PP #55: Pioneer Updates
Project: Pioneer #55, October 6, 2024 Sunday 9am
Our recent posts have been topical, so let’s use this one to catch you all up on what’s going on with our journey and here in pioneer-land for Giavana, Pia, and me. Follow ups on prepping, racism, politics, and personal finance.
Project: Pioneer is the live weekly reality journal of a couple and their small dog as they leave their ‘normal’ life in a luxury apartment for a new semi-off grid life in a small recreational vehicle. We cover prepping, politics, spirituality, afterlife, RV life, and personal finance. Half of all subscription/donation money goes to The National Alliance to End Homelessness, the other half pays for expenses. You can listen to the audio podcast version of this journal at Substack, Apple, Spotify, PocketCasts and others.
First up, for you personal finance preppers, Plan Your Money Path, the long awaited book by my fellow Wild Lake author is now available in eBook, paperback, and hardcover (audiobook coming soon). It’s at wildlakellc.com and all the major online stores. Give your loved ones the gift of financial freedom this holiday season!
As I write this pioneer journal post from the White House RV on Saturday, our neighbors are busy around us bustling about to break camp for the season, winterizing their rigs. The air is full of smoke as they use up the last of their firewood. A few idiots are burning their trash, the plasticine smell a dead giveaway. We’re surrounded by windows and the beauty of the changing leaves, some already taking flight from the trees in the shifting breeze. Our mountain backdrop is slowly phasing from shades of green to red gold hues. It’s a very nice Saturday afternoon, and we won free tickets to a show tonight in a small coffee-house listening room near us. I’m really looking forward to it. They have a fall event going on down by the camp office, with lots of vendor tables and basket raffles. A bunch of kids just came around trick-or-treating. I wasn’t prepared for that, we never get them, so I had to bust out a stash of full-size Hershey bars. Those little eyes were quite wide at the bounty! What a wonderful day, what a wonderful world, if we can pull together to keep it.
I was thinking more about my late friend Damon, who I wrote about in the last post. He’s an example of my concept of this existence as an incubator or proving ground. If you run with that, and start paying attention to the people around you, you can see that some are more developed in that way. They seem to operate at a higher level of consciousness, or awareness, of life. We might call it intelligence, but I feel like it’s something quite more. Damon was like that—very philosophical on another plane of reality. They exude empathy and all the traits we should aspire to—what all the religious texts say to aspire to. I think those are the well-formed, shaped souls that are likely now ready to pass on to a more perfect existence after this primordial, violent stew we’re in here. Maybe if there’s a sudden end to this experiment, those of us who are at least trying hard will get a pass.
On the prepping front, we’ve seen plenty of evidence of the things I (and many others) have been warning about. You don’t have to be in Florida or Louisiana to be wiped out or killed by a hurricane. It just happened to plenty of inland folks in inland Georgia, Tennessee, and western (inland!) North Carolina. Northeasters already know they aren’t safe, after the devastation of Sandy. Tornadoes are appearing out of nowhere, wiping out homes and entire towns. There’s another month of hurricane season. Two more are already queued up. Winter is coming. Recently I talked about the potential devastating power of the increasingly large solar flares, coronal mass ejections (CME), and resulting electromagnetic pulses (EMPs) here on Earth. This week there was a massive 9x solar flare combination, but nobody paid attention other than, “Ooooh, Helen! We might see the Northern Lights!”
As so many people just learned, when disaster happens, help doesn’t arrive for a while. You should be able to live off-grid for at least 72 hours, completely self-sufficient in terms of food, water, energy for heat/air, shelter, medical, security, and more. Are you? Envision none of that, no internet, GPS signals, unable to travel the roads, no communications, no medical help, for three days straight. Can you make it? If you’re not ready, see my other posts on prepping.
Our big exposure gap, as I’ve discussed, has been solar. I’ve been getting lost in the expense, nuances, and many doohickeys needed to do a proper RV solar install. I was worried about what happens if we have to bail suddenly, low-profile, and can’t take the RV with us. What if we sell the RV? Will we have to buy a whole new setup if we build our cabin? Then I saw this Jackery system on sale for Amazon Prime Days and grabbed it, along with their solar panel. I love how it’s expandable, and we’ll be adding on more batteries and panels as we go. It can power our future cabin. This will do for now. It’s inexpensive and well made. A renewable source of energy! Yay! That’s one major stressor off our plate. I’ll still be a little stressed until it arrives and is in place.
Speaking of stress, Giavana and I have taken to taking mini-vacations as a remedy. We took our field trip to look at cabins and bigger RVs. We recently did a weekend trip to a beautiful resort on a big lake. It was wonderful—the pool and outdoor spa were open, it was nice and warm, great restaurant for a nice dinner. Best of all, Giavana got to do the one thing she enjoys but can’t in this pioneer RV life—take a nice long hot bath. That’s the thing about living this inexpensive life ($700/month for our site, utilities included). We can afford to do that whenever we want. We have another queued up for later this month, and we’re still planning on spending November election week outside the country.
We’re moving to our winter site toward the end of this month as well. That will involve breaking camp, re-organizing everything, and setting up in winter mode at our new location. Ugh. We’re already thinking of warm weather winter escapes, if we still live here, if democracy survives Nov 5, Jan 5, Jan 20. In the meantime, we’re working hard on that project as well. This morning we had our own little letter writing party to registered Democrats and Independents who might need a nudge. We’re phone banking and running our own local group of very involved patriots. One month to go, and the lies are mounting from the right and on the propaganda network they use to reach most of the country. The one that had to pay almost a billion dollars last time for their lies about voting machines. The dog whistles for violence continue, and now the richest man on the planet is embracing a violent, dangerous new movement called Dark MAGA. People like him envision a world under their control—just a few kings and rulers to divide up the planet and subject us all to their will. That’s the plan. Trump is simply their useful idiot, because he has a cult.
If you have these discussions with any of the folks on the other side, don’t waste your breath arguing policy points. I’ve gotten tired of that, it doesn’t work. I go with these short points:
“We can argue policy until the cows come home. But you can’t escape that Trump has been a lifelong con artist. He’s left a long trail back to the 1970s in documented court cases, of screwing over families just like yours.”
Or, “I’m a veteran. My son and son-in-law are disabled Marine combat veterans. I will never vote for someone who has openly disrespected the biggest heroes among us, our war dead and injured. Trump has always and continues to do it, which proves who he is. Sorry, you can’t tell me you support someone like that and say you’re a patriot in the same breath.” I make that clear to my fellow veterans.
Or, to any non-Caucasians, “Trump has a long history of discriminating and hating on people just like you. He hates people who look you, your kids, your grandkids. You are not in the club. You are being used.”
I’m hoping you’re engaged down the stretch. Give a few bucks if you can at https://secure.actblue.com. Get involved with some great local peers at swingleft.org or indivisible.org. Send out pre-printed letters from home, with a personal note, at votefwd.org. There’s still time to make a difference. Ask all your democracy-loving friends, neighbors, coworkers, relatives to check at vote.gov to ensure they’re registered, and remind them if they have a problem at the polling place, they can request a provisional ballot.
We, the People, recognize that we have responsibilities as well as rights; that our destinies are bound together; that a freedom which only asks what's in it for me, a freedom without a commitment to others, a freedom without love or charity or duty or patriotism, is unworthy of our founding ideals, and those who died in their defense. —Barack Obama
Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first. —Charles de Gaulle
This pioneer journey continues…
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