Author: Ben Hewitt

The storm was lesser than forecast. We got maybe three inches of snow, though by this morning the wind had deposited it into sharp-ridged drifts. I pushed through two of them on my way to the barn this morning, both knee-deep, the snow soft and yielding. It was zero, but the early light – thin, uncertain, sunless -made the air feel even colder, and by the time I returned to the house, my fingers stung. I shucked my gloves and held my hands over the hot iron of the cookstove, flipping them every dozen seconds or so until the cold was all burned out.

•    •    •

A few steps of the dance, performed just three or four days a month, enriched their lives greatly and took almost no effort. As here on earth, the people of this planet were not a single people but many peoples, and as time went on, each people developed its own approach to the dance. Some continued to dance just a few steps three or four days a month. Others found it made sense for them to have even more of their favorite foods, so they danced a few steps every second or third day. Still others saw no reason why they shouldn’t live mostly on their favorite foods, so they danced a few steps every single day. Things went on this way for tens of thousands of years among the people of this planet, who thought of themselves as living in the hands of the gods and leaving everything to them. For this reason, they called themselves Leavers. 

But one group of Leavers eventually said to themselves “Why should we just live partially on the foods we favor? All we have to do is devote a lot more time to dancing.” So this one particular group took to dancing several hours a day. Because they thought of themselves as taking their welfare into their own hands, we’ll call them the Takers. The results were spectacular. The Takers were inundated with their favorite foods. A manager class soon emerged to look after the accumulation and stores of surpluses -something that hand never been necessary when everyone was just dancing a few hours a week. The members of this manager class were far too busy to do any dancing themselves, and since their work was so critical, they soon came to be regarded as social and political leaders. But after a few years these leaders of the Takers began to notice that food production was dropping, and they went out to see what was going wrong. What they found was that the dancers were slacking off. They weren’t dancing several hours a day, they were dancing only an hour or two and sometimes not even that much. The leaders asked why. 

“What’s the point of all this dancing?” the dancers asked. “It isn’t necessary to dance seven or eight hours a day to get the food we need. There’s plenty of food even if we just dance an hour a day. We’re never hungry. So why shouldn’t we relax and take life easy, the way we used to?” 

The leaders saw things very differently, of course. If the dancers went back to living the way they used to, then the leaders would soon have to do the same, and that didn’t appeal to them at all. They considered and tried many different schemes to encourage or cajole or tempt or shame or force the dancers into dancing longer hours, but nothing worked until one of them came up with the idea of locking up the food.

From My Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn. I highly recommend it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Over the past two days we slaughtered and processed two of our three pigs, a task that to me is always more daunting in anticipation than action. We have now killed and processed enough pigs that the process is etched in our thoughts, emotions, and bodies. I know the particular anxiety I will feel in the moments before death. I know the certain fatigue of six straight hours spent cleaving the carcasses into chops and roasts and sausage trim. I know even the small sorrow of leaving one pig alive, and I wonder how that it is for her. She exhibits no distress, nor displays any change in routine that might be interpreted as such. But still. How can she not miss her mates, if only for the warmth of their bodies at night? Or perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps she’s glad for all the extra space.

I have written enough on this site already about killing animals for meat, so I will add only this: After so many years, it has gotten easier. Maybe I should not admit this, but it has. For better or worse, we have accepted and acclimated to our role in the conversion of others’ flesh into our own. It’s been a humbling process, and this humility feels right to us. There is peace in this humility. I cannot tell you exactly why, and I would never have anticipated such, but we have found it to be true.

On Sunday, after we’d finished dressing the hogs, I washed my hands at the kitchen sink. I’d nicked myself earlier in the day, and now I removed the bandage I’d applied to stem the cuts’ flow. As the water ran over my hands, I watched two distinct swirls form in the sink basin: One my own, the crimson-blood shade of a shallow extremity wound, and the other the russet-red of the pigs’ arterial reserves.

In seconds, drawn by the drainward slope, the two swirls became one. I turned up the water and the blood soon disappeared.

Not many people reading this blog know it, but a while back (like, two decades ago, which was probably when some of you still needed a reminder to pull down your pants before you peed and damn but if that ain’t humbling to an ole fart like myself) I was a pretty good competitive cyclist. I raced mountain bikes mostly, in the preferred format of the day, which generally involved two hour, mass start events. At the time, cross country mountain bike racing was hugely popular; it was on the verge of becoming an Olympic sport, and the number of people willing to drive multiple hours so they could saddle their bicycles and pay to ride in circles until they vomited was really something to behold.

I raced at the highest regional level, and while I didn’t win very many events, I was consistently toward the front. I stood on the podium fairly regularly, though most commonly on its bottom step. I think the biggest thing separating me from the absolute best guys was pretty simple: I didn’t care enough. It never really bothered me that I didn’t win very often. In fact, I was always sort of amazed that I did as well as I did, and I couldn’t fathom doing many of the things the guys who were beating me did. Fly to Arizona to train in February, for instance. Or shaving their legs. Eating rice cakes. Living in their parents’ basement. That sort of stuff.

Anyway, what I really loved about riding my bike competitively was that every so often, I’d have a transcendental performance. I mean, I’d seriously be crying on the bike, and not from pain or grief, but from the pure gratitude of being allowed a glimpse of what being human can feel like. Everything would click so perfectly that I almost couldn’t feel the effort being expended, it was as if the bike were racing itself and I was merely fortunate enough to be along for the ride. This didn’t happen often – maybe one out of every seven or eight races – but it happened often enough that I never forgot the feeling. I never thought I wouldn’t experience it again. I just had to keep looking for it.

What happened the other 85% of the time? Usually, it was sort of average. Not miserable, but certainly not transcendental. Just a skinny, lycra-clad dude huffing and puffing and sweating. And on occasion, it was truly miserable. Legs like lead balloons. Lungs burning. Mind fixated on counting down the interminable minutes until the finish line. Questioning everything: the hours wasted training, the self-loathing of knowing Penny was at home, mixing cement for the concrete piers of our original cabin, while I was doing… what, exactly? Riding my bike in circles like a circus monkey and furthermore, spending money we barely had for the privilege? I’d bring her flowers if I placed high enough, lay them right in her blistered hands.

I mention this because I received an email from one of my writing students; she’s struggling with her work.  I mean I know how I want to write, I just can’t seem to get this new way to come out on paper, if that makes any sense, she tells me. Oh, yeah, A, it makes sense. It makes a whole freakin’ lot of sense. It especially makes sense to me lately, ’cause truth is, I’ve been struggling, too. Like this woman, I’ve had the sense over the past couple of weeks that I know how I want to write, but I can’t quite get it to come out on paper. My suspicion is that most writers – even so-called “professional” writers – feel that way an awful lot of the time. They probably don’t want you to know that. We pros like to think there’s something sacred about our craft, that we’re the beneficiaries of a particular genius you poor commoners will never understand. Bullocks. 

Here’s what I think about writing. No, scratch that: Here’s what I think about life. And bike racing, for that matter, which was the whole point of my long-winded introduction. You gotta muddle your way through a lot of shit to get to the sweet spots. Actually, it’s even more than that: You can’t even find the sweet spots if you don’t muddle through the crap. If you don’t hurt a little, if you don’t drag your sorry sick ass outside to do chores on a four below morning, you’ll never fully appreciate those August mornings when you rise at 5 full of piss and vinegar and you’re on the land by 5:30, and the cows are right where they’re supposed to be, waiting for you to drop the fence and the grass is boot-top high and so green you think there should be another word for it. If you don’t stick out the long months of winter, the truck that won’t start despite three – three! – cycles of the glow plugs, the 4:30 darkness, that craving you have for just a glimpse of sun please, please, please but even the long term forecast is all clouds and cold, you’ll never fully appreciate that day in early March when it hits 47 and the sap is running something fierce and you’re down to a tee shirt and sunburned by noon.

To my student, and to anyone who struggles with their writing (and therefore, to myself), I say this: If you don’t write the sentences that, no matter how many times you rewrite and reorder and rework them, never seem to say what you want them to say, if you don’t do that over and over and over again…. well. You’ll never find the ones that write themselves, the ones that fall into place as if they already existed (and truth is, they probably did). You’ll never know how effortless it can be – not always, not often, certainly not as frequently as you’d like. But often enough to keep calling you forward. Often enough that you do what I’ve been doing for the past couple of weeks, lurching along, doing what needs to be done. It can be a little painful. If you’re offering your work for public appraisal, as I am, it can be a little embarrassing.

It can also be no other way.

I wrestled the snowplow onto the truck this morning; the wind was gusting fierce from the south, and I watched an empty five-gallon bucket skitter across the yard like a north country homestead tumbleweed. Five gallon buckets are unheralded champions of the rural life, the best damn use of plastic since the 45 rpm. Better yet, they lend a distinctly white trash charm to even the most bucolic homestead landscape, especially when they’re blown willy nilly across the yard by the encroaching cold front. I don’t know about you, but the older I get, the less patience I have with bucolic. I want to see some grit and gumption. I want to see some trash and tarnish. I want to see the exposed, flayed-open underbelly of it all. It’s so much more interesting, don’t you think?

That fuckin’ plow. It’s about 20 years old, one of the early versions of what Fisher calls “Minute Mount” and boy but wouldn’t I have loved to be a fly on the wall for the meeting from which that particular moniker emerged:

Marketing Chump: “Let’s see boys, what should we call this puppy?” 

Engineering Dude: “Well, other than the fact that it takes about 20 solid minutes of knuckle bashing, back-and-forthing, creative cursing, and tool hurling to mount the damn thing, we’ve got ourselves a real good product.”

MC: “Ok, then. We’ll call it Minute Mount.”

And the room dissolves into evil cackling. 

Still and all. Beats the shit out of a shovel, I know that much.

•     •    •

We’re into January proper, which is about the time I start eyeing the firewood and hay reserves with a calculating eye. You’d think after all these years I’d have it down cold, but there are always contingencies. For instance, this year we’re burning mostly what I like to call “grade B” firewood: I cut a patch of white birch pretty heavy last winter, as most of it was slowly rotting on the stem.

I like white birch. It’s good for an awful lot of things. The bark is amazing stuff, and the wood is nice for carving into things like bowls and Cree snow shovels and whatnot. But it’s only halfway decent firewood. That’s because it’s a bit shy in the BTU department and also because it holds a lot of moisture, thus necessitating a relatively longer drying period, which we never seem to manage. And even then, it’s prone to sputtering a bit. On the plus side, the papery, combustible nature of its bark is a thing of beauty. It’s like having built-in firestarter.

Anyway. As I get older, I’m becoming less of a firewood snob (actually, the older I get, the lower my overall standard of living seems to be sinking, which is perhaps a topic for another day). Twas a day I was strictly a hard maple and white ash sort of fellow, but nowadays I throw all sorts of lesser species into the mix. Hell, there’s even a few sticks of poplar in the woodshed this year, which is a new low for us, because if white birch is grade B, poplar failed out years ago and mostly spends his days hanging out on the street corner, selling dime bags of dirt weed.

We’re actually about halfway through our wood reserves, which means we’re well short of abiding by the old chestnut “half your wood and half your hay by Groundhog Day.” But that’s ok. We’re coming close to the return of Sol (please, please let this be true, ’cause it’s been some dreary the past couple months, let me tell you), and the south-facing nature of our house creates an interesting dynamic: We actually burn more firewood in November and December than we do in January and February. A lot more. It surprises me every year, which it shouldn’t, but that’s ok, because I like surprises, especially when the surprise is that we won’t have to spend the month of March scavenging firewood.

So: Today’s lessons.

1) Plastic buckets rock

2) Bucolic is boring

3) Minute Mount plows don’t. Mount in a minute, that is.

4) They still beat a shovel

5) Face your house South. Unless you live below the equator.

And finally, most importantly 6) Let yourself be surprised

The confluence of holiday socializing, firewood-gittin’, and a New Year’s virus finally caught up with me this morning, and I came to my desk thinking it Monday and therefore as good a day as any to tuck into the sundry projects begging attention. By the time I realized the start of the work week is still a full 24 hours hence, the snow that fell overnight had turned to rain, and this bleak fact, coupled with the congealed porridge of mucous rattling my every labored breath (hope you weren’t planning on oatmeal for breakfast!), cemented my decision to just stay put.

We launched the New Year with vigor, and this was particularly impressive, considering we stayed up ’til all hours – 10:30! – at a friends’ party. I felled and skidded what I’m currently estimating to be approximately six cords worth of hardwood logs, a calculation arrived at despite my long history of firewood-related optimism and the unflattering truth that year after year after year my initial estimates prove themselves ridiculously inflated. So, yeah, in truth, there’s probably about four cords of firewood at the landing. But that’s still four cords more than were there a few days ago.

While I sawed and skidded, the boys and Penny split and piled, and all in all it was a fine way to ring in the first two days of the New Year. For all the food we grow, and for the multitude of other ways in which we fill the cup of our needs from our own wellspring, putting up the fuel for a winter’s worth of fires – some for warming, some for cooking, all for pleasure – is the act that brings me the greatest sense of satisfaction and, in a way I fear I will struggle to explain, liberation.

As Andrea recently reminded me, it was Edward Abbey who wrote the cliffs notes guide to overthrowing the system: Brew your own beer; kick in your Tee Vee; kill your own beef; build your own cabin and piss off the front porch whenever you bloody well feel like it. Good stuff, Ed, and not a bit of it in the wrong, but for those of us in the north country, I hasten to add one more: Put up your own damn firewood.

•    •    •

The last post brought a few trapping related questions.

First, thanks to everyone who’s recommend it, but we’ve seen Happy People. In an actual theater, even! Got in line at noon for the 7:00 p.m. show. That was a long, lonely wait, let me tell you.

Second, there is very little chance of catching non-target animals in underwater sets, which is one of the reasons the boys are particularly keen on water trapping. Most crucially, there is essentially no chance of bagging someone’s pet.

Third, the boys trap primarily for meat and fur and are committed to utilizing the whole animal (beaver liver pate, anyone? No? How ’bout muskrat pot pie?). They do sell a small number of furs to local craftspeople, but they are not drawn to commodity fur selling.

Fourth, the conibear traps like the one pictured kill instantly.

Fifth (and even though no one asked about it), supporting the boys’ trapping exploits was initially difficult for Penny and me. It was only through significant amounts of research and examination of preconceived notions that we have, over time, become accepting and even appreciative of their passion.

The temperature fell hard overnight, dropping a good 20-degrees in the 8 (ok, 9) hours I spent holding down my pillow. With the cold front came snow and wind, and this morning we awoke to wraith-like spindrifts spiraling across the pasture. The blown air bit hard on my cheeks and tunneled through the gaps between sleeve and glove, jacket collar and hat. It stung, but the stinging felt like winter should feel, and the house was never more than 100 yards away, so I did chores with no particular urgency. The colder I got, the more I’d appreciate my return to the protective cocoon of our home, where I’d have the distinctly rural luxury of choosing between two wood stoves by which to warm myself. If the cookstove, I could lord over percolating coffee and the twin five-gallon pots of bone broth from the quartet of lambs we processed over the weekend. If the Elm, I could stand sock-footed on the fieldstone hearth, feel the irregularities of the coarse stone against my feet, gaze at the unadorned cement board heat shield behind it, and admonish myself (yet again) for its incompleteness, which in turn would only remind me of sundry other incomplete projects. And then the subsequent descent into the inarguable truth of my failings.

So I chose the cookstove, and it was the right choice.

 

 

Too warm this morning, 40-ish and spitting rain. The snow, which just yesterday was ideal for skiing, that elusive combination of glide and yield, has gone to mush underfoot. What more, it has been gray for more consecutive days than I have fingers to count, and while I suppose I could remove my socks to facilitate the math, I don’t like cold toes. So let’s just say we haven’t seen sun for at least 10 days, and let me keep my warm toots, ok?

This morning I noticed a spike in traffic to this site; ever curious, I followed the spike back to Heather’s page, where she’d linked to this page. I like Heather; she’s been incredibly supportive of my work, and furthermore wicked generous with her insight and experience. She strikes me as a thoughtful and gentle person, though of course I know her only at a distance, and this allows me the luxury of imagining her in a manner that’s entirely inconsistent with that impression. I’m thinking pack of Pall Malls perched on the corner of a chipped formica counter, something raunchy on the juke (Skynyrd? No, wait, I got it: Skid Row!), post-breakfast Bloody Mary in hand… damn, I better stop, or she’s never gonna talk to me again.

Anyway, my only-partly-latent narcissism couldn’t keep me from reading the comments pertaining to her post, which included the following statement: I can’t help but feel a bit judged when I read Ben’s work. I might’ve passed it by, but it’s an issue that’s been on my mind; a while back, someone (can’t remember who, and I’m too lazy to go looking) commented on this page that what I write here sometimes makes them feel inadequate. 

I’m not sure exactly what to say about the sentiments expressed, except the only honest thing, which is that they make me feel pretty bad. I know that wasn’t the intent, but of course intent and outcome do not always align. I also know what it’s like to feel judged myself; if you have a spare, oh, 5 hours or so, scroll through the comments pertaining to my Outside article. There’s no shortage of judging going on over there. The obvious difference, though, is that I sort of ask for it. I mean, I put myself and my story and my views out there for the world to see and dissect and critique. Over the years, I have developed a fairly thick skin, though of course it’s not without its cracks. I don’t exist in some sort of evolved state of consciousness where nothing anyone says about me matters. Which is why I suppose the comments about my work making people feel judged or inadequate bother me in the first place.

Ok, I’m figuring out what to say. The first is this: If what you read here makes you feel lesser in any way, shape, or form, please don’t read it. I mean, I want you as a reader, don’t get me wrong. But not at the expense of your self-worth. Or at least your perception of your self-worth, which I suppose is pretty much the same thing. I realize this might sound sort of cold – if you don’t like it, don’t read it – but that’s not how I mean it. What I sincerely mean is that if my work does not hold some positive value for you, find someone’s work that does. There is so much great writing out there; there are so many interesting stories. But far as I’m concerned, none of them are worth feeling shitty over. Conversely, if what you read here somehow makes you feel superior to us, well, you might want to think about that, too. Because that’s its own form of self-deception, is it not?

Second. My intent is never to suggest that our way of life is the best, or that I’ve got it all figured out. We are constantly reevaluating, making changes, tweaking, thinking, talking. In my view, the moment you stop asking questions, not merely of others, but of yourself, is the moment self-confidence tilts toward arrogance. And maybe I am guilty of this at times. I hope not, but maybe so. I know I feel strongly about many aspects of our life, about many of the choices we have made. Truth is, you can’t make these choices and not feel strongly about them, because many of these choices are not widely supported in our culture. I would like to think that through my work, I do not offer answers, but rather encourage people to ask questions. The answers they come up with might be entirely different than the ones we come up with, and that is exactly as it should be. Why? Because they’re not us, that’s why!

Ok, one more thing, and then I’ll shut up. We do thing things we do, the things I write about, because they align with our version of a meaningful life. We do not grow most of our food to meet some arbitrary goal for how much of our food we can grow, or because we’re trying to uphold a moral code. We grow most of our own food because we like it. Because when we wake up in the morning, we get to wake up excited for what the day will bring (well, ok, maybe not today, what with the rain and all). Because we like the feeling of dirt under our fingernails. Because I like to sing stupid, made-up, ad-lib songs to the cows as I go about chores, about love and fur and hay and milk. (If I get $1000 in donations today, I’ll make a podcast of one of these songs. It’s like one of those NPR fund-raising challenges, except the reward is actually a punishment)

Someone once said something really smart to me, and I try not to forget it: I cannot control how people perceive my work and what they take from it. I think this is true, because of course my work is not entirely mine: It inevitably crashes against and into the experiences and perceptions of those who read it. This just now occurs to me, but it’s like the rain that’s falling this very minute. It’s mixing with the snow, it’s becoming something entirely different, one into the body of the other. And the outcome – the final result – is not mine to fully understand.

 

 

 

Yesterday I drove to Boston for an interview on WBUR and a reading at Brookline Booksmith. I do not as a rule mind these excursions; in some regards, I daresay I enjoy them, though there is always a certain amount of anxiety involved. For instance: I own exactly two sets of attire that might (might, I say!) be deemed appropriate for public appearances beyond the boundaries of my rusticated existence, and there is the lurking complication of getting from the bedroom, down the stairs, across the kitchen, over the porch, and into the car without malodorous or gelatinous (or worse yet, both) substances adhering to me. I’d give the boys a goodbye hug, but they are wearing the same outfits they wore the day before, and the day before that, and the… eh, you get the point. Truth is, even the car isn’t a safe haven, what with the sundry effects of the boys’ hunting and trapping exploits and the greasy layer of mudshitsnowmelt pooled atop the floor mats.

And then Boston, and 45 minutes of driving in confounding circles until finally I call my publicist (who lives and is based there) to talk me onto Commonwealth Ave. And then I go to park, only to remember that the door locks in our car do not. Lock, that is. Well, actually, they lock, it’s just the unlocking process that has become, shall we say, tenuous. So I can’t lock the car for fear I won’t be able to unlock it (and how convoluted a situation is that?), which only makes me more anxious until I suddenly realize (wave of sweet relief washing over me) it needn’t, since what on heaven’s earth could any nefarious Bostonian desire to liberate from our Subaru? A muskrat trap? A homemade axe sheath with the inconsistent stitching of my younger son’s hand? A dog-eared copy of the Vermont Atlas and Gazetteer? Ah, I know: The Complete Classic Rock Collection on CD, volume 5, which includes such gems as Foreigner’s Urgent and No More Mister Nice Guy by Alice Cooper his ownbadself. Hell, they can have it. (Though not volume 6, no way. Why? Because that one contains Blue Oyster Cult’s Don’t Fear the Reaper, that’s why) I am suddenly grateful to realize how little of what we own has value to anyone but us and I know there is an important lesson in that realization. Perhaps for another day.

In my mind’s eye, however bleary and half-lidded it might be, I like to see myself as one of those people who embodies the particular type of resourcefulness that allows him (me) to thrive in any environment. You know one of those people, right? Always cool and collected, always comfortable in their own skin, always sure of their place in this great and beautiful mess of a world. Not quite cocksure but close enough to it. Yeah, that’s how I like to think of myself. That’s the guy I want to be.

Of course, the reality is somewhat different, and the city always crumbles my façade, generally in as much time as it takes for me to become well and truly lost, turning down one-way streets in the two-way direction, shutting off the radio as if the absence of its chatter will somehow imbue me with directional super powers. I suppose that’s why I sometimes resort to haughtily poking fun at urbanity – it’s really just a reflection of my own insecurity, of the way all that concrete and steel and motion and noise and commotion exposes me as the rube I am. Not cool. Not collected. Not comfortable in my own skin. And sure and shootin’ not cocksure. Just a bewildered rural fool backing up traffic on Beacon Street, lost among the masses.

Yet there is something strangely beautiful in the chaos of the city. I see the bike commuters bundled against the cold, making their way through traffic as if impervious to its perils. It blows my mind, the speed and fearlessness of these cyclists. The fluidity. I am jealous. I want to grab a bike and do something improbable, like ride across the city in the middle of a November night, thumping my bared chest with a clenched fist and screaming into the frozen air. Alas, that would likely be the last anyone would ever hear from me.

And I see the noodle shops and the people on the trains and on the sidewalks and how in their own, quiet, unassuming way, everyone makes room for everyone else. You don’t need to do that where I come from, you know – there’s space for everyone to do their thing and no one has to make room because there’s all the friggin’ room in the world – and it occurs to me that it’s a skill worth having. Not merely making room, but navigating the chaos of humankind, pedaling with all your might to shoot the slim gaps between the hard edges of the things we’ve created.

 

 

This year, we experimented with giving the beets a bit more breathing room. It worked out real good. 

I bet I get more questions pertaining to kids and screens than anything else. It’s amazing what a stranglehold these devices have over children, probably because it’s amazing what stranglehold they have over parents. By-the-by, I’m clearly no exception, because as I’ve pointed out a time or two before, it’s not like I’m scratching these words on the fire-lit walls of my cave with a sharpened brontosaurus bone. On the other hand, relative to the screen-immersed extremes of contemporary American culture, we’re just a bit off the back. We don’t have a TV, although we do have a cell phone, one of those el cheapo prepaid jobs. Every time I need it (maybe once per month), I spend a frenzied 30 minutes or so trying to find the damn thing and then another dozen or so minutes trying to figure out how to retrieve the number, which is hidden deep in the bowels of its click-through menus. So. Computer. Cell phone. Not exactly luddites now, are we?

At the risk of upsetting some readers, I’m going to say what I really think: The immersion into modern digital technology is messing up our children. It’s messing up us. This does not mean there are not good things that come of these technologies; it only means that the damage wrought by these technologies outweighs their benefits. By how much? Hell, I don’t know, but I suspect by a whole awful lot. At least by a hanging half of milk-fed pork. Probably more.

I think things took a dramatic turn for the worse with the introduction of smartphones and tablets, because the introduction of such devices marked a turning point between the need to consciously choose to interact with these technologies and constant, almost ubiquitous presence of them. In many ways, they have become our culture’s default engagement point with the world around us. In our house, we make it as difficult as realistically possible to use the family computer: It’s stuck in the far corner of our living room, it’s generally powered down, and it always has a cloth draped over it, kind of like a diaper. There’s not even a chair next to it, so if you want to use the computer, you have to schlep a chair from the kitchen, remove the cloth, and wait for the damn thing to power up, at which point the brontosaurus bone/cave wall approach starts looking pretty good. Or hell, with all that trouble, why not just read a book or play guitar? Or, I don’t know, talk?

I don’t really know what to say to folks whose kids are already good and hooked on video games and smartphones. As I’ve mentioned before, we just didn’t go that route, in part because we are not of the ilk that deems these technologies essentially benign or even beneficial. You want to know what I really think? Ok, so that’s a rhetorical question, ’cause I’m going to tell you no matter what: I think these things are bad fucking news. I think they erode resourcefulness and discernment. I think they have become a delivery mechanism for the idea that our lives are incomplete, which is a very profitable idea. I think the over saturated experience they offer dulls the senses. I think if my kids were hooked on ’em, I’d do something really drastic, like put them all through a wood chipper or take the chainsaw to ’em. I think whatever short term ramifications I had to deal with on the back end of these actions would be preferable to the long term ramifications of allowing their continued use. I realize that’s easy for me to say, not having to deal with either. But still.

Sometimes people ask specifically what we’ve done to avoid the creep of these technologies and devices in our lives (again, being clear that we haven’t avoided it entirely). I’ve already mentioned one of those things – arranging our technology in a such a fashion that our use of it simply cannot be unconscious. This means no mobile devices beyond our barely-used cell phone. You want your kids to spend less time looking at screens? Then you better spend less time looking at screens. Ain’t no way ’round it. This is the hard truth that many parents seem unwilling to acknowledge, probably because they’re just as addicted as their kids.

At my reading last weekend, someone made a really salient point, which, in approximate summation, is this: Every minute we’re with our kids, we’re teaching them. We tend to think of teaching as proactive, as being about books and papers and talking. And sometimes, it is. But the truth is that often it is not, and I’m beginning to think that perhaps the most important things we teach our kids are done in silence.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The first cold morning. Not cool, cold. 23 degrees, wind gusting, ice on the cows’ water a half-inch thick. Long underwear. Gloves. The buttugly hat I got at the thrift store for a quarter. Penny tells me it’s not flattering and she’s right, but I wear it anyway. The sun came on me as I milked, first Pip, then Apple, and I squirted a little milk on the tips of my fingers to warm them. Web duck waited at my side for her morning ration and got it. The sound of her drinking: I love that sound.

Every once in a while, I find myself caught in old ways of thinking and I begrudge the milk she drinks, a cup a day or maybe a little more, 300 days each year. 300 cups. 75 gallons per year for five years now or maybe more.  All for a damn duck.

Actually, not true. I haven’t thought that way in years, and I don’t know why I said I have. I guess it’s more that I remember thinking that way, and this morning I remembered it and so gave her an extra slosh, a little stick of the knife, a flip of the bird (so to speak) to that old way of thinking. She probably won’t even drink it all. It’s probably out there right now, frozen solid. Tomorrow morning Penny will kick the icy chunk of it out onto the ground. An offering, then.

Sometimes I think about how people change. How I change. What are the levers? What are the reasons, the motivations? For instance, that thing about the milk, those 75 gallons year after year after year. How did I shift from begrudging the loss of that milk to understanding it’s not a loss at at? Shit, Web doesn’t need it. There’s plenty of food around this place. When did I make that shift? I don’t remember. I don’t think I even realized I’d made that shift until now.

I got an email from Andrea (actually, I got a bunch of emails from Andrea – and she from me – and that might be a topic for another day). You can’t convince people to change, she wrote. You can’t tell them what to do. It needs to come from within. 

I think I agree with her, because I can’t think of a single person who convinced me to change, at least not through the act of convincing me to change, which is probably an important distinction. You can’t tell people to change. Or I guess you can, but if you expect it to work, you’re deluding yourself.

But I also think something else: What’s within comes from what’s without (or is it with out?). It’s a reflection of what we see and hear and think, of the landscape we dress ourselves in, of the people we come to know and love (or conversely, to reject and dislike).   So what happened with the milk? I fed the damn duck for long enough that I came to like feeding the damn duck, the way she waits by my side until I’m finished milking. If I’m too slow for her liking, she might run her beak along my leg. Preening, almost.

Slowly, what was without came within and I wanted Web to have that milk.

So maybe I disagree with Andrea. Maybe you can convince people to change and maybe the way you do that is you offer them things – thoughts, art, ideas, emotions, memories, music, food, appreciation, affection, whatever you have to offer – and maybe eventually they take that within. Not because you tell them they should. Not because you say here’s this thing I have to offer you to help you change. Not because you’re even trying to change them (that would be crazy).

But because you’re not trying.

Because it just happens.