Isaac and Gideon, with the occasional help of Ezra and Malachi, have spent their free time the last several weeks raking, picking, shoveling, and hauling rock to create a mountain bike path/walking trail around the property. From an email I sent my dad and sister:
These are some photos of the new trail so far. None of these sections really repeat or overlap. So far, the boys have added 400 ft of trail for a total of 1380 ft of hand hewn singletrack. Now that Isaac has reached the old logging road, we have about 3 miles of good riding accessible from the front door. The next phase will be to go up to the bluff, requiring more advanced retaining wall skills and incorporating a couple of half sawn white oak bridges over small watershed grooves in a boulderfield. It's challenging riding with continuous climbing and some rocks and roots to add interest. When we're done we'll have several forks and options for multiple loops of short distances and high intensity riding. I'll be adding some trials elements that will incorporate logs and some very large boulders. The boys got two tree house building books from the library and are planning the style and location of their tree house/deer stand. Hopefully it will be deployed for next hunting season for some camp-out hunting trips. I can't wait for this stuff to get up and running and to have you all visit. It will be our own little mountain summer camp open year round. In addition to our own mountain biking, rock climbing, shooting, and zip and slack-lining, we are walking distance from some of the best easy creek kayaking (class III), canoing to and on the TN river, fishing, and swimming. We've got it all. And for only the low price of a couple of years of really gratifying work and $133.00 in property tax a year. Did I mention we live on about $600/month including food gas and housing expenses? Granted, there are operational expenses in time that we trade against convenience, but it gives us all chores we do together. I find the intellectual stimulation of necessity's hard won offspring and the need to become expert in such a wide range of knowledge and physical skills really satisfies my urge. Dad, you used to tell me when you dropped me off to school to "Learn it all." I took it as an axiom. Being so close to the mechanics of this kind of life, I've never taken less for granted.
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Here are pictures of our electric panel w/ 12V outlets, inverter w/ 120V outlets, and battery charger: For those who may be interested in the nuts and bolts of this project, it's about to get technical:
Our 6 golf cart batteries (about $100 each at Costco) are hooked up to a small fuse panel and power a dual 12V car outlet (like cigarette lighter outlets in your vehicle) and our 1000W Xantrex pure sine inverter for 120V power (which we generally use only after dark for the lightbulbs). At first, I intended to run lighting (CFLs) on a 2 battery bank and run everything else from the 4 remaining batteries. As I studied the problems with CFL in general, I changed my mind and hooked the whole bank up together. I am running our 14W CFLs from the inverter at 120V rather than what I intended originally with 12V CFLs directly from the batteries. This seems to be working fine, as it should, but it is only as efficient as the inverter, which is about 80% or a little better. What that means is that I lose some power to the inverter for the price of increasing the voltage on a nice sine wave. This is where one can easily go mad with the variables trying to stay on budget. The cost of 12V CFLs is about 5X that of 120V thanks to the economy of scale in the latter due largely to the partially aborted attempt to mandate them. Whatever you may think of this government manipulation, this is the retail reality in which I'm trying to plan. Longevity is another serious concern with the 12V, as well as some rumor and innuendo that the lumen output may be inferior. It's true that they aren't available in larger outputs like their 120V counterparts. It's also true that there is no reason to expect the price to drop significantly, since most of the world doesn't live on 12V. That said, the cost will always be higher for these bulbs, which pits the theoretical efficiency gain (arguably lost due to lower lumen outputs for equal wattage) against the cost of battery storage and power production. My decision was largely based on the fact that for the time being and forseeable future, we won't be using a lot of power. I also like to be able to pick up a bulb or twelve in town for cheap. I think I probably over estimated our power needs, though the non-linear math of actual battery capacities and discharge will take up what should have been a surplus. As I will discuss further on, the battery bank may be slightly undersized in the final analysis. In planning, I expected to have a microwave, but I'm not so sure anymore. There are a few tasks we miss, but since we all eat together most, if not all the time, most of the basic reheating we used to do doesn't need done. Living in one room, we use only one 14W CFL (60 or 75W equivalent) bulb at a time and get along very well. I hung two pull-string fixtures, so we have the choice of two locations: center of the house over the kitchen or above the dining table (and farther from the kids' beds). We can plug the computer into a car charging adapter in one of the 12V outlets along with a cell phone charger. Our news, weather, and entertainment come in on a nice little wind-up radio that takes an audio input cable from our MP3 player. Some evenings, we watch a little Rin Tin-Tin (DVD) on the laptop before bed. All of us pile onto our loft bed and enjoy a pretty comfortable in-home theatre. Who'd have thought a full size mattress and 15” screen would seem so huge? I had some buyer's remorse for getting such a large bed until all 7 of us fit comfortably across it for movie nights. Elyssa and I were pretty used to a twin together in the tent, so I get disoriented with all the space at night. The photovoltaics aren't up yet because I don't have the roof or the sunlight to really mount them. In the meantime, we use my generator which is pretty miserly on gas. It runs the large jack hammer all day on half a tank (2 gal). I've tried three battery chargers, since I can't afford a fancy charge controller with a 120V generator input. Maybe it isn't that I can't afford, but I refuse to buy at this time. I've settled on a Shumacher 60A manual charger that I babysit to get the charge right. I designed the system to only discharge 10% over about 3 days of use. So far, the battery capacity is a little underwhelming, but I'm still trying to figure out how to really top off the charge correctly. I should theoretically have 345 AH @ the 20 hour rate, as indicated by the battery label. That means I should have about 34 AH for three days of limited use at a time without exceeding the 10% threshold. I may have made an error in calculating based on the 20-hr rate, as is the conventional wisdom in battery planning. The truth is, most of our use really comes in about 6 hrs over a three day period, so the 5 hr rate on the battery may have been more accurate, though appreciably lower capacity than it seemed. All that to say, to really get my 10% drain formula right may take two more batteries. The industry standard is to design systems around a 50% discharge, but it doesn't make sense to me to tax the batteries like that when you potentially get 4-10 times the life if you don't discharge more than 10% (this is true of lead-acid batteries, though some lithium and other technologies may differ slightly). It's cheaper to buy more batteries to match your capacity to a 10% load than to replace the bank because you discharged too deeply too often. It's also cheaper to buy more capacity in less expensive batteries than to buy fewer high dollar industrial batteries only to run them down on a regular basis (80% discharge is the lower threshold in “professional” designed systems, but a few of these events will kill an entire bank). With a bank of batteries, charging is a bit different than for a single car battery. I sat for about 4 hours staring at the multimeter as I charged to try to figure out the pattern and gauge the battery reaction. What I discovered, which some of you may already know, is that a large capacity bank is like a big body of water and the state of charge is a bit like a tide, or storm swell. Watching the voltage numbers roll by on the meter, I counted the duration between changes in hundredths of a volt (thanks to digital meters). I could see how the microprocessor on the charger worked and finally concluded after 10 hours of charging on the generator that this was not a viable plan. Inexpensive, but large, automatic chargers claim to have circuitry to keep from over-charging the battery if left unattended. The problem is that the processor is too conservative to charge a system with approximately 10X the capacity of a car battery. I switched to a manual charger and can now top off in about 1.5 hours or less instead of 10+hours on the automatic. Since I'm only using the first 10% of discharge, my hope is that a higher amp charging rate for shorter duration will suffice. Even at the nominal 30A charge rate (about 20A actual) that is put into the bank by a linear manual charger (linear in that the wattage input to the battery remains pretty constant, but the amperage will drop while voltage increases) I'm at less than 10% of capacity for the charge rate, which is still, to my understanding, a “trickle” charge appropriate to the task, with little risk of damaging the cells. If all goes well in my charging experiments, I can keep the batteries full while I run the generator to do building projects intermittantly. In this case, the extra fuel costs to keep charged might only be a few dollars a month (right now it looks like about $6 more than I use ordinarily). I'm no accountant, but I'd say that's a pretty good utility bill for temporary power with no tap fees (up to $4K around here for grid power plus you have to have a building permit which can't be issued on our road since there is no water but rain . . . ha!). The photovoltaics are more powerful and will charge even faster than the generator-based charger, but maybe you can see why I'm not in a rush to install them, since I'm using only about 2 gallons of unleaded gas and minimal extra wear on the generator per month. Much of this is due to the fact that I have to run the generator anyway for large power tools. Also, the generator is a pretty large one (4000W continuous), so I don't lose much by plugging an extra appliance like the charger in while I run a table saw or air compressor, with idling between cuts or cycles. Some portion of the power would be wasted, otherwise. Efficiency-nazis might croak at a few of our practices, but in reality, the low consumption so far out-paces the losses to inefficiency that it hardly seems practical to spend any more time perfecting for now. Men are indeed crying as that about sums up today (if you don't get the Roy Acuff and Jimmy Dean reference, look it up). Isaac and Dan spent about all day breaking rocks. Ever seen this done by a chain gang in an old film about the south? Yep, it's about that good a time. Isaac was even singing to boot, when you could hear anything over the jackhammer. The crushed rock ended up filling the rubble trench foundation nicely. It's nearly self-compacting by our standards. Having spent the last several weeks in CO finishing up a patio at Scott's over a base of several inches to feet of manually compacted 3/8" minus structural fill, this is kind of a breeze. It's the really big rock in Dan's kitchen giving us fits. When I say really big, I mean 15-20 tons of boulder above grade. It's so big, we can't even talk about it after we finish the day. I've spent about 10 hours on the jackhammer on this gran massif, only to make a small dent in the toe. I tried using the rotary hammer to drill a series of holes along which to split a section. Wishful thinking, indeed. I burned up a good German bit without getting more than 3" into the "sandstone." So it was back to the jackhammer, which has already burned up a rather pricey breaker bit. I have a new strategy, though a costly one. I'll rent a 14" gas-powered demo saw to score the rock, I hope on a 4" X 12" grid, and jack out the stone between my saw kerfs. I tried a diamond blade on a 7 1/4 saw to see how it cut. The stone was pretty intimidating with a 13A electric motor, but the demo saw should have more power. When I took the hammer to the cuts, the stone came out as predicted. This method is going to cost a small fortune in rental fees and probably two very expensive blades, but I'm convinced it will work. Such is life when you can't get heavy equipment and a 500 lb hammer to the job site. In the end, it will all be worthwhile, or so we tell ourselves. The good news is that this appears to be the only rock of its size with which to contend. If I were making suggestions, I'd of course suggest making sure you can get big equipment into your building site. That said, however, the cash we'll spend dealing with these problems would cover an excavator and operator for all of two hours or less. This isn't enough time to even dig an exploratory hole around here, so we will come out ahead in the end, so long as no one gets injured. As of yet, there's only so much one can get hurt by when using hand tools of this sort. It's relatively safe, if tedious. So that's the secret to the shoestring budget. If you want to do something like this, either you feel "lucky" or you have some real skills, patience, and a good team. Two out of three ain't bad. As to luck, my dad taught me a valuable lesson about luck as a kid in a little gambling experiment. I lost it all in a matter of minutes. Ever since, as he would describe some escapade by or with his brother, Dad would turn to me and ask: Do you feel lucky? The answer, one could always assume, is no. I can go into the theology of luck, but I'll spare you. Suffice it to say, it isn't something I count on in my understanding of Divine Providence. Etymologically, Providence seems to have little to do with stupid risks or presumption. "For Life" is what God built into the machinery, though ease is often a sign of impending doom. This whole problem, like any building project or climbing assault is evidence that the best plan is not just a solid idea worked out in advance. Rather, those will not succeed without the long investment in human capital: a broad base of skills, an adaptable spirit, and a great living bibliography of creative people and ideas. That rock will move. Deo Volente, Dan and I will be around to see it. If not, God will make smooth the high places, even that one that juts out awkwardly from under Dan's dining room table. To my surprise and delight, our first real visitors, besides the neighbor's pitbull Hoss (who may have developed a chicken-killing fetish, making him not long for this world), were John and Judy Paulsen, of Grace PCA in Jasper. They drove out of their way en route to camp on the big lake to see us. I have to brag on these good Reformed folks for a moment. As the old joke goes, in the American West, the Baptists settled churches on foot, the Methodists on horseback, and the Episcopalians waited for the Pullman car. How then came these Presbyterians to tramp into the wilderness of our home site, without so much as an address or road sign? I'll call it a work of the Spirit since it was a very good gift, indeed.
Sunday afternoon we went down to Grace PCA to see if we could find them to talk some more. To our delight, they treated us to lunch along with RE Harold and his wife. It was a wonderful time, talking about the redemption of our culture through simple means, and, as Isaac pointed out in his blog, poop. It's always a hot subject, pardoning the pun. We look forward to working with these fine folks toward some new approaches (and old, very old) to the problems of affordability and wage slavery with no end in sight, placated by the glittering allure of cheap and petty consumerism that kills through the erosion of true value. Emphasis mine, of course. On the technical side: Predictably, there is a minor problem with the rain water pre-filter that we need to solve. It appears to be a vacuum lock kind of thing, which will be fixed easily by the introduction of a design allowing some air gap between layers of filter media. All this may sound complex, and in a way it is, but we are really talking about two dumpster-salvaged 5-gallon buckets, some sand and gravel, and a bit of charcoal. It's hard science and engineering on the cheap here. You can all thank the new LDS "church" under construction for several salvage finds in a region where new construction has nearly ground to a halt. We need not go into the troubling sign of the times this represents for the Southern Baptists. My cart for hauling straw bales performed. I won't use any further adverb to describe it. Suffice it to say, I'm thinking of a new carry method involving a couple of sets of poles, sans wheel. Dad, I know you always love a good Mesoamericans without wheels joke, but without motorized machines, it might just make the most sense of our situation. The bales were lighter than expected while the cart's added weight and the resistance of the wheel on the gravel and bumps of the path resulted in pretty hard going. There is also the relative difficulty of pushing a wheeled load uphill rather than pulling. Any mountain biker can attest, it's the front wheel over the log that's the hard part. With a bit of momentum, the rear wheel easily follows the center of gravity well forward of the axle. Dan and I both ran the cart, with me at the front in a "harness" which I tried to convince myself was more like a strong-man pulling a tractor than a dog with a leash tangled under his armpit, with mixed success. Most of the day, I would wonder: Is he really pushing anything? Knowing Dan as I do, he is no shirker. The bottom line: it just wasn't efficient. It seems to me that about 80 lbs. on each of us on foot will be easier and faster. So I'm going to make a simple pole stretcher suspended from longer poles, attached to shoulder webbing. This will keep the center of gravity low and hanging rather than high and balanced. The whole thing will be cinched together with tiedowns, so it will be like carrying a low-boy version of Solomon's traveling love shack (see S of S 3:6-10). No harem, court, or armed guards needed. A long, soft rain began sometime in the night and persists into this morning. I love the summer rain here, warm and wet, adjusting the light in the forest like a camera setting. For those faint of heart toward child labor, read no further. After a Herculean day of bale stocking, I'm not so disappointed by the extra time to rest. Isaac really impressed me, moving at least a fifth of the total bales by himself. He was tireless and sweaty, just like a man-child should be. He commented early on that his eyelids were sweating, but after seven hours, there weren't any comments, nor any novelty, just the solidarity of miserable work binding us together in mostly silence. In fairness to Dan and me, we didn't tell him to do anything. He figured out that he could move a bale at a time with the wheel barrow and went to it. Up and down the mountain, he went, lapping us a couple of times. I'm often especially proud of Isaac, but this was a high point. Now if only Giddy were here, Dan and I could have sat back sipping Country Time and telling fish stories. Last time I took Gideon to work with me, he, too, tirelessly shoveled structural fill into a wheelbarrow for several hours, looking forward to his union mandated "break", jumping the fence to play on the monkey bars at the school next door. Perhaps you haven't really lived until you've seen a boy work so hard, only to rest by swinging himself around and climbing on bars. These are the moments I think, in the immortal words of Davilene Aquila: I could have had me about ten babies. The Path (now 99% poison ivy free!) Today we took a much anticipated day off excavation to do a little sight seeing and visit neighbors with Anna and the kids. Foster Falls held lovely views and some very cold swimming under a 60 foot waterfall. The hike down was steep, but with the abundance of O2, surprisingly easy both ways. We met some vacationing climbers from MI down for the holiday weekend who were very friendly and gave some good indication what the climbing was like in the park. To my surprise, access is free. Dan, Isaac and I enjoyed the water on this unseasonably hot afternoon, however, in the low-slung river valley, the air temperature was fully 10 degrees or more cooler than at the rim. Yesterday, Dan and Isaac went to the Cove (Coppinger Cove is just down the mountain from us) to a swimming hole frequented by locals for a weekly bath in the summer. They enjoyed rope swings into the river and meeting some new friends Isaac's age. I stayed behind to attempt some more excavation and moved some rocks. When Dan returned, we started a major stump-removal that will take us a bit more time to finish tomorrow. We are waiting for parts to finish up the water collection on the shed, which should arrive the day the rain returns. Sugar helped me at the hardware store, rendering the most competent customer service I've had from a lumber yard in all my life. If you are ever building in SE TN, I can't recommend Collins Materials enough. The staff are friendly and knowledgeable and actually got up off the chair to walk around the store with me finding parts I needed and offering creative suggestions. Around here, when you tell people you are going to do something "unconventional" with a building material, I find they just smile and helpfully suggest how to make your idea work instead of telling me what can't be done or wondering why anyone would want to do anything so dumb. They seem pretty used to people coming up with creative solutions. Sugar turned to another customer who wanted in on the action and said, "He's gonna rig it." The customer laughed and said, "Riggin' it, that's the way to do it, you know." It seems they generally share my suspicion of pre-fabbed solutions to unusual problems. I got the same response from Advanced Auto when I bought battery cable. As soon as I said I wanted it for an off-grid system, the lady helping me instantly understood and made a great suggestion about a source (not even her store) for other salvage parts. I hate to go on in this Utopian vein, but I see a lot of hope ahead, in spite of the nearly impossible tasks of excavation awaiting our return to work. As I was telling my dad on the phone recently, it really is other people that make this place so great in spite of its challenges. So we have a shed of sorts and a water catchment system started, just in time for the rain to stop for a week. We'll wait patiently and work on excavation until it returns to test out our experimental pre-filter. Basically, the simple and scalable pre-filter we have consists of a five gallon bucket with washed gravel (quietly salvaged from a neighbor's driveway run-off into the road) nested into another bucket. The gravel will filter out the large material without clogging up with leaves. After the gravel, the water drains out of the bottom of the first bucket through a series of carefully spaced (for any Phil Hartman: the "Anal Retentive Chef" fans) 1/4" holes. Next, the water will pass through about a 4 inch layer of mason's sand and a silt fabric, then through 3 inches of crushed charcoal and another silt fabric and into the water container. I'd go into the details of this last connection, but it would only interest about 1 in 1000 of you. Considering about 15 people are reading this, that seems a pretty poor return. We found a free source of 55 gal. plastic barrels from a great guy named Doby up in Whitwell. As for the larger cistern, we found IBC totes (275 gal. water containers) for about $30 each here as opposed to $100+ in CO.
On the church front, much to our surprise and those who know our staunch Calvinism, we've continued to enjoy worshiping with the Nazarene church in Jasper. I spoke with Tankersley today about this and he concurred that there is something different down here that draws people together in the bounds of Christian love acros s these ideological lines that we found drawn in such hostility in the past. I'm impressed with the faithful service of the young pastors here. Kevin, the senior pastor, expressed an eager willingness to cooperate in ministry and to share thoughts and resources in sermon/lesson prep. He was exited to sponsor a mountain Bible study and looked forward to participating and co-teaching. This is something I've found to be like pulling teeth within my own denomination, yet here, in an episcopalian government even, I find greater cooperation and support than I ever found from within Reformed Presbyterianism. I've been singing in the choir and Isaac plays guitar with some fine bluegrass musicians that accompany worship. Tomorrow he's being taken to a senior home to play with one of the adult Sunday School teachers who will give him some instruction on the accordion and lead the old folks in songs of praise. All ecumenicism aside, I'm as predestinarian as the day is long, but I'm sure willing to get along with these folks of good will and faith until they say otherwise. Once I've built some trust and can explain that I may be absent, but I am committed and will return, I will go visiting other congregations to see if I can find a similar spirit of cooperation. I'm not sure where that will lead, but the usual suspects among my Calvinist brethren sadly seem out of the running for now. I hope that changes since I believe they can bring a lot to a meeting of the minds as I envision. What I am looking for is pretty simple, but I've found elusive until the Nazarene pastor and the District Superintendent assured me of their help. I just want a group of people who are called to preach and teach who can share ideas, study resources, and discuss the merits and pitfalls of exegesis and interpretation for the good of all congregations and the fortification of our unity as preachers and the beneficiaries of our great Gospel. This might mean a phone call met with an eagerness to look at a text with another, sharing books, reading papers, reviewing notes, sharing in the inter-congregational inter-denominational need for discipline and accountability in personal holiness and doctrinal soundness, and, I would even go so far as to say, sharing in corporate worship for special occasions and even sharing the teaching pulpit with the appropriate caveats about organization and authority. It seems so painfully obvious to me that this is needed, yet it has been so difficult to find. For whatever reasons, I've found a greater appreciation for what I'm talking about here among rural folks than in the city. The same was true in Fairview, MI as it seems to be here in Jasper, TN. My friend Sam Powell stated it well, I think, in his defense of denominationalism: Unity in the faith, but distinct in organization. He insisted that we can be and are united in one Gospel while we reserve the right to maintain organizational autonomy from those who differ. I would take this a step further and suggest, as a rabid Congregationalist, that the Gospel so transcends many of the peculiarities of our larger organizational groups, however precious, that we must seek out and actively develop relationships between congregations which display our unity by mutually edifying across organizational lines. Sacred Harp singing has been one of these occasions for us and I'd love to take it and the spirit of mutuality and respect therein to pastors and teachers in the aforementioned ways. Enjoying the hospitality of the Great American South, Lance It seems the drought in SE TN has broken large on our heads. It would be great if we didn't have so much digging to do and no shelter. What they call a drought here is three weeks with not more than .5" of rain. According to our crude estimate gleaned from careful calculations of the wheel barrow and our up-turned dinner bowls, we've gotten 1.5" in the last day and a half. The tree frogs are loving it: pollywogs leaping from the water with amorous plans sung out at all hours of day and night. I've never heard so many varieties of song-birds. It sounds as though a mocking bird near our camp has been smitten with a cell phone ringer and calls potential wireless mates at first light. Box turtles venture into the open in the rain, but not their venomous reptilian cousins. It is paradisaical here, but with a trace of hostility. The poisonous plants are only a few of many elements that make it unsuitable for human habitation in it's raw form. Without some serious efforts at civilisation, this place would best fit the "fine place to visit, but . . ." category. However, those who have carved out a foothold for themselves and come to some balance with nature never want to leave. It will be a long process to make late spring through early fall really enjoyable, but we've seen that it can be done and with great rewards.
On the civilisation note, a couple of observations: 1. As we constructed our path to the building site, the many refrains Isaiah uses of the rough ways made smooth ran through my mind. When approaching a mountain, one cannot even estimate the value of a well-formed path. One of my joys as a younger mountaineer was the absence of any such path. Becoming lost to the route-finding was part of the thrill. Yet, it was then, as it is now, impossible to really communicate the difficulty of forging ahead without a path to those who'd never ventured off the trail. Now, a new dimension has occurred to me: the perspective of trail-maker. I lost track of how many times Dan and I wold turn to each other and say, this is really hard work. Isaac settled in to the repetitive task of cleaning the organic matter from the fill dirt as we excavated. The clean fill would be used to fill the voids left by boulders we removed. As we looked back on each section, the indications of what had taken place to smooth this very rough terrain under foot were gone. In their stead was a path that looked as natural to any hiker, and as ancient, as the roads of Rome. Gone was the frustration of rock and root, poison ivy, saw-vine, stump, and overdense saplings, unspeakable insects and arachnids. There was just a path in the wilderness made smooth. It looked like it had always been and there was no reason to expect otherwise. 2. The inherent inhospitality of the wild I spoke of can be seen in Exo. 23:28-30 and Deut. 7:22. These are current realities for us and we have the benefit of a mighty Western civilisation minutes away. It is terrifying to think of Adam and Eve banished from a garden, tended by the Great Horticulturist, into the wilderness, showing them only fang, claw, and thorn. It's not much better to be Noah and family. For those who don't experience this end in the wilderness, please be mindful of Deut. 32, which tells the fat and complacent, grown so by the ready availability of consumer goods and general ease, that their feet will slide in due time, for the day of their calamity is at hand. We finished the path up to the site, and none too soon. The rain returned with a vengeance last night as we went to sleep and has persisted until this afternoon with no sign of letting up. The poison ivy saga continues as yet unabated, but the Prednisone should make a difference in the next day or two. Until then, I look like a leper. Everyone at church came up and said, "Well, it looks like you got into it." Though the digging of the path is done, it won't really be finished until we get some gravel or something on it to make it walkable in the rain. Right now, the scalped portions are a muddy mess. Fall leaves will also make an improvement, but it will be a while before we see these.
Tomorrow we will hopefully have a reasonable footing base for the shed and begin framing it the next day. Pastor Kevin of the Church of the Nazarene is treating us to the Cracker Barrel tomorrow night and we may have some new accommodations thanks to Theresa, our neighbor who has offered her guest house. It's 60 deg. and rainy. Even the mosquitoes and ticks are in hiding, but the toads are out in force. We got the generator hooked up to a smaller inverter by way of the generator battery. I'm glad we went with the pure sine wave inverter because when Dan plugged in his hair clippers to the gen and the inverter, the difference in performance was huge. I can only imagine what the gen would do to sensitive electronics. The inverter performed very well, though. At some point we'll try the mobile wifi hot spot, but for now we are waiting until at least the shed is done. Until then, we have power for small and large tools and possibly a dry place to sleep. Hallelujah! Amen! This week in church when S. asked about Food Stamps in relation to the Sitz im Leben of Ecclesiastes 4-6, I mentioned the Iron Law of Wages, defined simply as the theory that in an industrial economy, wages will tend toward subsistence. In other words, basic labor (think those at or below minimum-wage full-time work) will be rewarded finally with no more than a subsistence living like one might produce on a small family farm of a few acres. I stated that in the low-wage sector, we are within $2000 dollars of this outcome today.
Perhaps I was being optimistic. The article here shows the steady decline of private sector job benefits, and specifically those to low-wage workers. At the same time, private sector low-wage workers are depending increasingly on public (i.e. government) subsidization. All the while, Walmart, in a 2004 study, was the recipient of $1 billion in government subsidies, which they don't deny, but claim is a boon (as from the gods) to the communities that pay for them. Add to this the general degradation of food quality and economic incentivization of even poorer food choices, and we may see even greater subsidization of this particular mode. So my revised statement would be as follows: perhaps in a significant way, we have defied the Iron Law after all and reached below subsistence as the low-water mark for industrial wages through debt-laden public subsidies. Heretofore, it was unthinkable that a worker could be paid less than a living, but no more! The Malthusian prediction for such an impossibility would be a decrease in population. See article here. Thoreau calculated, albeit roughly, that six weeks of labor was sufficient for a man's yearly subsistence on a few acres of arable land. That works out to an hourly wage from the gracious hand of YHWH Himself of at least $25, or $50,000/year in full-time terms. If his figures are accurate (or if not) I think I'd prefer to work for God than Sam Walton, s'il vous plait. Compare, si vous voulez, a Biblical gleaning economy of the poor, including the basic right to land use, to the enticements of wage-slavery promising consumer status on the ethos of envy. I submit this to you all as information. The writers and producers of the linked articles do not necessarily or at all represent my own views on the subject. I am merely trying to connect some data sets in a meaningful way to illustrate the need for an entirely alternate economy. I'm hoping that I do so in a more accurate and less self-deluded way than Glen Beck. The irony that much of the criticism toward Walmart for so many of its workers being on public welfare programs (Medicaid being the most expensive) comes from a political sector which generally favors fully publicly subsidized and government administered universal health care is not lost on me. I'm also no fan of labor unions as I believe they are an obstacle to actual labor-ownership of the means of production and a sad acknowledgement of the status of the corporation as enjoying what are meant to be incommunicable attributes of the state, both legitimate and otherwise. There, of course, exists a peaceful solution to this and other abnormal realities. We can work in peace with our neighbors in meaningful ways having little to nothing to do with this system of supplies, its coercive model of redistribution, or the false systems of worship it imposes on the unwitting devotee. We could let Caesar keep his icon and render to God that which He requires. I'm not forcing anyone to opt out of the beast as fully as I intend to do, but we may all consider at the level of policy, how far we are from the natural prescription and question any politician who moves us into the direction of "mandatory or forbidden" as all-inclusive categories based on what is pragmatic for some, but hardly the universally good Natural Law. End the Fed, Lance |
LanceLance doesn't like to publish his writing, as he reserves the right to change his mind. =P Archives
April 2013
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