Homestead mailing list

[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

> I always think that maybe they are having fun. An odd thought but it could 
> be.
> 
> 


Oh, I've known people who gardened just for the fun of it ... but they said 
so.  One such, every time I visited his garden, would point to a tomato and 
say, "I don't mind telling you how much I've got in that tomato, why, that 
tomato 
probably cost me $239."

Gardening for fun?  Fine, admit so to oneself and go on.  But I think part of 
the "fun" is the illusion that they are saving money and/or saving the 
environment.

> 
> A city?
> 
> 

I'd say anything but suburbs.  In a properly done city one could put the 
shopping basket over one's arm and go to the very, very, very local market 
and get 
supper.  Can't do that in the country, but you CAN have a garden, larder, 
animals on the hoof, etc.  They don't work the same way, but they both work 
and 
both have worked for thousands of years without 70mph vehicular traffic.

Suburbs don't work that way.  They are a function of personal transportation. 
 One is far more dependent on a car in the suburbs than in the city or 
country.

That is, so long as we are not mixing metaphors.  You can't live in the 
country and depend on a cash job 80 miles away and do without using a lot of 
transportation fuel.  All our cash income right now comes from cottage 
industries 
and although we take most of that into town to mail and UPS it every two 
weeks, 
if we wanted, UPS and the USPS would pick them up right here at our driveway.

Just as most people who live in the country are not sustainable, too most 
people in hte city aren't either.  But both could be.  The suburbs cannot.

I live 20 miles from the closest town.  I'm not a lead foot driver so it 
takes me about half an hour to get there.  If I slowed down to 20 mph, it 
would 
take an hour.   I could do that.  In fact sometimes I find myself driving 
slower 
and slower anymore.  Cars will tailgate and impatiently whip around me and 
careen off into the distance.  When I get to the first traffic light in town, 
sure enough, there they are.  "Full of sound and fury signifying nothing."   
</HTML>