Living

I read this morning that women are being blamed in some circles for this economic downturn. The thought goes women like the big house, they love to shop so it follows it is all their fault. Amazing to the point that I had to smile. Of course, they also shipped the manufacturing overseas, took all the steps necessary to open up the financial markets to greed and had the majority in the power structure to write the bills in congress and rule on them in the Superior Court. Amazingly, this fact plus the one that asked Conservatives in South Carolina if Hawaii is a state and 12% got the answer wrong. This is an issue about education. Our system is not teaching the ability to think or reason. Of course, Hawaii is not part of United States like women caused this recession!The news each day is a drip of more bad facts coming to light about the society that we have worked on, in the last fifty years.

I sat in the theater watching the new movie, JULIA AND JULIE and wondered my I love Paris so much. It is built to scale for humans I decided. The building are mainly four or five stories high not skycrapers, each neighborhood offers shops for all ones daily needs within walking distances and the choices are broad enough to make life interesting but not overwhelming. Yogurt is in small glass jars that are reused not large plastic tubes, crackers are in packages that will be used up before they are stale and cheese, oh cheese for the holiday, for the season and for the days of the year. Not our 5 lbs of the different three choices. They value conversations over long lunches, mother's staying home with young children and fathers spending Saturdays morning with children. Paris is the one place I could visit each year for a month.

The other thought I have had during the slow drip of bad fact daily is that for the last eight years I have been preparing for this moment. I had realized that all of this crazy world was on the way with President that lied, wars that were unpaid while tax breaks were given at the same time, a first in human history. Mortgage rates at one percent creating a housing boom and a market that moved with no relationship to production or earnings. I was building the largest vegetable garden of my life and putting in an orchard. All, at an age, my peers are talking slowing down, taking more prescriptions and fulling days with an assortment of time consuming activities.

I relate to Julia and her need to master something that gives meaning to her life. My garden, my yard producing my food and has been in the works for six years and it this is proving to have been worthy adventure. The figs are sweet, the blueberries are numerous and the tomatoes are hugh. My world is growing small but it is like Paris all within walking distance.