Just weird. I couldn't relate at all, and I'm poor.

---

________
It doesn't really matter what Phil is saying, the music of his voice is the appropriate soundtrack for a bicycle race. HTupolev

If you want simple you can move to a small town and renovate a smaller older home and you won't have to worry about these people.

---

They constantly try to escape from the darkness outside and within
Dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good T.S. Eliot

My take away is that she's not keen on commercialisation of the perceived poor lifestyle - essentially sanitised, repackaged and then consumed by individuals who can afford it. You know, like every-fucking-thing in the world (grunge, punk, music festivals etc)

Well off people playing at being poor, all the while knowing they could call it off at any point they wished, whilst the real poor look on and wonder WTF is going on. The band Pulp covered it quite well in Common People (listen to the extended, album, track, not the single).

F'ing hipsters...

---

Swim. Overbike. Walk.

I'm not sure what that is. First I heard about poverty appropriation.

But it leaves me with an identity crisis. I am very liberal, grew up poor. But now I have money. But on the way home from work today I made my loop where I forage for asparagus in several spots in ditches. Which seems a step beneath dumpster diving but for a semi high falutin food when my wife cooks it in some fancy pasta dish.

Did I appropriate poverty or am I ok since I grew up poor? I'm thinking I am OK since it was a union household too. There are just so many rules and I can't keep up.

I'm still trying to figure out how to get the dipshits from being the face of liberalism?

---

I'm beginning to think that we are much more fucked than I thought.

I'm dumbfounded by this statement

I eat weeds out of my back yard (miner's lettuce, so it's legit, but it's literally a weed that comes up during the rainy season here). If I could find asparagus to forage I'd be ecstatic.

Dumbfounded that asparagus can be found in ditches or that I eat out of ditches? Or both?

---

I'm beginning to think that we are much more fucked than I thought.

I did that growing up too! Ten or twenty years before my folks moved into the house I grew up in there was an asparagus field behind the house. The stuff kept coming up for years later in the field in the spring and in ditches around us. In the spring I will also cut tiger lilies that are growing like weeds in the ditches or lilacs for my wife.

---

They constantly try to escape from the darkness outside and within
Dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good T.S. Eliot

Phrase of the Year winner, right there.

He should change his handle to The Forage.

---

The devil made me do it the first time, second time I done it on my own - W

Here in Maine there can be fights over Fiddleheads (which is a fern similar to Asparagus) patches this time of year. Recently, people were up in arms because a bill was proposed making it illegal to forage Fiddleheads off of private property without permission.

There have been Trustifarians begging for change and living a destitute lifestyle for decades. Probably since the 60's.

You are stealing food from people who need it. You make me sick.

Also, where are these asparagus ditches? Sounds delish...

---

How does Danny Hart sit down with balls that big?

Crazy activists:

"Everyone needs to stop buying so much stuff, all that stuff you buy is killing the planet. Do you need a house that big? Do you need a 5th TV? WHY WON'T YOU THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!"

****People start buying less stuff and living in smaller houses****

Crazy activists:

"HOW DARE YOU APPROPRIATE THE LOWER INCOME LIFESTYLE?!?!? GO BACK TO YOUR BIG HOUSES!!!"

---

How does Danny Hart sit down with balls that big?

I know right? Wtf is this person's problem? I grew up not poor by Eastern European standards but compared to my peers in the US I may as well have been homeless (single 13inch black and white TV with 2 state run channels in the 1980s).

Now I live in the US, make multiples of the average household income and still choose to live relatively simply. Old (rusty) cars, old, small house, single TV, no cable, buy used goods, cook at home, pick spices out of my lawn - almost the entire thing is overgrown with thyme. I don't think I'm appropriating poverty or simplicity or whatever. My main motivation is not wanting to waste this immense gift that is good health and a fortuitously high income. I think the tiny house crowd is pretty loony but a lot of them cite similar reasons - just not wanting to waste space/money/resources. I don't really see it as a bad thing.

Those crackpots who buy an $80K "tiny house" and tow it behind a fancy vehicle are a different story but still - their choice.

I don't think the idea behind living in a small house or minimalism or reducing consumption in general is to mimic poverty. It's just not buying into the idea that you need to consume excessively to be happy. It has nothing to do with appropriating poverty.

That is a work of art right there.

As to the foraging, we do it for blackberries and blueberries. We have asparagus in our yard/garden, so we have our own. If I knew of a place where I could pick it in a ditch - you can bet I'd be in the ditch.

Just read an article that ramps are being foraged to oblivion. Morels are coming into season and the woods will be crawling with people picking up ticks.

If I had the time I would forage as much food as I could.

I do think some of the ditch lilies are coming home with me this summer.

---

Pactimo brand ambassador, ask me about promo codes

It's not a matter of appropriation so much. It definitely becomes harder to be a victim of poverty when there are hordes of rich folks lining up to live the life style.

It also begs the question, in my mind at least, of what poverty really is. If it's having to eat rice a lot as that author describes, then who really cares?

Somehow the true definition of poverty cannot be primarily a material standard.

Edit: at least not in first world countries.

The author clearly feels that they are entitled to not eat rice. Having seen the shanty towns in South Africa, I am 100% certain that those people would tell the author to cry them a river.

---

How does Danny Hart sit down with balls that big?

If you ever got out and rode your bike around in the fall you would see the big fronds sticking up..

I live in farm country outside Columbus. Within 5 miles of my house there are 7 separate patches that I pick. I have left them go before to see if anyone else was eating out of the ditch. Oddly it seems most people do not. I have my own too, but it just seems wrong to let the others go. So I end up giving a lot away.

We had a chunk of property 15+ years ago we were planning on building on before we decided it was just too far out. In one day we got most of a five gallon bucket of morels off of it. We had shrooms every way imaginable. Best cream of mushroom soup ever. I half thought about keeping it just for that. Where I am now there is also a decent amount of public land and I have not found any reliable spots. I'm sure part of that is people getting to them before me.

---

I'm beginning to think that we are much more fucked than I thought.

Morels are coming into season and the woods will be crawling with people picking up ticks.

I've read a few articles about turf wars in the North West over mushrooms. I guess it's a huge business for supplying restaurants.

Ticks are bad this year. Pulled two off my dog in February (we still had snow in April) and had to treat her for anaplasmosis a couple of months before that.

I pulled one from my arm a couple weeks ago, was treated for lyme's last summer and still have a welt from one two Octobers ago. I've had shit luck with ticks the past couple years.

That tends to keep me out of the woods in the spring. I do keep a bottle of permethrin at the house for mosquito control, should mix a dilute spray bottle to spray my clothes and dog with.

---

Pactimo brand ambassador, ask me about promo codes

Yeah, despite trying to be careful, I usually pull a few out of me every year -- fortunately everything has always been negative. Nothing like taking a shower and feeling a tick in your nut sack. Had that happen a couple of times.