Tao’s 2 Cents

I always imagine that I’m going to have more time to write than I do. I suppose it always falls down my priority list and after a few hours of doing web work I just need to get away from the computer.

We’ve just got done camping for the last month and a half and have got a much better idea on how to approach our massive homesteading ecovillage project. The first couple of weeks we did a lot of exploring, getting used to the woods, dealing with tick and chigger bites, and generally figuring out a routine that didn’t involve a refrigerator, hot water, or easy electricity.

The ticks and chiggers did a good job of discouraging us from exploring the fields very much and chickens and guinea hens are certain to be the first animals we introduce to the land apart from our cats. The cats for their part did a good job exploring the woods around the campsite and seemed to really enjoy themselves. We worried about them for the first week or two with all the coyote howls off in the distance, but they seemed to take pretty good care of themselves and neither the coyotes nor any other critters snuck into our camp looking for a snack of any kind…

We’re finishing up our vacation at the Beaton family lake house on Tennessee/Mississippi border. It’s been really relaxing most of the time, especially compared to the all-consuming house renovation.

I’ve still had to keep working on my web work which wouldn’t have been too bad but I have to drive several miles to get Wi-Fi and I can only work sitting in my car for as long as my battery will last. That’s meant a couple trips a day every work day. I turned on the broadband wireless card that’s built into my laptop but the lake house is in a black hole for cell phones…

I haven’t written much of anything about sailing. One of the main reasons for coming to Baltimore, apart from Christine of course, was to learn to sail. Baltimore has a fantastic harbor and a really great (and cheap) non-profit sailing club, which I joined about three months ago.

I took a month of classes, just 1 class a week, to become a level 2 crew member. I skipped level 1 just because of the small amount of sailing I’d done in Texas and the large amount of reading I’d done on it. They told me if I felt confident enough to take the level 2 class then that was good enough to skip…

Tomorrow morning, September 15th, around 10 a.m. I’m heading down to meet up with thousands of anti-war protesters on the lawn in front of the White House. At around noon we’re marching to congress, supposedly in the hopes that this will influence them into some form of action.

I’m not convinced of the power of mass demonstrations, but I know that it certainly can’t be hurting. Agressive resource wars against foreign nations will never solve the problem that there simply isn’t enough cheap energy/oil in the world. We could and should be spending our money to find some other type of energy source…

Last week Christine and I went to New York. It was the first time for both of us and I’m not sure what to make of the tornado that touched down in Brooklyn on the same day we arrived. We went by bus which was definitely a good call by us. It was only $35 round trip on the “china town bus” which is technically called “Double Happiness Travel”, can’t get much more China Town than that.

The first thing we did when we got there was go see the statue of liberty. The thing that struck me the most was it wasn’t nearly as big as I’d imagined. The same would later go for the Empire State Building. I suppose in all of the movies it’s either a close-up shots of the statue or of the people but not both which would give you sense of scale having something to compare it to…

I suppose I should start out with a little back story as this is my first blog post about my life. Ten days ago I returned from a year and a half living in rural El Salvador. I initially went with Peace Corps but had a “falling out” with them. The bureaucracy wasn’t what I had expected and I wasn’t too sad to be disassociated with them. Before that happened though I met a certain young lady, namely Christine Carey from Spokane, Washington who was also part of the “falling out”.

I’d go into the details of what happened if it weren’t so convoluted, bizarre, and infuriating that it could take up several posts on its own. Frankly, I’m also just tired of talking about it. The separation from Peace Corps would end up being for the best as I wasn’t particularly keen on spying for the state department anyway. Since Christine and I weren’t ready to go home we decided to stick around and do what we came to do…