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Saturday, December 11, 2010 - Leasburg Dam State Park, Radium Springs NM

Century Plant, Leasburg Dam State Park, Radium Springs NM, January 22, 2009
Century Plant, Leasburg Dam State Park, Radium Springs NM, January 22, 2009

Getting used to limited power availability

I'm slowly getting used to living with the limited solar power I have available this time of year and I think I will stay here even if a good site with hookups becomes available. It's a good test of my winter boondocking skills with my imperfect setup. I should learn where I might focus power system improvement efforts in the future.

Night camp

Site 9 - Leasburg Dam State Park, Radium Springs NM

Beware of Hypnotic Media

To live sanely in Los Angeles (or, I suppose, in any other large American city) you have to cultivate the art of staying awake. You must learn to resist (firmly but not tensely) the unceasing hypnotic suggestions of the radio, the billboards, the movies and the newspapers; those demon voices which are forever whispering in your ear what you should desire, what you should fear, what you should wear and eat and drink and enjoy, what you should think and do and be. They have planned a life for you — from the cradle to the grave and beyond — which it would be easy, fatally easy!, to accept. The least wandering of the attention, the least relaxation of your awareness, and already the eyelids begin to droop, the eyes grow vacant, the body starts to move in obedience to the hypnotist’s command. Wake up, wake up — before you sign that seven-year contract, buy that house you don’t really want, marry that girl you secretly despise. Don’t reach for the whiskey, that won’t help you. You’ve got to think, to discriminate, to exercise your own free will and judgment. And you must do this, I repeat, without tension, quite rationally and calmly. For if you give way to fury against the hypnotists, if you smash the radio and tear the newspapers to shreds, you will only rush to the other extreme and fossilize into defiant eccentricity.

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