Category Archives: Taxes

Spiderman at 8500 ft.

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The adventure isn’t over, yet. Last week I turned 52, and yesterday I was hanging by a climbing rope with a Holehawg drill and air impact wrench installing braces on the south end of my house. The braces are triangular, and weigh in the neighborhood of 100 lbs. each.
To be quite honest, installing the braces is something that I’ve dreaded doing for over two years. My wife and son, Caleb, and I have discussed how to do it for all of that time. Not having a deck to set up scaffolding on has been the major obstacle.  I knew all along that I’d have to hang from a rope to put them up.  
Climbing ropes aren’t new to me. I have several. I’ve been a climber for many years, and a mountain guide for a few. I’ve seen the good, the bad, and the ugly. But using climbing ropes on the side of my house with drills, impact wrenches, and SAWS was a little bit weird. (Yes, I cut plywood with a circular saw just a few inches from my rope during the installation.)
Needless to say, the braces went up, and that part of living life large is over.  My son, Caleb, and my daughter, Heidi were up on a scaffolding, around the corner of the house, handing me tools, and beams. 
I was Spiderman, doing my thing on the rope. “Thank you, Jesus” kept coming out of my lips whenever a big beam got attached by the 12 inch lag bolts. I didn’t want to fall 25 feet backwards onto rocks with a log on top of me.
Living life large comes real natural when your home is up in the mountains.  If you chuck the “comforts” of city life, flatland life, and on-the-grid life, you can’t help but live an interesting life. 
The other night, I was awake at midnight, thinking how much work needs to be done on our house before the snow flies. I couldn’t sleep, so I got up, made a fire, fixed a snack, and sat down in front of the wood stove to make a schedule. Building contractors make building schedules all of the time. To get the outside of the house ready before winter will require massive work, 6 days a week, for 6 weeks.  
So far, I’m only slightly behind schedule. But for the next 5 weeks, it will be an accelerated schedule for me and my family.  
Don’t ask me how the house is coming. The answer is way too complicated. People who know nothing about the design or building of our house look at it and say, “Oh, all you gotta do is shingle it.” If I listed the things I need to do before it’s shingled, it would take up the entire blog. 
But don’t feel sorry for me. Last night as the sun was going down, I was hand peeling logs for the porch posts. I was warm, the sun was on my face, and the only sound I could hear was the wind clanging the chimes in the tree and whistling softly in the branches.

Your Tax Money at Work

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Today it hit me like a Texas Tornado, or a metric ton of bricks. There are 3 kinds of people in this world:

 

  1. Tax Protesters.

  2. Tax Embracers.

  3. Tax Sufferers-in-Silence.

More and more I’m running into Tax Protesters. They aren’t the kind that absolutely refuse to pay income tax, but they are becoming more vocal about what they see as our different levels of government generally smothering Americans. Some of them talk of “Taking America back”. Some tell me that they are contacting their representatives on a regular basis. Whatever the action, these people used to be part of the Tax Sufferers-in-Silence. They are good, hardworking, moral, usually Christian, citizens.

Our leaders would do well to remember what happened when Christians in the early colonies were overtaxed, and subject to “…a long train of abuses…”. We Americans will put up with a lot of shenanigans, but there comes a point where responsible citizens will rein it in.

The Tax Embracers are of the category where it is generally assumed that your government is the best entity at taking care of the public. After all, look at our beautiful city parks, paved sidewalks, and public schools. (OK, so don’t look at our public schools.) Police, fire, and the Tidal Basin in Washington are testimony to the government’s care for us. (OK, so forget the Tidal Basin. The last time I was there, trash was floating all over in the water. On the other hand, there were chain link fences everywhere because of Homeland Security, and you couldn’t go into the Capitol to use the restroom, which probably is why the Tidal Basin was trashed.) Tax embraces will literally kill you during the process of “taking care” of you. Don’t get me going on this.

Tax-Sufferers-in-Silence are the absolute largest group. Our friends, relatives, coworkers, and neighbors fall into this group. They usually work real hard to make a living, and don’t have time for tax protesting, or other nonsense. Not only that, they aren’t sure what to do, or where to start. They are the person who you always hear saying, “You can’t fight City Hall.” Baloney. For an example of how one simple letter can LOWER your taxes, check out my blog, “Copy of a Tax Protest Letter”. That one letter lowered my property taxes, and you can do it too! Suffering in silence isn’t necessary, anymore. If ever there was hope in America, it is in the fact that you can now hold the government’s feet to the fire.