April 21, 2008 7:19 AM

Celebrations

Special thanks to all those who danced the night away Saturday night in celebration of two farm anniversaries. It was a LOT of fun. I think, marginally, (dance challenged person that I am) I even have some slightly better sense for how to swing dance now. I believe my son, Samuel, danced nearly every number.

Special thanks to Bill Blanchard and crew, and the Riley's Farm staff who joined in the celebration as well.

Radical Notions

I have used this term before, but I sometimes encounter, at least figuratively, what I call "The Cuff Link Set." These are folks who give some grudging respect to the past, but really have no use for it for longer than a few minutes. These folks didn't invent electric light, the internal combustion engine, or central heating, but they act as though creature comforts and cable television are a cultural sign of enlightenment. In point of fact, they are too conventional to ponder the status quo at all, so they aren't likely to been plucky enough to invent these comforts. They are more likely to just take pride in being exactly like all the other goats. If they were baby chicks, they would be the sort that would happily peck to death the anomalous sibling.

On occasion, for example, our large family has been the subject of wry jokes by people who make spry references to the modern invention of birth control. I don't blink or give this kind of idiocy any quarter. I just say, "yes, well, I'm very intelligent, and so is my wife, and so we are doing what we can to save western civilization. What are you doing?"

I know this sounds insufferable, and radical, but I really am only articulating a notion that has solid roots in any study of history and culture that pre-dates, say, 1968. If you ask the average young married couple today if they are planning on having children, they will likely say, "we're waiting a few years." Families are planned, arranged, and entered into Excel spreadsheets. Most commonly, they are sensibly small. Warren Buffet and the zero population crowd would be proud--and so would all the other goats.

A more draconian version of this "sensible family size" agenda has been going on in China for the last fifty years, complete with forced abortion, parental licensing, and female infanticide. This experiment in social engineering and re-arranging the group-think assumptions about family size has created a large, shiftless, angry population of young men who have no mates.

The correct-think contemporary person is almost guaranteed to cluck, at this point,"but, heah, man don't they have, like, a billion mouths to feed over there?"

It represents a kind of spiritual and intellectual impoverishment to think that the arrival of a child is more of a liability than it is an asset, and I don't care how many of the cuff-link set think otherwise.

Sometimes the radical notion is the truthful one.

 

More of the Farm Journal -- April 19, 2008