John Ludi

Off Grid John-March 2012 Update-The Hard, Hard life of John Ludi.

2012-03-05T14:22:00.002-06:00

Off Grid John-Department of Power-Solar PV Upgrade.

2012-02-29T13:49:00.002-06:00

Just a note for clarification purposes.

2012-02-13T09:25:00.000-06:00

Hello!

I noticed on a thread on reddit that there are some folks that have the impression that I bailed from the yurt for the winter due to the winter weather. Not surprised that people would have that impression since I have not made any detailed statement as to why I took the room in town and that would be the logical conclusion.

I actually took the room in town because I was dating a woman who lives there, am working on an acoustic duo with someone in town and have a ton of new friends and activities there. The OTHER big reason was that my easement/road becomes impassible once there is more than a millimeter of snow and I had a choice between parking by the highway and being in the way of anyone who needs access (which has turned out to not be an issue) or just parking on my property and being snowbound for 4 months or so.

Truth be told, I WAS a bit worried as to whether or not I'd be able to handle extremely low temps in the yurt, but that has turned out to not be so much of an issue...this winter has been almost freakishly mild and my insulation scheme seems to have worked out pretty well.

So my bailing out for the winter had a LOT less to do with the direct physical conditions and a LOT more to do with my personal life and basic logistics. In terms of the yurt being a viable structure to live in year-round, I'm pretty confidant that it can be done easily and without great expense...and plenty of people are doing just that out there...even in places like Alaska. The 2-3 nights a week that I have been spending there have been blissfully comfortable.

I hope to install a more robust wood stove and get my solar heating system implemented for NEXT winter...as I'm planning on making some improvements to the property that should make the logistics less of an issue.

Glory Days

2012-01-28T13:41:00.000-06:00

At the recent memorial of our fallen comrade Dan Peper, I was struck by a curious thought: “this is a community that I will probably really miss someday”.

It’s not like I’m planning on going anywhere...especially since I really just arrived here...but when one lives with the notion of impermanence as a cornerstone of one’s waking consciousness, the phrase “these things too shall pass away” enters ones head whether the things in question are pleasant and joyful or horrific and torturous. Whatever happens in our little slice of heaven on Earth, it shall someday be dust. That is the nature of life on the physical plane: all is change. Days flutter by as they become years, loves come and go, we all get older, perhaps wiser...you know the drill. Every present moment becomes the stuff of future memory.

As I wandered amongst the crowd after the service I made the observation that there were at least twenty or thirty people gathered that I already felt a great deal of love for, and that like Dan, they too would someday make their exit from my life...unless, of course, I beat them to it.

I also thought of the term “glory days”. It’s kind of a cheesy phrase, and the title of one of Bruce Springsteens lesser works (I ordinarily like his lyrics, but I really hate that song), but it fits: here is an exceptional community full of exceptional people doing exceptional things. As someone who has bounced around a fair amount geographically, I can say that I consider it a rare thing...and a thing of beauty, in fact. One of those things that you want to keep going and keep contributing to, even when that thing is buffeted by such a significant loss...or even more, BECAUSE of it...because you see the fragility of these rare and beautiful things.

The older you get, the more time it seems that you spend ruminating upon the memories of the path you have left behind you. It is an act that can either be futile or instructive, largely depending on how ready you are to learn your lessons and not repeat your mistakes. I confess to be a mixed bag in this regard, myself.

Glory days: You find yourself in the midst of such a thing when you stop reminiscing and waxing nostalgic and actually LIVING. I have noticed since I moved here that I have been doing a fair amount of that, that whole “living” thing. I have become engaged, no longer just the aloof observer with the ironic detachment fixation. The Driftless region has breathed new life into my cynical soul. I smile a lot more out here, despite a couple initial setbacks and missteps.

This region seems to be a place to make NEW memories. If I live to a ripe old age, I picture droning on and on about this place to an impatient nurse who just wants to change my catheter and get on with his/her life:

“In my mid-forties I lived in this magical place where I met some of the most brilliant, gifted, and caring people you’d ever want to meet”.

“Yeah OK, whatever.”

“No, really...it was full of artists and writers and musicians and eco-warriors and hippies old and young.”

“What’s a hippie?”

One of the things that has haunted me my entire life, that I’m sure at least a few of you reading this can relate to is this: I am an outsider. I have been such for almost my entire life. I say almost, because there have been times where I actually have felt the warm embrace of something resembling community, despite the fact that most of the time I feel (and sometimes act) like I just got thrown out of a UFO.

When I was all of about 15 I read the book Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse. It was so profoundly impacting to my alienated adolescent mind that the second half of my stage name (Ludi) is an homage to that very author (my real last name is unpronounceable in any human language). Heretofore, I had thought that I was the only person who ever felt so estranged from this world. To march to the beat of your own drummer is a risky proposition...but if you are to be true to yourself you have to, if that is what the voice of conscience and intuition dictates. I dared to be just who I was and suffered slings, arrows, rotten fruit, and expletives galore. That which does not kill you...

Part of the issue was my wholly inappropriate and generally ill-timed asking of “The Big Questions”. As it turns out, most people are not all that concerned about trying to understand the meaning of life. That seems to be a distant concern at best, way behind the foremost concern of buying lots of things one does not need with money one does not have. Sadly, as the global wealth pool shrinks down to a dismal bit of nothing I kind of doubt that there will be a run on philosophy futures, but I could be wrong...I am wrong at least several times a day, so I am practiced enough in it not to take it too personally.

Here and there along the way I would find individuals who would be of a similar bent to mine. That was like manna from heaven: “Oh, you THINK too? Can we be friends?”. And every so often I would encounter a subset of a subgroup of a subcultural subspecies who managed to coalesce for some scant amount of time to meet in dark clubs or darker parties and spout existential poetry or quotes from Alan Watts or Robert Anton Wilson at each other while keeping an eye out for the “normals” who would invariably try to crash the scene as they wanted to be amused by the “weirdos”, as if we were some exotic exhibit in the reptile house of the local zoo. If they talked about football teams or said the word “brewski”, it was time to scatter and scuttle away like the cultural cockroaches many of us felt like we were at times. (In fact, when I lived in Minneapolis I hung out for a couple years with a community of aging goths and glam-punks and we called ourselves by that very name. It was a badge of honor.)

Viroqua and its environs seems to be a place where outsiders gather, in a lot of ways held together by the common theme of revulsion and repugnance at a dominant culture that seems entirely bent on destroying the very planet that we all live on. The dark side of human nature that seems to be so manifest in our collective suicidal impulse to consume everything in our path appears to have a far less intense grip here. We seem to live in a vortex of sanity...if sanity is to be measured by having the trait of not wanting to die gasping in the effluence of a cesspool the size of an entire planet.

“Why the hell do you want to take care of the environment? Are you some kinda socialist or something?” That seems to be the constant refrain of a regrettably large segment of the population our little vortex is surrounded by, and as the peril of ecocide grows larger, that drone gets louder. “Drill, baby, drill!” “Fraking is eco-friendly!” “Eat your hydrogenated corn syrup and be happy, you stupid peasants!”

Whether we are drawn here by the politics, the metaphysics, or the need to not be packed into a rented high rise like so many larvae, there is a set of principals that we either arrive here with or that slowly insinuates itself into our ethical cores. At it’s center seems to be the notion that we are all connected, that what I do either indirectly or directly affects YOU and vice versa, so we should probably not do terrible things to each other or the environment in which we all live. It seems an obvious thing...common sense really, but it’s amazing how we have created an entire culture that seems to operate on a diametrically opposed set of notions.

One of the observations I have verbalized to various people I have met here is that I think it is entirely possible that we could build a Great Wall of the Kickapoo Valley around several counties and be able to survive in a sustainable way...which is not something that I can say for pretty much anywhere else I have lived...or even visited. Granted, I would miss things like oranges and bananas, but I almost think it could work. Unfortunately, the insanity of the dominant culture would still find ways of spewing its toxins and radiation over and under such a wall, but it’s only a thought experiment after all.

When I think of a similar wall being built around the city where I lived prior to July 1st, Chicago, I think of this tiny little community vegetable garden I volunteered at. It was a sweet little piece of land that grew enough to feed probably one entire human being for approximately three months. It was also a rare thing and a beautiful thing in its own right. The people who created it seemed to do it more for public education than productivity. Large segments of people living in that city seem to be oblivious to how food actually HAPPENS. I was lucky in that I had a rural Grandfather who took great glee in sending me out to his three acres of vegetables to work the fields when I would visit in the summers, otherwise I would probably be just as dumbfounded by the sight of a squash as more than a few of the student volunteers were when a local school would fling them our way.

Such a wall would not be a good thing for Chicago, not under the current management and the current paradigm, at any rate...nor would it really be a good thing for our community either: we have some lessons to give to the rest of the world, once the rest of the world has finally found the current model wanting. Hopefully that day will come sooner rather than later.

And wouldn’t that be just delightful? That a relatively small enclave of outsiders, people at odds with the common culture, could be the people that prove by example that one can have a life of abundance and joy by learning how to work WITH nature...and each other...as opposed to trying to DOMINATE it...and each other? Wouldn’t that be something?

Yeah, I know...dream on. There are worse dreams to have though, and it seems that there are many people with dreams here...dreams of a better future than the past we are leaving behind.

We lost one of the people who was able to take the stuff of dreams and fabricate them into his very own reality...and further, was able to teach people how to do such things as well. That is a great loss accompanied by a great sadness, but at least we still have the dreams, and the ideas, and the skills. Those remain, and so does the community that can take those dreams, ideas, and skills and build wonders out of them.

And I hope we continue to do so. I really want to annoy that nurse someday.

Brother Raccoon: Wisdom Teacher, Pest.

2012-01-11T16:47:00.000-06:00

Rushed, annoyed, and feeling justifiably insecure and irritable about an increasingly perplexing romantic relationship...that was how I felt on the morning that I encountered one of the most profoundly affecting animals that I have ever conversed with during my tenure in Tickville, Wisconsin.

I parked my van at the entrance by the highway and walked the 600 ft uphill to the yurt...as has been my habit since winter came slowly trudging into the Driftless Region, laconically throwing just enough snow down from the heavens to make driving up my eroding easement a white-knuckle experiment in terror each time I was foolish enough to attempt it. I likewise trudged, feeling my age, muttering various practice conversations with my soon-to-be-former girlfriend under my breath (doesn’t everyone do this?), until I became aware of a large dark lump about 100ft ahead on the road...a dark lump that gradually took the form of an adult raccoon as I approached it.

(This was not a mistake in perception or a hallucination or one of those “reality shifts” that I drone on about to anyone careless or indulgent enough to listen...this WAS an actual raccoon...however, the verbal dialog that follows between myself and the raccoon is a complete and utter lie.)

The lump stared at me as I approached, not at all moved by my presence. It shifted slightly on its haunches, as if to be better positioned for the inevitable conflict.

I let out a yell. Nothing.

I jingled my keys at it (it used to work on my cat). Nothing.

I picked up a small stone and threw it. The stone mysteriously fell exactly in front of the creature and bounced exactly over it.

I then did what any city person would do...I called my now-non-girlfriend (a country person) and then a local friend (a city-turned-country person). Their advice was indispensable: walk around it.

I made the attempt, walking into the leaf litter that I try to avoid as that is where the dreaded ticks call home.

“This could play out badly for you, human.”

“Huh?!? What?!? Did you just speak?”

“Of course I did...do you see anyone else out here?”

“But...but...you’re a raccoon.”

“Yes, I am...and you’re an idiot...but I am not currently holding that against you...yet.”

“Raccoons can’t speak!”

“That would appear to be a false assumption if you have any respect for empiricism, would it not? For the record, I am still holding on to my “idiot” classification for YOU, until such time as you prove otherwise.”

“Wait...are you some kind of shamanistic power animal or something like that?”

“No...I am a raccoon.”

I stood mute for a while, trying to come to terms with the situation. Here was a raccoon speaking in an actual voice, not some sort of telepathic communication. Its tiny little lips were moving. From time to time it leered at me. The latter behavior was doing nothing for my then challenged level of self-confidence.

“OK...um...this is not normal.”

“Really? And you are the sole arbiter of what is normal? YOU?!? When have you said, done, or even eaten anything that was normal recently, hmmmm?”

“I guess you have a point there.”

“Are we going to persist in this mindless small talk, human, or are you going to ask me a question?”

“A question? What? Is that what this is...I ask you three questions or something? Do I get turned into stone or sent to hell if I ask the wrong thing?”

The raccoon snorted derisively and then rolled his eyes, the effect of which was irresistibly cute despite the surreality of the situation. I then did exactly what I shouldn’t have...I involuntarily said: “awwwww.”

“I should eat your eyeballs for that, two-legs. Ask a question or I will relieve you of the majority of your face.”

“OK...um...are you a REAL raccoon?”

“Yes, at present.”

“So normally are you are something other than a raccoon?”

“Something other than a raccoon is a classification that includes the rest of the multi-verse in its entirety...you may want to be a bit more specific, or just drop this line of questioning as it is not going to be of any benefit to you whatsoever.”

“So you are here to be of a benefit to me?”

“Considering that your road does not have any berries or small fish or garbage on it, and that is normally what raccoons do for a living...that may be a reasonable assumption. There is obviously not much I can gain from this encounter except for a tasty piece of your ear.”

“I see”, I said, not really seeing, “so...do you represent something...something that is NOT a raccoon?”

I thought this might be pushing the obviously cantankerous animal a little too far. I worried about my various appendages, balling my musicians fingers into fists and casting a wry glance downwards towards my pants.

The raccoon yawned and stretched. I thought about what he could possibly symbolize. For the most part, things were reasonable in my life, I was working on new music, making lots of interesting friends, starting to put a business plan together...it was mostly good, but then there WAS the confusing and progressively dysfunctional relationship and a sense that I was repeating a lot of the same old patterns in a whole new environment.

That has always been a theme for me, to the point where at times I would see myself and everyone around me as little more than walking bags of patterns. Patterns formed from as early as the womb (and probably before) that repeat until you find yourself looking in the mirror at some middle-aged stranger and thinking “well...he LOOKS like a grownup...why doesn’t he actually FEEL like one...or act like one?”

The patterns repeat endlessly in our lives and, by extension, macrocosmically in the greater world: wars are the quarrels of lovers writ large. As below, so above.

As I mused, the raccoon stared intently at me, waiting for just the right moment when my lack of attentiveness to my immediate surroundings would cause me to jump just high enough to dump my entire travel mug of coffee on my pants when he let out a sudden scream.

Which he did. After which, he laughed so hard that I thought he would explode. The whole routine was almost cartoonish: holding his hairy little sides, rubbing his beady tearing eyes with his almost human-like paws.

“Oh God...oooooooh god! That was priceless...priceless! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.”

I stood there with coffee running down the bottoms of my pant legs onto my boots, staring at a giggling raccoon lying on his stomach beating his paws on the ground.

“Ok now...fine! Fine! I said FIIIIIIINE!”

It was the raccoons turn to be startled. He stopped laughing and gave me an appraising look: “well, look at that...little Johnny just grew a pair. Seems you actually have limits as to how much you’ll put up with. Nice to see. Maybe you should think about applying a bit of that to some other areas of your life that are bothering you right now.”

This time my surprise was caffeine-free, as this was the first marginally non-caustic comment the raccoon had made thus far. It almost sounded like a compliment...and advice.

That brief respite from having my dignity assaulted was abruptly terminated when he then said “alright, look you putz...yes, I DO represent something...quite a few things. On one level, I represent someone who has a stupid job talking to stupid humans about their stupid issues and their stupid lives that are a mess because of all those stupid issues. Once in a great while I get a moment of joy like I just had...and you ruined it for me!”

He bared his fangs and advanced towards me, clearly angry. Being a stupid human, I asked a stupid question:

“Um...are you dangerous?” I looked around for a tree branch or something to hurl.

He stopped in his tracks and gave me a look that was not dissimilar to the same look I had one time when I had forgotten about a bag of apples for six months in the vegetable drawer of the refrigerator in the condo in Chicago I had recently moved out of.

“Idiot, idiot, idiot...of course I’m dangerous...I’m a wild animal, you stupid toad. I could lunge at you and give some plastic surgeon a couple months of future job security...or not. I COULD do nothing. You have a place you want to go and I am an unpredictable factor. I am clearly in the way and you have to overcome me or get around me. You have a road to travel and goals you want to achieve and you have to contend with ME. You know what I AM, you dense little man? I am the baggage of your past, the trials of your present, and the potential threats of your future. I am the uncertainty that dogs your every decision and the possibility that each new venture may go poorly. I am the love that isn’t working that you can’t let go of, the angry words spoken to people you cherished that you can never take back, and every hurtful memory burned into your brain that impedes your ability to make a firm conclusion and stick with it, because there were times when you DID make a decision in your past that made you fall right on your mostly-hairless monkey face and you are terrified of doing it again.”

I stood there mute for a while, taking this all in. Given my ability to repeat the same mistakes ad infinitum, it didn’t surprise me that the latest incarnation of the voice of Universe was a talking raccoon...the lessons didn’t seem to be sinking in in any conventional way...like actually LEARNING them or anything. I looked at my present life and saw the parts of it that were working and those that were not and what I should give a chance to grow and flourish and what was little more than a poison weed sucking away at my vitality. I thought about the people in my life and who was showing me love and support and who was emphatically not. I became increasingly cognizant of the areas of my world where I would “settle” for a less than positive set of circumstances and just accept behavior that was unacceptable.

I also became cognizant that the raccoon was twiddling his thumbs in an exaggerated display of comical boredom as I dithered.

“Um...so is that it? You’re just a representation of me being in my own way? I should just move forward on my path and take the risks and eliminate the negative relationships and toxic people?”

“You’ve got it. Congratulations...you are now slightly less stupid than you look.”

He smiled wanly at me, showing his teeth, which now appeared smaller than I first had observed.

“Proceed with your life, make mistakes, and be happy.”

“Be happy? Why?”

“Because I could have been a badger.”

To Find Dante's Inferno, Turn Left at Walden.

2012-01-04T14:19:00.001-06:00

Every so often, when there is a rare break in the endless parade of vicissitudes that passes for life in our wildly careening culture, that part of my brain still capable of some level of introspection amidst the ADD haze coughs up a barrage of questions like a three-pack a day smoker on a stair-master. Questions of no small personal import like: "What is my life's great purpose, and am I fulfilling it?", "Have I lived up to my own expectations?", and "Why did I just spend so much money on toilet paper, canned food, and small bottles of propane?"

And, of course: "How did I end up HERE, of all places?"

After almost six months of living full time in the Driftless region, I have found myself asking that last one almost constantly of late, it's become like a mantra...or some sort of Zen koan lightly dipped in a tasty shell of bewilderment. Crunchy confusion flavor with small bits of pathos mixed in.

(Of course the notion of "ending up" is kind of a misguided one, as we all "end up" in something roughly analogous to a rectangular box when all is said and done, but how we get there is what makes life interesting, I suppose.)

In the spring of 2009 I purchased a 3-acre parcel of woodland as a place that I could go if life in the city became untenable. Various factors of a personal nature that could populate a novelette made me decide in favor of moving out here ahead of that point in time, but the fundamental basis was where I saw the Big Scary World headed, independent of my tiny ant-like private concerns. I've always been reasonably adept at reading the writing on the wall when I'm not actively beating my head against it, and the writing seemed to be getting much more urgent and full of exclamation points over the past few years. Whoever is in charge of said writing seemed to have discovered meth and fluorescent spray paint.

Since my mid-teens, when I have not been making music or pondering the ramifications of various things that go "bump in the night", I have been researching trends in the arena of geopolitics, global economics, and resource and population issues. So roughly three long decades of watching the world be the world, basically.

Increasingly over the years, my maladaptive tendency towards catastrophic thinking has been mirrored in the macro-world to the point where the dour fantasy is becoming reality and genuine catastrophe is knocking at the door of our incredibly interdependent and brittle civilization, asking to borrow a cup of sugar while covertly casing the place. Some residual shred of my self-preservation instinct that had not yet drowned in lassitude and fatalism told me that I should respond to that knock by running away. I am generally a pretty brave person, but when the hand that knocks on the door is roughly the size of a global empire in an early stage of implosion, it's best to find a safe place high in a tree or deep underground when that particular giant falls. Further, to live an off-grid life where you contribute FAR less to a global system that is parasitically eating its host planet has some serious ethical appeal...and I still have those burdensome things...those ETHICS. No idea how I've hung onto them for so long but they are still there, like a persistent rash. They generally don't make for an easy journey, but I can go to my grave knowing that I'm not a total ass...only that I've ACTED like one now and again.

So I took up residence in my tiny little yurt on one of the hottest days of the year, finding that the trade off for leaving the city and it's amenities was too be directly confronted with nature...who is completely indifferent to our personal travails, though she be construed as kind and surly in turn in the minds of poets.

I also left the direct physical dangers of the city, though my professional work is often tangential to diminishing the frequency and severity of said dangers.

But I found new ones out here.

In the city, crime is impersonal, and I find that relatively easy to cope with. I grew up in an atmosphere of violence...Detroit is not exactly bucolic...and grew a set of defenses perfectly adapted to dealing with those risks. I even made a career out of it in recent years. That career will probably continue, but the change of venue merits a serious change of approach.

Someone here I have become close to told me a while back that "out here in the country it's the people who know you that will hurt you"...or words to the effect: all of that repetitive beating of my head has rendered me slightly obtuse. She has an encyclopaediac knowledge of local tragedy: "This one got mangled in a combine, that one drank himself to death, and that one died under the hooves of a jealous bull". The gallows humor response to much of this type of thing is one that any Detroiter knows well. Death is death, and whether it is that of a hog or a random stranger who once sat next to you on a bus, it is something that both the urban and rural poor have a keen understanding of. Detroiters laugh it off, though the sound of that laughter is closely related to the sound of whistling past the graveyard.

That is not where the stories end though, I have heard far more detailed ones, and some of them are terrible in ways that I had not imagined during my initial forays out here. For the longest time all I heard were the stories of the owls and coyotes. Predators both, but hardly malevolent in their predation. Not like some of the other predators around us, not at all...and out here, some of them live just down the street from those they have preyed upon.

As I have listened to some of these more detailed stories I have found that my despair at the vagaries of our nature as a species has reached new depths, but my admiration for some of the people who made it through hell to tell me their stories followed an equally extreme countertrend.

There is a level of perversity and cruelty in some of the antagonists of these stories that would make the merely average sociopath turn green with envy. There were times that the impact of what I was told was so strong that all I could do was cry. It was the only possible response to hearing stories of abuse so horrific without actively seeking out the perpetrators and acting upon my darker impulses. That was only MY reaction though: often the emotions of those telling the stories are buried under so many scars that their own emotional well ran dry years ago...and perhaps the removal of the scars and the subsequent release of all that pent up hurt is far less preferable than just spending the rest of ones life numb, either through additives or the healing power of ennui.

As analytical as I come across at times, I am an emotion-based life form. I feel. I feel a lot. It's just who I am. I think it has made me a stronger person...at the very least I've gotten some good songs out of it. However, one wishes to be analytical when the wounds of the world become so numerous that they outnumber the intact parts, and that is exactly when analysis fails and you are left with tears and rage at the injustice of man's inhumanity to man...or more likely to women, or children, or animals...they are the softer targets of the underdeveloped and brutal. And you wish to punish the guilty...or at least separate them from the far less guilty...and I say that because because the sliding scale of culpability has a place for each and every one of us, but some of us are merely guilty of being standoffish to an overly chatty waitress every once in a while.

When I was young I dreamed of living in a gentle world where people who were not actively loving each other would express benign neutrality at the very worst. Obviously, this world is not that one and I have had to get used to that fact, and to grow thick armor plating like some unknown species of mega-fauna that the fossil record is far too embarrassed to allow to be unearthed. It allowed me to live through Detroit and Minneapolis and Providence and Chicago...but perhaps not the verdant green of the Driftless region, because being damaged by those who should care most for you is something that corrodes you from within...it's the difference between cancer and a random lightning strike...and the armor does nothing, it's just fighting the last war with the only weapons you have.

And it's all so unnecessary, isn't it? So much of the damage that we do is just based on animal fear that we could so easily overcome if we took the time to actually TALK each other through it, but that takes revealing ourselves, and that makes us vulnerable, which puts us in the line of fire of all the other people who are terrified of revealing themselves. So we choose to acrimoniously chitter away in the trees like feces-flinging monkeys while hypocritically decrying the wars of the elite as we compete, compete, compete on levels we are not even aware of.

It is our present, and our past, and it will probably be our future...and as such, we will probably not have much of one. That is the general trend. Most of our Great Worldly Problems are simple extensions of the less charitable aspects of our shared human nature...consciously modify the way we channel our nature in the world of manifest form, and we may be able to alter some outcomes here and there. Possibly.

But that part is hard...and humans hate doing that which is hard when there are other options.

Despite this, I do cling to a naive little hope that places like this psychic nexus of the Driftless region that so many of us have been drawn to can be places of deep healing. A few months ago in a rare moment of clarity I announced to some of my new friends here that I thought the Kickapoo Valley was the Land of Wounded Healers: a place where people can reach out to each other and drop the defenses that keep us from being truly well. I have met so many beautiful souls here...people of great intelligence and insight and wisdom, many of whom kept those qualities alive in themselves through some of the worst treatment imaginable, and that gives me hope in a world increasingly devoid of such. So we'll see.

Be good to each other. Help each other. May empathy prevail.

Off-Grid John-Department of Not Freezing-Internal Winterizing REDO!!!

2011-12-09T10:58:00.000-06:00

Off-Grid John-Department of Not Starving-Cheap Root Cellar Experiment

2011-11-17T11:48:00.002-06:00

Off-Grid John-Department of Not Starving-Woodstove Dehydration Follow-up 1

2011-11-16T13:54:00.002-06:00

Off-Grid John-Department of Not Starving-Woodstove Dehydration

2011-10-31T10:32:00.002-05:00

Off-Grid John-Department of Not Freezing-Woodstove Modifications

2011-10-24T15:32:00.000-05:00

Off-Grid John-Department of Not Freezing-Internal Winterizing

2011-10-17T13:26:00.002-05:00

Looks like THIS one took...

The Ground: a new song by John Ludi

2011-10-14T07:47:00.000-05:00

My latest...pretty happy with it. One of these days I'll make a real video for it:

Off-Grid John: October Update, the Text Version.

2011-10-11T10:55:00.000-05:00

Sooooo...

It's been a while since I last posted anything on here, so I thought I'd post a brief bit to explain why.

It's not because of a lack of anything to post...I've actually been pretty busy: a brief dalliance with working with other musicians again (bad idea, need to keep flying solo musically), lots of winter prep projects (good idea, don't want to die just yet...life is too interesting right now), making many new friends in the area and doing a certain amount of volunteer work (another good idea), and a personal life that no longer is quite so tundra-like (seems like a good idea so far).

The issues are largely technical: my Droid phone is a pain to work on and the videos that I have been making take FOREVER to upload from the WiFi hotspots available. I recently posted several videos showing my Winterizing attempts in the yurt on Facebook. They were fairly amusing and had their moments, but when I edited them together they ended up being around twenty minutes long and would have taken 356 minutes to upload to YouTube. So it looks like I will have to err on the side of brevity for my future videos, can most of the jocularity and humorous excess, and get to the down and dirty technical facts of what I'm doing...in order to keep providing the various tips and tricks I am coming up with to make my time in the woods a survivable one.

So I have a LOT more projects I have been engaged in that I want to share, but I'm going to have to learn to talk faster and be less personal in the vids and leave such things to this blog and such. I was hoping that I could do that in video form as I really like to use the whole array of non-verbal communication to get my various points across in a palatable and friendly way, but we must accept the constraints of our environment after all...which is what being in an off-grid situation MEANS: working within your limits and being creative with what you have.

Off-Grid John: Department of Power-My Pet Solar Setup.

2011-09-13T11:58:00.000-05:00

A boy and his wood.

2011-09-08T10:14:00.002-05:00

More Off-Grid John Vids

2011-08-15T09:39:00.000-05:00

These are on my way of treating water at my location and my selection of a yurt as a dwelling. The former named is probably the most universally useful and I highly recommend watching it despite the fact that the lighting makes me look kind of creepy.

Off-Grid John: Monthly Update #1 July 2011

2011-08-11T09:18:00.000-05:00

Off-Grid John: The Introduction Video.

2011-07-28T11:21:00.000-05:00

This is the introductory video to the series I am slowly but surely putting together. It gives a general overview of what I am attempting to do and why I'm attempting to do it.

Off-Grid John: Foraging and Spiders.

2011-07-09T15:25:00.000-05:00

A couple new little videos from Tickville:

Some preliminary Off-Grid John videos.

2011-06-26T16:58:00.000-05:00

As some of you know, I have decided to move to the off-grid location very shortly. This is both for personal, artistic, ethical and situational reasons (meaning concerns about the economy, etc). I plan on documenting a lot of my what I do there on this blog and on videos that will end up on my YouTube channel. I am doing this because I am a vain little glory pig and a publicity whore...

(ahem)

What I meant to say was that I am going to document my trials and tribulations and joys so those of you who are interested in the Voluntary Simplicity lifestyle can see how a guy who has spent most of his life in the concrete jungle copes with living in the woods in a 200sqft yurt with no plumbing, electrical hookup, or gas or electric heat. I think this is a worthwhile project as I suspect that this is a lifestyle that may become one that people may be living in the near future when they have no choice in the matter...the choice may be made for them by circumstance...so the more we can learn NOW, the better off we'll be.

I have already shot a few videos that I am putting up here. Two are just of a couple comical encounters with birds and one is a video about foraging. I have a couple more of a tree-felling and a potato storage experiment that I have yet to edit, and then I will be shooting all kinds of new videos!

MUCH more to come...and MUCH more of a pragmatic and hopefully useful nature.

More tunes on the John Ludi YouTube Channel

2011-06-21T20:47:00.000-05:00

Before I end up in the woods full time, I wanted to put as many of my tunes up on YouTube as possible. I'm starting with Hell's Laughter and Heaven's Ache, but I should eventually have the 7 current albums and one or two that I have had sitting around in "storage".

A brief update.

2011-06-04T07:54:00.000-05:00

Just to let people know that I am going through some very significant changes in my life and things may be rather sporadic in the near term, but that I will be working on more music and other projects in the near future.

One of those projects may be an entirely new blog devoted to the aforementioned changes and how I deal with them, as I think that such a project would be greatly useful to other people who will increasingly feel the need to make such changes in their own lives.

John Ludi at Work: One Way Train, Part 2.

2011-05-24T07:57:00.000-05:00

The song about 1/2 of the way through it's development, otherwise me just being long-winded and acting silly...it's what I do.

Cheap Solar Cooker

2011-05-20T16:19:00.000-05:00

Just what it says...a cheap solar cooker you can make for a few bucks.

Pluto Radio

2011-05-12T07:55:00.000-05:00

It suddenly occured to me that I have not represented Pluto Radio on this here blog yet...so here it is:

http://plutoradio.com/

This is an online radio station started by an old friend of mine that is in the classic free form radio style that used to make radio worth listening to back in the 60's through 80's...and what's more, they also are one of the few online radio stations that plays my own music on a pretty regular basis AND the ONLY station where you will here me functioning as a DJ. The majority of the music you here on there is from independent bands and artists, many of whom display a serious degree of talent.

So tune in and give it a listen...you never know what you'll hear on there...it's pretty much all over the map, as life should be.

Weekly News Update-05/11/2011

2011-05-11T15:22:00.000-05:00

A busy week it's been and is going to be. So here's some stuff I've been following (I have not been keeping tabs of where I got these, so sorry if I've slighted anyone):

ECONOMICS:

http://blogs.wsj.com/brussels/2011/05/09/luxembourg-lies-on-secret-meeting/

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/how-cbot-comex-and-cftc-coordinated-break-last-silver-price-surge

http://detnews.com/article/20110510/AUTO01/105100408/Former-GM-execs-sue-for-retirement-benefits

http://www.businessinsider.com/irish-bombshell-government-raids-private-pensions-to-pay-for-jobs-program-2011-5

ENVIRONMENT:

http://www.pnj.com/article/20110508/NEWS01/105080328/Sick-fish-Gulf-alarming-scientists?odyssey=tab|topnews|img|FRONTPAGE

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/05/09/how-the-mississippi-river-levees-could-fail/?hpt=T2

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13338174

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703864204576317441172666186.html?mod=WSJ_newsreel_world

POLITICS AS USUAL:

http://www.truth-out.org/koch-brother-buys-right-interfere-faculty-hiring-florida-state-university/1305128548

COLLAPSE:

http://detroit.cbslocal.com/2011/05/10/crack-pipes-often-disguised-as-novelty-items-at-stores/

OUR RADIOACTIVE PLANET:

http://www.naturalnews.com/032303_tritium_nuclear_power_plant.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/vivian-norris-de-montaigu/deadly-silence-on-fukushi_b_859241.html

http://www.flickr.com/photos/xtcbz/sets/72157626687253144/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dxbm7iJTT8U&feature=player_embedded

INTERESTING DISCOURSE:

http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2011/03/07/this-time-we’re-taking-the-whole-planet-with-us-by-chris-hedges/

http://billhicksisdead.blogspot.com/2011/05/peak-exploration-apollo-program-and.html

PARANOIA:

Weekly News Updates-05-03-2011

2011-05-03T06:37:00.003-05:00

I'm not going to go on a rant about the whole Bin Laden bit...mainly because I really don't have a side to argue from. I have been both amused and disappointed by two distinct reactions to the news of the alleged raid:

1-This was a complete sham and a massive PR stunt and if you believe it was for real you are a complete and utter rube and you probably also believe in the tooth fairy...and you suck!

2-This was the pure and unvarnished truth and if you don't believe it you are a crazy conspiracy nut and you believe Elvis crashed at Roswell...and you suck!

Very sad. Is there no room for REASONED skepticism anymore? The government has pulled the wool over our eyes so often that I'm surprised we have not run out of sheep...but they don't lie about EVERYTHING. Just MOSTLY everything.

Like everything else filtered through the funhouse-mirror world of the Internet, before the news was a millisecond old the opinion-factory of the virtual world started spinning like a billion spiders on meth, with only ONE thing in common between the lot of them: practically EVERY purveyor of an angle on this event was ABSOLUTELY SURE they were right and that anyone who didn't buy their worldview 100% was wrong. Wrong and a gullible sheep ripe for a shearing by The Elites, or wrong and an unpatriotic monster who should be rounded up and gassed to make the planet safe for Democracy. The insensitivity and vitriol was breathtaking.

And there is one thing that they also have in common: none of them KNOW shit about the true FACTS of the subject. I know I don't. I was not there. If indeed there WAS a "there". I personally have my doubts...serious doubts...but that's ALL they are...I lack facts...and for some strange reason I seem to be able to live with this.

But since I also doubt the foundational existence of physical reality as the ultimate base of existence overall, doubt is part and parcel of my every worldly observation...and increasingly I find myself very much alone in that regard. At a time when I had wished for some sort of an expansion of a multi-layered approach to thinking and perception in the human species, some sort of awakening consciousness that can function in a non-linear mode, even the smart people are turning into narrow-minded little hermit crabs scrabbling around in the flux of the multiverse looking for just the right confining little shell to wedge themselves into.

And I find myself increasingly of the opinion that I do not belong on this planet.

Anyway...here's a start on this week's accumulation...check back for updates throughout the week:

ECONOMICS:

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/a-dollar-collapse-no-way-the-u-s-dollar-rocks-propaganda

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-gets-c-credit-rating-lower-than-mexico-2011-04-28

http://www.oftwominds.com/blogmay11/managed-perception5-11.html

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/and-scene-cme-hikes-silver-margin-third-time-7-days-raises-initial-maintenance-margins-12

(Where PMs go tells you more about the fate of the dollar then most other indicators...ALL currencies are now fiat currencies. When you see PMs rise the way they have, despite various efforts to suppress them, you know the game is afoot.)

ENVIRONMENT:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42873438/ns/weather/

(h/t to Sue)

POLITICS AS USUAL:

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/05/blackwaters-new-ethics-chief-john-ashcroft/

(h/t to Spin)

COLLAPSE:

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2011/0429/1224295673147.html

OUR RADIOACTIVE PLANET:

http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2011/04/government-adviser-quits-post-to.html?ref=hp

http://www.nuclearfreeplanet.org/where-is-all-that-fukushima-radiation-going-and-why-does-it-matter.html

http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/05/89047.html

INTERESTING DISCOURSE:

http://guymcpherson.com/2011/05/this-must-be-a-nightmare/

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/guest-post-circus-clowns-and-sideshow-freaks

http://kunstler.com/blog/2011/05/lying-is-the-new-normal.html

PARANOIA:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/04/CIPAV_Post

A brief note on moral ambiguity.

2011-05-02T10:58:00.001-05:00

I posted this on one of my favorite forums, but I thought I'd put it up here too. I was responding to a spirited back-and-forth regarding the Bin Laden issue. Some people believe what we were presented with last night and some emphatically don't. As for myself, the very manner and timing of the presentation itself aroused my suspicions...as did the news this morning that the body was already disposed of...but do I know one way or the other? Nope.

I do feel that the reasons why this event could be used as a pretext for any number of things from any number of sectors are sadly obvious:

"The war machine is one of the lynchpins of our current economy (disgustingly enough)...and just like anything else in our growth-driven economic model, there have to be new sources of expansion to keep that machine going. The more enemies we make, the more we can spend on the arms industry, the more we bolster the overall economy and keep utter collapse at bay.

It's probably one of the most horrific catch-22s we have ever created. It's too bad we didn't devote that huge slice of our economic pie to alternative energy, building schools, and growing organic produce...but here we are. The amount of people employed directly and indirectly in that industry is staggeringly huge and that pin can't be pulled without imploding the whole system.

Sad and sick, isn't it? That which keeps us alive does so by killing people.

We are exactly where Eisenhower warned us we would be headed.

Imagine being infected by a parasite that eventually grows large enough to replace several of the vital organs you require to live. Imagine also that the ultimate fate you await is that that parasite will eventually become so large that it's intake of nutrients will starve you as the host.

What do you do?

And it's the same thing with the TBTF banks: sure they are amoral bastards, a lot of them, but at the same time their sudden absence would tank our economy. And because they have a need to constantly expand, we let them play the games that will ultimately kill our economy anyway.

Bombs and banks: can't live WITH 'em...can't live without 'em.

We are in a global catch-22 and the only way out is down.

Happy birthday."

Weekly News Updates-04/25/2011

2011-04-25T10:16:00.009-05:00

When I have time, I will be trying to put up the various news items and blog posts by others that I want to pass on, on a weekly basis (hopefully on Mondays). Currently my main concern is still the Japanese situation, and the MSM has done with THAT issue what they usually do with major news events: BIG HEADLINES...then slow the news down to a trickle and dazzle us with trivia like royal weddings and Charlie Sheen...but it is still in play and could get MUCH uglier.

But other things at play in the world are the skyrocketing commodity prices, a looming global food shortage, the death of the dollar as a reserve currency (read: hyperinflation STRONG possibility), and a plethora of other issues, each of which would be greatly troubling, but combined are a part of the Death by a Thousand Cuts that will pretty much be the end of our civilization. One can also add to the level of insanity by the response of our leadership to the nuclear crisis: let's build more nuke plants! (Which seems to be the same response they have to the BP calamity: it didn't work the last time...let's do more of it!) Are they evil, stupid, barking mad or a quality blend of all three of those flavors? Well, it probably doesn't matter if the end result is all the same...

On the MUCH brighter side, I got together with 3 of my old bandmates from the group Soft War http://softwartheband.com/ for a trip down memory lane that was such a positive experience that we may be working together again in the near future. I've been pretty much a solo recording artist (with the occasional acoustic show) for the past 15 or so years, so playing in a full band contest was incredibly gratifying...especially when playing with people I both like and admire AND who have such a high degree of musical aptitude that I never have to worry about much of anything.

Anyway...here's a bunch of stuff to make you happy (which I will be updating over the course of this week).

Economics:

http://www.dailyfx.com/forex/market_alert/2011/04/27/FOMC_US_Dollar_Loses.html

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/guest-post-economic-abyss

http://kunstler.com/blog/2011/04/the-banana-peel-of-destiny.html

http://www.oftwominds.com/blogapril11/oil-USD4-11.html

(King World News has GREAT audio interviews that you can download as MP3s...I recommend that you do so as I think Eric King and his guests probably have the best bead on things of any of the Alternative Economics shows out there)

http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2011/4/20_James_Turk_-_We_Live_on_the_Edge_of_Chaos,_Dollar_to_Plummet.html

http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2011/4/20_Embry_-_JP_Morgan_Massive_Short_Position_Causing_Silver_Spike.html

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/gold-opens-1520-silver-over-50-everywhere-comes-few-more-minutes

(I'm not a huge PM investor...I have SOME, but not piles of the stuff...I prefer preps, ammo, and heirloom seeds...but I have been gobsmacked by how fast and how far silver has broken out...my net worth keeps climbing while I sit back and twiddle my thumbs. Considering that the rise in PMs is symptomatic of a collapse of the global economic system, I'm not too thrilled about it though.)

http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2011/04/22/banks-spending-2011/

(Dodd/Frank was a lameass bill, but it's amusing how even THAT slap on the wrist is getting pushback.)

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/pimcos-observations-us-reaches-keynesian-endpoint-qe2-ponzi-scheme-nothing-profit-illusion

Japan:

http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/2011/04/april-20-2011-fukushima-review-of-ines.html

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2011/04/201142317359479927.html

Politics as Usual:

http://www.alternet.org/story/150724/wikileaks:_shocking_revelations_in_guantanamo_files?akid=6881.200602.L60KRs&rd=1&t=5

http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2011/04/27/scotus-nukes-consumers/

(H/T to Joan and Satori)

Environment:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/Wakening_the_Kraken.html

(Hat tip to Tim/Jon/Sue on FB.)

http://www.fastcompany.com/1749695/monsanto-now-allowed-to-police-itself

(Hat tip to Syn.)

Insightful Commentary:

http://guymcpherson.com/2011/04/partial-understanding-on-planet-easter-island/

Primitive ritualistic behavior observed in the activities of homicidal mutant chimpanzee species (the Royal Wedding):

http://www.boingboing.net/2011/04/26/tom-the-dancing-bug-46.html

(Hat tip to Scott)

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/apr/25/royal-wedding-bells-fall-on-deaf-ears/?page=1

MUCH more to come...looks like a heavy news week (which always seems to happen when I travel, even just overnight.)

Big List of Japanese Nuclear News Update Sources

2011-03-31T08:31:00.003-05:00

Or BLJNNUS for short. Which is only an actual word on my home planet. It is our word for "three-eye flying snail"...which is not a species native to Earth, but after a few decades of radiation, it might be.

I am going to be updating this list as I find new sources...and if YOU know of any sources, please recommend them to me in a comment here or on Facebook or somewhere or other.

(UPDATED LIST AS OF 4-14-2011)

http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html

http://enenews.com/

http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/japan_nuclear_crisis/

http://www.beyondnuclear.org/

http://atomicpowerreview.blogspot.com/

http://nei.cachefly.net/newsandevents/information-on-the-japanese-earthquake-and-reactors-in-that-region/

http://www9.nhk.or.jp/kabun-blog/500/

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/index.html

http://www.idealist.ws/

http://fairewinds.com/multimedia

I should note that finding UNBIASED sources of raw spin-free news about ANYTHING is impossible these days...everyone is in bed with SOMEONE, it seems...so try to use your own good judgement (if you have any...and if you do, please send some to me as I ran out a few years ago).

At my primary forum home (for all things doom-related) we have been toiling away posting updates on the situation. I am posting a link to the beginning of the thread:

http://forums.silentcountry.com/forums/showthread.php?4799-Japan-Nuclear-Disaster-Updates-(post-3-21)

THIS thing here is not a news source, but a nifty little tool for checking out wind patterns/radioactivity in air currents.

http://www.weatheronline.co.uk/weather/news/fukushima?LANG=en&VAR=nilujapan131&HH=33

REAL-TIME RADIATION MAPS/GRAPHS/FEEDS. Not sure of the accuracy of all of them, use your best judgement (trust no one):

http://radiationnetwork.com/
http://japan.failedrobot.com/
http://community.pachube.com/node/611#3d
http://www.blackcatsystems.com/RadMap/map.html
https://www.naz.ch/de/aktuell/tagesmittelwerte.shtml
http://mu.jklmnop.net/japan/
http://odlinfo.bfs.de/
http://eurdep.jrc.ec.europa.eu/Basic/Pages/Public/Home/Default.aspx
http://twitter.com/TehachapiClicky

Fun little radiation dose chart that you can have tattooed on your chest:

http://xkcd.com/radiation/

THIS one is an interesting little tool (but then people have said the same thing about me):

http://www.targetmap.com/viewer.aspx?reportId=4870

Urbane Homestudding TM

2011-02-20T18:33:00.003-06:00

is MINE bitches!!!

Do you hear me?!?

Also, Urban Homewreaking, Ermine Homeschooling, and Unctious Bedwetting...so everyone out there better keep their f**king hands off of these or you will hear from my lawyers, you scum-sucking bastards!!!

http://www.alternet.org/food/149977/can_you_trademark_urban_homesteading

Unbelievable.

John Ludi at Work: One Way Train, Part 1.

2011-02-17T22:41:00.000-06:00

This is the first in a series of 3 videos that will show how the artistic process works in my particular little brain. It starts by having a basic structure to work around and build upon, which can be nothing more that a simple drum part or bass/guitar/keyboard line...but in this case is one of my older tunes that I like to play around with as it always presents a nice canvas to splatter odd ideas over.

Oh yes...this song has nothing to do with trains...it's actually about hypocrisy, world-weariness, and suicidal ideation...but "one way train" flowed better than "one way rickshaw" or "one way dirigible"...even though the whole "train" motif is disgustingly overused. There should be a law.

One of the saddest things I've read recently.

2011-02-15T18:31:00.000-06:00

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/disillusioned-99er-shares-his-disappointment-american-dream

Not much of a comment I can, or really should, make about this...except to say that this is only the beginning, and that this poor sad, sick man at the end of his rope is someone we are going to get to know very well, very soon...in fact, some of us may become him.

I wish peace upon Mark...and I wish the blackest of hells upon the suited monsters who helped make his life what it was...and I hope they too feel pain before they too fall.

Two Excellent Documentaries

2011-02-05T18:46:00.000-06:00

For your troubled viewing pleasure:

http://www.ethosthemovie.com

http://www.isuma.tv/inuit-knowledge-and-climate-change

I recommend them highly!

Clueless in Davos.

2011-01-31T10:32:00.001-06:00

Ladies and gentlemen, meet one of the most powerful people on the planet:

http://networkedblogs.com/dGVwI

From the reports that I have read out of Davos and from watching interviews like these, it is becoming ever clearer to me that the world of the rich and powerful is becoming increasingly detached from the world the rest of us live in. The almost-boundless optimism of this man leaves me stunned.

Either Jamie is a great actor, or he is an incredibly two-dimensional thinker and completely isolated from anything resembling a larger view of reality outside of the world of international banking and high finance.

I think it's the latter, and I think people like this are in for a big surprise.

What the hell did I just make? Volume 1, Number 1.

2011-01-26T13:25:00.001-06:00

When I am not cowering in my bunker waiting for the entire planet to explode (or recording songs about waiting for the entire world to explode) , I actually have a few hobbies, one of the being cooking.

I am not one for following recipes, for the most part. There are times when I may crack open a cookbook for something specific, but by and large my cooking is almost pure improvisation. Usually what it amounts to is looking in the fridge and in the pantry and saying "hmmm...6 totally unrelated items that are past their expiration date...what would they all taste like together?"

Now this may SOUND kind of appalling, but for the most part what comes out of this process tends to taste OK, and has not killed any of the brave souls who have ever sampled my creations.

I have decided to add some of my more successful creations to this here blog...just for the hell of it. There may be other vegetarian cooks who could play around with some of these ideas and not die in an ER somewhere.

Also, it may be fun for people who read these recipes (especially the more exotic ones) to have a go at telling me that what I came up with purely at random actually closely resembles a real dish made by real chefs.

Stranger things HAVE happened.

So this is my first documentation of something I have been doing since I was 8 years old (when my drunk single parent decided I was old enough to feed myself).

This is vaguely like an Indian dish (as I love Indian food with a passion)...but WHAT Indian dish is beyond me:

Here's what it looks like:

And here are the ingredients:

1 1/2 cups water
2 Tablespoons oil
1/2 Tablespoon salt
1/2 Teaspoon turmeric
1/2 Teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/4 Teaspoon fenugreek powder
1 Teaspoon cumin powder
1 Teaspoon coriander powder
1/4 Teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 cup (homemade) paneer
1/2 cup milk
1 egg
1 1/2 cups chopped okra
1/2 cup lamb's quarters (it's like spinach)

I blended all the spices with the water and oil, boiled it for a couple minutes, turned it to medium and added the okra and lamb's quarters (I had boiled and frozen them prior, so I just need to thaw them in the liquid).

Once the veggies were thawed, I decided to add the milk and the paneer...and just for the hell of it I scrambled an egg and spread it throughout the mixture, like one would with egg drop soup.

This I let simmer covered for a few minutes and then let it sit until it was eating temperature.

The results? Holy crap, it was tasty! I wish I had made a lot more of it. It's very nice served on top of a slice of naan (also homemade).

So what the hell did I just make?

Financial Meltdown Was 'Avoidable

2011-01-26T12:36:00.000-06:00

File under: "oh, really?"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/25/financial-meltdown-was-av_n_813989.html

It may be somewhere in the report, but the article does not mention that, in addition to complacency and ineptitude, this was also driven by brazen, insane, foam-at-the-mouth, drool-on-your-pants GREED...as well as by corruption, cronyism, and a system that offers an open revolving door between TBTF banks, the Fed, the government, and the agencies that are supposed to regulate such behaviors.

No...kinda doubt that will make the report...they probably just want to say that the players made a widdle boo-boo and bwoke your widdle economy and they feel reeeeealy bad about it and they promise not to do it again.

Keep an eye on the Middle East.

2011-01-25T10:23:00.001-06:00

The combined activities in Tunisia and Lebanon are both things that should concern anyone who drives a car and eats food.

Those of you who don't do either should just ignore this:

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/01/201112535328227823.html

http://www.nowlebanon.com/NewsArticleDetails.aspx?ID=233871

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/rioting-breaks-out-egypt

This could escalate rapidly. You really don't want it to.

(It's never too late to buy preps...until it is.)

Edited to add:

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/01/20111251711053608.html

The Detroit you don't see.

2011-01-23T07:17:00.000-06:00

A friend of mine turned me on to this little photo essay (thanks Kathi). Lots of people (myself included) denigrate Detroit for being an example of how NOT to run a city, and for having allowed a once thriving and vital place to become a cold, dead ghetto...all of which IS true and I'd never live there again, but there are OTHER aspects to the city that you don't see. These aspects are like the the little rodents scurrying amongst the feet of the dinosaurs: flowers amongst the ruins.

http://www.yesmagazine.org/peace-justice/detroit-photo-essay

One of the things I miss about Detroit is the intense creativity and individualistic inventiveness of that 1% of the population there that is still capable of that thing we used to call "independent thinking". We don't seem to have a whole lot of that here in Chicago: it's a very conformist city...a conformity born of a dichotomy of unthinking comfort and convenience on the one hand, and mind-crushing anonymous poverty on the other.

My prediction about the two cities is this: unless there ARE massive earth changes that alter the planet in ways that cannot be predicted, 50 years from now Detroit will be a paradise for independent gardeners and farmers, whereas Chicago will largely be a ruin...and probably an irradiated one if things get as out of hand as I fear they will.

The people in Detroit who are trying to make a difference are the weeds growing through the cracks, and they face opposition from above in the shape of a dying auto industry that still wants to maintain an economic stranglehold despite their largely moribund nature (working hand in glove with corrupt politicians who would have made Nero and Caligula turn green with envy), and from below in the form of a criminalized underclass who have long abandoned any hope for the future...

but those weeds do keep growing, don't they? Can't stop the weeds.

A Promise is a Promise...unless a government or a corporation makes it!

2011-01-21T11:10:00.000-06:00

Well...didn't see THIS one coming from a mile away:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/21/business/economy/21bankruptcy.html?_r=2&src=busln

On the weird and crooked little path that has been my life's journey, one thing early on that stuck out on that path like a 3000lb day-glo purple tumbleweed was the idea that kept knocking about in my thick little skull that if I even lived long enough TO retire, I probably would not have much of a safety net waiting for me if I did. Part of that comes from not having one when I was a kid, but the bigger part of it was seeing the overall untenability of "the system". Therefore, the draw for me when considering employment was always a "here and now" question, as opposed to a "can I work there for 40 years" question.

As it turns out that seems to have been a reasonably wise way of looking at it, though even I questioned my wisdom in taking that approach at times...but I really feel sorry for all the people who took the opposite approach: the safe way may have turned out to be the wrong way.

Who knew?

Looking at some of the pensions that public employees were promised I can certainly see at least a few problematic areas, but as people took these positions partially BECAUSE of these long term promises, it really is a huge moral hazard that is going to play out here: Yet another bait and switch for Joe and Josephine Lunchbucket, while the upper 1% gets to continue to roll around in piles of filthy lucre.

Pretty sad.

OK...now I'm REALLY scared: "No Insiders Bought Any Stock In Prior Week"

2011-01-20T12:23:00.000-06:00

When you see things like this, you have to wonder if this fake recovery is even going to last 2-3 months:

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/insider-selling-buying-ratio-div0-no-insiders-bought-any-stock-prior-week

I've been casually watching this for several months now, but this is the most extreme I've seen so far. The SMART MONEY is NOT buying into the system...they are LEAVING it!

Wakey wakey!

The latest GEAB is out.

2011-01-19T09:58:00.000-06:00

I have not subscribed, but I always look forward to their summaries.

2011 is what I'm calling "The Year of The Canaries". I think this year is where the erosion of the fundamental underpinnings of our global economy...and further, the very integrity of our biosphere, picks up a speed that will astonish even the most pessimistic. On the surface, I think QE2 is working its questionable "magic", which will make the 95% of people who don't pay attention and haven't a clue think that we are in a "recovery". In 2012 (or the latter part of 2011...which ever comes sooner...hahaha) the wheels will fall off in earnest.

This is assuming that we don't have any huge curves that come our way this year. The system is so achingly brittle as it is, it would not take much for something to spread like a contagion, knocking everything over in it's path.

http://www.leap2020.eu/geab-n-51-is-available-systemic-global-crisis-2011-the-ruthless-year-at-the-crossroads-of-three-roads-of-global-chaos_a5775.html

Just testing.

2011-01-12T10:36:00.000-06:00

I will be redirecting the front page of the John Ludi site here at some point in the near future, but for now this is just a test.