You’ve gotta love the myth-makers’ knack for crafting novel ‘non-judgmental’ lingo.
After all, who wants to say anything too closely resembling honesty about someone who caused loads of damage to their own lives and those of nearly everyone around them? That would be so mean.
Especially, obviously, on their deathbeds. This is when kind lies are most required, for the good of those gathered, who definitely do not want to be reminded that they rubbed elbows with such creeps and degenerates all their lives.
Especially, obviously, if there’s inheritance involved. Everyone wants to believe they inherited good, clean money and stuff, not funds garnered by drugs (unless they’re legal!), or theft, or blackmail, or you know, god forbid, blood money.
Who can help but to consider the grandchildren of the Great Fauci, as just one example?
Sure, they can go to his Wikipedia page and read how awesome he is once he’s dead. They can brush up on all his prestigious awards before hearing the sweet tinkling chimes of their personal portion of his vast estate which they have rightfully earned through his unfortunate passing. They can tell their own grandchildren how many lives he saved and how much of their own fortunes they owe to his generosity.
But, what if those poor future grandchildren get ahold of some of the fake news available today? Just imagine how this might affect their innocent psyches? And who would be responsible for this psychological torture?
Well, all the disinfo agents, clearly! Those evil-hearted, hate-spewing degenerates who are never grateful for their assigned heroes. Those same miserable wretches who believe Bill Gates and Klaus Schwab and the Bush & Clinton clans and even Trump are ALL deranged psychopaths.
All those crazies who are ruining our democracy!
If you can’t see it yet, put your rose-colored glasses back on!
Doctor’s orders: 3 puppy videos, 10 deep breathes during your time out, 33 rainbow drawings with your permanent markers, then you can re-join us nice, happy folk in civilized society.
Oh yes, that’s so much better! I can see clearly now!
It’s those people who believe the world reeks foul at every turn when in fact the stench is coming from within their own selves! Ahhhh, yes.
If they would just look in the mirror and smell themselves.
If they would just see the world as we do, so full of wonder and joy, then the world would magically shape-shift right before their very eyes and they would be filled as we are with the light of love and joy radiating outward at every angle of the sun, especially from their eyes and anus.
If those haters see a drug-pushing, lying, greedy turd in the mirrored face of the Great Fauci, then they just don’t realize the world is a kaleidoscope of marvels and all they have to do is change their black lenses for pink ones, which would undoubtedly turn their subjective hell into a fantastic earthly paradise!

Put your rose-colored glasses back on, Dude, before you bum everybody out!
A respite from the heat, but still no rain. We surveyed our fenced land for grazing and have come to the sad conclusion that our intention last year to grow the herd will not be achieved in the near future.
Seemed like the right thing to do, growing the herd, considering food inflation and especially high meat prices, and the fact that Hubby is here full-time now, and that more bartering/trading could be in the foreseeable future. But, the parched land screams otherwise.
Between the steeply rising cost of feed and the meager forage available, and no guarantees the stranglehold of the weather terrorists will let up any time soon, we come to some difficult decisions.
We will wait another year to freshen the goats, drastically reduce the number of sheep, and breed back only one sow. We will maintain the poultry flock as-is for the most part, but had hoped to add ducks once again to the mix. No rain means fewer bugs means more supplemental feed. So that plan is not looking too good now either.
Planned building projects are also getting postponed. A ‘milking parlor’ was on the list, some much-needed repairs to the deck, rebuilding the greenhouse, a field shelter for the herd, and on and on, plans are easy, implementation, not so much!
We are blessed with an already achieved minimalism: Living seasonally, frugally, well-acquainted with the boom-bust cycles of our overlords and still small enough to be flexible, and with enough local support to know we’ve got each other.
Our most crucial long-term goal remains: Growing our own feed—perennials as well as annuals.
We hear the word ‘sustainable’ repeated multiple times a day these days, but there’s rarely anything truly sustainable being suggested.
It’s 99% hype and green washing. But actual sustainability does exist, and the more self-reliant we can be, the closer we are to achieving it.
How do we measure up?
And it’s not like there’s not plenty for us still to do and learn here, even with squeezing the belt tighter.
I’m still very interested in herbalism, especially as it pertains to our local environment. The best things in life are free, or nearly so, no?!
And while I do appreciate the allure of the consumer life, I’m far more fascinated by the natural world all around me. It’s always a matter of slowing down, observing ever more closely, teasing out the potential of all that is all around me, and some of that certainly means our local community, but that doesn’t just mean the people.
I’d love to learn more wild crafts, as well as more fine art tuning; more science, and more speculation; and much, much more about where and how these endeavors mesh.
There is a different brand of “More!”, isn’t there, than the furious Billy Idol sang about?
Or, maybe it’s all the same, in the midnight hour?
To me this entire story positively reeks of stagecraft. But, even if we take it at face value it demonstrates how screwed up our food system really is.
MONDAY, JAN. 26, 2015 PHOTO In this Monday, Jan. 26, 2015 photo, cows are milked on one of the carousels in a milking parlor on the Fair Oaks Farms in Fair Oaks, Ind. Fairlife, which is rolling out nationally in coming weeks, is the product of a joint venture between Select Milk Producers, a dairy cooperative, and Coca-Cola. The product is filtered to have more protein and less sugar than regular milk. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)
Here’s the story in tiny nutshell: The McCloskeys were sued for animal cruelty at their dairy farm following an undercover employee’s secretly videotaping several instances with four workers involved. Now a settlement has been reached:
Completely denatured milk sold as natural, tasty and healthy
The Fairlife ads, cartoon milk dresses. Classy.
A $21 million Settlement has been reached in a class action lawsuit filed against Defendants The Coca-Cola Company (“TCCC”), fairlife, LLC (“fairlife”), Fair Oaks Farms, LLC (“FOF”), Mike McCloskey and Sue McCloskey (“the McCloskeys”), and Select Milk Producers, Inc. (“Select”), relating to fairlife and FOF Milk Products. The lawsuit alleges that Defendants falsely labeled and marketed certain dairy products produced using milk from cows that were allegedly not treated humanely. Defendants deny all allegations and have settled this lawsuit to avoid further litigation.
The Court has not decided who is right.You may submit a Claim Form to receive 25% of the average retail purchase price, up to $100, for your purchases of fairlife Milk Products and FOF Milk Products, if the products were purchased for personal use and not for resale, and were purchased on or before April 27, 2022. Claim Forms submitted without Valid Proof of Purchase will be capped at a Cash Award of up to $20 and Claim Forms submitted with Valid Proof of Purchase will be capped at a Cash Award of up to $80, subject to certain adjustments (upward and downward) depending on the number of claims submitted.
So, there’s video evidence, but the Court has not decided who is right. Must be so confusing, poor kids.
But you get some money anyway if you can come up with your milk purchase receipt, potentially from 2015. Brilliant.
In an interview the McCloskeys talk about all the fantastic improvements they’ve made to garner public trust once again in their dairy products since the video’s release, and the broad coverage of ‘the scandal’ by MSM (I do believe they neglected to mention the product line was owned by Coca-Cola, but I may have missed that part and really do not care to re-listen. It was annoying enough the first time listening to Mike Rowe pander to these creeps).
What I did hear in the interview was how proud the McCloskeys are now of their complete video surveillance system, how they are well on the road to becoming ‘Net Zero’ so that they can help curb climate change as responsible business owners, and how very excited they were to see the gleam in the eye of the school children who came there to tour their facilities and were so thrilled to see cows being milked by carousel machine.
Now they might grow up to become mechanical engineers, Mrs. McCloskey beamed!
I’m so excited for our Green future too, aren’t you?!
Have you ever experienced unrequited love? Ever love someone who was so out of your league they didn’t know you existed? Ever been horribly, unfairly, unceremoniously jilted by a lover? Ever love someone for years who treated you like shit most of the time? Ever love someone who turned out to be completely different than the one you thought you fell in love with?
Ever tried to muster up feelings of love for someone or something you did not, could not, love?
And yet still, despite its ephemeral nature—from its meaning, to its translation, to how it is individually experienced—some of our greatest thinkers, philosophers, social critics, poets, not to mention a good chunk of pop culture, still repeats “Love is the answer.”
We should love everyone and especially nature. That’s what’s wrong with the world, they insist, not enough love. And every time I hear this, I roll my eyes, even when it comes from someone I love.
Most recently I heard it in an interview coming from Wendell Berry (link). How someone so inspiring, who has led such a charmed and wholesome and respectable life, who now at an advanced age seems so wise, could repeat such nonsense confirms for me only one thing: “We don’t see things for what they are, we see them for what we are.”
Love is the answer to the West’s problems, they say, because you take care of what you love. And the younger thinker and social critic Paul Kingsnorth agrees with him.
How lovely.
Now here’s a homework assignment I’d love to give to these fools. Kingsnorth likes to study tribal cultures, which I think is really cool. He likes them because they have a solid home in nature, unlike Westerners. And I agree. So, I think he should ask all those tribal folks their opinions about this ‘love’ solution so many Western thinkers keep harping on about.
My bet is, it doesn’t translate. At all. I bet he’d have to write an entire essay for them about what he means by love in the first place, let alone how he expects that will solve anything.
How do you make someone love you? Or care about you? I have a difficult time imagining a more monumental task. And yet, somehow those who care about nature are tasked with getting those very great many, like the Technocrats and their vast entourages, to not only love it, but to respect it, to care for it, to nurture it even. Seriously?
What a debilitating delusion they are spewing. And not just once or twice out of an understandable desperation. But constantly, for decades now.
Yet to call it out for the obvious shallow fantasy that it is, I become the bitch.
Well then, so be it. Let me play that role for a minute or two right now.
Imagine Mother Nature is your very own mother. Maybe you love your mother, let’s give it the benefit of the doubt. You love her, but your sisters love her more. And your mother and your sisters are screaming at you—“You don’t love me!” “You don’t care about me!” “You are exploiting me and you must stop!”
How will you respond to their shrieks and demands of love and care? Deny your lack of love, perhaps? Maybe yell back that they are all wrong about you? Maybe ask what they mean by that?
You might be so sure of your love that you ask what you can do to prove it?
Maybe Mom replies she wants you to write her a poem professing your loving feelings. So you do. You go even further, and you write 10 poems and throw in a tediously long essay to boot. And you’re very proud of your efforts and you feel you’ve really captured the intense love you have for her.
And she says she likes them, even the tediously long essay. In fact, everyone who loves her also agrees how perfectly you’ve captured those feelings of love through your words. Astonishing.
But, after all, those are just words, and you said to love her is to care for her, so she wants to see some action.
So with the same zeal you wrote the ten poems and tediously long essay you tackle the part where your loving words become caring actions.
You chop wood and carry water for her. You refrain from any negativity in her presence, because she doesn’t like it. You insist that everyone in her company, through shame or coercion or even force, abide by her rules and preferences.
At long last, she is satisfied with your efforts. You can feel the power of her appreciation filling your heart and coursing through your veins.
She tells you, “Child, you are a true master of loving care!”
“Except, you see, there’s so many children over there who don’t love me. And their lack of love for me is upstaging your love. Their lack of love is demonstrably more powerful than your true love. What can you do about this?”
And you reply, “Great Mother, don’t you worry, I can make them love you like I do!”
Really? Can you? What makes you so sure about that?
You read them your poems, and they smirk. Then they read your tediously long essay and shrug. You show them your admirable work in fetching wood and carrying water for your Great Mother, and they respond by clear cutting your forest and damming your river.
Then they tell you their favorite joke, laughing all along.
The joke goes like this: There were these three dudes on a yacht. One was an American, another was Russian, and the third one was Mexican. They were all drinking and getting boastful as drunken men like to do.
The Russian said, “In my country, we have so much vodka we can afford to throw it away!” And he takes a full bottle of vodka and throws it into the ocean.
They all laugh harder. So, the Mexican says, “In my country, we have so much tequila we can afford to throw it away!” And he takes a full bottle of tequila and throws it overboard.
And they all laugh harder still. Then the American says, “Well, in my country we have so many . . .
And he picks up the Mexican and throws him overboard.
The Russian and American look at each and howl with laughter. And the American blurts out between guffaws, “Tough love!”
To The Holy Spirit
O Thou, far off and here, whole and broken, Who in necessity and in bounty wait, Whose truth is light and dark, mute though spoken, By Thy wide grace show me Thy narrow gate.
A proper tongue-lashing for Covidian cultists and other State-teet suckers. And, a prime example of the ‘divine masculine’ that too many will mistake for ‘toxic masculinity’ because the truth is not there to make you feel even more cozy and comfortable than you already are.
Forgiveness must be earned before it is bestowed.
And, another glimmer of hope from Academy of Ideas!
Government = Hypocrites with a monopoly on violence beholden to the highest bidders as partners equally committed to exploitation.
“The science is settled.” is a grift statement.
‘Due to funding cuts, the Government has supplied us with its very own doctor!’
“Vaccines are safe and effective.” Is a Barnum slogan.
“I’m sure they mean well.” Is a lazy, avoidant, arrogant, auto-rebuff that in a more sophisticated language might be more obvious, but which gets lost in English because we have dropped the use of the ‘subjunctive mood’ —a ‘tense’ used to express doubt, improbability or impossibility.
Some more telling quotes on the topic:
“Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” JFK January 20, 1961. Notice he said ‘country’ not ‘government’.
“I think our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries; as long as they are chiefly agricultural; and this will be as long as there shall be vacant lands in any part of America. When they get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, they will become corrupt as in Europe.” Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Madison, 20 December 1787, published in Papers of Thomas Jefferson (1955) vol. 12
“And so the grand vision of science, hundreds of years old—the dream of total control—has died, in our century . . . Science has always said that it may not know everything now but it will know, eventually. But now we see that isn’t true. It is an idle boast. As foolish, and as misguided, as a child who jumps off a building because he believes he can fly.” Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park
I remember well the first time I heard the expression ‘learned helplessness’. My mom used the term and I didn’t understand it. I asked her to explain, which went something like, “As if a man is actually incapable of doing the laundry.”
Some time later I heard it used again, only this time in reference to a woman who wouldn’t dream of changing a tire because she might break a freshly manicured nail.
These are benign examples of a much more serious issue. A little co-dependency amongst family and friends can be a very good thing. It reminds us we need each other, and it’s nice to be needed, as long as it’s not too needy. 🙂
But there is a much more nefarious kind of learned helplessness that is proliferating in our society and because it’s being sold by some very slick salesmen it goes on, continually championed by those who should know better. US.
This is the kind of dependency that fosters anxiety and dis-ease, because it promotes frustration, alienation, victimhood, powerlessness. Under the guise of convenience, comfort, safety, and even fun, we have allowed ourselves to become dependent on criminals, sociopaths, martyrs, tyrants dressed up as experts and beneficent leaders and stars.
Food, water, shelter, health, energy, entertainment, protection. These are all crucial aspects of human life we’ve willingly outsourced to others. Gone are the days for the vast majority who cooked from their own gardens, played and sang tunes around the fire pit, cared for their own ill, built their own homes. How many generations must we go back to know a time before politicians were household names and stock markets dealt only in livestock?
How many folks believe we have it so much better in our ultra-civilized modern world because they’ve bought the propaganda of their oppressors, those who actively promote and celebrate our dependency as progress?
There is a wellspring of peace of mind knowing that if you ever dare say “Take this job and shove it” you won’t end up homeless and hungry.
If you could do one thing in the new year to release the yoke of dependency just a bit, or a bit more, what would you do?
Happy New Year from the wee homestead, y’all, thanks for reading!
I remember the good ole days, from like, a decade ago. There was suddenly the mandate that everyone change their lightbulbs for some ‘common good’ reasons that escape me now.
What doesn’t escape me is at the time I thought, WTF?! I’ve longed considered ‘the government’ just a euphemism for ‘the mafia’, but surely, with this sort of escapade, now it will be obvious to everyone. Same tactics, only ‘legal’: Extortion, bribery, coercion, racketeering. Not to mention the ‘soft’ tactics.
Where will it end? Come on folks! I ventured forth on my social media quest. I was still on Fakebook back then. To the response of yawns and crickets and eye rolls and unfriending and the usual. Everyone clamored about to get their lightbulbs installed.
Now, here we are. As the old Virginia Slim ad boasted: You’ve come a long way, Baby!
No boobs, hmmm . …
It’s baffling, but I am far from surrendering to the mobsters and their minions. And in my own little way, I’ve come a long way, too. It’s very encouraging and refreshing for me to find like-minds in places I’d never have thought to look before. 🙂
It is always a temptation to an armed and agile nation, To call upon a neighbour and to say: “We invaded you last night – we are quite prepared to fight, Unless you pay us cash to go away.”
And that is called asking for Dane-geld, And the people who ask it explain That you’ve only to pay ’em the Dane-geld And then you’ll get rid of the Dane!
It is always a temptation to a rich and lazy nation, To puff and look important and to say: “Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you. We will therefore pay you cash to go away.”
And that is called paying the Dane-geld; But we’ve proved it again and again, That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld You never get rid of the Dane.
It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation, For fear they should succumb and go astray, So when you are requested to pay up or be molested, You will find it better policy to say:
“We never pay any one Dane-geld, No matter how trifling the cost, For the end of that game is oppression and shame, And the nation that plays it is lost!”
You worship at the twin alters of Ignorance and Superfluous
**********
I read a story decades ago when I was in the Peace Corps that was a well-known parable, but was new to me. I repeat it now hoping it will land for the first time on someone new to its moral and ring true in their heart for as long as it has in mine.
A rich man went to vacation on a beautiful island and sat in his beach chair under a sun umbrella reading a novel and looking out over the beautiful sea. He felt marvelous and relaxed and drank in the scenery with great satisfaction. He loved the experience so much he went back again the following year for his vacation, and again the year after that.
This third year, feeling again very happy and even magnanimous, he noticed the fisherman on the beach that he had seen during each of his vacations. He liked watching the man, who was very agile with his line and very patient for the five fish he caught each day. His bucket held the fish perfectly and he spent every morning on the beach until he filled his bucket and then he left.
One morning the vacationing man decided to strike up a conversation with the fisherman and they shared some pleasant small talk, so the next few days they stood together on the beach while the fisherman caught his five fish.
The vacationing man said, “I see you here every day and you always catch five fish and then leave.”
“Yes, that’s true. I have a wife and three children and my wife cooks up the fish for us each day when I return home.”
“But why do you always catch five fish every day?”
“Because that’s what we eat and that’s all I can carry home in this pail.”
“Well, if you caught more fish, you could sell them, and then you’d have enough to buy a bigger pail and even a wagon, so you could bring home more fish.”
“Oh yes, a wagon would be nice. With a wagon I could bring home many more fish, and sell some at the market.”
“That’s right. And then you could save some, so you could buy a boat, and then you could really get a lot of fish!”
“For sure that’s true, I could get a lot more fish with a boat,” he agreed.
“No doubt. And with all that money, you could afford to go on a vacation.”
“Oh, a vacation! I’ve never been on a vacation before, that sounds fun.”
“So, what do you think you’d like to do on your vacation?”
“I think I’d like very much to go fishing on the beach.”
We are, as the French express so politely, of a certain age (long in the tooth).We’re not types who try to disguise this fact in the myriad ways of modern times: no hair coloring or liposuction or botox, teeth whiteners or hair plugs or, heaven forbid, habitual pharmaceuticals of any variety.
We embrace the gray and the pudge. We don’t pine for our teenage libidos. We look forward to retirement watching the birds from our rocking chairs instead our hammocks, someday.
Maybe sooner than expected from the look of things currently.
So, it really, really pisses me off when the younger generations are portrayed constantly by the media as mind-numbed degenerates who do nothing but whine, complain, and join offensive, useless, co-opted, propaganda-driven movements like _________ (just fill in the blank, because there are too many that come to mind).
In fact, there are lots of really smart, creative, diligent, discerning, conscientious (my personal favorite quality) young voices out there who hardly get the time of day because they’re drowned out by bots, kittens, blatant censorship and wanna-be cast members of the (documentary) comedy Idiocracy.
It makes those of us of a certain age (vine-ripened) very reluctant to have any level of basic confidence that we might find that needle in the haystack that we might ever consider to pass the baton along at all, rather than take it with us to the grave lest it be used again and again to empower the escalating shit-show we call civilization.
And then, some other wise (time-enhanced) man passes along a ray of hope.This is just one of them, but how will their rays shine brighter and for more of us if we don’t share them?
Jeffersonian Girl, bravo! (I have no idea who this woman is, I can’t find her name, she looks much younger than her stated age on her channel (imo) and maybe she’s an actress, but still, her script is spot-on if you ask me!).
Kensho Homestead 