Goldenrod contains latex.  Rubber can be made from it.  Thomas Edison experimented with it, developed a process and a rubber-rich strain of the plant, and turned his results over to the U.S. government.  Nothing was done with it.  Gee, I wonder why.

Goldenrod will be the next plant I experiment with.

Form small communities of barter and shared labor.

Make vows to each other of eternal loyalty to takers of the oath against all others.  Only take the vows if your spouse will take the vows also.

Gradually withdraw from the dominant society.

Our system is going bankrupt.  Is there anyone who really thinks, deep down in his unconscious processes where most of the real work of thinking takes place, that we can go on living this way for a long time?  Really?  You really believe that we can support this level of expense and debt indefinitely?  We are a debtor nation.  We are a consumer nation.  We borrow and buy.  That is our function in the world economy.  We depend on the rest of the world for everything. 

When I think about the number of people on public assistance -- and I don't mean the stereotypical worthless shits lying around making babies and collecting a welfare check -- the demographics, the job prospects out there, the amount of unpaid child support and student loans, the amount of debt in general, health care costs, and the potential solutions that are within the realm of possibility as serious alternatives in this political system, I do not see how the American people can keep this economy afloat for long.  Wages are so low and obligations so high that I see many people who work 40 hour weeks and cannot afford to live.  When you can't get a decent room for one person for less than $500 a month, and a typical full-time retail worker makes $7.50 an hour, you've got people trying to pay rent and live on take-home of around $1000 per month.  Put a child support order for $245 per month for two children, and an order for $160 for another child by another mother, and you now have another person in a completely dependent position.  If he's really stupid in his late teens and early twenties, he'll have a couple more kids with about $350 more in court-ordered support.  He also has arrearages in all of his cases, is ordered to pay another $150 toward his arrearages, and every two or three months he is back in court with another court-appointed lawyer trying to stay out of jail for non-payment of support.  He will file a motion to reduce or two, and usually get denied.  Eventually, he will be sent to jail.  He will lose his job.  Now he will be on the looking-for-work/going-to-jail treadmill, and a system that has no mercy for losers like him will just send him to jail over and over again, expecting him each time to get out and within a week get work that allows him to pay that $900 per month in child support.  These expectations are completely without basis in reality.

And into all this the new President offers --

"And did they get you to trade . . . cold comfort for change?"

An Homage to Whitman

To the world I sound out my barbarian yawp
I am a Man!
I will not be a mouse
scurrying silently in the cracks and crevices of life
venturing out in the deep of night to steal a crumb, a speck, a mote
I will stride boldly forth in the light of day
Wrap my fist around the neck of life
And drink deep a draught
I declare to the world
I am a Man!
A Free Man
I will live as such
Not still my voice
Or hide my eyes
Not deny my power
Nor dim my shine
My voice will ring out
My boistrous laughter I will release
Let the timid shiver and cast furtive glances
My glare will sweep the field
And out will boom my barbarian yawp
I am a Man!

Surprise, surprise, do not avert your eyes.  There is nothing to see here but can you turn away?  Fascination claims you.

OK, that was nonsensical, but it came off the fingertips.  Today is the last day of February.  Tomorrow is March.  A boundary line will be crossed.

Here at Grace House we are trying to put together a new way of life for ourselves.  We are trying to break free from the corporate economy and create our own.  We are trying to link into the Local economy, trying to be part of this movement the truth of which, and the right of which, I have only recently come to grasp.  It is our salvation.  We began our compost heap yesterday.  Today we will plant our first seeds.  Tomorrow we will begin making our own paper.  We will produce for our needs, and produce surplus for exchange.  We are living communally.  We are attempting to govern ourselves and resolve conflicts through communication and consensus decision-making.  It is about being the change you want.  It is about taking care of ourselves and each other.

I'm not sure how well it will go, as none of us is an experienced grower.  But we will give it a go.  I just know I don't want to be dependent on supermarkets and transnational corporations for my food.  And I don't want to live as an atomized individual anymore.  I want to be interdependent upon the people around me.

My wife has the most perfect lips in the world
My mouth knows no pleasure greater than joining with those lips
They are my gateway to ethereal realms
No surface is more exquisite to the touch than the skin of her back
Trailing my fingers down the flow of her back is like dragging one's tongue through a trickle of pure, fresh honey
No fruit tastes as sweet as the base of her neck
No fiber is finer than her firegold strands of hair wrapped around my fingers
She is my Nirvana
My Paradise
She is the terminus of all my searching
In her my spirit rests

Long Time, No Write

My mind has wandered away from this blog of late.  I have written some personal blog entries, and even one or two on What Is To Be Done?  But I have gotten very busy with my business, and my creativity has suffered.  I have gotten away from the creative state of mind, so to speak.  Sometimes I miss it with a poignance that only a guy approaching middle age can have.

Still, thoughts have percolated, and at times while walking I have felt the flow.  I remain committed to developing the next political philosophy of liberty.  I am convinced that people need to walk away from the corporate society, because the corporate society has no use for people.  Those of us not fortunate enough to be born into the elite, or driven enough (i.e., soulless and unbalanced people) to obsess our way into it, are increasingly unnecessary to the corporate world.  This "globalization" is accelerating the depersonalization of the world.  America has for some twenty five years been a society of disposable people, and that trend is accelerating as technology enables more and more areas of labor to be replaced by machines.  So if the corporate world has no use for us, what use have we for it?

Another thought that I keep coming back to is that a people who cannot produce their own basic needs are by definition a dependent people.  When you depend on another for your basic needs, you are at his mercy.  How many of us could feed ourselves should the money economy collapse?  The less a community produces its own basic needs, the more vulnerable and unstable is that community, subject to the whims of external forces.

My hostility to corporations grows daily.  They are exploitation machines.  I want to get them and their products out of my life.  I want to get rid of the TV.  The TV is the corporate machine's primary method of controlling our minds.  The more we sit in front of it, the more their messages are bombarded into our brains.  The internet has become nearly as bad.  Even books are getting there, although the impending death of Barnes & Noble might have some impact on that.  Of course, Amazon.Com is the barbarian invader pillaging B&N, and that's pretty damn corporate and homogenizing in itself.

Of course, I am using my corporate-made computer, listening to corporate music, using the corporate internet, while wearing my corporate-made clothing, and getting ready to drive my corporate-made car to court.

Jefferson owned slaves.