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Post by epaul on Aug 19, 2023 10:23:44 GMT -5
... I woke up thinking of ePaul's moving version of "Water Is Wide," which he performed at an early IJam, one held in the Congregational church. Paul, if you're listening, could you favor us with the rest of the lyrics? All I remember is the opening line: The water is wet ...I had to do a little brain digging, but I think the below is close. At one point, it was up to 32 verses, but they just didn't match the literary quality of the opening, so I just let them drop away. There was one pretty good one about running away from an angry woman, if that comes back, I may post it, but until then, here you go... The water is wet, I can not cross o're Neither do I have wings to fly I’ll build a boat that can carry two And both shall row, my love and I
I built a boat, from a hollowed tree Said to my love, sit next to me But the boat sank low and began to sink And so I dumped, my love in the drink
Oh love is gentle, and love is sweet But I can not abide wet feet When a boat for two can float but one Then a man must do, what must be done
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Post by epaul on Aug 19, 2023 9:41:30 GMT -5
Odder and odder. Casper had something in his mouth when I let him in yesterday, and it was this CD. Now, how the hell?
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Post by epaul on Aug 18, 2023 20:23:08 GMT -5
I just came home with a lug of Colorado peaches. We get a lug every year from a local church youth group that has some kind of deal with a nursery in Colorado. A refrigerated truck shows up from Colorado and we get a call, "Peaches are in!".
Typically, they bring in a couple trucks from Georgia in late July and then two or three more trucks from Colorado in mid-August. This year, no trucks from Georgia. Georgia had a very, very short peach crop. Most years, we prefer the Colorado peaches to the Georgia ones. This year we especially prefer the Colorado peaches as there were no Georgia peaches.
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Post by epaul on Aug 18, 2023 13:11:57 GMT -5
Morning!
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Post by epaul on Aug 18, 2023 11:34:25 GMT -5
Happy Birthday, John! (Bill, John is not the same timid Falcon owner he used to be. He has earned success and now requires a more assertive Falcon.) Tasteful, but Assertive!
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Post by epaul on Aug 18, 2023 11:21:17 GMT -5
Oh, but on re-reading your sentence during an edit check, you did modify your argument in a way that removes my quibble. Yes, I certainly wouldn't be quick about any decision to take a bite. It would be a very slow, deliberative, do I have to do this, sort of bite. Certainly not a quick "All right! Let's do this!)
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Post by epaul on Aug 18, 2023 11:04:29 GMT -5
... And just because animals engage in behaviors doesn't mean that it is "natural" for us to do so too. Animals also eat their own feces but we're not quick to adopt that behavior.)... Just a minor quibble that is in no way is meant to distract from the overall import of your thoughtful post, but apparently there may be a good, and natural, reason for a human to, on occasion, eat feces (sometimes with certain worms included). Not our own, necessarily, but then animals know this and sample widely with an instinctive judiciousness. www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/treatment-tests-and-therapies/fecal-transplant#:~:text=Fecal%20transplantation%20is%20a%20procedure,bacteria%20into%20the%20recipient's%20intestines.
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Post by epaul on Aug 18, 2023 2:14:04 GMT -5
Here's my gripe. I don't see anywhere in that indictment of the leftist elite, where Trump is a viable answer. He's a big business huckster that wants to make a regulation free world for his plundering. Marshall, Wendell Berry's letter has nothing to do with Trump or the Red State/Blue State thing. Wendell Barry is speaking only for Wendell Berry and his Walden Pond yearnings. Re-read the quote you selected. Wendell Berry may be worried about the human and ecological evils of mining, but Rural America as a voting entity supports mining and is concerned that Wendell Berry types would ban it. Mining is jobs. And rural America isn't yearning for more ecological remedies inserted into their lives, they view ecological remedies as impositions from without that are undermining their lives and economy. And rural America supports logging, not the ecological integrity of our forests or whatever owl or squirrel that represents. And rural America doesn't want small scale holistic lettuce farming with organic mules, rural America as a voting entity doesn't want Wendell Berry types anywhere near the farm bill. Wendell Berry might be absolutely right about everything, but this letter, its language, its implied reimagining of a new and reinvigorated rural America, could have been written, and has been written, by the very urban elites he is supposedly lambasting as being out of touch with the needs of rural America. Which makes it confusing. There is no advantage to be grabbed triumphantly by either party offered in this letter. The only part of it that was clear is that he is mad at the NY Times book review people who didn't publish the last thing he sent to them.
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Post by epaul on Aug 17, 2023 19:49:42 GMT -5
[if it seems that I am all over the place on some of these issues, that's because I am. Trump makes it easy for me because he is an id-driven pathological liar and he is recklessly feeding a dangerous and damaging fire with his lies. But, as for the issues themselves, big and complicated they is, too big for me to get around. So I nibble at various edges.]
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Post by epaul on Aug 17, 2023 19:38:38 GMT -5
Other than, perhaps, "It's the economy, stupid". Some rural places are doing well. Some are doing poorly. People are leaving much of rural America, but good spots with jobs or that hold something that is desirable to others, they are consolidating and growing. The Red State/Blue State, Urban/Rural divide has a simpler answer than the tortured reasoning of the "oh so caring" pontifications of pointy headed elites. Rural areas vote heavily Republican because they are filled with white people. White people in general vote Republican. White males without college degrees vote for Republicans in about the same percentages no matter where they live. And if you filter out those with jobs dependendent on a government paycheck, college educated ones do as well. It can be awkward to discuss, but it is the case. And it is cultural identity, not racism. Culture is huge and tricky. So huge, you could wonder how calls of racism can miss such a huge target, but they do. Some folks express wonder and shake their heads at how those Evangelicals can support Trump. Flip the brain switch and ask "what is it about those progressives that cause an Evangelical to hold their nose and vote for Trump." It's culture. It's culture. It is where you were born, how you were raised, what you were taught by parents and soaked up through friends and neighbors. It isn't hard and fast and immutable, but it certainly is. And it isn't how many deplorables or left behinds there are in a district that determines whether it goes Red or Blue, it's the ratio of whites to non-whites. It's culture. What seems and feels right. What doesn't. Culture. And none are immune. Exceptions abound. I'm dealing with statistical patterns. And they seem pretty clear. www.pewresearch.org/politics/2018/08/09/an-examination-of-the-2016-electorate-based-on-validated-voters/
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Post by epaul on Aug 17, 2023 19:14:16 GMT -5
All in all, it's a mixed bag with no applicable soundbites.
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Post by epaul on Aug 17, 2023 19:08:11 GMT -5
And while there are fewer farms and farmers in the economy that supports my little home town of Newfolden, there is more money floating around for everyone than when I was a kid. More money, nicer houses, nicer cars and bigger boats.
When I was a kid, there were some good farms on good land that did very well, but there were a lot of crappy little hardscrabble farms that struggled to provide squat. Now, thanks to the jobs provided by Digi-Key and Artic Cat and other businesses in the region that are doing pretty well, there are decent jobs to be had, and money to spend that doesn't depend on having had a grandfather who settled on a nice patch of clay-bottomed loam rather than a gravel ridge that goes dry every summer.
The old days of farming are romanticized, but for many throughout the many years, farming has been a damn tough dirt poor way to get by.
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Post by epaul on Aug 17, 2023 18:37:51 GMT -5
Berry has an axe to grind against the course of modern ag in this country. And he has an axe to grind against those pointy-headed elites.
But, pointy-headed elites have never shaped farm policy. Big city liberals have never shaped farm policy. Farm policy via the current Farm/AG program, whatever it is over any given period, has always been crafted in the halls of congress by farm state representatives.
There is always some yipping from the inconsequential edges of Congress, but the compromise has been long standing. As long as the Farm Bill contains the Food Stamps program and few other things like WIC and milk for school kids, those pointy heads from those big cities are happy to let the representatives, D and R alike, from farm states, do whatever they want with the Farm/Ag Bill (in consultation with those that matter in Ag industry, of course)
(and corn, wheat, cows, and beans are what matter. If you are growing broccoli and spinach on a couple acres, good luck, you are on your own)
If you are upset with American Agriculture for whatever reason, the pointy-headed liberals from those big cities and fancy east coast colleges have never had anything to do with it. Berry is barking, but it's the wrong tree.
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Post by epaul on Aug 17, 2023 12:15:37 GMT -5
I don't think any farm program can stand up for the long term against technology and a global marketplace.
But, the EU's farm policies (invested public money) at least has been putting up a fight. The US's farm policies, by dint of having no effective caps on individual (and corporate) subsidies received, has actually encouraged larger and larger farms. If the subsidy is so much an acre, economy of scale is going to win. A $50 subsidy on 50 acres of wheat is a nice $2500. Pay for some fertilizer. That same $50 an acre subsidy given to the guy planting 5,000 acres of wheat is enough for him to buy your farm.
Bottom line, our farm subsidies are, at best, just slowing, cushioning, the inevitable transition to larger and larger operations. Which matters. But, the dollars per farm in the farm program could be effectively capped (and protected against the workarounds and loopholes purposefully left in the final drafts). Which would then matter more.
Bottom line, France's farm programs are fighting the same losing battle. But, at least their farm program dollars are fighting the beast instead of feeding it.
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Post by epaul on Aug 17, 2023 11:49:14 GMT -5
The main tractor would have 60 hp pulling a 12' cultivator. The average primary tractor now would have 300 hp pulling a 50' cultivator.
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Post by epaul on Aug 17, 2023 11:46:39 GMT -5
Average farm size in my home county is now around 1500 acres. When I was kid, it was around 300.
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Post by epaul on Aug 17, 2023 11:41:40 GMT -5
I have spent a lot of time in rural America (all my life). I have spent a little time in France (part of one summer). In France I saw smaller farms with much smaller tractors. And I saw bigger villages with more shops. Both countries have farm programs that are expensive and involve various degrees of export subsidies and domestic protectionism. France's farm programs has been geared as much as possible to supporting small farms and rural/village populations. America's has been geared towards efficiency of production and market dominance. Both spend a lot of money on farm programs. The difference in approach isn't political, it is cultural. crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R46811#:~:text=The%20EU%20has%20five%20times,per%20farm%20appear%20much%20larger.
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Post by epaul on Aug 17, 2023 10:05:19 GMT -5
I am feeling an urge to buy a pencil box and some crayons.
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Post by epaul on Aug 16, 2023 11:16:26 GMT -5
Morning!
Got up early and had a brisk morning bike ride. Made it around the entire block, no stops! Treating myself to a well-deserved, but sensible, breakfast of biscuits, pork gravy, chops, eggs, and hashbrowns. Good health doesn't just happen by itself.
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Post by epaul on Aug 16, 2023 9:48:10 GMT -5
And with the windows down, it has air!
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