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OT but a welcome bit of brightness
In article ,
songbird wrote: Billy wrote: songbird wrote: Billy wrote: songbird wrote: Billy wrote: two more books for the reading list: Sepp Holzer, _The Rebel Farmer_ and _Sepp Holzer's Permaculture_ i'm reading them in reverse order, almost done with the second. he's got many years of actual experience with many things, so i appreciate his writings. some things he's almost mystical about so that isn't as much a science as a ritualized practice but it seems to be working for him. This here represents a problem. The local library doesn't have "The Rebel Farmer", and even used it is way too expensive for me from Amazon. In any event, I need to clear out my backlog of reading books. The stack on the headboard could do some serious damage to me, if we had a trembler. i haven't gotten into mushroom farming, but i did enjoy the part of the book that gives that overview. if i do get into it sometime i'll be sure to read up on it. It is something I should check out. We're on the side of a hill, and there is a lot of dark enclosed space under the house. also how he talks about fruit trees and his methods. very low input, but you need a varied environment to pull it off. in a modern suburban landscape with grasses, etc and few understory plants that support beneficials it's a challenge. then you may also have to deal with neighborhood politics or town ordinances for weeds/lawn care. his main property is upland enough that he can work with microclimates and extending seasons of harvest by using the warmer downhill areas and cooler areas uphill along with using rocks, sun catchers and ponds. also the film mentioned: _The Agricultural Rebel_. Film? What film? You didn't say anything about no stinkin' film. You using Cliff Notes too? ;O) ... Against the Grain: How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization by Richard Manning http://www.amazon.com/Against-Grain-...-Civilization/ dp /0865477132/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1368981220&sr=1-4&keywords= Aga inst+the+Grain I'm about 60 pages into the book (a mere 240 pages). i finished it two nights ago. quick read. i'm not really sure what i think of it. as it is a bit dated and the enemy of popularity has turned from big-ag processor ADM to ag-chem-seed producer Monsanto. If you don't care for the murder rate of 20-30%, you probably won't like the complete genocide that the farmers wreaked on the hunter/gathers. Although farming startd 8,000 - 10,000 years ago, the full complement of wheat, barley, sheep, goats, and cows didn't really coalesce into a suite until about 5,600 years ago, near the Caucasus Mountains.They are identified by their pottery which is distinctively marked with straight lines, or as the German anthropologists called them Linearbandkeramik (LBK is the designation for these farmers who spoke Indo-European). Farming wasn't spread by adaptation, but conquest. The LBK farmers made it to the Atlantic in about 300 years, taking no prisoners. The "cave-painters" (Cro-Magnons), hunter/gaterers, last stand was in the south-west of France. The Cro-Magnon's descendants are most likely the Basque, who speak a language like no other. The book goes on to describe the encounter between the LBK, and the "Scandahoovians", which was a stalemate. A ripping good book. i enjoyed parts of it. i have to conceed the poorer health and starvation of some peoples under the version of agriculture much practiced in the past. Famines every 10 years don't auger well for agriculturalists. It's way past time to start humanities return to sustainable environmental practices. It's probably an impossible dream with greed intrenched in government. wait until you get to the part where he talks about China and famines (p. 71). ??????? It's the same deal, famines every 10 years. no, he writes they have evidence of 1800+ famines in about 3,000 years. that's a famine almost every year to every other year. OK, it's agreed, every other year, and we won't mention the cannibalism. Civil disobedience, thats not our problem. Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running the country. Thats our problem. -Howard Zinn well yes. we have a lot of people in jail on very minor things (non-violent offenders). What we have is more people in jail (percentage wise) than any other country in the world, 1%. Most of these people are people of color, because the law is applied disproportionately. This is the new Jim Crow, just in time for the Prison Industrial Complex. The term prisonindustrial complex (PIC) is used to attribute the rapid expansion of the US inmate population to the political influence of private prison companies and businesses that supply goods and services to government prison agencies. The term is borrowed from the militaryindustrial complex President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of in his famous 1961 farewell address. he was a smart guy. And he seemed to be human. I wonder what the U.S. would have been like if Major General Smedley Butler, USMC had been President. Such groups include corporations that contract prison labor, construction companies, surveillance technology vendors, lawyers, and lobby groups that represent them. Activists have argued that the Prison-Industrial Complex as perpetuating a belief that imprisonment is a quick yet ultimately flawed solution to social problems such as homelessness, unemployment, drug addiction, mental illness, and illiteracy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison%E2%80%93industrial_complex More specifically see "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness" by Michelle Alexander and Cornel West. http://www.amazon.com/New-Jim-Crow-I...dness/dp/15955 86431/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369114986&sr=1-1&keywords=The+New+J im+Crow gah! no, i'm not going there. it's all around me already, i don't need to read more about it. We have that option, for the time being, but people of color don't. It gets shoved into their faces, like it or not. any federal or state program is always set up and will self-perpetuate once funding gets allocated and spent. that is why i think that we should make as much government as volunteer or minimum wage as possible to discourage "entrenchment" and also to make representatives selected at random instead elected by campaigns. It's always a balancing act, isn't it? From about 1940 to 1982, Mexico had a centralized government that gave rise to paying morditas (bribes) to public officials to get them to do their work, or to get the results that you wished. Since 1982, Mexico has been a Neo-Liberal government with little regulation (much as the Tea Party wish for the U.S.). The result is that human rights are in conflict with property rights. Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal. - Martin Luther King, Jr. Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone. -John Maynard Keynes the alternatives are demonstratably worse as already seen. socialistic adaptations to capitalism are fine to protect the elderly and the poor, but subsidies are destructive in the long haul because they distort the market signals. of course, i've already stated before what i think of taxation for pollution and making sure there is recycling and many other things. i sure know that communism isn't functional. works ok at a small scale, breaks down quickly once the group gets larger. Who would know, it has never been tried. the first few years of Christianity were supposedly communist in organisation and sharing of resources, but that devolves like any other system as soon as you put money in any large amounts into the hands of a few "leaders" or "organizers". Ah, communist with a lower case "c", not an uppercase "C". In the middle ages, at least in England, you would live in a village, and behind your house you would have your garden, but beyond the garden was the "Commons". There would be fields that were worked in common by the inhabitants of the town for the good of everyone. There were also forests where a person could hunt for game. Then came the closure laws, and everyone was forced into the factories (more or less). Capitalism seems like an extension of feudalism. Both require infinite resources. Socialism (We the People) can be corrupted, as all can see, but it is doable. First we have to get campaign financing out of private hands, and everything else should flow from that, not that vigilance won't still be required. however, i don't see any solution because any system set up still has to interface with others and that means some form of currency or government to make sure the groups don't trample each other or use false means of gain or counterfeit currencies. Regulation is needed to combat cheating. The U.S.S.R. was an oligarchy, as is the capitalistic U.S. of A. sure thing. with some regulation here or there but the regulators can be bought off with campaign money and lobbyists contributions. so we get the best government that money can buy. which is also exploitive of resources to the detriment of any sort of sustainable future. without the environmental groups doing their counter efforts we'd be in even worse shape (the USSR was much worse than us in terms of how they treated their people and resources). so even if i don't much like what we've got and it surely can be improved, it seems to be at least a bit more open and changeable than most of what i see anyplace else. [T]he people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked [National Security], and denounce the pacifists [Whistle Blowers] for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. -Nazi Hermann Goering [Parentheses are mine] the other aspect is that we have a hugely varied culture that some other countries don't have to cope with. how to integrate so many different forces and not have it all blow up all the time... Most countries I can think of are multi-cultural, or multi-tribal. Japan is the only outlier I can think of. Maybe Korea. The Delaration of Independance says "We the People". It doesn't say I, me, mine. We are all in this together to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity. which isn't the constitution, but i love the language and intent. "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." It is the intent of the Constitution. The Articles of the Constitution are supposed to effectuate the above results, if they don't, then they aren't being faithful to the Constitution's intent. Nothing in the Constitution says anything about banks making money at the tax payer expense. probably covered under "promote the general welfare" intent above along with the clause which lets them regulate interstate commerce as many banks now cross state lines. as for the fed itself, that's a whole different story and the history of that is well worth reading up on sometime. it didn't say anything about income taxes or property taxes either, but once you get a governing class feeding off the rest of the people it is very hard to break that cycle of depredation. Ipso facto, it's not "promoting the general welfare". as to how to regulate banking, i don't see any good coming from the government being directly involved. i already am having severe dislikes to the feds current practices of transferring wealth from the responsible to the irresponsible, but put the fed in the government's direct control and it would be even worse as then they'd have no check on their abuse of the money supply. not that there seems to be one right now anyways. if i had a better place to put my money i'd be doing it, but the rest of the world is not looking much better either. Credit Unions keep the money local. my own answer is a different form of government, but that's not likely to ever happen. but getting back to the constitution, it's pretty amazing how many people don't even read it once in a while. The Constitution's intent has been corrupted by 250 years of shysters [shisters?] turning it into a real F.U.B.A.R. i think the current world is making up for it in some ways, but the question is if it is sustainable, and it doesn't look like it is as most are currently practicing... When the "free market" reigns, corporations will own the seeds for our food, the rights to the our water, and charge us rent for the clothes on our backs. Of course the problem may be moot if Global Warming gets away from us, or we meet another Chicxulub asteroid. they don't own my seeds and i'll gladly share. The natural, free seeds are becoming fewer, and fewer. As much as I like open pollinated seeds, I know that hybridized squash has less of a problem with mildew. Hybridized means that it is owned by somebody. Usually that somebody is Monsanto. i don't think you are right. perhaps you can find an organic source for a similar hybrid and not have to buy from Monsanto. as there are so many squash varieties you might even find something better. i keep finding seed sources way beyond what i can ever possibly use here. i don't think seed-savers are going out of business any time soon, and the expansion of farmer markets and people putting in their own gardens is also a good trend in the opposite direction. As luck would have it, I misspoke again. I was thinking that Black Beauty Zucchini was a hybrid, it isn't. Compared to Costata Romanesco and Zucchino Rampicante it has little taste, but it sure does withstand mildew. I'll have to find another example of skullduggery in high places. putting on some fertilizer, and then some potting soil, and lastly the plant, with what ever potting soil is necessary to make the ground flush. Today is sunflowers, lettuce, and potting some herbs. i've been digging and burying more shredded bark and wood pieces and then after filling it back in and then topping it off with soil that is actually topsoil (and not clay). into that went about 220 onions of three types and a small patch of turnips. Ah, to be young again. today is a day of r-n-r. very humid and in the 80s. Mid 70s to mid 80s here for te last few weeks and the seedlings are jumpin' i'm glad they are coming along. It's the earliest start I've had in 15 years. Usually I don't get into the ground until the first of June. today looks pretty good for getting something done outside. Carp that Dium, baby. if i didn't need to get areas above flood stage i wouldn't be digging quite as much and having free fill to put underneath is a big help too. i could not justify spending money i don't have for 20 yards of topsoil, but i do have time and can use the exercise. my back hasn't felt this good for many years. thanks to chiropractor and being careful the past year and listening to what my body is telling me. we're trying to walk each day before gardening. so when the day is done i'm done too. I hope you make it to 60 without any chronic illnesses, otherwise it can be a real pile of shit. Good luck. heh, allergies have always been fun, motorcycle accident broke and twisted things so i have to be careful about some angles and bends and then i've had chronic back problems since i was 15. for me to say that it is doing better is a huge improvement in how things are going. The thought of getting killed on a motorcycle never bothered me. Then I discovered getting mangled. They sure are fun on a hot day in the trees. every day on the right side of the daisy roots is a day i never expected. for some reason as a kid i never expected to live past 30. having relatives with chronic lung or back troubles or diabetes i can see the way it can be. i've been through my own piles so it's just a matter of keeping on, finding what is important and working on that and not getting hung up on what i can't do. being a systems analyst means being able to break down a problem and work the parts until it comes back together again. keep the big picture in mind. My plan is trying to squeeze the last drop of pleasure out of this life. I'm down to the hard part now, which only makes it tougher. i was a bit worried by the lack of bees on the blooming honeysuckle for a few days, but they were out in force today. *whew!* we'll be planting tomatoes and peppers within the next few weeks and i'll be finding more spots for beans, beets and peas, cucumbers, squash, strawberries are blooming and the rhubarb is coming along well as are the peas and onions already planted and the beets sprouted days before i expected to see them. the challenge is keeping the melon seeds from sprouting and pushing up so much that they are pushing all the beets out of the ground. i guess that is one way to thin them... rain due this week. we'll appreciate it. the killdeer are still sitting on their eggs. busy day today. i'm due for a bit of a snooze. We had unexpected, but much needed company yesterday. Back to planting today. good luck to you and your sprouts. Peppers (28) are in. Now it's on to the squash, sunflowers, and more lettuce. Then it will be beets, onions, and the misc. The seeds for the green beans must have been too old. I'll have to try again. luckily they can be planted in series. i keep planting peas and beans as much as i can, i like the flowers and foliage as much as the edibles. songbird Onwards, and downwards. Have a good'un. -- Remember Rachel Corrie http://www.rachelcorrie.org/ Welcome to the New America. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA736oK9FPg |
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