1. Wage stagnation

Wages for middle class men have decreased 28% since 1969 while our productivity has doubled. We’re working more for less money. 

2. The couples who should have babies aren’t. The couples who shouldn’t have babies are having a lot. 

(Presumably because to maintain a middle class existence, both people have to work and thus don’t have the time or money for children.)

Click here for the article

3. Money has become an abstract concept, with power behind the concept being held in the hands of the elite.

Derivatives, short sales, toxic assets, sovereign debt, bailouts: so much of the money in the developed world is held in mega-banks, investment funds, and 401k’s. Money, as a concept, has become largely abstract and electronic. As anyone who’s taken a high-level math class knows, when math becomes highly abstract, you can do some crazy things with it. That’s what banks, fund managers, and traders have done. They’ve created impossibly complex investments that are really nothing more than a house of cards. Governments have borrowed shocking amounts of money with the foolish expectation that the good times will never end. The result: a huge gap between the rich and poor, and a debt crisis that threatens to swallow a whole continent.

4. Our government is dysfunctional

81 % of Americans agree.   Enough said.

5. Our kids’ reality centers around electronics

When kids spend 7.5 hours a day in front electronic devices, (presumably as a means of escapism) what kind of adults and citizens are we creating?

While these are all interesting articles, the real purpose of this post in not to bemoan the state of society. On the contrary, it calls to mind some questions I’ve had for a long time:  If we seek to change our society or culture, do we work within the existing system, or do we try to start over? Is our society, economics, and culture so entrenched that we must re-imagine our society from the ground up, instead of trying to change what we already have? 

More and more, I’m beginning to think that at some point, we’re just going to need to begin again….

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been starting my classes out with a poem taken from the Poetry 180 site. It’s been a good way to get students in the right mindset, and it requires that I start reading poetry on a regular basis.

It’s funny the way that writing reveals itself to you. Over the course of teaching and exploring a poem with five different classes over two day span, the poem slowly begins to reveal itself; the fifth time I discuss the poem with the class, it is an entirely different beast than when I started.

I’m constantly  being re-reminded of the rewards of being is a state of patient expectation. The last few weeks I’ve been spending quite a bit of time hunting. Perched in a tree or sitting on top of a hill, I wait in silent hope. I may see moose, I may not, but in that state of intense listening, watching, and anticipation, even nature reveals itself in a rare way. Watching a mouse loudly busy himself near my feet, observing a raven circling the clouded sky, or studying the intricacy of the tundra beneath me: these are the ways nature reveals itself to those who sit in silence and expectation.

In a society that values getting as much done as we possible can, and where we intentionally set a break-neck pace for our day, it’s no wonder so many of us feel disconnected, discontent, and  stressed. There is simply no room to practice silent expectation:  waiting for a poem, the world, or God himself to be revealed to us in due time.

Fall is in the air, the leaves are quickly turning colors, and we’ll have the first frost in the next few weeks.

Once again, I wasn’t able to give my veggie garden the attention it deserved. (My garden is at my dad’s house, a half-hour drive away). All that said, most of my crops grew successfully. Below are a few of my notes on the lessons I learned this year:

• Onions: This year, instead of buying onion starts through the mail, I started my onions in seeds in February. For whatever reason, this was a far better way to go. I think the onion starts one gets through the mail (which have entered dormancy) take a while to get going. This doesn’t allow enough time to mature. This year, I started the onions in seed-starting flats and then transplanted them into 2′” cell packs. I grew “Gunnison “variety onions from Johnnys seeds. They’re a storage-type onion and we should still be eating them in February.

• Winter squash: This year I tried to grow acorn squash . It was a gamble here in Alaska. The plant that I put under a plastic hoop created several squash,whereas the plants that were on raised mounds did not produce any fruit (more on that later). I used the “Jet” variety.
• Sweet Corn: I finally figured out how to successfully grow sweet corn!  I start it indoors at the beginning of May and transplant it under a plastic hoop, removing the hoop when the corn gets too tall. Once the ears form, I wait until the last minute to harvest it. (It takes a long time for the ears to mature in our cool weather.) This year, I used a variety called “Spring Treat”. It made much larger ears than the “Yukon Chief ” variety that was developed in Alaska.

• Broccoli: I planted way too much broccoli this year and enjoyed a lot of it over the last couple of months. Big heads and lots of side-shoots this summer.
• Cabbage: The cabbage did ok this summer. I grew several different varieties, including storage cabbage, “giant cabbage” (OS Cross), and red cabbage. We had a wet fall, and the slugs went crazy on the cabbage. I harvested the gaint cabbage before the slugs affected them, and the storage cabbages tend to not get terribly damaged. In terms of storage cabbage, I may have planted them too closely together. I’ve used “Storage #4″ variety for the last several years. They store very well, but they mature late and I’m not sure if they’re going to form good heads before the frost.
• Squash and Pumpkins: I tried squash, zucchini, and pumpkins again this year, but I placed them in a different spot. I tilled a new area of the yard and mounded the soil and covered the mounds with clear plastic. Unfortunately, I don’t think the plants got nearly enough water during the early part of the summer. None of the squash, zucchini, or pumpkins matured enough this year. They definitely need to be grown under plastic hoops in a warm location.
• Carrots: I started the carrots about a month late due to a failed planting idea. However, they grew fast and we’ll have plenty of carrots this year. I’m going to leave them in the ground for a lot longer this year — until we get a few frosts.
• Lettuce and Kale: The lettuce and kale did well this year. I tried another “baby salad mix”, but it bolted very quickly. I hardly got any cuttings out of it. The romaine and kale did very well; the only problem is that the romaine is not ready until mid-July, so we were a little short on salad greens for the first part of the summer.
• Gooseberries: My dad has a couple of healthy gooseberry plants that produce red gooseberries. The taste is exquisite, and they grow to be almost the size of grapes. I easily picked three pounds off of the bushes, and will be trying a 1 gallon batch of gooseberry mead soon! (I’ll let you know how it turns out!)

I posted a quick tutorial on how to make your own sauerkraut. Enjoy!