revolution

Aphorisms

Simply by thinking right you will go against the grain. Just the act of trying to be moral; you will become a revolutionary.

Truth is hidden and lies are out in the open because Truth is freedom and lies are slavery.

And when, or if you see this you will be alone among the blind. And when, or if you ask you will know that they have put their own eyes out.

Once right is on your side, question it to keep it strong. Once you have truth in your mind, test it to keep it pure. Talk of the heart is nothing more than the empty words of the lost and the religious.

Search for others with right morality and Truth but do not lose hope that there are not many. Walk among the numbers to find rare beauty.

Do not lose hope by not having hope. Such hope is a fool’s game played by those who are standing still and claim they are moving.

To be human; we have to learn not to be a person.

Freedom of Food

canned food

When I first began finding the joys and understanding the necessity of growing my own food, I hurriedly began finding the necessity and understanding the joys of canning my own food. After all, what good is a garden if what it produces goes to waste.

Canning is pretty straight-forward and does not rely upon refrigeration. The basic principles are the same no matter what you can, but I really enjoy canning tomatoes, red cabbage, and beets. It’s a nice feeling to open the cupboards of your kitchen and look over the summer’s work. Also, it’s a great thing to look forward to all the freshly canned food that you will have when you are working on those hot, summer days in the garden.

So, get your canning on!

  1. Grow your own food without pesticides or artificial fertilizer.
  2. Pick, eat what you want, and save the rest.
  3. When ready, get some heat-resistant bottles for canning
  4. Boil the lids and bottles for at least 15 minutes.
  5. Prepare the food to be canned.
  6. Always, always make sure everything is clean, clean, clean.
  7. After canning the veggies, boil the newly bottled veggies for about 10 more minutes.
  8. Take the canned food out and listen for the wonderful  “pop” of the lid.
  9. Try different recipes, or just can some veggies.
  10. Mark the tops with the date including the year.

There are some important things to be aware of. First, some of your canning endeavors will fail. This is called compost in the canning world. Secondly, some of your recipes will not taste as good as you’d like. You have two options: compost or creativity. Mix some of these with other foods and sometimes you’ll be surprised.

I have read that growing your own food and putting it up is the ultimate revolutionary act and have found through the years found this to be true. So, if you want to taste true freedom, true self-sustainability, and experience what I would equate with being human, grow and can your own food!

It’s an amazing sense of freedom and the food, well, it tastes great!

Look Up

tomato sky

Gardeners tend to spend a lot of time with a shovel in the ground digging and covering up. Making sure seeds are laid comfortably to rest bends the neck forward and the care that we give to the earth tends to take its toll on the broad perspectives that often help us understand why we do what we do. Shoulders bent to the ground, we look at the holes we dig, lay the seed gently in the ground, and cover them back up. To grow your own food is a revolutionary act, but to understand why we must revolt, why it is imperative to grow our own food, takes the willingness to look up at the sun that makes what we do possible and why we must do it.

One of the most freeing things I’ve ever read was that gardening is a revolutionary act. But like all meaningful endeavors, it comes at a cost. Sometimes, to remind myself of this, I go out in the garden late at night and look up. I always think about when the stars were considered “holes” in the cloak of the sky-ceiling; the light coming down from heaven. Sometimes I felt like the small seeds that I covered diligently with soil only to get excited when they reappeared as a one small and ever so slight leaf on a shivering stem.

How is it that revolutions start? With one, small act while all the time remembering what that act stands for and why we do it. As David Blume stated in the Los Angeles Times, “By being an organic farmer, you fly in the face of every part of the power structure,” Blume said. “Refusing to use chemicals, refusing to use genetically modified seeds–it’s a real act of defiance.” And what better reason to garden?

Give it to “the Man”; plant a tomato! Screw the corporations that siphon our freedoms, and buy a chipper/shredder! Save and trade seeds, and save human history from the Monsanto’s of the world! Do all of these things and do them proudly, but always remember why you do them: look up and be awed by nature in order to understand why revolting against almost everything we’ve been taught is so important. The corporations are the result of people forgetting to look up every once in a while.

Albert Camus once wrote that nothing will matter in a million years, and that is probably true, but revolutions do not think about futures; they act in the present. What better thing can we do than to do what we know is right, and know why we do what we do. There is nothing more gratifying than doing the right thing except for knowing why it is right.

So, look up every once in a while, while kneeling at the alter of the earth. Plant those seeds that you’ve saved and then lay in the grass dreaming of a day when we are all revolutionaries.

Revolution

revolution i

Reading Paul Roberts’ book, The Impulsive Society, I am reminded how all things are interconnected. It is impossible for us to rectify social problems without first rectifying the economic problems. However, economic problems will be beyond us as long as the political problems ensue. These connections are simple enough to recognize. However, the connectivity does not stop there. In fact, it only begins.

Roberts’ book has to do with social, economic and political interconnectivity, but working in the garden and hiking in the mountains reminds one that the important connections are not social, economic or political at all: they are environmental; environmental on a global scale.

In reading classic philosophical texts (Adam Smith, John Locke, Thomas Jefferson f.ex) it seems that the writers and thinkers of the time realized this, but we have, in our modern and technologically advanced societies, seemed to have lost the capacity for recognizing the “bigger” picture. Roberts’ book compares the individual to the society, but perhaps a more apt comparison is that between human beings and the environments we live in, the greatest environment being the planet as a whole.

I cannot help but think that the social, economic and political problems will continue to be inevitable as long as we view the planet upon which we live as our own personal trashcan. Such thoughts are not consoling, but they seem to be true nevertheless. Such thoughts, however, are often the seed of actions. As we all know, or ought to know, we are on an environmental precipice; we all have heard the global issues that we face not only as nations, but as a species.

Problems faced as a species cannot be rectified by an individual, which goes against the grain of modern consumeristic thought that has pervaded most western societies. But, the fact remains that without society there are no freedoms. Just as in more natural environments: there is no free lunch. So, our social, our economic, and our political problems must (oddly enough) be addressed not from a social, an economic, or a political point of view, but from an environmental, a bio-diverse and even bio-centric point of view.

Think about that the next time you plant a non-GMO tomato or pepper, or the next time you take out some of your lawn to plant perennial, bee-friendly blooms. Consider being part of the solution when you ride a bike to work, or buy only local beef, pork, and chicken. Consider that planting a garden, being a locavore, or riding a bike is a socio-economic-political movement, a revolution, towards a better life for all individuals, human or not.