Freeacre has been decorating ducks.  Exercising her artistic mood.

From Murph;

Yup, I know, it's been nearly 2 months since we have put up another post. For both Freeacre and myself, we have been caught up in more projects, meetings, and activities than we can easily handle. We had the holidays to get through also. Plus, every single day, there is new stuff to talk about and the next day something else takes its place to pay attention to. It sure enough feels as though events are accelerating and becoming more severe and having more consequences on our society, our nation, than we can keep up with. It is also happening at the local level in our area.

I have a box of around 20 books to read sitting on my desk concerning all kinds of events , conspiracies, and political chicanery. I don't know how many of our readers have waded through tombs of political analysis and conspiracies, but I find them nearly impossible to read. If you aren't conscientiously taking notes and categorizing the authors information they are next to impossible to get through with any comprehension of the details outlined by the author. Frankly, I have too many other activities that demand my attention to take notes and categorize information of this sort. I can only come away with a general impression and have read about it before over the years. From the conspiracy writers and the whistle blowers, books of this nature are flooding the “must read” alerts by bloggers and political analysts. Frankly, I find it overwhelming and I sure as hell don't have 10 hours a day free to try and keep up with it all. I have all kinds of notebooks and note pads with tidbits to pursue and I simply don't have the time (or I refuse to take the time) to pursue all but a small amount of the notes.

Even at our local level of government, the state and county folks in charge are doing the same thing. At the county level, they are now talking about passing an ordinance that has a fine of $2500 if your property has any of the state classification of “noxious weeds” on it. The claim from the state government web site is that the economic impact is beyond belief and is and is an emergency, has no public input and is draconian as hell. So now I guess we are going to have a “noxious weed” informant policy with economic rewards for turning in your neighbor, and have tax supported folks that drive through the county peering on your land in order to identify “noxious weeds” growing on your property.

I went to the web site that lists all the “noxious weeds” that are supposed to have been found in Oregon and neighboring states along with potential weeds (with potential of invading our state and county). The list is extensive, big time. Now I am not a botanist nor a plant taxonomist and frankly am lousy at identifying weeds. I'm doing pretty good to identify the plants in our garden. I wrote to one of the folks that is close to this kind of stuff and asked if the state or county was going to have public courses on the taxonomy and identification of “noxious weeds” so I could earn money driving around the neighborhood and turning in my neighbors. Haven't gotten a reply back.

We are also having a push to form a “sanitary authority” (nicknamed the “authority”) for our area. I went through the state regulation on forming such an entity and frankly it raised the hair on the back of my neck.

Have any of our readers had experience with such an entity? I'd really like to know what you have to say about it.

Without getting in conspiracy ideas on it, it sure appears to us that the U.N. Agenda 21 is ramping up and insinuating itself into all levels of government. Please share your experiences and details of local agenda 21 implementation. Use of the Delphi technique, implementation of ICLEI, NARC, and any other manifestations of this agenda.

On the home front, I now have a building I can work in and have been organizing it so that I can fix or build what is needed. Due to my own naivety and trust, the building is not satisfactory and we got screwed out of (what is to us) a significant amount of money. We are about finished with the insurance company that is avoiding paying us about $2000 in compensation and we can't do a thing about it. The contractor of note has taken us for around $3000 and not much can be done about that either. I could pursue the contractors board but that would be opening up a can of worms and time expenditure that would be severe, not even considering the filing fees for a complaint and pursuing of legal battles. Paybacks can be a bitch.

I truly don't have any idea what is going to transpire in the near future. What I thought was probably going to happen, hasn't, or is happening so slowly that it becomes the new normal on a daily basis. I sure don't have to like it.