Plant Your Seeds

It was around Christmas time in Nashville in the early 1990s. I was a pot scrubber in a meat-and-three restaurant and would spend much of my time at work thinking about that hot singer, Mariah Carey. I had taken a bus to a mall all the way out at the end of the line to get a poster of her for my room, and I'd hung a little picture clipped from a newspaper record-store ad of her wearing a Santa hat over my sinks. And now she's beaten Elvis for the most #1 hits by a solo artist. She did me proud.

Hardly a week goes by that some rich and famous person younger than me doesn't die. (I'm sixty-two.) I always go, "Whoa!", and think how glad I am that I didn't spend my whole life just working and saving for my old age. Financially secure but dead doesn't make it for me. It's said there are only two amounts of money a person can have: either none at all or not enough. (Just look at Victor Newman.) There are no school classes in joy, contentment, or peace of mind. Pity. Happy people don't need so much. Life is easier.

Why in the world does God's representative on Earth need so much security protection from mere mortals? Actually, I know and so do you. It's like why do they have to advertise for the psychics convention. Why do churches need lightning rods. Sorry, I try to only goof on all religions at once, as a whole, but this guy visiting now is in the news so much this week, and the outfits and pomp are so totally over the top, I just can't help it.

Tonight on the news there was also a story about the growing number of super-rich people and the long waits they're having to endure for fancy cars and yachts. Like one guy they figured makes as much a year as eighty-one thousand regular folks. A couple weeks ago I saw a show about thousands-a-night hotel suites and $220.oo SHOTS of whiskey and such. Two thoughts: as they no longer need workers and the middle class, those disenfranchised masses will get increasingly desperate, so the rich folks will become self-imposed prisoners if they want to survive. And two: even people with lots of zeros on their bank statements need air and water and a place to stand. I'd say it'd make a bit more sense to start glamorizing how little a person can get by on, how more evenly wealth can be spread, work toward things like birth control and creating jobs restoring forests and wetlands, encourage dancing and crafts, promote backyard vegetable gardens, use fast-growing hemp wherever possible for fiber to make paper, fabrics, and home construction products while a few trees grow back. Have contests to come up with new ways to help repair the planet. Only make products that are sturdy and have interchangeable parts. But all we hear about is getting the economy going again and bringing down the price of gas. Let's get back to doing the things that are causing all the problems, yeah! More profits for the geezers.

I heard somebody say on the radio today: "The jet stream is moving farther north because of climate change. Only about a mile and a quarter a year; eighteen inches a day. No problem for the squirrels, but rough on the oak trees." Ha-ha. And they're thinking maybe it's cell phones causing all the bees to disappear. (Can ya hear me now?) "Hey, shut up, we don't need farms. We've got grocery stores."

I spent twenty-two years hitchhiking up and down the West Coast, partying--1970 through 1992--and it was great. For occasional work as needed, I used to hang hand-written signs on bulletin boards seeking "informal live-in work". Once in a while when I could afford it, I'd run an ad in SF Weekly or the Bay Guardian free weekly newspapers. And I did okay. But now look at the possibilities with the Internet. Wowzers, limitless connection potential. For anything. And the exchange of ideas and happenings can happen across national borders and even oceans, instantly and free. (The scenes from the most recent crackdown in Tibet would never have gotten out to the world before.) Boggles the mind of this old road dog, let me tell ya. Us peons are no longer at the mercy of governments and their news organizations. We just might stand a chance. What do YOU think?