Spring \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Planting Moon<\/p>\n
Finally, my activities and the turning of the Great Wheel will synch up. \u00a0Gonna plant cold weather crops today. \u00a0The soil’s still cold though the air will warm this week, only to cool down again next. \u00a0It’s important to remember that our average last frost date is the beginning of the second week of May and we haven’t gotten there yet. \u00a0No transplants outside yet.<\/p>\n
Except. \u00a0The leek and onion I got in the mail Thursday and Friday.<\/p>\n
Kate and I will be a pair out there today, trying to figure out which of us should do what to lessen the likelihood of pain.<\/p>\n
As the planting has approached, I’ve pondered, as I have often, the fate of pioneers* who wrenched a back, had disc problems, sprained an ankle, broke an arm at the wrong time of year. \u00a0Not that there’s a right time of year, but some times are worse than others. \u00a0Planting and harvesting would be terrible times to have a significant physical impairment. \u00a0Can you imagine? \u00a0Your life and perhaps your family’s depends on planting this year’s crop.<\/p>\n
What is today a nuisance, a bother, something to wait out, could have been literally fatal, and not just for one. \u00a0I’m sure everybody pitched in, did what they could, but sexual dimorphism and physical development from child to adult would often mean some work simply couldn’t be done.<\/p>\n
A bleak prospect.<\/p>\n
I can load up on Ultram, lace up the backbrace and then, if necessary, go to the grocery store and buy my vegetables. \u00a0The options are better today.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
*And, yes, I recognize the irony between the pioneers and the Native Americans, the latter \u00a0having developed their styles of living off the land in accordance with the way the land provided, at least for the most part. \u00a0The pioneers, most of them anyhow, were usually poor folks hunting for a place to live and raise a family. \u00a0This phenomenon of the poor spreading out to the places of least convenience continues in our day.<\/p>\n
I no longer know how to easily understand the right and wrong of it all. \u00a0Yes, the Indian Wars were wrong. \u00a0Of course. \u00a0And the associated Indian schools and all of it. \u00a0Wrong.<\/p>\n
The pioneers, though? \u00a0They don’t seem wrong to me, perhaps not right in a larger, probably undiscernible sense (for them), but not wrong. \u00a0At least not most. \u00a0Most were Okies. \u00a0Cox’s army. \u00a0Peasant class folks hungering for a chance. \u00a0For them, I have a lot of empathy.<\/p>\n
The question today is not how to go back and redo the past. Rather, it is how to discern the lines that will allow us all to walk into the future together, as friends and allies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Spring \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Planting Moon Finally, my activities and the turning of the Great Wheel will synch up. \u00a0Gonna plant cold weather … Continue reading Pioneers<\/span>