The Peaceful Gnome

Lora's Birthday 2013 , a set on Flickr. A few shots of Lora's 32nd Birthday party with the Cagle Crew.

Yuba River 2013 , a set on Flickr. Had a great time at the river, as usual.

Plans and preparations continue apace for our giant moving day on the morrow.  Most everything is in order already, things have been boxed and packed and even a little bit of "minimizing" has taken place, though not to the extent I think it should!  I hate moving, so does Yoda, and Mom and Lora.  Hey, only Max has not said "I hate moving," and that's probably because he only says "good-bye" and a couple of other words anyway ;-)  Earlier today mom and I went over to Tracy where she got her satellite TV hooked up and I managed to get the WiFi going.  Mom and I struggled with and finally managed to put up the pool fence so we are confident that Max can safely be in the back yard with supervision, that is a good thing.  It is going to be great once we have moved, but for now it really sucks.  Our new house is closer to the Bay Area, is larger and more logically laid out and has a pool and RV parking.  So, it's a good thing over all.  Wish us lu...

Anyone who knows me really well will understand how happy this music makes me. :-) http://feeds.wnyc.org/~r/radiolab/~3/qJ4n2ZC5FfE/

I ride BART to work, the ride covers 28 miles as the crow flies and takes about 40 minutes.   On most days it's pretty uneventful and even rather pleasant, sitting in comfort and reading or napping on the way to and from work. On other days the ride can be downright weird.  Today was weird. It being a holiday, Labor Day, the trains were on a limited schedule.  When I arrived at the Dublin BART station there was train at the platform with about a quarter of it's doors open.  Inside were a number of "homeless" people, most of them very pungent.  I walked along the platform seeking a car with an open door and lacking fragrant crack-heads.  As I was passing about the third car with, a half dozen of the seedier denizens of the Bay Area sleeping in the seats in each car, I passed one in which one of these fine upstanding citizens and honored BART passengers was sitting spread eagled in the seat with an extremely explicit large format color pr0n magazine and his h...

Well, I went back on Facebook a few days ago and it turns out it just makes me even crazier than I am without looking at it.  I'm not going to be specific about why because I don't want to insult anyone, even those friends who really really annoy me.  :-)  So, for my own mental health, and that of those who inadvertently read my posts, I'm quitting again.   Yes, I'm a quitter, so slap me.  I'm also going to try my best to go back to not posting about politics here.  No guarantees on that though, sometimes the behavior and proclamations of our masters just calls out for response and rebuttal.  

How an Insular Beltway Elite Makes Wars of Choice More Likely - Conor Friedersdorf - The Atlantic Do you wonder where all of this "pressure to act" that the Emperor is supposedly under comes from?  This story from the Atlantic explains it pretty well.

  Parliament Revolts, Brits to Stay Out of Syria -- News from Antiwar.com Seems to me that if Emperor Obama refuses to consult with congress before attacking Syria the military should REFUSE to launch what will CLEARLY be an unconstitutional, illegal and immoral attack.  Of course they won't do that because they are just as useless when it comes to honoring their OATHS to uphold and defend the constitution as are the spineless and gutless cowards in congress.  It's humiliating when even the British Parliament has more backbone than the American Congress. 

Even Jimmy Carter recognizes that the old Republic is dead! I stumbled upon this story today, somehow it barely got mentioned in the Imperial Press Service coverage of "News" last month. I give you this so those who think I exaggerate the death of the Republic can have a more moderate voice to consult, Jimmy Carter: Soe Zeya Tun | Reuters  Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter gestures before delivering a speech at a hotel in Yangon on April 5, 2013. By Peter Taber, Special to the BDN Posted  July 31, 2013,  at  1:16 p.m. Anyone is naive who thinks the commonly available sources for news in the U.S. are effectively superior to the Soviet news organization Pravda, whose Orwellian name is a hybrid noun meaning both “truth” and “justice.” There seems to be little difference between the dominant news organ of the old U.S.S.R. and U.S. corporate media, which might just as well have a single outlet perhaps titled “Fairalanced” (an English hybrid noun I...

Turns out I cannot NOT talk about the obscenity that is the American Empire.  The fact that there is a constant stream of talk about Emperor Obama ordering an attack on yet another Middle Eastern state makes me want to vomit and go buy one of those nasty red white and blue bits of cloth with stripes and stars to clean it up... maybe burn it on the trash pile after it dries. First of all I am old enough to recall the days when this Empire still at least pretended to be a Republic, and when the press questioned Imperial Pronouncements and sought independent verification of what they said and called them on it when it turned out to be lies.  This is no longer the the way things are in the American Empire.  Today we have an all powerful Emperor who does not even pretend to consult the impotent cowards of the Senate and the House before unleashing the Imperial Legions on the women and children of far away lands, raining down death and destruction to enforce the will of the Emp...

Oh my, looking at current events in the Middle East I really do regret my irrevocable vow not to pollute this blog with politics.  Please Pray for peace and justice in the Middle East.  It will not come from the United States shoving it's big nose in places it doesn't belong, that is for sure.   So, see, this post was really about PRAYER :-)  I won't go in to a long rant about... the US and it's myriad little wars... no... I won't do it!  Arrrrgh!  :-p~

What Mary may have been thinking at the end her life, awesome. http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/issuesetc.org/podcast/sbotwweedon08-23-13.mp3

It has now been 15 days since I deactivated my Facebook and Twitter accounts  as an experiment to see if I could reduce the amount of time and energy I wasted online.  After a fortnight of no Facebook I find that I have returned to my older habits of reading books and writing.  It turns out that Facebook had been stealing so much of my time that I read little else.  Before Facebook I used to read a couple of books per week.  During the now-ended Facebook phase of my life my book reading ground to a near stop, I was lucky to get through one book a month!  I must say that I do not miss anything about Facebook.  Not the announcements of glorious victory in various games, not the incessant "cute" cat pictures, not the bombastic political posts from left and right wings both, and yes, I'm guilty of those myself, I vow not to pollute this blog with them in the future. I don't miss the lame jokes, the myriad "blessings from God" posts nor the "new age"...

I'm posting this morning from my RV parked on a city street in San Leandro. I believe this is my penultimate visit to this place. In September we'll be moving to a new house in Tracy.  This will be close enough to BART to make staying in the RV unnecessary.  Well, that's what I think now, I'll have to try it for a while to be certain.  This small space living experiment has met with mixed results.  On the one hand minimizing clutter and excess belongings makes it easier to clean and just feels better over all.  On the other hand being in a small space doesn't work on a crowded city street.  If you can be outside, like in the country, it might be OK.  But being in an RV on the street is pretty claustrophobic to me.  So, farewell street living, one more time and I'm done.  :-) 

A sequel or perhaps a remake of the classic "Cosmos" series.  Very cool.  Of course Neil deGrasse Tyson is an atheist/materialist so it's going to be tilted that way, but still, I'll bet it will be interesting, Tyson is anything but boring :-) Dang, I may be forced to actually hook up basic cable...

I've been holding off on posting about this subject for quite a while.  It is a subject that is very important to me, in that I've always been fascinated by origins.  Where did we come from?  Where did the earth come from?  Where did the galaxy and the entire cosmos come from?  Why is there anything at all?  I've read extensively on cosmology, astronomy, geology and biology and it's a never ending source of wonder to me the way things have developed over time from the simplest beginnings to the human mind, the most complex thing we know of. The reason I was waiting to write was because, as you may recall, I allowed this subject to dominate my thinking to the point that I abandoned faith in God and changed my religious affiliation in an attempt to locate a church that was both theologically conservative and liturgical and at the same time fully accepting of the picture painted by science.  Turns out there ain't no such place. :-(  It also turn...

This is a great, short and to the point explanation of the real end of the American Republic  back in 1913.  It was already badly damaged by the Civil War but this actually finished it off. http://www.freemansperspective.com/1913-america/

Caesar is not amused by being forced speak to the peasants.  "Shut up and trust me" he said.  Visibly Annoyed Obama Unveils Non-Reforms on NSA Surveillance -- News from Antiwar.com

The City of Ripon has probably the easiest to remember bus schedule I've ever seen:  Thursday.  :-) The Ripon bus service is a fifteen mile radius from the city limits The City of Ripon offers a transit bus service to the general public, persons with disabilities, and our senior citizens. The city bus runs every Thursday unless special trips are arranged. At least one week notice is needed to secure a driver for special trips. For more information, please contact the Senior Center at  599-7441 , or Sarah Hollander at  599-2108 . Bus Fare  Thursday Shopping Trip $1.00 Concert $1.50 Special Trip $15.00 http://www.cityofripon.org/Community/community-resources.html#bus

I've noticed already, after having stopped using the two major "social media" sites of Facebook and Twitter for only a couple of days, that I'm going through the day at a much more relaxed pace.   OK, maybe not quite that relaxed but you get the picture ;-)

I'm reducing my social media participation by deactivating my Facebook and Twitter accounts.  I anticipate that this will be a good thing.  I didn't make any announcements on those accounts, just shut them off.  This is nothing against my "friends" on those services, it's just a huge time sucker that I don't want to bother with anymore.   I will probably post more here though, which means almost no one will be reading what I write, which is fine with me :-)  I mostly write for my own entertainment and as a way to vent when I'm frustrated.  Speaking of being frustrated, BART was supposed to be on strike today so I didn't take the RV into the Bay Area on Saturday night the way I normally do.   I had planned to drive all the way into the city and park in a garage across the street ($15) but found out when I got up that the governor intervened so the strike is delayed yet again.  So I ended up losing sleep for nothing, but Idid save that 15 bucks at l...

I have been asked from time to time "Why do you write so much in your journal?"  The simple answer is, it's how I think.  Without writing, or talking out loud to myself, I cannot clarify my thoughts enough to really be conscious.  I go through the day on auto-pilot and who knows what will happen then.  So I write, and I write and I write.  As the words come out I can see what they are and what they mean, I can see what I'm thinking.  Writing is better than talking to myself in most ways.  It's better because it doesn't make you look like a complete lunatic they way constantly muttering to yourself does, and because it leaves a concrete record I can consult later when I'm wondering what in the heck I was thinking when I made some decision.  Talking to myself is way faster though, mostly because I'm not all obsessed with spelling things correctly and having the words in the correct order.  When I write I have to stop and fix things on the pag...

Well now, we've been living in Ceres for a while, got the house all settled in, JD's been doing up the yard nicer and nicer, we know all of the neighbors finally, so, of course, we are going to move again. Mom and Lora both seem to really like Turlock.  They have their reasons, such as being close to church, nicer parks, etc.  Me?  My bedroom is on wheels dude.  It matters little where the family plants its several arses because I'll still be in the same "place" anyway.  I'm in my bedroom right now, before work, and I'm not in Ceres anyway.  :-) I'm going to prepare for this next move by completing my "minimizing" project.  It is my intent to dispose of everything that won't reasonably fit within my RV.  I have told the family they don't need to find a place with a separate room for me this time, 4 bedrooms will be plenty, as long as there is a place to park the RV close by.  I've also told them it's up to them to find a place...

I said I would write about diet here so I'm going to do that today. When I discovered that many things I did not enjoy, joint pain, digestive problems including cramping and constant gas and others digestive problems that I won't go into detail about here to save on the ick quotient of this post vanished with the adoption of the Paleo diet I thought I had it all figured out. It was those evil Neolithic ancestors of ours foolishly settling down in villages and farming; By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return. Even God said agriculture was wrong! :-) Sort of. Well, there wasn't much about the paleo diet I didn't like, lots of meat, fresh veggies and fruits, eggs even some dairy could be squeezed in there, cheese and yogurt weren't all that bad really. But I did miss my pizza and pasta! And so I conducted several months of experiments on m...

It occurred to me yesterday that since I'm living 1/2 time in the RV I could actually conduct an experiment in Minimalism and Tiny House style living.  It is my intention to move into the RV as my bedroom even while I'm at home.  For the last several weeks I've been parking outside, taking my bedroll and a few other items up to my room and staying there while in Ceres.  But it's felt odd, almost like I'm just visiting.  Then when I'm ready to leave for the Bay Area again I wind up having to drag everything back out to the RV and rack my brain trying to make sure I don't forget anything that I'll need in the next three or four days of being in the RV.  So, it seems to make sense to me just to go all out and make the big transition to minimalism right now.  I will sort through all of my stuff and put what I think I'll need in the RV, which is not much more than I have in it already, I think.   Here are some things that are in my room that just won'...

This Sunday is Trinity Sunday. This is important in many ways, the best is the chance to recite or just to read over again the  Athanasian  Creed, a Catholic Koan IMO: Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholic Faith. Which Faith except everyone do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly. And the Catholic Faith is this, that we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity. Neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Substance. For there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Ghost is all One, the Glory Equal, the Majesty Co-Eternal. Such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Ghost. The Father Uncreate, the Son Uncreate, and the Holy Ghost Uncreate. The Father Incomprehensible, the Son Incomprehensible, and the Holy Ghost Incomprehensible. The Father Eternal, the Son Eternal, and ...

It has been almost 6 months since I posted on this blog.  This interruption was due mostly to the fact that I was posting everything on Facebook instead.  While I don't mind posting there the truth is the format is more suited to short bursts of fluff than anything substantial.  In addition posts there tend to vanish into the background rather quickly, meaning I can never find anything I've posted there after a few days :-)  I know those posts are still out there (but who knows where?) but when I post on my blog at least I know where the thing is going to be the next time I want to refer to it.  But now on to the subject of this post. Some time ago I was interested in the concept of "Minimalism" in life.  This is the idea that by reducing the number of our material possessions we could both reduce our impact on the planet, reducing our consumption of resources, and also improve our enjoyment of life by spending less time on cleaning, maintaining and just st...