What music are you listening to?

[CharlesU Farley]

... with a touch of era-appropriate quasi-disco and some jazz influences. The era of Herbie JHancock and Pablo Cruise, et al.

We had some of their music on the off-grid homestead farm I worked and lived on in the northern UP of Michigan before moving to the Yukon Territory at age 18.

We had a Pioneer Super Tuner cassette stereo in the 1910 cedar log cabin, another in the barn, and one on the 1953 or 1958 Ford 8N tractor.

I can remember fairly clearly working on building the rather large barn with the lumber we'd milled at a neighbor's large old-school diesel-powered sawmill in tiny town/village we were nearest to, and as we worked, having that tune and others, the Marshall Tucker Band, Charlie Daniels, Ozark Mtn Daredevils, Pink Floyd, David Bowie, Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, and many more coming out of the various stereos. Jojo, (who'd been Army Infantry in an APC 'turret' in SE Asia when the draft people finally caught up with him after avoiding them for 3 years, bouncing from Corpus Christi, Texas and coastal Louisiana aeras, as a merchant marine, often fishing crab, shrimp, etc., then getting another draft notice and getting an AACON Auto Drive-Way vehicle and heading to Virgina to work merchant marine gigs until they caught up again and he had to move again) , standing tall on the tractor foot boards, driving down the truck trail, one hand on his hip, ball cap, shades, and Saddle Tramp (the album) playing on the Super Tuner on the tractor. A long well-kept ponytail floating in the breeze, massive brown beard, incessant incongruent smile from shit he couldn't talk about without displacing it with that affect, and a purple glitter t-shirt that read, 'Swamp Power'.

Another temporary family where I picked up some new tunes, lessons, responsibility, skills, acceptance, knowledge, etc.

Your wife and kids are going to have access to everything you've written here on ICM, aren't they?

I'm almost positive your daughter, and eventually your son, will absolutely love and appreciate everything that you've shared here.

 

[moose eater]

i wonder what happened to whitebread or whatever his name was

mpd can be fun

As soon as the poster gaslit_kush_company or whatever posted about donkey tamales, followed by a slew of heavy metal, I knew what had happened to him.

 

[mudballs]

What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
Build anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.

The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.

 

[mudballs]

 

[moose eater]

Your wife and kids are going to have access to everything you've written here on ICM, aren't they?

I'm almost positive your daughter, and eventually your son, will absolutely love and appreciate everything that you've shared here.

As a clinician dealing with wayward youngsters and as a dad, I have told numerous young'uns that if they absolutely, positively have to hit the trail and find something different, with no alternatives in sight, to head to a farm, find work in the woods, learn about being responsible to animals and others they live with, away from the street hustlers.

I'd still tell any youngster at their wits end, with no chance of reconsidering their options in a clearer frame of mind for a while, that very same thing. But I'd been working on farms since I was 9 y.o., so for me it was somewhat natural. It still offers those attributes I described, nonetheless.

 

[CharlesU Farley]

Used to hear this blaring from our sons bedroom in the '90s. He was the first in his high school to have a Zero t-shirt.

I liked this tune back then and I still do :

 

[moose eater]

Your wife and kids are going to have access to everything you've written here on ICM, aren't they?

I'm almost positive your daughter, and eventually your son, will absolutely love and appreciate everything that you've shared here.

My wife will have access to everything that was mine, electronic and physical, when I'm toast. I've told her to raffle off my custom-built hash tumbler at this site to cover expenses for putting me in a natural burial wood box in the backyard here. (*Assuming there's permission granted from the owner and operators).

My wife knows all there is to know about me. There are no secrets here.

My older son is in a place where he can digest and -try- to mentally/consciously integrate any lessons from my past into his thoughts and life, but his ego still eclipses sufficient self-awareness to make greater leaps. He'll come along in time. Underneath his Bohemian artist approach to life, and struggling, having seemingly HEAVILY adopted my old river-dwelling philosophy of 'must is the motivator', he'll take some time. Maybe all of his life. He's a very vulnerable guy.

My younger son is on his own for now and maybe forever. He's full enough of himself that anything I left him in the way of recorded experiences and insights would likely be a waste of bandwidth and effort for a long time to come.

My daughter is not typically completely or sufficiently aware of who she is, living in a pretense world of success based on veneer, and struggling to find connection, acceptance, success in the western image of what that means, and who she -really- is, but often afraid enough of the brutal honesty that might lead to that, such that the 'packaging' becomes the persona all too often.

My wife is and has been struggling with gaining perspective to many things, and I hope will have the strength to stand strong on any boundaries I leave regarding who gets what and why, and my disposition at that time as to how close any of them will be allowed to get to my hole in the ground out back. I've told her that I know for certain my dogs will be there with me. As to others, I'm not so sure yet.

 

[mudballs]

I remember this one horse farm i worked on...they would let the ponies close to death just wander around anywhere they wanted...i remember this stark moment while sweeping stable alley and i look up and Goldie was at the end of the barn by the open door, head down, blood dripping from her nose..blasting moment that was...sunbeams hitting funny and whole 9 yds

 

[mudballs]

It's a good memory..i second mooses' comment on farm life if you gotta go it alone...puts hair on ur chest

 

[moose eater]

I remember this one horse farm i worked on...they would let the ponies close to death just wander around anywhere they wanted...i remember this stark moment while sweeping stable alley and i look up and Goldie was at the end of the barn by the open door, head down, blood dripping from her nose..blasting moment that was...sunbeams hitting funny and whole 9 yds

I had rituals on the farm; up at 4:30 or 5:30 in the AM, 7 days a week, put a percolator-type coffee pot on the old wood-burning kitchen cook stove, roll 5 joints of Colombian, head out to the barn to feed and milk the goats, then slop the hogs and feed the ducks and sheep down by the swamp at the end of the pasture.

When I'd head down toward the hogs' pen near the swamp we'd dug out with heavy equipment for ourselves and the ducks, our favorite nanny goat, Lady Goat, would meet me mid-pasture and I'd put my grain and slop buckets down, curl my arms up like a sheep or deer jumping through the air in stride, and shake my head around like I had horns.

Lady Goat would then go racing down the pasture to the water, leaping with front legs curled up tight beneath her, shaking her head around with her horns, do a ewe-turn (you see what I did there?) and then run back, leaping through the air with her front legs curled up and shaking her horns, then slide to a screeching stop in front of me, look up at me, and wait for me to do it all over again. We'd do that numerous times most mornings as our greeting in the pasture after milking, and I suspect she'd have done it until she dropped from exhaustion if I hadn't had other shit to do.

What a GREAT fucking friend and goat she was!! And she and the other nanny goats produced a shit-ton of really good goat's milk.

Often with this tune blaring from the open barn doors:

 

[CharlesU Farley]

My wife will have access to everything that was mine, electronic and physical, when I'm toast. I've told her to raffle off my custom-built hash tumbler at this site to cover expenses for putting me in a natural burial wood box in the backyard here. (*Assuming there's permission granted from the owner and operators).

My wife knows all there is to know about me. There are no secrets here.

My older son is in a place where he can digest and -try- to mentally/consciously integrate any lessons from my past into his thoughts and life, but his ego still eclipses sufficient self-awareness to make greater leaps. He'll come along in time. Underneath his Bohemian artist approach to life, and struggling, having seemingly HEAVILY adopted my old river-dwelling philosophy of 'must is the motivator', he'll take some time. Maybe all of his lief. He's a very vulnerable guy.

My younger son is on his own for now and maybe forever. He's full enough of himself that anything I left him in the way of recorded experiences and insights would likely be a waste of bandwidth and effort for a long time to come.

My daughter is not typically aware of who she is, living in a pretense world of success based on veneer, and struggling to find connection, acceptance, success in the western image of what that means, and who she -really- is, but often afraid enough of the brutal honesty that might lead to that, such that the 'packaging' becomes the persona all too often.

My wife is and has been struggling with gaining perspective to many things, and I hope will have the strength to stand strong on any boundaries I leave regarding who gets what and why, and my disposition at that time as to how close any of them will be allowed to get to my hole in the ground out back. I've told her that I know for certain my dogs will be there with me. As to others, I'm not so sure yet.

So glad you've taken care of business! All this shit is tricky to navigate and like you, I'm just stumbling along trying to do the best I can:

 

[moose eater]

So glad you've taken care of business! All this shit is tricky to navigate and like you, I'm just stumbling along trying to do the best I can:

 

[PadawanWarrior]

 

[mudballs]

(fumbles for cane) ...did he call me old?

 

[mudballs]

Ill crush ur toes with my walker...wait till i catch ur ass

 

[moose eater]

 

[PadawanWarrior]

 

[moose eater]

 

[dramamine]

 

[CharlesU Farley]

(fumbles for cane) ...did he call me old?

Hell, I thought he was talking about me and moose!