The Hero We Don’t Know

I saw something on my way to work this morning that I see every year in October. Mountains of pumpkins at roadsides and grocery store entrances. Nobody really eats them. We carve them up into ghoulish cartoon-like displays and they soon rot on our porches around the country. Smashing Pumpkins is also the name of a popular band, if not a familiar pastime to mischievous youths.

Pumpkins helped keep the first pilgrims alive.

Pumpkins are food.

Since the oil crisis in 1973, OPEC once again has been flexing its muscles by manipulating the price of oil. I note, that according to the United Nations food and agricultural statistics, all 12 OPEC nations are currently experiencing higher prices for food. Being that all of these nations are importers of food and most are unable to produce sufficient sustenance to their populations, the reflective economics from nations such as the U.S., which is a major exporter of food, makes one wonder why more pressure to lower the oil prices cannot be brought to bear on OPEC.

It seems “Satan America,” does more than contaminate the pristine Muslim mind with its entertainment and fashion industry.

We produce food, a very direct contributor to human life.

Of course, I read the politically correct explanations too from UN publications. Most of them recite poor growing conditions, global warming and the impact of expanding populations. There is very little I find that relates to the pressures of inflating oil prices on the price of food.

I suppose, that when a nation such as the United States, does such a fine job of surpassing itself year after year in food production, an illusion emerges, something to the effect that food merely bursts out of our croplands and into stores around the world somewhat like the color green comes with spring.

You will not find a more honest, hardworking, generous soul than the American farmer. Farmers grow food. You will not find a multinational consortium of farmers like OPEC, who are trying to overinflate the price of food. To be sure, every farmer likes to make a profit and won’t complain when he sells wheat or beef at a good price. But farmers are a private lot. No farmer I know of gets national recognition for producing 20 tons per acre of oats one year. No farmer I know of goes on a bus tour around the country showing films on modern agricultural technology. Maybe they should. None are the subject of morning talk shows.

A box of corn flakes or a medium rare steak go a long way in my life to making me happy.

Sure, farmers complain about the price of oil too, but about like I do, when the commercials are too long between my sitcoms. I’ve seen quite a few farmers growing up. I never met one I didn’t like. Farmers tend to be chap faced, squinty and missing a few digits. They are typically self reliant and resourceful. I never met a farmer that couldn’t replace his own starter or couldn’t find the right breaker in the milking parlor.

Farmers can build their own houses, raise their children, feed themselves, fix most critical things that break, tow your car out of the mud for free and put in a month of 16 hour days. I know several factories that employ farmers on the off seasons, all to their benefit. If you lack an understanding for what constitutes a true American, behold the farmer. During the depression, if a farmer couldn’t make ends meet on his land, he would do it in the factories.

The American farmer prays in the field, he prays at the table and he prays at his bedside, but he may not care for religion. He knows his God like his next door neighbor but doesn’t think about jihad. He may not like congress or the President, but he gives of his sons to fight in places he has not seen and he loses them about as frequently as he looses a crop to draught.

If you can’t farm, you don’t. National subsidies not withstanding, farmers create far more wealth than they take in. In the years ahead, I am convinced we are in for hard times. The entire world economy is rocking wildly near the precipice of economic collapse, but there is virtue still.

People like the American farmer don’t give up. They don’t stop. To them, virtue is a fine sunny day, the smell of wet dirt and a chance to work . . . one more day.

Reality 101

Gold has always held a certain allure. It’s natural beauty and permanent luster seems to exemplify what man seeks in life. But for all of its intrinsic qualities, if modern man had to choose between steel and gold, steel would be the right choice. The last time I went to the salvage yard, they would only pay three cents per pound for it. But, our automobiles, air conditioners, skyscrapers and ships all rely on steel to perform the roles in life we all count on.


Gold is such the pretty metal, heavy, and also a non oxidizing excellent conductor. Don’t get me wrong. I wouldn’t mind having a few tons of the stuff sitting in my home in small little ingots; it just seems to me that gold is valuable for a variety of other reasons.


Gold has always required an inordinate amount of labor to extract from our planet. Hence its value comes with the price of human effort. Gold mines today can run profitably off of a quarter ounce per ton ore. Currencies have been hung for generations on the gold standard. It has bolstered confidence in nations and is still redeemable almost everywhere. But our nation’s economy can’t go back to the gold standard. There is no longer enough gold left on this earth to represent all of mans useful activities. A man driving a cab and a gallon of gasoline also has tangible value.


So what is and is not tangible? That question is being revisited almost to exhaustion in the stock markets.


Again we are in trouble with our economy because a bubble has broken in Wall Street. The bubble is complex and delicate. Inflation is rapid, formed by a thin layer of liquid until instability on its surface is punctuated by disruption and a vanishing ephemeral burst as short as the blink of an eye.


The metaphor, though poetic, is not the actual thing however. The mortgage industry was inflated largely by exterior forces. When an applicant for a loan no longer has to present evidence of eligibility for the transaction at hand I think a serious situation ensues.


Honestly, I was not aware that such a thing was possible. Who would have known? I suppose those "no cash down" seminars were serious after all. I had to present check stubs, tax records and have a decent credit rating for my mortgage. I thought everyone did.



Nope, apparently not. If I was the correct ethnicity, underprivileged or had the right congressman in my district, I could get a loan on barely my signature. So, instead of letting the bubble burst and getting on with life, it seems so many of us are now confused about the value of our holdings and that values daily oscillate in the market like yo-yos on a string.


The economy loves us, it loves us not, it loves us, it loves us not . . . but that’s another metaphor. This bubble is so darn big it is taking weeks to pop. I’m as stymied as most folks are on how badly this will affect us. I for one don’t want someone telling me my dollar has sunk in value, and I don’t need my taxes raised. Either way, the burden hits us all.


To brighten your day, consider the proton. Fifteen Billion years and counting, we still haven’t seen one decay. Its mass remains constant to within 15 significant digits, and this only because of the known limits of observation. Along with gravity, electric charge and a host of other factors that make life possible, if we had to depend on the universe operating like the stock market, we couldn’t exist.


The weight of this silly idea must have caused God to pause. He would snicker for a brief blink in time and then he would say to himself . . . “Nope . . . I’ll create man instead.”