Like a steam engine, trudging forth packing, planning, panting. The house and my five acres of prairie sanctuary are sold. At a big loss, but in these times of economic downturn I took what I can get. I relinquish my rights to this place June 1st. And then step into another chapter, even if it is in the Transition Zone. 

In anticipation we now have a new 'home'; this time on wheels. A travel trailer worthy of living in for two adults and one big fluffy old doggie boy. It reminds me of a turtle carrying its home on its back. I was trying to think of a hybrid name encompassing a turtle and coyote, but thus far have only come up with Viajar Coyote (spanish for 'traveling coyote'). I'm hoping to find my artist friend Jonathan and hire him to paint a coyote and turtle scene on the front rock guard. 

Meanwhile, I devote at least an hour/day and most of the weekends to sorting, boxing, packing, and setting up the TT. I've done this way too many times and I do hope this is the last time in my lifetime. If not, I'm getting rid of everything and living in a teepee. 

The next five months will be full of transition leading to leaving the Dallas/Fort Worth area. For good. Una liberazione. Addio. Mai più.


Viva Terlingua!!!

Wiley gazes out the door of Traveling Coyote while parked at Lake Texoma.

Labels: musings

Senate Bill Seeks to Extinguish Navajo and Hopi Water Rights - The Petition Site

"Senators Jon Kyl, Arizona - R, and John McCain, Arizona - R, will be in Tuba City on Thursday, April 5, 2012, to persuade Navajo Nation and Hopi Tribal leaders to give up their peoples' aboriginal and Treaty-guaranteed priority Water Rights by accepting a "Settlement Agreement" written to benefit some of the West's most powerful mining and energy corporations.
Senate Bill 2109 45; the "Navajo-Hopi Little Colorado River Water Rights Settlement Act of 2012" was introduced by Kyl and McCain on February 14, 2012, and is on a fast track to give Arizona corporations and water interests a "100 th birthday present" that will close the door forever on Navajo and Hopi food and water sovereignty, security and self-reliance."

I urge people to digitally sign the petition and repost on social media to increase support for the Hope and Navajo tribes and voice opposition.

"Science does not purvey absolute truth, science is a mechanism. It’s a way of trying to improve your knowledge of nature, it’s a system for testing your thoughts against the universe and seeing whether they match."  - Isaac Asimov

Source: What Is Science? From Feynman to Sagan to Asimov to Curie, an Omnibus of Definitions

Labels: quotes

Science is an inherent contradiction — systematic wonder — applied to the natural world. In its mundane form, the methodical instinct prevails and the result, an orderly procession of papers, advances the perimeter of knowledge, step by laborious step. Great scientific minds partake of that daily discipline and can also suspend it, yielding to the sheer love of allowing the mental engine to spin free. And then Einstein imagines himself riding a light beam, Kekule formulates the structure of benzene in a dream, and Fleming’s eye travels past the annoying mold on his glassware to the clear ring surrounding it — a lucid halo in a dish otherwise opaque with bacteria — and penicillin is born. Who knows how many scientific revolutions have been missed because their potential inaugurators disregarded the whimsical, the incidental, the inconvenient inside the laboratory?”

Source: Systematic Wonder: A Definition of Science That Accounts for Whimsy

Labels: musings

Labels: wildlife

Forget your generalized audience. In the first place, the nameless, faceless audience will scare you to death and in the second place, unlike the theater, it doesn’t exist. In writing, your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person—a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one. - John Steinbeck

Labels: writing