Posted on 01/14/2014 10:16:23 PM PST by dennisw
Hard physical work is still a requisite for a sound outlook on an ever more crazy world. I ride a bike; but such exercise is not quite the same, given that the achievement of doing 35 miles is therapeutic for the body and mind, but does not lead to a sense of accomplishment in the material sense — a 30-foot dead tree cut up, a shed rebuilt, a barn repainted. I never quite understood why all these joggers in Silicon Valley have immigrants from Latin America doing their landscaping.
Would not seven hours a week spent raking and pruning be as healthy as jogging in spandex — aside from the idea of autonomy that one receives by taking care of one’s own spread?
On the topic of keeping attuned with the physical world: if it does not rain (and the “rainy” season is about half over with nothing yet to show for it), the Bay Area and Los Angeles will see some strange things that even Apple, Google, and the new transgendered rest room law cannot fix.
We have had two-year droughts, but never in my lifetime three years of no rain or much snow — much less in a California now of 39 million people. I doubt we will hear much for a while about the past wisdom of emptying our reservoirs and letting the great rivers year-round flow to the Bay to restore mythical 19th-century salmon runs and to save the Delta three-inch bait fish. As long as it was a question of shutting down 250,000 irrigated acres in distant and dusty Mendota or Firebaugh, dumping fresh water in the sea was a good thing. When it now comes down to putting grey water or worse on the bougainvilleas in Menlo Park, or cutting back on that evening shower, I think even those of Silicon Valley will wonder, “What in the hell were we thinking?”
I do all the yard work on my three-acre home site and putter around the surrounding 40-acre vineyard. Mowing, chain-sawing, pruning, and hammering clear the head, and remind us that, even in the age of the knockout “game” and nightly TV ads for Trojan sex devices, we still live in a natural world. In the rural landscape, you are responsible for your own water. So you must know about what level resides the water table, and how deeply exactly your pump draws from, and the minutia of well depth, casing size, and type of pump. You know roughly how much sewage you’ve deposited in your cesspool and septic tank, and whether your propane tanks is half or a quarter full. There is no “they” who take care of such things, no department of this, or GS9 that to do it for you. Those who help you keep independent — the well drillers, pump mechanics, cesspool pumpers, asphalt layers, and assorted independent contractors — remind you that muscles and experience, not always degrees and techie know-how, are still important in extremis.
mark
It is largely because riding a bike in spandex is a self centered activity, and that is fine, just don’t impede traffic in your “smart shorts” but don’t kid yerself, you aint doing it for anyone but you.
Reagan stayed in shape by working on his ranch.
I can’t particularly say that yardwork (in typically 105-110 degree summertime Texas heat-index) offers much solace to get my mind off the vomitous depths of what America has succumbed to, both politically and culturally.
Contrarily, I do find my 20-mile-long bike rides, three times a week, during tolerable seasons, actually does relax me a fair bit. Along with getting back home from such intense physical jaunts, and then popping in a dvd of some old black-and-white western. That combination proves as generally effective a tonic possible for me.
Bingo!! It’s doing the mundane stuff that you feel has nothing to do with you, that’s hard, and then doing it day after day after day. It’s the mental component that can be the hardest of work.
Meh. Sounds like a city boy living on 3 acres and calls it “country.”
ride YOUR BIKE AROUND A LARGE OUTSIDE MALL WITH TUNEIN OR PANDORA PIPED INTO YOUR IPHONE .....LISTEN TO GREAT ENTERTAINING CURRENT CUTS BY BRIAN KILMEADE, HOWIE CARR AND OR ROGER HEDGECOCK ET AL...YOU CAN RACE THRU AN HOUR WITH GREAT EASE....AND YOU GET LOTS OF SCENIC ENTERTAINMENT TO BOOT....WORKS GREAT...A GREAT CALORIE MUNCHER...VERY PLEASANT...
Hanson's 3 residential acres are surrounded by a 40 acre working vineyard that grows grapes for raisins. He was born on the property, helped his dad maintain the property and work the vineyard.
He still lives there. And still works the vineyard. He has a farmer's respect for the land and the hard work to gain a living from it.
He may be an academic...but he's no "city boy".
He also mentions a 40 acre vinyard.
VDH brings it home.
It could be a lot of people are prisses who don’t like getting “dirty” - sweaty from exercise is okay, but no dirt, broken nails, callouses.
correct!!! VDH comes from a farming family and is still farming as best he can. He is retired now from the California university system where he taught for 30-40 years
IOW he comes from the land is not an urban dilettante
Those of us who are old enough to remember a world without TV dinners -
We grew most of our food from seed, in gardens we tilled, hoed, weeded, then picked & canned the harvest, and then laid in provisions for the winter.
(I can’t remember which annoyed me more, shelling peas, or the dad-gummed lima beans! The endless baskets, and the sore fingers! Must have been the lima beans!)
We traded with our neighbors (meat for milk, etc), and helped each other out when things got tough, or someone was hurt - all of that now only a memory in those of us now too old to explain it to our urban offspring.
We see our adult children ridiculing our warnings, and we see our grandchildren lolling on the couch in front of the TV, oblivious to the effort it takes to keep them living like mythical olympian gods and goddesses.
We are beyond worry for them now, for we fear they are doomed. The very idea of mundane work, so they can eat, be warm, or even have potable water completely escapes them. They “know” it is their birthright, and that government gives it to them, along with whatever else they fancy, like a cellphone.
My question, for those of you sharing my grief, who might offer some slim shred of hope - how do we go on seeing the oncoming disaster, when all around are pretending that the music is still playing, like on the Titanic?
Where can we find hope for their future?
All I can see ahead is desolation, a new dark age of barbarism. Please tell me that I am wrong, and that I have overlooked something when trying to discern the future.
Victor Davis Hansen has made this same exact point in many of his columns
Yep.
Working out side on your own spread does reap benefits. I am almost finished putting in 250 feet of no climb, red top, horse fencing with a 1x6 board on top in a cross fence project. Including cutting down and cutting up a large oak tree. All the holes were dug by hand with a post hole digger, 8 feet apart. I live down South so the ground is not frozen ever, but tree roots, rocks and clay do make it difficult at times.
I am pushing 70 so I could only work hard at it for 3 hours a day at first until my body told me to quit but now I can do twice that and feel a lot stronger stretching and nailing off the wire, cementing in the gate posts, etc, etc.
Next project is a pump house for the well and to clean all the water weeds off a small pond on the back 40. It is hard work for an old man but I enjoy it. And my dogs seem to enjoy watching me do it too.
Being outside working on a cool winter day with occasional gaggles of vocal Sandhill Cranes flying in from up North, watching the cows and their new younguns in the back pasture is a pleasure to savor, not work to avoid.
You should have clicked through and read the whole thing. I ran into one of those angry whiney dependents today, demanding that government do more to regulate the fast food industry because greedy corporations are poisoning the world with undisclosed trans-fats.
I thought he would choke to death when I pointed out that the free market already provided an app for that and that health conscious adults would probably have more success taking control of their lives instead of demanding the government control others.
ping
Disaster may be our only hope for a return to self reliance and true community.
In most cases, it's probably because they don't have TIME to spend hours doing landscaping. I have children and work 45-55 hours per week(as does my wife), and I sure as hell don't want to dedicate what spare time I DO have landscaping or mowing the yard. I'd rather pay someone else to do it.
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