Well, it ain't exactly the Rio Grande, but instead a piece of the Guadalupe as it runs by our place at Belmont. Paul Speir, publisher of my book, Ruminations from the garden, came by last weekend and interviewed me briefly. It's not the best of quality and I am what I am, flaws and all. For better or worse, here it be:
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Monday, September 27, 2010
The Left/Right paradigm is over: it's you vs. corportations
An article worth your time
excerpt:
Every generation or so, a major secular shift takes place that shakes up the existing paradigm. It happens in industry, finance, literature, sports, manufacturing, technology, entertainment, travel, communication, etc.
I would like to discuss the paradigm shift that is occurring in politics.
For a long time, American politics has been defined by a Left/Right dynamic. It was Liberals versus Conservatives on a variety of issues. Pro-Life versus Pro-Choice, Tax Cuts vs. More Spending, Pro-War vs Peaceniks, Environmental Protections vs. Economic Growth, Pro-Union vs. Union-Free, Gay Marriage vs. Family Values, School Choice vs. Public Schools, Regulation vs. Free Markets.
The new dynamic, however, has moved past the old Left Right paradigm. We now live in an era defined by increasing Corporate influence and authority over the individual. These two “interest groups” – I can barely suppress snorting derisively over that phrase – have been on a headlong collision course for decades, which came to a head with the financial collapse and bailouts. Where there is massive concentrations of wealth and influence, there will be abuse of power. The Individual has been supplanted in the political process nearly entirely by corporate money, legislative influence, campaign contributions, even free speech rights.
This may not be a brilliant insight, but it is surely an overlooked one. It is now an Individual vs. Corporate debate – and the Humans are losing.
excerpt:
Every generation or so, a major secular shift takes place that shakes up the existing paradigm. It happens in industry, finance, literature, sports, manufacturing, technology, entertainment, travel, communication, etc.
I would like to discuss the paradigm shift that is occurring in politics.
For a long time, American politics has been defined by a Left/Right dynamic. It was Liberals versus Conservatives on a variety of issues. Pro-Life versus Pro-Choice, Tax Cuts vs. More Spending, Pro-War vs Peaceniks, Environmental Protections vs. Economic Growth, Pro-Union vs. Union-Free, Gay Marriage vs. Family Values, School Choice vs. Public Schools, Regulation vs. Free Markets.
The new dynamic, however, has moved past the old Left Right paradigm. We now live in an era defined by increasing Corporate influence and authority over the individual. These two “interest groups” – I can barely suppress snorting derisively over that phrase – have been on a headlong collision course for decades, which came to a head with the financial collapse and bailouts. Where there is massive concentrations of wealth and influence, there will be abuse of power. The Individual has been supplanted in the political process nearly entirely by corporate money, legislative influence, campaign contributions, even free speech rights.
This may not be a brilliant insight, but it is surely an overlooked one. It is now an Individual vs. Corporate debate – and the Humans are losing.
Wanna be a farmer?
My on air conversation with Mike Ruppert spawned additional thoughts. Particularly the last question he asked which caught me by surprise. What advice do you have for some 20 something out there….
I’ve often concerned myself with the fact that the average farmer/rancher is getting old and there are almost no replacements from the subsequent generation. I don’t fault the generation: it’s more a matter of the tide into which they were born that created the current condition. The trend was for one farmer to do more with less and that left no financial incentive for a young person to take up the trade.
However, times are changing. I believe opportunities abound for young people that haven’t already spent years investing in another occupation, studying and practicing the art of growing food. The master plan of the powers that be seems continued consolidation and mechanization of agriculture.
I am convinced the plan will fail.
Instead, out of sheer necessity, I think re-localization and diversification away from the big ag monoculture equation will become the new rule and the key to our survival.
I don’t envision a return to entirely antiquated methods of farming, but instead hybrid variations incorporating parts of the old and the new.
The elderly will soon pass away and with them, the knowledge passed from one generation to the next.
On the economic front, I believe we have entered an era when expensive mansions, fancy cars, resort properties and any other non-essentials will depreciate sharply in value. Essentials will become scarce and will maintain or increase in value regardless of the value of currency, be it dollars, yuan or gold, unless we have a government takeover of farms and farm products (it has been tried elsewhere and that too will fail).
Perhaps now is the time to consider becoming a farmer. Believe me when I tell you that it’s a challenging endeavor. And that the work can be quite rewarding.
I’ve often concerned myself with the fact that the average farmer/rancher is getting old and there are almost no replacements from the subsequent generation. I don’t fault the generation: it’s more a matter of the tide into which they were born that created the current condition. The trend was for one farmer to do more with less and that left no financial incentive for a young person to take up the trade.
However, times are changing. I believe opportunities abound for young people that haven’t already spent years investing in another occupation, studying and practicing the art of growing food. The master plan of the powers that be seems continued consolidation and mechanization of agriculture.
I am convinced the plan will fail.
Instead, out of sheer necessity, I think re-localization and diversification away from the big ag monoculture equation will become the new rule and the key to our survival.
I don’t envision a return to entirely antiquated methods of farming, but instead hybrid variations incorporating parts of the old and the new.
The elderly will soon pass away and with them, the knowledge passed from one generation to the next.
On the economic front, I believe we have entered an era when expensive mansions, fancy cars, resort properties and any other non-essentials will depreciate sharply in value. Essentials will become scarce and will maintain or increase in value regardless of the value of currency, be it dollars, yuan or gold, unless we have a government takeover of farms and farm products (it has been tried elsewhere and that too will fail).
Perhaps now is the time to consider becoming a farmer. Believe me when I tell you that it’s a challenging endeavor. And that the work can be quite rewarding.
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Radio interview
I'm scheduled for an interview with Mike Ruppert Sunday at 9pm eastern on his new radio show, the lifeboat hour.
We'll be talking chicken, pigs, cows, vegetables, and diggin in the dirt. Maybe some other things as well. Also be taking calls from the public.
Listen here if so inclined.
Archive, here.
We'll be talking chicken, pigs, cows, vegetables, and diggin in the dirt. Maybe some other things as well. Also be taking calls from the public.
Listen here if so inclined.
Archive, here.
Friday, September 24, 2010
Hope remains
Sabbath eve, September 24, 2010
I’ve been in a funk for a couple of days, low of energy and feeling somewhat light headed. I don’t know exactly what caused this condition to arise, but I know I compounded the equation by engaging in an Internet orgy of doom when I should have been out doing something instead. There’s a time for everything, including studying the condition of our condition, but I need breaks. Too much bad news incapacitates me.
So this afternoon I shut off the computer, went out to the garden, started a rototiller and began plowing soil. We’ve had abundant rain, way above normal for the year, and grass and weeds were in the process of taking over an area that I had plowed less than a month ago. As the machine chugged and churned through the earth and tender vegetative matter, my mood began to lift.
I’ve focused a lot of attention of late on the current industrial model of feeding ourselves and the fact that absent cheap and abundant fossil fuels we will not be able to continue living as we now do. In doing so, I have pushed aside other lessons learned not only from a study of history but also real experience.
We’ve all heard how many man hours of labor a gallon of gas contains. But statistics can be misleading. As I watched the tines of the tiller chug through the ground, I realized how terribly inefficient the machine I was operating actually is. A vast majority of the energy that machine produces is wasted when compared to the efficient way a man with a sharp hoe would move through the same ground. Likewise, when you consider a car, the weight of moving that much iron and the friction created by the speed at which we travel in an automobile makes the machine terribly inefficient. We can and will get by on less energy.
I know for a fact that a healthy man with access to fertile soil, seed, a supply of good water, and hand tools can grow more food that he and an average sized family can consume from a garden plot. Coupled with an array of animal products, that family can do much more than just survive, it can flourish. Cooperative efforts on larger plots of land can and will work as well, despite the opinions of naysayers.
I also know that oil is not going to run out entirely overnight, everywhere, at the same time. I do think the time will come when a dystopian society is formed, denying the benefits of the cheap energy oil provides to many of us, so I am considering ways to use less. But I also know that the ground where I live has some oil remaining below and will have for years to come. There will be those that figure out how to extract and use some of that oil outside government and corporate control of the resource.
Those that focus on the law of entropy without also studying the mechanisms of rebirth and reconfiguration on this planet miss valuable clues to our future. Plants take water in the presence of sunlight and chlorophyll and create glucose which forms the basis for simple sugars, complex carbohydrates and fats. Throw in nitrogen which certain plants can also extract from the air and store in their roots and you have the basis for all proteins. Herbivores consume grasses and redeposit nutrients into the soil. Put these equations to work in sensible and well thought out arrangements and you will eat.
We can’t save everybody be we can save ourselves if we choose to do so. Our biggest enemy will prove to be those that choose only to take from others and offer nothing in return. I know I will lose some of you with this, but so be it. While I believe certain prophecies of gloom and doom will be fulfilled, I do not live in fear of these events. I expect a dystopian society to emerge, perhaps a one world government. And I expect that society to fail catastrophically. In the same way natural disasters or occurrences plagued the ancient Egyptian empire of Moses’ day, today’s disasters may prove the only hope for those desiring freedom in the face of tyrannical government interference, subjugation and inequity.
It took great faith for Moses and his people to walk away from the comfort of homes and the food supplies they had become accustomed to into the uncertainties of an empty desert but they did what they had to do. I expect many of us will face similar challenges.
If the Jewish parable doesn’t work for you, consider the prophecies of aboriginals elsewhere. Just about any culture has its seers. And if that doesn’t work for you, then at least consider the past and the cyclical nature of the rise and fall of empires. We are headed for a fall. When we fall, we're taking the rest of the world with us.
I look forward to a time when local communities rise from the ashes and come together to find new and better ways to get along with this planet. I may not see that day, but I feel confident that someone will.
I’ve been in a funk for a couple of days, low of energy and feeling somewhat light headed. I don’t know exactly what caused this condition to arise, but I know I compounded the equation by engaging in an Internet orgy of doom when I should have been out doing something instead. There’s a time for everything, including studying the condition of our condition, but I need breaks. Too much bad news incapacitates me.
So this afternoon I shut off the computer, went out to the garden, started a rototiller and began plowing soil. We’ve had abundant rain, way above normal for the year, and grass and weeds were in the process of taking over an area that I had plowed less than a month ago. As the machine chugged and churned through the earth and tender vegetative matter, my mood began to lift.
I’ve focused a lot of attention of late on the current industrial model of feeding ourselves and the fact that absent cheap and abundant fossil fuels we will not be able to continue living as we now do. In doing so, I have pushed aside other lessons learned not only from a study of history but also real experience.
We’ve all heard how many man hours of labor a gallon of gas contains. But statistics can be misleading. As I watched the tines of the tiller chug through the ground, I realized how terribly inefficient the machine I was operating actually is. A vast majority of the energy that machine produces is wasted when compared to the efficient way a man with a sharp hoe would move through the same ground. Likewise, when you consider a car, the weight of moving that much iron and the friction created by the speed at which we travel in an automobile makes the machine terribly inefficient. We can and will get by on less energy.
I know for a fact that a healthy man with access to fertile soil, seed, a supply of good water, and hand tools can grow more food that he and an average sized family can consume from a garden plot. Coupled with an array of animal products, that family can do much more than just survive, it can flourish. Cooperative efforts on larger plots of land can and will work as well, despite the opinions of naysayers.
I also know that oil is not going to run out entirely overnight, everywhere, at the same time. I do think the time will come when a dystopian society is formed, denying the benefits of the cheap energy oil provides to many of us, so I am considering ways to use less. But I also know that the ground where I live has some oil remaining below and will have for years to come. There will be those that figure out how to extract and use some of that oil outside government and corporate control of the resource.
Those that focus on the law of entropy without also studying the mechanisms of rebirth and reconfiguration on this planet miss valuable clues to our future. Plants take water in the presence of sunlight and chlorophyll and create glucose which forms the basis for simple sugars, complex carbohydrates and fats. Throw in nitrogen which certain plants can also extract from the air and store in their roots and you have the basis for all proteins. Herbivores consume grasses and redeposit nutrients into the soil. Put these equations to work in sensible and well thought out arrangements and you will eat.
We can’t save everybody be we can save ourselves if we choose to do so. Our biggest enemy will prove to be those that choose only to take from others and offer nothing in return. I know I will lose some of you with this, but so be it. While I believe certain prophecies of gloom and doom will be fulfilled, I do not live in fear of these events. I expect a dystopian society to emerge, perhaps a one world government. And I expect that society to fail catastrophically. In the same way natural disasters or occurrences plagued the ancient Egyptian empire of Moses’ day, today’s disasters may prove the only hope for those desiring freedom in the face of tyrannical government interference, subjugation and inequity.
It took great faith for Moses and his people to walk away from the comfort of homes and the food supplies they had become accustomed to into the uncertainties of an empty desert but they did what they had to do. I expect many of us will face similar challenges.
If the Jewish parable doesn’t work for you, consider the prophecies of aboriginals elsewhere. Just about any culture has its seers. And if that doesn’t work for you, then at least consider the past and the cyclical nature of the rise and fall of empires. We are headed for a fall. When we fall, we're taking the rest of the world with us.
I look forward to a time when local communities rise from the ashes and come together to find new and better ways to get along with this planet. I may not see that day, but I feel confident that someone will.
Friday, September 17, 2010
Breaking chains
Sabbath eve, September 17, 2010
Rain shortened my workday, once again, at least until the necessary evening chores came along which must be done regardless of weather conditions. Earlier, I saw one of our goats in labor. I moved closer to discover that a kid was already out and moving so I left the nanny alone. About thirty minutes later I saw the kid stand and nurse. I failed to notice another kid had been born and lay dead on the ground alongside the nanny.
Had I been there for the second birth, the kid might very well have been saved. Sometimes whether an animal lives or dies can be as simple a matter as removing a piece of the sack in which they are encased to allow the baby to get that first breath. Here’s what’s certain. I was not there. The animal died. Once dead, there is no bringing that dead animal back to life. At least one of the neighborhood coyotes will eat tonight.
Leah is out in the rain moving the nanny and the surviving kid to a stall so they won’t have to stand in a wet pen. Left out, even with the protection of our pack of livestock guard dogs, there’s a chance that one of literally thousands of coyotes in the immediate area might sneak in and snag dinner in the form of the surviving kid.
This morning I read a blog where a woman complained about having to go out and milk her goats. For her, buying and raising goats seemed a good idea until she realized that her spouse and her children would not drink the milk, nor are they interested in helping milk goats. If you have any kind of job at all or a government check, if not, it’s cheaper and easier to buy milk than it is to extract your own from an animal. Milk animals, be they cows or goats, must be tended to twice a day, even if milked just once. There are no sick days, bad weather days, weekends, holidays, or excuses unless you have someone to fill in, and apparently she doesn’t.
I’ve seen this scenario play out time and again. People leave the city for a homestead with some idyllic notion of their own little house on the prairie and soon find themselves in a hell of their own making. They plant seeds, hoping to grow things organically. Bugs eat the crops, if not, then weeds take over, if not that, some other impediment arises. If by some minor miracle they do manage to overcome all these obstacles and get food grown, they discover growing and harvesting food by hand is brutally hard work and the produce must be picked on time and immediately processed or it begins to overripen or rot in short order.
Then excess crops get harvested, more than can possibly be processed, given there are only 24 hours in a day, so the homesteader decides to try and sell some of their hard earned produce.
People say they want organically grown food but they don’t want to see a bug bite or any other blemish or imperfection and they want the food dirt cheap. In other words, they don’t really want organically grown, hand harvested food. They want something labeled organic that looks just like the shit sold in the grocery store and are willing to pay a few extra cents to get it. The vast majority, even if they buy “organic”, buy at some megastore that will not purchase raw food products from small scale producers. If you’re sitting at a farmer’s market selling stuff, you’re not at the farm taking care of the plants and animals in your charge. Most of those that do sit at farmer’s markets make their money fucking farmers out of their crops. Either you sell these middlemen stuff dirt cheap, less than the cost of production if your time is accounted for, or they go buy produce from the same place the big stores do, except they get the lower end stuff, repackage it and sell it as homegrown produce.
It takes time to do things by hand which, unless a person has a cache of money put aside, cuts into other money making endeavors which tend to be hard to come by anyhow if you live in what I would consider a favorable spot for a homestead. When raising food produced or gathered by hand, you’re competing with what amounts to foreign slave labor. By slave labor, I mean working your ass off for less than $10/day.
I could not do what I do if I didn’t have the family support of others that derive income from non-agricultural ventures. In my case, that help came in the form of a windfall that evaporates by the day. The vast majority of those that work on a farm, even of the mechanized and most modern variety, have similar arrangements. Either they inherited their land and/or someone in the family goes to town to earn money to pay bills.
When I pay someone to hand harvest crops, I lose money. Every time, without fail. And old saying, which is a whole lot less funny than it was the first time I heard it: If you want to make a small fortune farming, start out with a big fortune.
If I offered all the corn three field hands harvested today instead of the money I paid them for their efforts, to a man they would decline the offer. If that corn was all they got paid, they wouldn’t be back to work tomorrow. What they earned in wages is more money than the corn they picked can be sold for, if they could sell it at all (and that is highly unlikely). I’ve gone as far with this endeavor as I can. The rest of the unharvested corn the combine missed will be plowed into the ground.
Economic chains have forced farmers to mechanize, cut costs and grow Frankenfoods. We waste significant amounts of the food that we grow. Breaking these chains seems near impossible, but we had better figure out how.
Lives depend upon it.
Rain shortened my workday, once again, at least until the necessary evening chores came along which must be done regardless of weather conditions. Earlier, I saw one of our goats in labor. I moved closer to discover that a kid was already out and moving so I left the nanny alone. About thirty minutes later I saw the kid stand and nurse. I failed to notice another kid had been born and lay dead on the ground alongside the nanny.
Had I been there for the second birth, the kid might very well have been saved. Sometimes whether an animal lives or dies can be as simple a matter as removing a piece of the sack in which they are encased to allow the baby to get that first breath. Here’s what’s certain. I was not there. The animal died. Once dead, there is no bringing that dead animal back to life. At least one of the neighborhood coyotes will eat tonight.
Leah is out in the rain moving the nanny and the surviving kid to a stall so they won’t have to stand in a wet pen. Left out, even with the protection of our pack of livestock guard dogs, there’s a chance that one of literally thousands of coyotes in the immediate area might sneak in and snag dinner in the form of the surviving kid.
This morning I read a blog where a woman complained about having to go out and milk her goats. For her, buying and raising goats seemed a good idea until she realized that her spouse and her children would not drink the milk, nor are they interested in helping milk goats. If you have any kind of job at all or a government check, if not, it’s cheaper and easier to buy milk than it is to extract your own from an animal. Milk animals, be they cows or goats, must be tended to twice a day, even if milked just once. There are no sick days, bad weather days, weekends, holidays, or excuses unless you have someone to fill in, and apparently she doesn’t.
I’ve seen this scenario play out time and again. People leave the city for a homestead with some idyllic notion of their own little house on the prairie and soon find themselves in a hell of their own making. They plant seeds, hoping to grow things organically. Bugs eat the crops, if not, then weeds take over, if not that, some other impediment arises. If by some minor miracle they do manage to overcome all these obstacles and get food grown, they discover growing and harvesting food by hand is brutally hard work and the produce must be picked on time and immediately processed or it begins to overripen or rot in short order.
Then excess crops get harvested, more than can possibly be processed, given there are only 24 hours in a day, so the homesteader decides to try and sell some of their hard earned produce.
People say they want organically grown food but they don’t want to see a bug bite or any other blemish or imperfection and they want the food dirt cheap. In other words, they don’t really want organically grown, hand harvested food. They want something labeled organic that looks just like the shit sold in the grocery store and are willing to pay a few extra cents to get it. The vast majority, even if they buy “organic”, buy at some megastore that will not purchase raw food products from small scale producers. If you’re sitting at a farmer’s market selling stuff, you’re not at the farm taking care of the plants and animals in your charge. Most of those that do sit at farmer’s markets make their money fucking farmers out of their crops. Either you sell these middlemen stuff dirt cheap, less than the cost of production if your time is accounted for, or they go buy produce from the same place the big stores do, except they get the lower end stuff, repackage it and sell it as homegrown produce.
It takes time to do things by hand which, unless a person has a cache of money put aside, cuts into other money making endeavors which tend to be hard to come by anyhow if you live in what I would consider a favorable spot for a homestead. When raising food produced or gathered by hand, you’re competing with what amounts to foreign slave labor. By slave labor, I mean working your ass off for less than $10/day.
I could not do what I do if I didn’t have the family support of others that derive income from non-agricultural ventures. In my case, that help came in the form of a windfall that evaporates by the day. The vast majority of those that work on a farm, even of the mechanized and most modern variety, have similar arrangements. Either they inherited their land and/or someone in the family goes to town to earn money to pay bills.
When I pay someone to hand harvest crops, I lose money. Every time, without fail. And old saying, which is a whole lot less funny than it was the first time I heard it: If you want to make a small fortune farming, start out with a big fortune.
If I offered all the corn three field hands harvested today instead of the money I paid them for their efforts, to a man they would decline the offer. If that corn was all they got paid, they wouldn’t be back to work tomorrow. What they earned in wages is more money than the corn they picked can be sold for, if they could sell it at all (and that is highly unlikely). I’ve gone as far with this endeavor as I can. The rest of the unharvested corn the combine missed will be plowed into the ground.
Economic chains have forced farmers to mechanize, cut costs and grow Frankenfoods. We waste significant amounts of the food that we grow. Breaking these chains seems near impossible, but we had better figure out how.
Lives depend upon it.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Do not pity the Democrats
Chris Hedges has written a good piece concerning the condition of our condition. Now if more of his liberal constituents would take notice...
An excerpt:
Investing emotional and intellectual energy in electoral politics is a waste of time. Resistance means a radical break with the formal structures of American society. We must cut as many ties with consumer society and corporations as possible. We must build a new political and economic consciousness centered on the tangible issues of sustainable agriculture, self-sufficiency and radical environmental reform. The democratic system, and the liberal institutions that once made piecemeal reform possible, is dead. It exists only in name. It is no longer a viable mechanism for change. And the longer we play our scripted and absurd role in this charade the worse it will get. Do not pity Barack Obama and the Democratic Party. They will get what they deserve. They sold the citizens out for cash and power. They lied. They manipulated and deceived the public, from the bailouts to the abandonment of universal health care, to serve corporate interests. They refused to halt the wanton corporate destruction of the ecosystem on which all life depends. They betrayed the most basic ideals of democracy. And they, as much as the Republicans, are the problem.
“It is like being in a pit,” Ralph Nader told me when we spoke on Saturday. “If you are four feet in the pit you have a chance to grab the top and hoist yourself up. If you are 30 feet in the pit you have to start on a different scale.”
All resistance will take place outside the arena of electoral politics. The more we expand community credit unions, community health clinics and food cooperatives and build alternative energy systems, the more empowered we will become.
More at the link.
An excerpt:
Investing emotional and intellectual energy in electoral politics is a waste of time. Resistance means a radical break with the formal structures of American society. We must cut as many ties with consumer society and corporations as possible. We must build a new political and economic consciousness centered on the tangible issues of sustainable agriculture, self-sufficiency and radical environmental reform. The democratic system, and the liberal institutions that once made piecemeal reform possible, is dead. It exists only in name. It is no longer a viable mechanism for change. And the longer we play our scripted and absurd role in this charade the worse it will get. Do not pity Barack Obama and the Democratic Party. They will get what they deserve. They sold the citizens out for cash and power. They lied. They manipulated and deceived the public, from the bailouts to the abandonment of universal health care, to serve corporate interests. They refused to halt the wanton corporate destruction of the ecosystem on which all life depends. They betrayed the most basic ideals of democracy. And they, as much as the Republicans, are the problem.
“It is like being in a pit,” Ralph Nader told me when we spoke on Saturday. “If you are four feet in the pit you have a chance to grab the top and hoist yourself up. If you are 30 feet in the pit you have to start on a different scale.”
All resistance will take place outside the arena of electoral politics. The more we expand community credit unions, community health clinics and food cooperatives and build alternative energy systems, the more empowered we will become.
More at the link.
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