Christmas Greens

The days are too short, the nights too long, and the coldest part of winter lies ahead. It's a good time of year to make soup and sit by the fire. The garden hibernates awaiting Spring. Now's the time to look through those seed catalogs and plan for warmer weather. We don't have a southern facing window in our home so Sharon acquired two Aerogardens to use for starting seeds. This winter, we've decided to grow lettuce in the Aerogardens. That's what they're really designed for ... to grow plants indoors year round. The plants are big enough now to start selective harvesting.

I don't know if two Aerogardens can meet our lettuce needs over the winter, but at least we're trying. I wish we had started this project at the beginning of October instead of December, but I can't find the keys to our time machine. Sharon's Christmas Cactus is blooming too. It's nice to have some greenery during the Holidays.

Charlie Brown (in desperation): Isn't there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?
King James Version Luke 2:
11 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.
12 And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.
13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,
14 Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

To those few who take time to read Scarred Bark, I wish you all a Very Merry Christmas!

Recurring Dreams - Part 2

Here are a few links for those who want to know more about Helen and Scott Nearing and Living the Good Life:

Here's a link to Wikipedia's article on Scott Nearing
and here's the one for Helen Nearing

I saw a book on Amazon called The Good Life which contains Living the Good Life and Continuing the Good Life in a single volume. I'm not sure if it was new or used, but it seems readily available at present.

An article I found from 2009 says the Nearing homestead in Vermont is privately owned, and the owners have an open house once a year. I don't know if that's still the case. However the homestead in Maine is operated by the Good Life Center, and is open to the public each year beginning in May.

Zuzu's Petals

I'm not old enough to remember the invention of television. TV was always there, although in my early years only in black and white. There were four channels to watch: 4, 5, 7, and 9. There was a TV Guide published once a week in the newspaper so you knew what programs and movies would be on the air. And around 11:00 or 12:00pm, the TV stations would shut down for the night. There was also channel 11 from Baltimore, but reception in our area was so bad that it was usually unwatchable. There was no UHF, no VHS (or Betamax), no DVD players, no cable, no satellite dishes, no Blockbuster, no Redbox, no Netflix, no Youtube, and no Roku.

Watching TV together was a highlight of family life back in the day. Epic movies were broadcast once a year - and if you didn't pay attention to the TV Guide, you missed out. Every year we would sit together and watch Ben-Hur, The Ten Commandments, and The Wizard of OZ. One of my favorites was It's A Wonderful Life starring James (Jimmy) Stewart and Donna Reed.

Last night, we ate Campbell's Chicken Noodle soup and grilled cheese sandwiches with my parents, then watched It's A Wonderful Life on TV. It was a VHS tape in black and white, and it brought back fond memories of a simpler and better time in America. It's funny, I've seen this movie dozens of times, but each time I watch it I see something new. This year I noticed something about Jimmy Stewart's "falling down" moment - when he's smashing up things in his house. It looks like he's kicking over a model of a suspension bridge he'd built, symbolically shattering the last remnants of his dreams. The other thing was a comment from the maid. When she was donating money to save the Bailey Brothers' Building and Loan, she said she'd been saving the money to get a divorce in case she ever found a man and got married.

Some people say the movie is too corny, but I'd encourage you to suspend your disbelief and watch it in the context of the time it was filmed. There are some valuable lessons to glean from the characters, and some cool trivia too. It really is a wonderful life!

Recurring Dreams

As long as mankind lives in cities, there will be those who dream of giving up and moving to the country. I was a Mother Earth News reader in the late 70's and earlier 80's; and though I dreamed the dream, in the end I stayed with the city. The suburbs to be precise, but still a life tied to our capitalist system for the needs of survival. There was Thoreau, and there was Tolstoy; but for me it was Nearing. Perhaps you've heard the name as a sponsor on PBS: This show made possible by a grant from The Helen and Scott Nearing Foundation.

The Nearings moved to an abandoned farm in Vermont during the Depression, and wrote "Living the Good Life" about their homestead adventure. Later, they moved to an abandoned farm in Maine and wrote "Continuing the Good Life" - the story of their homestead along the coast. Both are must reads for anyone who dreams of abandoning the city. I've read them both many times.

I've also read a biography of Scott Nearing's life. Mostly, it covers the period before his adventures in the country. I won't go into details, but the social issues he fought to change in the early 1900's are the same social issues we face today. It's been nearly 100 years since the US entered "the war to end all wars", and we're still struggling with wage slavery, inequitable distribution of goods, racism, equal rights for women, international wars, and imperialist exploitation of developing countries. One area of progress on the nagging problems of his activist days was legislation ending the abusive child labor practices of that time ... at least in the USA. Unfortunately, plenty of new social problems can be added to the list. Perhaps population growth, environmental degradation, and energy? I'm sure you have your own suggestions.

Nearing decided to live a quiet life in the country absent from a system he felt exploited his fellow citizens. He produced what he needed with his own hands, and bartered or sold maple syrup to get the things he couldn't produce himself. It was a simple life. He claimed to work 4 hours a day on bread labor, 4 hours a day on self improvement, and used the balance of his time for social activities. He said he never felt better in his life, and he became a "back to the land icon" in his day. It still sounds good to me.

Lest We Forget ...

The United States Navy commissioned the Battleship USS Arizona on October 17th, 1916, and decommissioned her on December 29th, 1941. On December 7th, 1941, 75 years ago today, she sank at her berth in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. She was irrepairably damaged when a bomb from a Japanese plane detonated in her forward magazine. She still lies submerged on the bottom - the final resting place for many of her crew. I found this image on Wikipedia listed as public domain.

Wrong versus Bad

I hate to see people make wrong decisions. We all make them. You have to make decisions based on the information you have available at the time. Sometimes you don't have enough information, and sometimes information you do have proves to be inaccurate. But we all have to make decisions based on incomplete and inaccurate information ... and choosing to do nothing is still making a decision. Some people get a vision of the future firmly in place, make a decision, and then live or die by the results; other people allow for the inevitability of wrong decisions, and remain flexible about the future. If you lock yourself into an image of the future that just has to come true, I guarantee sooner or later you will be seriously disappointed. The future does not care if it breaks your heart into little pieces.

I don't really care how many times a person makes the right or wrong decision. We all make them, so what's the point of keeping score? The problem is that wrong decisions have all kinds of unpredictable, and often negative, consequences - and not just for ourselves. At least we should all try to make the best decisions we can with the information we have available at the time. Right? If only that were true.

How many times a day do you see people make bad decisions even when they know the inevitable consequences? Money problems, alcohol, tobacco, and drugs, marital problems, poor diet, bad sleeping habits ... When you try to intervene - when you try to help - people become defensive and irritable. They tell you to butt out. I once overheard a friend say, "Watch out, he's always trying to get people to do the right thing", as if it were some kind of warning.

New Year's is coming and now is a good time to think about resolutions. Might I offer a suggestion? "For 2017, be it resolved, I shall refrain from making decisions a reasonable person would believe are not in my best interest. If, after that time, my life is not substantially better, I will return to my previous decision making process." Common sense? Yes. Obvious? Yes. Easy? No. Worth the effort? Let me know.

Come on people, seriously, it's only a year. What have you got to lose? You might even find your life actually improves. Having trouble deciding what a reasonable person would do? Just ask one. Really. Go ask a reasonable disinterested third party what he or she thinks. "Do you think such-and-such is a good or bad idea?" 99% of the time you'll know the answer just by forming the question, but it's helpful to have an outside opinion if you have any doubts.