The End, My Friends -
I heard from my dad today. It seems like now is a time for homecomings everywhere. Now is a time for a lot of things, I guess.
This morning Lauren woke me up early, and though I still don't have a ton of energy she egged me out onto the roof over our porch. The sun was coming up. The street was stirring with people and pets. Wrapped up in her grandma's old quilt, we sat and watched the sunrise and watched our friends and neighbors wake up, waving to us as they walked or biked to class, or started shoveling their walkways from the light dusting of snow that fell last night. We waved to Andy starting up the cooking fire. He asked if we wanted anything, and threw some extra oatmeal into his pot for us. We listened to the sounds of people living in a new way, or is it an old way? Sometimes it strikes me as really medieval, our walled village with its own livestock and garden plots, cooking with fire and reading by candlelight after dark. But at the same time, it's not.
The way I see it, the basis of society is agriculture. Lucky for Michigan, we have plenty capacity for that. But Detroit, the city that Lauren loves so much, is built on obsolete technology now. I dread what is going to happen to the state as a whole because of it; although oil is now available, it is absurdly expensive. The Big 3 were tanking before the crisis. Now they're in shambles.
But we can and will start again. Some of the farmers we've been working with have announced that they're going to band together to start up the Ann Arbor Farmer's Market in the spring, something that I'm sure everyone living up on the north side misses dearly. Andrew has offered to give them gas discounts if they buy in quantity from him.
The basis of society is agriculture, but what allows it to grow is fellowship. We had to learn really fast the necessity of banding together and keeping a cool head. And I'm honored to count myself in among a community of men and women who have made a commitment to community and rational behavior, both online and here in Ann Arbor. Though sometimes the stress was too great, I think I did a pretty good job of it myself. Looking back on the past 32 weeks, I have to say, I'm older, I'm wiser, I'm more experienced, but I'm also more skeptical, more tired, and more worried. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. We've all changed, and I can imagine the vast majority of us have taken our troubles and travails and made the best of things.
From all of us here at the Northside Crop Collective, keep fighting the good fight. We're not going anywhere anytime soon, so if you're ever in the neighborhood, drop by and maybe we'll break our bread together.
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cycleboy_wwo) wrote,
tired
