Creating Farmily

They say you can choose your friends, but not your family. Wendell Berry has written about the health of the farms in a society as a good indicator of the health of its nation. The spirit of connection (the real meaning of religion- from ligare to "bind",) inspires me to think of a new way to extend family into farmily. I have seen it at the Grange as it closes each meeting to ask if there is anyone sick or in need in the community, in some churches, at recovery groups, but never in the polling booth. Democracy with a party system divides us: always in half, and sometime into dozens of factions. The fact that 51% can make a decision, (yes, sometimes it takes 67% to get by politicians blovination,) guarantees 49% will be unhappy, does not a farmily make. Consensus is a good start, but really at some point we have to realize that there is no me, only we; we are all in the same boat and nobody gets out alive. Enough is enough. Just enjoy it.

The Dalai Lama re-emphasized this

Right from the moment of our birth, we are under the care and kindness of our parents, and then later on in our life when we are oppressed by sickness and become old, we are again dependent on the kindness of others. Since at the beginning and end of our lives we are so dependent on other´s kindness, how can it be in the middle that we would neglect kindness towards others?Suffering originates from various causes and conditions. But the root cause of our pain and suffering lies in our own ignorant and undisciplined state of mind. The happiness we seek can be attained only through the purification of our minds.

Analysis Paralysis

Analysis Paralysis. A multiply syllabic way to say the more we study, the less we know until the final grid lock of too much information. One of the side effects of this, and really the only solution is to make decisions based on partial information, and the effects are stunning. This lesson was taught to me by an older Greek engineer in the preliminary design group at GE jet engines. I asked why GE and Pratt had two completely different ways to handle compressor non-linearity during start up. His response was considered and philosophical, way beyond mechanical engineering. He said that it was like two trains headed west from New York that encountered tiny course changes going through rail switches, less than a degree to the north or south; at the end of the day one is in San Francisco and the other in New Orleans. So it goes with partial adoption of what we believe to be absolute truth. The only thing we know absolutely is that we know nothing, absolutely.

Truth is, we are simpler than we think, or can

We are more together
than we know, how else could we keep on discovering
we are more together than we thought?
You are the known way leading always to the unknown,
and you are the known place to which the unknown is always
leading me back. More blessed in you than I know…
~Wendell Berry from “The Country of Marriage”
How is it that the chickens I dispatched last Saturday
know more of life than me?

Progress not perfection.

Progress not perfection. So we (the editorial we) the blog "Nulla dies sine linea" and have pathetically only posted 5/22's of days. The perfect is sometimes the enemy of the good, it has been said and so we have to accept progress: we are 5 blogs ahead of last year, and perhaps as thoughts are put on paper they can be dismounted from the tapes repeating in my head. The little squirrels that circle in the cages are the ones who bring in the nuts!

Attention

Mowing the fields is an education in soil and microclimate. I notice the differences in plants, thistles here in a wet pocket, bluets here on the hillside, Rudbeckia in the higher dryer areas.....not to mention the shift to blueberries where the soil becomes drier and acidic. So the plants tell us where they like to grow, wheras agribusiness feels that if you flood enough water and fertilizers you can grow anything. Back to pushing on a rope?

Success

As you wander through this life brother
Whatever be your goal
Keep your eye upon the doughnut
And not upon the hole....old homily on a farmhouse bathroom wall.

Songlines

In some traditions, it was our ancestors who sang reality into existence, and perhaps these tunes reflect the overall nature of our physical world. Jazz never would have come out of a lazy village in the south of Spain, in fact, there it took Flamenco to wake us up.

Farmanutricals

The subtlety of life is more like a well written song than we might think. A chemist was here a few months ago and I mentioned that we could really throw out chemistry as a separate discipline since the physics of atoms could be extended to encompass all the interactions we used to think of as chemical as more of a combination of energy that settle into a symbiotic relationship: that are singing the same tune. So when a couple of hydrogens pick up an oxygen they resonate in a simple dyad. Add a few more atoms and you can have a complex minor chord like ethyl alcohol: two carbons, six hydrogens and an oxygen. C2H5OH because we like the formula to be somewhat reflective of what we think of as the structure of the molecule, or perhaps because the last hydrogen is singing a high "C". More on this later.

Awareness

Took the ducks for a morning swim and look at my fat meat chickens. As they timidly swam into the cool pond, it was clear that their awareness was keenly engaged. Walking slowly back to the house for a second cup of coffee, their attention slowed me down enough to notice the feel of the soil under my feet after a night rain, and to look at every slope and hillock for the differences and opportunities. I have potatoes coming in from my attention to such a likely pocket that I noticed last Spring. No attention except a quick till, spread sprouting leftover potatoes, and watch the plants come up. Nothing I would have noticed if I had been speeding by in a car at 60 or even on a tractor at 10.

Pharming

I gave a talk about an engineer's perspective on herbal healing in which I pointed to the huge number called Avogadro's which is the number of molecules of a particular compound in what is called a gram-molecular weight. That is the molecular weight of an element or compound as a number of grams, (those pesky little one-thousandth of a kilogram: 2.2 pounds). So a GMW of carbon would be 12 grams, and would contain roughly 6 times 10 to the 23rd power or 6 with 23 zeros to the right. Lots of molecules in twelve grams and even such effective and psychoactive substances like cocaine only take 303 grams (or roughly 12 ounces) to get that count. So a kilo of cocaine would contain 18 with 23 zeros to the right, enough for everyone on the planet to receive 10 with 13 zeros, 10 trillion molecules. And I wonder how many molecules are involved in one thought? 10, 1000, even a billion would be saturated in 10,000 molecules. And so it is with homeopathic herbal biodynamic healing: a few molecules will heal you, more will kill you. This seems so "alternative" until we realize that it is exactly what we do with well researched "chemotherapy". Dosage must be adjusted to kill the parasite without doing in the host. Pretty much the same thing.

Farming

Last night we participated in a local farm/arts program and heard stories about our and others farms. After listening to the work and meager returns available it would seem that anyone would have to be crazy to farm. Being crazy isn't necessary, but it helps. For me, the life gives me an opportunity to participate in life.

Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality. - Dalai Lama

I believe that the more I learn the less I know. Two things I know: there is a plan and it is not mine. That is a great relief to all, mostly me.

Arcopolis

Thinking about the growth of humankind on the planet and the cycles of small tribes, serfs and lords, cities, countries, empires, and back to fragments. Look at Yugoslavia! The Soviet Union. If the United States, would we remember that the North Dakotans never did like the South Dakotans? Or that the Texans don't like anyone and no one likes them? Just as baffling as the Montenegrans and the Kurds, (where did the Whey go?). Assemblages dissolve into components, much like a chemical molecule. Life arrived, (yes, arrived as in "Water Bears from Space" from some other planet), and thrived-- up to a point. Is this the point? I envision life assembling into the kind of Arcopolis that Paolo Soleri sketched--miles high, miles wide, able to generate all the energy they need from thunderstorms, direct solar and wind. 90% of the worlds population can live in 1000 of them with only 9 million in each and the rest of us can live on farms. Then it is up to our husbanding of the soil whether they are small farms producing delicious food or whether agribusiness will pump "Soylent Green" to them? I would prefer the former, cause I sure as Hell don't want to eat that factory farmed shit.

Self destruction

Ironically, most self destruction is generated through attempts at "self" preservation. The immortal idea that or egos are just that: immortal and unique. Life was simpler for us before the "creation" of us, that temporary phenomenon that illumines consciousness, uniqueness, and self. We are healthier if the boundary is drawn with a fuzzy line that encompasses more geography. Wego is more satisfying than ego. Self-less is more satisfying than selfish.

Industrialization

If you travel over the ground in a machine, you will see the world as mechanical; if you lead living creatures over it and work it, you will see the world as a living creature. When a boy plows with a team over forty acres, he knows where to stop and rest in the shade and water the horses; when he drives a tractor over it, he goes as fast as possible to get back to the barn for a soda. Somethings have been missed in the industrialization of agriculture; as they have in finance, health care, and education.  

Me as We

I am in the mix, or rather "we" are. I am not sure we refers to my Gemini twins or our marriage dyad. We have sought to find a transition from ego to wego, from me to we, to remember we are all in the same boat. One of the goals of nourishing flourishing has been to seek the grammar of spirituality that transcends language and dogma. Let us continue!

Today reading Wendell Berry's essay on farming he drew the line between plowing with horses and with a tractor. If we work with a machine, we see the earth as a machine; if we work with living creatures we see the earth as a living creature. If someone from a pulpit tells me how my spirit is made manifest, I see my spirit as external to my self; if I seek my spirit in the group, if I reconnect with the group, I will see my spirit in the group.  

A very inventive individual

He was the sort of man who could start a revolution with the proper word and an arched eyebrow. He will be remembered for single-handedly architecting the ideas that ruined, nay, completely destroyed two planets and a solar system. The planetary ideas were simple: harness a black hole to take care of garbage disposal, and a giant siphon to let gravity produce a tidal flow up and down from an extraterrestrial reservoir in geosynchronous orbit; the solar system was taken out an energy scheme that paired a black hole with the local star.

Nulla Dies Sine Linea! Hard to write a blog that insists a line a day when you have been flat on your back for 48 hours. Sunday and Monday are lost, oh well....the nice thing about minor sickness is that it makes you aware of how well you feel most of the time....kind of the idea of Thict Naht Hahns of the "non toothache". We fail to realize that we are mostly in the state of non-toothachiness and today more in the non-flu mentality.

Trying to save a saltwater farm is my challenge. A friend said the best way to start a parade is to find a parade, follow it, and turn it around and you will be at the head of the parade. So agriculture and navigation are skills that are slipping and are essential to survival, if not directly, indirectly. Encouraging and nourishing flourishing requires intention, effort, and feedback. Some would say mankind is thriving on the planet. Aren't we prolific? Procreative? I can hardly appreciate 6 billion or 9 billion on the planet when a hundred times that lives and die in my gut by the minute.

the jellyfish in the collander

I was educated as an engineer and early on got into systems analysis, which is one powerful analytical technique. There are two problems, drawing the system boundary, and figuring out the systems equation(s). The systems boundary is the outer limit in space and time that the system impacts, and the systems equation is the system output or behavior given system inputs. A simple system would be a pendulum on a clock and can be represented by a simple harmonic equation that yields movement back and forth, with the boundary at the case of the grandfather clock. Such factors as the gravitational constant, frictionless bearings, wind, weather, decay over time are disregarded as negligible in the textbook problem. 

Last night I attended the meeting of the local conservation trust and a question arose as to how the trust invests its money. The answer was that big oil was providing a very nice return so that the trust money could be used to "protect more land". 

I would have to say that the system boundary is being incorrectly drawn, and I am not talking about negligible effects. How can we use money to protect coastal land from industries that will inundate those lands? Granted the use of formally sequestered hydrocarbons is driven by consumers, but really, the line has to be drawn. 

Reading a book about writing on the left and right side of the brain so into the left I go for rapidwriting:
It seems to me that we need more institutions and fewer industries. Attach the word "industry" and suddenly the vision and caring of institutions dissolves. Think I am off base? Remember when banks were institutions and not the "financial industry"; hospitals have become the "healthcare industry" and let's not forget the colleges and universities that have become the "higher education industry" Think on that.