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.