Maya

I've been thinking about this word a lot over the last few weeks.  The sense of the word that I am thinking about has nothing to do with an ancient people who lived in South America.  The meaning that I have been thinking about is the Hindi definition - the concept of illusion.  It's full meaning is in essence that the physical world is all fake and that the real spiritual world behind it is the truth.

Pretty deep I know, but what I have noticed is that people who I come into contact with in my day to day life all have different opinions about things.  In particular the new health care bill that is being debated.  I have not met one person who likes all of it.  For one reason or other no one seems to be all that thrilled about it.  It seems to me that no one knows the whole truth about it.  One side claims that it will save us billions of money, the other side the opposite.  One side says the government will do a poor job running the whole system and the other the opposite.  So on and so forth to infinity.

Who is right, who is wrong or is it all just an illusion?

The same is true of another subject I was reading about ADHD - what is the real cause of this disorder.  Is it a disease, behavioral problem, the lack of good parenting, or something completely unrelated and unknown.

Illusion.

Behind all of the arguing and possibilities that are "right" according to those people who give the opinion.  Due to the circumstances that have lead me to the point in my life that I find myself at now I have been extremely disillusioned.  This has probably been the most important thing to happen to me.  I don't know how to explain in the proper words how these negative events have been a driving force in my life, but that is how it has worked out.

If the world had not turned on me I would have never been able to see what I do when I examine something and never been lead down the path I am on.

So back to the illusion side of things.  I was recently asked why I didn't share more of my insights and spiritual   thoughts and discoveries.  Well to some point I think to get to the point of understanding you have to seek it out for yourself.  It's something that can't be just given to you without effort and if you aren't ready to hear it, then it's probably not something that will be helpful or even make much sense.

So bottom line start looking at things around you and question even the things you hold most dear.  What is most concerning to me is those things that tend to divide people, like health care, politics, global warming or gay marriage just to name a few.  Is one side more right than another or is there truth in what both sides say?  Do the things people say resonate down to your very soul or do they just cause emotions to well up inside you?  Emotions like anger or fear tend to solidify the illusion that you are seeing even more.  At least they do for me, the calmer and more serene I am able to keep myself the more I am able to see all of this.

I would be a fool if I walked around this world looking at things and saying this is all illusion and it doesn't matter.  That would not be responsible either - after all I still need to earn money, put bread on the table and keep a roof over my head!  What I am trying to say through all of this is that your life can be a lot more enjoyable if you remember that much of what consumes your day is illusion and that for the most part it really doesn't matter.  I'm speaking here more of the things that cause distress because even though at the time they may seem like big problems it is highly unlikely that you will even care about them a month from now.

Try to look beneath the surface of what you experience in this world and if you look at things in the right way many times you will find as I have found more and more that much of life is illusion and the reality that lies beneath the surface illusion is more interesting and makes a whole lot more sense than what you first see.

Sorry again to those who thought this was going to be about the Maya people, 2012 or something like that.  Perhaps that will be a subject for future writing...

Stop the insanity!

I'm moving ever closer to the solution to my chronic problem of mediocrity that stems from my adeptness of biting off more than I can chew. Today I was able to work through a situation that in the past would have likely led me down a path I didn't want to go down.


I have been working doing a little bit of teaching a the University of MN and one of the students in my class asked me if he could something called IPPE, which I'm not going to explain because I myself am not 100% sure I could explain fully. Anyway this would involve me getting registered with the board of pharmacy as a preceptor and with the college to have him come and work at my pharmacy for a couple weeks next spring. Sounds simple enough...

Little did I know that I would soon feel like my two boys who are deep in a snow cave - wondering if it's going to collapse on top of me. It turns out that the amount of work I would have to do would have taken probably about 8 hours if I wanted to do it right. Eight hours of time I really don't have when I have my boys. Then it wouldn't be just him, I would be an official site for many students from now until I die. Students every month, students calling, students asking questions, students saying stupid things to my customers, students thinking they are smarter than me, you get the picture. There also is no pay for any of this work. On top of that it would have to be done by Tuesday - yes that's right 3 days from now. Between now and then I have to work 12 hours, take care of two boys, try to be a good husband, package popcorn, prepare a lecture I've never given before and write 20 test questions for a final that is one week from tomorrow and find sometime to sleep during this time.

So I thought about all of this and I remembered what I had written not that long ago and the light came on. Why was I doing this to myself, why on earth do I need more things to do, I had just written this huge rambling blog on how busy I am and how I want to cut things out of my life. Shortly after this happened my phone rang - it was the student who asked me to do this for him. I didn't want to talk to him right at that moment. Turns out he was calling with bee hive related questions. I finished thinking about all this and called him back after a few hours and told him that I was sorry, but I just didn't have the time or energy to do what I needed to do to get everything done. The professor in charge of the program is not someone I am really fond of either so I wrote her an email and told her the same.

After doing all this I felt relieved, but I also felt like I was standing on top of a mountain. That I had begun to conquer my problem of always having more to do than I have time for. I don't know if this will be the last time I start something I will never be able to keep up with, but I feel like I accomplished something that I am at least moving in the right direction.


(All the above pictures were taken last year - there isn't that much snow here yet in MN!)

The Federal Reserve

The following is an exerpt from (what I am 95% sure of) a pamphlet written by Francis Shoemaker a congressman from Minnesota who served. He was actually born about 30 miles from where I live and had a pretty interesting past. What he wrote is of more importance though. I am working on finding a copy of the text he wrote which is titled "The Federal Reserve Bank (The Greatest Steal In American History)" so that I can confirm the source. What is written below was something I came across and through my powers of deduction and google's help I was able to find out what I think is the source.

What makes me interested and disgusted in this is that right now there is a movement - well one person to audit the federal reserve. It is not being met with much positive talk and after reading the following you may begin to understand why. So when you hear the Federal Reserve Chairman and others who deal publicly with this body you can begin to understand a little better how and why our government runs the way it does.


"Few Americans know of the betrayal that was plotted on Jekyll Island, Georgia, which was destined to defraud Americans of their wealth and opportunity, and would eventually lead to the subjugation of our great democratic experiment to a centralized global dictatorship.

"In November of 1910, after having consulted with the Rothschild banks in England, France, and Germany, Senator Nelson Aldrich boarded a private train in Hoboken, N.J. His destination was a hunting club owned by JP Morgan.

"Aboard the train were six other men: Benjamin Strong, President of Morgan's Bankers Trust Co., Charles Norton, President of Morgan First National Bank of New York, Henry Davidson, senior partner of JP Morgan, Frank Vanderlip, President of Kuhn Loeb's National City Bank of New York, A. Platt Andrew, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, and Paul Warburg. The secret meeting, as described by one of its architects, Frank Vanderlip, went as follows.

"There was an occasion near the close of 1910 when I was as secretive, indeed as furtive, as any conspirator. I do not feel it is any exaggeration to speak of our secret expedition to Jekyll Island as the occasion of the actual conception of what eventually became the Federal Reserve System.

"We were told to leave our last names behind us. We were told further that we should avoid dining together on the night of our departure. We were instructed one at a time....where Senator Aldrich's private car would be in readiness, attached to the rear end of the train for the South. Once aboard the private car, we began to observe the taboo that had been fixed on last names. Discovery, we knew, simply must not happen, or else all our time and effort would be wasted.

"The goal was to establish a private bank that would control the national currency. The challenge was to slip the scheme to the representatives of the American people. Earlier, it had been called the Aldrich Bill and received effective opposition.

"The planners of the revised bill titled it "The Federal Reserve Act" to mask its real nature. It would create a system controlled by private individuals who would control the nation's issue of money. Furthermore, the Federal Reserve Board, composed of twelve districts and one director (the Federal Reserve Chairman) would control the nation's financial resources by controlling the money supply and available credit, all by mortgaging the government through borrowing.

"The plan worked. The Federal Reserve Bill was held until December 23 (two days before Christmas) before it was presented to the House and Senate. Only those senators and congressmen who had not gone home for the holidays -- those who owed favors to, or were on the payroll of, the bankers were present to sign the legislation.

"The name 'Federal Reserve Bank' was designed to deceive, and it still does. It is not federal, nor is it owned by the government. It is privately owned. It pays its own postage like any other corporation. Its employees are not civil service. Its physical property is held under private deeds and is subject to local taxation (government property is not)."

The more things change the more they stay the same.

The way out

I mentioned in my last blog that when I have a problem staring me in the face and I feel hopeless that it will never be solved most of the time I will fuss about it and then after a while - sometimes after at least a few months a solution will present itself.

I generally have to take a big step back from it and look at it as a big picture. The problem I spoke about was in my last blog was one that I had to deal with about 4 years ago. I wasn't very happy with my life, my job, just my situation. I felt like every aspect of it was controlled by someone other than me. I felt hopelessly trapped and didn't see any way out of it.

It really bothered me for quite some time. This again was something that overall I never thought I could solve. It's a little fuzzy now, but what I do remember is that somewhere along the way I began to realize that even though in the present moment I don't have a lot I can do to change what is happening I could do two things. The first and most difficult was to accept things the way they were at that very moment in time. If there was any aspect of my life that I didn't like I had to get it through my head that I was the problem, not the situation that I disliked.

The other part of the solution had to do with this, but with one minor albeit important difference. That I had the choice on how to act towards these situations. That there were parts of my life that no one else could control - that being what goes on in my head. Even thought at the time I wanted to have more visitiation with my children I could let the limited time I did have them make me miserable. I had to make the best of the time and try to do the most enjoyable things I could think of with them. I could arrange my schedule so that I didn't have anything when I did have them. Once I was able to do this I began to notice that my life wasn't all that bad. That even though things were not the way I wanted them to be at the present moment that they would more than likely change.

The big picture showed me that massive changes in my life put me in the present unlikable situation I was in and that more than likely there would be more unforseable massive changes lurking on the horizion.

Am I perfect at this? Not by a long shot, but I have more happy days than sad days now and if there is something in my life that I don't like I know that if I can accpet it for what it is and then decide if it is really that bad or if there is something that I can do to change it.

So will a solution to my busy problems surface like the one I had to my choices problem. I don't know, but today I am able to sit back and wait for it to happen. Why did I title my blog the way out. The solution that I discovered - living in the moment is the way out of suffering for me and will be for the rest of my life. What will the solution to being overinterested in life be? Time holds the secret.

Busy

I almost feel bad at times that I don't get to write more.  This fact sort of got me going and made me start thinking again.  Why do I do all that I do?  Why do I do anything?  Why do I feel I need to cram as much as I possibly can in to each and every day at the expense of sleep and eating properly.

I can break things down a little into different categories, work, family, farm stuff, teaching, cleaning, eating, reading, hobbies, and so on into inifinity.  Some things get pushed out, like watching TV.  I will watch movies or TV shows on DVD, but that is pretty much my limit.  Most of the time due to my erratic work schedule I am not able to commit a particular time and day of the week to watch a show and I am too cheap to buy a TIVO or pay for satellite TV.  I was asked to join the local Lions club in town.  I told them I would go to a meeting and then never showed up.  Then I feel bad because I said I would.

On top of all of this there I things I would like to learn to do.  I would like to learn spanish, I want to learn how to make brooms out of broom corn, to be more organized, to just be a better person.

It tends to drive me crazy at times, then when I do have things I know need to be done that can be put off I do things that I really don't need to do.  For example tonight I am writing and should have gone to bed because I have to get up early in the morning.  I worked for an hour and a half at cleaning out my shed instead of writing test questions for the final in the class I teach.  I just find countless ways to do nothing when I have things that need to get done.  I procrastinate until the last minute and then rush through.

I have tried to set priorities, to make some things more important than others.  What I want to spend more time doing I end up losing interest in and then don't want to finish it.  I end up putting most of my effort into my job because I make money doing it.  I enjoy parts of it, probably the people part of it and not the mundane details that have to get done each day. 

I look at motivation to do things, I've accomplished many things in my life that had nothing to do with anything but my own motivation to do them.  I don't think that is the issue either.  The same is true of just about everything, I tend to seek out different things or activities and then when I've mastered them I get bored with them and drift to something else.

I don't know what drives this tendency towards mediocaty.  I suppose it's fear to some point.  I imagine some has to do with having a bizzare work schedule, trying to be more things to too many people.  I sometimes feel that if I could just quit doing one thing or another it would free up time to do all the other activities that I do.  For example I used to golf on a somewhat regular basis.  The last time I golfed was six years ago.

Someday I'll sort this all out and find a way to feel less busy and still be active in many things.  It's one of those things that I sit and stew about and about six months or a year later some sort of idea pops into my head that sort of solves the problem.  If only there was some way days could be made longer...

Slow

I've been watching the fall harvest here in southern Minnesota progress at a snails pace. Usually by this time in November most things are pretty much done with. This year only about 25% of the corn crop is out of the field and in the bins. Even with good weather it will take some people until December to finish everything. The crops are not drying as well and that is one hold up. It's mainly due to the cool spring, dry summer and cold October. It's actually been warmer in November than the whole month of October.

Everything is moving slow - even my popcorn crop is only partially harvested. That's not quite so unusual since the popcorn I grow is a little longer in maturity than the normal types of corn planted around here. So I end up waiting a little longer to pick it and let mother nature do some of the drying for me.

All of this has me thinking about things that seem slower than normal lately. Why does it take as long as it does for me to change some of the bad habits in my life. When I actually have changed them it's taken much longer than it should have considering what happened around me. Why do I still procrastinate in other parts of my life? Why do I not listen to people who give me advice I ask for and then have to learn that they were right and I should have listened to. I just wish I could shake this slowness!

I probably am too hard on myself, but at the same time I probably won't ever improve myself if I'm not. I think part of my problem is that like many of the farmers who are having problems with their harvest I tend to take on more than I can realistically can handle. Like them I have a problem saying no. Then when it comes time to do those things that I said I would, I find myself outside doing some pointless thing like raking leaves, or reading some stupid pharmacy magazine or looking at things on the internet that have absolutely no bearing on what I really should be doing (like writing this blog).

The one time I thought I said no to someone was when someone from the town I lived in asked me to come to the Lion's meeting. I told him I would, but when the night came I actually forgot about it. I actually feel like I should apologize and then go to one of the meetings just because I said I would.

At times in my life I have found a massive source of energy for change and growth and right now I really could use some. I don't understand how or why it came at the times it did. I summoned up the courage and stamina to do things I could have never thought possible. I was able to focus my attention and being like a laser and accomplish more than six Farmer Dan's in the present time would even dream about.

Here is where some of my problems lie - I am sort of getting the feeling that some of the nervous, worry of all the farmers and their workers are throwing off is rubbing off on me. The same worry is coming from my customers at my real job about this health care plan that is coming out. That type of energy is really good for nothing, at least I know it is for me.

I guess it is energy and like electricity it's still the same electricity whether it comes from a generator powered by nuclear, wind or methane gas. Whether or not that worry energy I think I may be feeling can be changed or shaped into positive energy for my life is something I really don't know.

I'll let you know in the morning though what I figure out, right after I get done raking leaves...

Change of Venue

I can't believe how rapidly things change sometimes. This is the scene I was watching on Sunday night. They are harvesting soybeans around my farm. It's really late for them to be doing that and unless we start having warmer weather it's hard to say if all the crops will be harvested before the snow starts flying...

Wait a minute - the snow was already flying last week! It melted in a few days, but it didn't help all the farmers around me. I guess it's supposed to snow again this week a few times, but for some reason I don't seem to care that much.

This is the sunset I got to watch last night - looking out of our hotel on Kona. Much, much better I must say. You might be wondering - why would anyone post pictures on their honeymoon? Well I went to bed at 9pm last night (local time) and woke up at 4 am and couldn't sleep. The sun is coming up now and we are going to have breakfast and look at volcanoes today. I'm not planning on posting more pictures or blogging until I get back - unless I can't sleep.

A big Aloha from Farmer Dan - see you when I get back!

Surprises

I've had a lot of little surprises lately and so far they have been good ones. I have some great (at least I think they are) pictures to help show some of the ones I happened to be able to get the camera out for.

The 1st one happened while working on my bees. I was taking off the extra hive boxes that are basically empty for the winter. What's interesting about bees is that they will work ever harded to fill up any space that you give them. In my case I was a little slow and didn't get the boxes on in time for them to really get working on them. Earlier in the day I pulled them off and let them sit next to the hives. There were a few bees in each box and I thought since they didn't have any food in these boxes that they would make their way back to the hives when it started to cool off. After it was dark I picked up the boxes and brought them to the house and put them inside.

I was just about to move them to the basement and I noticed the cat playing with a bee on the floor and thought to myself, "there must have been one clinging onto the box and it just fell off". I let this one outside and looked in the box and found that there was more than one bee left in it. My heart almost stopped. There were hundreds of bees left! They were moving very slow because of the cool outside air and their lack of food. Had I not seen the single bee scooting across the floor and looked in the box - would I have had a surpise in the morning when the sun hit the box and it really started to heat up.

I then took the frames with the bees back out to the hive and shook them off the best I could right in front of the entrance. A lot of them were still there in the morning dead. It made me sort of sad for the little guys, but many of them were young which explained why they didn't fly back to their home earlier.

The next surprise happened a few weeks ago. I woke up one morning and noticed some red on the walnut tree next to the house. I wear glasses so it looked like a red peice of cloth was hanging from the tree. After I found my glasses I saw that there were dozens of monarch butterflies hanging from the same branch. I ran and grabbed the camera and unfortunately by the time I was able to open the window and start snapping only about 1/3 of them were left. It was another suroprise that I just happened to catch.

The last picture is from a stormy fall day out here. I was snapping pictures of the sunset which I didn't think were anything that wonderful since the sun was sort of blocked, but when I was walking back in I was surpised to find the last picture. I didn't think it was going to turn out when the flash went off, but it is probably one of my most favorite pictures now.

I just get the feeling of what the 1st settlers saw when they moved out the prairie in Southern MN. That big open sky, grass as far as you could see - a sight that would make any agoraphobic person cringe.

To me the little surprises like these are what makes life so great. It's too bad it's taken me thirty years to realize that the best times in life are the quiet little surprises that only you and maybe one other person share. The 1st two are moments that I and only one other person was present for and will probably be things we talk about for years - just because they are so unique. The last is something I alone can say - I alone stood out on that odd September evening and witnessed natures beauty and felt time spin backwards.

Back to musing

I had a long drive this weekend - which gave me some time to sit and think. Usually a dangerous activity for me, it was actually a good time. A few things came to mind that I have been mulling over in the past few months and it all sort of came together tonight.

A very good friend of mine told me once about the act of giving - be it money, time, friendship. Everything comes back to you that you give away. I thought this to be interesting at the time. Later I read that the only thing you get to keep when you die is what you give away. Even more interesting.

The statement that "we are part of the world we live in" is something you hear spouted off from people who want a more "green planet". I've never understood that since most of our planet is covered in water which isn't green (sorry couldn't resist that one). I never really liked the way the "part of the world" part of the statement sounded. Lately I've been thinking that people ARE much more than a part of the world. Everything we do is reflected by the world around us. Look at any animal and you will see so many similarities in them compared to humans. It sort of freaked me out the one night - I was looking at different people and I couldn't help but notice that one looked like a hawk or eagle.

So back to my first statement - what we give the world is what we will get back from it. In the last 100 or so years we have given this world thousands of ways to speed things up, to try to tame nature. We have given it pollution that is unprecedented and taken it for granted.

If you see where this is headed we are in for a major crap storm in the years ahead. What people (myself included) forget is that by not being good to our neighbors, fighting wars, polluting, being bad to other people we are asking that we be repaid in kind for the above statement what we give is what we keep holds true for bad things as well.

It works for everything in this world and it is this statement that has really begun to change me. Coming from a christian background this is not something that is stressed to the degree it should be. It wasn't until I learned about the whole idea of karma that I felt any urgency to change myself. Maybe it is enough for others but for me it didn't let me see the big picture. Everything in the human world is starting to speed up - the way we work, travel and do anything. It's not surprising to me anymore that things like climate change are also speeding up.

We may be a part of this world, but it is also part of us. When we speed up the world speeds up, when we slow down the same thing happens. What I do individually may seem to the physical world to be insignificant, but it isn't. When I change the world changes with me and through me.

Honey and popcorn

To keep in the spirit of the name of this blog, I decided that I need to include a little "farming" stuff. Today I extracted some of my bees honey. It is my first time doing all of it on my own and I learned a few things. First - the kitchen is not the ideal place to remove honey from honeycomb. Second - always wash your hands before you grab a door knob or at least wipe the knob off before you decide to use it again. Third - don't touch an electric knife (who would have thought they would be hot?).

A quick lesson on how to extract honey. What I am holding here is a frame full of capped honey. Ideally all the frames in each box are supposed to look like this, but my bees don't seem to really listen to me so I only had about 60% that looked this nice. The rest of the frames were either uncapped (which means the honey is not "ripened" or dehydrated enough) or had brood in them.



The next two show how the cap is removed from the honey. As I eluded to earlier - the easiest way is to use an electric knife which gets hot and cuts off the cap. The cap falls into a bin where it is allowed to drain to get the rest of the honey off. This cap wax can then be melted and used to make whatever beeswax thing you want to make. I would like to think that at some point I will use it, would be fun to try to make a candle or some thing like that Burt Bees guy makes.





The stainless steel contraption you see in the next photo is the extractor which uses the centrifugal force (spinning) for those of you who slept through physics to remove the honey more quickly from the comb. The yellow handle you see next to the pail opens and the honey flows out into a bucket where the honey can then be strained. The bucket also has a valve to fill up whatever you want to store the honey in. This is the potentially extreme mess part of the operation - if one isn't paying attention you can suddenly have a whole lot of honey on you and everything within 5 feet of it.


The last picture is a nice closeup of a something that my little bees shouldn't be doing. The build a cross comb between the frames which the queen laid some eggs in. The little white things you see are bee larvae that haven't matured yet.


This is my "new" corn harvester. This machine is 40+ years old and is in great working order. It's really hard to describe how this machine works in a few sentences, but essentially it gobbles up the cornstalks and rips off the husks and then all the ears of whole corn go up the little ramp in the back and empty into a wagon. It is probably one of the most dangerous peices of equipment ever made. There are so many spinning gears, chains, rollers and places that a shirt or finger could get caught in a ripped off. These things are a big reason why old farmers are missing body parts. That being said, it should be fun to give this a go in October!


It wouldn't be a good blog without some sunset pictures. I took these after a rainstorm had passed and there were actually clouds coming out the opposite direction the storm was moving and they were just creepy looking. The second picture is sort of creepy and I wish I understood how to put full size pictures on this blog, because the smaller version doesn't do it much justice.

Intention

Intention to do something is an interesting thing. I was thinking about this as I was reading through the transcript of Obama's speech tonight to the Congress. From top to bottom it all sounded very good, a program that cracks down on insurance company shenanigans, is fully funded and provides a way for everyone to be covered. Pretty simple, straight forward, ideal, you pick the word. Anyone arguing with his speech is a fool as there really isn't anything to argue with.

His intention to pass this plan is noble. What happens to this plan how it all comes out is what I will be interested to see. He even eluded to all the presidents in the past that tried to get this sort of legislation passed. None of them did it and the ones that did pass something passed a very watered down version or flawed version of what they intended to happen.

Was it their fault - yes and no. No because the president doesn't write the bills and vote on them, yes because they had to sign the bill in order for it to go into effect.

Take for example the Wellstone Mental Health Parity Bill - a lot of people missed it because it went through on the coattails of the now infamous TARP bill. Mr Wellstone had noble intentions when he began to write the legislation - he wanted insurance to pay for mental health issues the same as medical problems. Something that doesn't really happen now.

What did end up passing was a very watered down version of the bill. Yes the spirit of what Wellstone wanted was in the bill, BUT there were about two or three loopholes written into the bill so that companies could opt out of payment for mental health treatment if the costs became too great.

What that says to me is that yes we will treat "those people", but only if it doesn't cost too much.

So yes I am really hoping the Presidents intentions go from being just good thoughts to a good health care plan.

Just because everyone else seems to want to argue about it I will add one disagreement with his plan. The only thing I think that he and the Congress need to do is have to use the same plan. If that was the case I KNOW we would have the best plan in the entire world without question.

Ouch

Last Tuesday I was out working with my bees, mainly seeing if their honey was getting ready to harvest. I was taking longer than I usually do and squatting down to straighten out one of the hives and I felt something on my ankle. I thought it was a stick or branch poking, but it happened again. As I got up it happened again and I walked away and pulled up my pant leg to find that there were quite a few bees on the side of my ankle. I brushed them away and went back to finish what I was doing and felt two more bites. I looked again and there were a few more on the front of my ankle. I brushed these away and closed up my hives and then went in to look at the damage.

Somewhere between six and ten bees stung my ankle and although it was a little painful and warm I kept about all the things I wanted to do. I was fine until the next day at work. After standing for about 4 hours my ankle started to balloon. It got so bad that blisters formed and started to pop. I really can't leave my job with out closing the store so I finally got a hold of my doctor who told called a prescription in. Within a few hours the swelling was getting better and by the next day was almost gone.

I considered taking a picture to post here, but it's pretty gross looking. All of this got me thinking more about what is in this venom that causes such a bad reaction. I have come to learn that their venom is made up of a variety of enzymes. These then begin to break down the tissues and cause massive inflammation. A true allergy to these stings is not common which is fortunate for me. I think many people have problems getting a similar sting in the neck or face and this same swelling causes the throat to close.

It just is facinating to think that that this terrible venom is made from flowers - nectar and pollen only. That's all they eat! What else could it be made from? While I was reading more about this on the internet - there is a whole school of medicine that uses bee venom to treat disease. Mainly that of inflammation - arthritis, joint problems, etc. A college profes

sor I had told me about this for the first time about 10 years ago. I don't think there are many doctors advocating taking a bee to sting a joint, but it seems that some how this venom is collected and then injected directly into the joint to be treated which someway helps to treat the pain.

Those little bees are amazing creatures. They work non-stop when they have food. When they don't they reduce their numbers so that they won't starve and even in climates as harsh as MN they are able to survive the winters without hibernating.

My doctor asked me if I was still going to keep bees. She has a son who keeps bees and has never had such a problem. I told her that I would just need to take a little extra care to protect myself. I am going to get a full bee suit for next year and try to protect my bees a little better. One of the reasons I think I got attacked like I did is partly due to the skunks who were having their way with my bees for a few weeks.

Skunks apparently like to eat bees and when they do this they really put a hive in defensive mode so they are much quicker to respond to any disruption. I am their helper - giving them a nice home to live in and feeding them if they happen to run out of food if it is a tough winter, but anyone that disturbes that hive is an enemy to them and they protect their home very efficently!

Just so you know - the picture of the bee hive at the top was taken after one of the hives swarmed. I didn't do that to them and wouldn't have went within 10 feet of that mess. I am so looking forward to the honey this fall, I tasted some of it after getting stung and it is very light and delicate. Much more flavor full than the clover honey you find in the stores.

Common sense

I read a book yesterday titled "Common Sense" by Glenn Beck. I just picked it up for something to read at work when it was slow. I ended up reading the whole thing yesterday. It was a book inspired by the Thomas Paine pamphlet of the same name.

In it he discusses in detail the decline of the United States and how similar things are becoming now compared to the way things were two hundred and thirty three years ago. What jumped out to me is that the very warnings that our Founding Fathers told us would ruin this country are now happening. One of the most glaring points he drives home is how our politicians have created their own class that is above the law. He points out problems mainly in the last eight years.

The excesses created by the government, the insane legislation and the terrible conduct by our leaders. The hipocrasy has never been more extreme. I could sit here and write and sum up everything the book said, but I am not as gifted with words and statistics to even try.

I keep writing and deleting what I have written. I'm not sure where to start or where to end. I think just about every semi-conscious person in this country is aware that our government officials (the higher up ones and not all of them, but most of them) lie, cheat and steal from us. I'm not being judgemental, just merely stating fact. How many of them don't pay their taxes and have gotten more than the IRS to give them a stern warning? How many of them fly on private jets to conferences on global warming?

This country every day gets filled more and more with half-truths. To me this is so much more dangerous than outright lies. The only way to see through them is to question their action and look what the consequence would be if they did nothing or the opposite. Generally this helps to see through the smoke and mirrors they put up. Companies will fail if you don't give them money, the economy will struggle if banks fail, people will have a hard time getting loans if the banks fail. These are all truths - plain and simple. What makes them half-truth is the other side of the argument. When giant companies fail there are generally many, many small companies that will jump in and take over and get a chance that they never had, the economy had good years and bad - sort of like someone exhaling and it is is normal for things to go up and down, if we don't have access to easy money then maybe we will start to realize that material things aren't everything and we will get away from this country of bigger and better.

Ask questions, debate and vote with your heart. The truth is out there it makes more sense than anything a politician will tell you. There are few things more powerful and more important in this world than the truth and it is something I will spend the rest of my life looking for.

Secrets, Secrets hurt someone

I have had the a little line from "the office" in my head for the last week, so I think it's time to write a little about it. I have more questions that I need to get down more than anything. I have been reading for the last year or so about secret societies, mystical things and noticed especially in the past week that my life has revolved around secrets. The question that has been stuck in my head is why do things have to be secret?

Why were thousands of books destroyed and/or hidden in the last 2000 years. In terms of ancient mysteries, secret societies and such it seems to be from the viewpoint of people who write that are interested in those times and peoples that groups of other people didn't agree with what they were doing so they just destroyed everything they could find that wasn't in line with their own thoughts.

With secrets in general most of the time people who hear them have a difficult time keeping them to themselves.

With personal secrets kept in ones own heart they have the power to drive people to insanity if they are not shared. If they aren't shared it also seems that at some point in the future people who do things in secret generally get outed or those secrets become public for everyone to see. I've found this to be true in my life and discoved this "secret" in a painful fashion.

So why are the secrets of some so well kept, while other secrets become public knowledge? Why did so many of the people around me have to find out about all the secrets I had? Is it the quality of the secret that determines the outcome?

Why have secrets then, why can't everything be public knowledge? I sort of know the answer to that one. If more than a few people knew about my interest in secrets societies and ancient mystery teachings I have a strong feeling that I would be looked down on or at least judged for my thoughts. Since my identity here is only know to a few people who know me well enough to know that I have a hunger for the truth of matters I can reveal some of these things without worrying too much about what they think of me.

There I go creating another secret...

This world tends to be so backward sometimes. What is considered to be public knowledge many times is not the full truth. What is secret a lot of the times is the truth. If the American public fully understood what has happened to their contries economy and why I think there would be a revolutionary war. Instead there is a bunch of half-truth which is just as bad as a lie.

It's my belief that half-truth is a much more dangerous, damaging beast compared to an outright, bald-faced lie. What is interesting is that people who conceal truth by telling a half-truth are lying to themselves.

What all of this means to me I can't really say right now, but it is an important thing and something that I need to work out.

Anger and Silence

I've been reading some really good quotes in the past week and I noticed that some of them sort of string together. I want to make sure that give credit where credit is due as I don't want to be a plagiarizing blogger like some are.

I've noticed that in the last 3 and 1/2 years there are times in my life when I find myself very angry at someone or something. Generally it passes after a while and I go on with my day and forget about why I was even angry to start with. What I've started to notice during this time is different though - mainly that when I am angry I end up in a much better position when I keep my mouth shut. If I can just keep quiet, walk away or just laugh at the situation I usually keep myself out of trouble. So on to the quotes that fired me up enough to write a blog entry on a Friday night. The first one is what made everything click in my head.

"Anybody can become angry, that is easy; but to be angry with the right person, and to the right degree, and at the right time, and for the right purpose, and in the right way, that is not within everybody's power and is not easy." Aristotle

That is a 2000 year old truth that sort of whacked me in the head - when I read that all these other little things I've read over the past few days and a little longer came jumping into my mind.

The next one is take from the 12 Steps and 12 Traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous which was written mostly by Bill Willson the founder of AA.

"It is a spiritual axiom that every time we are disturbed, no matter what the cause, there is something wrong with us. If somebody hurts us and we are sore, we are in the wrong also. But are there no exceptions to this rule? What about 'justifiable' anger? If somebody cheats us, aren't we entitled to be mad? Can't we be properly angry with self-righteous folks? For us of AA these are dangerous exceptions. We have found that justified anger ought to be left to those better qualified to handle it."

The last line is one that is quoted often and makes me go to the next quote which is from a person who I can't remember the name of who was quoting another person who I can't remember the name of. So I apologize that I can't properly recognize the person. To set it up a little bit, the person was speaking about her sponsor in an AA meeting (guess I probably couldn't quote her name anyway).

"The first thing you need to do is go home and put a note on your mirrors in your home that say "You are looking at the problem".

When I heard that I laughed and thought there is a true statement that most people will never understand fully and it's sad because I think some of our politicians should be doing this. That's perhaps a subject for a future blog post.

All of this lead me back to a quote I read a few years ago and one that I have been doing my darnedest to try to practice. It comes from Mark Twain.

"It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt".

Being angry is something that is going to happen to everyone at various points in their lives - there's no way around it. The choice of acting on that anger is where the true wisdom comes out - punching someone in the yap, screaming or just saying something is our natural tendency. Staying calm and being quiet in the face of an angering act is one of the most difficult things that we can do. I'm as guilty as the next person of acting on my anger - but after tonight I'm going to try harder to practice what other much, much smarter people have put forth in the above quotes.

It's alright

I've been listening to a new song by 311 lately and today I really thought a lot about what the song was trying to say - so I thought I would post the lyrics here.  Just reading the lyrics does them no justice.  This is one of the best songs I've heard and it may replace Today by the Smashing Pumpkins as my favorite (it's good, but I don't know if it's better).  Well enough of my usual rambling - I'll let them say it.  I'm going to see if there is a way to get the song on here so you don't have to make up a tune for the words.

Stay with me.

Here with me. 

Right in this instant. 

Not in the distance. 

When your head is off in future time. 

That's the place where things get out of line. 

Taking in this moment. 

You time is so well spent. 

It's alright 

Wherever you are right now. 

I tell you it's alright 

That's where you're supposed to be now. 

Stay with me. 

Here with me. 

Right in this instant. 

Not in the distance. 

Standing at a crossroads, I was at a loss those 

Temporary moments pleasures that are stolen. 

Here in the present 

You're time is so well spent. 

It's alright 

Wherever you are right now. 

I tell you it's alright 

That's where you're supposed to be now. 

Wash your feet

I have been reading the bible lately. I've come to the 13th Chapter of John which speaks about Jesus washing his disciples feet. Pretty boring stuff - at least it was to me when I heard about it every year in school and church. Maybe a little explanation will help shed some light on this. Washing feet in the bible times was done mostly by the lowest of the lowly. It was done when entering someones home - mainly because sandals don't offer much protection from road dust, manure, etc - so they wouldn't track everything into the home and to freshen them up from all the walking.

Why am I writing this? His demonstration represents a universal truth - that everyone and everything is absolutely dependant on someone or something. As a friend put much more eloquently than I - people who are high up on the food chain many times develop superiority complex. I'll use her example of the veterinary or medicine world - which I also have a great deal of familiarity with as well. Doctors and veterinarians (not all of them) have a reputation for looking down on their help. They are lead to the illusion that they are better than others. What the point of the feet washing story is that without those people they would be unable to do their jobs. Imagine a hospital with only doctors - there would be a lot of suffering people in them. Without nurses, pharmacists, and all their various technicians, and clerical staff things would grind to a halt quickly.

The analogy works everywhere - if I couldn't buy clothes in a store, cars from a car dealer, food from the grocery store, or anything that allows me to go about my daily life I wouldn't get very far. I wouldn't even be able to get onto the Internet or type on this computer without the people who invented and made all those things.

It works even more deeply than that - we rely on plants to a frightening degree, plants rely on the soil, sunshine, water. The earth relies on gravity to hold it together, to rotate it around the sun and you can go on and on all day long. All of this makes your head spin as it goes deeper and deeper and you begin to realize how dependent on one another we really are.

This should after a while bring us around to the idea of gratitude - being grateful to one another and to nature for providing all it does for us. Without the person or thing that helps us do what we do, we are nothing. Realizing all of this makes me more likely (SOMETIMES I forget all the above) to thank the people and things who help me and be grateful to them. When I do that it makes others feel better about themselves. Eventually the thought that I work back to is that I really serve everyone, including those who serve under me and wash my feet. For without my service to others they would be missing part of their lives.

Why does this work the way it does? Why do people do meaningless jobs for little money? Why do people do seemingly more important jobs for a lot of money? If you asked the average person, they wouldn't be able to answer with any sort of intelligent question. In light of all my ramblings however a truth arises. We are here to help each other, to learn from each other and to serve each other. When we all finally die and leave our bodies behind - what do we have left? I wish I could say these were my words, but they are someone else's, "The only thing we have when we die is what we have given away." What we do in service to others is what we are left with, not any money, a title, a fancy car, a big house or any other "thing" - only what we give to someone else.

Agree to disagree or thirty thre

I've learned a little bit in the 33 years I've been around. Some days I think I know more than others. Today I'm not really sure. I've been in a really sort of waffling sort of mood. I read something a little bit ago that sort of irked me and I was going to write this thing that just tore it apart. Something mean.

Then I thought to myself that it wouldn't be respectful to do that. Who am I to question someone else's thoughts?

Why does life make such perfect sense one minute and then the next none at all. All I've ever been able to come up with are others words, which I can only sum up. Life is exactly the way it is supposed to be right at this moment. Life is good because of the good choices I made, it is also bad because of the not so good choices I made.

After thinking about the last line for a while I can arrive at the conclusion that life is what I make of it. My perception of good and bad is just that, what I THINK it is. I can look at some of the terrible consequences in my life that are a direct result of my actions and see almost equally good that has resulted from it. It is not an understatement to say that I probably would be truly miserable had I not made some truly appalling choices. How that works out is one of the things in this life that I haven't sorted out. I mainly just know that it works.

I have a good friend who I sometimes wish I could be. He is probably the most selfless person I've ever met. He has the biggest smile and the heartiest laugh and he just makes you feel better when he is around. He has made it his life's work to help others and does it with his most valuable possession - his time.

I think of often the words in the bible - Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. I've noticed that I am terrible at this and I do everything in my power most of the time to keep my big mouth shut when a little thought pops into my head. Tonight I was talking with someone at work about anorexia and whether or not it is a disease. Immediately after I finished a skinny woman walks up and asks where to find a particular laxative. I'll let you imagine the thoughts that popped into my head, but I bit my tongue after she walked away and didn't say anything.

To be fair to myself I have to share an example of when I didn't keep my mouth shut. I was speaking with a diabetic gentleman on the phone who was using a lot of insulin which was ordered on a scale that reflected his carb intake. I made the comment to him that perhaps he was eating to many carbs and I got total silence. I meant no harm by it, I was merely trying to get him to laugh. All that was bad enough, but then I kept at it with the person I was working with asking if they had seen him - was he overweight? I felt really bad about this and ended up calling back to apologize.

I guess the point that I am trying to make is that why should I judge others for who they are or what belief they have. They are just doing their best to try and get along in this world the best way that they know how. If I judge them in the above fashion - how can I be mad or hurt when a similar judgement is made of me.

What needs to be differentiated at this point is the difference of judgement for survival or judging just for the sake of judging. I need to be able to judge whether or not my life is in danger - not whether someone is an idiot or if they are leading a life I don't understand. This world has billions of people in it and each one of them has a different opinion about something, I can choose to agree or disagree with it, but I have no right to belittle them for their opinion. Personally just agreeing to disagree (or just remaining silent) is generally the best route for me. I would think 33 years would be long enough to figure this out, but I will probably need at least 33 more before I am even close.

Insanity

I've recently been back to reading Mark Twain again - the book I picked up I haven't quite figured out yet, but it is something either critiquing or endorsing Chrisitan Science. This is the religon founded by Mary Baker Eddy - it also includes the prestiguous newspaper or what ever it is now - the Christian Science Monitor. Twain describes an encounter with a healer and his initial learning of the church and goes into a discussion of insanity. How everyone in the world is insane to one degree or other. The definition he uses is when another person differs in opionion with another. He goes quite in depth and I would ruin his linguistic talent to try to paraphrase it, but he goes on to say that this is the basis for disagrement among political parties, governments, neighbors, other religions, etc. The fact that I or we as it were don't agree is because we think they are insane to some degree. I've been thinking about this all day and it's really quite facinating when you start to break down everything.

There is no right or wrong - only differences of opinion a good friend of mine wrote something similar about a concept live and let live and it fits in here as well. If you disagree with someone why is it such a big deal. Who are you to know better and what does it really matter in the end if you are right or wrong? It makes thing in this world all that much easier to laugh at because most of the time disagreements are laughable in the grand scheme of things. We argue about trivial matters in this country - there are people who starve to death - they have NOTHING to eat and our congress fought about people who couldn't afford converter boxes for their televisions. Now don't get me wrong I'm not saying that just because our country is prosperous we should have to give up that to make all the worlds problems go away. It's more about having an open mind.

Insanity by others is defined as doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results. I present to you our current economic situation. There is only one explaination for it - people who think they can continue doing the same things to save failing companies - prevent pain by letting them fail. The only way true growth can occur is to have pain - pain bad enough to want a difference. Sometimes it's better to touch the red hot stove to learn that it's really hot.

This brings me back to the Twain book - put both of these concepts together and things start to flesh out. If insanity is a difference of opinion and a part of it is repeating this over and over, each time expecting that people will change or conform just because we want them to - we begin to see why the world is the way it is. Things tend to go to extremese before there is a correction. My personal life proves it (at least to me it does). I've never been able to do things just a little, or medium, mediocore, whatever word you want to describe the middle. I am all or none - no half-ass for me. I truly thing most everyone else in the world is just like me in this respect.

Moderation is the key for me - in terms of my sanity it is critical. Carrying things to the extreme and expecting that the world will be handed to you on a silver platter is one side of my problems. The other is that I expect that nothing will happen - that my life is stuck on the same railroad to nowhere. Reality lies somewhere in the middle and is generally much better than either extreme. How I get to that point is something I'm trying to figure out, but what I'm learning is that I have a lot to learn, that putting one foot in front of the other is all I can do somedays.

Progress not perfection.

Bees

I check on my little bee friends today to see how they were doing. The 1st picture shows a good view of one of the frames. All of the little sealed hexagons are larvae that should hatch in about a week or so. You can see the younger pupae around the capped cells (if you look close you can see it in the last picture as well)- they are little white wormy looking things. If you click on the picture and look closely at the cells next to them you will see tiny little whit things which are the eggs most recently laid.

It didn't turn out very well, but in one picture that I didn't post was a bee or two that was carrying some pollen that was bright orange. A lot of it comes in bright yellow. It's really been interesting to learn about bees and how they do what they do. It's truly amazing to think that there is no boss bee telling them what their jobs are. The other thing that makes me smile is that they are almost all female bees. Only the drones are male and after they do their "duty" - they die. When winter comes most of them are pushed out of the hive to die.

Humans on the other hand seem to be quite the opposite. If there isn't someone breathing down a workers neck things don't get done. Put a whole bunch of women in the same buisness and soon enough they will all hate each other and be talking behind each others backs. Humans also favor the males as the backbone of society.

These are all things I've witnessed myself and if you are offended reading them - too bad this is my blog. I'm mostly joking here, but seeing how bees work and comparing them to humans is what I do when I can't sleep or when I seemingly have nothing better to do.

The current flu problem is much like what honeybees have to face. This flu outbreak, and the deadly SARS outbreak are much like people who are allergic to bees. Most of them don't really have life threatening problems. There are some that do but there is a pretty good chance a honey bee didn't sting them. More likely it was a wasp, bumblee bee, hornet, yellow jacket or some other aggressive bee species. Honeybees for the most part are very gentle and only sting to protect themselves as a very last resort. The only two stings that have happened in the last year have been once when one got stuck in the netting around my head and the other was when I picked up a fram without gloves and accidentally had one under my finger.

A much, much bigger problem is the mosquito - in this country how many people get bit 100 plus times a summer? Not a big deal - well tell that to someone from Central America or Africa where Malaria still kills thousands every year. Remember that when you hear the total worldwide death count from the dreaded "Swine flu" that is probably going to be about 300.

Not too much else is happening on the farm. I'm getting ready to start planting - but once that is done I just stare at black fields for one more month...

Sunset

One of the things I love about where I live are the sunsets (and sunrises) the fact that you can see the sun dissapear over the horizon sort of like being on the West coast with a ocean in front of you. I imagine that at some point in history it did look like that with the waves of grass and not a single tree in sight, but having little clumps of trees here and there out in this part of the world is ok.


The first picture is from tonight and the second is from last night - the sky the last few days has been very red and the colors almost look fake for a few minutes right before the sun sets. In a few weeks the sun will move over a little so that there isn't a farm and barns blocking it. What is funny is the the top picture on the blog was taken on my birthday last year and it is basically facing southwest. This picture was taken facing west and a little north. By June 21st it will be almost facing northwest. It's just amazing to notice that everyday the sun moves a little more each direction until it stops and goes back the other way. Looking in the other direction the nearly full moon is low in the sky and it's fun just looking back and forth.


I think the sunsets beauty has been fitting for me personally. It sort of means the setting of my career answer phones and the moon is the new career rising in good old retail pharmacy. Although any new job or change for that matter is stressful when I leave work I am generally in a better mood than when I left which is the opposite of what was happening to me before I left my last job. I would go in feeling good and leave feeling tense and crappy. So it's not really the opposite since I leave for work now feeling good and leave feeling better.


Enough sunsets, moons and pharmacy jobs - isn't this a farming blog?


The old farmers say that potatoes need to be planted on Good Friday which is only two days from now. I think it may be something I can do this year even though it is still early April. There are some nice dry areas out in the garden and if I can just get my tiller started I think it will all work out.


I've got a larger planter for my popcorn crop this season - I just have to get it calibrated and I'll really cut down my work load for this year as it takes a great deal of time to plant and cultivate the popcorn, so hopefully the summer weather will cooperate and I will have a bumper crop.


The last farming note of interest is that my bees are going to arrive on Saturday - barring any weird weather. They should have left at 4 pm from Chico, California and will arrive in Stillwater on Friday morning. Last year there was a blizzard in North Dakota and the truck was sideswiped by another truck and the whole load ended up being lost. Not due to the cold and snow like you would think - the truck they were transferred to had the heat set too high and it killed them all! So hopefully they will have an uneventful trek to Minnesota this year as I am really looking forward to seeing them buzz all over the place this summer.


I'll try to be more regular posting with farm updates this spring - I am going to have to try and figure out this legislation that is going to be passed soon that has to do with the FDA and food safety. I've read in two places that this is going to be bad for the organic and/or small market farms. I'm not sure how or what this will do for them. I do know this - if it's got half of the garbage and wishy-washy crap that our beloved government has been passing recently it's not going to be much to worry about.

I quit

I had the last day of my job today at the SCI - it was a tough day to say goodbye.  Even though I know I'll see a lot of the people again as I still have reasons to head back there once in a while.  Some of the stuff that I heard today is probably some BS - but I really felt a lot of good compliments and some disappointment that I was leaving.

Anyway I think it is good for me to move on when I still have some good things to say about the place.  Sort of the Seinfeld attitude - leave at the top when people still like you.  I wrote a poem for everyone at work and I thought I would post it somewhere I wouldn't loose it anytime soon.  Not really sure why I feel like writing poems these days, but I think I'm getting better at it.

Ode to the SCI

We take calls all day long with the greatest of ease.

For some of the PPH calls we have to hear can’t you help me for free?  Please!

Why is my cat twitching, why is my dog barfing, is my child going to die?

I touched some rat poison and I’m going to cry.

For all these years you’ve asked me questions, inquiries and multiple pleas -

I’ve  loved to answer every question – I’m not going to tease.

This job has been interesting, frustrating, but it has never been dull,

I’ve made lots of friends here – which really made me mull

the choice I made to leave which was not an easy one.

It’s tough to move on from a place that feels like home,

you each have helped me grow in your own special way, so don’t be sad or cry -

Trust me when I say I’ll think of you next time I spray bug spray in my eye.

So with that I left to start a new job much, much closer to home at Shopko Pharmacy.  I second guess myself sometimes.  I think it is a risk, but a small one if I keep doing the things I have been doing.  So after a long day I really need some sleep and I think tomorrow will be a good day of spending time with my family and watching a good old fashioned April snowstorm.

Patience

Insideout and upsidedown,

my brain feels like it has been through spin cycle.

Happy and then sad,

up and then down,

good and then bad.

Bright green and then dusty brown,

left and then right.

On and then off,

Dark and then bright,

like a moth,

that keeps flying into a light.

Where am I going and what am I doing -

will it all make sense tomorrow?

Life makes more sense than it did yesterday,

why can't it all happen today?

Where do I start?

Now thinking about Joy and finding out where I derive this. The next logical and chronological step would be to get started. Where do I start? This is sort of where I'm stuck. I truly think without an idea there isn't going to be anything else.

What is the most effective way to do this - how do I get my message out to the masses? Why will people listen to me? I've done this to myself before - I've started down a similar road with Joy and happiness being the goal of my little plans. Now I have an even bigger plan. Why in the past did my others flop so terribly. I wanted to grow medicinal herbs for sale and eventually make my own products. Last time I checked that didn't work out too well. I had a good idea and starting out it looked promising, but it just went nowhere and now the farm where all of that was happening might not be available to do this anymore.

That's ok though - I would have loved to live down on that farm, it was so pretty down there - rolling hills, animals, plants. A nice river to swim or fish in. It has everything. Maybe it's still in my future, I'm not going to forget about it.

I come back to the thing (I don't a better word than thing) I need to know myself and understand myself. I think I do a lot more than I did, but I feel like there is just one missing puzzle piece or fact or something like that that would take me to a whole deeper level. I wrote a poem about it.

Where are the answers for my pain?
Looking here and there again,
I want to understand this world -
But nothing seems to be unfurled,
in front of me I look and look
and try to read a lot of books.
The answers are all inside of you
quit looking so hard you stupid fool!
How can I quit when I seem so near?
Accept, Listen and Hear!

Finding some joy

I've been told by a certain person that I need to discover the joy in my life and put it on the outside.  I've thought a lot about that over the last few weeks.  There are the obvious things in my life that give me joy, my boys, my new fiance - the normal stuff that give a lot of people joy.

Then the question was asked what would you do if you never had to worry about money?  That's a lot tougher question.  The same things come up, but if I didn't have a "job" what would I do with all of my time.  At first I think - maybe I would just read - but that would get boring.  I could volunteer and help people with different things - organizations, etc.  But what is it that I could do that would make me the happiest.

Plants, outdoors, sun - these things all come to mind.  But how to put it all together.  But in MN I can't really do that for about 1/2 of the year without a green house.  OK - well then a greenhouse, but that's an expensive thing to keep going when it gets down to -20 degrees.

Well finally I figured it all out.  In an age where materialism is dying - just look at the world financial markets and it doesn't take a genius to see that we are going to be living through a depression for a while.  What is it that most people need - food and shelter right?  Well if I could be the one to start a movement of growing things - in backyards, houses, decks any space - maybe you would be lucky like me and have your own green house.  The bottom line is - I could wrap a bunch of things that give me joy into one.  My love of plants, my love of teaching people, my love of helping people, my love of healthy plants and the good nutrition they provide, of good stewardship for the world, organic farming (or minimizing use of chemicals for farming), and of expanding their minds.  100 years ago there were more people that lived on farms or in rural communities than today.  Today less than 3% of the USA has any involvement with agriculture/food production.  A good chunk of these people are immigrants or illegal aliens.  That leaves 97% of this population that is or is getting farther away from their food.  There are a lot of people who don't know that milk comes from a cow or even what a cow looks like.  If they did know where it comes from they probably wouldn't drink it because they are afraid of GERMS or something else stupid.  

My guess is that people as we go into this depression are going to need some help learning all these things again.  Also with the way things are right now - they will need a lot of help.  How am I going to get to these people yet - I'm not sure, but it's sort of the if you build it they will come.  If there is no Idea - nothing will happen.

There may or may not be animals involved.   Bees are going to be important to all of this, maybe chickens too, dairy cows are too smelly for me - but pigs eat everything so I could see pigs being involved.  Anyway this is more of a side joy thing - plants are where it's at.

So here it is the plan - what is Dan going to be doing at some point in his life.   It sure as hell isn't going to be answering the phones or counting by five.  Those things may be needed for a while, but it is not something that will work forever.

I am just peaceful and happy after finally making this - things could change a little as I get going, but this is where I see it going now.  I just need to get it all down so I remember.  I have a nasty habit of forgetting if I don't write things down.  I may make some changes, but this week has just been an exciting, confusing, overwhelming, and joyful week for me.  Life is a lot of fun when I don't take it so seriously, when I can step back and say now what is really important.  So here is my idea and it makes me pretty darn happy and joyful.  Now how am I going to do it?

Pumpkin Economics

Yesterday I drove home and was listening to the radio - there wasn't any good music on, I'm sort of tired of all the CDs I have in my car and I didn't want to listen to the account of a car race on the radio. So I tuned into a guy from the Twin Cities and listened to him talk about the economy. He was a liberal or democrat person and he posed the question - If the republicans have an answer to our economic crisis, why aren't they talking about it and what would it be. I was amused for a while, people called in and argued with him, told him tax cuts would work, something about how the bailout plans passed already would fail, blah, blah, blah. The people who called in didn't really answer his question. Most of the callers just wanted to argue and this radio host was up for it.

The point of all this was I don't think there really is an answer to the situation - no matter what either side does the only answer for this country and the world is pain. It's our most effective teacher, it's so simple. The problem is that if you polled every single politician in this country they would all have some idea or hate someone elses' idea to fix all the problems.

The problem in this country is much deeper than money will ever go - it's the lack of consequences that we are willing to bear. Bailing out companies, giving money to every man, woman and child may help to stop this pain from happening, BUT it's our children who are going to have to deal with it. A politician only cares about getting re-elected - what happens next year or the one after. Not about 30 years from now. That's the nature of things and the way they have always been.

Here's where the pumpkin comes into the picture - pumpkins have a about a 3.5 month growing time - they put out vines, they flower, the fruit grows larger, it ripens. Then something curious happens - the plant dies or is killed by the frost. The pumpkin is still good though. Maybe it will even last another 3.5 months if it is stored. Then it starts to rot (or gets eaten or thrown off a parking ramp) - somehow the pumpkin comes to an end. This is all sad and pointless to an observer just watching it. But there are seeds in the pumpkin which formed all along and soon enough they are planted and the whole cycle starts over.

You may be able to draw your own conclusions about where we are in the above process. But this is the process of life and the economy is not immune to growth and death. History is full of inventions that surfaced and weren't useful at the time, but keep coming back in different places and suddenly are the core of a new industry. I'm not going to give examples, but if you can follow this logic a few things come to mind.

So the pumpkin does serve the purpose here - out of the death of a pumpkin comes new life. A car company failing and causing massive unemployment will allow a lot of very smart people who have some very good ideas to be able to take the risk of starting their own company which could be the next GM. The seeds or people that were contained in their comfy shell of a company didn't have to do anything until the old rotted away.

This is true of everything, but our lack of tolerance of short term pain is holding this back. Every time we try to fix or interfere with this we delay the inevitable. Things are going to fail, new things will arise out of that and life will get better and improve.

I feel better getting all this off my chest - I sat and thought about all this while driving and wanted to call the show and felt myself getting more and more angry. The radio host would have likely argued with me too. Since I don't consider myself to be a republican or democrat, he probably wouldn't have had too much to say to me. I'm just amazed that all the people in office now are supposed to be the best and brightest, if they are the best this country can do - we are in for a long decade or more of depression.