I wanted to take a moment to say farewell to all the people who have visited this site, especially to those who took the time to comment or leave a private email. I’ve enjoyed our chats. I’ve enjoyed reading the work of many of my fellow bloggers on BNN or Lefty Blogs, but my time as a politically oriented blogger is finished.

We won’t have internet access in the days ahead. We won’t even have cell phone capability.

Next weekend, in a huge estate sale, we will sell every single thing we’ve accumulated in our life together and begin a new chapter. Although my computer will survive the sale…my drums won’t. heh. That’s how serious a life change we are making. My drums and one of Don’s guitars will be sold along with everything else ‘cepting our underwear and our animals.

We are starting over in the Ozarks. I have to leave my beloved Texas, for many reasons…not the least of which is the fact that we’ve faced eminent domain twice on two different properties in the last five years. Texas has changed so much that I no longer claim it as home. The developers and the entities like LCRA now own Texas and you might as well rename the state DevelopLand. I am DONE with fighting them.

We always said that when we won the lottery we would buy as much forested acreage as we could afford for a nature preserve. Well, the dang lottery hasn’t cooperated so we can’t afford thousands of acres. What we can afford, if we sell everything we own and beg borrow or whatever… is about fifty acres of forest in the Ozarks. We found a special fifty acres that adjoins other land owners who have linked their lands in an effort to save a species of salamander that lives no place else in the world. We’re going to add our new land to their efforts and in this way, any impact we can make will be added to others in the area and hopefully, that combined effort will be enough to save this one ecosystem. It feels like the right thing for us to do.

If the guys can get some magic to happen with satellite internet access then we’ll probably be back to blogging one day but it will not be in the political arena. I’ve said everything I meant to say. Over one hundred posts since March. That’s a lot of hot air. Heh. We’ll probably take this site totally down when we get a chance.

The reality is… I can’t stop the wars. I can’t stop them from taking my son to their hellhole. I can’t make middle class America wake up. If four dollar gas doesn’t make them look up and start yelling, then nothing we can say on this silly site will accomplish much.

To my fellow lefty bloggers:

You people do important work. I hope now that the nomination process is finished that some of you will begin to focus on things that will make everything else trivial if not addressed. Democracy has to be reclaimed in order to have the tools needed to facilitate a real change. There is absolutely NOTHING to stop another stolen election. Voting machines will be used this November. The same machines that have been proven by Princeton and other universities to be entirely hackable and untrustworthy will be used to decide the presidential race. In addition to the voting machines, unless free and open media is reclaimed, there is very little hope of any real reform happening. MSM is corporate owned and sells a product that has little resemblance to news coverage of any value.

How does Democracy fail? Make the people afraid. Control the news. Make a free election into a sham. Done.

Government that is democratic in name only is easy to accomplish given those three facts. Unless at least one portion of this formula is turned back, no amount of protest for any other subject will matter in the long run. Defend Democracy first and everything else will fall in line. Defend anything else and the result is much like shouting in the wind. Shouting about the war is futile if there is no democracy in place to force the will of We the People…pretty much what has happened the last few years. We say get out of Iraq and the government says…umm..NO. We say do not torture…and the government says…umm Yes, we will.

At any rate, my time yelling about all this is finished. We will be back to blogging one day but we will have a site totally devoted to the environment, off the grid living, organic farming…that sort of thing. Much of this is knowledge we have already internalized and have utilized these last fifteen years. Some of it will be new skills that we will need to acquire. I’ve never made soap from goat’s milk. I can’t wait to try!

I think this is what we can contribute that may actually make a difference in the days to come. Documenting our success AND our failures at self-sufficient living in harmony with our environment might help someone else attempting the change from urbanite to small farm or even urbanite to urban backyard farm.

That’s the plan anyway. “Man plans and God laughs”…was that a Chinese proverb? …hmm…my middle-aged memory can’t remember what the reference is but it seems appropriate for my life.

So long folks…our Ozark Hillbilly Hippie Clan is outta here!

Menopausal Mick