In the meantime, I’ll borrow the poem that Wes Jackson used to close his “The Next 49 Years” essay. It captures this moment in time perfectly – as Wes no doubt had in mind:
For the Children, by Gary Synder (from his collection Turtle Island):
The rising hills, the slopes,
of statistics
lie before us.
The steep climb
of everything, going up,
up, as we all
go down.
In the next century
or the one beyond that,
they say,
are valleys, pastures,
we can meet there in peace
if we make it.
To climb these coming crests
one word to you, to
you and your children:
stay together
learn the flowers
go light
Chapter 2
Anxious Days
"It just doesn’t seem like anything is cheap these days." – Faith Taylor, a personal trainer from Baltimore, quoted in a Washington Post story.
In the past month or so, the newspapers have been flooded, it seems, with uneasy headlines and opinions. Take, for example, a recent op-ed by conservative syndicated columnist Victor Hanson, published in the Albuquerque Journal, which captures well the degree to which the state-of-our-union at this moment in time has become unsettled.
He begins his column with a litany of bleak news:
• Oil has climbed over $100 a barrel;
• Gold surpassed $1000 an ounce;
• The dollar has slumped to a record low;
• Staples such as corn, soybeans, and wheat cost more today
than anytime in our history;
• Foreign creditors hold over $12 trillion in U.S. government
securities, a product of "staggering" trade deficits;
• The housing meltdown continues without an end-in-sight;
home prices continue to fall; foreclosures are at an all-time
high in modern memory; consumer savings is at an all-time
low; stocks have slumped; and a major investment house had
to be salvaged for a fraction of its former worth as a result of
all this chicanery;
• We are still fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq;
4000 servicemen and women have died in five years of
Copyright ©2008 Courtney White, A West That Works, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Reproduction is permitted, as long as credit is given to the author.
