IDEAL MONTH
March is an ideal month to ski in Lapland. There are no crowds. Temperatures are not too low. Days are long and sunny. There's plenty of snow.
LIFTS
There aren't many chairlifts at Lapland resorts. You will spend a lot of time on long button and T-bar lifts. It's great for leg strength but can be very tiring when those lifts are nearly a mile long up steep mountains.
OFFPISTE
Even moderately difficult offpiste can be too challenging if you have never done it before. Offpiste conditions are less forgiving of lazy skiing and bad technique. Snow conditions can vary greatly on the same run, from ice to deep, heavy snow.
BAG LUNCH
For a small fee, hotels will allow you to make a packed lunch from the breakfast buffet. We paid 25 kr (£2.27, $3.40) to make big ham and cheese sandwiches accompanied by a flask of coffee.
WHERE TO EAT
On-slope eating: Cafes and restaurants will not like you eating your packed lunch around guests who are paying for meals. Each cafe has a warming hut attached to it where you are welcome to eat food you bring with you.
BASIC FARE
Eating out: Food at the slopeside cafes is basic. Burgers and fries; pizza; ham and cheese sandwiches are standard fare. Few of the venues we tried offered high quality cuisine. But it's odd how a hard day's skiing can make you long for a burger and fries.
AFTER SKI
Apres ski: Do not come to Lapland if top-notch apres ski is vital to you. It usually comprises drinking in an (expensive) bar and, if you're lucky, a guy with guitar singing cover versions. Once in a while, a band might visit to liven things up.
Left-libertarianism
Welcome to Open Source Lifestyles and tunc.biz, the organically growing online magazine started by left-libertarian David Hay Jones.
Syndicalist
Be a reader, be a writer. Be of the left or the right. Believe in God, or not at all. The choice is yours. We welcome all input.
Grace us with your time and words. Read us as you wish, write for us if you want.
Be local, be global. Be free, be happy.
Open Source Lifestyles and tunc.biz
Publisher Athina Simonidou talks about the history and aims of OSL and tunc.biz, which she and her collective bought from David Hay Jones. If you want to write for, or submit images to, OSL, contact Athina.
Web adventurer David Hay Jones
Athina Simonidou: OSL grew out of tunc.biz, which was started by the writer and photographer David Hay Jones in 2002. Tunc means Testing under natural conditions
. It's also an homage to Lawrence Durrell's novel of the same name. You can guess what he meant by tunc.
HOT NEWS
The site grew very quickly under David's ownership from a kind of hobby site to a successful business that became too time-consuming for him to want to run anymore. So he sold it to the OSL Collective. His contribution was finding an anarcho-syndicalist way to make money online.
What's OSL?
Athina Simonidou: OSL means Open Source Lifestyles. We are strong believers in open source, in sharing, in the free exchange of ideas, in money being a part of life but not all-defining and and all-encompassing. We celebrate the open source way of life.
David Hay Jones' latest book. Order from amazon if you wish.
What's being tested under natural conditions?
Athina Simonidou: Life. Anything we care to write about is tunc, i.e. tested under natural conditions. And I mean anything.
Is the website commercial, political? What's the point of it?
Athina Simonidou: Although David no longer owns the site -- he sold it in 2009 -- it retains his flavor of left-libertarianism. The site is about everything and nothing.
What's left-libertarianism?
Athina Simonidou: It's a political philosophy based on individual freedom and expression. It also has a focus on peace, anti-imperialism, social justice and international solidarity. We promote sexual and orientation liberation, being proud of who and what you are.
In contrast to the right libertarianism of people like Ron Paul and some folks in the GOP, left-libertarianism is critical of corporate capitalism and the domination of American life by big business. Left libertarians believe the individual should be as critical of big business as he/she is of big government. We like the idea of national parks and health care for everybody, which the right does not like.
Anything else?
Athina Simonidou: We are against racism and sexism. But isn't everybody? We're for feminism. We're for freedom of religion, but we're probably critical of religion, especially abuses of power and people by religion.
We're not keen on superstition and supernatural hocus-pocus, the way it adversely impacts mainstream religion, prevents religion form growing up and becoming modern and honest. We dislike the anti-intellectualism and anti-science stances of the fundamentalist religions and denominations.
But you can't force people out of beliefs. Our approach is peaceful, conversational, and educational. Unlike religion, we don't aim to convert; we converse.
Left-libertarianism is for the individual finding his or her own path to happiness without undue reliance on government. It's also about saying No
to overt corporate influence over our lives and choices.
We differ markedly from conservatives because while they are for corporate freedom they love to interfere in the individual's freedom by forcing their social agenda on people. For example, conservatives are in favor of bullying by government and the courts to prevent gay marriage. They also tend to push an evangelical Christian agenda, which is often intolerant and hateful. Conservative commitment to individual freedom is superficial.
We differ from liberals and socialists in that we are less accepting of, or we reject, big government.
How does a left-libertarian strategy play out in everyday life?
We are usually non-conformist and anti-authoritarian.
We believe the human capacity for creativity and invention can build happiness and income in all sorts of unexpected ways and areas.
You don't have to be a wage slave if you don't want to be. If, for example, you want to write poetry online or sell your organic veggies at a Farmers' Market, we believe you can and should do that, and that along the way you'll find the means to make a living. Most of all, you'll be happy.
We believe in challenging established norms, whether they come to us from big business, government, church, or the deadweight of tradition. It's the individual's right to say, That's not for me. I don't want to do that. I don't believe in that.
Is political commitment always serious?
Athina Simonidou: It doesn't all have to be earnest and deadly serious. We'd love to get some of the dull, life-destroying cr-p out of politics, get the fun and individual freedom back into it.
It's important to be personally convinced about stuff, not to believe or commit to action because you are told by a higher authority to do it. If a pastor, parent, or elder tells you, You'll get to hell
for not believing some rigid, religious belief, you should just say -- it is your right to say -- No, I don't believe that stuff.
So, we say yes to life, peace, happiness, the good things. And we say no to authoritarians, bullies, people who demand obedience.
How is this reflected in OSL's articles?
Athina Simonidou: Each contributor is free to write what he or she wants, and the individual earns whatever their pages make from click and affiliate advertising. Some contributors make hundreds of dollars a year, other makes thousands. One or two make more than that.
If someone reading this is interested in finding out more about left-libertarianism, who should they read?
Athina Simonidou: There are plenty of influences. Henry David Thoreau in Walden
is a great start. Going back, there's Emma Goldman and Lucy Parsons. There's Ella Baker. Angela Davis is important despite her long association with the statist left. We should mention Dolores Huerta.
More recently there's novelist Henry Miller, influential for his message of sexual liberation. The poet Gary Snyder is worth looking at. Take a look at the Earthship architect Mike Reynolds. Noam Chomsky is influential for his political writings.
We could mention the philosopher Philippe Van Parijs. Murray Bookchin is important. There's Hillel Steiner, and you'll see Samuel Edward Konkin III mentioned a lot. Though not a libertarian or anarchist, the leftist American philosopher Richard Rorty is important.
There're the radical feminists Nikki Craft, Mary Daly, who died this year, Catharine MacKinnon ... and the anarchist-feminist group Mujeres Creando started by Julieta Paredes, Maria Galindo and Monica Mendoza. And there's Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak to name just a few important contributors.
Is anyone free to submit articles to OSL?
Athina Simonidou: Yes, of course. We have everything from skiing advice, to articles about shoes and lingerie, to how to find a marriage therapist, and how to catch a cheating spouse. The site grows everyday, expanding into new areas all the time. We, the OSL Collective, provide the template, the form, and our contributors provide the content.
If you want to contribute to OSL, just write to me via this link.
Do you allow right wing and GOP-inspired material?
Athina Simonidou: Absolutely. We do not interfere with the individual's right to express him or herself. The only stuff you will not see is overt and offensive racism, sexism, and homophobia. But we are very tolerant of most tastes. We have a lot of atheist and skeptical articles, just as we publish stuff by evangelicals.
How would you describe the OSL site?
Athina Simonidou: I think we are an anarchist version of Wikipedia. I mean anarchist in the positive sense of individual and freedom-loving, while also being socially responsible. These anarchist, anarcho-syndicalist, or left-libertarian ideas are very much in tune with David Hay Jones' original aims for the site. It's good for us to keep that focus.
Finally, Athina, who are you?
Athina Simonidou: I knew David Hay Jones when he lived in Greece in the late 80s. He was a writer interested in social justice. I was active in the anarcho-syndicalist movement in Athens. We hit it off and have stayed in touch ever since. It's great to be able to take over a business he started and keep running it in line with our shared political ideals.
OSL Collective, Athina Simonidou,, Giles Devos, and Rupert de Borchgrafve