Sept 1993 MLT Newsletter

Michigan Land Trustees Newsletter

September, 1993

BACK IN AMERICA

Michael Kruk

   One year ago I arrived back in the United States after living in Osaka, Japan for three years. A few weeks after my return I spent a week in Washington, DC our nation’s capital, visiting a friend.
   Having never been to Washington, DC I was excited about seeing the sights, especially since I had been out of the country for so long. It was a chance to “See America.” I felt like a foreign tourist. Politically I had always felt like a foreigner in America, now, after being gone for three years I felt like a real foreigner.
   I looked for Japanese tourists to speak Japanese with so that I could feel at home. I did find a Japanese couple in the Lincoln Memorial and together we went to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. They were not tourists, however, but were living in Washington. The man was attending Georgetown University. Their English was much better than My Japanese but they indulged my Japanese anyway. We parted after exchanging addresses so that we could send copies of the pictures we took of each other.
   Feeling more comfortable I proceeded to the Capitol building. I found it to be quite an impressive building with a vast lawn and a huge, imposing front entrance. Due to construction, the front stairs were too imposing and the rear entrance had to be used.
   When I arrived around the back I saw a much less impressive entrance way. On the steps, a group of about ten people were sitting around a large banner that read, “PEOPLE’S FAST for JUSTICE, and PEACE in the AMERICAS 1492-1992.” A Japanese, Buddhist monk was sitting at the bottom of the stairs. She beat a drum steadily and was chanting.
   They were holding a forty-two day fast for all indigenous peoples who have suffered since the arrival of Columbus. The fast was coincided to end with Columbus Day. I spent about an hour talking with some of the fasters and took some pictures. I was invited to come back. On Saturday Independent presidential candidate Ron Daniels was going to be there to address the group, so I planned to come back.
   On Saturday I went back to the Capitol building. Going around back I passed by a large black car with its motor running and nobody in it. The car had a US Senate license plate on it. A man was standing near the car eating a hamburger and fries out of a Styrofoam container. I suggested that it would be a good idea to turn the engine off. He responded, “Got to keep it cool.” So I said, “But it’s wasting gas. “He said, “So what.” I said, “Oh! So we can invade Iraq again in order to get more oil.” He shrugged. Just then a man with a child passed and said, “His boss ordered him to keep it running. Ask his boss, George Mitchell the Senate Majority Leader.” Surprised, I said, “really! How do you know?” But he rushed off towards the Senate members’ entrance. I asked the driver if his boss was George Mitchell. He said, “I don’t know.”
   Frustrated, and thinking about all that I had heard and read about the invasion of Iraq and feeling disappointed in America’s lack of public transportation which in Japan I used every day to get to anywhere and everywhere, I went into the Capitol building to take a tour. The tour was disappointing. I couldn’t get the car incident off my mind.
   It was now three o’clock, and time to go hear Ron Daniels. His talk was refreshing. He spoke of the need for change, not for the same change that Clinton was talking about, but a radical change of the system itself. However, he didn’t expect to win the election. I didn’t expect that he would either but I planned to vote for him because he was the only candidate whose views I could support.
   I said my good-byes to the fasters, and feeling uplifted, I took my leave. I followed the same route as before and I saw the same black car with the same man standing near it. The car was still running. About three hours had passed since I had first seen it. I was appalled. Wanting to get some documentation of this, I took a picture of the car, showing the US Senate license plate. I then prepared to take a picture of the car with the driver in the background. I said to the driver, “Smile.” The driver turned away and said, “What do you want to get me in trouble for?” I then took the picture. He said, “You some kind of trouble maker?” Then looking up at a policeman he said to me, “I should have him take your camera away.”
   Slowly I walked away thinking about how in Japan many times I would see a car parked with its engine running and the air conditioning on, while its occupant, probably a salesman, caught an afternoon nap in between his calls on customers. Then it bothered me but that was different. I was not a member of that society. The salesman taking a nap did not vote to send people to kill and be killed in order to keep a cheap supply of oil. The. Japanese salesman also paid three times as much for gasoline as the United States Senator did. I knew that I was back in America. It would take some getting used to.

IMPORTANT MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIR:

The April 1993 MLT Newsletter contained a proposal by Bobbi Martindale and Jon Towne to buy the MLT Landtrust Farm. We asked for your reactions - and have received a few. The Board had been presented this proposal at its January 31st meeting. It appointed an ad hoc committee (David Claremont, Sharon Crotser, Ken Dahlberg, Maynard Kaufman, and Thorn Phillips) to meet with Jon and Bobbi to discuss the details, possibilities, and ramifications. The committee generally responded favorably to the proposal- and recommended to the Board that each party obtain a separate appraisal of the value of the farm, The Board approved this recommendation at its May 2nd meeting. At it most recent meeting (July 23, 1993), the Board received the appraisals and passed two motions: 1) that MLT agree to sell Bobbi and Jon the Land Trust Farm once a price and the terms of the sale have been mutually agreed upon; and 2) to table the previous motion until MLT members had been notified in the newsletter so that they would have the opportunity to provide their views and opinions.

With this notification of the Board’s intent to sell the MLT Landtrust Farm, we would like to ask you to send us your views on two topics:
1) any comments, suggestions, or objections to selling the MLT Land Trust Farm to Bobbi and Jon; and
2) assuming that the sale will proceed, what you think the MLT should do with the money from the sale.

The Board has done quite a bit of brainstorming on point 2 at its last two meetings. The range of options include:
    -looking for another similar farm where another organic farm family would have the chance to get established; this would require MLT to find a similar farm within our resources, to find new tenants, equip the farm and set up an inventory systems, etc. - things that all take significant time and effort;
    -set up some sort of ecologically-based community nearer an urban area where a number of families could build and share common lands - again a project that would take significant time and effort;
    -focus more on educational projects like the LETS project in Bangor and/or perhaps encouraging community gardens in towns and cities, etc;
    -donate most of the funds from the farm sale to other organizations that are promoting goals similar to those of MLT while retaining a small budget to continue or expand the newsletter and do other modest projects;
    -disband the MLT once all the terms of the proposed sale are completed and donate all of MLT’s assets to other like-minded organizations.

It seems clear from the Board discussions that for us to pursue any of the more ambitious possibilities would require an infusion of new people who would be willing and able to contribute the necessary time and effort to making such a project go.

In any case, we would like to receive your views on the farm sale and on the future of the MLT no later than October4. 1993, which will give us two weeks to consider them prior to the MLT Annual Meeting - at which we hope to be able to make a decision on the farm sale.

Thanks, Ken Dahlberg

One day last summer Joe Filonowicz dropped us a line: “This poetry contest is tough——you may not get any response. Maybe your would-be poets need some clues. Attached is something that might provide a direction.. - We are trying to tell it like it hopefully will be.”

The following clue that Joe had passed along is from Life Against Death by Norman 0. Brown, Wesleyian University Press, 1959, page 305. For your consideration:

Part Six

THE WAY OUT

"The cultural era is past. The new civilization, which may take centuries or a few thousand years to usher in, will not, be another civilization—it ‘will be the open stretch of realization which all the past civilizations have pointed to. The city, which as the birth-place of civilization, such as we know it to be, will exist no more. There will be nuclei of course, but they will be mobile and fluid. The peoples of the earth will no longer be shut off from one another within states but will flow freely over the surface of the earth and intermingle. There will be no fixed constellations of human aggregates. Governments will give way to management, using the word in a broad sense. The politician will become as superannuated as the dodo bird. The machine will never be dominated, as some imagine; it will be scrapped, eventually, but not before men have understood the nature of the mystery which binds them to their creation. The worship, investigation and subjugation of the machine will give way to the lure of all that is truly occult. This problem is bound up with the larger one of power—and of possession. Man will be forced to realize that power must be kept open, fluid and free. His aim will be not to possess power but to radiate it,”
Utopian speculations, such as these of Henry Miller, must come back into fashion. They are a way of affirming faith in the possibility of splving problems that seem at the moment insoluble. Today even the survival of humanity is a utopian hope.
• From Henry Miller, Sunday after the War (New York: New Directions), pp. 154-155. Copyright. 1944. by Henry Miller. Reprinted by permission.Sept93newsl

As of late July there were six: or seven contestants. In this time of lowered expectations that's several more than I would have anticipated. A panel of judges has been assembled and the winner will hopefully be announced in the next newsletter. All this may sound pessimistic, but not necessarily. Perhaps now is not yet the time for poetic flourishes pronouncing new myths. And besides, it’s difficult to grapple with the birth of a new age.

At the last MLT meeting, Maynard reported that the response to the Bangor area Local Exchange and Trading System has been, at best, minimal. Nonetheless, he and the other men and women involved continue to plug away at it. They’re visionaries; and it does take a great deal of vision to think and act beyond jobs and money.

There is a compelling article in the September, 1993 Harper’s Magazine: “The End of Jobs’ Employment is one thing the global economy is not creating,” by Richard J. Barnet. Wages are inadequate, and falling, as businesses scour the [Third] world for cheap labor. There is not now enough employment opportunities for people seeking work, nor will there be. Efficiency, technology, and perhaps even pollution control will eliminate more jobs than they can create. Even the Fortune 500 companies have issued over four million pink slips in the last 12 years. Still, Mr. Barnet’s conclusions sound real familiar:

There is a colossal amount of work waiting to be done by human beings-—building decent places to live, exploring the universe, making cities less dangerous, teaching one another, raising our children, visiting, comforting, healing, feeding one another, dancing, making music, telling stories, inventing things, and governing ourselves. But much of the essential activity people have always undertaken to raise and educate their families, to enjoy themselves, to give pleasure to others, and to advance the general welfare is not packaged as jobs. Until we rethink work and decide what human beings are meant to do in the age of robots and what basic economic claims on society human beings have by virtue of being here, there will never be enough jobs.

Joe, I admit that it would have been great if we had two dozen entries vying for "a new poetic mythology.” Oh, well. I hope that somebody came up with something. Meanwhile, I see momentum, and it’s going your way.