The Blind Salesman

Curiouser and curiouser. I go to the World Food Garden site and ask “Giving Away Vegetable gardens to poor people; building free vegetable gardens for poor people.” and find there is no category founded in that substance. Not even among the Garden Guerillas are people building free gardens for their neighbors. I am appalled at the depth of our collective selfishness. Then Scott McGuire’s colloquial rant righteously inquires after what is actually valued: the money, or the means to spend the money? The fate of the world rests with a human and its dibbler, a notion capitalized upon so relentlessly the talk becomes the fragrance of fertilizer, but provides not actual nutrient. He is also absolutely right: the very few of us who have a faint understanding of natural processes diminish beneath the digital tsunami, subsuming to a numbed slavery rather than accreting the pride of free people. The only way to make this not so is to consciously pick up the shovel, or wait until the reek of the dystopian collapse fades and the arduous struggle for survival is again resumed, though not so heavily numbered.
Its not that the compassionate phenomena hasn’t persisted since its inception in ‘84. People in Victoria, Olympia, Oakland, Flint, even WDC, are conducting life generating programs. What they do works. Thousands upon thousands of free vegetable gardens have been built in order to help lift the suffering of those among least able to help themselves. The begging question is why is this such rare strange ground, and why capital developments such as CSAs are seemingly touted as panacean. I’ll bet its that word “community”. A pleasant concept but hardly a reality. On the other hand, real work in the real world, real action taken upon accurate acceptance of that reality - that constitutes genuine progression. It also seems cautiously selfless service for those awake to the realities of co-evolution with the flora to help those numbed and dumbed so profoundly that they fail to see the credence of McGuire’s cogencies and hence pick up the shovel and get to work. Making money is important, and the community that is supported by the well being infused by building free vegetable gardens should in hand support that work. As Pres. Obama noticed, real change is generated from the bottom. For a recipe for Transcendental Squash, you can call.