Civility

People here talk about the weather a lot.

You hear it everywhere—amongst the people gathered for coffee at the Dairy Queen, at the hardware store, at church, in the average phone conversation. The other day, as my wife and I were taking our son for a stroller ride around town, we passed a powerwalking middle-aged lady who, after the customary and sufficient exchange of “Hi”s, for some reason felt it necessary to call back to us over her shoulder from a significant distance back down the sidewalk to give her opinion of the fine weather.

It used to annoy me to no end, how people would comment on the weather that we could all see clearly enough without the play-by-play commentary. Then one day I realized that this is a farming-dependent region, and nearly everyone, no matter their current residence or means of making a living, was separated from an agrarian lifestyle by only a generation or two at most; therefore, the weather was indeed an issue of concern socially, and as such was certainly worth talking about. These days, I don’t mind a discussion of the weather, unless its purpose is solely to have something safe to say to someone with whom we have little relationship. I guess I’ve always been a little contrary.

Talking about the weather is just one example of those social conventions which we variably call courtesy, etiquette, or politeness. I’ve heard many anthropologists and sociologists explain social politeness as the way we interact with strangers to keep from killing them (although my murderous tendencies are aroused more by the banal application of the superficialities of politeness than by its complete absence). These conventions are intended to create or, at the least, mimic civility.

We used to have civility, in the deepest sense of the word (citizenship, belonging, a sense of being a part of a place and a people, from the Latin civis, “citizen”), simply by needing one another and living in community. This was generally the way of things since the dawn of band-level societies until mass-migration, mass-production, and mass-media converged during the Industrial Age, culminating in the mid-twentieth century in creating a truly mass culture. The dominant modi of “culture” have moved from the local and specific to the widespread and general. We now experience the social necessity of politeness, since we lack so much in familiarity.

It was due to and during this convergence of mass influences that we began our shift from being members of functioning communities to being members of the general public. The meta-shifts of the late Industrial Age—from agrarian to industrial, from rural to urban, from agriculture to agribusiness, from competent self-sufficiency to wage-earning dependency, from multi-generationalism to the “nuclear family”—brought about a situation in which hundreds of millions of people globally changed their living situations to such an extent, separating themselves from others to such a degree, that individualism has become our basic social principle. And a society of individuals can be said to experience communion in little else than jointly consuming “public goods”—air, water, place, information.

In our individuality, and without the strictures of interdependent community, we have gradually absconded from our personal responsibilities and interests, relinquishing them to ever-distant political bodies and impersonal purveyors of goods. Disenchanted and dispossessed, we became targets—individuality and dependency are profitable concepts. Consumer culture was born, and savvy profit-seekers have supplied us with automobiles, personal computers and DVD players, MP3 players, earbuds and cell phones, all those things which so clearly illustrate our isolation from all those other individuals surrounding us.

Now, as a society, we live individually or as nuclear families, needing 1) only those companies which provide us goods or services to consume—those that grow, transport, process, package, and sell us our food; those that saw and mill or synthetically produce the materials from which we build and furnish our homes; those that produce our energy sources (at tremendously high cost monetarily, environmentally, and socially), transport them directly to our homes (by way of an ubiquitous, monstrously ugly, dangerous and bothersome web of power and gas lines), and sell them to us (at unbelievably low cost for what they help us achieve); those that grow and mill or synthetically produce the fabrics from which other companies fashion the products with which we clothe ourselves; those that sell us the ability to “communicate” with those other individuals with whom we still share some modicum of relationship; those that produce and/or provide our means of transportation in our exceedingly travel-dependent systems of land use and municipal zoning; those that pay us wages for doing often demeaning work so that we can hopefully afford to buy the services and products of all these other companies—and 2) the paternalistic, multifarious, often duplicitous and unquestionably inefficient and wasteful government programs and legislation intended to “help” us achieve our goals or “protect” us in achieving them.

Thankfully, many people live outside of this paradigm, and I am grateful for them, and I hope they are appropriately grateful for their good fortune. However, this situation is the common social and economic paradigm of our time in the “developed” world, and this paradigm is so structurally engrained that except in local neighborhoods, VERY small towns, and institutional and religious communes, we no longer need the people we pass on the streets every day, and so we must create social conventions which keep us from doing them harm for the purpose of self-advancement.

I see dissatisfaction with and a backlash against this condition brewing in North American culture today. These have been brewing since the “Back to the Land” movement of nearly four decades ago. Unfortunately, that movement (along with the Hippie counterculture that partially gave birth to it) was a reactionary one, and its influence was significant but small. I fear reactionary “movements”, for a reaction cannot exist except in reference to another thing; move away from that thing and the ideals which brought about the reaction can be ambiguated, forgotten, or preyed upon. What I hope to come of this dissatisfaction is not some new movement fashioned out of the philosophies of self which dominate our current social situation but a thoroughgoing rediscovery of the necessity and pleasure of life in meaningful relationship with others.

When we belong with and to one another, perhaps we will be able and willing to trade our pleasantries and politeness for civility and consideration.

Maybe even talking about the weather will become a truly worthwhile activity.

Great News!

According to this article, Gen. David Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command, believes that al-Qaida is no longer operating in Afghanistan.

Great! Mission accomplished, payback for 9/11 complete. So when are we bringing our boys home?

Wait, aren't we sending even more troops to Afghanistan?

Oh, yeah, that's right—we still haven't completed that pipeline to the Indian Ocean that we wanted in the region, and we haven't yet bound ourselves to India by invading Pakistan...ummm, I mean, "supporting" Pakistan's valiant offensives against the Taliban (you know, that little troublesome group we essentially created to help stave off the last invaders of Afghanistan, the Soviets), and we haven't found Osama bin Laden, and we haven't completed our nationbuilding exercises in the region (as pushed by the new pro-war "progressive" thinktank, the Center for a New American Security, from which Obama conscripted his Undersecretary of Defense).

We're gettin' in deep, people, and it ain't likely to get better anytime soon.

You know, I wonder what happened to all those anti-war protesters we used to have? Are they all at a conference or something? Since Obama passed himself off as the anti-war candidate last year, maybe they all quit once he was elected, expecting the Pax Americana to descend upon the earth. Or maybe they have all bought into the "wrong war" mantra of some so-called "progressives" in Congress. And I expect a few of them were just Bush-bashers and Republican-haters (which is fine, since both Bush and most recent Republican politicians deserve nearly every unkind thing one can think of to say about them, and I say that as a registered Republican and as someone who voted for Bush). But aren't there any anti-war protesters out there who are actually against war? Or is that kind of ideological consonance unattainable in our day by anyone who is not a Jain, Buddhist, Mennonite, Quaker, or Amish? (Luckily, there are a few decent anti-war people around—they just aren't the ones we heard screaming during the Bush years who now seem to have lost their voices—and they often have good things to say.)

OK, I suppose the only really great news here is that the good ol' U.S. of A. hasn't strayed from its course since 1917, when the war-mongering, Constitution-trampling "Progressive" Woodrow Wilson set us off on our enduring Imperial Quest to "make the world safe for democracy".

If you consider that a good thing.

Connections

I need connections. I need a place to be and to be a part of. Since I was 17 I’ve been somewhat of a drifter. I finished high school, moved out of my parents’ house, and set out on a spectacularly unsuccessful attempt to make it on my own.

Growing up in King, North Carolina, never quite suited me. I dreamed of being other places, of being someone else. I remember hearing a song on the radio at my grandmother’s house when I was about 12 or 13; it said, “I’m gonna be somebody/One of these days I’m gonna break these chains/I’m gonna be somebody/You can bet your hard-earned dollar I will.” This was Travis Tritt’s “I’m Gonna Be Sombody”, one of his first singles. I didn’t know who Travis Tritt was at that time, but I knew I wanted to be like the guy in that song. Unfortunately, I thought that meant having to leave behind everything and everyone I knew, since what I knew didn't quite encourage being "somebody".

I first visited New York when I was 17. I loved the city and came to realize through that weeklong experience that there was a MUCH bigger world out there for me to get to know. Sometime around my 18th birthday I took a trip to Alaska as a graduation/birthday present to myself. This was too much—seeing the two extremes of the quintessential urban landscape and, a few months later, after I had had a little time to process the first experience, the closest thing to wilderness America had left to offer proved more than my small-town-North Carolina self could handle. I wanted out.

After a year of community college a couple counties over from where I grew up, I began to feel drawn to work in church ministry. A few months later I decided on a college—in Saskatchewan, Canada, of all places. Three years and a bit later, looking to fulfill the internship requirement for my ministry degree (at a different college in a different Canadian province), I decided to take a job in Casper, Wyoming, basing my choice on driving through western and north-central Wyoming in 1998 and the eastern half of the state, including Casper, in 1999. I arrived in Casper one fine day in late August, 2000, not having a clue as to where I was going to live, much less sleep that night. Thankfully, Dave Tenney, the kind fellow who had been called out to welcome me on behalf of the school I was to teach at (pardon me, at which I was to teach), happened to have a garage apartment for rent. His sweet little children were the first to introduce me to my new title: Mr. Calloway.

I worked at the school and at a church, fulfilling the requirements for three different internships during that year. I loved it—I was busy, I had my own life for the first time, I was important to a lot of people. I developed some of the deepest friendships of my life during that time. But, due to the combination of a couple bad experiences and the lack of maturity necessary to handle them well, I decided to leave my chosen home, taking the easy way out by blaming the decision on having finished my internships and my desire to finish my degree. A part of me regretted that decision for several years. A part of me still considers Casper my home.

I spent two years in Alberta, finished one degree and came within one assignment of finishing a second, drove back to Casper, spent six months there trying to work through my regrets, and then finally returned to North Carolina, penniless, with not a bit of direction for my life. So I decided to do what nearly all directionless people do—go to university. I thought I’d become a professional at some academic abstraction, finally become somebody, finally break those chains of indecision and regret. Well, a bit more than two years, two universities, $35,000 of student loan debt, and the failure of the most serious romantic relationship up to that point of my life later, at the age of 29, I moved back in with my parents, ostensibly to help care for my partially disabled dad, but in reality because I had nothing else left. Six months later I drove out to Montana for a job interview, and on a whim took a little jaunt back up to Saskatchewan. Thank God.

Over the years I got to know a lot of people and a lot of places, but I’m about as rootless as a store-bought onion. Sure, I have my favorite places scattered over the U.S. and western Canada—a little cove in a waterfall in North Carolina, the spot beside the Snake River at the base of the Tetons where I first heard coyotes sing, decaying pioneers’ cabins here and there, great little Indonesian restaurants in Calgary and New York, a krumholtzed five-foot-tall relic of a tree on Wolf Rock, a nearly redwood-sized 500-year-old tulip poplar tucked so far back into the mountains of Tennessee that it somehow survived the loggers’ saws, the glistening stream in Wyoming where I first flyfished, a muddy trickle of a spring in the Smoky Mountains that once quite possibly saved my life. And I know people scattered all around the world who have had profound influences on my life, with most of whom, however, I carry on little or no correspondence. I now have a beautiful wife and child to ground me somewhat, but what I lack is a deep and abiding relationship to A place and A community of people.

I have been reading Wendell Berry’s essay, “A Native Hill”, in which he looks at his own life in terms of the place in Kentucky where he grew up and to which he returned after he tired of his successful literary career in New York and other famous centers of magnificence. His relationship with that place and the people there show me what I do not have, what I never have had, but what I desperately want.

I think there’s something missing in most of us products of suburban life and modern transport. And I think that thing that’s missing has a lot to do with our general dissatisfaction with our circumstances here in the most wealthy region of the world, the erosion of our culture and decency, our rates of depression and suicide, our extreme individuality, escapist religious teachings, extractive consumer economy, and progressive destruction of the earth. I think most of us suffer from a fundamental sickness, and it comes on us because we never truly belong to a place. And if we never belong to a place, we cannot in any meaningful sense belong to its people—no wonder we escape into virtual online worlds, collect friends on Facebook, and absentmindedly chat on our cellphones nearly constantly. If we do not belong to any place or its community of people, we are all nothing but individuals passing one another every day, getting to pick and choose our relationships based upon how they benefit us, seldom being required to develop the humility necessary to see ourselves as small parts of a greater whole. This hubris of the self is one of the most devastating forces humanity can wield, and, unfortunately, our contemporary culture and its consumer economy are geared to create just that pathos in each one of us.

So how does the drifter find a home? How does he make a place his own and begin to belong to it rather than the other way around? How does the self-centered man be truly present with other self-centered people? How do individuals create genuine community where it does not exist, and how can we genuinely enter into it where it does? I’m not asking how we make friends—most of us are capable of that. But how do we create interconnectedness—healthy interdependence—in a world of individuals and an economy of consumers?

Solutions

Before my recent forays into the religious side of things (I’ll soon post on why that’s been on my mind of late) I had made mention of both my belief in sustainability and my distrust of technological “solutions”. We’ve heard a lot lately about being “green”, from “green” jobs as the answer to our current unemployment problems, to the need for more “green” vehicles from U.S. automakers, to “green” energy production, to the recent cropping up of “Recession Gardens” all over the country. Being “green” is a good thing to do—it’s a good first step for otherwise disconnected people—but, as it is usually presented, it is in no way sustainable and does not represent a lasting solution to either our social or environmental problems.

I’ve recently read about three different “solutions” to various environmental problems. Two are in the vein of “green” technologies; the other entails a simple, practical, low-to-no-cost change in thinking and behavior. I hate to give away anything so early, but let’s have a vote now: which of these three was not covered by mainstream media outlets? Darn, I let the cat out of the bag on that one, didn’t I? OK, how’s about another vote: which will likely gain the least traction in society as a whole? I know, that setup is unfair and cynical…but not wrong.

The first article talks about “artificial trees” that would use a special resin to soak up carbon dioxide. When the resin is rinsed with water it releases its CO2, which can then be separated from the water and stored for later industrial uses such as carbonated drink manufacture or oilwell pressurization. Each of these “trees”, with the use of 32,800 feet of resin, should be capable of capturing about 1 ton of CO2 daily, which is a substantial amount and pretty impressive I might add. Overall, I think this is a pretty cool idea, as it would give an excellent “on demand” emissions-reduction option for significant CO2 polluters like power generation stations. I have some reservations about the effects of producing that much (supposedly “environmentally friendly”) resin, but in a world where nearly everything else is made of plastic, who cares?

The second article discusses the rush toward “green” energy production and its unintended consequences. It seems that mega-scale solar and wind farms in the middle of nowhere and the transmission lines that carry their energy to more populated areas affect wildlife. Imagine that. And why is it that all these utility companies are moving so strongly toward renewable sources? Government-mandated production targets. (Honestly, I don’t mean to sound so cynical. Producing electricity from renewable sources is responsible and good and even the moral thing to do. And perhaps our society is so screwed up and driven by high profits and low prices that the government is forced to step in and mandate the responsible choice, but I don’t think that’s really what’s going on here. More on that later.)

The third article talks about the many benefits of grass-fed beef, but focuses on the benefits to the environment. It seems that the acreage used to finish cows (to fatten them up to marketable weight and characteristics for slaughter) on grass or on grain is, on average, the same. The article argues that if we were to replace the farmland used to grow grain for feedlot finishing with perennial pasture for grass finishing, we could reduce carbon emissions by a net 3000 pounds/acre/year over feedlot finishing on grain. This figure isn’t quite as impressive on its face as that capable by the aforementioned artificial trees, but when we start talking about millions of acres things kinda begin to add up. Also, it requires absolutely no new technological inputs.

Did you figure out which article was which? Just teasing.

Now I’m all for responsible technologies that keep negative human effects on the environment to a minimum; sure, irresponsibly practiced technological “progress” has brought about many of our current problems, but the wise use of technology could reverse the effects of many of our ills. The onus is on us to do just that.

I try to be “green”. I believe strongly in recycling, reusing anything and everything, reducing consumption…all the aims of the sloganeering of the late 1980s/early 1990s. I believe in using alternative fuels for personal vehicles (although I presently do not—my 16-year-old Nissan pickup absolutely HATES ethanol. In cold weather, ethanol blends reduce my mileage by about 35%. Even in warm weather, using a 10% ethanol blend reduces my truck’s average pure-gasoline mileage by about 20%, which means I’m actually increasing my net gasoline consumption by something like 19% by burning an ethanol blend…go figure). I believe in eating foods raised without petrochemical inputs. I believe in eating locally when possible, thus reducing fuel consumption from transportation. I have in the past used compact fluorescent bulbs (although I no longer do since I consider heavy metal toxicity to present a more serious threat to the environment than increased CO2 levels). I don’t do laundry on the “hot” setting. I keep the furnace set just marginally warm enough for comfort. I like all these popular things. I’m even occasionally willing to buy the “EnviroCare” paper products and scour my behind with recycled-stock toilet paper (using a cat’s tongue would be gentler…although much more traumatic…especially for the cat).

However, not one of these practices is truly sustainable. All of them together do not constitute sustainability. Even their combination with all the other pedantic pseudo-moralisms of our Earth Day concert-watching, slogan-chanting, superficially well-intended society cannot fix our problems. Only a radical shift in our thinking and our behavior (and, therefore, in our politics and economics) could do that.

I have a lot more I’d like to say about these articles and this topic, but I’m tired and want to go to bed. Also, I’ve been working on this post sporadically for over a week and I want to post something of it. So consider this Part 1. Tune in later for Part 2. Goodnight.

Federalism Amendment?

I just read this article from the Wall Street Journal on the wisdom of seeking a Federalism Amendment to specifically define federal and state powers. If you know me, you know I think this is long overdue.

The combination of the current economic crisis, the multi-trillion-dollar bailouts and government guarantees, a long history of unfunded federal mandates on the states, the economic parameters of Obama's $787 billion "stimulus" for the states, the proposed changes in tax laws, recently released reports from both the Missouri Information Analysis Center and Department of Homeland Security warning law enforcement agencies of the threats posed by those who question federal primacy, and the election of a Democrat president and Democrat supermajority Congress have come together to ignite quite a bit of anti-central government furor, for better or worse. No matter what the reasons are or what foolishness the excesses and grandstanding may bring about, the thing I like about this situation is this: due to economics alone, the United States will soon be forced to revisit, refine, and perhaps redefine the relationship of state versus federal primacy in governance.

If you are an American and have not read the Constitution and its Amendments (as most Americans have not), take an hour and give it a read sometime. If you read it you will discover how far we've moved away from it as a nation, even though it is supposedly our government's guiding and enforcing document. It is a pretty impressive work, one that we would do well to follow more closely, but it is not perfect—it left many loopholes for the unscrupulous and the power-hungry to find. The proposed Federalism Amendment would remedy many of those ills, and perhaps the national dialogue its formal proposal would engender would benefit us all.

A Tale of Adam

In light of my last blog entry, I would like to introduce some thoughts based upon something I originally wrote down a couple years ago as a way to deal with something on my mind at the time. Back then, I titled that discussion “A Discourse on Creation Pistology”. Yeah, that was back when I was still trying to sound important and impress people. Now, I’ll just call it “A Tale of Adam”.

In this little discourse I talk about a “philosophy of God”—by that I mean what we think God is like, how and/or whether we can experience God, how we can know anything about God, etc. Academic theology would cover these ideas in the disciplines of theology and pistology; however, I think these separate constructions are faulty and would rather see them as parts of an overall approach to God, hence my term "philosophy".

So, without further ado...



I recently read Tales of Adam by Daniel Quinn. I thought it was an excellently crafted work that made the first family of the Judeo-Christian tradition seem quite well what they always were—human. After all, the term adam is simply the Hebrew word for “a man” or, by extension, “mankind”; it should never have been considered a proper name. This story of “Adam” is representative of the story of humanity.

Tales of Adam got me thinking about the Taoist attitude which has made its way into Christianity by which we lazily allow circumstances to shape us, accepting things in the name of being the will of God. This turned my mind to the problems this situation creates—namely, the manic/depressive episodes of thankfulness and anger/despair felt in response to accepting the circumstances of life as the will of an assumably benevolent God, and the general apathy that can result.

What should happen to this situation when we look past the belief that the world was ever an idyllic place? What happens when we trace concepts such as sin and salvation back beyond their ecclesiastical constructions? What happens when we deconstruct beliefs such as these in light of and in favor of a more ancient understanding?

We would deny some of the bases for Christian doctrine. But we would open up the possibility of experiencing an attainable and intimate faith.

A faith in which we and the world around us are not at odds, not at enmity with one another, not different creations, but one and the same. This would free us from the restraints of enmity with Creation (and our Creator in the bad times) and allow us to rest.

We have created God in our own image. We have allowed thinkers in dark rooms to express in finite human terms the infinite light of God. We have taken their ideas and have elevated them to the status of being an ‘ology’—a study of, a dependable discourse about. Some strains of Christianity have taken this further and have reified a particular view of theology into an ‘onomy’—a law—particularly medieval Roman Catholicism, Calvinism, and modern evangelical fundamentalism.

In these systems, the constructed “faith”—one’s perception of his own relationship with God—is the tread of a wheel, the beliefs and doctrines its spokes, and their commitment to a particular philosophy of God is the hub, without which the entire wheel falls apart and the believer is left broken and in peril. What all these systems have failed to recognize (or admit) is that the hub rides along on an axle of human thought, finite constructions, and various responses and revisions according to the circumstances of belief over time and space, and is cotterpinned to these deficiencies by a choice of commitment. Upon the collective “wheels” and “axles” of all believers of all time ride our ecclesiastical structures—our denominations and hierachies, our missions, our ministries, our programs.

But what if the believer should consider this axle to be faulty and untrustworthy? What if his wheel is damaged? Does he lose his constructed “faith”? Where is he left? He is either adrift, alone and lacking a dependable archeology of belief, or he takes the more determined human route in which we whip the amalgam of our ideals, our desires, and our guilt into action until it surges forward beastlike in its traces and pulls our ecclesiastical structure along on a path of its own devising regardless of the lack of integrity in our vehicle’s construction and regardless of our lack of confidence in its design.

But what should happen if we deny this hub of human-made law, allow our spokes to fall away, break the axles of our own faulty construction, release the beast of our ideals and desires and guilt from its burden, step out of our rickety ecclesiastical constructions and down into the path of creation, where we find both the laws and presence of the one in whom we live and move and have our being? What happens when we stop midstride on the march of the Christian soldier and sit down among the meek?

The entire world becomes open to us, and we to it. And I say this not in the Zen, Toaist, or Hindu sense, and certainly not in some mindless New Age Aquarian hallucination, but in the very real and true and indisputable admission that it is in the Creation that humanity finds its most evident, effable, consistent, everlasting, and transcendent revelation of God. When we see the world around us in such a way, we begin to look around us for the revelation of God and not for the manifestation of evil, we look for the good in our fellow humans rather than for their sins. Our constructed “faith” is replaced by deep experience, and we find rest for our weary souls in the stasis of eternity. Suddenly, accomplishment of the greatest commandments—to love our God and to love our neighbors as ourselves—is not so improbable. When we find ourselves in the limitless sea of the revelation of God around and in us, our relationship with God is no longer a contingency of belief, and therefore then finds substance of its own. It then rests and finds its identity not in choices, commitments, or practices but in the absence of these—faith, the evidence of things unseen—while the turbulence and insubstantiality of a contingency upon commitments and constructions drop away from us like a burden turned out of hand.

Orthodoxy?

I was asked the other day by a pastor, “You’re not exactly what we would call ‘orthodox’, are you?”

No, I’m not. Being “orthodox” would suggest that I have the right worship of God, and the right thought, opinion, or estimation of him and his relationship to everything else which exists. I think that would be a problematic place to be. If I think I’m right about those things I’m going to stop looking for anything else that may be right; therefore, if I’m wrong, I will become nearly incurably so. As I told the pastor, I much prefer to focus on orthopraxy—right action or practice—which is experiential and to some degree self-corrective (if not allowed to become another orthodoxy in itself).

As an orthopractic rather than an orthodox follower of the way of Jesus, I tend to focus on the human element of the biblical narrative. I tend not to hold anything so dear as to consider it beyond questioning; or, perhaps I consider everything so dear as to want to understand it all. I don’t get tied up in the literal hermeneutics and the pick-and-choose proof-texting exegesis necessary for creating and upholding doctrines; therefore, my reading of scripture, my views on the nature and person of Jesus, and my entire concept of God are rather “loose” by orthodox Christian standards. This creates precious little in the way of confidence of belief. I have experienced my own “crises of belief” and have seen how they can destroy good people. I do not wish such crises on anyone else; however, if they bring us to humility rather than despair, if they lead us to a less self-centered expression of faith, and if they encourage us to treat others in the way of Jesus, they are worth the discomfort.

All that to say this: my faith is real and means a lot to me, but I look at the Christian religion much differently than do most people who would call themselves Christian. This leads me to unorthodox opinions and causes me to rail against some things I consider spectacular failures of Christianity. I will represent that thinking from time to time in this blog. I hope my musings will cause no one any undue offense; rather, I hope these thoughts can spur discussion and lead all of us to a more responsible faith.

Values

Sorry there haven’t been more posts lately. Having a kid tends to take up one’s time.

Now that I’m a “family man” I suppose I’m expected to have some new values, or at least different priorities. My mother-in-law asked me the other day if some of my values had changed over the last year or so. I didn’t have a clear answer at that time, but yes, they have.

Actually, those values that have “changed” have not so much changed as solidified into the trajectory they’ve followed for a few years now. Even though I spent way too many years in college aimlessly studying for this and that “professional” occupation, I’ve said for years that if I ever had a family I’d like to make as much of a living at home as possible. I considered home-based businesses or other work which would allow me to spend significant quantities of time at home. I liked the idea of being a teacher partly because I would have summers and holidays off. Back when I was living in North Carolinian suburbia I even hoped for a career-driven woman for a wife who wouldn’t mind me being a stay-at-home dad.

Of course, those preferences came as a reaction to my own upbringing. My dad grew up on his family’s farm, and when my grandfather had a massive heart attack at a rather young age, he gave up farming and opened a little country store. It was a great place, a social center for the rural community, but my dad had no interest in tending a store and, as far as I know, had no desire to try his hand at farming, either. Since there was still something approaching a manufacturing sector in North Carolina in those days (early 1970s), factory work looked like a pretty good alternative to the distasteful jobs at home, and it paid pretty well, too. So off he went to work for the Turbine Components Plant of the Westinghouse Corporation.

My dad enjoyed his work, and was content at it. He earned no extravagant amount from his hourly wage, but made what any NC farmboy of that time would have considered a decent living. He and my mom were married in ’76, and I came along in ’77. Whether it was financially necessary or was simply because he felt like he ought to make money when he could, my dad worked overtime and asked to switch off the day shift when he had a chance. He worked hard, he provided us with what we needed, and he made enough extra so that I could attend a private school K-12 and so that he and my mom, who were devout churchgoers, could always give their monthly gift to the church, which usually was quite generously above the customary 10% tithe.

But I didn’t get to spend all that much time with my dad when I was young, and, because of a pretty serious back injury he had when I was 3, his time at home right after work was often spent in pain and our time together didn’t really center around the stereotypical father-son tossing the pigskin/playing catch sort of thing. Not to say that we didn’t do that stuff—he often insisted on playing a little ball with me (after I had nagged at him for days on end) even when he didn’t feel good and knew that those minutes would cost him days of soreness. He did what he could, developing ways of doing things I liked that didn’t hurt him so bad (he threw a football underhanded, and could throw for a distance, with an accuracy, and in a tight spiral that would make any rugby player jealous, not to mention a few college quarterbacks), but I guess I just never thought it was enough. By the time that I was in my teens and “quality time” could have sufficed, I didn’t care to spend my time with him, as I was already well on my way to becoming the onerous jerk I was in my late teens through mid-twenties (by the way, thanks to Jason, Trent, and Magill for repeatedly pointing out that quality of character to me—I finally listened, sort of). So, as a teenager I decided that if I ever had kids I would spend more time with them.

After my disappointing time in church ministry, and after two more years of Bible college failed to help me make any more sense of the experience, I returned to university with no clue of what I was there for. Having botched several desperate attempts at romance over that same course of time, I decided that marriage and family for me were unlikely prospects in the near future and loosely directed my generally aimless educational endeavors toward what I considered at that time as positions of stature (hoping to make money and attract a girl, if I should be honest).

At this same time I became increasingly disenchanted with the culture I saw around me. The cheapening of community, the loss of a sense of belonging, the unfettered mobility of our day had all shown themselves to me through my experience of coming to Canada for college and moving on a whim to Wyoming for work. Back in NC, the emptiness of suburban sameness, the lack of individual purpose, the futility of workaday life, the growing corporatism and branding of everyday experience, the anonymity and objectification of service-sector work, the cultural desolation wreaked by a tourism-based economy showed me how much my area had changed since my youth. It was depressing. No wonder so many Southerners are depressed, obese, and disgruntled.

In my studies, I wanted as broad a humanities/social studies curriculum as possible, so I declared a double major of anthropology and political science with a minor in economics. I figured these areas of study would be a fine preparation for teaching social studies in middle and high school if I should settle down, but I dreamed of status and considered jobs with the US government.

When I wasn’t dreaming of “being somebody” I began thinking of some practical applications of what I was learning. Some of my anthropological case studies led me to ideas for effective social advocacy, petitioning governments to recognize the benefits certain marginalized minority cultures could bring to their societies if given ear and protection. I was also required to take a technology course and an ecology/environment elective; I thought a Society and Technology course which centered on culturally-appropriate technology and a Forest Ecology and Management course which studied silviculture and governmental policy would both interest me and be good selections for my program. From these courses (and from related articles in National Geographic which appeared, rather uncannily, over the same stretch of time) I learned of the troublesome politics and ethical questions surrounding “biofuel” production, the aquifer depletion of dryland irrigation farming, the inefficiencies of large-scale renewable energy production, the disincentives for paper product recycling. I began to realize that small-scale, low-tech solutions held significant advantages in nearly every circumstance over the industrial big-fixes and politically-expedient mantras I saw and heard tossed about in our culture. I decided that if I was going to help my hypothetical anthropology subjects live better lives with less financial and political clout, that it was appropriate for me to begin to incorporate these very principles into my life as well.

I made some changes to my thinking. I became skeptical of the blanket approach of all governmental and industrial “solutions”. I began reconsidering my economic identity of being a consumer. I gradually lost my desire for status. I came to desire to be productive. I grew my first garden, during my second summer at university in an array of pots on the back deck of my rented townhouse.

A lot more things have changed since then, constant gradations toward becoming more the person I am. Meeting Joelle, getting married, and considering the prospect of being a dad have further focused my thought toward its current state.

Yes, my values changed some time ago, and I have lately committed myself more fully to those more responsible values.

Now I must act.

The Unsettling of America

A few days ago, I started reading Wendell Berry’s The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture. Excellent book. Berry is a prophet for our time, calling into question a culture which can disconnect and insulate itself from every natural process and which encourages the division of every individual from the community of humanity. His principles and perspectives are exceptionally natural, practical and sensible, but that's what you'd expect from a farmer, and that's what he is.

If you find anything I have to say interesting or provocative then you would do well to read Wendell Berry - many of his perspectives seem like much more intelligent, much more experienced, and much more eloquently expressed versions of my own. Here's an excerpt which presents the general thesis of the book (so far as I've gotten):

The modern urban-industrial society is based on a series of radical disconnections between body and soul, husband and wife, marriage and community, community and the earth. At each of these points of disconnection the collaboration of corporation, government, and expert sets up a profit-making enterprise that results in the further dismemberment and impoverishment of the Creation.

Together, these disconnections add up to a condition of critical ill health, which we suffer in common—not just with each other, but with all other creatures. Our economy is based upon this disease. Its aim is to separate us as far as possible from the sources of life (material, social, and spiritual), to put these sources under the control of corporations and specialized professionals, and to sell them to us at the highest profit. It fragments the Creation and sets the fragments into conflict with one another. For the relief of the suffering that comes of this fragmentation and conflict, our economy proposes, not health, but vast "cures" that further centralize power and increase profits: wars, wars on crime, wars on poverty, national schemes of medical aid, insurance, immunization, further industrial and economic "growth," etc.; and these, of course, are followed by more regulatory laws and agencies to see that our health is protected, our freedom preserved, and our money well spent. Although there may be some "good intention" in this, there is little honesty and no hope. [emphasis mine throughout]

Berry wrote these words in the 1970s, and they are ever more true today. He is no conspiracy theorist, nor is he a ranting alarmist—he simply looks at our society from outside of our time, rejects the metanarrative of progress, and discusses what he sees rationally, point by point.

Unto us a son is given...

Joelle gave birth to our first child this morning. It was a pretty powerful experience, and I am incredibly happy.

Our son is named Lane Thomas. He is named after my step-grandfather, Rudolph Lane Atkins, one of the kindest, most genuine men I have ever known and the best friend within my family I have had. The choice of Lane’s middle name comes mostly from its status of being one of the few names that we liked on which both Joelle and I could agree. I think a boy named Thomas will be in quite good company, sharing the name as he will with some very good men I’ve known, including Tom Perkins and Tom Keating; with the learned farmer and political philosopher Thomas Jefferson, whose character of homo universalis I am drawn to emulate and whose perspectives on personal liberty and personal and social responsibility I espouse and promulgate; with the honest “skeptic” of the Gospels who did not wish to delude himself with unsubstantiated hopes but, when confronted with experience, readily accepted and joyed in the implications of his expanded reality.

I’m sure Joelle does not share all my reasons for liking the name, but that’s OK.

The Problem with "Regulation"

As the US fumes over how much money was paid to AIG execs in bonuses, I sit with, paradoxically, both the knowledge of and absolute disbelief in how incredibly gullible, underinformed, and downright stupid the average American is.

Those of you who are among the "outraged" may be mad at me now. Okay.

We've known about the bonuses for months - they are honoring contracts from over a year ago. See what else the current administration and congress have known about all along, and actually helped create.

The problem with this AIG business is that Congressional laws, Executive programs, Federal Reserve monetary policy, and federal and state financial regulators all had a hand in creating this mess. Their policies created the conditions which allowed the housing bubble and the opacity of derivatives contracts which have now given the world economy a turbulent ratcheting down of its belt size. Their policies and decisions turned a localized market overexpansion affecting a few states into a full-blown crisis that will, before it plays out, have drastic structural consequences to world finance, almost certainly bring about substantial geopolitical changes, possibly ignite new or expand existing regional conflicts, and likely shift the world reserve currency regime away from the American dollar (as Russia is already calling for - you think things are rough now? Just wait until the American dollar is no longer buoyed by its world debt- and commodity-denominator status). You know what the worst, and the most condemning, part of it all is? AIG played completely within the government-sanctioned rules, as this article from the Wall Street Journal makes clear.

No one administration is entirely at fault here - the causes of the conditions which gave rise to this debacle directly stretch back to the Clinton Administration, and, it may be argued, much further. Politicians - IF they should ever decide to point fingers within their ranks rather than at AIG execs and Tim Geithner - will undoubtedly say it is one administration's or one party's fault, but that is not the case. It is the fault of the notion of government economic planning and regulation, and nearly every administration since Andrew Jackson's has been guilty of that.

Why does the government - whether Congress, the president, the Federal Reserve banking conglomerate, or even their best and brightest Ivy League economists - think it can successfully regulate (assuming any one of them could even understand) every aspect of the country's economy? A better question - why do average citizens, who regularly complain about Washington's ineptitude, trust the government to understand and regulate the economy? Government intervention always has unintended consequences and always creates winners and losers, skewing the playing field to the benefit of some.

My same question asked above - why does the government think it can successfully regulate - applies just as aptly to food policy. On Monday, Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) went into effect. The idea is that all fresh fruits, veggies, and meats should be clearly marked as to where they came from. A good idea. But meats have more requirements, and fish have even more. For domestic small livestock producers and aquaculturists, this means additional costly paperwork and animal tagging when their profit margins on their small-scale enterprises are already low enough. Some may accept that this may very well be the cost of better regulation and food safety measures and that small producers will simply have to run more efficient businesses to stay competitive, and that's fair.

But, as always, government regulations are hypocrital. COOL does not apply to any food which has been processed in ANY way - smoked, emulsified, mixed with other ingredients - and does not apply to the ingredients included in processed foods. So, we can still import the salmonella- or E. coli-infested spinach from Mexico, but we'll sell it as prepared fresh mixed salad greens so no one will ever know the difference. We can import chicken from melamine China but we'll cook it and put it in some other finished product so we don't have to mention China on the label. You can read the USDA's own release here, or the MSNBC story here.

This law specifically aids food processors and large agribusinesses. Surprise, surprise. And, I suppose, the inverse is true - that this law specifically targets small producers - but I prefer not to take the angle of emotionalism when I can take the angle of fact.

As Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, Congressional leaders whose campaign funds are essentially owned by financial interests, continue to spout off ideas how best to solve this "crisis" and then deflect criticism away from themselves onto corporate execs when the plans become unpopular, and as new government regulations on food safety are revealed to be a farce to aid large businesses, I ask this: when are we going to denounce this hypocrisy for what it is? When are we going to hold our governments and our elected officials responsible? Will the average citizen be willing to turn off his iPod, quit watching March Madness, quit being entertained for just a few minutes, put partisanism aside, engage his critical faculties potentially for the first time in years, take some measure of responsibility for himself, and ACT in our society as a citizen? (Oh, and you Canadians, this means you too - your government and its misguided policy-making is even more ubiquitous than the American, albeit, thankfully, much less corrupt.)

So that's the problem with "regulation" - that it always benefits some disproportionately, and there's always enough wiggle room while being completely within the regulation to create massive disturbances, whether in the world economy or in individuals' health.

What's the answer? Expect every citizen from the time of his or her childhood to take an active interest in our society and responsibility for his or her actions within it. Yeah, I know, about as likely to happen as fair policy coming out of Washington. I suppose that's a topic for another day.

Obama and Food

The outcry of the demos brought some changes yesterday. I read here that President Obama, in the wake of the most recent salmonella scare, wants to change the way foods are regulated for safety. Now this is a good idea, one I am not opposed to. But notice what Agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack wants to do: create one regulatory entity to handle ALL foods, rather than the eleven which currently do a marginally satisfactory job of it. Again, from a regulatory standpoint, a great idea - one entity should be able to do a much better job of communicating with itself and effecting consistent regulation than eleven entities could do.

However, there is one little problem with this scenario: Vilsack is bought and paid for by big-ag interests. To some degree that is reasonable since he comes from big-ag Mecca - he's the former governor of Iowa. The problem comes when someone who represents the interests of industrial agriculture wants to consolidate all food regulation under one agency - then, the big-ag companies need only to influence a few people to keep their interests protected by policy. Consolidation of oversight is a good idea; consolidation of power is not.

Food safety was also the central issue of Obama's weekly YouTube address. I must point out one glaring omission of President Obama's teleprompter-read take on the issue of food regulation: recalls are voluntary. Public safety policy has been written to protect the profits of food processors. It came out quite some time ago that the peanut plant so recently in question knew it had tainted product in its facility, but chose to let this go unreported, believing they had dealt with the problem. Another bad policy problem we have in such situations is this: if a processor does issue a recall, it is extremely difficult to legally hold them responsible for sickness or death, since it is assumed they did what they could to correct the concern. If we want to ensure food safety, we either must have inspectors active at every single one of the 150,000 domestic processors (AND all the foreign ones, or at every port of entry) OR we must make it clear that companies and involved individuals will be held legally responsible for EVERY case of food poisoning. Since neither of these alternatives is practical or economical on such a level, perhaps we should seriously look into the idea of a decentralization of food safety regulation. There is no reason to believe the private sector could not do this well; otherwise, how did private organic labeling work so well for so long? Some groups think we should require mandatory labeling of ALL pertinent health information (origin, GMO content, pesticides used, etc.) on all packaged foods; at the very least, we could simply allow this labeling to even be LEGAL, as some of it now is not. Informed consumers acting through a market-driven demand for information on their foodstuffs could strongly enhance safety, and likely enhance overall health at the same time.

One last little note - the banning of "downer" cows from the food supply is a no-brainer. This should in no way be seen as some great achievement, but I suppose I should thank President Obama for finally doing it. Such laws should have been in place decades ago, and likely would have been had not big-ag interests had such a hand in crafting public safety policy. Now we should also ban "downer" chickens and pigs, as the lines bred for industrial-ag use and the confinement operations which raise them create animals which often cannot even stand under their own weight since their bones, muscles, and joints are so underdeveloped for their size. Some may say here, "That doesn't mean they're sick or at all dangerous." True, but how does the slaughterhouse worker tell the difference in the couple seconds he takes to kill the animal and put it on the line?

If you think I'm overreacting, or if you have doubts about how our food is processed, take a look at this video. Unfortunately, it's from PETA, an organization whose leaders have some very screwed up views, and unfortunately also, the intent of the video is to encourage vegetarianism through pity and shame rather than to expose the practices of industrial farming. Anyway, it's worth a look, and I hope you come away from it with a desire to encourage and give patronage to local small farmers who raise their animals with genuine care.

Food safety for the nation does not begin with government, but with the individual reinserting himself into the food production process and making informed decisions in his own self-interest.

What's wrong with this picture?

Beautiful, isn't it?

The expanse of amber wheat, the windbreak in the distance, the perspective of distance you would never experience in North Carolina.

I really do love living here in Saskatchewan sometimes. I could do with a month or so less of winter, a little more of a drawn-out autumn like we have back in NC, and without a few cultural practices I find annoying, but all in all it's a pretty good life. Seeing fields stretching to the horizon in every direction is sure a change of perspective from forested, hilly NC. And the sunsets! Unbelievable.

And the people here are different, too. These wide-open expanses, the rurality of this region, and the primacy of agriculture as livelihood sure do rear a different type of person from the busy, demanding, self-centered East Coast suburb. Not that social conditions here are idyllic, just different.

But can you tell me what's wrong with this picture?

Maybe you don't think anything is wrong, and maybe you won't agree with my assessment once I tell you what I think is wrong. Or maybe you've just never thought about these issues in the ways I do. Either way, hear me out.

I see a few things wrong here, things which matter a great deal to me as "causes", things I could "fight" if I were so inclined. Some of these things a great many social and environmental groups do indeed "fight" with protests and political action and petitions, all those democratic tools of discontent. I'll discuss each of the things I see wrong in future posts; for now, I'd like to give a somewhat lengthy introduction to this line of thought. Get a cup of tea and settle in.

The things I see wrong with this picture all stem from one fundamental concept of modern life that I see as seriously flawed: centralization. Centralization of governmental policy decisions, of capital and credit, of land use/zoning decisions, of the production of energy and other consumable goods, of food production/supply/processing, of economic policy, of security interests. I see all of that in this picture. Yeah, I know, I'm pretty screwed up.

I care a lot about the idea of sustainability. That's a term we hear a lot about these days, but I don't think many of us understand it. When I hear people casually using the term in the media, advertisements, etc., I notice that there is often more of a "maintainability" color to their discussion: "bio"fuels, alternative energy sources, organic farming, even different techniques of oil and gas production. Not that these things are inherently bad, but they are not sought after because they are truly sustainable but because they offer us different (and potentially less destructive) ways to maintain our current standard of living.

The problem is our current standard of living is in no way sustainable. And neither is our way of living. And neither is the centralization necessary to keep up either our standard or our way of living.

For the sake of increased productivity (and, therefore, for increased earnings and thus standard of living), workers moved production out of the home and into the workshop, out of the individual workshop and into the guild, out of the guild and into the factory. Ever since Frederick Taylor developed the idea of "scientific management" for factory workers in the late nineteenth century we've known the benefits, and the adverse effects, of the centralization of procedural decisions in the workplace and, by the extension of the factory model of management and of a few new inventions to the "industry" of agriculture, on the farm. And with the widespread use of the assembly line by Henry Ford came the realization that people acting as cogs in a machine could easily out-produce even highly-skilled independent, decentralized workers. We can accomplish so much more in this way, but at what cost?

Centralization of political and social institutions and specialization of labor were once beneficent hallmarks of civilization. Now, outside of a few select professions, they are little more than a way for the corporate boss to jerk us around. Specialization of labor creates the situation in which the centralization of planning is necessary to keep all the "cogs" working to potential (except in very small-scale communities with truly free markets - but market-moderation just doesn't work on the level of entire modern societies). Centralization of planning means those who do the planning have power over those so planned for. For evidence, take one look at the corporate atmosphere of today's average workplace and the stress and dissatisfaction it brings.

But what does this have to do with sustainability? Centralization for the sake of efficiency makes us act in ways that are not sustainable, since it removes the individual from the process of production of those things necessary for life. In agrarian societies, and within the last century in predominantly agrarian regions of "developed" nations, the majority of the people individually or as family units performed the tasks necessary for living and, hopefully, earned enough money to buy those few luxury and specialty goods they could not produce themselves. When one's labors are directed at producing those things necessary to live there comes a moderating influence which curbs consumption of extraneous goods. That moderating factor may be as simple as extra free time or as serious as the necessity to survive, but it is there; the moderation comes because one's labors are directly producing the majority of goods for his livelihood. Moderation in consumption conserves resources, thus enabling sustainability.

Another issue arises here: the agrarian (or otherwise predominantly self-sufficient) landholder-worker has a natural incentive to conserve his goods, to conserve his resources, and to improve his holding, since his continued survivability depends upon these elements (that is why the Jeffersonian ideal of the yeoman farmer was, and is, so powerful - it could have, and should have, worked. But Jefferson did not foresee the California gold rush or the Civil War or the Irish potato famine or the rise of industrialism or the massive demographic shifts in their wake). Direct personal interest in the continued productive capacity of those things under one's care tends to steer one away from over-production of goods, an inefficient waste of labor and resources. This disincentive to waste directly enhances the chances for sustainability.

In today's society, moderation makes for bad business. We've seen that evidenced in the credit bubble. Even the limitations brought by the natural productive capacities of resources are circumvented through chemical means and by the outsourcing of production to foreign lands.

Those individuals who do produce in today's centralized system - industrial-scale farmers, hydropower operators, miners, factory workers - only produce one small element of the entire chain and never truly have an appreciation for what it takes to produce all the other goods of everyday life, and therefore are never moderated in their pursuit of those goods.

In fact, as long as goods enter the economy by no effort on the part of those not directly involved in their production (the vast majority of workers for any one specific good), then there is neither a moderating limitation on consumption nor a disincentive to work as a cog. In fact, the opposite is true: the ease with which a variety of goods not produced by the individual may be procured encourages the individual to work in his specialty all the more, to make more earnings, to procure more goods. That is why modern economic theory can legitimately be based upon the assumption of perpetual growth - because perpetual demand is a given within its framework.

And so we keep working, trading our time for money, paying taxes on our earnings, using the remainder to buy the stuff we need and want, hoping to "retire" someday. All the while we are investing and trusting more fully in the centralization of our economy and of political power into "a few strong hands".

Haven't the events of the last year shown us that centralization of finance opens up world markets to drastic blows from a small percentage of faulty investments in a very few localities? That centralization of food processing can have far-flung deadly effects when something goes wrong, and that centralized food safety regulation fails horribly when one processing plant slips through the cracks? That centralization of government power cannot help but create winners and losers in any of its endeavors? That centralization of economic thought leads to "corrective" responses tantamount to the original problems?

And in any way did any of this centralization add to the sustainability of current human endeavor? No. No, we just pass the buck to someone else, to someone on the other side of the world, the country, the aisle of Congress, or to a different generation entirely. The responses of centralization tell us to keep spending so our GDP doesn't look so bad and so China can still afford to subsidize our "stimulus", to hold more debt than we can afford so we won't put any more pressure on the banks, to trust the new regulatory regimes which will in time fail us just like the old ones did. And in the meantime we continue to rape the earth.

In the end, the individual lives and dies. In the end, every notion of existence is decentralized. Why, then, do we go along with centralization and the loss of personal liberty it brings? Why do we trust the centralized powers even though they exploit the earth and destroy peoples' lives? Is it just because it's easier, or is it simply to slough off responsibility for one's own actions onto the group?

So, what's wrong with this picture?

The Scent of Green

So here we are...

I never thought I'd have a blog. Of course, I swore I'd never have a Facebook account, but I signed up for that a few weeks ago, too (thanks a lot, Jason). I always made fun of people who felt compelled to share their lives with the great anonymous Web and its tired-eyed denizens.

But as I accept the current facts of my life - namely, that my life is changing drastically (with my first child on the way in a matter of days), that our world is changing (in the wake of this current hubristic crisis), that I am so far away from my family and so many of my friends (it's official - today I received notice that Immigration Canada has approved my application for Permanent Residency, so I'll be staying for a while...so long, North Carolina) - well, I want a way to deal with those things, and talking through type is a way to do just that.

Maybe I'm just bored after six months of winter. I've looked at this white landscape long enough. I've already ordered all my seed for this year's garden, so I don't have that to distract me anymore.

There's this amazing thing that happens around this time of year in this northerly of a climate. One late winter day you'll wake up and there will be a different quality to the sunlight when you look out the window. And then you'll go outside and you'll feel a breeze coming from the south. And then you'll catch it - just this faint scent of something fresh, something normal, but something you've not smelled in a long time - the scent of green, the smell of plants somewhere farther south that aren't still covered in the snow you see all around you, the smell of spring. And then you know that this long winter will soon be over. This is something I never experienced growing up in North Carolina, but I look forward to it more than Christmas in my new Saskatchewan home.

And that yearning is part of the reason for the name of this silly blog, but it's not all. The scent of green is pretty important to me, in a few ways. Over the last few years I've begun to enjoy gardening, so much so that I've put plans in place to make a living farming. I've come to realize that helping the earth do what it does to help people do what they do is a pretty cool way of life, as a hobby or as a job. Some would very reasonably even consider it a vocation, a calling. But as I watch us humans do what we do I realize we have some pretty screwed up ideas about how all this is supposed to work, and about how it all did work for countless millenia before a few inventions over the last 150 years changed everything. But more on that later.

Those of you who know what it is to wave a crisp American dollar bill by your nose know another meaning of the scent of green, maybe the one which first registered when you saw the title of this little adventure in storytelling. I didn't choose this name because I like money, however, but because so much of what is going on in our world today is about the economy. Precisely, about how little "economy" we have left, buried under mountains of debt and greed and vain hope. I don't want this blog to devolve into nothing but my little soapbox, but I will talk about these things from time to time, and I'd love to have your opinions on these matters and on what I have to say about them.

And, lastly, to be my normal unwholesome self, the scent of green may very well call to mind the olfactory corollary to the sight of the inside of my soon-to-be-born child's diapers, but that imagery is only an unfortunate consequence of thinking too long too late at night about a title for my blog. It was strictly adolescently derivative and in no way played a part in the choice of my title. That's my disclaimer, likely the first of many you'll see here, since I can't seem to open my mouth without offending somebody.

I hope you'll enjoy keeping up with me here. I hope I can renew old friendships, maintain the ones I have, and come across some new ones with what I have to say here.

So, here's to this little journey of ours