The Evening Blues - 8-16-17
Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features delta blues musician Willie Brown who may have also recorded as Kid Bailey. Enjoy!
Willie Brown - Make Me a Pallet on the Floor
"It is simply untrue to claim that the United States has a problem with white supremacy. It is untrue because the United States is synonymous with white supremacy; it is a nation founded and established by white supremacists, whose constitution was written by white supremacists, and in which white supremacy is wedded into the cultural and social fabric, not forgetting its very institutions."
-- John Wight
News and Opinion
An excellent article. Here is an excerpt to whet the appetite:
Why is the US still fighting the civil war?
[F]igures such as Lee and Jackson are heroes to some. Their admirers include Donald Trump. In a rowdy press conference on Tuesday, he compared them to celebrated figures in American history such as presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Their admirers also include the white nationalist movement, which is currently surging in the US. The footsoldiers of that movement terrorised Charlottesville last weekend. Trump downplayed their violent excesses, saying they were merely “there to protest the taking down the statue of Robert E Lee”. ...
Charlottesville’s statue of Lee is one of around 1,500 such monuments to the Confederacy scattered throughout the US. Mostly, though not exclusively, those statues can be found in those southern states that broke from the union in 1861 over their desire to retain the system of slavery. In 1865, after the loss of more than 600,000 lives and the destruction of entire cities such as Atlanta, the southern Confederacy was defeated, and slavery was abolished. But like most of the other monuments to the confederacy’s “lost cause”, the statue in Charlottesville was not built in the immediate aftermath of that war. Rather, it was commissioned more than half a century later in 1917, and erected in 1924.
It was part of a wave of statue-building in the south that took place between the late 1890s and 1920, according to research from the Southern Poverty Law Center. That wave crested in about 1911. There was another, later, flurry of statue building in the 50s, and around this time the “stars and bars” confederate battle flag became a popular symbol. In that decade and the one following, some southern states, such as Florida, changed their flags to more closely resemble the standard of southern defeat.
According to Joseph Lowndes, a political scientist at the University of Oregon and author of two books on the US’s racial politics and the south, the timing of these enthusiasms is not accidental. “The statues go up in moments of racial reaction.” The earlier craze was the moment when Lowndes says, “the Jim Crow order was really being built in the south”. So-called Jim Crow laws formally segregated public schools, public transport and public spaces generally in former confederate states. Laws mandated that black people and white people use separate restaurants, restrooms and drinking fountains.
According to Lowndes, the Jim Crow phenomenon was a reaction to the inroads made by the populist movement, which had fleetingly created political alliances of poor blacks and whites against the rich southern planter class. ... Southern elites sought to “take blacks out of the electorate and segregate public space” in order to “redivide the black and white core” of the south’s working class and small farmers. The monuments were also elements of this divide-and-rule strategy. They were ultimately built for a white audience, as “elements of a culture that directed whites towards beliefs that aligned them with the planters”, says Lowndes. “It was a political project. Any political project requires symbols, and an imaginary.”
Antifa: A Look at the Antifascist Movement Confronting White Supremacists in the Streets
Trump defends white supremacists
President Donald Trump defended the group of white supremacists who marched on Charlottesville, Virginia, last weekend, telling reporters they were largely justified and being unfairly vilified by the media. The protests ended Saturday when one of the white supremacists drove his car into a crowd of people, killing one woman and injuring 19 others.
“What I’m saying is this: You had a group on one side and you had a group on the other and they came at each other with clubs and it was vicious and it was horrible and it was a horrible thing to watch,” he said at a Tuesday press conference in New York. “But there is another side. There was a group on this side, you can call them the left, that came violently attacking the other group. So you can say what you want, but that’s the way it is.”
"The night before people innocently protesting very quietly the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee" Trump on the torch carriers pic.twitter.com/UkjUXz9pc3
— Ema O'Connor (@o_ema) August 15, 2017
Trump seemed to indicate he agreed with the protesters that the statue of the Confederate slave owner should not have been removed. “You’re changing history. You’re changing culture,” Trump said, comparing George Washington to Lee because “he was a slave owner,” and asking rhetorically if his statue should be removed next.
Watching @maddow right now on @msnbc, Fred Trump at a 1927 KKK rally? Boing Boing first reported that in 2015 FYI. https://t.co/HKVuOiRzMq
— Xeni Jardin (@xeni) August 16, 2017
Donald Trump Has Been a Racist All His Life — And He Isn’t Going to Change After Charlottesville
Consider the first time the president’s name appeared on the front page of the New York Times, more than 40 years ago. “Major Landlord Accused of Antiblack Bias in City,” read the headline of the A1 piece on Oct. 16, 1973, which pointed out how Richard Nixon’s Department of Justice had sued the Trump family’s real estate company in federal court over alleged violations of the Fair Housing Act. ...
Over the next four decades, Trump burnished his reputation as a bigot: he was accused of ordering “all the black [employees] off the floor” of his Atlantic City casinos during his visits; claimed “laziness is a trait in blacks” and “not anything they can control”; requested Jews “in yarmulkes” replace his black accountants; told Bryan Gumbel that “a well-educated black has a tremendous advantage over a well-educated white in terms of the job market”; demanded the death penalty for a group of black and Latino teenagers accused of raping a jogger in Central Park (and, despite their later exoneration with the use of DNA evidence, has continued to insist they are guilty); suggested a Native American tribe “don’t look like Indians to me”; mocked Chinese and Japanese trade negotiators by doing an impression of them in broken English; described undocumented Mexican immigrants as “rapists”; compared Syrian refugees to “snakes”; defended two supporters who assaulted a homeless Latino man as “very passionate” people “who love this country”; pledged to ban a quarter of humanity from entering the United States; proposed a database to track American Muslims that he himself refused to distinguish from the Nazi registration of German Jews; implied Jewish donors “want to control” politicians and are all sly negotiators; heaped praise on the “amazing reputation” of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who has blamed America’s problems on a “Jewish mafia”; referred to a black supporter at a campaign rally as “my African-American”; suggested the grieving Muslim mother of a slain U.S. army officer “maybe … wasn’t allowed” to speak in public about her son; accused an American-born Hispanic judge of being “a Mexican”; retweeted anti-Semitic and anti-black memes, white supremacists, and even a quote from Benito Mussolini; kept a book of Hitler’s collected speeches next to his bed; declined to condemn both David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan; and spent five years leading a “birther” movement that was bent on smearing and delegitimizing the first black president of the United States, who Trump also accused of being the founder of ISIS. ...
We would do well to heed the words of those who have spent decades studying this bizarre president. “Donald is a 70-year-old man,” Trump biographer David Cay Johnston reminded me in the run-up to his inauguration in January. “I’m 67. I’m not going to change and neither is Donald.”
Bree Newsome: Charlottesville is Latest Chapter in Long U.S. History of White Supremacist Terror
'Embarrassing' for US, Trump Defense of Neo-Nazi Rally Stuns People Worldwide
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) charged President Donald Trump with "embarrassing" his own country during a press conference on Tuesday—and the overnight evidence suggests he's exactly right.
.@realDonaldTrump, you are embarrassing our country and the millions of Americans who fought and died to defeat Nazism.
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) August 15, 2017
President Donald Trump's defense of last weekend's violent neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia was met with shock across the country and around the world on Wednesday, with some of the strongest criticism coming from his hometown of New York City. ...
Business Insider pointed out that Trump's preferred method of engaging with the public—via early-morning tweets—has earned him a frequently-stunned audience of Europeans who are now grappling with a U.S. president who's defended an ideology with a long, bloody history on their continent.
"In Europe, fascism is taken seriously," wrote Jim Edwards. "Spain, Italy, Germany, Austria, Croatia, Japan, Portugal, Greece and Hungary have all done time under Nazi or fascist governments...So to see a U.S. president say things like 'there are two sides to a story' when asked to condemn a white supremacist march that led to the death of a woman, is astonishing. Outside the U.S., this is beyond the pale."
In the U.K., Prime Minister Theresa May, who has generally sought to strengthen ties with Trump, offered a rare criticism of the views espoused by president. "There's no equivalence, I see no equivalence between those who propound fascist views and those who oppose them and I think it is important for all those in positions of responsibility to condemn far-right views wherever we hear them," May told reporters on Wednesday.
Meet the College Student Who Pulled Down a Confederate Statue in Durham & Defied White Supremacy
Baltimore takes down Confederate statues in middle of night
Confederate-era monuments have been taken down in the middle of the night in Baltimore. Journalists in the city in Maryland, US, tweeted that the statues were being removed days after a city council vote on the issue.
The memorials in the city include the Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Monument on Mount Royal Avenue, the Confederate Women’s Monument on West University Parkway, the Roger B Taney Monument on Mount Vernon Place, and the Robert E Lee and Thomas J “Stonewall” Jackson Monument in the Wyman Park Dell. ...
Other cities and states accelerated their plans to remove Confederate monuments following the violence in Virginia. Only two statues were taken down immediately, in Gainesville, Florida, where the Daughters of the Confederacy removed a statue of a Confederate soldier known as “Ole Joe”, and in Durham, North Carolina, where protesters used a rope to pull down a Confederate monument dedicated in 1924.
Trump accomplishment: the removal of Jackson and Lee after nearly 70 years in Baltimore. pic.twitter.com/MkIDRAxZzq
— Alec MacGillis (@AlecMacGillis) August 16, 2017
Moon Vents South Korean Frustration by Asserting Right to Veto U.S.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in has signaled his country will no longer stay quiet as tensions escalate between the U.S. and North Korea.
In a forceful speech on Tuesday, Moon asserted the right to veto any military action against Kim Jong Un’s regime, saying that decision should be made by “ourselves and not by anyone else.” He vowed to prevent war at any cost -- a statement that drew a sharp contrast with President Donald Trump, who has warned of “fire and fury” if North Korea continues to threaten the U.S.
“Moon’s speech speaks to his frustration, and his nation’s wider frustration -- and that is the perennial problem that they are not masters of their own destiny when it comes to North Korean geopolitics,” said Euan Graham, a director at the Lowy Institute in Sydney. “The U.S. now sees itself as the primary concern and the South Koreans as a secondary concern.” ...
The statement came after U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis warned in Washington Monday that it would be “game on” for war if North Korea fired missiles that hit the U.S. or its territories, including the Pacific island of Guam.
‘No military action without our consent’ - South Korea against war on Korean Peninsula
Constitution prohibits Trump from pre-emptive strike against N. Korea
On matters of war and peace, the U.S. Constitution speaks in prime colors, not pastels.
President Donald Trump is prohibited from pre-emptively attacking North Korea without express congressional authorization to retaliate against Chairman Kim Jong-un’s verbal thunderbolts. But the president may attack unilaterally in self-defense to answer sudden North Korean aggression with the use of military force proportionate to its provocation.
The War Powers Resolution of 1973 (WPR) does not disturb these twin precepts. Section 8 (d) (1) of the WPR declares: “Nothing in this joint resolution—(1) is intended to alter the constitutional authority of the Congress or of the President…”
Article I, section 8, clause 11 of the Constitution empowers Congress “to declare war.”Every participant in the Constitutional Convention and state ratification debates understood the Declare War Clause to prohibit the president unilaterally from crossing the Rubicon from peace to war. The president was, however, empowered to repel sudden attacks. At the convention, James Madison, father of the Constitution, prevailed in proposing that congressional power “to declare war” replace a power “to make war”… ”leaving to the Executive the power to repel sudden attacks [in self-defense].”
Chinese and Indian soldiers hurl rocks at each other in the Himalayas
Chinese and Indian troops threw stones at each other Tuesday, in a rare outbreak of violence that risks escalating an already heated two-month border dispute between the two nuclear superpowers.
The confrontation took place in the western Himalayas when Chinese troops attempted to enter Indian territory in Ladakh, near the Pangong lake. India claims the confrontation broke out after Chinese troops crossed into Indian territory carrying iron rod and stones. Beijing, unsurprisingly has a different perspective, insisting its troops remained inside Chinese territory, and calling on New Delhi to “withdraw all personnel and equipment from the Chinese soil.”
Since June, India and China have been openly toiling over the Doklam plateau, an oft-disputed and strategically important location where the borders of China, India and Bhutan meet. That standoff began when India sent troops to stop China from building a road that infringes on land claimed by Bhutan — a close ally of India.
The latest altercation is among the most tense border disputes between the two countries since China defeated India in brief border war in 1962.
GOP Senator Drowned Out By Cheers for 'Single Payer' at Town Hall
When Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) took the stage at a scheduled town hall on Tuesday in Greeley, Colorado, he apparently didn't expect to be confronted by a crowd full of enthusiastic supporters of single-payer healthcare.
Angry with his support for legislation that the Congressional Budget Office estimated would strip healthcare from more than 20 million American, Coloradans greeted Gardner with jeers as he arrived at the event.
At one point during the discussion, Gardner asked how many in the audience supported single-payer healthcare.
An "overwhelming majority in the high school auditorium raised their hands," reports Colorado Public Radio.
Gardner responded defiantly, saying: "I do not support single-payer, I do not support socialized medicine." ...
This growing support for universal healthcare has been evident at town halls and demonstrations across the country, as thousands have organized and pushed back against the Republican Party's efforts to cut Medicaid, defund Planned Parenthood, and kick millions off their insurance.
Trump healthcare subsidy cut would raise premiums by 20%, CBO says
Consumers would pay 20% more for some of the country’s most popular health insurance plans if Donald Trump followed through on a threat to cut subsidies to insurers, according to a new analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
The CBO projection, which was released on Tuesday, also estimated that terminating the subsidy payments would increase the federal deficit by $194bn by 2026. The payments reimburse insurance companies for covering some low-income enrollees. For months, Trump has dangled the possibility that he may stop the payments, which he calls “bailouts for insurance companies”, as a tactic to force Democrats to the negotiating table. ...
The CBO said it expected insurance companies to withdraw from the individual insurance market because of “substantial uncertainty about the effects of the policy on average health care costs for people purchasing plans”. “In the agencies’ estimation, under the policy, about 5% of people live in areas that would have no insurers in the nongroup market in 2018,” the budget office said. Democrats seized on the report as proof that Trump was “sabotaging” the ACA markets.
Ignoring Threat of Rising Seas, Trump Eliminates Flood Risk Standards
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that reportedly eliminates flood-risk standards for federally funded public infrastructure projects—in a purported effort to expedite the approval process for projects such as highways and bridges, as part of his $1 trillion infrastructure plan that's been criticized for its reliance on private developers.
Although details of Trump's order were not immediately made public, at a press conference this afternoon, the president called U.S. infrastructure a "massive self-inflicted wound on our country," and said there would no longer be "one job-killing delay after another."
Reuters, New York Times, and the Washington Post reported that Trump's order "revoked an Obama-era executive order that required strict building standards for government-funded projects to reduce exposure to increased flooding from sea level rise and other consequences of climate change."
The Obama-era risk-management standards "required that builders factor in scientific projections for increased flooding and ensure projects can withstand rising sea levels and stronger downpours," Reuters reported.
New Drone Footage Exposes the Scale of Factory Animal Farming
The animal agriculture industry spends millions on deceptive advertising to persuade consumers that farmed animals roam freely on bucolic pastures. But I’ve been piloting drones over animal agriculture facilities for several years, and the video I’ve captured tells a far different story. Nearly all animals raised and slaughtered for food in the U.S. live in factory farms––facilities that treat animals as mere production units and show little regard for the natural environment or public health. Instead of creating widgets, these factories confine, mutilate, and disassemble animals who feel pain and pleasure just like our dogs and cats.
Aerial views of the first factory farms I visited—pig facilities—didn’t capture grass and rolling hills, but instead exposed rows of windowless metal buildings. Each confined thousands of intelligent, sensitive pigs who spent their lives on concrete floors in crowded pens. The footage also reveals what appear to be red lakes but are in fact giant, open-air cesspools. Waste falls through slats in the pigs’ concrete flooring and is flushed into these massive pits, which sometimes have the surface area of multiple football fields. To lower the levels of these cesspools, many facilities spray their contents into the air where they turn into mist and drift into neighboring communities.
In North Carolina, this practice has been associated with spikes in blood pressure among community members and increased asthma symptoms among nearby schoolchildren. I spoke with neighbors who described walking outside and falling down in their own front yards because the stench of these factory farms made it so difficult to breathe.
Also of Interest
Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.
An Open Letter from Guam to America
Julian Assange asks why the US said nothing when Obama supported Ukrainian neo-Nazis
A Ukraine Link to North Korea’s Missiles?
Trump is making it harder for cops to go after white supremacists
Charlottesville: Outrage, Hypocrisy & Obama’s Betrayal
Roy Moore Nearly Lost a Statewide Race in 2012. Doug Jones Could Beat Him This Time.
Inside the Elizabeth Warren merchandising empire
Tax the Rich to Improve Public Transportation
'Most bizarre dinosaur ever found' is missing evolutionary link
A Little Night Music
Willie Brown - Mississippi Blues
Stefan Grossman - Mississippi Blues
Willie Brown - Future Blues
Canned Heat - Future Blues
Willie Brown - Ragged And Dirty
Larry Johnson - Ragged And Dirty
C.W. Stoneking - Ragged And Dirty
Bob Dylan & His Band - Ragged & Dirty
Willie Brown - M & O Blues
Paul Rishell - M & O Blues
Charlie Patton + Willie Brown - Dry Well Blues
Kid Bailey (Willie Brown?) - Mississippi Bottom Blues
Kid Bailey (Willie Brown?) - Rowdy Blues
Be Good Tanyas - Rowdy Blues
Comments
Good evening, Joe. Thanks. Trump is brilliant beyond his
own knowing in eliminating standards for infrastructure. He will not only provide jobs now, but also later as the fail, collapse, crack and shift, etc. This may well be a perpetual jobs program. Huzzah!
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
evening el...
heh, i guess you're right, there is no limit to the amount of shoddy work that could be done and redone and redone... i guess trump may have created the cure for competition from automation.
Thanks For The Tunes joe
As usual an awesome selection, and a terrific news roundup as well. What a week! Here's the link to a short John Wight Counterpunch article:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/08/16/charlottesville-outrage-and-hypo...
Gonna kick back and listen to your tunes now. One of them sanity break thingies.
"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn
evening mm...
willie brown didn't record much (just 6 sides under his own name and a few more perhaps as kid bailey) but it was all really excellent. a lot of musicians would give their left foot for that sort of talent.
enjoy!
"Never the less, she persisted."
God, they could probably get me for trademark infringement just writing that I guess... Maybe not yet. Sickening but typical.
Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur
evening lizzy...
yeah, what made me sick was the "marketing talk" of her minions quoted in the article. apparently she's yet another politician (like obama) who is a brand rather than a person.
Thanks for the stunning news digest, js.
Looking as if he has just learned some shocking news, a male Impala exhibits 'testing' behavior, sampling scent during mating season for readiness of a female. Kruger National Park, July, 2017
We are enjoying some very fine mild weather during our first week back home in Santa Fe. We had some awesome experiences as always over the last months, but glad to be in one place for a while.
Heh. We don't shop Amazon because of Obama's butt buddy job creator Bezos policies. Did you see the latest in the butthole boys Bozo vs Bezos action? Mr. Trump tweeted and stock dropped 5 bill ! http://www.newsweek.com/amazon-stocks-fall-5-bn-after-single-tweet-trump...
A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.
Any chance you will share your photos from your travels?
Or write an essay about your adventures?
I would love to see more of the animals that you have seen on your trips.
Or join us in our Friday night photography essays.
Pleeeaaassseee?
“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt
@snoopydawg Answering for DO. Back
Answering for DO. Back in Santa Fe now and as we move into fall, the days grow shorter, and it is cold at night so maybe we can put together a photo essay for the Friday night photo essays. Divine Order has some great photos and I just record the events of the day!
Life is what you make it, so make it something worthwhile.
This ain't no dress rehearsal!
Thanks for the invite ! We are so far behind on our own
blog that have little energy for anything else but we will see !
And of course we have a long tradition of sharing via Evening Blues so....
So great to see you and the gang in real time again after living in a different time zone since late April.
Love your thoughtful and important comments sd ! Keep up the great work !
A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.
evening do...
glad you're settled in and now have time to sort out all of those fabulous photos that you took while you were checking out the wildlife in the african parks!
i am starting to look at camper-things to attach to my own global heater in hopes of taking some more extensive trips. you've mentioned that you have a slide-in camper, i think? i have been debating the merits of slide-in vs. trailer and starting to look around on craigslist at what's on offer.
any advice on selecting the right camper?
We have a 1996 craigslist special !
What might be interesting for you is to hear about our two closest Austin based camping couple buds .
We are all recovering tent campers. (Of course jb and I still .spend over 2 months in our tent in southern Africa but that's another tale. )
One couple had a Sportsmobile Camper Van for some years. The other had a slide in camper but a lighter one than we had that the top could be cranked down.
The first couple then decided to go slide in truck camper like the rest of us. They bought the top of the line slide in Arctic Fox that one can use in winter as well as summer, but the brand new pickup they purchased to haul it proved to be not up to the task. So they later brought one that would carry more weight safely.
The second couple had kayak racks on the top of their pop-up slide in camper but developed shoulder probs. Also decided that they liked having a trailer so that they could carry the kayaks on a rack in the back of the pickup and pull the trailer behind, leave it a campsite in say Grand Teton for a week, and take the pickup to various trail heads or launch points as needed.
We like the truck camper because we occasionally will 'boondock' with it and sleep in it outside a bar rather than drive. A bit 'dodgy', and we have been rousted before by the police, most recently several years ago in Monterey CA where they have an anti camping ordiance for RVs. (The kind police suggested we move on to the local Home Depot parking lot.)
We also like being able to drive on rough roads. A year or so after we retired back in 2004 we took the Global Warmer down into the Barancas del Cobre (Copper Canyon) in Mexico. We had found a Mexican techie on line that gave us the GPS waypoints and off we went. He cautioned us that after we left the first main town in the canyon to not stop, even for the police !!!! We could never have done this trip with a pull behind.
In recent years we have hosted couples of traveling friends from Switzerland and elsewhere to join us out West for camping adventures. On these trips we now tow our Honda CRV behind the Global Warmer with all the toys inside: 4 folding bikes, two tandem inflatable kayaks etc.
Having the truck camper has greatly expanded the number of months a year we can camp. (When jb was getting chemotherapy in Austin we liked being able to stay in a local state park rather than with friends or relatives.)
The climate change guilt factor has driven me to look at hybrid pickups and the like. Who knows what we will do when the Global Warmer 2001 F250 diesel which now has 175000 miles goes bad?
We soon figured out that we would not join the ranks of 2 million plus full time RVers. We can do 6 to 9 weeks but we like being inside in one place for a while each year.
However it has been interesting to figure out how to save money by diy camper projects. For example we learned online how to install solar charging system and extra batteries to be able to operate our laptops without having to rent a campsite with electric.
There are great forums online for learning from the experiences of others. As time permits we follow the Fiberglass RV forum.
Here's a taste:
One thing to be prepared for is the relative high cost of RV camping spaces vs tent camping. A few days ago on the way here to Santa Fe from our stopover at our old cabin in the TX Hill Country we spent the night at a KOA in Lubbock to break up the trip. Very hot so we got a site with 'full' hookups for running the AC and 'pumping out' the grey water and black water holding tanks. $38 per night. Cheapest local hotel was $48. A similar site in Grand Teton NP is $48. But one can camp in Grand Teton with no electric for much cheaper.
All the best on your quest !
A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.
@divineorder Divine Order did a
Divine Order did a good job of covering most of the bases on this. When we first found this camper, I knew it would work for us. We like to cook and this particular camper had a double burner stove, and more importantly nice cabinet space for dishes, spices, condiments, and pots and pans. Another feature that sold me is the huge window over the cooking, cleaning area that allows for great views as you cook and wash dishes.
Of course, it helped that we lived the last three years we taught on a 34 foot towable houseboat with about 17 foot on indoor space. Small sink, no counter space, and no space for dishes, etc. made this camper seem luxurious.
Another consideration is what you plan to do when traveling. Staying in one place or moving every couple of days are things to be considered as well.
Probably much more I could say but we did check out several campers before we found the one we have as well as checking out what our friends had as far as campers.
Life is what you make it, so make it something worthwhile.
This ain't no dress rehearsal!
thanks for the input jb...
we tend to go to national parks to camp and spend a certain amount of time driving around to get a sense of where things are, talk to the rangers about where the wildlife and other cool things are and then go there - which always seem to be beyond walking distance from the campgrounds.
based on that, the thing that i like about trailers is that you can leave them behind and drive unencumbered. i've seen some propaganda videos about how easy it is to slide campers in and out, but i'm not convinced that it is really that easy, nor do i like the looks of leaving a camper up in the air on those spindly-looking legs. it seems that a brisk wind might make a real mess.
oh well, anyway, thanks!
thanks much for the info!
i like the fact that the slide-in doesn't have to be licensed (or taxed) and it's still possible to tow something behind if we need it. i will definitely be looking into putting some serious solar panels on top of whatever rig i wind up with to charge devices, run fans and lights, etc. fortunately, my camera batteries seem to last quite a while between charges (something that canon has done very well) - on the other hand, laptops just suck electricity. i'd like to be able to go several days between visits to a full-service campsite in order to stretch the green.
the thing that i don't like about slide-ins is how cramped they seem to be. while i expect to be spending most of my waking hours outdoors, i still wonder if 2 people can perform the basic tasks of daily life in that small of a space without constantly getting in each others way.
anyway, thanks for the input. perhaps by next fall i'll be able to head out in your general direction in whatever i wind up with.
Great! I look forward to seeing your photos
I'm jealous of your lengthy travels. It sounds like you two have so much fun.
Hopefully I'll be a traveling gal again some day.
I haven't been out of this country and there are so many I would love to see and photograph.
“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt
Assange beat me to it
I was going to comment on the neo Nazis that our country is supporting after we overthrew the Ukraine government.
I wonder if Markos is aware of this and that it happened during the Obama presidency? Or any of the ToP members who were in agreement with his tweet about the alt-left?
Anyone who hasn't been banned from there want to post this gem? Anyone?
Hatch has said that his brother didn't die fighting Nazis only to see them rising up here. I'm pretty sure that he is aware of what is happening in Ukraine.
I'm waiting to hear from someone's family member who lost a relative to Al Qaida during the Iraq war after they find out that our government has been supporting them in Syria.
Or a veteran who saw his friends being injured or killed by Al Qaida.
It's one big happy circle jerk, isn't it?
“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt
evening snoopy...
when i stopped paying attention to the gos, any sort of information about ukraine that contradicted the neoconservative narrative was attacked as conspiracy theories. there has been a great deal more information that has come available since i stopped paying attention there, but i doubt that it has made a dent as anybody who might have the interest in finding that sort of information has probably been driven off of the site.
posting that sort of factual information there would probably be akin to attempting to teach a pig to sing (it wastes your time and annoys the pig).
Hola, Joe & Gang! Got a blurb
to post after I run 'the B' out, about the difference between Traditional Medicare and Medicare Advantage. It came to mind after a friend of ours found herself in dire straits, due to her Medicare Advantage (managed care) plan. Several financial professionals in our Family warned us about going that route. So, more on that later.
Also, Good News--we're eligible to apply for dual citizenship [Ireland] based upon my Maternal Grandmother. At this point, it sounds like it will be simple and/or cut and dried process. (We're not really interested in living there, but, we figure that it might be helpful to us, in the event that we should ever apply for residence, or citizenship in Scandinavia.)
We've not ruled out Puebla as a residence several months a year, while 'the B' is still around. Unfortunately, I've been sidetracked from further checking out the safety status there, due to other business obligations. I hope loose ends will be tied up by October or November of this year--fingers crossed!
Agree that while the weather's not been wonderful this summer, it seems that it's not been quite as awful as the past several summers.
Of course, that may not apply to our western friends' experience this summer--I've never seen a street sign 'melt,' until I saw the Accuweather photo from Arizona. Whew!
Later.
Mollie
Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.
Hi! Thanks for the info on Medicare vs. MA
jakkalbessie and I have just been forced back into Medicare Advantage by the TX legislature. Have learned over the years how MA gives important funding to the private insurance industry. When we turned 65 we were automatically enrolled in MA in order to get our retiree health benefit. We changed back to regular medicare as matter of principal after learning about MA pracitices limiting providers etc. Now the teacher retiree health benefit, which we have to go back to the leg to get refunded every two years in contrast to the rest of state workers whose plan is well funded, is billions in the hole, and the 'solution' was to force all with Medicare back into MA in order to qualify for the secondary retiree health benefit.
FWIW
http://www.texasaft.org/house-accepts-stripped-senate-school-funding-bil...
A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.
Hi, DO--sorry to hear that you and JB are
being gypped out of some of your retiree health care benefits by the TX state legislature. From what I'm understanding, both the federal government and the business community are trying to herd folks into the MA plans, versus Traditional Medicare (TM), because they object to folks having not only first dollar benefits, but, virtually no OOP costs at all--if they enroll in either Medigap Plans F or C. (I'm sure you're aware that those are the two Medigap plans that will be phased out beginning in 2020.)
I was going to post a Kaiser Health News piece this evening, but will do so tomorrow afternoon, instead. There should be no problem with me being able to get the article posted soon after Joe posts, and I'd like for as many folks to read it, as possible.
(Mr M thought that I shouldn't say too much about our friend's personal experience, and I had to agree with him that it might be best. Anyhoo, the Kaiser piece illustrates the same type of problem that she's recently experienced, which I think is important to share with folks, sorta as a warning.)
Hey, enjoyed reading your advice to Joe. One of my favorite camping vehicles was a truck [long-bed] slide-in. They're really pretty cool, and some are larger than folks may think.
Have a good one!
Mollie
Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.
Thanks for the info. Appreciate your work sharing with us.
Our camper is a tight fit but the big windows help open it up. Sounds like js needs a trailer. We can store our truck camper on our truck at our condo without violating the homeowner bylaws. We could not store a trailer or other 'rv.' Works for us.
A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.
evening mollie...
glad to hear that you have an irish escape hatch. hmmm... perhaps i ought to do some genealogy research.
looking forward to your information about medicare and medicare advantage.
my best regards to the b.
Do the search, Joe! ;-D Seriously, I knew
the genealogy, but didn't know that it would make me eligible for applying for dual citizenship, until I 'Googled' counties that allow descendant jus sanguinis citizenship. Some of the easiest countries appear to be Italy, Ireland, Israel, Ukraine, India, etc.
Like I told DO, I'll post the Kaiser piece, tomorrow, since I got back to my computer much later than I intended [this evening].
BTW, quite a number of years ago, we had a super Coachmen long-bed slide-in (camper). Honestly, it was one of my favorites--I felt comfortable driving it, as opposed to larger RVs/campers, and/or pulling camper trailers, etc.
Of course, we normally spend the better part of our days outdoors. Because of this, we've always had a large tent canopy to cover our outdoor area--in case of bad weather, or extreme heat. (Attached, or detached.)
We've never used Craigslist. Hope you let us know if you have any luck with it!
Mollie
Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.
My last name is VERY irish. But know nothing about the family
tree. Where to start?
A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.
DO, here's a cut and dried blurb about obtaining
dual (Irish) citizenship. Compared to some countries, the eligibility is not as broad.
Notice, there's another category, with conditions, based upon one's Great-Grandparent(s) descendency.
Here's the link to that piece. I'll post a link to the Irish Embassy in D.C., too. I contacted the Consulate General in Atlanta, GA, to make sure that I understood the process as outlined on the website.
From the main website,
Born outside Ireland?
Foreign Birth Registration - Guidelines for Applicants Resident in the USA
Here's the link to the FBR, itself--which is relatively detailed.
Luckily, my situation was very straightforward regarding my maternal Grandmother's birthright and/or birthplace. And, since my mother was her youngest child, and the only living child she had when she passed away, her records are in a safe deposit box [with my parents' records] in another state. Haven't been back to see them, yet, but I feel confidant that my Grandmother's records are complete, since my Father would have been the recordkeeper--and he was meticulous in all matters.
Hopefully, the info below will be helpful:
HOW TO APPLY FOR IRISH CITIZENSHIP BY DESCENT
To apply for registration in the Foreign Births Register you will need to submit a completed and witnessed Foreign Birth's Registration form (available from your local Consulate) along with supporting original documentation outlined below. . . .
REQUIRED SUPPORTING DOCUMENTATION:
For your Irish born grandparent:
Civil marriage certificate (if married)
Final divorce decree (if divorced)
A current passport of official photo identity document (e.g. passport) for the Irish born grandparent. If the grandparent is deceased, a certified copy of the death certificate is required.
Official, long form civil Irish birth certificate if born after 1864. Baptismal registers may be used to establish the grandparent's date of birth if he/she was born prior to 1864, or with a search certificate from the General Register Office of Ireland stating that no Irish civil birth certificate exists.
For the parent from whom you are claiming Irish descent:
Civil marriage certificate (if married)
A current official photo I.D. (e.g. passport).
If the parent is deceased, a certified copy of the death certificate.
Full, long form civil birth certificate of the parent showing your grandparents' names, places of birth and ages at birth.
For you:
Full, long form civil birth certificate which shows your parents' names, places of birth and ages at time of birth.
When there has been a change of name (e.g. marriage), supporting documentation must be provided (e.g. civil marriage certificate).
Notarized copy of current passport (if you have one) or identity document
Proof of address. A copy of a bank statement/utility bill showing your present address.
Two recent passport-type photographs which must be signed and dated on the back by the witness to section E of the application form at the same time as the form is witnessed.
All official documents - birth, marriage and death certificates - must be original or official (certified) copies from the issuing authority. It is important to note that church certified baptismal and marriage certificates may be considered only if submitted with a statement from the relevant civil authority that they were unsuccessful in their search for a civil record. Hospital certified birth certificates are not acceptable. All other necessary supporting documents (e.g. proofs of identity) should be notarized copies of originals.
At some point after you've sent in your completed application for Irish citizenship by descent along with the supporting documents, the embassy will contact you to set up an interview.
This is generally just a short formality.
HOW TO APPLY FOR AN IRISH PASSPORT:
Once you have established your identity as an Irish citizen, you are eligible to apply for an Irish passport. For more information on obtaining an Irish passport, please see the Passport Office of the Department of Foreign Affairs of Ireland.
Disclaimer: The information in this article is not meant to be a legal guide. Please consult with the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs or your nearest Irish embassy or consulate for official assistance.
The 'good' part is that the process appears to be pretty straightforward. The only 'negative' is that the 'right' only goes back a couple of generations, which is sorta limited.
Hope this helps. BTW, if you want a simple way to trace your ancestry for free, there is a site called Find A Grave that traces my Family back for generations. I've seen photos of my family members posted there, that I had never seen before. Here's the link to it.
Find A Grave
Good luck!
Mollie
Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.
Thanks, wow! All my grandparents are of course dead
by now and were born in the US AFAIK.
A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.
Suggestion for 'Article of Interest'
A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.
thanks!
looks like a good one!
Good evening Joe and all...
Dropping in for sanity, great to see old travelers at home.
Thanks for the news and blues!
evening smiley...
glad to see you. i hope that all is going well, feeling well and your sanity is preserved as best it can be these days.
take care!
hey @smiley7
Peace be with you, and all of us.
Edited: Wrong Version omg
A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.
hey, do, ...
good to have the gang together after these years; i think it fair to say i speak for all in looking forward to you two sharing photos from your adventures and continuing thanks for your activism.
? i looked for a bookmark of a blog site you once shared about your trips, but could not find it, do you still maintain the site?