Possum Living. An Interesting Old Book About Living Cheap.
I recently found a book called Possum Living: How to Live Well Without a Job and with (Almost) No Money
It’s a detailed how-to book where an 18 year old lady writes about how to survive without a real job. Considering it’s from an 18 year old’s perspective, the book is very insightful. It covers how her and her father lived on the cheap and survived with very little income. They raised their own food, created their own heat, owned their home, and managed fairly well.
In my opinion, the book doesn’t live up to the title for the average person. Most are not willing to go to the extremes that Dolly and her father did. In some cases, they were breaking the law. What this book does do is make you ask the question, “What would I do with no job?”. Could you raise your own food? Do you have the basic skills to survive? Could stay away from government dependency? Dolly provides some ways that they did it in in a rural area in 1973, but what would you do in a modern suburban environment. Are you using your resources wisely that you have now? Are you using your skills to save money now?
After reading the book, I’ve reconsidered my lifestyle. No, I’m not planning on getting off the grid, but I do think that the more capabilities one has to do without it, the better off they are in general. When you consider that our entire lifestyle is tied to a system of wires and pipes and that system is tied to an complex grid that few of us understand, I don’t think it’s out or the realm of a reasonable person to consider wise alternatives. Not only does it explain how to live off of the grid, there are some ideas about health, education, cooking, and how nearly every area of life can be simplified when the desire or need is there.
It’s a great book for the money and it’s sure to spark some ideas. The first idea it sparked with me was that I needed to get organized. I actually have some of things that are mentioned in the book, but I can’t even find them. In the process of cleaning the house up, I’ve been throwing out some things that I could have done without and that’s money that could still be sitting in my bank account. Lesson learned and onto a simpler way of life.
A Marine Who Couldn’t Forget the Sacrifice of Another
I received an e-mail alerting me that an ex-Marine would like to speak with anyone who was a relative of Corporal Harry Lawrence Spearman, U.S.M.C who died in Korea on Oct. 23, 1951. They stated that my Uncle had saved the life of Glen Finley while serving with Easy Company 2-7 and that he would like to express his gratitude for the sacrifice made.
Most of my young life, Sunday was the day we went to see Grandpa. There were pictures of an Uncle I never met. They told me he was killed in a war. They explained war to me. Of course, that led to how? What was the exact situation? What was he doing? Was he a hero? Nobody really knew the answers. War is chaotic and many times there isn’t time to write the long detailed letters explaining what happened.
When I turned 18, I joined. I admired the sacrifices of my many uncles, the ones who died and who didn’t. I couldn’t think of anything more honorable to do than to serve your country. What were the alternatives? Setting in a classroom going stir crazy in hopes of landing a job, delivering pizzas? I knew that wasn’t going to cut it. Off I went to join the ranks of so many others. I did my thing, but those who went before us always had a place of honor in my heart and mind. The honor and traditions they passed down ran deep and allowed me to participate in the greatest armed forces ever. The history of what happened with them should be just as important as anyone else’s in our country’s history, but there are just far to many stories for the historians to keep track of.
Finding the exact accounts of one of my uncle Bud Griffin when the PC-558 was sank led me to believe that I could find accounts for all of the others. The Army and Marines didn’t keep good records though. All that you really have to go on is the accounts of the men that were with them. In Lawrence’s case, there wasn’t anything.
I was excited to hear from Glenn Finley. Minutes after returning the e-mail with my information, I had a phone call from him. He said that he’d lived with the guilt all of his life that Spearman guarded him from the shrapnel from a mortar round. He said that their platoon sighted Chinese troops and rushed to get into a position to kill them. He and Lawrence were both lean and fast and the rest of the platoon could not keep up with them. They got into position with a BAR machine gun and started to take the Chinese out. He said they counted 20 dead in the area that they fired on. All of their firing at night gave away their position and mortar fire started to zero in on them. Lawrence covered him as a round hit and the shrapnel killed Lawrence, but left Mr. Finley with only minor wounds.
Finley said it took himself and 2 other men to carry Lawrence to the ambulance as he was such a tall and big man. My Uncle had only been in their unit for 3 days, but Finley remembered everything about him all of this time. He knew that he was from Sunbury, Ohio and verified that when he came across a classmate of Lawrence’s and found him in their high school yearbook.
Finley said that after he came home, he had a rough time. He had caught malaria and nobody could find the problem. Doctors here didn’t know that they had to take blood while the fever was high in order to diagnose it. They kept taking his after the fever had left. He had numerous wounds. Even with all of this, he managed to find a doctor that would ok him for service with the Ohio State Highway Patrol.
Finley said his proudest moment with The Highway Patrol was an incident where a car was stolen with a baby inside it while the mother had went into a bar. He spotted the car and followed the drivers to their home. He asked the men to step out of the house and questioned them about the car and they denied knowing how it got there. He and another trooper convinced them through unorthodox methods that they would show them where the baby was. It was November and they convinced the thieves to take them to the baby where they had placed it in a dumpster in an alley. I asked him if he got an award for that and he said that another trooper got shot that month and stole the spotlight, so no award.
He went on to become a federal agent for the U.S. Treasury. After that, he got a job with a large insurance agency based in Akron, Ohio. He was proud of the agency that he ran in Indianapolis and said that he worked with some fine people there.
We talked about many things in a short period. We both agreed Obama has placed our nation in a grave situation and neither of us are happy with it at all. He said that he fears for young voters that would choose Obama for the reasons that they did. He said Gingerich was our best bet as far as he could tell, but wasn’t sure. I think I got him converted to Ron Paul now though. It didn’t take long for us to make friends. I hope our talk helped his soul rest easier. Imagine feeling guilty for actions like he had to go through! Thinking maybe it would have been best if you took that lethal hit?
I’m sure our family suffered the loss of a great man. I never knew him of course, but Uncle Lawrence had served and survived World War 2. He volunteered to go to Korea. I’m certain that he understood the dangers. There’s no doubt. It is great to know that his sacrifice went to a man that was deserving of it. Mr. Finley took drunks off the road, saved a baby’s life, went after thieves while working for the government, and then served his community and employees as a businessman. He raised a son too. My uncle’s simple protective move allowed all of that to happen. There probably wasn’t even time to think about it, just an instinctive move. Who knows really? All we need to know is that both of them were the type of men to charge ahead and take to the fight.
It causes me to pause and think about the people that have sacrified for all of us. I’m honored to know that one of my family members acted with such heroism. It reminds me of John 15:13, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”. This is true, but how do we live up to their sacrifice? It’s a question that Glenn Finley has been searching for answers to all his life. At 79, 60 years after this incident, he’s still expressing his gratitude for that sacrifice. God bless you Mr. Finley, I’m sure you were worthy of it.
Cafe Orzo – Caffeine Free Coffee Replacement
Image via Wikipedia
I found Cafe Orzo at a discount place called Ollie’s. It’s a caffiene free coffee replacement that’s 100% natural. It’s made from special Barley. Barley’s in beer, so you know it can’t be that bad for you. I was really surprised at how much it tastes like coffee, really good coffee too!
I probably drink to much coffee, so this will work as an easy way to have something similar to drink. I’ve heard that caffeine free coffee can be just as bad for you as regular coffee, so this fixes that. There’s no processes done to it to alter it. It’s just barley.
Related articles
- Home remedy for Tea and Coffee addiction (prophet666.com)
- Caffeine (therefinedmind.wordpress.com)
- Coffee: Good or Bad for Us? The Verdict is IN. (talesfromthelou.wordpress.com)
The Red Green Hat.
Apparently I’m one of the few who watch The Red Green Show AND want a hat like Red Green’s. I’ve never been much of a person to watch a show and want to emulate what I see, but Red Green’s a little different. Red seems to know quite a bit about life for a north of 40 white male, so it seems fitting that he would know what type of hat works best, especially when it’s cold like his native Canadian home. The suspenders, no way. The flannel shirt, I already have plenty of them. The khaki pants, no way. I have no interest in anything else about Red Green, but the hat, yes! That hat is classic.
When I set out to find a hat like Red’s years ago, I didn’t even know what it was called. When I asked places that sell hat’s, they never knew who Red Green was. To make matters worse, they thought you were a fool asking for a red and/or green hat. Simply asking wasn’t going to work. I kept checking the Internet and even found a short clip where Red explained the hat. He stated that it was a Canadian Army expeditionary hat. When I searched, no such hat was found linked to the Canadian Army.
Once I finally discovered that the hat is called a Jones hat or simply a “duck hunter’s hat”, I started getting close. I also got Red’s humor. Who would be a prominent member of the Canadian Expeditionary Force? Duck hunters.
There are few suppliers that make these hats. Gore-Tex makes one, but it’s not available in green. It’s sold through L.L. Bean. When I called L.L. Bean to ask if I could get it in green, I made the mistake of telling the lady about the Red Green Show. After that, she too was stuck on the idea that I was looking for a red and/or green hat. Dammit. The rest of the hats I found where either plaid or camo. I found the McAlister Waxed Canvas Jones Hat
The McAlister Brand Jones Hat Like Red Green's
Once the hat arrived, I was impressed with it! It’s waxed so it keeps the rain out. There is a warm liner and ear flaps that fold in. I got mine in olive and the McAlister stitched logo really doesn’t show enough to bother me. I’m happy with it and I would recommend it to anyone searching for a hat like Red Green’s or just a good hat to keep the weather off.
Numerous Life Lessons Here. Watch and Learn.
Here’s a great short video about a successful knife maker. He went from a failed writer to being another type of artists.
There’s many life lessons here -
- Failure is just part of success.
- Surround yourself with others who are like-minded in goals.
- Don’t give up.
- Work! Work through the sweat, blood, and failures until you get it right.
You can probably find a few more. Thanks to Cultural Offering for the post.
Made by Hand / No 2 The Knife Maker from Made by Hand on Vimeo.
Old Signs at Lawrenceburg, Indiana Car Dealer
There is a car dealer in Lawrenceburg, Indiana called Beer’s Auto Sales that has covered the entire front of the dealership with old signs. They’ve got quite collection, some that I’ve never seen before.
Beer's Auto Sales Antique Signs In Lawrenceburg, Indiana.
These old signs are quite a history of old companies, some of them huge, “to big to fail”, by today’s standards. Some, like Shell Oil and Coca-Cola, still survive.
It’s interesting to visit their websites and explore the history of these companies. Here’s what I’ve found.
- Dutch Boy Paint - Their sign was bland then, so’s their website now. Maybe bland adverstising isn’t a bad thing.
- Coca-Cola
- Sunbeam Bread – just the name slapped on some conglomerate’s product.
- Phillips 66 – They still have gas stations.
- Standard Oil – Rockefeller’s company.
- Lehigh Cement – Still operating.
- Penn-Dixie Cement – I’m pretty sure they’re gone, but a Google search shows some interesting things about them.
- Mobile – still in operation.
- Sunoco - still in operation.
- Sohio – no longer in business
- Hudson Automobiles – sold in 1954 to Nash
- Texaco - still in business
- Sinclair - still in business
- Goodyear - still in business
- Gulf - still in business
Whiskey Stones. Great Idea.
Whiskey Stones
Steve Job’s Lead on Education
Image via Wikipedia
Now that the Internet is being transformed into a social interaction tool, I don’t think we’re using it right. I can only speak from my own experience, but I see it being used as more of a distraction rather than the incredible possibilities it has as an educational tool.
I wrote about Steve Jobs and referenced his speech to Stanford. I keep looking back to it and I’m finding a lot of irony in the beliefs of those that worship him and Apple. One of the more striking is that Apple relied on the education system for it’s funding for many years. Years ago, Apple was the dominant system in any government funded class even though the private sector leaned heavily towards the PC. When I see that Jobs found great value in dropping out and studying only what interested him and what he found value in, it flies in the face of those who preach that a degree is required and that their classes must be taught.
Considering where in an age where more information is available for free than at any other time in history, I find it odd that more are not following Jobs’ lead to learn for themselves. A quick look at the website The Do It Yourself Scholar is just one of many resources for free classes. While the education system beats the same old drum, technology is moving ahead without them. The system is doing it’s best to hold onto the idea that you need to borrow more than the costs of a house for their brand of education, but it’s not working. Even the funding for education is about to collapse.
Thanks for the information Mr. Jobs! Finding clues to success like this are hide to find. When they’re cloaked in a message to a bunch of graduates that have just the opposite of what you’ve done, it’s difficult to find them.
Related articles
- Lessons I’ve Learned from Steve Jobs (digitalbrandmarketing.com)
- Guy Kawasaki Talks About What He Learned From Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs Inspirational Speech
Image by Getty Images via @daylife
Everyone is copying this speech by Steve Jobs, so I’ll do it too. It touches on a lot of things when you think about it. While everyone focuses on Jobs, it makes me think about everyone that surrounded him. The mother selfless enough to not abort him, the working parents lacking college educations that made him what he was, his employees that will pass away without a speech published to millions of blogs, and the fact that even someone like Jobs has their fallibilities.
Imagine how many Steve Jobs were aborted. When asked to think about how the world would have looked without Steve Jobs, I wonder what it would look like if the thousands or more that may have been even better people were not killed. One would think that Jobs would have poured some of his resources into stopping the abortion process, but I can’t find one instance where he did. I wonder what stopped him.
On the positive side of what he did do, there was a role for higher education, but the lack of if is what made him. Higher educated people scheduled to adopt him changed their mind just on their preference of gender! He himself abandoned the traditional education system when he realized that many requirements were a complete waste of his time. He’s a huge inspiration for people who realize that real education is far more valuable than sheepskin. Who cares what a paper said you completed when compared to what you really know. He’s proof that real education cannot be purchased. It’s something that only requires placing yourself in situations where you can learn and taking the effort to acquire knowledge.
Here is the now famous commencement address to Stanford University in June of 2005.
I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.
The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: “We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?” They said: “Of course.” My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky – I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation – the Macintosh – a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down – that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me – I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.
My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I’m fine now.
This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960′s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much.
