral language and much that goes with it calls to mind the substance with which I fertilize my dirt, but I digress.

Few of us these days are qualified to gauge the value of dirt with respect to raising food; for this, omnipresent government provides us with well-educated professionals. But can we count on them to fulfill their obligations to assist us? Not in my neck of the woods, as I have learned to my chagrin. As the saying goes here: "Mucho ruido, pocas nueces," which for you poor, unfortunate Anglo monoglots means, in the words of the immortal James Brown: "Talkin' loud and sayin' nothin." I certainly hope agricultural extension agents up north honor their word more than do the gravy-train riders down here. Our local glad-handers have asked me to address a community meeting of small agricultural and artisanal entrepreneurs, and the meeting is the day after tomorrow, and I've heard nothing further. Okay. And all the promises the Peronistas have made to me about help with my own efforts... nada de nada. I suggest y'all may enjoy Sunday's post, because I'm going to treat them to some self-righteous Irish rage on Saturday.

I learned about my dirt on my own, thanks. I recommend you do so too. I will say this, however: down here in Catacombs Country, we've got some dirt you'd be thrilled to have under your fingernails. 'Nuff said?

Get down 'n dirty, boys and girls, or prepare to live like serfs without your own dirt.

If not, then I recommend you read up on dirt. If you need help in finding resources, let me know.

Get some dirt, get it soon.

99.7%

If ever there was a "must read" financial piece, it is this one: http://www.zerohedge.com/article/fitch-financial-companies-hold-997-all-derivative-contracts.

The article begins as follows: "Fitch has released a comprehensive study on derivatives held by various corporations and has come out with some disturbing results: as Zero Hedge's recent disclosure of data from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency confirmed, the bulk of the derivative risk is concentrated not merely in the "financial company" category (99.7%) but in a subset of just five companies, which account for an "overwhelming majority" of derivative assets and liabilities.

The companies in question (Total Notional Derivatives: Assets & Liabilities, $ in Trillions)

• JP Morgan:$81.7;
• Bank of America:$80.0;
• Citigroup:$31.5;
• Morgan Stanley:$39.3, and of course
• Goldman Sachs: $47.8 (this is an OCC estimate: Goldman has not disclosed notional amounts in their derivative book, only # of contracts);

If you want a preview of what the Basel III definition of "Too Big To Fail" will look like, the above five companies is a great place to start."

"Too big to fail," as in "more important than you or I or our nations." Lords and Masters of the Earth.

It's time for all of us who are NOT too big to fail to turn up the volume on what must become our anthem: the now-gender-neutral disco classic "Enough Is Enough," (aka "No More Tears") belted out by Donna Summer and Barbara Streisand.

The article, the reading of which I cannot recommend too highly, adds the following very useful information: "For those unfamiliar with the concept of derivatives, here is a good blurb provided in the Fitch report:

Companies use derivatives to manage risks related to interest rates, foreign currency exchange rates, equities, and commodity prices, as well as more obscure risks such as weather and longevity. According to the Bank of International Settlements, the notional amount of the global over-the-counter derivatives market was nearly $600 trillion at the end of December 2008. Furthermore, gross market value (the sum of gross derivative assets and gross derivative liabilities) stood at $33.9 trillion.

While improved disclosures and transparency are a good start to helping gauge the risks posed by these instruments, it is important for analysts and investors to take a fresh look at risk management practices, including the use of derivatives within that context.

The need for better disclosure on derivatives has been obvious since the implementation of Statement of Financial Accounting Standards (SFAS) 133, “Accounting for Derivative Instruments and Hedging Activities” (now Financial Accounting Standards Board [FASB] Accounting Standards Codification [ASC] 815). However, comprehensive derivatives disclosure did not become a U.S. GAAP requirement for most companies until March 2009 with the implementation of SFAS 161 (now ASC 815-10-50), “Disclosures about Derivative Instruments and Hedging Activities.”

For a more quantifiable overview of derivatives, we recommend the most recent quarterly report from the BIS, especially the data starting on page 28.

The key findings presented by the Fitch report are as follows:

• Not surprisingly, an overwhelming majority (approximately 80%) of the derivative assets and liabilities carried on the balance sheets of the companies reviewed were primarily concentrated in five financial services firms: JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPMorgan); Bank of America Corp. (Bank of America); Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (Goldman Sachs); Citigroup, Inc. (Citigroup); and Morgan Stanley (Morgan Stanley).
• Fifty-eight percent of the companies reviewed disclosed the presence of credit risk related contingent features in their derivative positions. These contingent features generally require a company to post additional collateral or settle any outstanding derivative liability in the event of a downgrade of the company’s credit rating.
• The use of credit derivatives was limited to financial institutions, with 17 of these reporting such exposure.
• Proprietary derivatives trading by utilities and energy companies appear to be very limited, but most of the companies reviewed in both industries report the use of derivatives for hedging commodity risks.
• Generally, non-financial companies appear to use derivatives only for hedging specific risks.
  Derivative valuation is often model-based, making changes in significant valuation assumptions particularly important. Analysis would be enhanced if issuers provided additional disclosure on the sensitivity of their derivative valuations to major assumptions."

There is much more, but for the non-financially-minded among you, or those who are uncomfortable with technical-talk, the above summary tells you all you need to know.

Bankers own the world; they own governments; they are a cabal, and unless an end is put to their privileges, societal suzerainty and social engineering that reward untrammeled greed, their stranglehold will only become more suffocating. Matt Taibi's "giant squid" metaphor must surely have occurred to many of us; it came to me as a memory of a science-fiction novel title: The Kraken Wakes, published in 1953.

Ninety nine point seven per cent. How much of that is in your portfolio? How is it that a government tasked with protecting the well-being of its citizenry permits these financial leviathans to suck every last drop of the lifeblood out of the poor schleps (US, in case you hadn't noticed) in the name of a "free market?" How is it that nearly all of the people can be fooled nearly all of the time? How long can this go on before some sort of breaking point is reached?

And the most important question of all: Are the above questions all rhetorical questions?

It is probable safe to say that approximately ninety nine point seven per cent of the population takes no interest in any of these matters and that is the main reason the financial cabal can lord it over them and those of us trapped in the grip of those tentacles. Those of us who do take an interest find ourselves largely powerless to do anything about what we learn, but we are not necessarily powerless to take steps for ourselves that will put us largely out of the reach of those ever-further-extending tentacles, and it is that Paradigm Change that this site advocates and hopes to assist in making such change possible for those who have just recently begun to recognize the need for it.

Unless you truly believe in the dangers--political,social,economic--stalking you and your fellow citizens, there will be little point in postulating a Paradigm Change; posturing it will be the only result. Step One--tangible step one is the planning and execution of a move from the urban/suburban setting to a rural area in which you can either own arable land adequate for providing a high degree of self-sufficiency, or finding someone who owns such land and making an agreement with that person to carry out some sort of cooperative and mutually beneficial arrangement that will improve the position of both parties.

How is that to be done? Future posts will explore potential solutions.

The Monsters Have Arrived on Maple Street

The title of this piece plays on the title of a Twilight Zone episode that aired nearly half a century ago: back then, the monsters were "due" on Maple Street; fifty years later, they have arrived.

Back in 1960, liberals were still huffing and puffing over the McCarthy hearings, in which an American senator claimed the government had been infiltrated by communists. "Witch hunt!" howled the liberals, and the public agreed. Yet many years later, it turned out the accusations were true. Ever-more-tiresome doom-monger James Kunstler fears a new witch-hunt, this time inspired by the crimes of the Monsters of 85 Broad Street, Main Street America's mortal enemy: Goldman Sachs. The intellectual aristocrat Kunstler fears "the savagery of right-wing broadcasting and how it had led, in one instance, to the murder of a doctor who performed abortions. What bothers me is that, sooner or later, the conduct of Goldman Sachs will lead the growing ranks of the unemployed, foreclosed, disentitled, and hopeless into the hands of a savage right wing seeking mindless vengeance, for instance, against "the Jews," (as represented by Goldman Sachs), or brown-skinned people (as embodied by a vilified president)."

Jimmy the K forgets how savage left wing violence led to the extermination of millions in a secularized, Bolshvik Russia and in the China of Mao. Perhaps Mr. K should take a close look at the portrait of soviet exterminator Nilolai Yezhov, aka "The Bloody Dwarf." Look closely at his facial features. Perhaps I'm hallucinating, but he seems to bear a curious resemblance to an American president of darker hue. Uh oh! Prejudice! Yipes!

It is K who is prejudiced, as is often the case with so-called liberal-progressives of his sort. He worries less about the rape of the United States and indeed the world by a cabal of materialists and more about vengeance against "for instance.. the Jews."

Fear not, bold defender of your tribe: I, an Irishman, would like nothing better than to see the downfall of: Kevin W. Kennedy; Timothy J. O'Neill; Terence J. O'Neill; E. Gerald Corrigan (former NY Fed prez); John P. Shaughnessy, etc., all managing directors of the "great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money," to quote Matt Taibi in Rolling Stone. But I don't fear a pogrom of the Irish (and there are many more at GS). No, Mr. K is a professional Christian-baiter, a bore, a one-trick pony, a snob whose endless predictions of catastrophe next week or whenever (like those of Rapture-huckster Gray North) never come true. Mr. K worries more about the homicidal physician tragically murdered than the many innocents that same doctor killed, of the millions he encouraged killing. Then again, Mr. K, like many "liberals," is an elitist, a eugenicist, most likely, and all those working-class babies... well, the fewer the better.

Main Street, USA, for Mr. K, is populated by the "the growing ranks of the unemployed, foreclosed, disentitled, and hopeless ," and it would be well for Main Street to remember this. If I have to read a liberal commentator, I'll take Joe Bageant, who is an actual representative of that class rather than a Sixties work-shirt-and-weejuns retread with a tattered Pete Seeger songbook under his arm. Joe worked!

The monsters have arrived on Maple Street, Main Street and nearly every other Hometown USA street, and perhaps it is time for the "unemployed, foreclosed, disentitled, and hopeless " to begin seeking justice from those who have manipulated them into that position, without regard to race, creed, religion, "gender preference" or whatever other qualificative nonsense the professional whiner wishes to apply. The "great unwashed," which is how pundits like Mr K see the American working class, have been lazy and easily gulled by the Goldman whizz kids and their elitist monster bosses. Time to take action, unless it is already too late.

I took my action by leaving the north. I took my action by obtaining a wholly-owned home, a rental property and arable land in a place where such things are affordable and outside the reach of the Krakens of the financial district. I took my action by obtaining a second citizenship and a permanent residency in a country not of the northern hemisphere. I took my action by changing my way of life from that of an intellectual elitist who "earns a living" speculating on the financial markets to that of a semi-hermit who grows his own food but, somewhat shamefully, continues to get cash by speculating in the financial markets, at least while such is still possible. I do not like earning money in this way, but it is what I know and in what I have experience. I am not a real estate tout, a stock tout, a gold tout, a newsletter tout... And that pleases me. I get by on little. I write for a fortnightly and that small income goes a long way toward sustaining me.

I live in a small town, a place in its own way somewhat like the "Maple Street" depicted in that long-ago Twilight Zone episode. The monsters haven't arrived here yet, largely because I live in a country in which "credit" is largely unobtainable. "Credit," aka "debt" issued by a cartel of counterfeiters, hasn't made it to Maple Street here, thank God.

That debt and those who deal in it are the true monsters. That is not a witch-hunt perception; it is a fact.

Do away with it and watch Maple Street return to "a tree-lined little world of front porch gliders, barbecues, the laughter of children, and the bell of an ice cream vendor," to quote the introductory narrative to the episode.

Ignore Kunstler, Gary North and all the rest of the huckster phonies who are concerned first, last and always with their own interests and those of whom they perceive as their "tribe." Follow the money, as the saying goes. And then see where nearly all of it ends up: not on Maple Street, but at 85 Broad Street and elsewhere in the neighborhood.

The monsters have arrived, but they are most emphatically NOT Mr. Kunstler's "factory drone[s]" and "growing ranks of the unemployed, foreclosed, disentitled, and hopeless ." The monsters are the elitists, the financiers, the intellectually arrogant and the godless, the eugenicists who believe themselves superior to lesser human life forms, the Yezhovs and Rahm Emmanuels, the Bidens and Blankfeins, the Gores and the Geithners and the Bilderbergers, the toadies and their masters... those monsters have arrived on Maple Street and if you look carefully, you will see that they are in your living room as well.

Don't worry about a "witch-hunt;" worry about them getting away.

Don't let that happen.

Sic Transit Gloria Urbis

Detroit is a model for urban failure in the US, likely just the first of many more to come. The list of cities that will have to shrink to fiscally survive grows by leaps and bounds, while empty houses are now being targeted for bulldozing. Not a pretty picture, and not a place one would want to be, or even be near. Yet it is in the vast megalopoli that much of the world's population can be found, at least for the present.

One wonders for how much longer this will be so.

There could be a trigger even that collapses a city overnight, but a more likely scenario is slow and steady deterioration combined with increasing distribution difficulties in essential services, plus widespread unemployment and rising crime that make large parts of cities no longer viable as communities.

One thinks of Robocop when one thinks of private corporations taking over control of city services, of cities themselves, as is apparently becoming the case in Detroit.

Born in NYC, I no longer enjoy visits to even small cities, never mind the megalopoli (NY, Sevilla, Rabat) in which I once lived. The time of the great cities is passing, and may end with a bang rather than a whimper.

A Latter-Day Dr. Seuss

I refer to a Mr. D. Jones, an out-of-work aircraft mechanic who submitted a marvelous poem to Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis, one of the few financial journalism sites aimed at the general public that makes sense out of the rampant criminality and foolishness that the financial markets have become. Mr. Jones did not leave an email address, or I would have written him to ask permission to reproduce his wonderful work, but I gladly cite him in the hope that he would be pleased. He is looking for a publisher for children's books he writes and illustrates, and were I a publisher, I would jump at the chance to have him on board.

Without further ado, I present Frugal McDougall:

Frugal McDougall worked very hard,
Bought things with cash and not credit cards,
And when it came to the things that he bought,
Things that he needed were all that he sought.

Once he was sure that his bills were all paid,
The money left over was carefully saved.
You see in the future he hoped to retire
And knew very well what that would require.

His neighbors were foolish and laden with greed.
They focused on wants instead of on needs.
They went out to dinner about every night.
When you’re middle class that’s one of your rights.

When they got their paychecks they spent every dime.
Having money left over would have been a crime.
Their credit was pushed to its uppermost limit,
When it came to debt they were very deep in it.

When Frugal McDougall would try to explain
The value of saving they all called him names,
So he wouldn’t bother most of the time.
He said it was something like ‘pearls before swine’

Meanwhile the neighbors got credit card offers,
Promising money to fill up their coffers.
Consumed by their greed they filled out every one,
With barely a thought as to what they had done.

And when the cards came they all ran about
Foolishly spending till they were maxed out.
A pool for the yard, perhaps some new skis.
They spent money like it was growing on trees.

Some even went on a cruise to the Med,
Where they all laid around looking tanned and well fed.
No thought was given to how they would pay,
For surely a bill would be coming their way.

In complete disbelief McDougall looked on.
He knew very well that they had it all wrong.
And the foolish idea that was shared by them all
Was that happiness was now on sale at the mall.

He’d been chastened so often he now bit his lip,
For fear if he didn’t he’d let something slip.
His neighbors would learn of his total disdain
For the way that their money was thrown down the drain.

Instead he would focus on his quiet life,
With his quiet children and his quiet wife.
In their simple way their needs were all met,
And their simple life was quite free of debt.

Then one day his neighbor came home joyously
In a gigantic brand new s. u. v.
Frugal McDougall just stood there and gawked,
Confused and bewildered and totally shocked.

He knew that his neighbor made twelve bucks and hour
And shouldn’t have this kind of purchasing power.
And when asked how he paid for this monstrosity
The neighbor replied, “with my home equity.”

The debt didn’t matter, the man was a dunce,
Whose only concern had been "how much a month."
The neighborhood pondered what he had just said
And one by one light bulbs came on in their heads.

Then sure enough the very next day,
New cars appeared in every driveway.
McDougall now cautioned that they should take heed,
All this debt served no legitimate need,

Instead they were putting their futures at risk.
The response they delivered was angry and brisk.
Frugal McDougall was called a big fool,
And other mean names that were equally cruel.

"We are all rich," they boldly declared
As Frugal McDougall stood there and stared.
"Our homes are all worth more than twice what we paid!
The good life is ours and should not be delayed!"

But Frugal McDougall refused to be goaded
And as he expected the debt bomb exploded.
The neighborhood values were starting to fall,
Faster and faster effecting them all.

Then as his neighbor stood looking distressed,
The new s. u. v. was being repossessed.
Soon all around, the neighborhood toys,
The ones that had recently brought so much joy,

Were all repossessed or put up for sale.
The pleasures they brought had grown a bit stale.
Purse strings were tightened as jobs were now lost.
It seems the free money came at a steep cost.

Banks were collapsing as everyone bailed
From upside down houses and lifestyles that failed.
All of the debt that could not be repaid,
Was now wreaking havoc that would not be stayed.

Government bailouts now came on the scene
As political leaders were all very keen
To keep credit flowing and money being spent,
So trillions of dollars were foolishly lent,

In a desperate attempt to keep prices high,
A fact that they won’t even try to deny.
These actions were more than a little perverse,
For adding more debt only made the mess worse.

This of course left them with one thing to do.
They needed more sources of tax revenue,
So small businesses that were already hurting
Were saddled with costly additional burdens.

Many scaled back hoping they could prevail
But quite a few more of them now simply failed.
So many neighbors were now out of work,
They turned on McDougall and called him a jerk!

The papers had all said that he was to blame,
Though none had specifically called him by name.
In a foolish attempt to curry some favor
It seems that they now blamed the problem on savers.

They said "greedy savers are hording their cash
And collectively made the economy crash."
His penchant for saving was very well known.
Poor McDougall’s cover was thoroughly blown.

“Tax him,” folks cried as they all shook their fists
“And tax him some more if he tries to resist!
He has more money than he’ll ever need,”
They cried in a horrid expression of greed.

Poor Frugal McDougall was truly confused,
Saddened, frustrated and now feeling used.
He’d tried to warn people of what lay ahead,
But they didn’t listen and blamed him instead.

The country can never be restored to health,
As long as we’re exporting all of our wealth.
Closing our factories, exporting our jobs
Turning the people into angry mobs

And all of this spending with no end in sight
Is the most direct cause of our national plight!
How did this happen, where did it begin?
This foolish game’s left us no way to win.

Now the brave politicians all deny fault
As the nations economy grinds to a halt
Is this the end of the U.S. of A?
Will McDougall’s country now fade away?

He doesn’t know and he really can’t tell,
But from where he’s standing it doesn’t look well.

Thank you, Mr. Jones! You're ready to move To the Catacombs.

Friend's Day: Dia del Amigo

July 20th was "Friend's Day"--el Día del Amigo--in the Spanish-speaking world, and it is taken quite seriously, as are friendships. I attended five separate parties over the weekend, given that one has varying groups of friends, and this was in a city not my own!

The holiday--not an official one--was invented here in Argentina thirty years ago. The date was chosen because it was the anniversary of humankind's first landing on the moon. The rationale was that on that day, all of us here on Earth were friends of the three astronauts.

"Friends" should mean something more than the name of a situation comedy. Friends follow family in intimacy and are those with whom we choose to be close, so setting aside a special day to honor them is... well, not at all a bad idea.

Argentines are a very hospitable people and far less inhibited about showing affection than tends to be the case with those of us of northern European ancestry. It is customary to greet female friends and even new acquaintances with a kiss on the cheek, and in some provinces a male friend as well, though there is nothing "romantic" about this practice.

This pleasant little holiday, cause for festivities and reunions, is the sort of thing that makes living in the Southern Cone--and this country in particular--a pleasure.

I have made many friends over he course of the five years I have been here, friends from all walks of life and in disparate parts of this vast country. Over the weekend, in Santiago del Estero, I visited with some thirty or more, and came home with new addresses and promises (which I am sure will be kept) of future get-togethers there and at my home. The nearly seven hour drive was well worth it.

I salute my friends, here and elsewhere, old and new, living and deceased, spread far and wide over the surface of this Earth, , of many colors, creeds, countries and ways of life. I have been blessed to know these people and would love it if it were possible to have them all together at a great Friend's Day party, but that, I suspect, will have to wait for the hereafter.

And if we have not met, my reader friend, I wish you as well a...

Happy Friend's Day!

Going Forward Back-o-the-Mountains

Mister Potato Head waves bye-bye to those who choose to stay behind in the Old Paradigm, signs "so-long-it's-been-good-to-know-ya'" to those like a couple cited in a comment on The Oil Drum who declared that "they didn't wish to be the "sort of people" who stored potatoes," and when the commenter pointed out to them that "they'd actually be wise to have a bit of food stored in their home for unforeseen circumstances and offered to pay for it myself," "his wife simply said "we'd rather die" and that ended that discussion."

It would, wouldn't it?

Discovery channel has come up with a show for those who would rather live: it's called The Colony, "where real people from a wide variety of backgrounds and skills will be challenged to rebuild their own civilization in a devastated world."

The Catacombs is looking to build a New Paradigm from a civilization not yet devastated but already endangered in a world that needs changing if it is to provide a decent life for our progeny yet unborn.

The Catacombs intends to be a community-driven Paradigm Change site, not a hunker-down, rugged individualist survival bolthole, and it is the creation of similar communities this site hopes to promote.

We are looking forward, not Looking Backward, to the "resplendent vision of life in a socialist utopia" that was Edward Bellamy's fever dream looking forward to the year 2000. Bellamy would have felt right at home at a Bilderberg conference, or sharing a glass with Gramsci, perhaps. A conclave here at The Catacombs would favor G.K. Chesterton over Bellamy and be more confortable sharing a locally brewed beer with Wilhelm Ropke.

Preparations for August 1st's Valley-wide "Great Seed Swap" continue apace. Down here, we're the sort of people who store spuds, seeds and what-have-you, the sort of people who jerry-rig repair materials when store-bought isn't possible, the sort of people who believe with William Faulkner what he stated in Stockholm in December of 1950 when awarded the Nobel Prize for literature: "I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance."

We wouldn't "rather die" than store potatoes. We will endure, we will prevail long past the time when the foolish, infantile and narcissistic suburbanites have died and their way of life become extinct. It is they who look backward: we look ahead; we are going forward.

Going Athens on Main Street?

"Going Athens," an expression I invented today, comes from the world of American history, from a little known incident--"The Battle of Athens"--that took place on Aug 1st, 1946, in Athens, Tennessee, an incident that deserves greater study for its possible contemporary implications. A brief account of the incident can be found here. A 1992 Hallmark movie, An American Story, was loosely based on the incident.

There is something vaguely apt about posting it on Bastille Day.

The concept occurred to me last night upon reading a comment placed on the board of a financial blog I follow: the comment can be found at 17:54:36 EDT posted by "Black Swan." It deals with the threat of citizen violence against the city council of Cape Coral, Florida, which "are doubling the number of police at Council meetings and are installing metal detectors. This comes after a meeting attended by 500 citizens erupted in many threats against Council members, and with half of the citizens were so enraged, that they stormed out before the end of the meeting." Read the comment and said rage is easily understood. How far might that rage take them? A look at the "Battle of Athens," also known as the "McMinn County War," might be illustrative.

What the "Battle of Athens" was all about was nothing less than a violent armed rebellion by a group of WWII veterans against a corrupt political machine, a rebellion that resulted in victory for the rebels and universal condemnation of them by the media of the time. Violence is not a good solution to problems, unless it furthers the interests of the financial oligarchy bent on dominating every aspect of all life on earth, in which case it becomes necessary force required to maintain order and therefore though lamentable, inevitable. Violence or even the threat thereof by the plebs is terrorism, plain and simple, particularly if it is directed against their betters: the financial overlords and their political lap dogs; there can be only one response to such effrontery.

Perhaps a better-known Twentieth Century American insurrection took place in 1920 in a West Virginia town that became the subject of the 1987 John Sayles film Matewan. The Battle of Matewan in turn led to "the largest armed insurrection in the United States since the American Civil War, the Battle of Blair Mountain," to quote a Wikipedia entry. The latter, larger battle has been written about in the 2006 history The Battle of Blair Mountain: The Story of America's Largest Labor Uprising and in the 1987 novel Storming Heaven, among other works, but this important part of American history is not taught in the indoctrination camps called schools, nor does one hear much about it. Instead, the news from Tennessee is that "After losing homes, families move into tents." "Tea Parties" have taken the place of hurling dynamite at the Athens jail.

"Going Athens," however, is a remote but nevertheless conceivable reaction on Main Street to the looting and repression being foisted upon the public by a globalist cabal determined to impose a global rule by a supposed intellectual elite that has replaced the corn-pone corruption of post-war McMinn County, Tennessee, with the slick Saul-Alinsky-style Acorn activist such as the one who occupies the White House.

This writer does not believe that "Going Athens" is a wise course of action, if for no other reason that the forces arrayed against any latter-day uprising would be devastating. It bears remembering that during the Battle of Blair Mountain, on orders of WWII hero Gen. Billy Mitchell, "Army bombers from Maryland were also used to disperse the miners, a rare example of Air Power being used by the federal government against US citizens. A combination of gas and explosive bombs left over from the fighting in World War I were dropped in several locations near the towns of Jeffery, Sharples and Blair. At least one did not explode and was recovered by the miners; it was used months later to great effect during treason and murder trials following the battle." Just imagine Predator drones instead of tasers and, well, you get the picture, I'm sure.

Going bye-bye might be a better option for those who believe that the U.S. and other northern hemisphere countries are becoming more like Caligula's Rome than Plato's Athens. Those of that turn of mind should give thought to resettlement in a rural Shangri-la, where "Going Athens" is called a "cacerolazo."

Madagascar Back-o-the-Mountains

"Going Madagascar," an expression I learned today, comes from the world of computer games and means "going into isolation," more or less; it refers to a pandemic quarantine situation in the eponymous game Pandemic II. It means closing out the world beyond.

In no small measure, I've "gone Madagascar" myself, though linked by telecommunications to the rest of humankind beyond the valley. This morning, as I harvested my oranges while keeping a close idea on the price movement in SRS, a good day-trade vehicle, I asked myself how I would fare if communications failed; shortly thereafter, they have!

I have a WAN miniport and we're experiencing strong, cold winds this sunny day; apparently, one of the repeater antennae has been damaged. I can no longer track the price of the ETF, but I suspect the world will not end as a result. And, my but the juice from just two of those big oranges was sweet!

The winter root crops are going well, as are the beans, peas and cabbages. They don't depend upon telecommunications. As for seeds for next year, on August 1st we're having a valley-wide get-together of small producers to exchange open-pollinated, non-Frankenseeds, during a day-long program sponsored by the Agricultural Institute, a fair designed to provide coordination and instruction on how to operate in the various farmers' markets running here in the valley. I will be presenting the finance module in the hope that this will convince the town government or their opposition to fund our hoped-for business incubator and move forward on getting people off the dole and into productive activities centered in our valley.

Will we shut ourselves off from the world one day? Not necessarily, but as far as the swine flu pandemic goes, I feel safe here in Traslasierra. We haven't had much tourism during this winter vacation, and it is my opinion that the idea of tourism as the lynchpin of the local economy is mistaken: we have great productive potential here, but it requires paradigm change to realize it.

Could be we'll have to go Madagascar.

Independence Day

Yesterday, July 4th, was "Independence Day" in the United States of America, where "independence," like so much else in the post-modern era, is relative.

Independence Day for me is Sept. 24th, the day I moved into my just-completed straw bale house on my own property, not a penny owed on any of it. Three months and a bit from now, I'll celebrate my fourth anniversary in this home, although two years ago, the wife who entered it with me preferred to return permanently to apartment living in Sevilla, Spain, after repeated false starts with respect to living in another country. The rural, self-sufficient life made for a nice fantasy, but the reality was something else again. In retrospect, I suspect she had been humoring me, not believing that I was serious. I was and am. I was saddened by her departure, but not about to commit financial and psychological suicide, trading this for a sardine tin in a noisy city in a country that I was sure was soon to experience exactly what it is experiencing now, and worse to come.

Living alone in a 2700 sq. ft. house on three acres is not easy at 62, but when I reflect upon what my life would likely be in any northern hemisphere country, without wholly owned property not subject to confiscatory taxation, without my own trees and gardens producing food, without all the free range eggs and chickens, the pig I fatten and have butchered right here, the fresh milk straight from the cow, the homemade cheeses, the crystalline air, the gurgle of the arroyo, the birds, the peace and quiet... without any of this, well, it wouldn't be a harder life: it wouldn't be any sort of a life at all, not for me.

Independence.

The local people here are very poor by northern standards, but they have free health care (often they grow old waiting for the doctor, but...) and for the most part are content with their extremely simple lives; the young, however, are tempted by the allure (false, of course, but that takes time to learn) of bright lights, big city, at least for a while. Very, very few have full-time jobs, but neither do they have mortgages or pay rent in most cases. The have no debt. NO DEBT!! They are FREE!

More and more previously docile folk are beginning to chafe at the growing restriction upon even the mildest sorts of freedom once available in the north. One sees more and more rebellion talk, "throw-the-bums-out" talk with respect to governments, advice offered as to how to become independent once more. Here's one that I found particularly relevant to what I'd like to accomplish down here in the Catacombs: Fifty Things to Do NOW! Many of them have been advocated here and elsewhere, but it's encouraging that more and more systematization is being applied to the freedom and independence issue.

The new "Cap-and-Trade" Law is an abomination, pure and simple, and if it passes, it could be the straw that breaks the back of the up-to-now ruminant population that has been willing to swallow the "Patriot" Act, all the thievery entailed in the bailout programs, but this... As I joked in a separate post with respect to a different topic: "In my twenty years on the force I thought I'd seen everything, but this...this...". Will those in the northern hemisphere take back their rights and their countries? The jury is still out, but one fears it may have been "got to."

Hard copy those Fifty Things and begin putting them into practice if independence means more to you than a barbecue; firecrackers have been illegal up there for so long now, that...

And remember, here at The Catacombs, you've got a friend; in fact, more and more every day.

Slow Down and Smell the Mate

Before anything else: the last word in the headline has nothing to do with one's spouse; it is pronounced "mah-tey" and refers both to the gourd beverage container pictured on the right, as well as to the herbal preparation within, the Southern Cone substitute for coffee and tea.

The mate ritual is akin to the coffee break or tea time: a pause in the daily labor, a slowing down of the pace and "living life in full measure," as the conductor cited in the "Willoughby" post below might have put it. A time for socializing, symbolized by the passing of the mate, all present sipping from the single "straw" (the "bombilla) as a sign of solidarity if not of the hygiene practices of the northern hemisphere.

The pace here in the Southern Cone is practically funereal compared with the frenetic scramble of the English-speaking lands. There are times when one accustomed to a quick-march grows frustrated with what seems to be foot-dragging, dawdling, time-wasting... But one learns that frustration will do one no good, because nothing will change, save that perhaps the frustrated northerner will develop an ulcer and not be able to digest the herbal infusion being shared by those seated in the shade of, say, a carob tree. Better to take life as it comes, one concludes.

I will not get done today all that I wish, but neither will I lose sleep over this fact; I have learned something from the simple folks who inhabit this district, rural folk with rarely more than a middle school education, who rarely leave the valley, who aspire to very little beyond basic needs. Could I live just as they do? Not by choice, no, but were the world, the flesh and the devil force me to slow down owing to a collapse of the fast-paced society that exists outside the valley, well, I suspect I would and be none the worse for it.

Can you say the same?

Argentine Ants Gone Global: Let's Fill the Vacuum!

The Argentina meme that seems to be gathering momentum confirmed itself in a spectacular manner in this BBC article: "Ant Megacolony Takes Over World."

Older readers and fans of Fifties monster movies will immediately recall the awful twittering of... Them!. Little did I know back then that those monster ants, instead of just making some dreadful, high-pitched noise that foreran a formic acid injection that would fill a beer bottle, were perhaps whistling a Carlos Gardel tango tune.

Signs point to yes, as my Magic 8 Ball used to confirm.

"Argentine ants living in vast numbers across Europe, the US and Japan belong to the same interrelated colony, and will refuse to fight one another. The colony may be the largest of its type ever known for any insect species, and could rival humans in the scale of its world domination,"states the article.

Uh oh!

"In Europe, one vast colony of Argentine ants is thought to stretch for 600km (375 miles) along the Mediterranean coast, while another in the US, known as the 'Californian large', extends over 900km along the coast of California."

Most would have speculated that the Spanish coastal colony was most likely made up of British ants, but it appears this is not the case. And who would have guessed that the California group would be Argentine rather than Mexican? The Universe never ceases to surprise!

While Argentine ants colonize the world, perhaps the Universe is sending us the message that it's time for the world to colonize Argentina? After all, this nation is one of the great melting pot nations of the West, yet there remains room for many, many more. Argentina has a population density on the order of 35 persons per square mile, but that figure fails to tell the true story, because the population density in Buenos Aires is on the order of 4,032 per square mile, whereas in the Patagonian province of Chubut, it is closer to two, tops. Outside the 15 major cities, there are fewer than ten million occupying 1,068,322 square miles. This yields a population density slightly greater than that of Canada, much of which is located in an utterly inhospitable climate zone, whereas Argentina is almost entirely in the temperate zone. Patagonia has a population density along the lines of the former Spanish Sahara and lower than that of Mongolia.

Plenty of room here, folks!

Willoughby South

That's Mr. Gart Williams looking longingly at the sign identifying a station stop that wasn't to be found on the 1960 New Haven Railroad line, but instead existed in that special place known as the Twilight Zone.

Nearly half a century has passed since I first thought how pleasant it would be to make "A Stop at Willoughby," as that particular episode was called. Willoughby was a "peaceful, restful place, where a man can slow down to a walk and live his life full measure," according to the conductor on a train that had passed through the time tunnel back to 1881.

This episode from the program's first season was acknowledged by its creator, the late Rod Serling, as his favorite, and indeed it remains one of the best remembered and most popular of the 156 episodes. Why?

Well, the conductor said it all, didn't he? When all is said and done, modern life with all its empty thrills and narcissistic vacuity goes by in a blur, and the cup is nearly always half empty. The closing narration expressed the nostalgia for a Willoughby that exists within us all: "Willoughby? Maybe it's wishful thinking nestled in a hidden part of a man's mind, or maybe it's the last stop in the vast design of things, or perhaps, for a man like Mr. Gart Williams, who climbed on a world that went by too fast, it's a place around the bend where he could jump off. Willoughby? Whatever it is, it comes with sunlight and serenity, and is a part of the Twilight Zone."

Traslasierra, on the other hand, is sunny and serene and most definitely not part of the Twilight Zone, though it has that other-worldly feel to it that one can still find in rural areas largely passed by as the Urban Ambition Express barrels past. This is Catacombs country, an enclave of slowing down to a walk and living a life of full measure.

The Southern Cone is filled with places like this; climates and topography vary, crops grown are different, modcons may be more or less, but they have in common a pace that has been lost in the so-called developed world. It makes for a good "last stop," a place in which one can set down roots and live a life in large measure insulated from the tumult of a world in growing economic distress and social discontent with excessive political control, a place in which social engineering has yet to tinker much with the time-honored traditions of the folks who call these places home.

Better Willoughby than Alphaville, Jean-Luc Godard's 1965 fantasized dystopic technocratic dictatorship in which society is directed by a slow-talking computer named “Alpha-Soisant” with a whiskey-and-black-tobacco-broken, bad-barbiturate-habit voice that explains to secret agent Lemme Caution that everything is relative, governed by probability, and the word “love” is without meaning.

Are you holding a thirty-year commutation ticket to Alphaville?

Before your ticket gets punched one too many times, you might consider getting off at Willoughby South. We'll be waiting for you at the plaza.

Confluence

The synchronicities simply don't stop and this post gives me great pleasure to write.

Here we are at the confluence, something I have hoped for from the moment I began this web site.

You see to the right a photo of La Confluencia, both the place in Patagonia where two rivers meet and a self-sufficient community: http://www.laconfluencia.com/ This community is now part of the "Catacombs Confederation," which is to say Southern Cone Paradigm Changers working together to create a sustainable future for our posterity and a largely self-sufficient present for ourselves and those who wish to join us.

La Confluencia is near the Patagonian town El Bolsón, as is the nearly self-sufficient Traditional Catholic monastery the Seminario Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, whose hardworking monks are held in high esteem by hippie-esque "New Agers" and grizzled laborers alike.

The "padres" and seminarians at the monastery are friends; I visited them in March. The folks at La Confluencia recently contacted me because we have both built bale structures, and we quickly recognized that synergies exist that we should not allow to be ignored. We are now looking forward to a tripartite get-together with the monks to initiate cooperative ventures that will hopefully create a ripple effect in the larger community.

The folks at La Confluencia practice bio-intensive agriculture. I'd heard of it, but never known any one who practiced it until I encountered an acquaintance at the nearby Saturday morning farmers market and after chatting a good while, he agreed to come to The Catacombs in the second week of July to do a demonstration. When I returned home, there was the email from La Confluencia!

The universe appears to be trying to tell me something, and I'm all ears.

There may be a message here for you as well, because things are coming together rather nicely here in Catacomb country.

Highballin' the Love Train

How could the O'Jays know back then that the next stop was going to be the Southern Cone? They couldn't, of course: they were in the Old Paradigm.And the kids in this video? Well, the tee shirts on the girls say it all, don't they? "Nerds." Sigh.

Look at that room!

The color of the wall: bilious green, something their folks must have picked up at a Sherwin-Williams get-it-off-the-premises sale. The tacky posters, the flimsy curtains. The Love Train got derailed on its way through here.

The kids are spirited, I'll give them that, but the guys would have been prime candidates for "pantsing" back in my day, and the girls... well, we won't speak of them. But their behavior is not the sort that belongs in the street.

See, the world has turned nasty, and in the kind of neighborhood where the pavement ends, the street-light-vee hits the vanishing point and there are no more pachinko parlors, well, in those places, these kids could find themselves face down in a toilet bowl until the bubbles stop breaking the surface and the Love Train is a lonely whistle in the distance: Choo-Choo-Woo-Woo Bye-Bye.

Enough of that! Let's think happy thoughts! Let's get on board the Love Train! I mean, if you miss it, I feel sorry for you and, well, this whole train meme is kind of something you should, you know, like, "get into to."

We will be examining over the course of this week the ever-more-impelling urge that should be rising within readers to, well, "Git on bo' the Love Train" as it morphs into the Trans-Andean Express, the Traslasierra Streamliner, the Patagonia Powerhouse... Imagine yourself in a 50s vintage pullman dining car, linen on the table, heavy flatware flanking porcelain plates, white-jacketed waiters, clickety-clackety, clickety-clackety, wibbledy-wobbledy, landscape rollin' on by, smell that bacon frying, and you're heading south, south, ever further south, the rat race falling further behind, becoming nothing more than a hazy memory because you're on the Love Train, highballin' past dusty hamlets, whistle Doppler-shift-hooting like a barn owl caught in a wind tunnel... Love Train comin' on through!

Take a close look at the links on this page, think about the metaphorical train you're riding now. It's time to get on board the Love Train! Believe me, if you miss this Love Train, I feel sorry, sorry for you.


But not as sorry as you'll begin feeling sooner than you might think.