Get away from it all

Haven't you ever had time you wanted to get away from it all? In March/April 1978, motherearthnews. com published a story about a couple who bought McLeod's Island — a 90-acre island off the coast of Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Canada.

They have a few animals, spend very little on groceries, and are pretty well sustained by the island itself. Although it does present them with some challenges:

"The sea, you know, is not called "restless" for nothing. A glass-smooth bay (as we've learned so well!) can churn-sometimes seemingly in seconds-into a windswept chaos of currents and combers. We've also seen that same bay (the one in which our island is located) thaw and then completely refreeze in just hours on a single December day.

Winters up here can be especially variable. Continual spring-like thaws throughout 1976's cold season, for instance, kept our bay filled with slushy ice that was too thick to push a boat through ... but too dangerous for even a fox to walk on. We were marooned for three full months, from the first of January until the end of March. Last winter's record cold snap, on the other hand, filled the bay so solidly with pack ice that we could hike back and forth to the mainland for our mail and toboggan loads of supplies any time we wanted."

For some of us, we find the Internet gives us the freedom to be able to work and live almost any place we want to. These people didn't have that luxury. I use the past tense as I can't find any current information about them. Who knows? Maybe the tide swept the out to sea.

Life is full of sacrifices. Some are just more dear than others. Still, I don't think buying an island is in my future.

You can read the whole article here.

motherearthnews. com/library/1978_March_April/We_Homesteaded_an_Island

Find people for free

:
How do you find people for free? To avoid hiring a private investigator, learn how to do your own investigating. Here are a couple techniques to get you started.

People are creatures of habit. Even when they are willing to give up their names, and move far away, they rarely are willing to change who they are. A bowler will still want to bowl. If you suspected which city he may have moved to, you could call bowling alleys there to get information on new league members. If I moved and changed my name, you could find me where people gather to play chess. Think of all their habits, and how these might predict their behavior and location.

Most of the time, though, people you try to find aren't really trying to hide. At least, they aren't trying very hard. Maybe they have left town and keep their phone number unlisted, but they probably haven't changed their name. How do you find them quickly? Here are some techniques.

Find People For Free With Skip Tracing Techniques

"Skip tracing" is tracking down people who have "skipped" out of town, or otherwise disappeared. This was the part of my job that I enjoyed when I was a bill collector years ago. It is much easier today with the use of the internet, but the principles remain the same.

The basic things you start with are things like sending mail to any addresses you have and calling any phone numbers you have for the person. When you send a letter, you pay a little extra for "address correction." The post office will return a card to you with any forwarding address they have on file for the subject.

When you call their phone number(s), if you get an answer, you of course want to ask for the subject. If they have moved, you want to get any information you can from the person on the line. Use basic phone pretexts for this.

Find People With Phone Pretexts

These are useful stories. They can be as simple as "Hi, this is Dave. I'm an old friend of John's. Do you know where I can find him?" Be prepared, of course for a question or two, like. "Where do you know John from?"

More complicated pretexts might involve a temptation like, "I have a rebate check for $50 on a car stereo here that John never claimed. Do you have his address, so I can just drop it in the mail today?" If they refuse or claim they don't know where he is, give them your number and ask if they could give it to John if they talk to him.

Get any information you can while you have a person on the phone. They may refuse to give you an address or phone number, but then mention the city that the subject has moved to. Ask them who else might help you, and call those people. Using the phone is the easiest and fastest ways to find people for free.

Passover laugh while cleaning

Passover, or Pesach as it is called in Hebrew, is the 8 day festival where the Jews celebrate their liberation from Egypt more than a thousand years ago. One of the most important features of this freedom festival is that the Jews cannot eat anything that is leavened. They eat unleavened bread.

They must also make sure that no bread crumbs exist in or around the house: the cupboards, the drawers, the kitchen, behind the bed, under the refrigerator and anywhere else where crumbs might have fallen through. To ensure that the house is clean of leavened food materials, the Jews have to clean the entire house from top to bottom as thoroughly as possible. And they do. During the week before Passover, house cleaning is what goes on in most Jewish houses. To answer this demand and to ease the tension, here is a joke on this subject called Impossible Timing, which highlights this cleaning tension.

Impossible Timing:

Samuel, an observant Jew, who was also a financial wizard, left Brooklyn to accept the position of Vice President in a famous broker firm in Utah, which is well known for being a Mormon state.

When they learned this, the company's directorate applied tremendous pressure on the company's president. "We are religious people here," they said. "It can't be that a Jew will handle all our money."

The president tried to ward them off, but when he couldn't manage it anymore, he called Samuel to his office and explained the situation to him. Samuel was offered the choice of either converting or leaving the attractive job which also had a six figure salary quote attached to it.

Samuel had no choice but to convert, and he went home and told his wife that from Sunday, they will start attending the Church services.

A few months went by and his wife kept troubling Samuel about the conversion. "This is too difficult for me. I miss the Sabbath: lighting candles and blessing the wine. I miss the holidays. Money is not everything, Samuel dear."

And with each time that his wife complained, Samuel's conscience increased until he could not take it anymore and he went to meet the company's President.

"Look, I can't go on like this," Samuel said. "I am full of regret. Money is not everything. I can't sleep and neither can my wife. This is too heavy a burden for me to carry. I was born a Jew and I want to die a Jew. And if you want me to quit, I will without making any trouble."

The President looked at him in wonder, "Listen, Samuel, I had no idea that this was so difficult for you. I thought it was a trivial matter. But you don't have to leave. Everything will be the same as before: you can stay here with us without converting.

Samuel returned home happy and grinning from ear to ear. He ran to his wife, who was watching Ricky Lake, "You won't believe it! It's a miracle. We are going back to being Jews, and I still retain my job."

His wife looked at him with eyes that spat fire, and said," Are you mad?"

Samuel was shocked. "But I thought that this is what you wanted!" He cut in. "All this while you have been crying and complaining. Don't you wish to go back to becoming a Jew""

His wife looked at him with ever more fury, "Of course I want to. Of course I want to," she said. "But now? Only a week before Passover?"