Sunday, July 31, 2005

Habits

Habits fascinate me. They are the compound interest of life. Over time they become powerful forces, the currents that sweep you through your life's journey. They are behind much of your luck and karma, whether good or bad.

We, as people, are really nothing more than a collection of habits. (Just try to think of some aspect of yourself that doesn't ultimately boil down to some sort of habit.)

Common examples of the power of interest...
:Most people don't realize that the average person pays for their house 3 times due to interest.
:Mathematics graphically explain why you would be a millionaire if, rather than smoke, you put the money for 2 packs a day into long term investments.
(a quick check on an the first compound interest calculator I found on google shows that about $5.5 per day at 9%(average return from stocks) over 50 years adds up to $2 Million.)

That same power is working a zillion times per day in our personal habits. Every little thing we do is usually part of a habit. It can be aimed at making life better or worse, or just aimed randomly.

Mathematics can also explain why your life would tend to be set back by major accidents if you made habits out of taking little safety shortcuts. For instance, let's say that every time you jay walk you have one chance in 10,000 of an accident. If you walk to and from work and end up jay walking 5 times per work day, that's 1000 times per year. In 5 years you have a 50/50 chance of being hit by a car during a jay walk. What if you do it for 30 years?

Multiply that by the countless little habits that make up our lives and...
WOW! We really do create our own luck.

Friday, July 29, 2005

They are going down!

It's hard when you try to help somebody over and over and they just keep making bad decisions. No matter how many breaks you arrange for them, no matter how many times you outright give things to them, they still manage themselves into deeper problems.

Tonight Lynn and I were discussing several situations around us that are coming to a head. Friends who we keep trying to help. They either delude themselves or they delude us or others and eventually it catches up to them. They end up in legal trouble and financial trouble, each causes the other.

At some point you have to stop helping. It is not really helping anyway. They have to sink or swim. Sometimes, hard lessons are the only ones that really work.
I can think of twice we went broke and it turned out to be very good for us. We emerged wiser and ultimately better off.

Sometimes we help someone and it actually has a happy outcome. Those cases usually involve little or no money. Its usually simple stuff that has the best outcome.

Thursday, July 28, 2005

Too much at once Rant

Life is busy.
I figured I would spend most of the day at the energy fair in Little Falls, just over an hour's drive away. By the time I did a little babysitting and favors and chores, I didn't get on the road until nearly 2:00. Even the road trip was interupted with another semi-unplanned but high priority meeting. I finally got to the fair 30 minutes before we had to leave again to get to a dinner invitation and concurrent babysitting.

You have to keep in mind that this energy fair is all about what we do. We were even planning on giving a straw bale house demonstration (before Pete died and Ryan broke his finger). It takes us about an hour to talk to each of the dozen vendors of interest. There are things to be learned and connections to be made. 30 minutes doesn't quite do it.

I maybe I can squeeze it in tommorrow night or Saturday.

Tuesday, July 26, 2005

Growth

Galen is definitely older and more capable than he was last time he was here. He is very polite. I am impressed.

Monday, July 25, 2005

Vitamin D exposure

Recent studies have shown that vitamin D has a great anti-oxident effect. It is powerful at reducing cancer. Sunshine on your skin is the best way to get vitamin D. As long as you don't burn, sunshine is five times more likely prevent all kinds of cancer than it is to cause melanoma.

I love the privacy of our place on a Sunday morning. The sun was shining, the grass needed watering, and I was talking on the phone for hours with Raya. It felt really good to be running around watering the lawn, totally naked except for my straw hat.(My face already gets too much sunshine, the rest of my pastey white body needed sun.) I got comfortable out there. After a long time, I was so into my chore and the phone call that I didn't notice Ryan and Amber driving up the driveway until they were already here. They laughed when I suddenly dropped the hose and ran indoors. I did too.

Hobby

Barb was our first employee, starting sometime around 1986. She has been working for us on and off ever since. She was around while we were a little bitty basement operation. She was with us during the wild white knuckle ride while Hunt Tech grew at 100% per year for 5 years. She is with us again while we are creating our environmental research campus.

Right now, it is pretty hard to articulate our current goals. When a neighbor asked Barb what she does at her job, she replied she has no idea. Today, Barb commented that it boils down to... she has been helping me with my hobby for 20 years.

It's true. When we were poor, my job was my hobby. That kind of focus made us successful. Now my hobby is my job. I hope it also creates wonderful outcomes.

Misc. Stuff

Family has kept me very busy lately. It is good, but reduces the chance of a good blog.

Our new yard is being used quite a lot. The weather is perfect for it, warm and mostly dry, few bugs.

Ray and I have been doing a lot more "what is reality" discussions lately. Ray is feeling compelled to study it. I am loving this. Fifteen years ago, Ray and I spent countless hours "wasting time" in similar discussions when we should have been working. I feel it had a lot to do with the subsequent success of Hunt Technologies.

When I get the time, somebody remind me to post about:
:Future shock
:What is inertia
:Huddha, the minor demigod of obscure realities
:Universe in a computer

Friday, July 22, 2005

Life's a beach



I may have mentioned that we suddenly have a lawn. Did I also mention that it is wrapped around a very nice playground that is sitting in the middle of a giant sandbox? It is our own private beach, without the dangers of deep water.

Today Lynn came home from a two day trip carrying two 6 year old boys and a carload of chinese food. They joined Ethan and Avery and we all had a very pleasant evening burying each other in the sand.

Wednesday, July 20, 2005

Landmark Time

Time is subjective:
Some hours drag slowly, some wizz by. Each year seems to go faster than the last.

Time is objective:
We agree that some things happen at regular intervals, like the earth turning or an atom resonating. Because we can all observe them and they are regular compared to each other, we use them as a measure of time.

In its travels, our consciousness hangs around these reference points for the same reason you would hang around a landmark. It helps us meet others.

Tuesday, July 19, 2005

How Wide is "Now"?

It keeps giving me hints.
Perhaps time is not something we are moving through. It IS our moving.
Our consciousness is like a little dot of light traveling through many dimensions. We view some of those dimensions as space. The dot illuminates the wee little bit that we can perceive. We notice changes as the dot moves, and we call it time.

The question is; How wide is that dot?

I am gathering more and more personal experiences suggesting that at a subconscious level we know when something emotionally big is about to happen.


Many times my body "preacts" meaning it reacts hours before some incident happens.
Case 1:
I was a little kid. A group of us periodically broke into an abandoned house. Many weeks later the cops showed up and every one in the group got in trouble. Not me. I was sick that day with an upset stomach of unknown origin.

Case 2:
I was in high school. Some friends stole a piece of the cable TV system, thinking it was not in use. It turned out they knocked out service to a large section of town for a few hours. Many weeks later I got an upset stomach for no good reason and went home to bed in the middle of the school day. I turned on the police scanner for entertainment and listened to them close in and arrest my friends that afternoon.

Case 3:
I'm an adult. My daughter Raya drives 25 miles from home to college every day. In the winter she is to take the larger highway because it is straighter and better plowed.

One day I came home from work totally wiped out (for no particular reason). I went to bed at 5:00. At midnight I woke up, sat in the dark living room alone for an hour or two, feeling lousy and bummed out. Then, out of the blue I decide to give the dog a bath at 2:00 AM.?? After giving him the bath I felt fine and went to bed.
I slept like a log until 7:30 when the phone rang. Raya had just rolled the car. She was ok. The accident happened on the small highway at a curve. Why was she taking that route?
We rushed over to the site; cops, tow trucks, commotion, and our dog runs up to me.
"What is he doing here?" I asked. Raya explained that she was on that road because she was taking the dog to the groomer on her way to college.

It took me a while to put it together. I had been preacting to the car accident. When I bathed the dog, my subconscious was satisfied that I had done something to prevent it.

Case 4:
In a semi dream state I was having a conversation with my "spiritual advisor". To condense the story, I was given a hint that someone on the Crow Wing Co-op board was going to die. The next day, the person on that board who was closest to us died of a heart attack.

Case 5:
My second entry in this blog site was titled "FLOWERS" and I noted that I was compelled to use it and knew not why. Two days later Pete died in a car accident. We were buying flowers.
This case is subtle, but the feeling wasn't. It is also worth noting that the HUG web site journal was currently focused on Pete.

So what do you think? With a little retrospection can you come up with cases where you preacted emotionally?

Instant Green

I never cease to be amazed how we end up doing things that seem opposite to our theme.

On campus we are all about natural. In our minds, lawns that need mowing are to be avoided. We don't even have a lawn mower.
We are making one small exception right in front of our trailer house (another anathema that is teaching me a lot). We put a playground close to the house. A little grass around it would be nice. I have enormous patience and have no problem evolving some grass, but Lynn's 50th birthday party is in 4 weeks. Sod was way cheaper than we thought and POOF! less than 24 hours after the first thought of it, we have a fully sodded yard.

Monday, July 18, 2005

What we like.

It's amazing! We don't have a clue what we really like. We are usually too bound up by what we think we would like, if we had it.
Lynn and I are finding out what we like about our housing. For some unexpected reasons, we are really happy living in our 16x80 trailer. In many ways we like it better than our very nice monster big house with a great view and terrific yard.
Some reasons why...
:Proximity. Close to downtown and Ryan and Amber.
:More privacy when needed, set in the middle of 65 acres. It is also plenty busy during work days.
:Close to outdoors. Much less isolation between our living space and what's happening outside. This includes the playground being very close to the front door, and the front door being 30 inches above the ground; high enough to feel like we have a view and low enough to be where the action is.
:Easy to clean, because it is small.
:Office, bedroom, bathrooms are handy; because it is small.
:Toilets actually work. I have a habit of clogging up most toilets. (Some people say its because I am a big asshole.)
:Lots of changes. Because nothing is highly finished, we can change the buildings and landscape to our heart's content.
:We are honestly trying to blaze a path to a better future for ourselves and to encourage other Americans that they can do it too.

Life is change. We have lots of life here.

Thursday, July 14, 2005

Fragile God

We want our God to be somewhat fragile or frail.
We want our God to be all powerful when we are in need, but we need our God to be a little bit in need of us.

These thoughts were rolling in my head as I observed my way through a catholic funeral today. First of all, it has been quite a while since I have been at a catholic mass. I was almost transfixed at the level of ritual. In the middle of the crowd, I was a distant and separate observer. Many pagan rights and rituals have been programmed into the group. Certain words trigger programmed physical movements. Certain phrases trigger programmed return phrases.
This was a ceremony for and about Pete, but every turn of phrase in the ceremonial part was all about promoting the church. Clearly the church (as with most institutions) exists first and foremost to promote itself.
Ryan left about 2/3 of the way through the funeral. He was all ritualled out.

Something in one of the prayers triggered the thoughts about we need a fragile God. This resonated with stories and movies I have seen lately. Truly we need to feel needed.
Why would God create us if she didn't need us?

Tuesday, July 12, 2005

Tough week so far

Ryan broke his right index finger today. Shattered one of its bones into about 5 pieces. He got 4 pins and a cast and a night in the hospital. We got a sudden change of plans. Just after lunch, Lynn and I left campus for only an hour. On our way home we got a call that Ryan needed a ride to Brainerd. We met him and Ray half way to Jenkins and headed south. We got home around 10:00 pm, wondering what happened to our day.

Now we are also wondering what happened to the rest of our plans for the summer. Pete is gone. Who knows about Quin? Ryan is de-handed for months. Maybe this is the reason that we couldn't talk ourselves into starting a building this summer.

Monday, July 11, 2005

Drummin'

Today we needed distraction, so we helped Neil and Tori move. Barb, Ray, Bob and I each drove a truck over there and convoyed loads of stuff to Mom's house. They will be joining her in her house, trying to squeeze in all the contents of their home, business and school, then share the space with contractors who will proceed to shrink the house by at least two rooms, while making a huge mess. Sounds like fun.

I made it back home just in time for a healing massage. That got done just in time to go to Hackensak for a drumming circle.

The drumming circle had a different kind of energy. It was very much like a wake. A picture of Pete was in the middle and all of us there were affected by Pete's passing. The greiving energy was strong.

Sunday, July 10, 2005

Damn

I got the word this morning that Pete got killed in a car accident about 11:00 last night. I'm still trying to soak it up. We will all be trying for some time I bet.



During the last few days I have been contemplating the great job Pete was doing, and trying to figure out how to handle the finances for the future great jobs he will be doing.

Maybe the future of campus art is to move on. Pete blazed the trail. We should document what he taught us and get the many other artists started.

Friday, July 08, 2005

Photo Time

Here it is, late evening and I am finding time to make a comment. It might become a routine mainly because this site is a tab in Firefox and automatically shows up when I am checking other blogs.


This photo is from last winter when we built an intersecting arch snow fort. It is a good test of the photo posting process.

You can learn about the snow fort test building in the February-March timeframe of the HUGllc.com Journal.

Thursday, July 07, 2005

Flowers

Flowers is a title that begged to be used. I know not why. This is just another test entry anyway to get me familiar with the territory.

Virgin Post

This is my first try.
Will I use it?
Is it better than paper?
Can I get a backup file of it occasionally?

We will see.