Whose in charge of your yard? (No, it isn't a trick question.)
Taking care of the yard, the garden, the shrubs and trees, can be a lot of work. But we do it anyway. We do it because we want to take charge of an area in our lives that won't do as well without our personal attention. We want to produce certain results. I'm speaking very broadly, of course, to cover a whole wide range of plant care.
I've spent up to two years on some yards, simply cleaning up the place, ridding the land of old burn piles, junk piles, jungles of weeds and poison ivy, thickets of wild trees and shrubs, slowly bringing a lawn back to life, tidying the landscape. And I never hesitate to jump right in and do it all over again someplace else. There is pleasure in making things better.
The United States is not unique in having people who like to create something orderly and beautiful out of chaos. In some ways, we've done that with our collective lives -- making a new nation out of what was once a kind of bondage, as we saw it back then. We wanted the chance to make our own way, to build our own land, our own culture. And we got that chance when we won our independence.
But human nature has a way of slipping back into easy bondage -- to all sorts of things, and to all sorts of people. If we think we can get by a little easier, we will too often allow others to have more and more power over us, until we are once again in the yoke. We need to be alert right now, I think, and to be making wise choices. We once got rid of a king because we resented the unfair tax loads inflicted on us. But now we're paying out huge sums of money just to keep the lights on. Where is our cry for freedom today?
Whose in charge of your life?
What do you think? Are the people of America still independence-minded? I mean, really?
Here in America we have a reputation for holding the idea of independence pretty high. But we need to be careful not to give too much power to corporations that love to keep a hold on our lives.
Think about it. There are the credit agencies, such as banks, credit card issuers, etc. that can end up with a lot of power over a person, or even over an entire family. There are the advertisers who work very hard to persuade us that we need to be thinking about this, buying that, and so on. And along those same lines, there are the media people who very much want to sway folks as to what we should think and feel about various issues.
But my main thought right now is the power companies themselves. The utility companies and oil companies. We tend to gripe about these guys but then we do very little to shake off the hold they can have over our entire household.
When I see the grip that electric companies and gas companies have, for example, I wonder just how much we really cherish our freedom in this country. It's not like we have no alternatives.
Alternative power is here. Some of our neighbors are using solar, wind power, various geo-thermal power, and so on to either supplement or supply their household power. The technology is here. It's working. But only a relatively small number of people are going for it.
It's possible to heat your home all winter by using passive solar, wind powered generators, and solar panels. Of course, the other big alternative is also in place and being used by a larger number of people: wood heat.
Only when enough people are switching from total dependence on the electric grid and/or gas lines to private power will we begin to see a real return to independence-minded America.
Griping about poor leadership, griping about high prices, griping about the economy -- none of this gets anything accomplished. Personal freedom & independence never comes without a struggle. The "fight" has to be inside of us before we will emerge as a free people. We can see this when we look at nations such as Iraq. Why can't we see it in ourselves?
Real freedom cannot be given to us by other people. Politicians will never be able to do it for us. It must be earned, forged, built with our own hands. That's demonstrated in the history of our own nation. It's just as true today as it ever was.
Anyway, just thinking about these things.
Jim
Here's a partial list of alternative energy information sources (there are, of course, many, many more)