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Tuesday, May 03, 2005

mennonot,

yes, telling stories is one of the ways we can sew the seeds of a new understanding and approach to life. you and i have traveled and had the opportunity, or curse, to see life manifest itself in a variety of different forms. also, we've seen the broken ends of global economics, a depressing and ultimately crushing sight. as for myself, i've struggled, like you, with what to do next, after i've sat down. i've decided that i must stand up, start being active and live the life that speaks for the alternative.

this includes: growing vegetables on a community farm just to give them away; starting a food waste rescue service where i turn the kitchen scraps of goshen into organic (or as close as i can get it) fertilizer with the help of my phriend: the red worm, all powered by bicycle; and investing time to build relationships with people in my community.

i can't remember if i posted these articles before, but i'll do it again for your reading.

in solidarity,
bread for the people

----------------------------
My Senior English Portfolio Introduction Essay
- "Going slow into the sunless day"

The writings within are born of a life lived in the slow lane. Those who choose to go slow make the decision again and again, each sunrise and sunset, to speak with their body and actions for a different way of approaching the human experience. Going slow is as simple as walking to work, or taking an hour or two to prepare a meal for phriends or family. Going slow is simple and yet it is extremely complex, for the moment one decides to slow down you begin to notice the details in life, and begin to analyze what you see, hear, touch, know and feel.
For many people, winter is cold. This is a true statement. However, for those who walk or bike as their primary means of transportation, we know the small differences between 30 degrees fahrenheit and 38 degrees fahrenheit. The former requires an extra layer of clothing. There is beauty in knowing and experiencing these small details.
Living slow and eating slow ultimately results in more time: to be with people, to think, to process the day's news, to find the connecting threads in our daily lives.
I've been going slow since june 2004. In the past ten months i've begun to connect my world travel experiences -- iridescent ponds in the banana plantations of southern china; the free trade zone factories east of santo domingo, dominican republicr; and fair trade coffee cooperatives in el salvador -- with my life in the united states because I've had time to think. It's built into my commute and lifestyle.
There is a common thread; it's me, the "consumer," one who has purchased products from these three regions. Each time I swipe my credit card or put a dollar down I'm voting "yes" and giving a nod of approval to those involved in the process of producing my product.
The problem is our daily economic votes are destroying the environment; ruining our relationships with family and phriends; and ultimately condemning ourselves and our happiness as we place our future hope in the dollar, social security and the stock market. Each of these three systems have either crashed completely, destroying an entire generation's life savings, or are nearing a critical point in their cycle: e.g. the dollar's future is tenuous as there is talk about dumping the dollar for the euro as the primary oil currency, from petrodollar to petroeuro; and social security is, well, not so secure to say the least.
As a young person who thinks critically about the systems in operation around me, taking into account history and what it teaches us, how society tells me i can find happiness and my intrinsic belief that the american lifestyle cannot be supported for generations to come, i'm compelled to stand up, take a stance against that which is leading us to destruction.
What is this thing? It's the short term quest for profit; a desire for instant, personal gratification; and ultimately our collapse as a person when we watch all that we have worked and saved for dissolve before our very eyes. Capitalism, or global free trade, brother and sister, is all too happy to supply the products and capital(1) to see that these two objectives are met, with each new day. Our continued economic votes in support of this system will lead to the result of such time, money and personal investments.
By the time you have read this essay, I will have completely divested my stock portfolio and cashed in my gold. Ethically and spiritually i cannot continue to invest in the market or precious metals as they place profit over people. Socially conscience funds invest in companies whose purposes are at odds with my desire to base all that I do and am on face-to-face interactions and live a sustainable lifestyle. Gold remains one of the most sought after metals, and yet, its production wreaks havoc on the land. It?s associated history shines a darkened red, with connections to apartheid, greed and countless of broken bodies.
Two popular companies often found in socially responsible portfolios include mcdonald's and coca-cola. The former seeks to profit, and does, from exploiting both human labor and animals. The latter is connected to human rights abuses in Columbia.
More progressive companies like "tom's of maine" do treat their workers well, give back to the community and produce with sustainable means of production. But I ask myself while brushing my teeth with my favorite tom's flavor, gingermint, "how many people can afford to spend five or more dollars on a tube of tooth paste?" The answer illuminates the differences between the "haves" and the "have nots". Sustainable products, healthy foods and strong bodies are available to those with extra money or time, both of which are born out of holding a job that pays enough.
But for many living in the united states, maintaining a healthy lifestyle is not an option as they must work two or three jobs to support themselves and family. Essentially giving of their body and labor to support a system which is already balanced in favor of those who can afford expensive toothpaste. That said, those who buy expensive personal care products also lead unhealthy lifestyles as they've committed themselves fully to a lifestyle that ensures they are able to afford the organic pineapple or imported extra virgin olive oil at the cost of relationships and awareness of themselves.
You are probably asking yourself now, "well, how do you plant to retire? do you think about the future and how you will support yourself?" My reply is a resounding - yes! To the seventh generation and beyond do i base my each decision i make about the future and it's a bright future if i may say so.
In our country we are trapped to live a life defined by the car, informed by a media concerned more about profit than international news and placated with trinkets and the newest "insert favorite product". My advice? Go slow and think!
We must begin living beyond ourselves. We need a radical, cultural shift away from a consumptive/industrial lifestyle to that which is sustainable. We must begin to work with, rather than against nature, empowering ourselves to feed one another both physically, emotionally and spiritually through "protracted and thoughtful observation of nature rather than protracted and thoughtless labor," claiming the words and ideology of permanent agriculture proponent, bill mollison, who studied in depth the practices of the indigenous people in australia and how they survived in the "outback".
"The difference is like that which exists between the [a]boriginal and the ploughman: the latter is seen as one who would cut open his mother's breast to obtain the milk; the former takes only what is given freely, and takes it with due reverence," wrote mollison in his book "permaculture two".
We must realize as a culture, a government, a people that our way is not best, but in fact, leads us towards famine as we continue to extract the fertility from our prairies only to flush them down the toilet in our homes, disrupting nature's cycle of growth, death, decay and life. We must consider daily the cycle or circles we are involved in. But since so many americans are too busying paying for cars, too large of a home, they will never understand.
My college career draws near to a close and i believe with my entire body and spirit that i am called to educate my brothers and sisters about the path we are walking. The path is mined with countless uncertainties, each at the bidding of markets, analysts and resource consumption.
For myself, and hopefully for others, i will invest in another system, one that places nature, human beings and animals at its core. With the dollars i have divested i will reinvest them in that which is not affected by global economics. Rather than stocks, mutual funds, 401(k)s: permanent agriculture, a sustainable home and relationships with people shall be my investment. By doing so, I can assure myself that no matter what the cost of gas climbs to or how scarce non-renewable energy becomes, or if another hurricane destroys a primary source of vitamin-c, i can say, with each rising of the sun, that my life will go on.
And if for some reason the sun does not rise one day, well then, we all have a problem to think about while getting to work or school in the dark.

----------------------------
Cover Letter

Dear future employer,
I regret to inform you that I must decline at this time, and all future occurrences, your kind offer to join your company. I consider myself an ex-worker, a human who staunchly refuses to let their labor be utilized for economic benefit at the cost of my brothers and sisters around the world and as well as the earth; it's cycles which, believe it or perish, keep us alive and functioning with each rising of the sun.
My labor potential from hence forth shall be used to affirm humanity, not abuse it as does the current global economic system. My time is worth more than money. It's worth my future: my investment in relationships, the soil and building or renovating a structure into a sustainable home. For I wish that generations to come after I've left this earth may also know the joy that it is to walk on this planet, to interact with God's creation each day. I want them to feel the nip of the cat's tooth or sit in the radiant warmth of a summer's eve with a glass of honey-sweetened mint tea.
Consider, then, what your life might speak for if you altered your lifestyle so as to not work 40, 50, or gasp, 60 hours a week for someone else. Consider, then, what your passions are and what if would feel like to make these your life work.
Start by selling one of the two or three cars you own and carpool, train, bus, bike, walk or a combination thereof, to work. I'll bet you a chocolate bar with one less car a year to support you would save at least $1,500.
Selling your car is just one possible step. You could move to a different home, cheaper and smaller. You could turn down or up the thermostat or air conditioner, respectively. You could teach yourself how to cook, saving the cost of eating out 3 to 4 times a week.
I'll let you in on a secret. Learning how to cook and preparing food for people will always ensure you have friends. Cook more, get more friends. It's easy.
These are only a few steps towards working less and living your passionate dream life.
For myself and my future after college, I'm staying in Goshen?the city where my family resides. I'll be growing my own food, working at a local bakery, collecting recycle and compost by bicycle, teaching people how to cook for themselves, teaching people how to repair bicycles and enjoying long walks by the river. I'll also be keeping my eye out for that perfect, small and ugly house, with high food production capability and low initial visual appeal. They sell for cheap. Just what a cook can afford.
But give it time and I'll be eating my own strawberries in front of a home that produces its own energy and fertilizer so I can grow more strawberries the next summer.
I'll conclude by saying that if the work you wish me to help you in completing empowers people, improves their health and ensures that they too can live their passions, then by all means send me an application.
But if your desire, whether you know it or not, is to use my body and numerous skills to buy yourself a BMW or invest in the stock market for your social security, I have few words for you.
When cheap oil runs low, where will you buy your food? Not at the chain supermarket because they transport their food in from thousands of miles away. Like apples from Australia or bananas from the Philippines. When the landfills can no longer hold more waste, where will you put that Styrofoam cup? When the electrical grid fails (oh, wait, it already did. e.g. Enron and the northeast), how will you use your cell phone?
Don't worry too much. You are my brother or sister and I will not turn you away from my garden. However, to eat from the soil one must invest in the soil. It takes time and knowledge to grow food. Time you can make, as I've shown. Knowledge, well, when can you come over for dinner?
I suggest calling ahead, 574.534.3031, but drop-ins are more than welcome and sometimes encouraged.

----------------------------
a perspective -
?capitalization woes: an essay reflecting on the hierarchy inherent in written english?

two weeks ago i finished a book suggested to me by my fellow housemate, erin williams. "the fifth sacred thing" tells the story of san francisco of the future and it's struggle, as a sustainable community, to cooperate with the outside system; a system fashioned on an industrial understanding of society, that being not sustainable. the author, starhawk, a woman who lives in san francisco writes and advocates for sustainable societies.
in her writing she utilizes the terms "goddess" and "sheroes" in addition to "god" and "heroes". at first thought, you may think that this perspective is traveling down the path of reclaiming the divine in a feminine voice, but i'm not. rather, i want to explore the reasons for capitalization and why we agree to give special meaning to some words over others. starhawk's book, and her critique of patriarchy and capitalism, acted as the catalyst for this short paper to be written.
for a while now, i think it started while i lived in hong kong two years ago, i've refrained from using capitals, majuscules, in my personal writing and, more recently, in my academic writing. as i contemplate the rationalizations for my writing style, i've come up with the following reasons i use lowercase, minuscules.

majuscules:
- encourage divisions
- alienate persons without degrees, a higher education
- assess human value to degrees, knowledge, personal accomplishments
- operate within sets of confusing rules as to when capitalization is necessary
- break the eye's line, resulting in unnecessary jumping motion between maju- and minuscules, causing eye strain and deteriorating the aesthetic flow of the text.

i find a definition of capitalization to be appropriate in expanding my argument; one of the best definitions is available, not in a dictionary, a book controlled by a group of people who tell us what words mean, but online at: www.wikipedia.org
wikipedia is the equivalent of any hard copy encyclopedia with one major difference, any person can suggest, write and edit entries. wikipedia, essentially, is the voice of the people - well, at least those with internet access. according to wiki, "[t]he full rules of capitalization for [e]nglish are complicated and have changed over time, generally to capitalize fewer terms; to the modern reader, an 18th century document seems to use initial capitals excessively. [i]t is an important [ism supporting] function of [e]nglish style guides to describe the complete current rules."
another way of understanding the role of capitalization in our current language set is to look at the root. the word, capitalization, is rooted in the etymology of the term "capital" or "property" so vitally important to a system we call "capitalism", this is yet another reason why i distrust and refrain this form of writing. why then, does our language need to make distinctions. written chinese contains, in my limited knowledge, no more important characters, "words", than others. again, i turn to wiki for further explanation.

wiki: capitalism
[t]he lexical roots of the word capital reveal roots in the trade and ownership of animals. [t]he [l]atin root of the word capital is capitalis, from the proto-[i]ndo-[e]uropean kaput, which means "head", this being how wealth was measured. [t]he more heads of cattle, the better. [t]he terms chattel (meaning goods, animals, or slaves) and even cattle itself also derive from this same origin.
[t]he lexical connections between animal trade and economics can also be seen in the names of many currencies and words about money: fee (faihu), rupee (rupya), buck (a deerskin), pecuniary (pecu), stock (livestock), and peso (pecu or pashu) all derive from animal-trade origins.
[o]ften thought of as the "father of capitalist thinking," [a]dam [s]mith himself ne ver used the term. [h]e described his own preferred economic system as "the system of natural liberty."
[t]hough popular with [m]arxists, the word "capitalism" was in fact not used by [k]arl [m]arx, who only spoke about capital, to refer to the social relationship between owners (capitalists) and workers (proletarians); although it is not completely clear who used the word in its current, systemic context first, it was coined and introduced into the economic discourse by [w]erner [s]ombart in his 1906 classic, [m]odern [c]apitalism.

hear, hear: the way we write the english language supports the capitalist system; a system based on extracting resources, human and natural capital, to give power, control and wealth to a few individuals. for a number of reasons i will not discuss here, i choose, henceforth, to not support this system i see at inherently standing in opposition to humanity, the human spirit and the divine?s vision for society.

who, then, will join the movement?

ps. yes, we shall allow for am amendment to the movement's ideology, allowing for computer programmers to use majuscules in writing code; for programmers often use capitalization to make discrete chunks in a class/object/variable name such as strTitleMain (meaning the variable is a string, it is a title, it is the main title. a nod here to fred yocum. thanks.
posted by joel @ 9:17 AM

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