• Common Ground •

Living through any event for the first time will always stand out in our memory. I had been insistsing that Joaquim coil the hose in the market overnight. He complied but didn't seem to really understand why this was something he had to do because in his experience here, since March[when I coiled and drained the hoses] he didn't need to do this. So I didn't make him put the hose away last night. This morning after our customary greeting, when I asked how he was he said not good. Then he went on to explain that he hadn't been able to do the morning chores because no water was running through the hose and lines to the field. He also told me that there was a thick crust of ice on the water tub for the cows. This is something he has never seen before. Keep in mind that Joaquim is 70 and from Brazil. I can only imagine what he'll think when he sees snow.

Imagine the reality of our parents' generation, and those who can still remember the great depression, WWII, and for those of us who grew up with the Korean War and Vietnam War and now for the second time the Iraq War. Our lives here have been unique in that this has been a very long period of time when there hasn't been a war on our home soil. It has been a generation, actually several [baby boomers, flower children,gen x, gen y and whatever today is being called] that haven't known widespread hunger and privation. In human history of thousands of years it is a very short period of time and while for us it is our lifetime so far, there is no guarantee that our reality will not change.

Who among us experienced the flu epidemic in the early 1900's? Is that why it is possible for the specter of such a pandemic to cause sufficient hysteria for us to be manipulated? That generation surely survived to tell us about it. Every ten years, discounting all of the other "predictable" causes of death, more Americans die in traffic accidents than all those who died in the US from that flu epidemic. US data on influenza deaths are a mess. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) acknowledges a difference between flu death and flu associated death yet uses the terms interchangeably; Reporting statistically that each year about 36,000 Americans die from flu and influenza/pneumonia. That translates into every 11 years more Americans die from the flu than those who died in the US during the influenza epidemic in 1914-1918.

To me it is critically important that as a community we reframe how we consider issues of health and life and death. Today, people are so media dependent that before an event can finish taking place, before it is understood or quantified and time allowed to lend perspective, it is broadcast around the world and captivates our imaginations and consumes our thoughts. This keeps us unsettled or distracted from resisting those ongoing events that erode our freedoms and quality of life. So much so that it is clear to me, being someone who has chosen to distance myself from the immediacy of todays information technology, that it has become very easy for us to succumb to mass manipulation. I am very aware that when a raw newsworthy event takes place you hear different information in the first few hours than what becomes the polished and spun 'party line'. Very often, critical bits of information that would help us decide for ourselves what the severity or potential impact of an event are are pared away to present a single viewpoint.

The enduring day to day existance upon which civilizations are built is what is critical to hold in focus because in that context we are less easily snookered. It is our lifetime that gives us perspective. I am not discounting death at all, but we need to work at life and need to project ourselves past the limits of our experience to avoid the snake oil salesmen who profit by our naievete. Every one of us living today is here because someone came from some other land. Those people all came to new experiences and many died in trying. WE are the children of the survivors for how ever many generations. What a tragedy it would be for us to foresake the potential of our future in preference or deference to living focused upon the most convenient and immediate distractions. I see that while folks shun new experiences due to complacency or fear of the untried, that very complacency and insecurity set the stage for us to be manipulated.

The old axiom is "nothing ventured, nothing gained"

Get up and do and be and live! And when the water freezes, don't be unsettled, learn from the experience and have a richer life.

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