Seed catalogs do not just sell seeds. Often, they function as repositories of all things agricultural. Most include some sort of instructions for growing each variety of seed, and nearly all include brief descriptions for each fruit, flower or vegetable that they offer.
As my interests in seeds have drifted toward primarily heirloom varieties of produce, meaning that the seeds were developed through open pollination rather than manipulated for large scale industrial production, the catalogs selling them have gotten even more interesting. In addition to instructions, most sellers of heirloom seeds include at least some stories about the seeds themselves. I enjoy learning about the depression-era history of, say, mortgage lifter tomatoes in general, or of Halladay's Mortgage Lifter in particular. I feel the stories attached to the seeds—sometimes agriculturally focused, at other times culturally or socially so—better connect me to the long continuum of agricultural acts that comprise the bedrock of our culture.
Of seed catalogs, the D. Landreth Seed Company has the most fetching that I've come across to date. Established in 1780 in Philadelphia, Landreth's is the fifth oldest company in the United States. It's 2009-2011 catalog—which in addition to information related to ordering seeds is also filled with reproduced pages from over 150 years of Landreth's seed catalogs—is a beauty. I've spent several hours looking at images (“The grand display of D. Landreth & Sons, at the Southern Exposition in Louisville, KY, 1883,” page 14), reading nineteenth century customer satisfaction notes (“When a boy, fifty years ago, I bought your Seeds, and buy them yet,” says Abraham F. Hains, District of Columbia, 1884, page 15) and pouring over century-old planting ideas (which varieties of greens to plant—and how and when—for winter salads, page 31). As catalogs go, it's a keeper. It stays on my shelf long after its use as an ordering mechanism has passed.
One picture from the Landreth's catalog, entitled “Harvesting Onion Sets On Reedland Farm,” stands out to me for its ability to glimpse a working agricultural economy. The woodcut offers a panoramic view of the farm as its workers—all white, seemingly all mustachioed—work together in digging up, sorting and collecting onion sets into a series of bins stacked on wooden horse-drawn trailers. Although the catalog gives no date for the image, the ratio of horses to tractors in the scene (5:1 by my count) suggests that it was produced at the beginning of the 20th century when mechanized labor (tractors and such) as yet did not have a stranglehold on our national agriculture. (Mass mechanization of our agriculture began to occur between 1930 and 1945, when tractors in use increased from 920,000 to 2.4 million, according to a 2006 USDA publication.)
Though I am sure the farm life depicted in the image is idealized—the fact that it's populated entirely by white men, for example, suggests an implicit racialized and gendered order of workers on this Philadelphia farm—I was struck by the sheer numbers of workers in the landscape. Reedland farm at the time of onion set harvesting was a place bustling with human labor. To the left, workers on their knees dig up onion sets; at the picture's center two men chat and work together to dump the collected bins of sets into bigger piles; to the right, people stack and then haul the onions off to the horizon in horse-drawn trailers. All told, the picture shows over fifty men employed in the process of harvesting a product that will eventually be grown and eaten—consumed—by people like Abraham F. Hains of the District of Columbia. Food production, the image shows, is a labor intensive process.
Or at least it was. Fast forward 80 years to what that picture of agriculture might look like now. The image that comes most readily to my mind, Kevin Costner alone on a tractor plowing up a portion of his corn farm for a baseball diamond in Field of Dreams, is in many ways the direct opposite of the onion set harvest at Reedland. In place of the vibrant social activity of laboring men working together, we get a single man, broke and lonely, sitting atop his tractor.
The two images, each an artifice in its own way, nevertheless leak a certain truth. In 1900, nearly forty percent of the U.S. population, 31 million people, farmed on about 800 million acres of land; today, that number is closer to two percent of the population, or about 5.84 million of us, farming on close to 1 billion acres. If the Reedland scene is depicted as vibrant, and if by contrast a hundred years later Costner seems so damn lonely on his corn farm, it's because less people farm the land today. Twenty-five million less people, to be exact, even though the U.S. population—those who farmers are theoretically tasked with feeding—has increased by over 200 million over the past century.
The current paucity of farmers in the country has produced and reinforced a number of destructive behaviors. When 20 million less farmers are tasked with farming 200 million more acres to help feed 200 million more people, some things have got to give.
And give they have. As farm owners have come to rely less and less upon human labor, they have become dependent more and more upon other forms of labor to supplement their lost manpower. They must pay Kubota for the tractor (and its upkeep), Monsanto for the genetically modified seeds, Du Pont for the pesticides; Cargill for the technical expertise of making all of the farm's mechanized “systems” work properly. They must scale up their production and trim down the number of crops they produce, such that over the past 100 years, average farm sizes have increased by 350 acres (to 450 acres) while the number of crops produced on them have decreased from 5 crops to 1 crop per farm. All these things have costs: monetary, ecological, cultural, demographic.
They also have great labor costs. As our farming has become increasingly mechanized, it has also become increasingly depopulated. Somewhere along the line, whether by choice or necessity (and probably a little of both), farmers chose to support machines and poisons over laboring human beings by putting their dollars behind industry and technology rather than workers. An estimated 15.3 million people were unemployed in December; we've lost 25 million farmers over the past century for an industry—basic sustenance—that never experiences a downturn and that, theoretically, cannot be outsourced. We should begin to think about how to re-people our farms—not as models of efficiency (though human labor on farms has the potential to decrease farmers' economic dependence on fossil fuel burning farm machinery and ecosystem-killing pesticides), but as a great source of jobs production. We want farmers because we all must eat in this country; it is a basic and irreplaceable economic necessity and yet, as a percentage of our GDP, farming registers a minuscule 0.7% (down from 7.7% in 1930).
I have heard a lot about the need for a “green” economy, mostly from well-meaning liberal democrats. Usually what is had in mind consists of creating new energy grids and systems, investing in solar or wind, and re-fixating on super-fuel efficient cars. These are, of course, fine and needed things. But they also tend to require different sorts of outside inputs. For the most part, these things require access to exceedingly costly tuition dollars for the right to gain access into the new high tech green service economy that they are imagined to be a part of.
Perhaps a quicker, cheaper, and on the whole more effective way to “green” our economy and landscape might involve something a bit more basic and old fashioned. Why not begin employing the nation by de-mechanizing at least one industry?
Why not send the nation out into the fields?
05 February 2010
Seeding this year's garden
Although I am not a particular fan of New Year's celebrations, I do enjoy the new year. January in Lexington is when the cold really sets in and my nighttime walks get magnificently quiet: no bugs, less auto traffic, fewer pedestrians. Perhaps because January is when winter starts to take hold that it is also when I begin to peruse the seed catalogs and actively start working my imagination toward the coming year's garden.
For the past two years I have retreated to a small room built into a corner of our unfinished basement to choose my seeds and plot my immaculate (and never realized) spring and summer gardens. The room is essentially a 6'x10' area, framed in to separate it from the rest of the open basement (presumably as a grow room at some point in time). Just over half the square footage is taken up by a four foot high concrete ledge, painted white here inside the room, which runs the entire length of the two back corner walls and leaves room for about 2-3 people to comfortably stand.
The place has become my garden headquarters. The concrete ledge that brackets the inside of the room is wide enough to hold comfortably two seed trays twice over and still leave me enough space on it to lay out books and seed catalogs, write in my journal, draw sketches of hare-brained ideas, collect stacks of pilfered Cricket Press, Holler and other art posters (to later decorate the room), lay down half-drunk bottles of wine, and store a bunch of old seeds for the next year's garden. The place is my winter and spring refuge.
In what is beginning to resemble a seasonal habit, I began my return to my garden headquarters in December by locating and corralling all my packets of seed, which I had gathered at different times during last year's chaotic fall growing season and placed at different points throughout the house and my truck, and moving them downstairs. December's chore finished, in the new year last week I began to sort and catalog bits of data in my log book. As the temperature dropped into the teens at several points during the past week, I sat in the basement, beneath the dirt and under some fluorescent light, and started preparing this year's gardens.
I began with the seeds.
A look at my log book after cataloging both “field seed” (what I saved from last year's harvest) and “packet seed” (seed from last year's purchased seeds) shows that I was more more diligent about saving seed this past year. That seems hardly possible—I'm a lazy gardener, almost as a matter of principal—but the log book doesn't lie: 4 different varieties each of tomatoes and peppers, three each of beans and winter squash, and two types of watermelon. Not good, but better, and with names like big red and med pink (tomatoes), watermelon I and watermelon II (watermelons), and green, soup and bean 3 (beans), I've still got the lazy covered.
Combined with last year's packet seed, all told I've got basil, beans, summer and winter squash, eggplant, watermelon, peppers, greens, a variety of herbs, and a ridiculous 15 varieties of heirloom tomatoes that I can begin under lights in late February. (My log book tells me that last year my first batch of seeds were started February 28; I'll try a batch of peppers a little bit earlier this year.)
Subsequent nights I have spent perusing the seed catalogs, which began arriving to my door in mid-December. I normally begin by choosing a couple catalogs and circling anything that I might plausibly want. When I'm done looking through all these, I make a list of everything circled and then compare it with my own catalog of seed.
I'm pretty exuberant, so I try and make a seed budget (how much do I want to spend on seed this year?). This helps me pare down costs but also allows me to sample new seed by buying from the catalogs. This year, I'm focusing mainly on different varieties of greens, carrots, okra, cucumbers and sunflowers (4 varieties as a border for a natural labyrinth a friend grew into some uncut grass). In my early, teen-charged seed-spreading days, I spent close to $150; I'm now down to around $50, a number that does not include potatoes. (Ronniger's Potato catalog has yet to arrive, but in conjunction with some friends I will be getting boatloads of their purple and yellow and red fingerlings.)
This number is way higher than most backyard gardeners; I happen to have access to a number of outlets for my seed. I am fortunate in that, along with four friends, I rent a 12 acre place 13 miles away in Keene, KY. We have developed over several years three or so gardens where we grow potatoes, corn, winter squash, watermelons, and other things that do not require constant harvest. In addition, off Leestown Road I have developed a sizeable (for the lazy amateur gardener, anyway) plot of land at Bluegrass Community and Technical College's PeaceMeal Gardens. This produce feeds into my Free Store, which runs into the late spring and summer months when my teaching schedule relaxes considerably. (This garden will receive most of the okra and greens, two products in high demand last year.) And finally, I normally grow tomato plants from last year's seeds and give them away to any of my 5 classes of students who desire them.
Combined with my backyard garden, these side-interests make for a considerably larger seed footprint than most non-professionals. But the basics are still there: start checking out seed catalogs now. If they treat you like they treat me, even in the dead of winter—and perhaps because of the dead of winter—the catalogs will inspire the living shit out of you. They'll make you hungry, sure enough.
For the past two years I have retreated to a small room built into a corner of our unfinished basement to choose my seeds and plot my immaculate (and never realized) spring and summer gardens. The room is essentially a 6'x10' area, framed in to separate it from the rest of the open basement (presumably as a grow room at some point in time). Just over half the square footage is taken up by a four foot high concrete ledge, painted white here inside the room, which runs the entire length of the two back corner walls and leaves room for about 2-3 people to comfortably stand.
The place has become my garden headquarters. The concrete ledge that brackets the inside of the room is wide enough to hold comfortably two seed trays twice over and still leave me enough space on it to lay out books and seed catalogs, write in my journal, draw sketches of hare-brained ideas, collect stacks of pilfered Cricket Press, Holler and other art posters (to later decorate the room), lay down half-drunk bottles of wine, and store a bunch of old seeds for the next year's garden. The place is my winter and spring refuge.
In what is beginning to resemble a seasonal habit, I began my return to my garden headquarters in December by locating and corralling all my packets of seed, which I had gathered at different times during last year's chaotic fall growing season and placed at different points throughout the house and my truck, and moving them downstairs. December's chore finished, in the new year last week I began to sort and catalog bits of data in my log book. As the temperature dropped into the teens at several points during the past week, I sat in the basement, beneath the dirt and under some fluorescent light, and started preparing this year's gardens.
I began with the seeds.
A look at my log book after cataloging both “field seed” (what I saved from last year's harvest) and “packet seed” (seed from last year's purchased seeds) shows that I was more more diligent about saving seed this past year. That seems hardly possible—I'm a lazy gardener, almost as a matter of principal—but the log book doesn't lie: 4 different varieties each of tomatoes and peppers, three each of beans and winter squash, and two types of watermelon. Not good, but better, and with names like big red and med pink (tomatoes), watermelon I and watermelon II (watermelons), and green, soup and bean 3 (beans), I've still got the lazy covered.
Combined with last year's packet seed, all told I've got basil, beans, summer and winter squash, eggplant, watermelon, peppers, greens, a variety of herbs, and a ridiculous 15 varieties of heirloom tomatoes that I can begin under lights in late February. (My log book tells me that last year my first batch of seeds were started February 28; I'll try a batch of peppers a little bit earlier this year.)
Subsequent nights I have spent perusing the seed catalogs, which began arriving to my door in mid-December. I normally begin by choosing a couple catalogs and circling anything that I might plausibly want. When I'm done looking through all these, I make a list of everything circled and then compare it with my own catalog of seed.
I'm pretty exuberant, so I try and make a seed budget (how much do I want to spend on seed this year?). This helps me pare down costs but also allows me to sample new seed by buying from the catalogs. This year, I'm focusing mainly on different varieties of greens, carrots, okra, cucumbers and sunflowers (4 varieties as a border for a natural labyrinth a friend grew into some uncut grass). In my early, teen-charged seed-spreading days, I spent close to $150; I'm now down to around $50, a number that does not include potatoes. (Ronniger's Potato catalog has yet to arrive, but in conjunction with some friends I will be getting boatloads of their purple and yellow and red fingerlings.)
This number is way higher than most backyard gardeners; I happen to have access to a number of outlets for my seed. I am fortunate in that, along with four friends, I rent a 12 acre place 13 miles away in Keene, KY. We have developed over several years three or so gardens where we grow potatoes, corn, winter squash, watermelons, and other things that do not require constant harvest. In addition, off Leestown Road I have developed a sizeable (for the lazy amateur gardener, anyway) plot of land at Bluegrass Community and Technical College's PeaceMeal Gardens. This produce feeds into my Free Store, which runs into the late spring and summer months when my teaching schedule relaxes considerably. (This garden will receive most of the okra and greens, two products in high demand last year.) And finally, I normally grow tomato plants from last year's seeds and give them away to any of my 5 classes of students who desire them.
Combined with my backyard garden, these side-interests make for a considerably larger seed footprint than most non-professionals. But the basics are still there: start checking out seed catalogs now. If they treat you like they treat me, even in the dead of winter—and perhaps because of the dead of winter—the catalogs will inspire the living shit out of you. They'll make you hungry, sure enough.
North of Center end of fiscal year report: A state of our newspaper address
“The newspaper business is great—if you can keep the money out of it.”
Troy Lyle, graduate of UK journalism and NoC sports editor
Author's Note: These updates on the paper will be delivered periodically for anyone needing the push or knowledge to start up their own micro-community ventures. For those not interested, this will all come off as pretentious bullshit. If you fall into the uninterested camp, I suggest moving on to a different article.
In May of 2009, North of Center appeared in Lexington, KY, for the first time. I knew we were onto something good when I teared up while reading a draft of Beth Connors Manke's feature piece on affordable housing in Lexington. That first issue, which included Beth's piece and came in at eight pages of text and 1,000 copies, cost me a little less than $270 to produce.
The first place that I asked for permission to leave the paper at, a business on North Limestone Street, told me no. Luckily the second and third places, Alfalfa's and Sunrise Bakery, said, “Why yes of course.” Were it not for their enthusiasm and kindness, the paper might not have lasted more than a couple issues. I am easily discouraged and a poor salesman to boot.
North of Center began operation in May 2009 without a business plan, without any advertisers or other source of self-generating income, and without any hired help. It had no distributors until a couple issues ago when Don Pratt, having come across it at some point, emailed and asked out of the blue to give them away. The paper's first paid advertisement didn't come until issue 3—a $25 ad from Evenstone Landscaping—from a friend who just wanted to help see the paper work out. Our main ad guy, Jerry Moody, has no phone and is currently homeless. The paper's writers work for free around their own full and weird schedules. It was not until issue 8 that our layout person, Keith, was able to get to bed before 5:00 AM on Monday night/Tuesday morning. Even now, we habitually run to 3:00 and 4:00 AM on layout nights, sandwiching our learning of the newspaper business around our full-time day jobs. Only last week did I finally get an office in our house out of which to work.
I started North of Center for a number of reasons, but chief among them were (1) a curiosity to see if I could do it and (2) a desire to create a community-minded reading text and writing outlet for students taking my first-year writing classes at Bluegrass Community and Technical College.
As a sort of working bonus, in the summers I teach an extra class of first-year writing. As a community college teacher, the class is a blessing. After a year juggling five classes a semester, the one summer course allows me to treat the course like a seminar...and it gives me extra summertime cash to supplement my salary. Last year, I bought a canoe with some of that cash. This summer, I used the summer teaching money to pay for the first six issues of North of Center—enough to cover most all of the summer.
As it turns out, I bought one king-hell of a summer adventure: newspaper drops to the poet Eric Sutherland at the public library and to Krem the grocer at Wine+Market; early-morning chats about “the newspaper life” over coffee and donuts and cold pizza with Troy and Keith; interviewing Seedleaf and Urban Gleaning leaders about the construction of community food networks; getting my own sports beat; meeting up at Al's Bar on nights the paper came out for a group looksie over beer, jokes, and food; meeting the artist John Lackey and the author Ed McClanahan; learning about my community from the viewpoint of someone obligated to write about it.
Typical male that I am, I have a one-track mind that is ill-suited to the kind of multi-tasking long-range business planning skills I should have as editor in chief of this filthy local rag. When we started last summer, that one-track focused on seeing if the collection of every-issue writers who really make North of Center work—Beth, Keith, Troy, Michael Benton, Colleen Glenn, Nick Kidd, Andrew Battista, myself—could actually commit to putting out a biweekly paper, on schedule, with no pay at all.
Having answered that question in the affirmative, this past fall I've wanted to ensure that these same writers, when most of them went back to their everyday jobs teaching college students how to read and write, didn't go certifiably insane attempting to make biweekly deadlines for long 2000 word articles or dropping off caches of papers to places like the Lexington Art League or CD Central.
In short, this first fiscal year has been less about evaluating our fiscal viability than it has been about ensuring that the paper's most important asset, its human capital, could function well. I wanted to know, did our hobby have legs to stand on?
The way I see it, in a venture like this, there's little sense in worrying about money when you don't know if the project is worth saving to begin with, and no project can work without invested, committed human capital. We have been fortunate in that the paper lucked into a group of varied, thoughtful, committed, and above all damn good writers who hold somewhat similar notions of putting their talents on display out there in the public, for the public.
So purely in terms of human capital, the state of NoC is good. On the docket for next fiscal year, we'll have interns and potential collaborations with some university classes. People have begun to ask about things they want to see covered, which means, hopefully, that the paper should continue to move in the future toward different avenues of focus, staffed by other people like our film and culture and sports and features editors who are interested in putting forth the energy to channel their voice and to actively assist others to effectively channel theirs. People are even starting to write letters to the editor (though we'd encourage more). Our human capital, for the moment at least, seems to be moving toward stable footing.
But now we have to answer the economic question: are we economically resilient. That question thus far remains unresolved. As a paper, we have a commitment to offering our writing and insights to the community as a freely given, freely taken community good. But at some point, we have to pay the bills; at some point, I'll feel an obligation to pay our writers at least a pittance for their contributions.
But still, things are not all bad here north of the center. Though we still lose money on virtually every issue we put out, we've steadily lost less money with each issue—a record Bernanke and Summers and Geithner would be proud of. We've got some advertisers (who you should support within your own personal means) that seem like they'll be steady streams of revenue, and we're always optimistic about prospects for a couple more. At the moment, we've built up enough dough in our business account to pay for about the next six issues or so.
A six-issue horizon. It's almost as if we're right back where we started, which if I can recall at this late hour in the evening, was a wonderful and exciting place to be.
To give all of us some much-needed time off to recharge and reflect on what worked and what didn't, what we can build on and what might be best cast off, North of Center will go on vacation for the rest of December; we'll start back in mid January. Here on the Chimp, we'll continue posting our older articles.
Troy Lyle, graduate of UK journalism and NoC sports editor
Author's Note: These updates on the paper will be delivered periodically for anyone needing the push or knowledge to start up their own micro-community ventures. For those not interested, this will all come off as pretentious bullshit. If you fall into the uninterested camp, I suggest moving on to a different article.
In May of 2009, North of Center appeared in Lexington, KY, for the first time. I knew we were onto something good when I teared up while reading a draft of Beth Connors Manke's feature piece on affordable housing in Lexington. That first issue, which included Beth's piece and came in at eight pages of text and 1,000 copies, cost me a little less than $270 to produce.
The first place that I asked for permission to leave the paper at, a business on North Limestone Street, told me no. Luckily the second and third places, Alfalfa's and Sunrise Bakery, said, “Why yes of course.” Were it not for their enthusiasm and kindness, the paper might not have lasted more than a couple issues. I am easily discouraged and a poor salesman to boot.
North of Center began operation in May 2009 without a business plan, without any advertisers or other source of self-generating income, and without any hired help. It had no distributors until a couple issues ago when Don Pratt, having come across it at some point, emailed and asked out of the blue to give them away. The paper's first paid advertisement didn't come until issue 3—a $25 ad from Evenstone Landscaping—from a friend who just wanted to help see the paper work out. Our main ad guy, Jerry Moody, has no phone and is currently homeless. The paper's writers work for free around their own full and weird schedules. It was not until issue 8 that our layout person, Keith, was able to get to bed before 5:00 AM on Monday night/Tuesday morning. Even now, we habitually run to 3:00 and 4:00 AM on layout nights, sandwiching our learning of the newspaper business around our full-time day jobs. Only last week did I finally get an office in our house out of which to work.
I started North of Center for a number of reasons, but chief among them were (1) a curiosity to see if I could do it and (2) a desire to create a community-minded reading text and writing outlet for students taking my first-year writing classes at Bluegrass Community and Technical College.
As a sort of working bonus, in the summers I teach an extra class of first-year writing. As a community college teacher, the class is a blessing. After a year juggling five classes a semester, the one summer course allows me to treat the course like a seminar...and it gives me extra summertime cash to supplement my salary. Last year, I bought a canoe with some of that cash. This summer, I used the summer teaching money to pay for the first six issues of North of Center—enough to cover most all of the summer.
As it turns out, I bought one king-hell of a summer adventure: newspaper drops to the poet Eric Sutherland at the public library and to Krem the grocer at Wine+Market; early-morning chats about “the newspaper life” over coffee and donuts and cold pizza with Troy and Keith; interviewing Seedleaf and Urban Gleaning leaders about the construction of community food networks; getting my own sports beat; meeting up at Al's Bar on nights the paper came out for a group looksie over beer, jokes, and food; meeting the artist John Lackey and the author Ed McClanahan; learning about my community from the viewpoint of someone obligated to write about it.
Typical male that I am, I have a one-track mind that is ill-suited to the kind of multi-tasking long-range business planning skills I should have as editor in chief of this filthy local rag. When we started last summer, that one-track focused on seeing if the collection of every-issue writers who really make North of Center work—Beth, Keith, Troy, Michael Benton, Colleen Glenn, Nick Kidd, Andrew Battista, myself—could actually commit to putting out a biweekly paper, on schedule, with no pay at all.
Having answered that question in the affirmative, this past fall I've wanted to ensure that these same writers, when most of them went back to their everyday jobs teaching college students how to read and write, didn't go certifiably insane attempting to make biweekly deadlines for long 2000 word articles or dropping off caches of papers to places like the Lexington Art League or CD Central.
In short, this first fiscal year has been less about evaluating our fiscal viability than it has been about ensuring that the paper's most important asset, its human capital, could function well. I wanted to know, did our hobby have legs to stand on?
The way I see it, in a venture like this, there's little sense in worrying about money when you don't know if the project is worth saving to begin with, and no project can work without invested, committed human capital. We have been fortunate in that the paper lucked into a group of varied, thoughtful, committed, and above all damn good writers who hold somewhat similar notions of putting their talents on display out there in the public, for the public.
So purely in terms of human capital, the state of NoC is good. On the docket for next fiscal year, we'll have interns and potential collaborations with some university classes. People have begun to ask about things they want to see covered, which means, hopefully, that the paper should continue to move in the future toward different avenues of focus, staffed by other people like our film and culture and sports and features editors who are interested in putting forth the energy to channel their voice and to actively assist others to effectively channel theirs. People are even starting to write letters to the editor (though we'd encourage more). Our human capital, for the moment at least, seems to be moving toward stable footing.
But now we have to answer the economic question: are we economically resilient. That question thus far remains unresolved. As a paper, we have a commitment to offering our writing and insights to the community as a freely given, freely taken community good. But at some point, we have to pay the bills; at some point, I'll feel an obligation to pay our writers at least a pittance for their contributions.
But still, things are not all bad here north of the center. Though we still lose money on virtually every issue we put out, we've steadily lost less money with each issue—a record Bernanke and Summers and Geithner would be proud of. We've got some advertisers (who you should support within your own personal means) that seem like they'll be steady streams of revenue, and we're always optimistic about prospects for a couple more. At the moment, we've built up enough dough in our business account to pay for about the next six issues or so.
A six-issue horizon. It's almost as if we're right back where we started, which if I can recall at this late hour in the evening, was a wonderful and exciting place to be.
To give all of us some much-needed time off to recharge and reflect on what worked and what didn't, what we can build on and what might be best cast off, North of Center will go on vacation for the rest of December; we'll start back in mid January. Here on the Chimp, we'll continue posting our older articles.
04 November 2009
A Sunday Contract
Dear Troy and Lyle,
We have been talking for some time of pooling our different skills together for work on each other's homeplaces. What follows are some late-night sketches toward a common contract.
As you both know, we share a long history of tinkering together on projects. The place we rent together outside Lexington in nearby Keene, with its hops deck and vegetable gardens, 22-hole disc golf course and fire pits, is littered with the fruits of our collective labor. And before our time in Keene, there was the six-month long construction of a writing shack—1 foot larger than Thoreau's, though no sleeping loft—over beers and conversation on the Houp property between Wilmore and High Bridge, land that backed up to the palisades of the Kentucky River at the edge of Minter's Branch. And farther back still, before me, there was you and Troy in your late teens, both stuck in Wilmore with a High Bridge state of mind, looking to build your own ways out into the world.
I propose simply to transfer back into our homes the skills we have developed while working together on these projects. Our history together suggests that we have figured out to get along while keeping our hands and minds busy, and to do these things together passingly well: to take joy from our collective work and to make this seem a natural extension of an enjoyable and productive day in Kentucky.
In working together on our homeplaces, we may take advantage of our unique skill sets. Troy's carpentry and general home maintenance skills are much needed at my 100 year old house; Lyle's rockwork and general outdoor landscaping knowledge can be more productively put to use, by all of us, with the addition of some outside muscle (however meager that muscle may be). And as for me, while I offer no specific carpentry or lapidary skills, you know you can count on my steady, if unspectacular, work—to set the bar low, yes, but also to always show up and exert that initial energy to just get the bar set to begin with. Working together, there is no doubt that we may continue to learn and benefit from each other's strengths.
Of course, there are more practical reasons for our trading of our labor. I am speaking of the nice collection of tools that, collectively, we gain access to in working together: rock hammers, trucks, ladders, saws, etc. The greater variety of tools at our disposal means that most jobs don't need to accrue an added tool rental or purchasing expense; since the farm we rent together was, for many years a dump site, we are also well blessed with odd castoff trinkets, like rusted fencerows that make for fine blackberry or bean trellises, that we may find good ways to re-use.
If thus far all of this sounds like too much, well, work, let me here acknowledge that I am only formally recognizing that which we mostly do already. Left unacknowledged up to this point is the immense amount of joy we have gotten ripping apart and burning honeysuckle limbs, collecting rock and building an outdoor oven, and listening to Peanut Houp tell us about the time he got drunk in the navy and passed out on the wrong damn submarine (leading to all sorts of hijinks) while we nailed scavenged black tar oak board pieces—as siding—for a place we simply called the Shack.
And now that we're at it, I should also point out that history dictates that our labor trading days must also involve great meals with family and friends and (occasionally) strangers. Who can forget the garlic soups and rabbit stews of winter, cooked over a small wood burning stove during cold winter afternoons and nights, that were prepared as we cleared a path through honeysuckle to an overlook over the Kentucky River, or the gatherings with Michelle and Julie and Stone and Lisa and Mike and the rest, chowing down on Severn's tomatoes or boiled greens while on break from a disc golf game. I see no reason why cooking would not be incorporated into our days' activities, as a crescendo to the day's relaxed toils.
Just what our toils will be, of course, can always be determined as we go. I know that Troy needs honeysuckle clearance, rock gathering, and a firepit built. Lyle needs help getting his man shack in order. I'd like a shed to house my tools and some semi-skilled maintenance on our house's interior. No doubt, through the many breaks for walks, talks, drinks, and games, we will undoubtedly provide each other interested feedback on the future visions and hopes for our places, our lives.
The work, that is, will no doubt become more valuable to us as it and we age.
If you are interested, I propose we shoot to meet on Sundays. There is nothing intrinsically Right about this time, other than that, at the moment, it seems to fit all our schedules. If this convenience no longer presents itself, we can always choose a different day to try and meet at each other's houses. We can change all the above arrangement, in fact, as our needs and conditions change. We can always be free to opt out.
But at the moment, it just seems right that we extend our friendships to the work we do on our homes.
Thoughts?
best,
Danny
P.S. I can't start next week as I will be attending Keeneland with Troy. We are currently seeking a sober driver for the event.
We have been talking for some time of pooling our different skills together for work on each other's homeplaces. What follows are some late-night sketches toward a common contract.
As you both know, we share a long history of tinkering together on projects. The place we rent together outside Lexington in nearby Keene, with its hops deck and vegetable gardens, 22-hole disc golf course and fire pits, is littered with the fruits of our collective labor. And before our time in Keene, there was the six-month long construction of a writing shack—1 foot larger than Thoreau's, though no sleeping loft—over beers and conversation on the Houp property between Wilmore and High Bridge, land that backed up to the palisades of the Kentucky River at the edge of Minter's Branch. And farther back still, before me, there was you and Troy in your late teens, both stuck in Wilmore with a High Bridge state of mind, looking to build your own ways out into the world.
I propose simply to transfer back into our homes the skills we have developed while working together on these projects. Our history together suggests that we have figured out to get along while keeping our hands and minds busy, and to do these things together passingly well: to take joy from our collective work and to make this seem a natural extension of an enjoyable and productive day in Kentucky.
In working together on our homeplaces, we may take advantage of our unique skill sets. Troy's carpentry and general home maintenance skills are much needed at my 100 year old house; Lyle's rockwork and general outdoor landscaping knowledge can be more productively put to use, by all of us, with the addition of some outside muscle (however meager that muscle may be). And as for me, while I offer no specific carpentry or lapidary skills, you know you can count on my steady, if unspectacular, work—to set the bar low, yes, but also to always show up and exert that initial energy to just get the bar set to begin with. Working together, there is no doubt that we may continue to learn and benefit from each other's strengths.
Of course, there are more practical reasons for our trading of our labor. I am speaking of the nice collection of tools that, collectively, we gain access to in working together: rock hammers, trucks, ladders, saws, etc. The greater variety of tools at our disposal means that most jobs don't need to accrue an added tool rental or purchasing expense; since the farm we rent together was, for many years a dump site, we are also well blessed with odd castoff trinkets, like rusted fencerows that make for fine blackberry or bean trellises, that we may find good ways to re-use.
If thus far all of this sounds like too much, well, work, let me here acknowledge that I am only formally recognizing that which we mostly do already. Left unacknowledged up to this point is the immense amount of joy we have gotten ripping apart and burning honeysuckle limbs, collecting rock and building an outdoor oven, and listening to Peanut Houp tell us about the time he got drunk in the navy and passed out on the wrong damn submarine (leading to all sorts of hijinks) while we nailed scavenged black tar oak board pieces—as siding—for a place we simply called the Shack.
And now that we're at it, I should also point out that history dictates that our labor trading days must also involve great meals with family and friends and (occasionally) strangers. Who can forget the garlic soups and rabbit stews of winter, cooked over a small wood burning stove during cold winter afternoons and nights, that were prepared as we cleared a path through honeysuckle to an overlook over the Kentucky River, or the gatherings with Michelle and Julie and Stone and Lisa and Mike and the rest, chowing down on Severn's tomatoes or boiled greens while on break from a disc golf game. I see no reason why cooking would not be incorporated into our days' activities, as a crescendo to the day's relaxed toils.
Just what our toils will be, of course, can always be determined as we go. I know that Troy needs honeysuckle clearance, rock gathering, and a firepit built. Lyle needs help getting his man shack in order. I'd like a shed to house my tools and some semi-skilled maintenance on our house's interior. No doubt, through the many breaks for walks, talks, drinks, and games, we will undoubtedly provide each other interested feedback on the future visions and hopes for our places, our lives.
The work, that is, will no doubt become more valuable to us as it and we age.
If you are interested, I propose we shoot to meet on Sundays. There is nothing intrinsically Right about this time, other than that, at the moment, it seems to fit all our schedules. If this convenience no longer presents itself, we can always choose a different day to try and meet at each other's houses. We can change all the above arrangement, in fact, as our needs and conditions change. We can always be free to opt out.
But at the moment, it just seems right that we extend our friendships to the work we do on our homes.
Thoughts?
best,
Danny
P.S. I can't start next week as I will be attending Keeneland with Troy. We are currently seeking a sober driver for the event.
An Ethics of Collecting Rock
I recall fondly the first time I ever took rock. A Sunday morning, early and cold, idling in the car on the shoulder of the outer Circle near where it hits Liberty Road by that ridiculous Halloween shop. Like much of New Circle, this stretch features a couple small road cutouts, and I was about to scout and grab rock that had fallen over a period of time into the ditch below. I wanted to harvest some of the fallen stone for a pathway and sundry other small projects for my home two miles away. The process would involve about thirty minutes of my time grabbing the rock on the side of the road and another fifteen minutes in transport home and unloading.
The central question I pondered that day, while waiting to jump out into the cold to try my hand at rock-thievery, is the same one I continue to ask myself five years later when traipsing around places that are supposed “Off Limits” to me, though my fear in having to answer it while collecting rock has subsided substantially over the years: “Well, just what the hell do you think you are doing here?”
Throughout the years, I have offered different answers to that question. Gathering rock on roadside cutouts, construction sites or back alleyways is a distinct activity; it tends to get noticed by passersby, and I've never checked into the legal specifics, so I at least try to mentally prepare for just such a question whenever I'm out.
Collectively, the different answers I've imagined to the question “what are you doing here?” form a sort of personal ethics for rock collecting, a justification for why and how I collect rock—in effect, an orientation for being in the world. On the whole, my rock ethic is rooted in ideas of usufructure (the taking of pleasure and profit from unused private land) and anarchist critiques of private property. Together, I have found they offer a solid foundation for trespassing onto under-used land in order to take discarded items not used by the property owners, particularly natural ones like rock. Though thankfully nobody representing authority has ever stopped me to have to answer this question (perhaps an indication that while I may be breaking the law, I'm not doing anything wrong), I've imagined two general reasons against taking rock from public or private lands—reasons my rock ethics must both question and take into account.
First, one might suggest that my collecting endangers myself or someone else. In asking how I might ensure that the process was as safe as any other daily driving activity in the U.S. (like commuting to work), I have had to ask and answer a number of related questions: can I come at off-hours time, when no workers are around. (If I do go at off-hours time, am I accompanied by a friend?) Is the shoulder on the side of the highway sufficiently wide for me to park for ten minutes? Is the rock safe to access, or is it in a position where it could do bodily harm to me? Is there a possibility that the rock will pose a driving hazard to others in the area. When the answers to these questions are “no,” I normally find another spot.
A second, more theoretical question, is a little less straightforward but I find much more intriguing. One might ask how my taking of rock damages the environment by manner of theft. In a strictly capitalist sense, this is what is we mean, I think, when we talk about the sanctity of private property. Here in the United States, we assume, by dint of deed, that the owner will proceed to make the best use of the land. We assume this because private property, in a capitalist society such as ours, is sacrosanct. The best use of that property is whatever the owner does to it, and, conversely, anything that the owner does not condone gets viewed as damaging to that environment in the sense that your very unsanctioned presence detracts from it—so long as environment is synonymous with a deed. Or at least, this seems to me pretty much what property rights enshrine in our laws, the unquestioned assumption that your use of land is less valuable (and correct) than a property owner's use.
Most of my rock collecting actions, of course, constitute a legal trespassing, particularly so in the case of construction sites. That the sanctity of property stands beyond thought, beyond question, is one of the reasons why I enjoy trespassing to collect rock. I want people to see what I do from their homes or cars—trespassing onto places both private and government affiliated—and to begin to question the primacy of private property. “Oh, look at that young hardworking lad over there! He's not hurting anything taking all that pretty Kentucky rock that X construction company ripped up during their construction of Y Estates! What a neat and industrious idea putting that rock to good use!”
A bit idealistic? Try collecting rock and the question will become a bit more intimate. It's something that I ask myself all the time while scouting out rock locations. Specifically, I ask whether I do damage to the property owner for taking discarded rock, stone whose main use to the owner is as a substance to be carted off to somewhere else—that is, as a waste product of that property. Don't believe me? Take a look at the many unfinished (and finishing) construction sites and the amount of rock sitting discarded, waiting to get hauled off, or watch that favorite cutout of yours over a couple years and wait for the county crew to come and cart it off.
Observing these things, and seeing how useful stone is, has lead me to note simple things about private property—notably that private property owners can both misuse and not use the land that they own, and that while trespassing might be illegal, it doesn't have to be immoral or wrong to do. It also didn't have to detract from a property's value. My taking of stone does no damage to the actual private property—only to the unquestioning idea of its sanctity.
Of course, the same rock ethic restricts as much as it frees. I am, after all, not suggesting that you start ripping the rocks off some bungalow on Desha. The question of damage to the environment is much wider than property rights. Do I want to take stone from somebody's house? Not hardly, unless I am invited to do so. Doing so would damage that person's home environment. Similarly, I might ask whether the stone I gather has a cultural value to the environment, as an old rock wall might, or if it held still a use value, if it is still in service to the area, as an overgrown stepping stone might be. In my accounts of environmental damages, these things hold more value to me than a deed paper.
Ultimately, such values necessary to answer the (as yet) unasked questions of “What are you doing, and why are you doing it?” force me to think beyond my environment as property, and to respond to it more as a commons, a place that we all have the responsibility and capacity for using and tending to. You'll be forced to ask the same sorts of questions, I'd wager, at some point while you gather rock for your projects. Though we may disagree on some particular instances, I trust you'll arrive at many of the same conclusions that I have.
The central question I pondered that day, while waiting to jump out into the cold to try my hand at rock-thievery, is the same one I continue to ask myself five years later when traipsing around places that are supposed “Off Limits” to me, though my fear in having to answer it while collecting rock has subsided substantially over the years: “Well, just what the hell do you think you are doing here?”
Throughout the years, I have offered different answers to that question. Gathering rock on roadside cutouts, construction sites or back alleyways is a distinct activity; it tends to get noticed by passersby, and I've never checked into the legal specifics, so I at least try to mentally prepare for just such a question whenever I'm out.
Collectively, the different answers I've imagined to the question “what are you doing here?” form a sort of personal ethics for rock collecting, a justification for why and how I collect rock—in effect, an orientation for being in the world. On the whole, my rock ethic is rooted in ideas of usufructure (the taking of pleasure and profit from unused private land) and anarchist critiques of private property. Together, I have found they offer a solid foundation for trespassing onto under-used land in order to take discarded items not used by the property owners, particularly natural ones like rock. Though thankfully nobody representing authority has ever stopped me to have to answer this question (perhaps an indication that while I may be breaking the law, I'm not doing anything wrong), I've imagined two general reasons against taking rock from public or private lands—reasons my rock ethics must both question and take into account.
First, one might suggest that my collecting endangers myself or someone else. In asking how I might ensure that the process was as safe as any other daily driving activity in the U.S. (like commuting to work), I have had to ask and answer a number of related questions: can I come at off-hours time, when no workers are around. (If I do go at off-hours time, am I accompanied by a friend?) Is the shoulder on the side of the highway sufficiently wide for me to park for ten minutes? Is the rock safe to access, or is it in a position where it could do bodily harm to me? Is there a possibility that the rock will pose a driving hazard to others in the area. When the answers to these questions are “no,” I normally find another spot.
A second, more theoretical question, is a little less straightforward but I find much more intriguing. One might ask how my taking of rock damages the environment by manner of theft. In a strictly capitalist sense, this is what is we mean, I think, when we talk about the sanctity of private property. Here in the United States, we assume, by dint of deed, that the owner will proceed to make the best use of the land. We assume this because private property, in a capitalist society such as ours, is sacrosanct. The best use of that property is whatever the owner does to it, and, conversely, anything that the owner does not condone gets viewed as damaging to that environment in the sense that your very unsanctioned presence detracts from it—so long as environment is synonymous with a deed. Or at least, this seems to me pretty much what property rights enshrine in our laws, the unquestioned assumption that your use of land is less valuable (and correct) than a property owner's use.
Most of my rock collecting actions, of course, constitute a legal trespassing, particularly so in the case of construction sites. That the sanctity of property stands beyond thought, beyond question, is one of the reasons why I enjoy trespassing to collect rock. I want people to see what I do from their homes or cars—trespassing onto places both private and government affiliated—and to begin to question the primacy of private property. “Oh, look at that young hardworking lad over there! He's not hurting anything taking all that pretty Kentucky rock that X construction company ripped up during their construction of Y Estates! What a neat and industrious idea putting that rock to good use!”
A bit idealistic? Try collecting rock and the question will become a bit more intimate. It's something that I ask myself all the time while scouting out rock locations. Specifically, I ask whether I do damage to the property owner for taking discarded rock, stone whose main use to the owner is as a substance to be carted off to somewhere else—that is, as a waste product of that property. Don't believe me? Take a look at the many unfinished (and finishing) construction sites and the amount of rock sitting discarded, waiting to get hauled off, or watch that favorite cutout of yours over a couple years and wait for the county crew to come and cart it off.
Observing these things, and seeing how useful stone is, has lead me to note simple things about private property—notably that private property owners can both misuse and not use the land that they own, and that while trespassing might be illegal, it doesn't have to be immoral or wrong to do. It also didn't have to detract from a property's value. My taking of stone does no damage to the actual private property—only to the unquestioning idea of its sanctity.
Of course, the same rock ethic restricts as much as it frees. I am, after all, not suggesting that you start ripping the rocks off some bungalow on Desha. The question of damage to the environment is much wider than property rights. Do I want to take stone from somebody's house? Not hardly, unless I am invited to do so. Doing so would damage that person's home environment. Similarly, I might ask whether the stone I gather has a cultural value to the environment, as an old rock wall might, or if it held still a use value, if it is still in service to the area, as an overgrown stepping stone might be. In my accounts of environmental damages, these things hold more value to me than a deed paper.
Ultimately, such values necessary to answer the (as yet) unasked questions of “What are you doing, and why are you doing it?” force me to think beyond my environment as property, and to respond to it more as a commons, a place that we all have the responsibility and capacity for using and tending to. You'll be forced to ask the same sorts of questions, I'd wager, at some point while you gather rock for your projects. Though we may disagree on some particular instances, I trust you'll arrive at many of the same conclusions that I have.
21 September 2009
Collecting and Stacking Rock
It's hard to reckon the precise tonnage of rock that I have gathered from the inner bluegrass region these past four years. I have no scales, so instead I tend to measure such things in minor back aches and fall fires around rock fire-pits.
But irrespective of the precise number, here's what that tonnage has built in Lexington: four small guerrilla gardens atop drainage ditches and astride fences in places like the Rupp Arena parking lot (all of which are waiting to be re-inhabited); two separate rock walkways (approximately 40 feet in length and partially adorned in creeping thyme); a rock fire-pit surrounded by rock patio that was built into a double terraced rock flower bed (all this more or less a 120 square foot thing that reaches a height of 3 feet); a 40 foot section of a partially-raised-bed garden that backed up to a fence/property line; a terraced 200 square foot garden built atop what was previously an unusable steep incline of weeds behind my former house; a 30 foot long rock fence (as yet only partially completed) at my current home; and sundry other projects taken on alone and with friends.
The list could go on were I to include into my figures things built in Jessamine County, but I think you get the point. I like to collect and stack rock and do it quite frequently.
My attraction to rock is both practical and aesthetic. Moving here in 2000 for school, I have been continually struck by the power—aesthetic, historic, racial, economic—of the inner bluegrass region's rock fences. When we first moved here, my wife and I would take long rides in the country, both by ourselves and as part of those weekend tours we gave visiting family and friends.
As I have lived here longer, my fence experiences have become more tactile. I have scraped my boots and jeans hopping an eighteenth century rock fence that divided land near the Kentucky River that Daniel Boone helped survey, and more recently I have periodically helped re-stack an only slightly newer fence in Keene, KY. I have now walked enough Kentucky ground to know that my interest in rock fences lies mainly in the rock: Limestone mostly, and shitloads of it, all over the region, used in the construction of beautiful fences, terraces, mills, bridge bases, houses, garden and flower beds, retaining walls, and culverts, to name a few rock creations old and new I've come across and marveled at.
This last learned attraction,the historic multi-functionality of rock, is also practical. I first experienced the practical use of stones when trying to figure out what to do about the dirt and mud path created by our two dogs that stretched across the back yard of our former home. Grass seed did not work, discipline and (later) pleading did not work, and the pea gravel I paid to get dumped there to make a walkway was messy and stuck in my barefeet when I walked in it.
When friends in Carlisle offered us the rocks strewn across their property that had been ripped up in the making of their new home, I began gathering rocks for a walkway. By the time I finished the firepit and terraced garden, I realized that in addition to its utility as walking surface, rocks can raise garden beds, separate areas of my yard, level uneven land, provide a building beam to perch my canoe upon, and otherwise create an aesthetic “hardscape.” I also learned that I didn't need to go to Carlisle to get it. As I began to look and see how much was available, gratis, at ripped up construction sites, interstate cutouts, water-main projects, and excavation sites in our own yards, I saw the economic and aesthetic practicality of choosing homegrown rock over Lowes-bought faux-rock.
As with most things, collecting and stacking rock is both infinitely easy and gloriously nuanced—an activity for both green beginners pulling a one-off project and craft tradespeople getting paid for their enhanced skills. Here's the easy version, which is restrictive to the degree that it assumes automobile access and physical ability to lift things weighing between five (5) and one thousand (1000) pounds: Get in your vehicle and locate rocks accessible to said vehicle. Load rocks. Drive home, unload product by stacking it. Repeat as necessary.
It gets more nuanced, of course. First,trucks are better vehicles to use than Cooper Minis, though I find it instructive to note that community gardener Michael Marchman, “Notable Neighbor” for the August issue of Chevy Chaser, used the trunk of his stepfather's Buick Park Avenue to transport the rock grabbed for his public sidewalk garden located on the corner of Hart and Ridgeway. Commuting to Northern Kentucky University where he has found adjunct work as a teacher of geography, Michael grabbed rock off cutouts on the sixty mile stretch of I-75 he drove twice a week. It took about fifteen minutes per excursion as he selected and then moved the chosen rocks to his trunk. All in all, this took Marchman less than a semester of 15-minute respites from his car to build a garden now in its second year of harvest.
On the collection side of things, there are other nuances I've learned. Nearby rock outcroppings are easier in both the arrival and the departure. I'd suggest to stay within twenty-five miles, mostly because it's ridiculously easy to do. Sunday mornings are good times to hunt rock since most of Lexington and its police force are engaged in various religious activities. Home construction sites often result in mounds of rock upturned from the earth; rock mounds are preferable in that you can roll heavier rocks down them and into your truck bed rather than heaving them into it.
If you are collecting rock from ground torn up for active construction, stay out of the way of workers and visit when you will not be in their way. If you collect from other sites, make sure that your taking does not negatively impact the physical and cultural environment in which it sits. Thank friends and acquaintances who offer their rocks. And finally, go travel the road to Galilee: the ripped up stretch of Harrodsburg Road beginning past the great Christian megachurches and ending at the turnoff to Wilmore and Asbury Seminary. I don't know if it's legal or not, but my hunch is that rock gleaning is supported by at least some part of Christian thought.
On the stacking of stones, I'm more a practitioner than a craftsperson. But I have found that wider bases seem to make more sturdy structures. So does stacking to avoid long running vertical joints. This happens when you put two ends together on one level (making a joint) and then put two ends together at the same place for the next set of rocks stacked on top. Vary the joints, and make level stacks of rock. Having level stacks gives you a much easier base to work your next layer of rocks. Use small rocks as backfill for support or as shems. Rocks want three stable points of contact to help be steady and the backfill helps keep it in place.
These are some basics of collecting and stacking, and they are from someone who has not spent much time learning the finer points of the craft. I collect and lay rock for a variety of reasons, so my things are not perfect. I am not an expert. I update, I fiddle, I repair, I move, I tend, I learn. I get a little bit better and then the simple process gets a few new fun wrinkles thrown into it.
But at its most democratic and simple, all you need to do to collect and stack rock is this: Look and think. Drive. Act. Go home. Tailor as you can and need.
14 September 2009
Some Definitions and Precepts
Last year an article appearing in the New York Times, a shortened version of which also appeared in our Herald Leader, caught my attention. The headline read, “Russia makes return to the barter system,” and was followed by the rather ominous subheading “Critic says it's a step backward.” The article noted that Russia's local iteration of the global downturn had resulted in a minor uptick in bartering for goods—up to 3 or 4% of all sales, as reported by the Russian Economic Barometer. I say minor because in the 1990s, when Russia embraced capitalist reforms and sent its economy (and people) into a tailspin as the government transferred its wealth to well-heeled capitalists who unsurprisingly grew richer at public expense, the paper reported that “barter transactions...accounted for an astonishing 50 percent of sales for midsize enterprises and 75 percent for large ones.”
The critic of bartering was Vladimir Popov, who teaches at the New Economic School in Moscow; I am sure that he had good reasons for critiquing the barter system, which seems to have arisen as a way to cope with massive inflation, but they did not appear in the article. Instead, the paper reported that Popov called Russians “arrogant,” and claimed that the minor uptick in barter meant they were “hiding [their] head in the sand.” What the Russians needed to do, the article implied, was to cut costs and reduce inefficiency, normally euphemisms for firing workers and mechanizing production.
The article stood out to me because at the time I had just finished reading an online essay by Charles Eisenstein entitled “Economics of Fermentation.” In his much more developed article, which originally appeared in Wise Traditions Magazine, Eisenstein essentially makes the opposite argument of Popov. Rather than increasing our reliance on exchanging dollars for services and everything else, Eisenstein calls for a return to a much older form of economy, what he calls an “economy of reciprocation and social exchange,” based in human contact and the establishment of social connections. For Eisenstein, what bartering does for us socially is something that gets left out of our money transactions.
Money is, he notes, “an anonymous form of energy.” Anyone can go into Wal Mart and buy a TV or food with it, and we need not know how it arrived there or who made it. In barter and social exchange, however, the emphasis is more intimate, on things we make for and with each other. One household makes cheese, another beer, another clothes from wool. Needs and transaction prices are determined primarily by a community rather than anonymous people from afar who cannot or do not conceive of us.
I'll not go any further into Eisenstein's ideas here, as I'm sure a discussion of them will play into future pieces, but needless to say that such ideas are at the center of how I would define a basil economy. The following bulleted points make a stab at an opening definition and guiding principals.
A basil economy will:
--take non-monetary transactions seriously. This is not an argument for the abolishment of money; rather, it is a realization that money as a form of economic exchange has usurped other useful modes and overcrowd our thinking. In short, a basil economy seeks to put the exchange of money in its place as one among a number of possibilities. Though your financial analyst may tell you that you can “grow” your money, such growth is entirely unnatural and mostly unearned: unlike basil, tomatoes, wool, wood, or a host of other things we need, money does not grow from the sun, the soil, or our water supply. We should figure out how to use better these living trinkets of exchange that we ourselves might produce from our own labor.
--be based first and foremost in small, community-based transactions centered on need: food, clothing, water, shelter, pleasure, health, transportation, education. This is not an argument against the flow of needed outside goods or people into the community; rather, it is a re-commitment to ourselves as able producers. This should help restrict the accumulation of too many things while at the same time to allow for a natural diversification of such needs into localized art, shelter styles, etc.—things all communities used to have and do.
This means that a basil economy will
--flourish to the degree that we produce things. We must begin to think of ourselves as producers once again, makers of things, rather than consumers. For the most part, what we make need not be “perfect,” only “good” and “committed.” (Perfect tends to marginalize interested parties and also to increase value for products that many cannot afford.) Currently, 70% of our GDP is based in consumption, which means that our current solutions to our economic moment lie in us purchasing more. This is a false answer and it makes us poorer socially and economically in hock for the one thing we cannot produce: money. When credit becomes our lifeblood, the answer is not to feed that beast by generating more money to buy things, but to have us scale down to need less money.
In other words, a basil economy will
--assume a scaling down of economic activity to something approaching a subsistence economy. As Americans, we have been perched at the top of the economic world order. As we emerge out of our current economic moment, this will no longer be the case. We should recognize that and pare down our outsized and destructive expectations.
It will mean a renewed focus on
--seasonal and cyclical growth and death rather than on the unnatural capitalist model of permanent accumulation and permanent growth. Cancers grow exponentially; economies, like our earth, should experience periods of growth and decay, of work and rest, of relative abundance and scarcity. By focusing on these sort of growths, by desiring them over continual 3, 4, 6, 8 percent returns, we will better prepare ourselves to be resilient and communally self-sufficient.
What I'm describing requires a lot more work from us, from you, from me. It will mean that we necessarily spend much less time watching television and playing on the computer. These contraptions let us off the hook, make us fat and lazy, and waste a lot of our time that could be better spent doing and making things, generating ideas and meeting people.
The critic of bartering was Vladimir Popov, who teaches at the New Economic School in Moscow; I am sure that he had good reasons for critiquing the barter system, which seems to have arisen as a way to cope with massive inflation, but they did not appear in the article. Instead, the paper reported that Popov called Russians “arrogant,” and claimed that the minor uptick in barter meant they were “hiding [their] head in the sand.” What the Russians needed to do, the article implied, was to cut costs and reduce inefficiency, normally euphemisms for firing workers and mechanizing production.
The article stood out to me because at the time I had just finished reading an online essay by Charles Eisenstein entitled “Economics of Fermentation.” In his much more developed article, which originally appeared in Wise Traditions Magazine, Eisenstein essentially makes the opposite argument of Popov. Rather than increasing our reliance on exchanging dollars for services and everything else, Eisenstein calls for a return to a much older form of economy, what he calls an “economy of reciprocation and social exchange,” based in human contact and the establishment of social connections. For Eisenstein, what bartering does for us socially is something that gets left out of our money transactions.
Money is, he notes, “an anonymous form of energy.” Anyone can go into Wal Mart and buy a TV or food with it, and we need not know how it arrived there or who made it. In barter and social exchange, however, the emphasis is more intimate, on things we make for and with each other. One household makes cheese, another beer, another clothes from wool. Needs and transaction prices are determined primarily by a community rather than anonymous people from afar who cannot or do not conceive of us.
I'll not go any further into Eisenstein's ideas here, as I'm sure a discussion of them will play into future pieces, but needless to say that such ideas are at the center of how I would define a basil economy. The following bulleted points make a stab at an opening definition and guiding principals.
A basil economy will:
--take non-monetary transactions seriously. This is not an argument for the abolishment of money; rather, it is a realization that money as a form of economic exchange has usurped other useful modes and overcrowd our thinking. In short, a basil economy seeks to put the exchange of money in its place as one among a number of possibilities. Though your financial analyst may tell you that you can “grow” your money, such growth is entirely unnatural and mostly unearned: unlike basil, tomatoes, wool, wood, or a host of other things we need, money does not grow from the sun, the soil, or our water supply. We should figure out how to use better these living trinkets of exchange that we ourselves might produce from our own labor.
--be based first and foremost in small, community-based transactions centered on need: food, clothing, water, shelter, pleasure, health, transportation, education. This is not an argument against the flow of needed outside goods or people into the community; rather, it is a re-commitment to ourselves as able producers. This should help restrict the accumulation of too many things while at the same time to allow for a natural diversification of such needs into localized art, shelter styles, etc.—things all communities used to have and do.
This means that a basil economy will
--flourish to the degree that we produce things. We must begin to think of ourselves as producers once again, makers of things, rather than consumers. For the most part, what we make need not be “perfect,” only “good” and “committed.” (Perfect tends to marginalize interested parties and also to increase value for products that many cannot afford.) Currently, 70% of our GDP is based in consumption, which means that our current solutions to our economic moment lie in us purchasing more. This is a false answer and it makes us poorer socially and economically in hock for the one thing we cannot produce: money. When credit becomes our lifeblood, the answer is not to feed that beast by generating more money to buy things, but to have us scale down to need less money.
In other words, a basil economy will
--assume a scaling down of economic activity to something approaching a subsistence economy. As Americans, we have been perched at the top of the economic world order. As we emerge out of our current economic moment, this will no longer be the case. We should recognize that and pare down our outsized and destructive expectations.
It will mean a renewed focus on
--seasonal and cyclical growth and death rather than on the unnatural capitalist model of permanent accumulation and permanent growth. Cancers grow exponentially; economies, like our earth, should experience periods of growth and decay, of work and rest, of relative abundance and scarcity. By focusing on these sort of growths, by desiring them over continual 3, 4, 6, 8 percent returns, we will better prepare ourselves to be resilient and communally self-sufficient.
What I'm describing requires a lot more work from us, from you, from me. It will mean that we necessarily spend much less time watching television and playing on the computer. These contraptions let us off the hook, make us fat and lazy, and waste a lot of our time that could be better spent doing and making things, generating ideas and meeting people.
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