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| roseville mugwort and foothill pine |
the man sitting in the iron seat did not look like a man; gloved, goggled...he was part of the monster, a robot in the seat...he could not smell the land as it smelled; his feet did not stomp the clods or feel the warmth and power of the earth. if the young thrusting plant withered in drought or drowned in a flood of rain, it was no more to the driver than to the tractor. he loved the land no more than the bank loved the land...
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| himalayan blackberry blossom |
he could admire the tractor...but it was not his tractor...behind the harrows, the long seeders - twelve iron penes erected in the foundry, orgasms set by gears, raping methodically, raping without passion...
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| gold, lupin, teddy and linky. |
the driver sat in sat in his iron seat and was proud of the straight lines he did not will, proud of the tractor he did not own or love, proud of the power he could not control.
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| looks pretty good to me! |
and when that crop grew, and was harvested, no man had crumbled a hot clod in his fingers and let the earth sift past his fingertips. no man had touched the seed, or lusted for the growth. man ate what they had not raised, had no connection with the bread.
the land bore under iron, and under iron gradually died; for it was not loved or hated, it had no prayers or curses.
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| homeward bound |
once California belonged to Mexico and it's land to Mexicans; and a horde of tattered feverish Americans poured in. and such was their hunger for land that they took the land -those frantic hungry men; and they guarded with guns the land they had stolen...then, with time, the squatters were no longer squatters, but owners; and their children grew up and had children on the land. and the hunger was gone from them, the feral hunger, the gnawing, tearing hunger for land, for water and earth and the good sky over it, for the green thrusting grass, for the swelling roots.
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| rattlesnake bar, folsom lake |
they had these things so completely that they did not know about them anymore. now farming became an industry, and owners followed Rome, although they did not know it. they imported slaves, although they did not call them slaves: Chinese, Japanese, Mexicans, Filipinos. they don't need much, the business men said. and if they get funny - deport them.
and all the time the farms grew larger and the owners fewer. and there were pitifully few farmers on the land anymore. and it came about that owners no longer worked on their farms. they farmed on paper; they forgot the land, the smell, the feel of it, and only remembered that they owned it, remembered only what they gained and lost by it.
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| acmon blue butterfly? |
and the dispossessed, the migrants, flowed into California, two hundred and fifty thousand, and three hundred thousand. and while the Californians wanted many things, accumulation, social success, amusement, luxury, and a curious banking security, the new barbarians wanted only two things - land and food; and to them the two were one. ..
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| pipe vine swallowtail caterpillar? not confirmed. |
..the wants of the Okies were beside the roads, lying there to be seen and coveted: the good fields with water to be dug for, the good green fields, earth to crumble experimentally in the hand, grass to smell, oaten stalks to chew until the sharp sweetness was in the throat. a man might look at a fallow field and know, and see in his mind that his own bending back and his own straining arms would bring in cabbages into the light, and the golden eating corn, the turnips and carrots.
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| i love these babies. |
and in the south he saw the golden oranges hanging on the trees...and guards with shotguns patrolling the lines so a man might not pick an orange for a thin child, oranges to be dumped if the price was low.
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| wendy, my yarrow princess. |
the decay spreads over the state, and the sweet smell is a great sorrow on the land. men who can graft the trees and made the seed fertile and big can find no way to let the hungry people eat their produce. men who have created new fruits in the world cannot create a system whereby their fruits may be eaten. and failure hangs over the state like a great sorrow...
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| hemlock, chickweed, miner's lettuce, cleavers. i feel the weightiness of foraging safety when my nieces gather lettuce growing right next to hemlock. |
the works of the roots and vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. carloads of oranges dumped on the ground.
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| my nieces gather pineapple weed, tromp down the hill for the flowering yerba santa, pluck lemon balm and rose petals all for the joy of making fairy sun tea. |
the people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be... and men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. a million people hungry needing the fruit - and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains.
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| whenever i visit the hills around my parent's i feel like the pied piper: these wild ones skip and follow behind through the trees, so curious about the plants. |
and the smell of rot fills the country.
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| rocket, plantain. |
dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth..
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| crawdad twins |
there is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. there is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. there is a failure here that topples all of our success. the fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. and the children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. and coroners must fill in the certificates - died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot...
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| filliary (sp?) |
the people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed.
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| boss sauce. chicory friends. |
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| "fwimmin'...." |
and they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quicklime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze;
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| specter of childhood. |
and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath.
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| wild crop |
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| some parts of roseville are just huck finn divine. |
in the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.
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| my sunshine |
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| he loves those pockets |
i can run my mouth all day and say that we need to return to the land and proselyte like thoreau, to say that we don't know how our food that keeps us alive is grown, or who grows it. i can preach the good word of farming, of self-sufficiency, that our agricultural system is on the verge of collapse, that the land has been been all 'cottoned' out.
all around roseville empty fields have big developer 'for sale' signs.
who owns the land? who buys it? who develops it? if i were to plant a garden on it i'd be trespassing.
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| the industrious soul of the town |
steinbeck saw that there were no convenient solutions, this monster we've created is out of our hands. we don't know who to go to with our anger, our hunger, our landless bitterness, this system of waste and yields that leaves so many feeling helpless.
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| roseville |
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/01/21/264577744/should-farmers-give-john-deere-and-monsanto-their-data even now monsanto is rigging to track every large farmer's yields via satellite, and analyze the plantings per every 2.5 acres in real time, getting soil and moisture and "fertility" readings, claiming that they'll use this information to assist farmers in increasing their yields, telling them which of their hybrids would succeed best in the minute niches. as if monsanto needed even more control of the world's food production, they go ahead and put even more of a presence in farms.
this is big. if they see what is planted the minute it is planted, they can predict availability and readiness in crops and disrupt the markets in their favor.<----- growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage. what can we do?
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| past and present, all expansive. |
steinbeck somehow knows that we're failing, still, that we're stuck in a machine that exploits the land and profits only the few. of course we want to return to land, thoreau, of course every one wants a patch for themselves to tend to and plant their trees and seeds.
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| washed out mid-plie`. a wonderful semester of ballet and jazz has passed. |
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| obsession. |
we know we are so removed from our bread, our carrots. from the hands who do the labor. to the machines and fertilizers that do not the love the land. and we resist those who would force us to rot in any way that we can.
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| widow |
how can any of us succeed within a system that is born to fail? a system that is in opposition to the natural flow of abundance, and generosity? all around us is fertile earth, and those who do control the land abuse it.
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| teddy, me, vanessa (my little neighbor shadow in the culdesac), wait for the moon. |
we don't know. only the wealthy get the land. we do our best, like the okies. we gotta eat. we want to work. the land is what keeps us alive, yet so few of us actually feel the strain from withered plants. we eat what we do not raise.
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| neighbor kids play in the quiet evening. |
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| scorpion moon in the suburb |
needless to say i have found my new favorite book. steinbeck, you make me proud to be an american. bravo, bravo.
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| nothing to hide |
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| infant amber: school camp out |
the migrant people looked humbly for pleasure on the road.
-steinbeck, the grapes of wrath
xoxo
