Action In the Country

Mar 22

Of Gretchen, Gardening, and Coincidence

Tuesday night Greg and I were at the West Chester Library. We were instructing one of my Let’s Get Dirty! organic gardening classes, this one funded through a State DEP grant our organization C3A had received last year. This was a continuation of a gardening series we had begun at the Library last fall. As we attempted to park, it was obvious a service was happening at the Dellavechia Funeral home across the street. The parking director said we’d have to move further down the street, because a lot of people were expected. We set up, and then sat waiting for people to arrive in the meeting room, whose large picture window gave us a clear view across the street as many mourners arrived for the service. “Someone well known,” I thought. We both admired the beautiful architecture of the building, similar in style to the Library. And Greg—Mr. Intuition who’d been reading remembrances in the DLN all week- had a vibe that the service was for Gretchen Metz. Who had attended a Let’s Get Dirty! class a few years ago. Who had sat next to Greg for class, where he got a chance to chat with her and get to know her a little on the common ground of gardening rather than as a reporter. Who seemed ill but we couldn’t know why. Who enjoyed the class and hurried away with a smile. Who I had met years before as Greg and I made our way through networking jungles promoting C3A events (she gave us some nice coverage too). So now here we sat, wondering, remembering, talking gardening and growing and thinking of this accomplished woman who for all we knew could be hovering nearby picking up some last minute tips!

The next day we found out that indeed it was the service for her, as well as that Tuesday had been National Agriculture Day, and were doubly moved because she was known to be a big fan of farming and gardening. So we felt confirmed that her spirit had been with us the night before. We couldn’t attend, yet from across the street we could remember and celebrate the life of a great and beloved Chester County institution who used her life to enliven and enlighten us all.

Feb 20

Action For Some Country

A child’s face is like an upturned flower. Cast a thousand seeds and hope that one takes root. Questions turn like a clock. Lead by example.

These are thoughts swimming in my head as I reflect on a wonderful experience last week. Greg was invited by teacher Mandy (a new neighbor) to speak to her 5^th grade class at Avon Grove Charter School. Since her property is near Layton Park and the West Caln Twp. Land Reserve, she wanted her students to understand how such a beautiful piece of land could come to be forever protected as a park. They are studying environmental science, and this seemed a perfect topic. But could an experience that took Greg and I ten years— a vision inspired by a dream he had as a child—be readily understandable to a class of 11 year-olds?

A meandering trip south along Rts. 82 and 841 took us through little burgs and lush farmland, much of which could only be protected by those with wealth (and knowing what was worth protecting from rising property values and pressures to develop). We kept thinking about how the 5000-acre King Ranch area in Unionville, just east and north of our journey, almost became Disney World North, if not for the vision of the Frolic Weymouths, Bill Sellers, and others who helped found the Brandywine Conservancy. Later, the Disney Land part (it not happening that is) got some disappointed sighs from the students. As a kid I might have reacted the same way too. But then again, I craved playing in the woods vs. an amusement park.

We entered the school, housed in a beautiful old brick building once the area consolidated high school, and into the brightly decorated classroom. Some 40 kids filed in from recess (two 5^th grade classes combined for this talk), armed with questions and upturned adorable faces. Greg began to unfold his story of history, community, family, land and legacy. And I added my three cents here and there.

Greg explained the huge impact the proposed 125-unit development (which was originally supposed to be 60 housing units) would have had on traffic, pollution, population, surrounding development pressures if it had moved forward. And oh the terrific questions:

Was it hard to save the land? Were people mad at you? If it was 147 acres big, how big’s an acre? Why did you want to do it? Did your family like it? What about your neighbors? Were you happy when it was done? When was the first Earth Day? What were the traffic problems? Do you walk in the park? Could my family come there? Why was it important? Did you get paid much money? Do your neighbors like it? Will it always look like it does now?

Not knowing their usual classroom behavior, it was hard to know how much they were got out of Greg’s talk, but both teachers confirmed it was a hit. “If only they were this quiet for fractions!” one of them noted. Greg and I were so happy that these kids were hearing this story, so they could appreciate beautiful places around them, and know a little of what’s at stake for all our futures. They drew pictures and charts as he talked, and they imagined. It was an afternoon well spent. They will work on projects connected to the talk, and we’ll be invited back to see them. Can’t wait!

Jan 28

What Are You Waiting For?— We’re Not Dead Yet

The future of the Middle Class depends on America investing in the one-of-a-kind creative products and services that all artists make in every community, in every state in this country. Why? Because most of the jobs that pay middle-class salaries, the jobs lost in the 2008 financial meltdown, are not coming back. This according to a Associated Press study cited in an excellent if terrifying series in the Daily Local News business section last week (Jan. 23, 24,25) to help explain the impact of technology on middle-class jobs in developed countries. Data from the last forty years from twenty countries was collected and analyzed regarding hiring and pay, and job types, losses, and gains. This was combined with interviews with economists, tech experts, robot manufacturers, software developers and people in the labor force from CEOs to the unemployed. And the results are enough to make your hair stand on end: The job displacement that began in the modern era with the Industrial Revolution is now at a dizzying speed.

Buggy whip makers have long been used as a historical symbol for an industry which seemed to disappear overnight. An entire segment of jobs was displaced by the onset of cars as a huge industry that supported transportation by horse (harnesses, carriages, feed, tools, blacksmiths, stable-builders, etc.) became a relic instantaneously. The good news then was that lots and lots of new jobs were created centered around the car, including road construction. People could retrain and get paid well.

The bad news now is that robotics and high tech are displacing jobs in ALL segments of the world economy, not just one corner. Large and small companies, schools, police, and entrepreneurs are utilizing ways to cut costs any way they can, i.e. cutting workers. Robots can put stuff together and master other tasks without health insurance, sick days and time off; software can count numbers, arrange schedules, make calls, put in data, figure change orders, retrieve library books, drive cars and trucks (very soon) and generally do you one better after learning your routine. Cloud technology cuts need for offices and tons of computer hardware. So what you think is cool on your smart phone is finding ways to outsmart everybody. And this power is exponentially increasing every month.

The study concludes that the most vulnerable workers are the repetitive jobs, many requiring a college degree, that provide middle-class salaries. Moreover, the job retraining promoted by our political leaders is great in theory, but many of those jobs are also being overtaken by high tech too. So when either party talks of “job creation” it’s vague for a reason. If we don’t watch out, the Brave New World won’t need us.

So what’s a society to do? What new field of jobs and (made-only-in-America exportable) commodities is out there waiting to be exploited, waiting for investment using all that money sitting around in the coffers of over-subsidized banks and corporations? The creative, arts-based economy! There are millions of creative people in every community in every state, and in every country who already make things coming out of their souls and brains that cannot be duplicated by a robot (which has no soul), waiting to be invested in. We will soon become a country of people with much more leisure time than we want, and ironically no money with which to enjoy it, unless a new middle-class engine is created with new buying power. Artists are the analogue internet: Communicating, exchanging ideas, gaining new insights. Let’s put it to work for us. Art is Soul Food. Invest in it. With your Time. With your Money. Be fearless.

Lying, Cheating and Stealing

My father, three brothers and I all played so many competitive sport while growing up. And we were taught that cheaters never win and winners never cheat, a philosophy that I still adhere to in my artistic life. Unfortunately, in today’s upside-down, no value, winner-take-all world, we have heroes that have now been tarnished such as Lance Armstrong, Jerry Sandusky, Joe Paterno, the Catholic Church, Roger Clemmon, Barry Bonds & Co., and lions of business and Wall Street. They all depend on the omerta of their peers, all having the smell of mobster-ism. Not that winner-take-all hasn’t influenced the culture business from journalistic plagiarizers to lip synchers to visual artists who let their minions do the hard work for them. What to do—who can we trust?

First, we shouldn’t have hero worship except in our personal lives for people who have helped us survive the daily ins and outs of life as well as people in the greater picture like most police, soldiers, nurses and doctors, EMTs, teachers, social workers—all the people who are answering to a higher calling, not in it strictly for the money and glory. And we know who we can trust because it always end of being the people who show you respect no matter what your predicament or station in life. My prayer is for this nation to have some consciousness-raising or change of mindset to shower these everyday people with praise, and a reward of a secure financial life.

Oct 3

Sexy New Models

Job creators are getting all the press, not the us workers who do the jobs. Our self worth is defined by our jobs and how well we do them. And we feel as important as the people who hire us. Without our labor, this country would disintegrate overnight.

You would think, listening to some Ayn Rand, free enterprise pundits and economists, that there is only one way to do Capitalism. But check out this model in Spain. Something we could adopt here if we opened our economic minds. One brief mention caught my ear on the radio some months ago about a huge business cooperative called Mondragon in the Basque region of Spain that employs 84,000 people. This corporation was founded in 1956, is comprised of 256 companies, and is the seventh largest Spanish company in terms of asset turnover. It manufactures everything from kitchen appliances to data systems to sheet metal machines to furniture to architecture consulting to catering to educational systems to stock breeding, and on and on. All over Europe and Asia, with yearly sales in the multi- billions. ! Because it is worker-managed, not worker-owned, it is still in the capitalist camp, but a different approach.

It’s business model offers strong social responsibility and respect to its workers without compromising corporation’s expansion and bottom line. All workers must buy in and become members and can buy stock. When one of the companies loses steam and has to reduce the work force, those workers go to other companies within the cooperative umbrella. The boss makes six times the lowest salary of any worker.

Shocking,since here in the U.S. the CEOs in large corporations often make SIX HUNDRED times the lowest-paid worker. Do they deserve that kind of pay scale? Hell no. Why not more of this experimentation here, I ask!!

Well to answer my own question, here’s another cool idea that was just in Sunday’s Philadelphia Inquirer. A Philadelphia-based venture capitalist named Terry Williams has come up with an innovative idea called CXP, which provides HR, IT, accounting and sales functions to mid-level companies that pay CXP a management fee. But here it gets nifty: Each company in which CXP has a minority share also has a minority share in CXP. So they swap equity! Growth squared! I love it! When smaller companies are having trouble, here is a way to offer support and gain growth at the same time. So this is a cooperative model on another, local scale.

Let it all bloom and grow. The lessons learned from the financial meltdown and the recovery should be an opportunity for new capitalism (since the old model has failed). Let’s move away from the same old black and white lines of thinking that got us in trouble in the first place.

Sep 26

To counter that Obama & Co. don’t do anything.

It’s not like they haven’t tried.

Sep 21

Betrayal

Even though we’re all supposedly working in this system called United States of America, you hear the word “betrayal” used to describe the predicament most of us feel, think and know we’re in today. Not too long ago, by using that word, people accused you of playing the victim card with “Why don’t you just get a job.” Back in the late 1960s when I felt, thought and knew that I was betrayed by the ruling class, that sort of cutting response always confused me. Because I’ve worked hard my whole life, and was working hard then as an orderly in a hospital because I’d been drafted.

Like most people with a privileged upbringing, I could have betrayed my belief in the American Dream by dodging the draft and letting some unfortunate working class person take my place in service. Probably meaning on the front lines of Vietnam. Which could’ve been my fate as a medic: stationed on the front lines without a gun—a well known suicidal role to play because medics were always in harm’s way and unarmed. But crazy as I was, I was ready to go wherever they sent me. However Nixon was supposedly “Vietnamizing” the war by bringing American soldiers home to be replaced by Vietnamese soldiers (what we’re attempting in Afghanistan right now). I call it the ‘slow fake walkaway from a disaster we created.’ This never works out as planned because no matter what we try to do, too many of the locals in the occupied countries are pissed because their relatives have been killed in these wars. Does this ring a bell with all the violence going on since that agitprop anti-Mohammed tape was disseminated throughout the Middle East to add oil to this fire? Smells like a Right Wing dirty trick to me to undercut Obama’s reputation for being strong on foreign affairs. His poll numbers are down. Romney jumped the gun w/ his put down of Obama’s handling of the Middle East , most likely egged on by a Right Wing over-anxious to re-boot his failing campaign and throw Israel ( and Netanyathu) a giant bone.

It seems as though the Democrats had a dirty trick up their sleeve (the “47%” video) , waiting for a scenario like this to expose the real attitudes the ruling class has about the rest of us. So it’s not our imagination that we not only feel betrayed, we’ve been betrayed.

Back to my original premise of being betrayed by the draft. I and all my brothers and sisters who either were drafted or volunteered for the Vietnam War, were promised by the ruling class back then that we were the “good people” vs. all the whiny, pointy-headed intellectuals who were trying to stop the war, bring the troops home and also not get drafted themselves. Guess since they were part of the privileged they knew something that other people didn’t know. So even though I was one of those so-called privileged people who was able to graduate from college as a math major then get married and set up my home in Coatesville before I was drafted, I should have known better. I didn’t serve in Vietnam, I served in the states like all the other Conscientious Objectors from 1970 on because the ruling class was going to lump us all together and blame us for this disastrous war. Because after all we were nothing but a buncha: Drug addled, hippie, losers, ne’er-do-wells that blamed American first and didn’t understand how wonderful the ruling class was and all their kids who didn’t serve. FYI, only 10% of the U.S. families were negatively impacted by the war. But the other 90% benefited and are still in denial about their nasty role of keeping vets in their place by all this name-calling. Since that time I’ve been trying to educate people about the betrayal of the American Dream by the people who run the system and was told to shut up. And now so many more know how we felt but that’s no consolation. It divided Deb and my families and many others who are still trying to put the pieces back together again.

So please cut the Afghan and Iraqi War vets a major break and give them all the empathy and help you can conjure up. Because if this can happen to the best, bravest and smartest defending the Constitution , what can be expected for the rest of us?

Jul 23

Take Your Mind Off and Relax through Arts this Saturday in Wagontown

C3A presents

Take Your Mind Off! (Relaxation thru Art)

Saturday July 28^th, 1pm til !

Problem: Too much Stress & Worry

Remedy: Slow down and catch up with your Life through Arts and Nature.

Wander and wonder at eARTh’s*

14 private acres of beautiful views in Wagontown, Chester Co.

Arts workshops and demos like drawing-as-mediation,

organic gardening, mosaic, music, and more, as well as old-time games. Dig on nature, birdies (free tweets!), lovely gardens, and eARThArt sculptures,

♦ Croquet, horseshoes, scrabble, cards ♦ Nature Walks

♦ Bring yer own Picnic ♦ Celebrate National Dance Day too!

»$5 recommended donation per car /rain/shine

Want to demo and promote your creative product or skill? Contact us and come on out. (early birdies get the better spaces)

info: Gregc3a@verizon.net; directions: CthreeA.org

*everybody’s ART home (CoatesvilleArea Arts Alliance cultural ctr.)

COMING UP NEXT: Let’s Jam! Preserving Your Favorite Tastes

Sat. Aug. 11 (10a to 1pm) or Weds. Aug. 15 (6 to 9pm) at Deb’s Wagontown kitchen

Yum, all that delicious summer and fall bounty—what to do with it?

Third-generation organic gardener and longtime canner Deborah Kates can show you how to save it deliciously from food you buy or grow yourself. Learn whys and hows of hot water canning and how to make and “put up” :

jams ♦ easy pickles ♦ tomatoes (sauce and whole) ♦ peaches and pears

♦ applesauce using a food grinder (it’s easy and fun!) and more;

♦ tips on freezing fruits and vegetables correctly.

Survival skills that last a lifetime. All take home treats made in class !

$80 p/p which includes all jars, other supplies and produce.

Space is limited. Reserve at 610-384-2535 or debc3a@verizon.net

Jul 19

Two Creative Minds Lost Forever

Saw in the DLN obits today that we lost the imitable Cubby Culbertson—poeticize in peace Cubby. Also passed was Rob McIlvaine: editor, soldier, filmmaker and more. Two artists who have made Chester County a richer place, and persevered through times when art was barely considered for attention, funding, being main stream. It was a small community back then in the late ’70s and ’80s for us, larger now thank goodness. Two originals from this area of my generation who made things happen by being themselves. Wish I’d known you better. Glad I knew you at all.

Jun 19

I Was A Victim of Nixon’s Enemies List

This week is the 40th anniversary of the discovery of the Watergate break-in, which exposed Nixon’s fascist, dictatorial dirty tricks to destroy his enemies and remain all powerful. Who were these enemies, and why?

Nixon, along with his VP Agnew, sympathetic journalists, and other operatives conspired together using the FBI and the CIA and local police to dragnet onto their enemies list anybody who was a critic of the war, environment, civil rights, or Nixon himself because they cared about their country

So what’s this have to do with me?

Fall, 1969—Nixon establishes the draft lottery to pick winners and losers for the Vietnam War , establishing a pattern that could last, essentially, forever. Because after all we were all just young men trying to get our lives started. I had just graduated from Gettysburg College as a math major and was married; a very conservative person who was pro civil rights and anti-Vietnam War. In fact I was a Conscientious Objector working in VISTA as a White teacher in poor, Black schools. Very dangerous, right?

Fall, 1970—My low lottery number got my butt drafted. For my C.O. service I ironically ended up working stateside in Eisenhower’s Gettysburg hospital 2 yrs. after I graduated. Little did I know then that it was world’s apart from the campus, and I became just another “townie.” Not only that, I suddenly became a “coward” lacking patriotic zeal, a ne’er do well living on the wrong side of the tracks along with the other poor and disenfranchised people stuck in the tiny ghetto of the town of Gettysburg. Why was I living in the ghetto? Because I was paid on average $50 a week for shiftwork as an orderly to carry out dead bodies to the morgue, put in catheters, clean up horrendous scenes, shave people’s privates, and be blamed for everything that went wrong in the hospital. All this traumatized me. Nothing in my background prepared me for this and it was the last thing in the world I wanted to do. As if that wasn’t enough, when I found out the list of Nixon’s dirty tricks, detailed in the COINTELPRO (Google it), I realized that it fit too well into what had been happening to me. This Program was uncovered as a result of Watergate, in special committees on intelligence in the House (Rep. Pike) and Senate (Church), in the mid-70s.

— The FBI pulled me off the floor at the hospital to interrogate me, trying to get me to implicate myself in things I knew nothing about. It was really intimidating and it made me look to the staff like I’d done something wrong. Embarrassing me in front of my peers and managers.

—Within a period of a few months my life was threatened by 3 strangers I had no relationship with (one the head of the local Pagans cycle gang—whom I suspected was working for the authorities). I’m a big guy and very athletic, and am respectful so it was shocking and weird.

—I came home from a shopping trip w/ my girlfriend one night and found my teeny little 2-rm apartment w/ all my art and belongings invaded and upended, and my roommate Jeff handcuffed to one of our chairs. He said, “Greg, I didn’t do anything wrong, I don’t know why they’re here.” When they found out I lived there, they took me to the station, interrogated me with no Miranda Rights, and busted me on some trumped up charge. I spend one night in jail and had to call my parents to bail me out.

—Went back to work, and almost lost my job because under the arcane Selective Service rules for C.O.’s, if I got fired I would have had to get another crappy minumum wage job and start the two years over again, even though I was almost finished.

—So my blemish-free reputation that I’d carefully and sincerely cultivated throughout my life was ruined on all fronts: job, family, community and college, as well as future employment. It was a very effective character assassination; one of Nixon’s favorite tactics because it left no fingerprints on the process.

Of course, I am a very patriotic and honorable person to this day, with PTSD from this gross treatment, and am still coming to terms with what Nixon and the right wing Republicans did to my family 40 years ago. Now they have their sights set on Obama and everybody that believes in him. The Big Smear is on.

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