Michael, your writing (in and of itself and as a manifestation of your thinking) is excellent. From one aspirational dilettante to another who has such a clearly intellectual and creative interest in the human condition broadly, and trying to make sense of the little world we live in now, you are appreciated. Thank you for continuing to share your thoughts.
Titus looks like an interesting guy. I’ll check him out. ¶ Wife and I sold our suburban home in 1988 and bought an old dairy farm where we lived and “hobby farmed” — raising sheep, making hay, big veggie garden, for many years — while both working downtown (no kids). So I tried the rural peasant gig, but like the fortune cookie sez: “man who ride two horses, fall off". (NYS was not affordable in retirement. We owned our farm debt free, but couldn’t afford taxes, so sold it and came south.) We have a good friend here in Mexico who writes backyardnature.net . He has been a modern Thoreau for many decades, in many countries, with the tiniest carbon footprint of anybody I’ve ever met. (He has a master's in botany.) ~eric. MeridaGOround.com
Good writing, as usual. Thanks. I, too, love being an amateur (a concept that has roots in the Latin word for love, not evident in our neologism "newbie"). Rationality, and western civ are coming to a head. I'm deeply concerned. Two books are in my thought. ARMAGEDDON: What the Bible Really Says About the End, by Bart Ehrman, a professor of church history (perpetually on best seller lists). Conventional Christians believe in a cataclysmic end, and as Plato somewhere said, we will eventually see what we believe. Book #2: (for serious stoics) PHILOSOPHICAL RELIGIONS FROM PLATO TO SPINOZA: Reason, Religion, and Autonomy, by Carlos Fraenkel. (Pricey, but accessible, and valuable.)
In "my dictionary" a peasant is someone who can feed himself and his family out of his small and defensible plot (a yeoman, in ancient Greece). I can see from personal experience (ie: "failure") that this is mostly a forgotten art. Real farmers are those who can feed themselves and perhaps a hundred neighbors. Today, they mostly "farm the government" — but Washington needs to keep them viable, lest we all starve. Yet the average age of today's farmer is creeping up, and that number is growing white whiskers and getting bald. ~MeridaGOround.
Expectations of the World
Michael, your writing (in and of itself and as a manifestation of your thinking) is excellent. From one aspirational dilettante to another who has such a clearly intellectual and creative interest in the human condition broadly, and trying to make sense of the little world we live in now, you are appreciated. Thank you for continuing to share your thoughts.
Titus looks like an interesting guy. I’ll check him out. ¶ Wife and I sold our suburban home in 1988 and bought an old dairy farm where we lived and “hobby farmed” — raising sheep, making hay, big veggie garden, for many years — while both working downtown (no kids). So I tried the rural peasant gig, but like the fortune cookie sez: “man who ride two horses, fall off". (NYS was not affordable in retirement. We owned our farm debt free, but couldn’t afford taxes, so sold it and came south.) We have a good friend here in Mexico who writes backyardnature.net . He has been a modern Thoreau for many decades, in many countries, with the tiniest carbon footprint of anybody I’ve ever met. (He has a master's in botany.) ~eric. MeridaGOround.com
Good writing, as usual. Thanks. I, too, love being an amateur (a concept that has roots in the Latin word for love, not evident in our neologism "newbie"). Rationality, and western civ are coming to a head. I'm deeply concerned. Two books are in my thought. ARMAGEDDON: What the Bible Really Says About the End, by Bart Ehrman, a professor of church history (perpetually on best seller lists). Conventional Christians believe in a cataclysmic end, and as Plato somewhere said, we will eventually see what we believe. Book #2: (for serious stoics) PHILOSOPHICAL RELIGIONS FROM PLATO TO SPINOZA: Reason, Religion, and Autonomy, by Carlos Fraenkel. (Pricey, but accessible, and valuable.)
In "my dictionary" a peasant is someone who can feed himself and his family out of his small and defensible plot (a yeoman, in ancient Greece). I can see from personal experience (ie: "failure") that this is mostly a forgotten art. Real farmers are those who can feed themselves and perhaps a hundred neighbors. Today, they mostly "farm the government" — but Washington needs to keep them viable, lest we all starve. Yet the average age of today's farmer is creeping up, and that number is growing white whiskers and getting bald. ~MeridaGOround.