I Love My Home In NoMi--!

Photo By John Hoff

I've often thought I should write more about my house in the Hawthorne Neighborhood, the one I bought for a mere $17,900 or something like that. All my friends tell me how lucky I was, how fortunate, to be able to make my move in the housing market and buy a home outright; a house that once had an assessed value of, like, $180,000? Something like that.

And it will probably have a value that high once again.

But, of course, I'm well aware that my blog has a tendency to upset some people (no, really, I've heard that!) and so I sometimes hesitate to share details about my beautiful home...how much I enjoy being a home owner in Minneapolis...and the work which gets done on the place, little by little, to make it not only a home but a base for world-changing activism involving (for example) freeganism.

Lately, though, I've been thinking, "Gee, really, I'm not hard to find if somebody is determined to find me--especially with mouthy, implacable enemies like the T.J. Waconia fraudsters (Jon Helgason and Tom Balko) and their little greased-up prison errand-boy, Jim Watkins of Plano, Texas, a.k.a. "The DFW Mentor."

(Oh, yeah, I've got something special for Jim Watkins, by and by, when I'm not too busy galavanting all over the nation seeing, for example, Apache Indian reservations. So cool)

All of this is just my tangential way of saying...I might be writing about my home more, the same home with a "We Watch, We Call" sign out front. After all, if JOHNNY NORTHSIDE is afraid to write about his own house, others may feel afraid as well. I see it as my job to be unafraid.

So let me tell you about my new oven--! A few months ago I...

...replaced the old, "grody to the max" oven (which came with the house) and replaced it with a newer, considerably less grody oven which still cost nothing, because I'm frugal-as-all-get-out and, well, it's not hard to score an oven. Somebody is always pleasing their woman with a sparkly new oven, which means the old oven has to go SOMEWHERE; probably to some divorced guy paying child support.

Anyway--!

So I got this new oven, pictured above, and celebrated with a friend of mine by cooking up a kettle of corn on the cob. I had briefly considered having a LIVE LOBSTER with corn on the cob, but then I thought, well, who wants to eat a live lobster? If I bite into it while it's alive, won't it scream? Won't that be profoundly disturbing? Live oysters are different...you eat them and they don't make any noise at all, but I've heard lobsters scream.

But seriously...lobster? During a recession?

I decided to just go with corn on the cob. The picture, above, shows my friend and I cooking up the corn on the surface of the new oven. And, yes, this was a few months ago. Why am I writing about it now? Because the photos were in my camera, and I had to leave for, like, a month to drive a truck all over this great country. Yes, I'll be blogging about those adventures by and by, but for now I just wanted to say...

Corn on the cob...cooked on a new oven...in my wonderful home, which I own outright.

I've often blogged about trying to transform NoMi into "urban utopia." Well, sometimes I realize we already experience moments of pure utopia, such as the famous backyard bonfires slash policy discussions, or walks with a dog around Jordan Pond during weekend visitation with my son. We just need to make the moments of utopia last longer, unbroken by crime and thuggery.

These are the things I think about while eating corn on the cob. Though sometimes I just think...

More salt. More butter!

(Addendum, Thanksgiving Day, 2009: DFW Mentor Jim Watkins claims he no longer lives in Plano, Texas. He did not specifically deny the allegation that he is a "greased up prison errand boy," however)

Blog Donation Disclosure And Energy Saving Light Bulbs...

Photo By John Hoff

It is now my habit and practice to reveal donations which come to this blog, via PayPal and in person, and to disclose where the money goes. It is not a standard required of me in any way. It is simply a standard I choose to take upon myself. I reveal these things when the money is spent, not when it is received, and I don't spend money very fast so...it can take a while.

Recently, a friend personally hand-delivered a cash donation of $50 from a local businessman. Nothing was asked of me as the recipient of this particular donation, except I was assured a particular issue I care about was being worked on behind-the-scenes.

Today I used this money to pay most of my electric bill, which was a mere $55.59. I credit this low electric bill to the fact I'm using energy saving light bulbs throughout the house, plus I do obsessive green things like unplug my microwave when not in use. Even my FRIDGE has energy saving light bulbs.

I am, however, happy to leave yard lights on constantly. It is my ongoing contribution to the safety and security of the neighborhood around me and, besides, the yard lights are also the "energy saver" kind.

That is some great electric bill, let me tell you. I was so happy and pleased and relieved when I opened the bill. I exhaled and thought, "Wow, the energy saver bulbs really paid off!"

I would urge all my NoMi friends and neighbors to make the leap to a deeper shade of green, stop using incandescent bulbs, and switch to energy saver bulbs.

But, no, I didn't throw away the incandescent bulbs. I still have a big stockpile of those. I figured I'd put 'em all in a box and take them to some of my blood kin out in the hinterlands of Minnesota. Since one of my blood kin is rather adamant about preferring the incandescent bulbs, the greenest thing I can do is make sure my old bulbs don't go to waste, and help my kin save money.

I am nothing if not an environmental radical. I am the only person I know who recycles sea shells. But, then again, I can be very pragmatic. That is, after all, the nature of a freegan.

(Do not click "Read More")

Edgy Green Freegan Movement Takes Root In NoMi...

Photos By John Hoff

For political, social, moral and environmental reasons, "freegans" like to avoid paying for food whenever possible. Many freegans are vegetarian or "vegan," but some freegans (such as myself) think it's "morally pure" to eat meat as long as you yourself didn't buy it, such as pork chops that get pulled out of a store fridge and put in a nice clean cardboard box and gently, lovingly placed in a dumpster two hours before they actually expire. THAT kind of meat.

(For the record, I eat morally impure meat as well, but I consider it an ongoing spiritual failure which accumulates what may be described, in a vague non-Hindu way, as "bad karma.")

In any case, due to the outrageous waste habits of our society (yes, even during a so-called recession) all kinds of valuable stuff just gets thrown away. Because of how much is wasted, dumpster diving is not the desperate, filthy little world most Americans assume it to be at first glance. On the contrary, it is the doorway to a lifestyle of "shabby chic" luxury, with very little impact on the earth.

Read my two books on the subject of dumpster diving to learn more: The Art and Science of Dumpster Diving and Dumpster Diving: The Advanced Course, both by John HOFFMAN. (Note pen name)

But don't run right out and buy those books. Geez, that's what LIBRARIES are for.

Anyway, as the author of two seminal books on dumpster diving, (I was a famous cult author in my late 20s) I lay claim to being one of the "intellectual grand daddies of the freegan movement." My book, The Art and Science of Dumpster Diving, is cited by most freegans as central to their outlook and lifestyle. Years before I met Connie Nompelis--Realtor and historic house preservationist--she had read both my books. Somehow we both ended up in NoMi where, from time to time, we take off in her vehicles and go dumpster diving together.

I won't say where. Maybe Wisconsin, maybe Canada, who knows?

Some of my freegan friends like...



...Karl Noyes have been hanging around, lately, scoping out the situation in NoMi, contemplating the possibility of buying property and moving here. Karl Noyes helps me with technical junk on this website--like putting in the PayPal button--and he used to be my editor at the Minnesota Daily. Karl converts diesel vehicles to run on used cooking oil. He's very cool.

In North Minneapolis, I've had discussions with virtually all my friends about freeganism, even if it's something as simple as picking up a roasted marshmallow Peep which has fallen on the grass, and saying, "This would have been discarded. That makes it Freegan food, so I will eat it. It's a political and spiritual thing with me. I am a freegan."

Of course, freeganism isn't merely about food choices. All kinds of lifestyle choices are associated with freeganism, most of which involve NOT PAYING MONEY FOR STUFF.

Freeganism is constantly part of my life and, actually, this is one of the reasons I came hunting for a house in North Minneapolis: so I could dig in, get stability, do more writing, and keep developing the loosey-goosey tenants of freeganism, among other things I enjoy writing about.

But that's a different tale for a different day. The point is I haven't written a whole lot about freeganism on this blog because it's not very North Minneapolis related, except among me and some of my closest friends who happen to be from or around North Minneapolis. And even constant dumpster diving doesn't mean one self-identifies as a freegan. I'm not sure if Connie would call herself a freegan. And it's not important enough to ask. Freegan is as freegan DIVES.

But then two things happened recently and I said to myself, "This is something you need to write about more often. Not later, but NOW."

First, Connie and I made a huge score on Arizona iced tea. That night we had a discussion about starting a "freegan food bank" to attract graduate students to North Minneapolis, students that might buy homes, have families, and fill NoMi with their environmental edgy coolness. (And it wasn't like Connie said, "Oh, yeah, let's do that" because THAT is a lot of work, after all, but rather we just kicked around the idea)

Some days after the "Arizona tea score" with Connie I gave most of the tea to to Karl Noyes, because I had way too much of it and it was going to make me gain weight, and I also gave Karl a bunch of canned food somebody just boxed up and left in an alley after a vacant, foreclosed house had been "trashed out." And I thought to myself, "Geez, I just gave Karl all this dumpster dived and foreclosed food. Isn't that the freegan food bank vision I talked about with Connie?"

On that same successful dive which turned up all the Arizona tea, Connie managed to score three rose bushes, which she planted in front of her house in (wait for it...wait for it...) NORTH MINNEAPOLIS.

A few days ago I was doing some yard work over there--cutting out some brush I nicknamed "The Witchy Thicket" and, like most of my nicknames, it stuck--and I noticed Connie had planted the dumpster dived rose bushes in front of her house.

So I snapped a picture.

And as I contemplated those rose bushes planted in front of Connie's house, I realized I could actually get on my blog and say, with a straight face, the freegan movement is taking root in NoMi.