Shake it off. in A small but passable life.

I finished reading “The Sixth Extinction” by Elizabeth Kolbert today. I haven’t read much in anthropology in the last several years so a couple of new facts were revealed to me in this book. The first is that non-African homo sapiens DO share DNA with Neanderthals, one to four percent. And that famous asteroid has been pushed back from 65 million years ago to 66 million years ago.

But one of her most enlightening theories is that somewhere in our DNA is a mutation for a “madness” gene. She gives two examples of the manifestation of this gene mutation. The first is the fact that someone figured out how to hold fire in their hand and crawl a thousand feet into a cave just to draw representations of animals on the walls. Why, other than madness? The other example is our journey onto the open ocean. Someone loaded up a boat of some kind and went that-a-way, not knowing what, if anything was over the horizon. Neanderthals did none of these things.

There is also the manifestation of this “madness” gene in the inherent greed prevalent among homo sapiens. I remember reading about tribes not bothering to go through the effort of peeling a few buffalo from the herd to slaughter when they only needed a few. Instead they’d stampede a whole herd of dozens off a cliff and then only butcher what they could carry and leave the rest to rot and carrion.

There are too many examples of this “madness” mutation in our DNA in modern societies to count.

Anyway, on to the next book.

Jassy and I went to the farmer’s market early yesterday morning. The buffalo wagon wasn’t there but we bought cucumbers, tomatoes, spinach, and a quart of jalapeño peppers. All for $13. The shopping bag was pretty heavy.

Oh yeah, how that works with the EBT card is that there is one vender out there designated as the “market manager” who has the card swiper thingy. We bought the $3 bag of spinach from her and she rung us up for $13. She kept $3 and gave us $10 worth of tokens. The tokens are accepted by all the other venders. A very easy system.

We loaded up the dehydrator and let it run until today. Everything turned out great. And looks really nice in the recycled sauce jars.

The weather has been fine enough for some good sleep, at temps in the high forty’s and fine enough for lounging in the van in the mid-seventies.

I’m not sure what I’m doing tomorrow. I’m thinking about walking over to the campus and finding a good tree to sit up against and read all day. No sense in being indoors.

My “Books Read” list for this year stands at forty-five. A little short of last year at this time. Oh well, still a little over two months left to get caught up.

I’ve went through the file box that contained the contents of my bottom desk drawer in my desk. I shredded a lot. I gave Jassy some. And the rest is in my briefcase, ready to be gone through again. Some day. I call it progress.

TWO BOXES. TWO BAGS. That is still the goal. What I’m down to is:

Full-sized backpack with all the gear.
A small carry-on roller suitcase full of odds and ends.
A big duffel of winter clothes.
A shoulder bag with my every day stuff.
My briefcase full of notebooks.
My new knapsack with my laptop and everything I carry every day.

Gah.

Jassy has our 500 book collection.
And three tool boxes.
And my footlocker.
And our car camping equipment and kitchen.

And the van.

Eventually I’d like to have nothing, own nothing but what I can fit into my new knapsack.

Anyway, I’m off to piss away a couple of hours until bedtime.

Last updated October 19, 2014