Smaller, Better, Wiser

I watched a News Hour broadcast the other night about some of the things American troops are doing in Afghanistan to help win the war for hearts and minds. And although I do think there is a military role beyond blowing things up (accidentally or not), I was a bit disturbed by the description of some of the aid work U. S. Forces are engaged in.

PBS's Margaret Warner has been reporting from Afghanistan all week, and I appreciate the perspective she's providing. But in her Reporter's Notebook piece for the segment on the Nebraska National Guard "Sodbusters" Agri-business Development initiative, she describes their work as follows:

This is the soft side, the warm face, of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan, an exercise in nation-building (not reconstruction but building anew) designed to help this agrarian society -- among the five poorest on the planet -- leapfrog into the 21st century. It's a tall order, in a country where the literacy rate hovers at about 25 percent. The gameplan is to help the Afghans develop the economic and social wherewithal to withstand the blandishments, ideology and threats of the Taliban and its array of insurgent allies.

For that, the Army and National Guard units have deployed ADTs and PRTs (provincial reconstruction teams), augmented by experts from the State Department and other agencies, to build bridges and roads and help the Afghans develop their skills at earning a living, governing and managing their own affairs.

This sounds well-intentioned and certainly indicates a more productive use of our soldiers. But it's also just too big.

Why are we talking about "leapfrogging" into the twenty-first century when these people have been denied, through both our efforts and those of the Russians, the gradual development of their own ways of life, and a more natural progress toward integration of tradition with new technologies? Why are we even talking "agri-business" here instead of sustainability?

In our own country the family farms that formed the backbone of the Republic are being driven out of existence by the Big Bidness Giant Farm Conglomerate types who worship at the altar of Monsanto and other chemical companies bent on genetic modification and patenting of seeds stolen from traditional farmers in other parts of the world. Why on earth would we want to subject Afghanistan to even more manipulation of their traditional ways of maintaining their land and their livestock than they've put up with since before the Soviet invasion?

For multiple generations, Afghan farming communities withstood drought and meteorological misadventure by using methods that worked for them. Part of what has made the Taliban successful in this region is that they don't threaten these ties to the past. (For a brief history of the bad policies--ours and those of the former Soviet Union--that led to this mess in the first place, see my post about Saving Ariana from a few weeks ago.) I had hoped that we had learned something from our mistakes, but it looks now as if good intentions are getting in the way of good sense. There are programs that show promise, but I can't see that trying to turn a neolithic economy into a post-nuclear agricultural machine overnight is going to win us any long-term allies.

Instead of building infrastructure these folks might not be able to maintain, encouraging wanton growth, and addicting farmers to chemical fertilizers and modern mega-farming techniques, we need to be starting small, and working within traditional parameters. "Infrastructure" should mean wells, low-tech sanitary systems, simple solar technologies (like solar ovens), reliable, renewable energy sources, and food-storage facilities--not fancy paved highways and bridges in seismically unstable areas.

Help these people do what they already know how to do, and protect the aid workers who are trying to build sustainable communities--rather than making them dependent on high-dollar foreign technologies grounded in foreign values. The wise path is not paved with concrete; it's worn by goats and sheep and herdsmen, and maintained by men, women, and children who have worked the land since long before our ancestors left the coasts of Europe have their way with this continent.

The last time I looked, we weren't doing such a great job in our own twenty-first century economy. Maybe we could learn something from the Afghanis.

Image credit: Northwestern Afghanistan, by Koldo Hormaza, via Wikimedia Commmons.

Skywatch Friday: The Full Worm Moon

I think I'm finally getting the hang of this Skywatch Friday thing. I'm not really one for joining in many of the games bloggers play, but I love the idea of this one; last week over 300 people posted pictures of the sky on their blogs, and some were quite lovely. One does get an idea of what skies are like all over the world once a week--and it's rather reassuring, for reasons I don't quite understand.

When I first found out about this through Arija's blog (from South Australia), Garden Delights, I posted clumsily, and thought I'd put an image and icon on the sidebar every week--over there by the astronomy and geology stuff. But the pictures there are tiny and can't be enlarged unless you link them to a larger image online, so I decided to go ahead and make this a once-a-week ritual, trying to be sure the photos (I take a lot of sky pictures) are reasonably topical, but when they're not, I'll post my favorites.

This week's is part of an ongoing project, and it's something of a miracle (in my sense of the word: a happy chance and confluence of possibilities). Since October of last year I've been trying to photograph each named full moon for a year. I was pretty sure it was going to end on Tuesday night, because skies in Dallas were completely clouded over and it had rained while I was teaching. I called Beloved Spouse from school and asked him if he could see the moon (we live about 30 miles north of Dallas). He said it was iffy, that the moon was peeking in and out of the clouds, but he would try. When I arrived home at around 10 pm, it was to some disappointment, because he hadn't been able to get the shot.

Just before I went to bed, however, I decided to take one last look. The clouds were moving pretty quickly, and some clear spots were on their way. I could tell where the moon was, so I grabbed the camera and stood out in the cold, waiting. As the moon appeared, I took a series of quick snaps (no tripod to keep things steady), and got a couple of decent ones--although this one seems best at the moment. A couple of the others have possibilities, but will need a little doctoring in PhotoShop, and I don't have time now--but this is the real deal, anyway. Unedited, pure, and spontaneous.

So happy Skywatch Friday, folks. There's a linked icon over on the side bar, and a copy of my previous week's offering. The Full Worm Moon*, by the way, is so-named, according to Spaceweather, because "It signals the coming of northern spring, a thawing of the soil, and the first stirrings of earthworms in long-dormant gardens. Step outside tonight and behold the wakening landscape. 'Worm moonlight' is prettier than it sounds." And indeed it is. Taking the photo gave me an opportunity to enjoy the drama associated with clouds and light in the night sky.

Just for the pure wonderfulness of it, here's a NASA photo of Discovery, waiting on the launchpad in the light of this same moon. The launch has been delayed until Sunday, but the picture was too good to resist.

*Some almanacs say the Worm moon comes in February, but Spaceweather's my bible in this regard, so I go by what they say.

Spring Is Icumen In

The weather gadget on my desktop tells me it's 67 degrees and cloudy. It's already the second day of that abomination we call "daylight savings time," but I'm still discombobulated. So, to cheer myself up I went out looking for signs of spring--especially since it's going to get chilly during the week and may ever freeze again by Friday. I still haven't read the paper this morning, because I was sidetracked by the new Smith and Hawken catalogue: garden porn. Anyway, spring seems to be springing. And how.

The last of the daffodils is hiding behind the remains of last year's sea oats (Chasmanthium latifolium, not the true variety, Uniola paniculata), which I need to pull out before they turn the entire property into amber waves of grain. The rest of the daffy-down-dillies are spent, as are the paperwhites that made it so pleasant to sit in the sunny garden a couple of weeks ago.

But the wisteria catkins are already beginning to bloom, so by the weekend the back fence should be awash with purple. I've let the stuff grow wild, primarily because our back fence looks like crap. A few years ago it was wonderful, because we had bought rolls of willow screen to hide the alley. But since then it's deteriorated and when people walk their dogs in said alley, our dogs go nuts and attack the fence, so it's shredded and rather ugly, and needs to be taken out. Spring break is coming up for Beloved Spouse, so that'll be his chore.

As if all the buds and blooms weren't enough, I'm being entertained by an adamant sparrow, determined to use a twig of dry sea oats for his nest. The twig probably weighs as much as he does, and messes with his aerodynamics, so he's not being very successful. A pair of starlings (one of whom appears in the picture at left) is also building a nest in one two emptied knots in the pecan tree outside my window. The squirrels are giving them fits about it; but every year the birds are at it again, despite the hole's accessibility to marauders and proximity to human activity.

The fig trees are beginning to produce leaves around their buds, promising a decent crop. Another chore for Beloved Spouse is to clear out the dead branches before the new growth is completely leafed out, so it will be easier to harvest the fruit before the mockingbirds snitch it all. I'd like to have enough figs for a confit this year, as well as for enjoying directly from the tree.

Pears and peaches are in bloom, and have been for nearly a week. Pear blossom petals are already starting to blow across the driveway, drifting in front of the window like snowflakes. Our Redbud (the image that opens the post was taken from below, looking into the cloudy sky), which is in decline, is nonetheless blooming and littering the front driveway with little pink splotches. Last year when this happened, the late, much lamented Biscuit rolled in the petals and covered himself with confetti. I wish I'd gotten a shot of that.

The muscarii, a small number of which I enherited from the old gal who used to own the house, have naturalized to such an extent that they nearly cover the front yard. But they're most plentiful on the north side of the house where they and the ajuga (one small bud is already out; see below) have taken over, and there's very little grass left.

That's fine with me, and when I'm able I'm going to liberate the irises next to fence in front of the kitchen window, and replant them in less structured places. Flagstones will be added for a path, and it should be rather pretty. Some unidentified bushes we transplanted there last year from outside the study's west window didn't make it, so they'll have to be composted. The scion of the original peach tree is finally blooming; it's a different variety from the one pictured above, and buds later. It bore a few peaches last year, so I'll take better care of it this year and maybe get some jam out of it.

The ilex variety (not sure which one, but could be Ilex vomitoria--lovely name--Yaupon holly, which seems to be The Holly of Choice in these parts) that grows tall and fat along the north and west walls of the house (and hides our bad paint from casual observers) is covered with new berry-growth. They'll eventually be big and bright red, and the birds feast on them all winter. I will have to cut some of it back again, but the great thing about this holly is that it provides privacy but lets light in because it stands away from the house, leaning outward a bit. I can walk behind it, and it doesn't block the morning sun, even though one can barely see the front windows hidden behind it.

In the front border, only a bit of salvia is blooming. A little clump of pinks (red ones) I stuffed under a huge coleus plant (long gone) in my big red ceramic pot on the front stoop last summer has come out of winter intact. Since I only have a month before I start the whole valve-replacement process, little will get done to spruce things up, so I'm enjoying what's here, now.

Which probably isn't a bad plan, really. All things considered.

Update, 10 March 2009: I should have added "Lhude sing Who Cooks For You?" to the title of the post, in keeping with the old English rhyme. The barred owls were out in force this morning, beginning a long competition for mates. Their calls are distinctive enough that I know there are at least two males, one who seems to have a frog in his throat. They were somewhere else in the neighborhood, but it's only a matter of time before their less melodic vocalizations start occurring right outside my window. Also, I added a picture of the starling outside his nest.