EASY DOES IT, SOMEDAY

Me, I vote for easy! I sure would like to, anyway.

In the case of the ongoing presidential election from hell, the easy thing always has been to just count the votes (duh)! I don't care who you voted for, unless you voted for Nader (in which case I hope you learned your lesson), but since we're talking about "easy," what's the simplest explanation for why one side doesn't want to count all the votes in Florida? Yup. Well, at least the nickname will be easy to remember: as of this writing, it looks like it'll be four long years of ole"No-Count," har!

Maybe I should've been a lawyer. At dinner tonight my lovely wife nearly flung her enchiladas at me because I was "so good at creating PROBLEMS!" Isn't that what lawyers do (see above)? I wonder if I could sell my services to the well-adjusted but slightly bored. I mean, there has to be an undiscovered occupational niche here somewhere, right?

Sometimes I think this talent runs in the family. My youngest brother, a highly capable geekmeister in Austin, Texas, wants me to change from Claris Emailer to Microsoft's Outlook Express. He's been urging this on me for quite some time, in fact. The occasion for this latest prodding was an article I wrote for Applelinks about all the darned spam I've been getting lately. It seems he regards OE's spam filtering ability as far surpassing Emailer's, and besides, who uses Emailer any more?

Well, I do! I always have. It's the only email client I've ever used. People are always yelling at me to use Eudora or some other program, but Emailer works just great. I've never had a single problem with it, not one, and since it doesn't display HTML-formatted messages, I just delete like crazy. Simple! Someone from Apple keeps sending me snotty emails that read something like, "We have detected that you are not using an HTML-capable email client. Please go to [some URL] to see this material, blah blah blah." (In their dreams! Are these people nuts? What am I, Pavlov's freaking dog?!) No, the last time I had time to tolerate any sort of learning curve was 1998. When I sit down at this machine, everything has to work NOW! That's why I've stuck with Emailer for so long: for me, it's easy.

In my personal life, however, I do have a talent for doing some things the hard way. Maybe that's why I go for the obvious in other areas, since "easy" is all I have energy left for after everything else I manage to put myself through, like moving to northern New Mexico on the cusp of the new millennium.

Simply put, this is a very hard place to live. Don't get me wrong, now: the mountains are beautful beyond belief, the vistas shocking, the air pristine. Most days I don't regret a thing, except maybe not bringing all my old friends with me. They'd have been much more useful to me than those old dressers sitting in the storage unit. Oh, that storage unit. (I don't miss the dressers, either.)

But it's hard here, really. The only things cheaper than back East are Mexican limes and local restaurant fare. The last inexpensive house was sold in 1987, around the time of the last rain, I believe, ho-ho-ho. That's why the city of Albuquerque is planning to suck water out of the Rio Grande, an action likely to come as a rude shock to the migratory birds wintering in the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge down south. For that matter, the bosque (riparian woods) won't like it very much either. Oh well. One thing I've learned in my wanderings is that local planning commissions, developers, and real estate people are the same everywhere. If these folks were marooned on a raft in the middle of the ocean, they'd sell it to a school of sharks! I truly believe the only solution is simultaneous euthanasia by occupational categories, but this is difficult to organize and dangerous to implement, as the list of included vocations would surely swell to include Internet writers dissing people with real jobs. Ho.

Here in Taos County, as in many other scenic places around the world, local people can hardly afford to buy homes anymore, which is one reason gray-haired Anglos are the fastest growing segment of the population. The irony is that the social and medical services needed to support the influx of aging retirees just aren't in place (tell your Uncle Fred to expect a three-hour ambulance ride to Albuquerque if he has a heart attack). My wife and I are of course ridiculously healthy and expect to be killed by an asteroid strike or abducted by aliens, so none of this is any of our concern. Finding an affordable place to live is, however.

Such places do exist, as I've pointed out before, even right here in El Norte, especially if you're willing to live at least half an hour from town. The only thing is, all you dreamers who would follow in my tire tracks need to be prepared to live without a local income (better read that again). You also need to be totally satisfied with physical isolation, glorious views, and the brightest stars in God's heaven. That is to say, you should have no illusions about transplanting whatever lifestyle you currently enjoy into this environment, because it probably won't work. Instead, you have to just BE HERE, and being here is likely to be the most extraordinary thing most of you have ever experienced. Unless you are absolutely convinced that you have been called to come, however, stay away!

For one thing, even with the best of intentions, you will be contributing to the accelerating death of a unique regional culture -- there is simply no way of getting around this, and it weighs heavily on my conscience. For another, this really is the Wild West. It's legal to carry a loaded pistol concealed in your car. I had dinner Sunday night 100 feet away from a local bar where a man was executed by pickup truck a year ago last September. There's so much emptiness here [see above], you could walk out the back door and never be seen again. Yes, I know, in parts of places like Baltimore you can be driving down the street and have your head blown off by a 15-year-old crack dealer trying out his new "piece" -- but if you were still alive, there'd be an ambulance! Finally, there's me: I was most definitely called, I came, and it wasn't easy (still isn't). Only the hardest part isn't physical at all, it turns out, the rigors of the place notwithstanding.

In my heart, you see, I was still in my twenties. When I really was that age, getting adjusted to a new town was a matter of finding the right local hangout, hitting on a few girls, and taking it from there. This modus operandi actually works quite well into one's forties, but by then aggravations like shaving and having a demonstrable income assume much greater importance. Being who I am now, it's much more difficult to get my ass in gear. (If I had any guts, I'd be making plans for the Questa Bikers' annual Toys for Tots dance with Jeff and the Piranhas.) Oh yes, I'm married, too (thank God). And I'm also asking myself, is it really necessary to start ALL* over again? Hmmm??

Well, no, actually. :-)

If we do what's easy, we'll probably start looking for a place where houses cost less and it rains enough to grow your own food. (If people knew my name when I walked down the street, that wouldn't hurt either.) I also feel about this place like I do about a lot of other things I'll never give up, so the issue now becomes one of integration. . . [ponder, scheme] All I know is, when I wake up in the morning, living has to work NOW! This learning curve bullshit is for babies, you know? I mean, the clock is ticking. I also have the sneaking suspicion that everything is much, much easier than I've led myself to believe.

Everything, that is, except having your vote count in Florida (!).

John H. Farr also edits the news for Applelinks.com and invites your comments. The Farr Site Archives will take you to the past three years of columns. John also writes a monthly op-ed page column called "El Emigrante" for Horse Fly in Taos, NM and has an ongoing project called Zoozone News that he really wants you to visit (over 70 New Mexico pictures can be seen at the Photorama).

* New friends, new email client, new operating system, yadda-yadda-yadda. (It also occurs to yours truly that this column contains several brilliant OS X adoption analogies, but it's time to take it easy and let you figure them out for yourselves... :-)

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