Good Growth

Our local Whole Foods Market is decked out with pumpkins (some pretty big ones--that a person could sit on--for $50), and the seasonal squashes and other goodies are in, if not as plentiful as last year. The summer's heat blasted many local farms, with the result that Fall menus will likely feature veg from Mexico and Chile rather than from around here as many of us would like.

I had planned to have acorn squash at least, but that gave up the ghost long before Halloween decorations even made it into the stores. So I've got a few peppers coming in, and maybe some late eggplant, but aside from the herbs, that'll be it.

What this post is really about, though, is work. Real work: the stuff that needs to get done in order for people to survive. And the work of the season is harvesting. With the U. S. economy in the doldrums, and anti-immigrant fervor at a peak, one would think that farmers would have their pick (ahem) of potential hands to pull up the onions and pop the corn off the stalk.

Not according to this morning's New York Times, however--and this isn't the first I've heard of this problem. The upshot is that although America is a far fatter and less healthy nation than it should be, and even though the unemployment rate is embarrassingly high, farmers can't find nearly enough local workers to get the job done. I've heard more than one report of people signing on to harvest crops, and leaving after a few hours because they thought the work was just too hard.

I know I tend to romanticize farming; I even have the temerity to use the term "farm" metaphorically in the title of this blog. But farming lives somewhere at the center of our American identity (think of our pastoralist forefathers, amber waves of grain, and all that). Many of our ancestors farmed this land, or the land from whence they came. My own name even contains "farmer" in German (although we still haven't figured out how one could farm owls). But farming seems to have evolved into something different in recent decades.

The growth of agriculture has meant not an increase in the number of people who farm. Rather, it has morphed into fewer, larger farms owned by conglomerates. The idyllic-sounding "family farm" has become a memory to many, because small farms now find it so difficult to compete with Big Ag: Bigger machines, more oil (including fuel manufactured from corn, which--if I remember correctly--used to be a food crop), larger spreads of monocultures, genetically engineered species. Everything's designed to be more efficient and cheaper to produce, and then we hear complaints about how hard it is for mega-farms to make a profit. Heaven help the small farmer, unless she happens to live near a city where she can sell her fresh harvest to a restaurant or at a farmers' market.

I'm always amazed at the small-government advocates who don't seem to give a hoot about small anything else, because they'd rather buy their genetically-engineered corn at WalMart for pennies, rather than pay more for better food from more sustainable sources. Yes, I know the Large Marts all over the place are touting their local sources and organic produce--but all that's a piddle in a puddle when we look at the big picture.

The picture isn't pretty. After reading about farmers' trying to hire unemployed workers to fill in gaps from lower numbers of immigrant workers, and the unwillingness of the new hires to do the work after only a few hours on the job, I couldn't help but wonder about what we've become. Fat and lazy? Disconnected from the earth that sustains us? Softened by electronic toys and digital media that distort the very idea of farming ("Farmville," anyone)? Do any of these people really care about where our food comes from--what they put in their own bodies? It seems that most folks these days would rather work at Micky D for minimum wage than get out into the open air and get some exercise for the same amount of money per hour.

At my rapidly advancing age and stage of decripitude, I can't quite afford to give up my own job--despite the increasing stress afforded me and my colleagues as we watch beloved co-workers laid off, our own work-loads increase, and as we face the challenge of teaching students whose preparation levels seem to drop every quarter. But don't think for a minute that if the axe fell on me I wouldn't be looking for seasonal work in the field to supplement my meager retirement prospects. I'd certainly be a great deal healthier, sturdier, thinner, and freer of stress-induced belly fat than I am today.

But this is a philosophical as well as a practical concern. What have we become? Why is farm work, the foundation upon which civilization itself was built, held in esteem so low that so few people think it worth doing? When we talk about culture (that ineffable essence that describes what it means to be human) and cultivation (how we educate, nurture, and exercise our vast intellectual possibilities), we're using the language of farming. (Agriculture: ager = field, cultura = tending, tilling.) Even traditional American teaching cycles are arranged around the agricultural needs of our ancestors; kids get off in the summer because at one time they were needed in the fields. And shall I also mention all those seasonal festivals that arise at planting, tilling, and harvest times?

I'm going to be talking about the origins of agriculture in my first-level art history classes next week, because when we began to farm, we also began to create the monumental works that mark a culture and provide it with a physical identity. Turkey, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Bronze Age Greece--the makers of temples and tombs were all farmers first, and only later warriors. It was to help account for crops that writing was invented among some people. Some of the most enduring painted and sculpted images from antiquity depict farming or honor agricultural products and nurturing deities.

Lately I've also been thinking about growth. And although that's a post for another time, about the only really beneficial growth I can think of these days has to do with crops and kids. Most of the other senses of the word we're currently using are essentially unsustainable. But growing crops--and growing children both provide us with hopeful metaphors. It's not coincidental that some of the first formal schooling our offspring get is in kindergarten--a garden for children.

But schooling has little to do with gardens these days. Except in a few schools that actually cultivate garden classrooms (about which I've written elsewhere), we've taken our kids out of the fields and plopped them down into over-crowded classrooms, tempted them away from the out-of-doors with myriad electronic gizmos, and taught them to eat Happy Meals that will end up making them fat, unhealthy, and reluctant to do the real physical work it takes to harvest real food.

That Mad Farmer, Wendell Berry, has the right idea. We need to re-ground ourselves in the metaphors that arose from our nation when it was young. Before we became enamored of constant growth, upward mobility, and efficiency, we knew something about the cycles of things. I just hope we can remember them before it's too late.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.

--Wendell Berry
"Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front"
From The Country of Marriage, 1971

Image credit: Ansel Adams, Farm Workers and Mt. Williamson, 1943. This is a rather idyllic photo taken at the Manzanar "relocation" camp outside of Lone Pine, California during the second World War. Despite their forced internment at the camp, the incarcerated Japanese occupants contributed to the U. S. economy by farming. A woman I met in Philadelphia, who had been at Manzanar as a child, told me that farming helped the internees maintain their dignity because it was honorable work. The photo is available through Wikimedia Commons, from the Library of Congress collection of Adams's photos of Manzanar.

Aliens, Redux

Well, I was wrong. The Dallas Morning News did print my letter. Sort of.

Thus begins a small rant about the cavalier form of editing that seems to be going on these days: never mind the context, just print the sound bite or whatever fits the space.

The context here is a story the News ran about a woman who was seriously injured by a man whose failed suicide attempt (by jumping from a relatively low highway overpass) knocked her out and caused her car to veer into adjoining lanes and into the paths of oncoming cars. As a result, she has been unable to work at her job as a manicurist, and the story recounted her plight as a non-English speaking immigrant who depended on her co-workers as translators. These same co-workers had been collecting donations at the salon to help her through her ordeal. The story prompted one reader to send the following letter:

Ten years, no English?

Re: "His leap almost took her down – Stranger's suicide try leaves driver with injuries, nightmares," Sunday news story.

I sympathize with Lan Nguyen and her ordeal and understand how that would surely traumatize anyone.

What really got me fired up was not what happened to her, but the fact that she has lived in the United States for 10 years and still cannot speak English.

If you're going to live here and be a productive citizen, then have enough respect to learn the language spoken by the customers that provide your income.

Kelly Williamson, Kaufman

Well, this letter got me fired up, leading to my sending the News the following response (copied here from my last post):

In regard to letters from Kelly Williamson and other readers complaining about immigrants’ English language skills (or lack thereof), I have one question for these critics: when was the last time you tried to learn a complex language as an adult? It’s one thing if you’re a child, at peak language-acquisition age; it’s entirely another if you’re adult—especially if you don’t happen to live in a particularly supportive community. I have also noticed that folks who live around here are neither very good at understanding (nor very tolerant of) “foreign accents.” They even need subtitles on the news to understand interviews with non-native English speakers! I’ve even heard adult, native-born Texans complaining about “Yankee accents,” insisting that they can’t understand what’s being said.

As long as people can make themselves understood, and translators are willing to help them out, what’s the problem? It’s not as if immigrants don’t want to learn; but who would even attempt the long and difficult process if they knew they’d face impatience or even ridicule for their efforts?

And this is what the paper printed:

Patience for novices

Re: "Ten years, no English?" by Kelly Williamson, Wednesday Letters.

When was the last time you tried to learn a complex language as an adult? It's one thing if you're a child at peak language-acquisition age, but it's entirely another if you're an adult, especially if you don't happen to live in a particularly supportive community.

As long as people can make themselves understood, and translators are willing to help them out, what's the problem? It's not as if immigrants don't want to learn, but who would even attempt the long and difficult process if they knew they'd face impatience or even ridicule for their efforts?

Candace Uhlmeyer, McKinney

So, the letter ends up sounding like a rather personal attack on Mr./Ms. Williams, and much less like a general indictment of local attitudes and lack of tolerance for accents. There's no indication in the printed letter of how impatience and ridicule might be manifested, and makes me sound rather like one of those whiny liberals who don't like it when communities aren't "supportive."

For a while I thought I might fire a snippy note back to the editor, but finally decided to vent here, where I'm the only editor, and I get to decide what's said. And, in today's letters to the editor, I've found someone who agrees with me, so I'll let her have the last word:

What's important here?

Re: "Ten years, no English?" by Kelly Williamson, Wednesday Letters.

America is made up of immigrants. If Lan Nguyen's customers are happy, what difference does it make what language she speaks?

Luckily for Ms. Nguyen, most Americans are much more compassionate than those who would exploit a sad situation just to make a political point.

Carol Perkins, Dallas

But then, perhaps Ms. Perkins and I have been taken over by pod people . . .

Photo: Again, I'm including what I hope is fair use of an image from Wikipedia.

The Aliens are coming! The Aliens are coming!

The really funny thing about even thinking about blogging is that separate, seemingly unrelated events begin to connect unexpectedly. I have fallen into a pattern, since I began this thing in June, of writing once or twice a week, usually in response to events around me, and after I’ve processed them through my “utopia matrix.” I’ve tried to look at the news and contemporary culture within the framework of a William Morris-inspired world that applies his philosophical insights within my own fictional realm. And even though I haven’t published the book yet (I’m still trying to decide if I want to simply put it up online and see what happens), I nevertheless filter my responses to the news through a very particular perspective.

So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that two events from the last couple of days are linked here: a letter in the Dallas Morning News complaining that a Vietnamese woman who’d been here for ten years still didn’t speak English (the article that prompted this letter concerned the woman’s ordeal after a man tried to commit suicide by jumping off a local bypass, landing on her car, and injuring her severely). Aside from the lack of compassion implied in the letter, the underlying stimulus was the current national preoccupation with Aliens (of any stripe), and how to deal with them. I don’t want to get into the Great Immigration Debate here (mainly because my solution is essentially to let ‘em all in, and develop a Reliable Terrorist Detector), but having lived through the fifties, I’m acutely attuned to the relationship between current events and science fiction—Which, later on, will bring me to the second impetus for this post: the hullabaloo about Halo 3.

First, my response to the letter in the Dallas Morning News. Nothing I’ve ever sent to these people has ever been published, but here’s what I wrote:

In regard to letters from Kelly Williamson and other readers complaining about immigrants’ English language skills (or lack thereof), I have one question for these critics: when was the last time you tried to learn a complex language as an adult? It’s one thing if you’re a child, at peak language-acquisition age; it’s entirely another if you’re adult—especially if you don’t happen to live in a particularly supportive community. I have also noticed that folks who live around here are neither very good at understanding (nor very tolerant of) “foreign accents.” They even need subtitles on the news to understand interviews with non-native English speakers! I’ve even heard adult, native-born Texans complaining about “Yankee accents,” insisting that they can’t understand what’s being said.

As long as people can make themselves understood, and translators are willing to help them out, what’s the problem? It’s not as if immigrants don’t want to learn; but who would even attempt the long and difficult process if they knew they’d face impatience or even ridicule for their efforts?

I had originally written “aliens” (in quotation marks) instead of “immigrants” in the last paragraph, but decided that they’d edit me anyway, so went with the less suggestive term. But that’s what it’s really all about: aliens, and what to do about them, the Other, the NOT US. Towns around North Texas are busy enacting and enforcing laws that deny housing to “illegals” and deport anyone without “papers” for even the smallest infraction (like a parking ticket). Families are being split apart because some members are citizens and some not, and in some cases they’re being housed in prison-like facilities while somebody negotiates on their behalf. The underlying fear that governs all of these activities centers on the latest version of the Red Scare: illegal immigration and terrorism (and the apparently necessary connection between the two). I know that this issue is far more complex than my rather facile description implies, but I’m pretty sure that the similarities hold. We’re afraid of something that might happen, so we focus on eliminating (or at least containing) the “other” as the solution. Implicit in this preoccupation is the basic perception of the other as dangerous, threatening to our way of life, and/or destructive of our very values.

Yesterday, the debut of Halo 3 caused a minor earthquake at Best Buys throughout the country. Friends with children are still debating whether or not they should purchase it (that is, if they weren’t already camped out in line with their kids the night before), and the conversation has centered on its graphic violence and its “Mature” rating. There but for the age of my children go I (my son has probably already purchased his own copy and may even be playing it at work—he has that kind of a job). But this isn’t another rant about violence—it’s an observation about world view.

In Halo, the Covenant is out to destroy future Earth. The gamers are out to defeat them, all decked out as the Master Chief (probably the dumbest name in science fiction history), and they can’t do this through negotiation. They have to blow the crap out of the aliens and destroy their Weapons of Mass Destruction (the eponymous Halos) in order to Save Us from the Other. Or we could drop nukes on Nagasaki. Or invade Iraq and defeat our enemies with Shock and Awe. Or . . . well, you get the picture.

As I will continue to maintain throughout my literary life, science fiction is not about the future; it’s about us. Now. Today. It’s one of the metaphorical devices through which we work out possible futures, alternatives, worst- and best-case scenarios. Aliens, of course, are not always bad (Klatuu barada nikto!), and are sometimes the redeemers. But since it’s much more fun to blow things up, the good ones don’t get as much play. The most interesting take on the question in recent science fiction was Joss Whedon’s Serenity, in which the “aliens” are us—the result of bad judgment (and bad science) on the part of a repressive government.

I’m no longer arguing against graphic violence in video games (although I might someday argue against video games in general, just to keep my logic chops going), mainly because it’s a bit like banging my head against a game controller (I work in a design school that teaches people how to do this, after all). And the graphics in both Halo 3 and Bioshock are quite simply gorgeous. I just wish that we could get over our fear of others for long enough to stop crabbing about how they can’t speak English, and start wondering what we can do to make immigration unnecessary (by finding ways to help stabilize foreign economies and improve standards of living abroad, for example) or make what we do less offensive to the rest of the world (and less desirable for all the wrong reasons). I also want a beautiful video game with challenging play and sumptuous graphics that doesn’t involve explosions and blood and gore—but rather invention, creativity, intelligence, and the potential for good will. We’re very good at thinking up ways to kill people or simply exclude them—but we’re terrible at imagining what a better world would look like.

Photo: I snitched the poster from Wikipedia. Surely it's in the public domain by now.