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.
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