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[ld61061]

Gathering

This morning I expect to be the last frost-free morning of the year. Supposed to get cold tonight.

Every morning I cut little twigs and leaves from the trees here and I gather them in my arms, walk them to the pasture fence and give them over with a heave to my ruminants.

Dairy goats and an orphaned heifer stand in their paddock probably soon to be too small, looking at me schlepping their fodder and, I think, wonder at my foolishness.

They could do what I'm doing, better and with less effort if the fence didn't stop them. The goats know it and talk it over either between themselves or at me, I wonder which.

I don't let them wander and eat because of baby apple trees getting sleepy now and the strawberries that went in, late June. Elderberry, willow, jack-in-the-pulpit, wild carrot, even boxwood and hostas, they could eat them all down or try a mouthful and spit it out as a bad job with no effort from me.

I know that a ruminant's judgement and mine are different in these matters and because of a genetic trick we pulled awhile ago -- my thumbs can do this thing and my eyes are in the front of my head -- I get to make that call and accordingly, the strawberries stay in place.

This is the last morning I can gather these leaves for them, if the frost does come. A lot of the chemistry that makes a leaf, a leaf will change and what was a good idea today will tomorrow be hazardous to their gut. It'll be hay until Spring.

Just that fast -- overnight, sometimes -- what was helpful and good becomes suddenly a thing to be avoided. What was as regular as clockwork for as long as memory simply ends.Just that fast -- overnight, sometimes -- what was helpful and good becomes suddenly a thing to be avoided. What was as regular as clockwork for as long as memory simply ends.

It's a good thing to recall, when frost is on the way.It's a good thing to recall, when frost is on the way.

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An Open Letter to Andrew Yang

I did consider supporting your campaign but I bought a sledgehammer instead.

Your approach to the human cost of technology was what interested me. Here's a guy thinking about what tech does to the people who aren't directly benefitting from it, I thought.

But after some additional consideration, it appears to me that all a UBI does is to make clear exactly how the lord of the manor will be fucking the peasantry. There won't be anything nebulous about it under your plan: here's a shiny thing to play with while I kidnap your wife, steal your labor and enslave your children -- sorry, that was the lord. What I meant was, here's a shiny thing to play with so that you don't destroy the system while I automate every job currently known and substitute a few hardware maintenance jobs. Your argument seems to be, hey! Better a shiny than nothing at all!

I guess I have a different view of things. And a sledgehammer.

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Tips for Better Living for the DNC, #12

It is not comforting to the Left when you attack the GOP for corruptly investigating a multi-millionaire who was innocently sitting on the board of an Oil Company in a war zone.

The point is, Joe Biden, your pick to be the next POTUS, is that guy's dad. Innocently sitting.

Yeah, no.

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The impeachment hearings are underway and my one overwhelming impression is, these people speaking from the different sides of the aisle have more in common with each other than they do with nearly anyone I know.

That, in a nutshell, is why the Republic is broken.

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Family Values in Retail

The regional farm supply chain I work for plays Christian Country over the PA and has disciplined store managers for daring to bypass the corporate feed. Company line is that they are supportive of the family values embraced by our customers.

This same company has Thanksgiving Day hours that are actually longer than usual.

Last year, they did more sales on Thanksgiving Day than they did on Black Friday.

What in the actual fuck is wrong with people?

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Help!? A little help here, please?

Our friends at the DNC seem to be having trouble enunciating the phrase, "Voters who are not benefitting from the digital economy, we now see why you voted for Trump. We thought that adopting techniques from the corporate world was a good idea -- the personal brands, the carefully-worded messages... We now see that you would literally vote for the worst human on the planet rather than listen to another teleprompter-polished politician. We're sorry and here's what we did to fix the problem."

They try to say that, but what comes out is, "Look, you're dumb. That's why you live in the sticks. Now shut the fuck up and let the grownups talk. Also, you lost the civil war -- get over it."

See the difference? What can we do to help them with their pronunciation, hmm.

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"Whole forests of oak, beech, poplar, maple and walnut, standing since Columbus, collapsed... from girdling and deadening with fire. There was in the heart of this new (European) race no more consideration than for the game until the best of both were gone; steel conquered the West but chilled the soul of the conqueror. This assault on nature, than which few more frightful spectacles could be imagined, offered much to sheer need, but something also to a compelling desire to destroy... the fauna and flora of the wilderness."

-- Moore, Arthur. The Frontier Mind: A Cultural Analysis of the Kentucky Frontiersman (Lexington, KY, 1950), p. 56. Writing about the Ohio Valley in the 1840's.

The author goes on to discuss the tiny fraction of the lumber that was actually used. There were no roads, no railroads and no heavy equipment, so to use the lumber productively was out of the question. The woods of Eastern North America were in the vast majority of instances simply burned in place.

In other words, the same need we have to mow our yards and poison plant diversity may be the same need that drove whites to destroy everything standing on this continent that they had not planted or birthed.

Heartbreaking.

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If this guy had just said, "I'm going to need more money from the military industrial complex", he could not have been more clear.

Gun sales improving in 3... 2... 1....

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The quote from St Augustine is: "A Christian is a mind through which Christ thinks, a heart through which Christ loves, a voice through which Christ speaks and a hand through which Christ helps."

I just want him to follow the logic here -- not that much of a stretch -- and add, "...dicks and cunts through which Christ orgasms."

And just like that, how much good Christian hatred would have been eliminated from the world.

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Jaime, the DNC isn't even doing centrism right, let alone making a difference in human rights. They've made an idol of nonviolence.

Show me just one example of a successful negotiation -- a win/win, the Holy Grail of Centrism -- that started with one side stating exactly what they wanted, and I'll agree with you that we all just need to calm down. Spoiler alert -- you won't find one.

Yet corporate Dems take their desired end state, roll it out repeatedly as their agenda, and then evince surprise when they get pulled Right. Huh?

If nothing else, from even the most cynical realpolitik stance, the DNC has no clue how to benefit from the Hard Left. The GOP's positions have been repeatedly strengthened by their radicals, whose willingness to engage in violence is always a player in GOP interactions with corporate Dems. The Hard Right allows the GOP to "tut-tut" with plausible deniability, even as their legislative agenda advances on the unspoken promise of violence.

But the dems are the party of true civility.

By the bye, while ya'll have been congratulating each other on your civility....

Women's control over their bodies has just taken a huge hit, necessitating incredibly expensive legal battles with the States. Paying for those battles will be just one more drain on DNC war chests. Women will die for rights just won, in living memory.

Trans people -- among the most vulnerable among us -- are being killed in droves. We seem to have run out of outrage.

The power to appoint SCOTUS candidates was just successfully taken from a sitting president who epitomized a corporate Dem while the DNC... did what? That power was then successfully transferred to a man so stupid that he battles science itself. Successfully.

Why the fuck aren't our Democratic state leaderships -- stable centrists all -- calling out their state militias to shut down corporate concentration camps that are clearly illegal? The judiciary has stated, repeatedly, that ICE policies targetting children are illegal. The installations in which those illegal policies are being enacted are not federal facilities. Even the UN -- another shrine of Centrism -- defines taking kids from a target group and giving them to other groups as genocide, yet I haven't seen any National Guard units shutting down illegal genocide operations. Where is your meaningful and effective Centrism, my man?

Meaningful public ownership of lands is becoming a joke -- a thing of the past -- as corporations isolate each ownership right, attack it, win in court and bulldoze ahead. They're leaving the public with a handful of nothing, our National parks nothing more than green areas on a map. Where's the power of compromise and civility?

The integrity of our electoral process has been successfully undermined by a foreign power with accountability that is a strong incentive for anyone contemplating a repeat. No security fix on the horizon as the feds declare it a state problem, if it is a problem at all. We should be publicly figuring out how to do war without guns, as it is being done to us. Centrists want to stand by Lady Liberty while Putin has his hands under her skirts and call their inaction a virtue?

Last thing, and I'll stop. The Southern Poverty Law Center -- an amazing group -- concludes many of its press releases with the words, "the march continues". These are incredible people and I mean them no disrespect. But the march of civil rights is a march in circles. with no fix on the horizon. We are quite literally rehashing the social issues of the 19th Century.

You in the corporately-constructed center need the Hard Left. So why can't we use it as the GOP uses the Hard Right? Because, Jaime, people like you are too concerned about What Ghandi Would Do to allow for Weather. You always have been.

We need an Any Means Necessary mindset to strengthen anyone attempting to stand in the Center. Must we stay vigilant that we don't become tools for Putin? Absolutely we must -- semper vigilans. But we need to remember that even as Ghandi was advocating for nonviolence, he was fingering prepubescent girls and verbally abusing his wife. Being nice isn't always okay, it isn't always reasonable and sometimes, it's just plain cowardly.

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Gunpowder, witches and climate change

First use in battle of a gunpowder weapon recognizable as a mortar: 1453, Seige of Constantinople.

People knew enough chemistry to make bombs and enough physics to launch bombs in 1453. Chemistry and physics, not demons or angels. Bombs, castle walls -- again, 1453.

Salem witch trials, in which sober men and women offered and considered evidence in an actual court of law that their neighbors were conspiring with the Lord of Darkness, resulting in the state-sponsored murder of 19 people by hanging and 1 death by incremental crushing: 1693.

So... 250 years. Two and a half centuries after people understood that certain things when dried, powdered, mixed and contained in a brittle metal container could be made to explode violently enough to tear down castle walls, other people were building a crushing machine to kill their neighbors because Jesus. Horrible deaths for being Lucifer's lovers, yet chemistry and ballistics. 250. Years. Gunpowder weapons had been in use for 250 years, but witches. Church ladies murdering people.

We're being told by climate scientists that the tipping point of climate change-- the last moment to act decisively enough to save the earth as a viable home for humanity-- is anywhere from 18 months to 12 years from right now. And that's not going to prevent a mass extinction event, mind you.

In light of what you now know about chemistry and witches -- 250 years, yet morons still didn't really get it -- let's talk about the odds of everyone agreeing on climate change. 18 to 140 months is what we've got. To convince the same bunch that was still killing their neighbors for Christ 250 years after gunpowder, to get them to park the NASCARs and end fossil fuels forever, we have 18 to 140 months.

If that's not a crisis, I have no idea what is. We simply aren't going to get them, no way. We have to get started without them.

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I got some concern from an old friend recently that I have turned a corner and have begun to hate.

I doubt that it'll be comforting, but just to take the mystery out of it--

I don't think it's hateful to wonder about the role of violence in our society. It's virtually impossible to consider our history or the dynamics of day-to-day life without blundering into the realization that without violence or the threat of violence, our country would not exist and neither would very sweet, well-intentioned people who would never hurt anybody.

Every time we have made real progress towards social justice in our country, the thoughtful application of violence has always been a part of the process. The same can not be said of unions, Congress, the President, tactics of nonviolence, religion or the ballot box. More often than not, it has been those willing to use violence strategically that have made progress towards their goals.

As an example, Lost Causers won after the Civil War. I know I'm talking about hate -- give me a minute.

Lost Causers were able to reconstruct the racial history of the US after the Civil War to the extent that most of us still -- to this day -- have no idea exactly how much progress had been made prior to the days of Jim Crow. Lost Causers killed, terrorized, burned and tortured the African American people of the South back into submission after there were black sherriffs, mayors and congressmen while Northern whites... what? Fretted? Made sympathetic noises with their mouths?

Lost Causers won because they were willing to kill and at some level, Northern whites understood that hundreds of thousands of whites would have to be killed and the Union once again put in jeopardy if the work of the Civil War was to be protected. And whites decided that blacks just weren't worth it.

Which brings me back to hate.

The same bunch is at it again and because we don't know history, we're flummoxed as to why. We need to understand that none of this is new or unprecedented or confusing. It's the same bunch what that needs to be killed. Again. Good people are going to have to ruin their lives killing hateful people. Again.

But the alternative isn't abstract or unknown. We've seen it before and all we need to do is not ignore what is certainly coming -- more repression and fear among our vulnerable.

Perhaps it does mean that I hate if I consider how different our world would look if, for example, after the 1964 murder of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner, an angry Northern mob had descended on Neshoba County, Mississippi and hanged the lawmen everyone knew were involved. That might be hatred on my part, for sure. But how is doing nothing when the powerless are being degraded and terrorized better than hating what is happening?

I do not believe that allowing for violence as an available option against tyranny is hatred.

Perhaps -- just perhaps -- the average American citizen has become so convinced of their own powerlessness that to consider meaningful action seems like madness. Perhaps.

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On Civility

Interesting that civility is such a concern to the American middle class these days. More and more, the PTA ladies just want us to be nice on social media, seems like.

I used to judge pretty harshly the average German during the 1930's. I used to like a joke about average Germans --

Q: What do you call a punctual, polite, well-adjusted, well-intentioned German citizen of 1939?

A: A nazi.

I'm much more empathetic now, and I mean that sincerely.

Growing up and becoming a bonified part of a social organism is primarily a process of becoming civilized. We learn that we don't always get what we want when we want it. And when comes the day that we realize we aren't just exercising patience -- that in fact we're never going to get things we want -- in that moment we don't get to take the ball and go home. We have to disagree in a manner that allows us to continue in our jobs and our relationships and above all, we learn to stomach our frustrations and go on. Mostly we remain part of the social organism. That is civility. And Joe Biden.

And then, not necessarily and just perhaps, comes a moment -- sometimes literally a moment -- in an entire lifetime when all of that learning and maturing and tolerance is exactly wrong. Yet even then, there is no signal that the times have shifted. No test is given, no bell rings, no ominous soundtrack. People don't suddenly applaud misbehavior.

In moments like Germany in 1933 or the US in 1858, the same process of learning to be a social animal all of a sudden and without warning becomes an oh-so-comfortable slide into evil. I've heard it said that a good working definition of sanity is a person's ability to function within his or her own culture, applying accepted social expectations to their own behavior. Is it just me or are the concepts of civility and sanity uncomfortably similar? Or uncomfortably simian?

We live in a day when those who actually expect government to guide us and show us our better nature are regarded as insane or perhaps just hopelessly liberal, depending on their ability to remain civil. We live in a day when sanity looks like a mob of American voters chanting hateful slogans and civility looks like accepting those in that mob as fellow Americans, despite their faults. Civility means that we should be able to eat a jello salad at the community picnic with anyone at all. After all, nobody's perfect.

Are we okay with those definitions of civility and sanity? Because increasingly, I'm not. Sometimes my expectations of people are too high. In point of fact, no one is perfect, particularly me.

I do understand better than ever how confusing these moments can be. Yet I also remember how little history cares when those who had a chance to act decisively instead chose civility.

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This.

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I keep reading liberal opinions that the tariffs on China are stupid. Truth be told, I don't care why we are finally getting tough with China.

I just know that the machine that sent the tanks to Tiananmen Square, that openly colluded with Sam Walton & Family to destroy American retail as a reliable small business opportunity -- they are still chewing up human rights and never stopped, even if their slave labor does make an affordable cell phone.

American Liberals, once our nation's conscience, would rather keep Googling than deal with reality.

Reality is, starting in the 1970's our ruling elite sold out Main Street in hopes that once the Chinese got a taste of the dollar, they'd stop wanting to spread Communism. The measure of retail success became not customer service or community involvement, but rather efficient Chinese supply chain and manipulation of currency.

Now, I truly can't say I would have argued for a different course.

To avoid unending proxy wars like Korea and Vietnam, we allowed China a hostile takeover of most every American small business on Main Street. One lucky discounter, Sam Walton, became the pipeline for the consumer goods coming in from China and all the cash leaving the American economy.

I can't really call that a bad deal. Don't get me wrong, no Walton wants me to have a say in either their physical safety or the fate of their fortune. But violent fantasies aside, would you rather give up the neighborhood grocery store or every kid in town under the age of 20? I'd take that deal. It's ugly, but not as ugly as unending wars between nuclear powers.

Problem isn't the original concept so much as it is the fact that we've known since well before the Tiananmen Tank Man that we got "took". China is utterly capable of communism for the masses and unfettered power for their elite.

That should sound familiar, by the way. A major world power playing host to an ongoing political game while the real work -- keeping the world safe for the elite -- continues without a hiccup.

The question the Trump presidency continues to ask of all of us is, Are we willing to see? And once we have seen, are we willing to act?

Tariffs are the least we should do, even if it is a madman calling the shots.

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On Cash as Mulch

I see people every day using cash to stop weeds. They don't actually shred it and spread it, but they may as well.

Stop paying Bayer, Monsanto and Dow for your home's landscaping.

Your lawn should deliver value to your family every year, not just when you sell the property. Having beauty in your yard does not require that you pay a multinational corporation.

Lamb's quarters, dandelion, daylily, wood sorrel, clover, some vegetables, basil, mints -- there are hundreds and thousands of edible and attractive plants that are not troubled by disease or pests. Do an internet search for "edible landscaping" or "what common weeds can I eat".

If your lawn is an important place for family playtime, why would you want your children playing in chemicals that legally must be labelled as poisonous? If your family needs that smooth play surface, seek a low-growing lawn plant that requires little or no chemical protection -- many clovers fit the bill.

We don't have to throw firebombs to weaken corporate control of our lives. Sometimes firebombs are necessary, but we don't all have to think like soldiers. Likewise, we don't have to join a union to weaken the corporate grasp on our economy.

We do have to embrace change, recognize our own role in injust economies and do what we can. Start by evaluating each plant in your yard and if one isn't delivering value -- or worse, requires cash to maintain-- replace it. Don't use your dollars as mulch.