buckets of sap and bittersweet fruits

So I'm reading a book by Gladys Dimock called A Home of Our Own, which tells the story of her young family after moving from Chicago to a remote farm in Vermont shortly after World War II. Abandoning their cramped basement flat with small windows looking up at the shuffling feet hurrying along the sidewalk for the freedom of the farm was not unlike emerging from a cocoon, though it was difficult for them to abandon the security of a reliable paycheck with a new baby. It is an inspiring story of the pursuit of a dream and a better life.

Incidentally, this reminds me of a fantastic visit my wife and I had just a half hour out of Quebec once in the far north of Vermont. It is really beautiful country out there, and the people are a real hardscrabble independent lot. Anyhow we stayed with the parents of a friend in a simple wood heated home with windows overlooking a classic view of the rural northeast that hasn't changed much since our founding fathers were still above ground. A night of cooking down a couple hundred gallons of maple sap to syrup over a large roaring woodstove in the sugar shack with large snow flakes gently falling outside was one to remember.

Back to our story though, I have been struck by the fact that the author begins telling her story some 90 odd years after the publishing of Henry David Thoreau's influential book telling the tale of his "experiment." The author doesn't mention this classic as an influence, but one can't help but use it as a reference point. What is striking is the thought of how much had changed within the span of a single lifetime since Thoreau left Walden Pond. This was an era of accelerated "progress" greater than any in all of human history. Four major wars of increasing barbarity and scope, the transcontinental railroad, the fulfillment of Manifest Destiny and dozens of stars added to the American flag, numerous world changing inventions such as the automobile, airplane, telephone, electricity, radio, television and the frisbee, as well as the onset of the Atomic Age, to name a few, would all have been vividly experienced by an individual born in 1854. We are still tasting both the bitter and sweet fruits of this flowering of creativity, which incidentally was marked in its earliest years by mankind's greatest works of literature and art. Well the extreme degree of change in daily life and the massive industrialization caused a longing in many individuals to get back to the land in the post WWII era that persists to this day, as well as in the head and heart of the one incessantly pounding on his keyboard now (as if 40 hours a week in front of a screen isn't enough!).

Children of this industrialized concrete jungle clearly have missed out on a great deal, and have become shallow, self absorbed, and soft to a great extent. It's really interesting to observe the busyness with which people move through life along with their ipods and cell phones completely oblivious to the world around them. It is a constant busyness with very little of anything of value ever really being accomplished. This week I saw a story about the debuting of Sony's Playstation 3 in Japan, and the tens of thousands jockeying to have the opportunity to waste their money before someone else beat them to it. Japan is one of those areas in the world that for literally thousands of years has been a very traditional and fiercely independent society, and it is incredible to see how this sort of frivolousness is westernizing their youth at record pace. Less than a generation of this style of westernization is causing a general unraveling that had been feared over 150 years ago when the first gun ships appeared near Tokyo to force trade. Their kids are becoming just like our kids, namely self absorbed punks. Don't misunderstand me as worshipping their society. It is just one of several places where even a young punk like myself can observe the change taking place even within my 3 decades.

Well, I never did get to wax poetically about the importance of both manual and mental labor, but I think you get the general idea. If you actually made it this far through my incessant rambling your persistence would produce greater dividends by diving into a truly great work: War and Peace by Tolstoy which was a part of that flowering I spoke of.