Yesterday, when gassing up for today's departure, I had the foresight to buy an x-large cup of Texas Pecan coffee at the CEFCO, as it was only 89 cents for any size after 3 p.m. and I knew it would be great for my camp coffee this morning! As it was.
I did not have the foresight last night to undress the picnic table before I retired to ensure that this morning, I would already have a dry tarp neatly packed in its bin. I have to wipe it down of dew before I can put it away.
The traffic I hear from I-10 across the water is never-ending. Reminds me of the I-65 traffic behind and above my Birmingham apartment. If I work very, very hard, the sound of running tires on pavement can sound like ocean waves breaking against big shore rocks, but really, the sound is just a relentless backdrop of noise.
Last night it rained and the temp dropped. I was completely cozy in my Prius. What a game changer this is from needing a tent.
Today marks the first leg of my loop back to Missouri for a second summer visit before a turn in New Mexico.
Wishing tree at Orange Street Pier. Fairhope, Alabama. July 2021.
As part of my due diligence in scoping out my next tourist-in-residency, I dropped down the eastern side of Mobile Bay to Fairhope.
The brief visit sealed my heretofore provisional conclusion that living in a tourist town is not the right place for me. Let's assume "arts community" (a la Fairhope) = "tourist town" = congested streets, sidewalks, and woeful parking opportunities. Add to that a climate with mild winters and proximity to Florida beaches, we've got presumably high rent, assuming most long-term rental properties haven't already been swallowed by the succubus Airbnb.
However, it is a good thing to live close to such a place for visits.
The Fairhope community has invested in walking paths that parallel the shoreline, public art, and thoughtfully-dispersed benches.
On this day, I stopped by:
Orange Street Pier
Mullet Point County Park (Baldwin County)
Fairhope Municipal Pier (and up the sweetheart-candy-colored stairs to The Bluff at Henry George Park)
Masks preferred sign, Ben May Library. Mobile, Alabama. July 2021.
When I set my Maps to Birmingham back in summer 2020, I set it for an Ethiopian restaurant. I had lunch there immediately upon my arrival at my newly chosen city.
When I set my Maps to Mobile the other day, I set it for the main branch of the Mobile public library system: Ben May Public Library.
After being amongst COVID collaborators in Missouri for two weeks, the sign on the Ben May Library thrilled me. "Masks preferred" - such a succinct, firm, and pleasant statement. When I walked in, my spirit lifted again because every library employee wore a mask.
Having already been entranced by the lush live oaks in the neighborhood, which leaned over the shady street with loving arms, and then that masks preferred sign - my brain shot out a swoony splash of good chemicals.
Where am I going? Just last night I decided, after perusing for several days the weather (with rain at ALL destinations for the coming days, flooding in some areas, etc.) --> Mobile, Alabama.
I'll check out the Mobile Bay and Gulf area for possible coming-year residency.
But after a few days, I'll slide over to New Orleans, then Lafayette, then Lake Charles, and then Beaumont.
Harriet, ER nurse during COVID. Artist: Tom Croft.
Early July 2021.
I left Birmingham on Wednesday, June 30, bound for central Missouri for the start of my annual interregnum between tourist residencies.
I felt such promise for the coming summer and fall, for the resumption of a more normal life. Dancing again! Listening to get-down blues in small, crowded bars! Flying to New York with one of my descendants! Places to go where I can wear pretty clothes. Wearing earrings again!
But then I entered Missouri.
Butler County. A convenience store. No one wore a mask. No one, except me. Having just left Birmingham, where indoor masks were still de rigeur, I was astonished. I returned to my car. Looked up the fully-vaccinated rates for Butler County. Only 20% of the population in Butler County were fully vaccinated as of the day before.
Reynolds County. A convenience store. No one wore a mask. No one, except me. Rate of fully-vaccinated people in Reynolds County as of the day before: Only 15%. FIFTEEN percent.
Phelps County. A convenience store. Only two people (me included) wore a mask. One employee did have a mask that hung from his two ears, protecting his upper neck. Rate of fully-vaccinated people in Phelps County as of the day before (and this is the home of the University of Missouri-Rolla, where presumably, thousands of students will descend in only weeks for the fall 2021 semester): 30% fully-vaccinated as of the day before.
This defies logic.
As of this writing, on July 3, 2021, Missouri is a hotspot in the United States for COVID upsurges and for the Delta variant, in particular.
The state forced workers to return to work at the Truman Building in Jefferson City - masks not required. No one is asked if they've been vaccinated. Cole County - home of the state government! - has a 37% rate of fully-vaxxed, but with many Truman Building employees commuting from the rural adjacent counties, the rate of vaccinated state workers in the Truman Building is surely much lower.
Sure enough, this past week, 15 Truman Building employees in one area of the building tested positive for COVID. More than 100 employees were sent home. One of my friends works in the Truman Building. He was so angry. The state had tried to keep the information about the building's outbreak from the workers there.
Barely anyone is wearing a mask inside stores in Jefferson City. The Republican governor has asked the White House for help with dealing with COVID in Missouri.
That spark of good cheer I had when I left Birmingham?
There is joy in that the singing is simply present - we don't have to hunt for it, find that right channel, that right app, that right song, download it, look at a screen for it, plug it in, recharge it, or venmo it.
No, the birdsong is for the birds; our bystander enjoyment of their conversations is a serendipitous side effect.
A reason I chose my Opelousas apartment back in 2015 was that, just outside a living room window was a tree, and on that tree was a melodic mockingbird.
In Birmingham, Alabama, which I left only a few days ago, there was a pair of mockingbirds in the front yard outside my living room windows, quite talkative, though not as melodic as their kin in Louisiana or Caucasus Georgia. They seemed more interested in succinctly pronouncing their claim to the yard in case squirrels or other birds had eyes for any of the juicy menu items the yard offered.
But I am polyamorous when it comes to birds and their songs.
The mourning doves' low talking in Alamogordo, New Mexico, made for an audio wallpaper at home:
Listening to these birdsongs from my past writings remind me that even in times of profound sorrow or fear or uncertainty, one can feel moments of joy.
We can immerse ourselves in birdsong, like a restorative soak in a bath.
I don't have AC in my Birmingham apartment, which is an interesting state of affairs when one lives in the South, and it is nigh on summer.
The mental game
I am playing a mental game between now and when I leave Birmingham at the end of the month.
Every day that passes in which it is tolerable enough to sleep and during which I don't sweat in place - that is a day that has been stolen from Birmingham's God of the Furnace, Vulcan.
The daily theft deeply satisfies my humid resentment toward a landlord who treats their tenants - the very same people who butter the landlords' bread with their rent payments - with contempt via malfunctioning, geriatric heating and cooling systems and shoddy installation and insulation, so that the tenants live with inadequate climate control AND pay extra because the machinery is energy-inefficient and the insulation is so poor that the tenant must also offset the influx of cold air in the winter and the egress of expensively-cooled air in the summer.
Not that I hold a grudge.
Fans
Other sweaty times and sweaty places
Not having AC in Birmingham takes me back to July in Rustavi, in Caucasus Georgia. Where it was so miserably hot and sweaty in the concrete vertical village, with screenless windows, and the sticky dilemma of what to do at night to sleep:
Open the bedroom window to catch a breeze and invite the apocalyptic-sized grasshoppers inside; or
Keep the window closed, shutting the Satanic grasshoppers out, but sweating on the sheets?
A summer weekend in the country - in Gurjaani - the heat squatted among us, an uninvited guest:
Even in the country, the heat was oppressive. It drained the energy from
everyone. Many of us took frequent, short naps like dogs and cats. The
heat pushed the odor of the outhouse into full bloom, and it wafted
throughout the courtyard.
When one looks at photos of Tuscany -- the pretty scenery, the tables
groaning with fruits, cheese, baguettes, and wines, the convivial
gathering of smiling people, the grape arbors sheltering all beneath ...
you don't think of the prosaic realities that accompany such beauty -
flies that crash the party, fruit that over-ripens before your eyes, the
aroma of super-heated humanity, the rationed water that means bathing
is not a daily or every-other-day event.
In Nazret, Ethiopia, with its screenless windows, one can open the windows for breeze-catching until 6:00 p.m., and then you've got to close them firmly to keep out the bimbies - the mosquitoes.
In Alamogordo, New Mexico, it was hot hot in June, until the rain came. The onset of the monsoon season, smack on time, July 1. 'Course, in Alamogordo, I had functioning air conditioning. Not like here in Birmingham.
Museum and Tourist's Center list of Important Dates in history of Washington, Louisiana. March 2015.
I'm in Birmingham, Alabama.
Juneteenth 2021 is coming up this weekend.
I've been going through past photos, editing and organizing.
I bumped into a photo I took in 2015: A list of Important Dates in the history of the historic village of Washington, in Louisiana.
Apparently not a thing in Washington, Louisiana:
Slavery
Civil War
Emancipation
Opelousas Massacre (with its catalyst in Washington) (or heck, even call it the Opelousas "Riot")
Nor are these noteworthy events:
April 9, 1866: The first civil rights act in the United States, which overturned the Black Codes and which established that "all persons" (including Black persons) born in the U.S. are citizens. [But: The Act specifically excluded most Native Americans from citizenship.]
July 9, 1868: The 14th Amendment to the Constitution re-affirmed that all persons born in the U.S. are citizens. [Note:
But voting rights were denied to all women and to most Native
Americans. The 14th Amendment was generally interpreted to deny
citizenship to most Native Americans, as well.]
June 2, 1924 (less than 100 years ago!): The Indian Citizens Act allowed as how Native Americans are U.S. citizens, too.
Here
in Alabama, the state scrubs out the federal holiday that commemorates
Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday by bleaching it with a state holiday that honors Robert E. Lee, the Confederate general.
In fact, Alabama has three PAID holidays that honor those who fought and died to protect their right to enslave fellow human beings.
In good news, there are efforts afoot to make Juneteenth a federal holiday.
A couple of days ago, the U.S. Senate voted unanimously to make Juneteenth a federal holiday.
Yesterday, the U.S. House voted in favor of same, over the objections of, yes, two of Alabama's four representatives. (On the other hand, Governor Ivey recently proclaimed Juneteenth as an important day.)
Internet cafe, Vakhtangisi, Caucasus Georgia.March 2012.
Stuff has happened in the last 10 years re: location independence for working people.
My 10 year-old article on location independence for workers was a snapshot of that time.
Today, we might put location independence into three buckets:
#vanlife digital nomads: The worker lives out of a home on wheels (car, van, bus, RV) and relocates with their wheeled home every few weeks or months.
Tourist digital nomads: The worker lives out of hostels, short-term rentals, or house-sits, and relocates every few days, weeks, or month(s).
Settler remote workers: The worker settles in a community for a year or longer (hey, like me!): More and more cities, states, and and countries are trying to entice such workers to settle in their communities. Such as here and here.
Next to the genre of nomad, the most important variable in location independence is the worker's internet access needs: Do they need real-time, on-camera internet access (and how often) for 1:1 or group meetings or is most of their work in not-real-time? Do they have lots of stuff to upload? If yes, do they need to upload daily, weekly, or less often?
And what's their budget?
Sadly, I've not yet been able to find writers in categories 1 and 2 who offer realistic, reliable, under-the-hood information on how they manage the technical aspects of their remote work.
Instead, there is a glut of writers who litter their sites with the words like "you should do this, too!" and "freedom!" and "amazing!" as if internet access were universally accessible, reliable, and fast enough for the nomad worker's needs.
There were informative nomadic writers I used to follow, but who, since I published the 2011 post below, have turned to other interests.
Because I teach English online most days, and require real-time, on-camera, upload/download reliability and speed, neither #vanlife nor tourist nomad life are realistic for me. Not for the lack of trying, but my experience has shown me that one cannot rely on the internet service in hotels, motels, airbnbs, so-called free wifi spots at cafes, libraries, or even at friends' houses in a Major Urban Center.
Quel dommage.
Saturday, April 16, 2011
On Being Location Independent
In my view, working "location independent" will only get more popular as
technology and imagination gloriously expand, freeing people to live
where they want. Location independence could rejuvenate small towns
foresighted enough to invest in distance technology for their current
and potential residents.
Puts me in mind of an Isaac Asimov series with robot Daneel Olivaw
and robot-phobic and agoraphobic police investigator Elijah Baley. The
Spacers can live and work on huge estates, in physical isolation, but in
virtual proximity to anyone, anywhere.
Location Independent: Connecting You With All the Resources You Need to Live and Work Anywhere You Choose [2021 UPDATE: The link is thanks to the Wayback Machine aka Internet Archive, as the site owners moved on to new endeavors since 2011.]
One example of Location Independent's resources is house-sitting, a concept I thought went the way of schemes such as "vacation for free while delivering a car across the country!" or "see the world as an airline courier!"
But apparently house-sitting is alive and kicking. On further
reflection, this makes sense - I'm guessing pet care is a common
expectation for house sitters.
At the thrift store, a cotton coverlet called to me from atop sedimentary layers of cloth.
The colors!
Sweet 'n juicy cantaloupe, butterscotch hard candy, periwinkle blossoms, hot-skinned August tomatoes.
My spirit soaked 'em up like a parched plant does water.
I felt deeply satisfied. Joyful. I even sighed, I think.
I brought the coverlet home. I shook it out, let it fall floaty-like onto my airbed, and smoothed my hand over the slightly nubby surface. I'm pretty sure I sighed again. These colors, like a dawn that cracks a crevice of red-orange-yellow light from behind the dark.
A few weeks later, I saw a flash of a young woman on the street in a summer dress, ostentatiously, outrageously, loudly, flowery colorful. So fresh! Ah!
And then, and then ...... when I stepped into a Target, I saw more splashy, happy, joyful colors! A produce stand of a summer's first fruits.
Colorful summer dresses at Target. Birmingham, Alabama. May 2021.
Colorful summer dresses at Target. Birmingham, Alabama. May 2021.
Colorful summer dresses at Target. Birmingham, Alabama. May 2021.
The colors bring hope that the end of a long sepia COVID winter is coming. They bring joy.
My Oliver Lee State Park campsite, outside Alamogordo, New Mexico. September 2012.
I've flirted with the idea of becoming a full-timer for more than 10 years, always in a modest arrangement. A smallish camper or, more recently, ChezP.
In the past five years, I've gone on innumerable video tours of folks living out of their cars. I've imagined how I might make it work for me at some future point. Over time, I concluded that full-timing out of my car was not a good fit for me. Too cramped.
But in the past year, I toyed with the possibility of full-timing in a tent (with ChezP as my back-up when inclement weather dictates).
A tent is roomier. Living in a tent also frees up one's vehicle for transportation.
What's out there to inform full-time tentfolk on the practicalities?
The resources I seek address my specific vision of tenting full time for up to a year:
Relocation every three to four weeks for new scenery, geographic interests, special events, or proximity to an expensive tourist destination
Although wifi welcome, I don't envision tenting full time as a digital nomad who requires daily, robust internet access, as this would seriously restrict my freedom of movement
Mild climate is a requisite
I don't want to tent for three or more weeks in places where fear of bears (or mountain lions!) are going to keep me awake, like here (oh my!)
Below are some sources that give me actionable intel on:
Practical realities of living full-time in a tent (power, water, location, weather, food, etc.)
Gear (tents, kitchens, power, furniture)
How to stay warm or cool; how to stay dry
How to mitigate invasions from water, insects and other small critters, and wind
On Wikihow: How to Live in a Tent (With Pictures). There are useful relevant how-to articles on the page, as well, along with references. Simple, clear, very practical.
Flower yellow and blue, Lafayette, Louisiana. January 2014.
I'm glad some folks study joy.
I started to write this post on what science has to say on joy.
But I got bogged down in my hunt for interesting research on joy.
In fact, the exercise became joyless.
So, I say, fuck it.
Which brings me a nano-flare of joy right there.
To fan that tiny flame, I'm just going to take a moment here ...................... and muster up some joy ........... by looking at the greenery outside my window and listening to the chatty birds outside.
There we go now.
So as not to let my preliminary efforts go to waste, read on if you wish:
"The American Psychological Association
(APA) defines joy as 'a feeling of extreme gladness, delight, or
exaltation of the spirit arising from a sense of well-being or
satisfaction.'”
... which applies a definition of joy by Ingrid Fetell Lee:"[Joy is an] 'intense, momentary experience of positive emotion.'"
In her 2017 abstract, Refining Research on Joy, Dr. Lynn Underwood proposed how scientists might refine the terms they use in reference to joy. An excerpt:
To find out about joy using the tools of scientific research we must identify what
connects joy of all kinds for many people, something that comes under the wide umbrella of
joy, in order to find some common features .....The kinds of joy that happen
together with sorrow differ from unmixed joy. Variations in intensity may describe joy of
very different kinds. Quiet joy that looks more like deep contentment might be very different
from ecstatic joy. Joy that occurs with others, either with other people or a divine other, may seem quite distinct. ... And each of us is temperamentally different. Some of us
experience the most profound joy in solitude, some of us when with others. Some of us find
frequent calm joy, others have frequent highs in experiences of joy. For some joy is
inextricably linked to a sense of the transcendent, for others there is no awareness of
transcendence in their experiences. The words used to tap into this need to give space for all of these kinds of joy.
A happy couple in Nazret, Ethiopia. September, 2006.
We are not a glum lot
I'm not an alcoholic, but I am in a 12-step fellowship that uses the Alcoholic Anonymous Big Book. In that Big Book are some of my favorite phrases:
But we aren’t a glum lot. ... We absolutely insist on enjoying life. We try not to indulge in cynicism over the state of the nations, nor do we carry the world’s troubles on our shoulders. ... So we think cheerfulness and laughter make for usefulness.
We are sure God wants us to be happy, joyous, and free.
This, too, shall pass
In the 12-step universe there is a slogan we lean on when we encounter one of life's storms: This, too, shall pass.
But the slogan also applies to sunny days, when everything seems to go right. Because they, too, shall pass.
So I'd better savor the flavor of today's sweet air.
The Honey Comb Barber Shop, Opelousas, Louisiana. October 2015.
I got my hair cut the day before my mother's funeral last week.
It was my first haircut since March 2020. Back then, the possibility of a COVID clamp-down in Tucson loomed and I thought I'd
better get scissored before that happened. If that happened.
To get my hair cut this month wasn't my Plan A.
My Plan A was to wait until the beginning of May when I would visit my mom for a week. My Plan A was to walk in to my mom's house with my hair at a length it hadn't been in decades. My Plan A was to take pleasure in these three moments with my mom:
Anticipation of the verdict she would render when she saw my hair
The actual verdict
My first flush of response to her verdict
Her judgment could go either way, and I knew it would give her a moment's pleasure, as well, to see something unexpected and to express an opinion about it.
And then I'd get my hair cut.
I looked forward to that May haircut - more than a year after the last - because my hair doesn't do well long. I inherited my mom's hair texture. It's fine and on the thin side, so the adjective to describe my hair when it's long is lank and not lush.
But Plan A fell by the wayside.
Instead, the day before my mom's funeral I went to a hair salon in my old neighborhood.
I arrived before the salon opened to avoid any hair cutting rushes later in the morning. There was one man already there with the same idea.
The three stylists on duty wore masks, as did I.
It felt safe to be there; I relaxed into the cutting experience.
It felt good to have a fresh cut the day before I saw my mom, to say good-bye.
My mom's shining white hair, when I saw it the next day, looked freshly cut, too. Pretty. Except there were two strands slightly askew on her forehead. I tried to guide the strands - lightly, gently - into place, but there was some sort of product on her hair that resisted movement, so I let them be.
I've written you a letter almost every Monday since mid-December 2018.
In that first weekly letter, I was at the end of an interregnum Missouri visit, about to depart for a Christmas-New Year layover in South Louisiana before heading westward to my next tourist-in-residency --> Tucson.
When I wrote you that letter, I still had my 1995 Toyota Camry. When I wrote you that letter, I didn't know that, two weeks later, I would say good-bye forever to that sturdy stalwart of my rootless life.
It looks like this will be my last Monday letter to you, and I'm putting it here, seeing as how you don't live at Carol Cottage anymore, seeing as how you've died, of course. You, too, were a sturdy stalwart in my life. I think you'd chuckle at being compared to a car. Or you'd be annoyed.
Carol Cottage, Missouri. January 2011.
So let me tell you about your funeral and burial. It was everything you'd asked for.
You lay in your casket in a long-sleeved, white cotton nightgown. White-thread embroidery just below the neckline, a band of hand-stitched eyelets below the neckline, a pleated bodice. Pretty details, yet still in the range one can call simple. Exactly your style.
The James Lee Burke book, Pegasus Descending, featuring our mutual hero, Dave Robicheaux, rested on your belly, propped against the open half-lid of the casket. You had a perverse fondness for Dave's violent, psychopathic side-kick, Clete Purvis.
As you'd asked, we ordered your casket from an online supplier and had it shipped to the funeral home to side-step the markup costs assessed by funeral homes for their caskets. We selected a poplar casket in a cherry finish that, like your nightgown, had pleasing details of interest, but overall, evoked the comfortable warmth and intimacy of your living room. And, gosh, did you know you can buy a casket at Costco? We chose yours from a different company, but knowing Costco's got caskets is something to tuck away for future reference.
As for how you looked in the casket, you didn't just "look good" like in the cliche about such things. You were beautiful. Astonishingly so. I'm serious, Mom. Even your nails were manicured and polished (with the barest of pink blush), just as you would like. And you wore the exact right shade of lipstick for your complexion. I'm not saying you looked beautiful "for your age," a woman of 91. No, you were beautiful in that casket irrespective of age.
You wanted Ave Maria sung at your funeral. The soloist, a young woman, sang it to you, to us, in a clear, warm, mezzo-soprano voice, from the balcony behind us. The notes of that transcendent song washed over me.
Your Ave Maria was gorgeous. But when the young singer began to serenade you with Amazing Grace while your descendants escorted you from the altar to the waiting funeral car, well, that took my breath away.
The car procession that followed you to the cemetery ... an unremarkable journey.
No Fellini-esque plot twists on the way, as happened after your brother, Clement's, funeral. Remember? When dozens of us, including you and Dad, idled outside the church, seemingly forever, waiting for the priest to lead the vehicular cavalry? And when you asked the funeral director what was taking so long for us to get started, he conjectured that maybe the priest was eating a sandwich.
We eventually did get going, one car following another, as they do in a funeral procession. We seemed to drive a long time, first on a congested arterial road, then on the highway, then off the highway onto another arterial road and then, oddly, the funeral car took a right turn onto a small side street. A dead-end, in fact. We followed, of course, only to understand that the funeral car driver had taken a wrong turn somewhere and he'd only entered this street so he could turn around (turn all of us around) and get onto the right path. Remember how we all poked our vehicles' noses into residents' driveways so we could then back up and restore our places in line behind the retreating funeral car?
There had been so much idling in front of the church before getting underway that your youngest child had to pull out of the funeral procession so he could gas up his truck before he ran out of fuel.
Oh, what a dramatic third act that was!
But getting back to your memorial day. It had rained earlier, but the rain abated for the final stop of our long good-bye to you. Chilly, though. If you'd been among us en vivo, at the cemetery, under the final-words canopy, you'd have been rolling your eyes and sighing while the priest used his bully pulpit to convince us of how fun it is to be in heaven. Me, I just shivered in the cold and waited impatiently for him to cut the commercial and get back to the program: you.
Daughter Kit had a mission to visit Dad's grave (where you were about to join him) and her paternal grandfather's grave. She'd already obtained their grave 'addresses' and their locations on the cemetery map, and following your closing ceremony under the canopy, she and her family and I drove to Dad's cemetery neighborhood.
So it was that we came upon the newly dug grave, into which you would be interred. We watched while the cemetery crew brought you to the grave in, let's call it a carriage, albeit a humble, utilitarian one. We watched how the crew pulled your casket from the carriage, centered you into a harness of sorts, and carefully lowered you into your grave with straps and winches, guiding your slow descent by hand.
You would have been quite interested in watching this process.
It felt good to be with you in your most final of final moments.
Under consideration for this year's intermission, all dependent on COVID, are:
A trip to a Big City with one of my descendants. New York City is our Plan A. Toronto is our Plan B.
A month's stay in an international location. China, Vietnam, and South Korea are on my mind, influenced by my English-learner students. From today's perspective, however, none of these destinations appear realistic for at least six months.
New Mexico and El Paso.
Wild card - some place or activity that hasn't yet hit my imagination.
