ngo junk mail

in 2007 i had a need to belong and so i set about joining things like the bertrand russell society...the dada network...an unfortunate group of existentialist thinkers on yahoo...all kinds of stuff ( i was also new to the internet and was wild with abandon)...among other things i shipped thirty-five bucks off to amensty international...not a bad thing i suppose...a bit impulsive perhaps..but nothing ethically damning...then 2008 rolled around and the "recession" took its toll on my income and my attitude...changes had to be made and disgressional expenditures had to be prioritized...there was school...and through that i was hipped to the idea of micro lending by mik stokely in the anthro department( thanks mik!)...that wasn't going to be abandoned, economic stabillity ( not obscene wealth) fulfills a human need and a right in my book...neither was contributing to local food pantries...alas amensty found its way onto the expendable list and went by the wayside...doubly alas amnesty didn't agree and since my membership lapsed i have received monthly mailings of all sorts of stuff like address labels, pens,quarterly financial reports, and now christmas cards...all of this leads me to wonder exactly how much of my intiial membership fee amnesty has used up in trying to get me to fork over more lucre...postage, trinket importing, printing all the stuff they cram in there with the graft that is supposed to shame me into re-upping...surely they've used up that thirty-five bucks in three years and just who have they gotten out of camp x-ray or some cia balck prison since then? are they an ngo watchdog keeping tabs on human rights violations or an importer doing buisness? it has certainly sown doubts in m y mind about rejoining...and they aren't the only ones...credo wants me to express my support for progressive causes by buying a cell-phone plan...technologically advanced they use way more emails than mailings...but that means i get them weekly instead of monthly...i can't help but think that liberals have been infiltrated by bunko artists and low level capitalists...sure kiva asks for my support, but only when i make a loan or if they need a vote in some contest for corporate funding...they don't send me stuff to try to guilt me into making loans...it all very shady and it taints the issues ( in my opinion, mind you) with a seedy sort of capitalist manipulation...i could go on...doctors without borders isn't shy about asking for donations and neither are a lot of others...it is, perhaps, the carnival side-show barker facet of it that chills me...i will pick my own causes and i will back my beliefs with hard-earned cash given to people who use it to HELP others...not promote their own organization...it's my momey after all.

quarantined?

i have been seeing these green things on utility poles all over lake and porter counties as i've been out surveying the crops and photographing seed signs and i had been wondering what they were...they resemble baited traps we used one year to trap japanese beetles ( do not do this...the pheromones in the traps we put up attracted all the beetles in the surrounding area to our yard, overwhelming the traps and leaving us with the neighborhood's largest infestation ) and traps are what they are...seems gypsy moths are on the move in indiana this year...where exactly i cannot say beyond infering that lake and porter counties are involved due to the presence of the traps...the map on the dnr website ("use this site for current and correct information") only shows quarantined counties up to 2000, so we may be under a usda quarantine...among other things that means if you are moving from a quarantined area to one that is not you are required to have your household goods checked for gypsy moth eggs prior to moving...bear that in mind if you're planning an exodus form the rust-belt to sunnier economic climes ( wherever those may be)...introduced accidentally in the boston area in 1868 or 69, the moths have been moving westward since pigging out on oak leaves or almost anything elese that they can find...the migration seems to be spasmotic and pilot populations in newly colonized areas seem to die out suddenly...small mamals, birds, fungus, and a specialized virus all can do them in before they reach a threshold for successful establishment in any given area...despite this they are still moving westward as well as south...nothing to do with climate change apparently...just ignorance one hundred and forty-one or forty-two years ago.


and by the way, i did not disturb the trap...i only photographed it...i do not how many gypsy moths were harmed.

what kind of culture is industrial agriculture?

"Pioneer maintains the industry's largest winter seed production program with a capacity for 1.3 million units. With the recent addition of a fifth dryer our installation at Paine, Chile is the world's largest seed corn production plant."

"Incorporate superior and reliable sources of disease and insect resistance through intensive breeding and use of marker-assisted selection techniques."

"The unique proprietary genetics that make up Pioneer brand seed products are valuable assests of the company. Patenets and plant variety protection laws are tools to protecr germplasm and research knowledge in order to bring new and improved products to the marketplace that provide value to growers. For example, Pioneer wheat varieties introduced contain a genetic package that takes an average of twelve years and over a million dollars a year to develop."

"When a customer purchases a Pioneer wheat variety or trait having the protection of an issued patent, the purchaser is granted a limited license to ONLY PRODUCE A SINGLE CROP OF GRAIN OR FORAGE FOR FEEDING OR PROCESSING. The patent prohibits any unauthorized making, selling, or use of the pateneted variety. NO SEED CAN BE SAVED from this commercial crop and used for planting purposes. Persons willfully infringing on this patent protection are subject to multiple damages and costs."

from the pioneer website. the capitalized passages are theirs, not mine.

sounds like a globalitarian corporate culture to me. far removed form the yeoman farmer who won the war for independence ( americans do not have revolutions...not since hamilton and madison got hold of the government anyway ) "production plants" "proprietary genetics" "limited license"...those don't sound very agrarian to me...okay...there's been a vigorous trade in food as long as there has been agriculture...and generations of farmers have willfully interfered in the reproductive processes of plants and animals to encourage traits they found desirable...artificial selection is genetic engineering...but it took place in fields over generations of human and their domesticates, not in twelve years in a labratory...and there were exchanges of species and landraces of plants between farmers...if farmer brown grew wheat that made a superior flour you might like to buy some of his seed and grow some yourself, so there was some sort of "marketplace" for those genetic enhancements...but once you bought or bartered it, it was yours and you could keep part of the crop back to resow the next year or maybe cross with a somewhat hardier breeed you'd found without the local sheriff hauling you in front of the justice of the peace for doing so...if i go out to the field where i took that photo of that sign later this autumn and flich an ear or two of the corn there ( and let me assure the good people at pioneer that i have absolutely no intention of stealing their genetic secrets...the stuff is inedible and genetically modified corn is somewhat contrary to my evolving food philosophy) and plant it around like some sort of guerilla pirate of intellectual property i could be walloped with some doozies in the way of fines and arbitrary damages...just over some seeds..seed producers sound alot like pharmaceutical companies these days...and i wonder what happens if some of pioneers pollen blows across the road into farmer jones' field and infects his corn with pioneers genes..is farmer jones liable for the actions of the wind and the corn? i'll be he would be if it were detected...maybe pioneer should splice some gene in that makes their corn purple so they could tell more readily...whatever kind of culture agriculture has become it has mostly passed out of the hands of farmers and smallholders and into labs, boardrooms, and courtrooms...when, i wonder, will they start policing my gardens?

extractive agriculture

in the last garden blog i was remarking on the dearth of soybeans...well today i was driving around warming up my truck before taking it to be emissions inspected so i headed south-east into porter county between routes 130 and 30 and i found some...quite a few fields like the one in the bottom photo...so the traditional industrial agricultural crops are alive and well here in northwest indiana..i also found a bunch more corn and there really are feilds of alfalfa out there too...a pioneer variety by the look of the sign...that sign triggered a whole slew of memories from my childhood...when we'd go to visit my grandmother and my great aunts and uncles down in jasper county ( places like fair oaks...before the dairy, i never want to go to fair oaks again, it could not possibly be what it was when i was eight and i would absolutely hate to violate that memory...wolcott, parr, remington...my grandfather left the farm along with his brothers but my grandmother's kin stayed on the land) we'd go down route 231 through de motte and down through renesselaer ( where my granny lived on webster street) and all along the way by the cornfields would be little sign printed with an ear of corn, the name pioneer seed, and a lot number for the hybird seed in the field...today i saw a sign for the alfalfa, but nothing in the way of an explanation of what the corn or beans were...i only knew what they were because i rcognized them...so, have the seed giants like bayer and monsanto so restricted the genetic make of things like "roundup ready" or "liberty link" corn that there is no need to differentiate seedlots? does everyone have virtually genetically identical plants in thier fields? or is it so engineered with spliced genes that no-one wants us to know what's in those fields? just speculating here, but i wonder what the story is...more later...it's specualtion that won't go away.

my consumerism is dysfunctional

i went to the bookstore today...and i bought nothing...huh...the history and current events section looked like propaganda, not information...mass media bullshit from people with an agenda about how i should think..politicians and the yahoo punditry...you can forget about that..so i went to the gardening section and found absolutely nothing helpful in a quest to grow teosinte...i will have to continue researching on line and irritating helpful academics with endelss emails ( they can be a very patient group on the whole...get to know some...most likely you'll come out smarter)...my consumerist function is atrophied by the current economic slump, and i find i don't miss it...i've learned not to be impulsive...this is bad news for retailers...if i can get by on borrowed or copied materials and used books, i don't need them...if a bunch of people develop these skills it could crate a whole new economy based on use instead of growth...bad news for wall street and its greed mentality too...no more growth=no more finacial instrumments=no obscene wealth...a pipe dream? i don't think so...they are the ones in denial.

anyway on my way home i stopped off at deep river and took a photo from about the same place i took on on march twenty-sixth..almost three months makes quite a difference in appearance for the place...i like both photos...but i like one more...your guess...the cornfield is a reminder of industrial agriculture that treats nature as an extractive resource like the rest of industry does...on a finite planet it is a pattern of thought that's best unlearned a quickly as possible...it's summer now, but it won't last forever.

well...we know there was an election

there had to be because there is a run-off election later this month due to , of all things, a tie in the election for the buisness representative ( see what i mean about craft unions? not a steward or a griever, a business representative...not a worker's representative...just someone who conducts union buisness...i loathe john r. commons) in the indianapolis area..."it is very important for the union that your vote be cast." because one is an insider ( or rather the incumbant member of the ruling caste) and the other is not...i will haul my ass out to the hall that day and i will NOT take a dues receipt...i signed dues check-off, let them prove my dues are unpaid...i don't have to prove a goddamned thing...incidently this is the only election result form last saturday i do know...the rest is mystery...i have been to local 20's website and i have asked my union representation at the plant ( they don't know either...seemingly it's a secret...or a foregone conclusion) no-one knows or is willing to tell...maybe i'll find out on the twenty-sixth...perhaps i won't.

union democracy

i just got back from the union hall after voting in the election...it was a pretty standard sort of thing...i was approached by a number of people outside the poll who were campaigning for this candidate or that...a lot of people were running unopposed which sort of defeats the purpose of an election, but this one was really about one race for a local-wide post rather than the representative from the various areas ( the local covers a few states so it is divided into local areas each with their own union officials )...it boils down to a case of the incumbant versus the challenger...outsider versus insider ( except, of course, both candidiates are complete insiders...incumbancy is probaly more the isssue here and in 2010 incumbancy may be a really difficult onus to bear...seems you have to be strong to remain incumbant)...most likely the only people who would be significantly impacted by a change of regime would be the aforementioned union officials in the local areas...as a rank and file member and an industrial worker to boot i don't see this doing anything to change my status as a non-person, except when it comes to insurance co-pay or union dues...speaking of which...when i got in the hall and showed them my drivers license they asked for a dues receipt...i get those in the mail, and i do keep them...but when i joined this organization i signed a dues check-off agreement which allows my employer to deduct my union dues form my paycheck and remit them directly to the union...my dues are automatically paid...i paid them when i signed the agreement...if the union cannot get my employer to remit them that is their problem not mine...i signed the agreement, i am a member in good standing whether my employer pays up or not...this legal fact held no sway and i was denied a ballot untill the election officials called the main union office in indianapolis to verify my existence, even though the name and address on my license mathced their records and it's my fucking picture on the license..can you tell i'm a bit irked? something like being asked for a dues receipt at a union meeting...up yours pal...look at your records...anyway i got to vote after i gave the people in indianapolis my social secutity number...it was special...you could get the idea that i don't like unions much from reading all this, but that's not true...i don't like craft unions because they are utterly anachonistic and belong to the century before last...they are run like businesses and leadership has far more in common with management than they do with rank and file...they also have virtually no clue about the needs and intersts of industrial workers...rigidly hierarchical...almost oligarchical...they are something less than responsive to issues that do not directly involve the craft side...on the whole i think i'd rather be part of the steelworkers...or even the umw...they may be no less hierarchical, but everyone started out unskilled on the floor or in the pit...a bit more egalitarian in approach.