THE FALL

The Fall

freeacre

Usually this is my favorite time of year. The gardening is coming to a close. We lost many pole beans, green peppers, and the summer squash to an unexpected frost one August night, despite our efforts. But, we still managed to blanch and freeze quite a lot of vegetables. We have bags and bags of frozen chard, snow peas, kale, carrots, beets, and green beans. Pretty soon, we’ll purchase big winter squashes from the Farmer’s Market. We’ll steam them, mash them up, and freeze those, too. It should last us most of the winter.

Another good thing, I think, is that I was able to write a series of columns about gardening in central Oregon that I augmented with pictures in our local newspaper. I am hoping that these stories about local food production as a hedge against inflation will raise the consciousness of the locals to begin to localize food production. The local garden society made a visit, and they were able to get a look at the garden and the “anarchist” free range chickens as well. I hope it will have a ripple effect. I don’t expect that many of them will be spray painting “Hen Power,” “Expect Resistance,” and “Screw Monsanto,” on the walls of their chicken coops (like we have), however…

But change in food production can come none too soon. The hurricanes and inflation of food prices, together with shortages of gasoline sure to be coming will put a bite on most of us this fall and winter. We can pretty much count on that.

Who knows what else will be coming. Potentially, we are looking at global meltdown of the economy, possible wars escalating in Pakistan, Iran, Georgia, or God knows what. From the fringes, we are warned of possible space-time distortions, alien spaceship manifestations, plagues, “secrets revealed” regarding the military and/or black ops programs, corruption, and on and on.

Then, there is this season’s gruesome election. It is getting so grotesque that I can barely focus on it without feeling sick. The whole process seems more and more about as enjoyable as a series of chemotherapy treatments. By the time I get to fill out my ballot, I will probably be bald.

By Thanksgiving, I guess we will be lucky if we can just be grateful that the lights are still on and we still have the internet and each other.

Everybody now says that they want “change.” But, very little real change is being offered. We are beginning to see many different alternative ways to keep our cars on the road. But the cars would still be on the road. People are clamoring to close the borders. But, I don’t see anyone mobilizing brigades of people to take their place in the fields or the landscape business, meat-packing plants, or housekeeping departments and whatnot. Neither candidate is suggesting that we stop depending on the sales of military weaponry and credit card debt to prop up our economy. No one talks about closing some of the 170 or so military bases that we man all over the world. We might pull back from Iraq, only to move the troops into Afghanistan.

I don’t hear much of an outcry against the brutal police state that is taking over in our country. The only person that incarcerated more prisoners than us was Stalin. The right to redress grievances and the right to peacefully assemble in order to protest against tyranny is what this country was founded upon. And yet, objections to the war and the government policies that harm the citizenry are met with paramilitary force and accusations of terrorism. Our right to privacy is compromised every day by new and better tactics of electronic surveillance and invasive marketing and tracking techniques. Unlawful searches, tasering, and police brutality of every sort are authorized and subsidized by “Homeland Security.”

Unspeakable atrocities are being committed by hideous new weapons that can melt a whole bus loaded with people and shrink their bodies down to the size of a large roast. Pain rays that burn you from the inside out, others that put incapacitating thoughts and fears into your brain with no defense possible… all this to control a civilian population that isn’t even armed with one helicopter? And, do you hear any debate about the ethics of any of this or its effects on our soldiers, or the blow-back we can expect from the world? No, just an “unexplainable” rise in suicides and PTS disorder among our troops.

To counter this waking nightmare I try to think that the Universe actually does know what it is doing. The Fall leads to Winter, and the Winter leads to Spring. Eventually, we will plant new seeds and harvest another crop.

The Murph and I are in the process of watching a series on John Adams that we rented which portrays the thoughts and the people and the forces that led to the American Revolution. Those sure were simpler times. But one thing remains the same: freedom is still a concept that people will fight and die for. And, hope seems to be as natural as sunshine or rain.