The Same Thing, Only Different

Farming in Michigan has been going on since the great White Pine forests were clear cut in the 1800's.  Within a 10 mile radius of my home it is possible to travel back in time and experience this time honored profession of tilling the soil in many of its incarnations. Today the rigs can isolate the farmer in an air-conditioned glass bubble with all the amenities of a luxury sedan protecting him from from the harsh chemicals, dust, and the blazing sun.

It wasn't so long ago a man earned his red neck by sweating the day away under the blue skies breathing in the dusty earth, diesel and smell of manure. A farmer had to be a mechanic, a carpenter, a horticulturist, a veterinarian, a meteorologist, and an optimist in order to succeed.

Our connection to the earth seems tenuous in these days of virtual reality. We can, if we choose to, live in a glass and plaster sanctuary, the air never to hot and never to cold, our food harvested in brightly colored boxes with "nature" being the least important element in the mix. We have won a costly battle with the elements that for millennia blew through every crack and worked us from "sun up 'till sundown" with the gritty business of survival. Our clever minds have dreamt into being, a divine isolation, to be in the world but not of the world. What on God's green Earth were we thinking?


             "The human race's prospects of survival were considerably better when we were defenceless
                against tigers than they are today when we have become defenceless against ourselves."
                                                                                              Arnold Toynbee
                                                                                                (1889-1975)