Chin up!

That's what my dad used to say to me whenever he saw me looking down or depressed. He was a firm believer in the "act as if" theory. So even though I'm feeling a lot of mixed emotions about my anti-communitarian studies and how much more I may owe to the American people as far as local efforts to thwart the mapping plans go, I will keep my chin up and keep moving and producing regardless of how I feel. I know I'm going to feel the way I do no matter what I'm doing, so I may as well write the gertee book and do the rest of the dishes and maybe along the way the burden will lift and I'll see things in a new light.

Many huge bear thanks to my friend Pete for sending copies of Taking Liberty and the Coordination efforts of the Stewards of the Range! Taking Liberty is a fantastic DVD for people to share and discuss. It addresses all the major environmental land use plans and establishes hard scientific data as part of the discussion. It does not introduce any of the theory driving the plans, and that's good, because most people never understand that (my) part anyway.

And I was unfamiliar with Hernado de Sotto's The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else . It's too bad he used the dialectical term capitalism, but I want this book now, and I want to use this quote from him as my "tag line": "The greater the arbitrary regulatory burden, the poorer the nation and the smaller the middle class."

Communitarian Law, as practiced by Administrative Hearing and Review Boards in the USA is an arbitrary (changes with a whim) regulatory (irrational agency regulations) burden (unecessesary load imposed on us, the new beasts .. of their burden).

So thanks to all the people who have been emailing me their encouraging words. It matters to know that some people appreciate and put value on my contributions, even though I'd never accomplish anything if I depended on finding my worth in man. :)