I've Got the Blues

Blueberries that is. They need picking every morning these days. Blueberries are such a good crop. Our bushes are thirty years old and still bear strong. They are largely disease resistant. The deer don't browse them, although birds will eat the berries. I've seen young turkey chicks fly into the bushes and chow down. This year there's a Thrasher nesting in one of the bushes. She hollers at us every morning as we pick. Today I also want to look at various approaches to avoiding the blues and living your dream. Of course we'll also hit this weeks headline stories. Last Sunday I was MIA because my modem was fried and I had to order a new one to connect again. A week without internet was unusual, but may have caused me to be more productive in other ways.

Let's start with the praises of blueberries...

Blueberries fit into any general home landscape design and can serve as hedges, borders or backgrounds. Blueberries are typically used in the landscape as hedges for screening purposes, but they also can be used in cluster plantings or as single specimen plants. Blueberries are an ideal year-round addition to the landscape with delicate white flowers in the spring, attractive blue fruit in the summer and the possibility of colorful fall foliage. In addition, blueberry plants lend themselves to the “organic” approach of gardening because they typically have very few insect or disease problems and pesticides are not needed in home garden plantings.

There are two major types of blueberries - highbush and rabbiteye. Rabbiteyes (Vaccinium ashei) are native to the southeastern United States. Supposedly they are called rabbiteye because the berries turn pink before they go blue, reminiscent of the eye color of a white rabbit. Highbush blueberries (V. corymbosum) are found in the wild in northeastern North America. The name highbush implies it might be the larger plant, but it is actually smaller than rabbiteye. Highbush earned its name because it is taller than lowbush blueberries, the other species important to the blueberry industry. Lowbush (usually V. angustifolium or V. myrtilloides) produce very small berries used primarily in baked goods.

Highbush blueberries are the most common type of berries across the country, but Rabbiteye bushes are batter adapted to the south. Although highbush berries will grow in the south they will not persist. Our Rabbiteye bushes are over 30 years old and still productive.

Blueberries are easy to grow, productive, freeze easily, and are really good for you. They are one of the best fruits to add to a ketogenic diet. Blueberries are packed with antioxidants and phytonutrients which have powerful health benefits. These include the ability to reduce DNA damage, prevent aging, control cholesterol levels, and may lower the risk of cancer. They also help strengthen bones, reduce acne, lower blood pressure, control diabetes, and improve heart health. Considered a superfood, they can also help improve brain health, promote weight loss, and soothe inflammation.
https://www.organicfacts.net/health-benefits/fruit/health-benefits-of-bl...

It isn't difficult to plant and maintain this excellent crop...

Here's a nice general guide to growing your own blueberries...
http://www.homeorchardsociety.org/growfruit/berries/the-basics-of-bluebe...

For information on highbush blueberry production visit this site...
https://www.blueberrycouncil.org/growing-blueberries/growing-blueberries...

Here's a very good and complete guide to Rabbiteye blueberry production in Louisiana
https://www.lsuagcenter.com/NR/rdonlyres/D30270C0-F2DC-4B33-8AB7-036865A...

So I hope I've planted the idea that planting blueberries is a good idea. The more perennial food crops you have the less input is required from year to year. Picking is the most labor needed. We prune, manure (every couple of years), and mulch them in winter. Otherwise all there is to do is harvest and eat! Don't leave this productive plant out of your landscape.

How do you get rid of the blues?
By creating and living your dream...

My dream involves putting down roots...blueberries and more. We built our homestead ourselves, and so in a way we have planted ourselves on this property. There's an old pioneer cemetery on our place. The first white folks to settle here (among the Cherokee) are buried there in graves dated from 1790 to 1810. The last marked grave is 1908. One of the early graves is a little girl killed by a bear while out in the yard. One day I'll be planted there too...a part of the land I've spent my adult life tending.

However dreams take many forms. I love looking at human creativity and other approaches, and I hope you'll enjoy exploring a variety of people living their dreams...

A couple of weeks ago we looked at building. Here's a good example of someone building their own dream home...(22 min)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lG49SF7DAgI

From desert to full time on water on a tiny houseboat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3BA-O0dNH0 (14 min)

How about life on a barge in a swamp? Atchafalaya Houseboat is an entertaining story of a young couple living their dream
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJuI5WIf6cA (57 min documentary)

Some prefer rehab of old old things. How about this fellow living on a century old sailboat?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNh56ZKa4HY (9 min)

Other create unusual projects like this artist's concrete sailing schooner.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnummVJ9BFc (19 min)

In 1989, Mauro Morandi’s boat docked on Budelli Island off the northern coast of Sardinia, Italy. Discovering that the island’s caretaker was retiring within the next two days, Mauro decided to extend his stay indefinitely and step into the role himself. Little did he know that, nearly 30 years later, he would still be there. Mauro has built a small, simple life for himself on the island, collecting rain for drinking water, and building solar panels for electricity. Living alone, his love for his island paradise runs deep, and he hopes to stay as long as his health allows it. (4 min)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLWTXgC9BKI

What about a life on the road instead of on the water? Can you do it without fossil fuels? Here's a solar powered van traveling from Alaska to Argentina.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcj2lQwH7N4 (9 min)

There are many inspiring people and stories. People leading rewarding lives in this failed system. I often wonder if our c99 community focuses on the failures rather than exploring alternative approaches to living fulfilling lives within a collapsing system. All humans deserve the opportunity to live a peaceful, rewarding life, and I understand that goal is impeded by the global oligarchy. I think it is better to be aware of the conditions we face. So I do my best to find meaningful information about the current conditions....and it is enough to give you the blues as Joe reminds us every evening during the week. Next week I'll explore more ME stories, but this week seems to draw me south to Central and South America....

"...can you tell me where we're headed? Lincoln County Road or Armageddon?..."

There were some good interviews with Manuel Zelaya the duly elected president of Honduras who was deposed by the Obummer administration. He is speaking truth to power...(1.3 min)

Here's the complete interview (27 min) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZSiordl-os

For those who prefer to read, there's a transcript of his interview with Juan and Amy's
conversation with former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, who was ousted in a U.S.-backed coup in 2009. Zelaya reflects on that coup, what has happened to Honduran politics since then, and the migration crisis that has seen hundreds of thousands of Central Americans flee to the U.S.
https://www.democracynow.org/2019/7/3/manuel_zelaya_reflects_on_the_coup

Since the coup d’état, in these 10 years, each year, the United States, through the International Monetary Fund, has authorized $24 billion of additional debt each year. So now we have approximately $14 billion debt. When they removed me 10 years ago, we only owed $3 billion. Today, it’s $14 billion. So, to uphold the dictatorship, first they militarize the country, then they drive the country into debt. And they take out huge credits, which they call sovereign bonds, at huge interest rates. And of every 100 lempiras, 40 now go to the banks.

Plus, they loot the state institutions. The levels of corruption are exorbitant. They are abusive in every sense of the word. They’ve looted institutions such as Social Security, which is where the retirement funds for the elderly are and where the moneys are to cover the illnesses that the mothers suffer. They have looted these institutions in order to finance an unpopular, anti-democratic and dictatorial regime.

The United States doesn’t talk about Honduras, because it’s shameful. They are ashamed to talk about what they’re supporting in Honduras.

Max Blumenthal interviews people in Honduras. The shameful outcome of US meddling!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrEkO2aTygI (7 min)

Over and over and over again my friends...

“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”

― Smedley D. Butler, War is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America's Most Decorated Soldier

The US continues to put pressure on Venezuela also in order to obtain their oil.
Weaponizing human rights’: UN chief Bachelet’s Venezuela report follows US regime change script. Former UN special rapporteur Alfred de Zayas slams UN High Commissioner Bachelet’s report on Venezuela as a politicized collection of baseless accusations by “advocates of regime change” https://thegrayzone.com/2019/07/06/weaponizing-human-rights-un-high-comm...

US Gov. Meddling Machine Boasts of ‘Laying the Groundwork for Insurrection’ in Nicaragua
https://thegrayzone.com/2018/06/19/ned-nicaragua-protests-us-government/

The fourth of July has come and gone. I heard a couple of good pieces. Amy usually replays this clip every 4th of July...the words of Frederick Douglass. Born into slavery around 1818, Douglass became a key leader of the abolitionist movement. On July 5th, 1852, in Rochester, New York, he gave one of his most famous speeches, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” He was addressing the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society. This is the actor James Earl Jones reading the historic address during a performance of Howard Zinn’s Voices of a People’s History of the United States. This is the late great people’s historian Howard Zinn. (video or text)
https://www.democracynow.org/2019/7/4/what_to_the_american_slave_is

My intertube went flat Friday a week ago when my DSL modem went out. I guess I'm fortunate it lasted as long as it did. My ISP was happy to send me another for an additional $8/month. I said no thanks and ordered one for about $70. It arrived Wed. evening, and I manged to get it formatted and back on line by Thursday. I caught this interview with Larry Wilkerson that day, and I found it an appropriate commentary...(video or text)
https://therealnews.com/stories/is-us-democracy-dying-a-slow-and-barely-...

Well, what the founders wanted, as you pointed out, was a government for the landed, white male aristocracy. And the people could do whatever they wanted to under that government, so long as it didn’t badly interfere with what those white, male landed members of aristocracy wanted....
... whether you believe it’s plutocrats, whether you believe it’s a national security state, a deep state, a predatory capitalist state—And I happen to believe it’s all of those, which makes it all that much more dangerous and complex that it’s trying to take over. One of those or all of those are making a run on taking over,...
....they are desperate to hold onto power and will use any means at their disposal to do so. And they harken back to the time when the only thing we got rid of with the 750,000 casualties, people dead in The Civil War, was slavery as an institution. We didn’t get rid of, as you just pointed out, sharecropping that would replace it. We didn’t get rid of disenfranchising anybody we didn’t want to vote by having guns at a polling place— and if you voted, you got shot— or having a test, and so forth and so on...
...Look at Pelosi. Look at McConnell. Look at Trump. Look at any member of his cabinet. Look at the people who run our businesses today. My God, you deal with them. I deal with them every day. They’re cretins. They’re not well-educated. They’re just cretins out there for more and more filthy lucre.

Worth the full read

So, Where are the intellectuals?
Two of my favorites in conversation...Chris Hedges and Ralph Nader
Chris Hedges discusses the lifetime achievement of activist and attorney, Ralph Nader, in his creation of government regulation and regulatory agencies to protect the rights and lives of the public. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSrGLyVWF5Q (27 min)
the second part of Chris Hedges’ interview with Ralph Nader, activist and attorney, on the importance of a civic life. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fN6fw8Yjtms

Another power voice that speaks to me is Noam Chomsky...
In April, Noam Chomsky visited his hometown of Boston, where he was a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for more than half a century. He now teaches at the University of Arizona, Tucson. Over 700 people packed into the Old South Church to hear him speak. (video or text)
https://www.democracynow.org/2019/7/5/an_hour_with_noam_chomsky_on

Another intellectual, Cornel West discusses the 2020 race (6 min)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zR6L2_M9PA

Yesterday I went to a large party on a community land trust composed mainly of old hippies and their young adult children (and their kids). All I can say is TDS (that's Trump Derangement Syndrome) was rampant. Ironically, I think that will lead to his re-election. The dims are still dim...they are so blinded by T-rump that they think it doesn't matter who runs as a dim...that T-rump will lose. They do admit that Trump will win Alabama's electoral college votes, but think the rest of nation will vote anyone but T-rump. Perhaps they are correct, but I don't think so. Jimmy had several good stabs at the dim candidates this week...including Joe Bye-done and Kamala. He also had a fun interview with George Galloway last week (30 min)

So it is nice to be back in the saddle again riding along the intertubes. I must admit to missing the ability to sit down and look up anything I want to know, cruise youtube for news and info, and having access to my email account. However it was a nice break. I was able to focus on my many projects. It has been really hot here, so it is up and out early first to pick blueberries...and mow...and grade my road...and finish the wellhouse (which now just lacks trim)...and irrigate the garden...and harvest tomatoes which are coming in strong now...and on and on. Chores are endless but the reward is in the accomplishment, whether it is eating delicious produce, driving on a smooth gravel road, or having abundant clean water. Regardless of your life path you can choose a route that provides rewards and I hope you all are finding your lives rewarding and fulfilling. Nice to be back to read all your excellent work and comments from last week. Have a good day and week!