Timeout! Technology, Business, and Sigrid Olson...

As some of you may have noticed, I have taken a break from my commentary on Thoreau's commentary about life, Walden.  There have been many things happening in my life since I started that project and I have to say that I have been spending more time reading paper books than listening to Walden on my mp3 player and have been spending more time researching market revenues than considering the profitability of solitude.  *It is strange how a "simple" life can include so much complexity!

So what has been going on:

1. The Brewery-- This has been taking up a lot of my mental energy.  I have been using a lot of my extra time to work on a business plan for starting up a brewery in Grand Marais.  The plan itself is looking pretty good, but there are a lot of questions and specific pieces of information that I lack because, well, I have never started a business before, let alone a brewery.  I have operated several businesses and have done a very good job of cleaning up/organizing the places that I have worked for, but doing the initial research is challenging to say the least.  However, I have been making headway and I will post the business plan up on Cabin Industry when I get it completed!  Wish me luck and send me any advice/help you can!

2. Computers-- *Warning: There is a lot of computer mumbo-jumbo in here, so if you are not of a stout computer person, this could be painful... You have been warned.*
Recently the macbook that I have been using (which was given to me by the author of another riveting blog called opentheory.net) has been showing its age (6+ years) and is likely tired after being lugged around the world and having to put up with the unreliable voltage in India for 9 months.  So, alas, the time has come to replace it!  Here is my conundrum:

Why should I buy a brand new fancy-pants computer when a used one can do all that I want it to do and is much, much cheaper?  The answer for this, of course, is reliability, but I haven't had much trouble with reliability as long as you keep water and explosives away from it...

So used is a possibility... Any ideas?

Then there is the 2 party issue of computers these days... has anyone else noticed that Apple and Microsoft are a lot like the Democrats and Republicans?  I won't delve into which is which and what characteristics each shares, but it is amusing to think about!

Let's put politics aside for a moment, shall we?

I like Macs because they are very intuitive and smooth. I kind of feel like Apple is becoming too "Big Brother" and is becoming such a computing way of life that I want to pull back from it, just like how facebook can start to suck your soul out through your eyeballs after you see the 30th cute kitten update in the timeline... you know that you have been there...

PCs are waaaaaaaaaaaay cheaper.  However, Microsoft hasn't put out an operating system since XP Pro (Service Pack 2) that has made me feel anything but sadness about computers.  I hear that Windows 8 is going to be better, but I just don't think that I trust them anymore... Sorry Windows, we had a nice run, but I am afraid that maybe we should see other people...

Like Android.  This is an interesting new competitor in the laptop operating system game.  A third party so to speak.  Google's upstart is famous for making smart phones smarter and gave the population access to hundreds of thousands of applications that could make your life more productive, but likely will just take more of it up...  Anyway, Android now has a version out (4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich... yum) that is robust enough to run on a full fledged computer, but still integrates all of the things that people love about smart phones.  Coupling this with really snazzy designs and decent prices like the Asus Transformer tablets makes a very good argument for Android... Any thoughts?

The jury is still out, but I am leaning towards previously used computers or something that runs Android...

3. Phones-- Jeez!  Thoreau must be rolling in his grave I am talking about all of these THINGS that he would dismiss as not adding any value to my life.  I can see his bearded head shaking side to side with that look of disappointment on his face... he often wore that expression...

Anyway, my current phone doesn't do me any favors when it comes to work.  It doesn't actually receive calls, but does me the kindness of telling me when I have missed calls.  And then charges me for them even though I didn't receive them.  Hmm.  Time to change.

Does anyone have any experience with Straight Talk?  This, allegedly, is a month to month, no plan cell phone program that is not only much cheaper than most other carriers, but has better reception because it uses just about everyone else's network!  There is a Dark Side here though... Straight Talk is done through Walmart.  I guess that I don't have a huge problem with benefiting from Walmart's buying power in this instance.  I do get a funny feeling about it though...

One cool thing about it is that you can use just about any phone with Straight Talk, so I can, again, use a used phone and won't have to buy a new one...

Anyway, enough about all of that.  It makes me tired.  I hope that I haven't tired you out too much.  I sometimes have to pull back from all of this stuff so that I can realize that I don't need any of that stuff to thrive in my life.  Time for something much more refreshing and that has kept me centered throughout most of this other stuff...

4. Sigurd Olson-- Sig Olson was an amazing man who was instrumental in the forming of many of the National Parks of the United States and their policies.  He is most famous around here (Minnesota) for being the most vocal proponent of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.  I have been reading a book of his quotes and writings and it has brought me back from the abyss with all of this mumbo-jumbo I wrote above here.  His writing was aimed at helping people to "feel about the woods and hills and waters as I do." They bring me back to the simplicity that I truly desire, more than a computer or a phone or even a brewery.  This will be forever ingrained in me and his words have a magical way of touching me.  I would like to close not with any of my words, but with his, because I believe that what he has to say will speak well for me:

"Think of the wonder of being able to live on dreams, of being able to do what more than all else in the world you have wanted to do.  Think of the wonder of knowing that you have found yourself." -Journal, January 14th, 1930






"I have stood on top of a windswept hill, waved my hat at the breeze, shouted to the skies that I was alive, and I have fought the waves on gigantic lakes and enjoyed the slap of every one.  I love the rain, the snow, thunder, storms, quiet, every change of the weather. " -Journal, March 4, 1935

Take That Thoreau! I'm Starting a Business!

In my last post I talked a little bit about Thoreau's view of work and how it is integrally connected with the possession of "stuff."  The more "stuff," we have or want, the more we will have to work in order to get it when, according to Thoreau, we actually don't need it at all.

He uses the example of his squatter garden, which he proudly claims profited him $13.44 or around $350 today all told.  He planted and hoed and harvested by himself.  People who walked by often scoffed at him saying that his field will never bear any fruit because he was so late in planting and because he never actually hoed the whole thing.  If he had an ox, he could have gotten it all done earlier, had more leisure time, and would have had more income from a better harvest.  Problem is that an ox in 1850 cost around $30, which would come out to be about $650 today.  He would be working for almost 2 years to pay off the animal and that doesn't count building the animal a stall, feeding it, etc.  The expense adds up without you realizing it!  This is still the case today in many situations.  Thoreau claimed that he was doing better than any farmer in Concorde that year!

Anyway, with all of that said, I am going to try to take the best of both worlds and start a business based on low overhead, a sound idea, a lot of elbow grease, and some serendipitous resources.

A little background first:

My acquaintance with the great city (village) of Grand Marais began some 8 years ago when I arrived here on my way to be a canoe guide at the end of the Gunflint.  At that time Grand Marais was already a tourist destination, but hadn't done a lot to polish up its image.  (It has since done a magnificent job of becoming a welcoming destination).  That summer I repeatedly told my co-workers that something that Grand Marais needs is a gym because there is no place to work out in this city!  Behold, 2 years later: The Pump House and a community gym at the high school.

THEN, I was an intern at the North House Folk School and spent pretty much all of my spare time out in the woods doing this or that, hiking, collecting mushrooms, collecting birch bark, you name it.  I told people then, "You know, Grand Marais needs an outdoor sporting good store." Behold, Stone Harbor.

SO, this time I am not going to let my ideas get away from me!  I have already begun discussing business plans and potential investors to get this project off of the ground.

Behold, the Grand Marais Brewery.

No, the brewery is NOT in the lighthouse... I doubt that I could get the Coast Guard to go for that one, but I think that the lighthouse is going to be present in the logo when I get it developed...

Anyway...

Grand Marais is a destination.  People love it here because it is beautiful and it is pretty calm, and there is some really great food around here.  What better to compliment these wonderful things than the ability to quaff some great local beer along with your Lake Superior Trout or Ancho BBQ marinaded pork ribs?  Sit by the Lake and enjoy a Pincushion Porter in the shadow of the mountains that gave it its name.  Watch the loons fishing while tipping back a Loonlight Belgian White.  Dig into a Wild Rice Stout and be transported to a simpler time...

Ok, so that last one was going a little overboard, but I think that you get the point.

I have been brewing since I was an intern at North House.  I haven't done much in the last year (because you can't get good hops in India... or any of the other stuff for that matter!), but I am starting to refresh myself and already feel that I have exceeded the brewing knowledge that I accumulated over those years.  I do have many additional resources to tap (heehee) into to make sure that the product is as good or better than the idea!

Supply would be limited to the North Shore, starting in Grand Marais and branching out.  The recipes are in the works as we speak and if anyone has any name ideas that have to do with things Northern, please send them to me via email!  I would love to hear your ideas!

I have serendipitously met several people who have been interested in helping me get this project started: One person who knows a master brewer who can give advice on the recipes, one person who is looking to start a distillery and could potentially coop, and many people who are excited for this to happen.

The first thing is funding.  I will likely be able to get some startup funding from the Northeast Entrepreneurial Fund (the same organization that helped one of my friends start a coffee roasting business-- Fika Coffee), but am open to grants and other ways of getting funding.  If any of YOU out there in blogger land would be interested in being a part of this, please let me know!

There will be more coming in the future about this, but I just wanted to get the word out more effectively and put some of my ideas down on "paper."  And to see what you all have to say about this idea.

This has truly been an interesting development considering my recent reading of Thoreau and Sigurd Olson, both of whom viewed that their work, writing, was so much more important than anything else that they could possibly be doing.  I am pleased to be pursuing something that I am excited about and see that this could add another layer of strength to Grand Marais's appeal/draw.



It will be a win/win situation!

Walden Part 2: Work or that thing that you do with most of your time...

I have been asking myself questions about work my entire life.  That has been a huge motivator for this blog as well!  I think that there are many, many ways to look at work, but they all fall into a few categories, of which Thoreau digs into right off the bat in Walden.

First of all, Thoreau paints a pretty stark counter-culture picture of himself here.  Picture the 1800s, industry is just starting to really make some progress, people are working hard, building up and developing the world, which is growing steadily larger by the day!  Only 10 years after Thoreau's death is when the play "Around the World in 80 Days" is set, lauding the modern railway and steamship's efficiency to grant one ability to circumnavigate the globe in an astonishing 80 days!

People were working and people were proud to be working!  Amazing things were happening!  Things that were only dreams a few years before!  So, why is this guy holing himself up in a cabin in the woods and badmouthing people that work?  Well, let me paraphrase a little and then move forward.

STUFF.  We all have it, and no matter what we get, we usually want more.  I am guilty of this all of the time.  There is that bike... oh that sweet, sweet bike, or that new tent, or fill in the blank.  This, to Thoreau is the work of the Devil!  He states that we work so hard for things that we don't need so we forfeit the things that we do need, which is time to relax and be free and healthy.  But in order to be free we enslave ourselves to a wage or an identity made up by our employment and thus are handicapped in being who we want to be!  "You make yourselves sick that you might lay something against a sick day..." (Page 1)

This makes a ton of sense to me.  I have always worked doing something that I loved.  I was able to find a solid and respectable identity in my work and was just fine with that.  My employment now (at the hotel), is solid, respectable work that pays well.  I have a good amount of influence in the company and I can make most of the calls that I need to make.  I manage a relatively large staff, oversee a few million dollars worth of real estate, and have the flexibility to set my own schedule.  All of this sounds really great, but Thoreau would scoff and say that I am stuck!  I am mired!  My time is not my own!

What should I do then Henry?

He said that he tried being a teacher, but he was really bad at it because he saw it as a job, not a calling and he just didn't care that much about his students... Whoohoo!  I think he was right to stop doing that one!  My experience with teaching was about as different as possible.  If I would be fed and sheltered, I would have kept teaching.  Someday I hope to be filling that niche again... He tried managing and business, but found that although he earned more money, he was always on call and that was not up to his expectation.  He finally decided that he would be an hourly laborer.  The work isn't particularly hard, it is honest work, and at the end of the day you go home and leave work at work!  I have often wondered what it would be like to be done with work at a specific time and to not have to think about it "after hours."  I am not sure that will ever happen with me though... Anyway, Thoreau calculated that with his lifestyle he would only have to work 40-50 days a YEAR as a laborer to support himself.  Think about what you could do with all of that extra time!

Honestly, what my mind immediately jumps to is something like, "I could get so much WORK done!"  But what kind of work?  Work for pay?  Work for pleasure?  Or work for something else that you aren't quite sure of?  Work for discovery, either personal or public?

I like to think that Thoreau didn't push off work altogether, but just chose to do something that was more natural to him rather than something that was forced.  For example, Rose is a writer.  It is easy for her to write.  It comes naturally.  When she is at the front desk of the hotel she does a good job too, but often she gets really worn down because it isn't natural for her to be on like that all of the time.  I like to be moving, I like to be interacting.  Teaching and coaching were good for me because I was always doing something.  I would like to think that I could start up a business or three and stay busy and happy, not being mired in the "work of the Devil" though I continue to work.  Only time will tell about that last one...

So, what is YOUR natural work?  At St. Olaf the Class of 2005 started a project that assists students in discerning their vocation, which is a complicated word that means who you are, what you do, how you see yourself, how you see the world, how your identity is and isn't associated with what you do... and much more.  That is where I think that Thoreau is heading with his view of work.  You have to do SOMETHING with yourself or you aren't really a self in the first place!  He chose to intellectually brow beat society while working as an hourly laborer 40 days out of the year... Well, that is the cynical view of it.

Maybe I should do something like that... (Not be cynical, but be more like Thoreau...)

But one forgets that Thoreau was a wealthy person and had some serious cushion for his lifestyle.  His father owned a very successful factory that produced, of all things, pencils!  So, as literacy improved, his father's business did too!  The fact that Thoreau is writing against the machine of possession and consumerism is relatively ironic then, but you know how things can get blown out of proportion or exaggerated a little... it IS election season after all...

The question still remains as to whether Thoreau would have been able to come up with these ideas if he had begun his life as a pauper or a laborer.  Would be have the cushion to think these things or would he just be trying to keep his head above water?  Perhaps herein lies the problem.

Poor people have to keep working because they have to keep spending money.  If they didn't spend money and worked, they wouldn't be poor for very long, but the cost of services in the world doesn't seem to match the rate of payment, so people have to work more and more so that they can have more and more.

This harkens back to my previous post on wealth according to the book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad.  Could Thoreau have mustered up these thoughts as a poor person or am I missing the point.  Choosing to not be attached to possessions could be the first step to freedom.  What you don't need, you, well, don't need!  Stripping it down to the bare minimum for a productive life looks different for different people, but I am sure that it includes a lot less STUFF than we currently enjoy... but do we enjoy it?

He tells a story about an estate sale at a large farm where they sold everything that this man had after he died.  He thought this appalling as all of that stuff should have been piled up and burned just as the man's body had been burned.  Instead it carries its burden into a new house to fill up someone else's space only to be sold at the next auction after the next death... We can hope for a greater sense of immortality, can't we?

Anyway, next up on the agenda is philanthropy.  When you have a lot of money and you want to be nice to someone or "give back" how do you do that?

If anyone out there has any additional thoughts on work or Thoreau's idea of work, lay it down!  It would be great to hear what you think!

Walden Part 1: Introduction and Segues...

It seems to me that no self-respecting blog concerning anything "cabin" related can exist for very long without having some commentary on Henry David Thoreau's classic work, WALDEN, where Thoreau builds his own shelter and lives/reflects on life and many of its associated afflictions... even though he himself was pretty well taken care of and wasn't all THAT far out in the woods... but I digress...

I have read Walden several times.  This will be the third time in completion, but the umpteenth time I have visited its pages.  I would like to think that Thoreau would forgive me for blogging about his masterpiece of transcendentalist independence, but I am a little nervous that he would shake his bearded head at the fact that I am listening to it as an audiobook on an iPod... Whoops!  Anyway, back to the subject at hand...  To me it seems that one can gauge the complexity and value of a book or work by the diversity of perspective it can elicit in its readers.  For example, I view the Bible as a magnificent work of art, not so much because of any of the messages it propounds, but because it seems that just about every time I read it I learn something more, either about myself, the world around me, or society at large.  That, my friends, is power!  You find different things at different times because of what you bring to the table.  Likewise, the first time I read Walden I was dabbling in Hegelian philosophy and was seeking his system.  How can a man from Thoreau's background get to these conclusions?  Needless to say, I got more questions than answers out of that reading!  The next time I was enthralled in the beauty of relationships (interpersonal, not just romantic...) and ended up being a little upset with how he eschewed interpersonal connectedness.  Well, it turns out that Thoreau doesn't really throw this to the wayside, but he does think about it much differently than I did, which raises the supreme irony of the fact I was upset with him for thinking independently!  So much for interpersonal relations I guess!

This reading has already proven to be vastly different.  My situation coming into it is different and there are a few situations in my life that are influencing it greatly.  One of which I will introduce shortly:

Rose and I have three neighbors.  All of them have proven themselves to be kind and they all appreciate Ennis's toddler-ness, which is GREAT because Ennis can't be anything else right now!  One of our neighbors, Ted, has slowly been watching his wife of 40+ years approach the twilight of her life.  Rose has been more conversant with him than I have been, but the fatigue of this process is plain to see.  Tonight we watched as the ambulance brought Ted's wife up to the hospital; we walked over to talk with him a little and see if we could help out.  As usual in these situations, I was a weepy mess and Rose was the put together one.  It was touching to see someone who had previously seemed so strong and tough become so tender and fragile.  It reminded me of a passage in J.R.R. Tolkien's book of mythology The Silmarillion.        *I know that I am going to sounds SUPER nerdy here, but stick with me!

In this book Tolkien explains the complexities of the world he created for the other books and the origins of the different peoples.  He explains the elves, who are immortal, the men, who are mortal, the dwarves, the goblins, etc... One of his stories has to do with a unique love story and a deep insight into life.  It seems that at some point in the history of Middle Earth an elf woman fell in love with a mortal man.  They got married, had kids, and eventually they all had to make a decision: to be mortal or immortal.  The way that Tolkien pitches both sides is tremendous.  Immortality gives you constancy across the eons, it gives you perspective beyond a doubt, it gives you clarity of mind and temperance of spirit, it gives you perfection in craft and skill, etc, etc...  It seems like a no-brainer!  Immortal it is!

BUT

Mortality gives you passion, mortality gives you the fire of life that burns so hot that it can't help but burn out, mortality gives you intensity, individuality, creativity beyond the sensical, spontaneity, freedom from the chains of time through your own departure, it gives you pain, but it also gives you love and peace and happiness beyond measure.

One of the children chose to become immortal and became the leader of the elves.  One of the children chose to become mortal and became the greatest king of men ever recorded.  Both chose wisely, both lived honorably, only one died with cause and sacrifice.

That may seem pretty dark and deep, but this came to me again tonight as I watched Ted say goodbye to his beloved and ask himself the question whether he would see her again in this world or in the next. I thought about this tonight as I played with my beautiful family and my little boy who is so full of life.

What does this have to do with Walden you might ask?  Well, honestly, not much, but as I read it this time, I will be filtering it through this as well as many other things.  My filter will help distinguish what I get out of this project, and I believe that it is paramount to taking on a project to know what glass you are looking at it through.

What it does have to do with Walden can be broken down to a few things that are clear to me right now (I am sure that there will be several more things to add later!):  live your life with some sense of freedom and consider your life anew each day.

I will be trying to do these things as I go through the book and I hope to hear your comments on my musings!  I encourage any of you who are reading this post to take up the book (or audiobook) and experience Walden again for the first time.  There are several books I will be working my way through again and hope to be sharing my thoughts with anyone who is willing to listen!

"To be awake is to be alive." -H.D. Thoreau