Commerce and the human condition

Today is the annual Coming of the Seed Catalogs, which reliably arrive in my PO box in late December. This is commonly an inspirational moment for writers -- it manifests the essential symbolism of the solstice, the newly lengthening days initiating the gestation of reborn nature in the coming spring and all that.

But I'm too cynical for all that. The merchants know that seed catalogs will be a lot of fun to look at this time of year, so we'll do it. They hope that by getting in at the beginning of our spring fever, we'll turn to them instead of the competition. And they hope our fantasies of abundance will exceed the size of our garden plots and our endurance for sweaty brows and we'll end up buying mass quantities.

They're probably right. But this time, by golly, I really am going to assiduously cultivate 800 square feet and grow enough onions and carrots, and bottle enough tomato sauce, to last me all winter. Just you wait.

The Firewood Business

I haven't bought any firewood for at least 15 years, when I lived in the city. I can get all I need from deadfall on my own and my neighbor's property. He has a lot of acreage on which, for some reason, the trees tend to fall down more than they do on mine, and (he claims) he can't use a chainsaw because his ex-wife made him promise he wouldn't, even though he now has no positive regard for her. Whatever. There are other opportunities to scrounge. For example my brother and I recently dealt with overgrown vegetation at my mother's place and I got a good truckload of firewood out of  the deal.  In fact my only problem right now is that I don't have enough space to shed everything.

But that's not the point of this post, except to demonstrate that I know the time, effort and investment in equipment required to shed a cord of firewood. Around here, it sells for about $200, and believe me, if you're making $20 an hour you are Hercules.  It's really hard work, you have to constantly maintain the equipment, which means spending money on chains, fuel mix and oil, and small engine repair, not to mention the investment in your truck and tractor (which is pretty much necessary if you're dealing with big trunks and needing to pull stuff out of the woods and load heavy pieces). Also, before you can sell it, you have to shed it for a year.

Unfortunately for Karl Marx, this pretty much shoots down the labor theory of value. There just aren't enough people who want to buy it in bulk to soak up the supply, and the market has a lot of friction. It's too bulky and heavy to be worth moving long distances, for the most part, so you have to find your buyers nearby. I understand there are people who will haul firewood to Manhattan and get a better price, and then there are those ridiculous little bundles of six logs sitting outside the supermarket in plastic wrap with a $6.95 price tag or whatever it is. But that's a very narrow channel.

 I have a probably impractical idea of making a deal with Home Depot, and setting up an operation on the edge of the parking lot -- there's a lot of open space at the Windham location -- with a truck scale, a lot of shed space, and log splitters. Guys can bring in their green, unprocessed material and we'll pay them for it on the spot -- much less than final retail but they won't have to go through all the hassles. We'd do it by weight, not by volume, but whatever the weight equivalent is of a typical cord of green hardwood we'd buy for say, $100. Then we'd section it, split it and shed it, and sell it a year later for $225 or something. (Convenient location, trusted business, top quality guaranteed.) We'd also sell odd sizes for less, and kindling. And we could dicker up and down with people who brought in stuff already processed, or lower quality. Then you'd have a much better functioning market.

Of course, I wouldn't want to encourage people to start clearing land for fuel, but I don't think much of that would happen. It just isn't worth it. We'd be getting material from people cutting roads and clearing house sites, cleaning up deadfall and tree work, and we'd be preventing it from going to waste. If it decomposes, it's going to put it's carbon back into the atmosphere anyway, so you might as well extract the heat on the way, I figure. Not going to happen though.

Warmth

As usually happens when it's unusually warm here in winter, we have a dense fog. Actually it has never been this warm in Connecticut on December 24, since people here had thermometers. Today is just the culmination of the warmest December in general. It's certainly let me conserve my wood pile and it's made life generally easier. The squirrels are literally swarming in the woods, and looking fat. Life is easy for most of the critters, but not the ones who normally hide from raptors under the snow.

Now, here in southern New England we expect a lot of variation in the weather. It's not at all unusual to have warm spells during the winter, and some winters are milder than others in general.  As you know, last winter turned extremely cold and snowy in January and stayed that way through March. The prognosticators say we should expect more precipitation in winter here in the coming decades; the question is whether it gets warm enough for much of it to be rain, or for the snow to melt quickly. Until then, more snow will make winters seem harsh, even if the temperatures are tending to rise.

Whatever humanity manages to do about burning fossil fuel, the climate will continue to change, so we need to accept the consequences. One of the worst things for this neck of the woods will be if the hemlocks all die. When I bought this property the forester I hired to do prep work told me they were doomed because of the woolly adelgids. But we had some winter mornings that were cold enough (-6 F.) to kill the insects. If that stops happening, they'll come back, and the hemlock groves will turn into ghostly gray monuments to our folly. I can't bear to think about it.

Mysterious semiotics

I know I'm supposed to do some sort of philosophical musing on the solstice, but I'll pass. It happens every year and now the days start getting longer, yea!

However, I do want to talk about a puzzle. Tuckie road is a town road in Windham, basically a country lane with a cornfield at one end and a trailer park on the other, with modest houses on 1 or 2 acre lots in between. Also a new regional magnet school. It carries a lot of traffic, however, because it links Windham Center and points south and west with a commercial stretch of Rte 6 with big box stores, and headed in the other direction UCONN and Hartford.

So one of the local yokels has a yard filled with dozens of junk trucks and heavy equipment. A weird thing to collect. He has also hung two enormous confederate battle flags from trees in his front yard. It is highly unlikely he is celebrating his southern heritage, as I will be very surprised if this guy (and the junk does say guy) has ever set foot south of the Mason-Dixon line. It is not in fact that unusual to see confederate flags, as for example substituting for the front license plate of a town fire captain in Canterbury, or as decals on the back window of a truck just above the gun rack.

So what are these people intending to proclaim to the world? They must think they are saying something meaningful. What might that be?

Communing with nature

My university basically closes down between Christmas and January 2. I could go in -- my access card would let me into the building -- and I have work to do, but I don't know how productive I would be sitting in the building by myself. So I'll probably hang out here in the woods all week.

That's actually something I have never done before. I'm hoping I can maybe work on that book I've been wanting to write, get my chops back on the saxophone. If the weather stays mild I can work on some landscaping. I still have a big pile of dirt that came from where my basement used to be and I'm using it to build up some low spots. With my little tractor that's a slow process. I might also finally get around to setting up my workshop, or at least starting to.

Let's hope I get something accomplished.

Sandy Hook

Yesterday was the third anniversary of the massacre at Sandy Hook elementary school. It's across the state from me, but being within the political boundaries still made it feel close to home. Also, my brother-in-law grew up nearby and I've driven through the area.

Millions of people produced various musings on the event yesterday, so I'm not going to bother with the politics or the moral meaning, or the grotesque phenomenon of denialism. What I will remark on is the way in which memory is physically embodied. The damage to the school building could have been repaired for no more than a few thousand dollars; but instead, in a referendum, the townspeople voted overwhelmingly to tear it down and build a new school for some $57 million, of which the state contributed the bulk of the money. The town also acquired the perpetrator's house, which his family lawyer arranged through a series of transactions so they would not acquire it directly from the estate; and demolished it, leaving the land permanently open.

So the house was unsaleable and uninhabitable, and the school unusable, because they were marked with the memory of horror. There was no alternative but to eradicate them, at whatever cost it required. Sometimes, we take the opposite view, and insist on reclaiming morally tainted spaces. Think of the Aurora, Colorado movie theater, which ultimately reopened in what was widely seen as a positive gesture of defiance; or for that matter the Planned Parenthood clinic in Brookline, Massachusetts that was attacked by John Salvi, which also reopened.. It will be interesting to see what happens with the civic building in San Bernardino.

I wonder what makes the difference?

Indian Summer

The unusually mild autumn is happening in most of the country -- the scientists are saying something about el niño, maybe they're right. While I could say we deserve it after the past hellish winter I'm still hoping we get some deep cold in January because without it, pests from the south will continue to invade.

That said, it's been a great luxury. My parsley, believe it or not, is still growing. We've had some hard freezes, but it turns out parsley can take it, as long as the afternoons warm up. I even have  a bit of fresh mint that came back after the freeze. And my garlic is looking like it's May already. Of course it will have to go to sleep again soon.

I have not only conserved firewood -- even went out of town twice without even having to turn on any heat, came back to a moderately cool house that warmed right up once I fired up the stove. I build a fire when I get home from work, then just let it burn out overnight and wait till the next evening to start another. No problem. I also picked up some stuff from an old pile of my neighbors that he neglected. It's a few years old and it's over the hill, but the main problem is just that it's wet. I've gotten it shedded and with this weather, it's drying out nicely and I'll be able to use it right away.

On top of that the ground isn't frozen so I'm still working on landscaping. It's all supposed to come to and end in about a week with some real winter cold -- as if they know. I'm selfish enough to wish it wouldn't, on one level, but on another I know it's for the best. 

What it will be like here in December 10 years from now, however, I do wonder about.