Letter from Slim Wolfe
Colorado Central – August 2005 – Colorado Central Magazine
Editors:
Once again there wasn’t a damned item in the regional calendar relating to self-reliance or sustainability.. And once again the editorial ranted on for pages about our condition but kept shoving the blame elsewhere or nowhere. The blame is on me (and you) and self-reliance is the key. A century ago, a tiny little parcel of real estate such as the Quillen’s would have been crammed with self-reliance: vegetable plots, chicken coops, and rabbit hutches, looms, canning sheds…
Yes, the workday was long and sometimes messy but the land was pretty much free of the growth we despise. So let’s quit crying boo-hoo over how we gotta have jobs and lets start realizing that maybe we don’t gotta have nearly so many jobs because much of the output of our economy is wasteful and much of the income is spent on so called convenience which we’ve been taught is our birthright by the vendors of our commerce. Even Mattingly’s interesting articles about farming canola for biodeisel approached the topic from a commercial vendor
Yes, it’s a pain in the butt to bake all your bread and build your greenhouses and rabbit-hutches and gather renewable fuel, while all the neighbors are renting the latest VCR film or transmogrified by their laptops. But it’s also the only way to take some of the steam out of the endless conundrum of America described in many of your editorials and my past writings as well. And while we’re on the topic of jobs versus livelihood lets consider the Climax mine whose moly may be needed in large part to make steel for the weapons our government likes to deploy and murder with around the globe. I lived in Leadville and even worked at the mine briefly before it shut in the early ’80s and frankly all those jobs did was create an excess of consumer orgyism – big red trucks and plunk-down modulars bought on time and endless hours in the saloons and ATVs and snowmobiles and all the ignoramus crap that people need to cover up the reality that they’re slaving their lives away for the wealth of absentee absentee investors, so the return of Daddy Warbucks to Fré Summit doesn’t strike me as a think to cheer about.
YOU CAN SAY NO TO THIS. YOU AS AN INDIVIDUAL CAN SAY NO TO THIS JUST AS YOU CAN FIND WAYS NOT TO PAY FEDERAL TAX FOR WAR, just as the munitions workers in wartime Germany found ways to undermine weapons production. BUT YOU MUST MAKE YOURSELF PUT OUT THE EFFORT: longer hours and skinned fingers you can make your own building materials like your ancestors did and your own clothing and SAY NO TO BEING A CORPORATE CONSUMER ZOMBIE. Life goes on and gets better without Safeway, Wal-Mart, and tree-farm lumber and sometimes it’s not convenient to butcher those cute innocent little bunnies and put food on your table, but hey – no guts, no glory.
You are not helpless – you can say no. The revolution will not be served up by your server. It’s down to you and your stubbornness and ingenuity in the face of all the great satans of the world.
You don’t need to pay municipalities or corporations to produce your electricity or dispose of your bodily wastes or tell you how often you need to install your electrical outlets, doors and windows and how to landscape your territory – you can be a lot smarter and more effective than the lot of them and you can say no to dependence and mental slavery and see the world with your own two eyes and good common sense…not some sort of emergency contingency in case of massive catastrophic failure (because that’s already happening on several levels) but as a matter of personal self-respect and enjoyment of the pleasures of independence, your true (not romanticized) wild west spirit.
Be your very own re-enactment, don’t drive to see someone else pretend to do it for you. If enough people say no, a lot of the Dick Cheney bears will run out of garbage/fear and will retreat to wherever they came from. It’s only a hopeless conundrum until you realize that the buck stops here.
Slim Wolfe
Villa Grove
(Hopefully a photo will follow.)
Dear Slim,
Sure, but first you have to send us your photo.
In the meantime, I totally disagree. First off, almost everything in our calendar is about sustainability, including music concerts, gallery openings, and book signings, because that’s what people do here to sustain themselves — both professionally and mentally.
Second, I don’t think it’s whining to point out that U.S. economic policy is fixated once again on increasing corporate profits and stock market gains by ruthlessly slashing labor costs and wages (along with environmental protections and workplace safety standards). On the contrary, I think citizens must speak out against such greed and inequity.
But the thing I find most alarming about your assertions is the implication that everyone must be, act, and think the same way. I’d rather live in a diverse society where merchants, farmers, artists, craftsmen, fishermen, plumbers, physicians, monks, Hutterites, etc. can all pursue their own ideals (assuming , of course, that their pursuits are not unduly avaricious or destructive).
You say self-sufficiency is the answer. Yet if you have your way, it seems to me that the powers-that-be will just come along and take our chickens, crops and land in lieu of back taxes.
You claim that baking your own bread is somehow necessary. But what’s wrong with getting bread at the local bakery? What’s wrong with co-operation? And what will become of us if a majority of Coloradans decide to play Robinson Crusoe? How many acres will it take for them to grow their own crops, raise their own stock, produce their own building materials and clothing, and generate their own power? Don’t we already have problems aplenty with water shortages and sprawl? Will it help to encourage more people to leave their jobs and apartments to live off the land?
Although a Mother Earth News lifestyle may be praiseworthy, too many adherents would harm rather than help matters.
But I certainly don’t mean to imply that there is nothing that workers can do to better their lot. We can organize; we can vote; we can buy locally; we can support cottage industries; we can boycott companies that cut pensions and benefits; we can reduce our dependence on foreign oil. In short, we can band together before everything from Social Security to our National Forests gets restructured in order to turn a profit and the workers are the only Americans left who are still expected to pay taxes.
Martha Quillen
