Little darling, it’s been a long cold lonely winter
Little darling, it feels like years since it’s been here
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun
and I say it’s all right
Little darling, the smiles returning to the faces
Little darling, it seems like years since it’s been here
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun
and I say it’s all right
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes…
George Harrison, The Beatles
Today the sun shines brightly upon the two inches of snow that blanketed the yard yesterday. It hasn’t been a full week since I was complaining about the mud that seemed to surround us in the soggy gray of winter. Last night we watched the thermometer drop from 11 to 7 to 5, then zero degrees, but today, the shining sun makes 32 degrees feel almost… warm.
Despite the cold, I grabbed Daisy’s leash and outdoors we went, braving winter’s bitter bite just to be out in the sunshine. It seems so long since we’ve had a bright and sunny day, I could not help but to life my face to the sun, letting the winter wind chap my skin as I basked in the light.
Leaving what could have been a career as a newspaper reporter and breaking off on our own felt very much like stepping out of the gray of winter into the sunlight. Although news is typically printed in black and white, the truth is, the world of news reporting is a million shades of gray. Political powers, anonymous sources, advertising income, community opinion, the “truth” you read in black and white is anything but black and white.
Dark truths may be lightened by the style, humor or sympathies of the writer; the bright truths can be shaded by smear campaigns, misunderstandings, propaganda and hidden agendas. It can’t be helped, reporters are human after all and it is difficult, when surrounded by such a world of grays, to maintain a focus on the sunlight, much less bask in it.
Frank and I are quite proud, when we get the chance, to point out that Two-Lane Livin’ Magazine is “not the news.” We not writing to expose, report, or keep our readers up-to-date on the developments of the world. We’re working to educate and entertain, and that’s a world of broad-spectrum color, where light shines brightly on a regular basis. In fact, the more news we read, the more important our mission becomes.
With a copy of Two-Lane Livin’, readers step out of the gray, and into the sun. Join us in the sunlight. Pick up your print copy today, or visit us online at www.twolanelivin.com/issues.
To help us spread the sunshine, consider supporting our mission with your advertising dollars. Details are available online at: www.twolanelivin.com/advertise/
Appearing today on The Hur Herald (www.hurherald.com)
Resolutions or Goals?
It’s been years since I’ve made any New Year resolutions. I don’t much care for the idea of starting over. Some like to look at the New Year as a fresh start. Well, I’ve made plans, I don’t want to go back to scratch. For me the turnover to a new year is a time to reassess the goals I have already established.
In early 2006, Frank and I set a long-term goal to simplify our way of living and become more self-reliant. For us, this is the path we have chosen to pursue our happiness. Two-Lane Livin’ Magazine; our “super sized” garden; farming; my experiments with canning, freezing, raising chickens, baking bread; our studies into earth and body friendly resources; practices of budgeting and saving and recycling – all of these are attempts to “simplify” our lifestyles.
Unless you were raised that way, simple living is anything but simple. In order to be “self-reliant,” your life schedule comes under the control of daylight and dark, the whims of seasons, the influences of the clouds and the sun. Meeting times are set by chickens and projects are planned around planting, weeding, watering, and harvest.
In college, I studied writing and literature, not herbs and livestock. I may be able to quote Shakespeare, but I cannot tell you the germination period for a tomato seed. You have to study, learn, practice and polish simple living skills to reach the goal of self-sufficiency, and I feel, in many ways, I’m just getting started.
1. Learn About and Launch Hot Beds: Frank and I learned last year in our first “serious” garden that vegetables like carrots, beets, etc. really need to be planted early. Also, we don’t want to wait until spring to have fresh leaf lettuce. We know that hot beds can help us get an early start and more fruitful harvest, but I know very little about how hot beds work or how to manage them.
2. Study Compost, Fertilizer and Earthworms: In an attempt to increase the quality of our soil, we began a compost pile last year. In addition, this year, we have what we need to “farm earthworms.” While these things may not seem related, the soil the worms will be living in will be excellent for our garden, and we might sell some worms for fisherman. Worms can double their population in less than three months. Of course, I know very little about raising worms, and I haven’t quite gotten full control over the compost pile, but I can continue my studies and practice.
3. Expand the Herb Garden: I started an herb garden last year, mostly from plants given to me by friends. It did fairly well until the rabbits, chickens and deer found it. Even so, I have herbs dried and frozen and I use them in my breads, teas and other dishes. But, I need to fill out the selection I have, and I need to get a fence around it. I will master what I’ve learned about drying and freezing them, and maybe next year I’ll learn to make salves, vinegars, oils and tinctures. But right now, I just want to master keeping them alive.
4. Get More Hens: I’ve been the parent of four hens for eight months now. We call them “The Ladies.” DeeDee, Ellemby, Pepper and Red provided eggs for Frank and I, my mother, my aunt and uncle all summer and fall. If I get four more, I can supply more friends and family, and maybe work through the process to sell some at the farmer’s market with excess herbs and vegetables from our gardens.
These four goals are some early 2010 goals for the land around us. We also have goals for the house, goals for the business, goals for our health, goals for our minds and our mentality. So much can be done in a year, the possibilities are overwhelming.
It helps me focus, organize and plan if I reassess my goals instead of making resolutions. For me, it’s the difference between promises made from scratch, and simply maintaining our set path.
It helps me remember that I’m already part-way there.
Two-Lane Livin’ sponsors two monthly contests, the most well-recognized is The Cover Contest for which the readers submit their own photos to be featured on the magazine’s cover and win a Two-Lane Livin’ T-shirt. The other contest, the Find the Hidden Graphic Contest, challenges readers to find the hidden signpost graphic in the pages and send it in to be entered in a drawing for a Two-Lane Livin’ bumper sticker.
Neither of these are exotic prizes, I know. But most interesting are the entries we get.
Gina (not her real name) discovered Two-Lane Livin’ Magazine about a year-and-a-half ago. She has entered the Find the Graphic Contest every single month since. She has won… Twice. Her tiny clipped-out entry form is always accompanied by a hand-written letter with a copied poem of some sort, and some version of “I love Two-Lane Livin’ it’s the greatest!”
Now, about four months ago, Gina must have introduced Two-Lane Livin’ to her neighbor, Nicole (not her real name). That’s when we started receiving Find the Graphic entries from her with, “My neighbor introduced me to Two-Lane Livin’. I really like it,” letters included. Gina and Nicole live on the same road, their house numbers in their return addresses are less than five numbers apart.
Over the months, these two ladies have sent in their entries with notes and submissions for our Reader’s Page. Gina sends poems likely copied from the internet, and until this month, Nicole simply sent variations of, “I really like Two-Lane Livin’. I read it when I can.”
But this month, Nicole wrote an essay:
“When I was a Lettle Grial, this old man put me to sleep. He told this story about Running Bears and cats and his father Saw me playing whith the cats can Hurt you Bad. A Bad A Bear can hurt you too as Bad. then the man ask me what did I whant for Christmas and I Saide I what a puppie. Im not so good writeing this too Two-Lane Livin I Really Like it and I Love it I hope you Like this Lettle. I can’t write Like I whant to.”
What is especially interesting is that the essay has nine places where Nicole covered mistakes with white-out and made corrections. She, knowing she could not write well, put forth every effort she had to send something that was to her very best ability. This was not a quick note. Not an easy task for her. The white out shows that this was a project that she spent time on. Imagine the time alone in letting the white out dry.
She worked at it, and I appreciate her efforts.
Nicole, I know, will write us every month – just as her friend Gina does. Gina’s writing is a little more legible but includes more scribbled out places, but Nicole dots her i’s with little circles, and troubles herself with white out, no scribbles. For as long as our magazine exists, for as long as they are able, both of these ladies will take the time and effort each month to find the graphic… cut it out… tape it to the form… write the accompanying letter, poem or essay… address the envelope (each came this month with decorative Christmas stickers added)… and place it all in the mail.
Nicole and Gina are reading. They are writing. They are Two-Lane Livin’ Magazine’s most responsive and dedicated fans.
I picture them, Gina bringing Nicole her copy, and the two of them sitting down together to search the pages for the hidden graphic. I see them passing the scissors to each other to cut out the graphic and the entry form. I see them sitting at the kitchen table, addressing their envelopes, choosing which Christmas sticker they want to use from a pile that’s been gathered from junk mail “gifts for you” over the years.
And then Gina drops them in the mailbox along the side of the road on her way home when they are finished.
It touches my heart. The picture in my mind may not be accurate. It matters not.
In “Super Size Me,”when Morgan Spurlock gets physically sick in his first day of only McD’s, I thought, “One meal? Two meals? And he’s sick already?”
Well, when you clean up your diet and spend months eating healthy, wholesome, non-mutated, non-processed foods — one meal from those pharmaceutical dinner menus will do it.
Frank and I each spend a whole week on the road driving every day to deliver the magazine. Since we’re out and about like that so rarely, we consider it a treat to have easy access to restaurants and shops, etc.
For example, I always do the South Calhoun/Clay/Kanawha/Roane delivery run. One reason is because I know I can get Krispy Kreme doughnuts at The Big Otter Exxon.
We used to eat dinner, lunch, breakfast out all the time. But now, we’re homebodies, and eating out has become…
An Eating Experiment.
See, when we launched the magazine, we also launched our gardens in full force. Vegetables, herbs, winter gardens. We also got chickens, our own eggs – and I began baking bread. Frank and I have eaten healthier in the last two years of our lives than we have in a decade.
But our bodies have developed a low tolerance for processed foods.
If I have caffeine after 11 am, I’ll be up all night. And those Krispy Kreme doughnuts? Man, what a sugar high (and following crash).
But it’s the queasy stomach part that really gets you when you are out on the road.
After two years of this experiment where “diner diarrhea” is the common effect of failure, I have picked up a habit from Hawkeye Pierce on MASH – I smell my food before I eat it.
I have identified a scent that tells me, “Don’t eat that.”
I consider it a survival skill.
We deliver to sixteen counties in Central West Virginia, and I know every restaurant and diner along the way. (I also know all the cleanest bathrooms on every route.) In some, I pick up the scent the minute I walk in the door. In others, it wafts up from the cottage cheese, or the soup.
The sight of an all-the-processed-food-you-can-eat buffet is enough to make my nose and stomach both turn in self-defense.
I don’t want to be this way. Believe me, I come from a long line of buffet grazers. I LIKE crab salad, fried shrimp and instant mashed potatoes smothered in margarine that is only one molecule off from being plastic. I LIKE pre-made pies of pudding on graham cracker crust and nachos smothered in processed cheese.
I just… can’t…. eat it any more.
I also can’t eat much microwaved food.
We haven’t used a microwave in our home for three years. A friend of mine gave me an article on microwaved foods and after that I just couldn’t eat anything I cooked in the thing. We eventually just gave it away. I heat everything on the stove or in the oven now. We dirty a lot more dishes without a microwave, but other than that? We don’t really need it.
I can tell if my bun and burger have been nuked. I can tell by the look if food has been zapped.
I ordered a corn dog once, and they microwaved it. A corn dog. Isn’t there some chef’s rule that says a corn dog is a FRIED food? I mean really, if I’m risking stomach cramps later today with my choice of junk food, shouldn’t it automatically include GREASE?
Some things, like corn dogs and doughnuts, I love so much I don’t care if I’m going to get sick. I’ll risk it all for a bite of Bavarian creme or a taco pizza or salad.
But I can’t if it has that smell. Even still, there are times when I don’t catch it. But after two years on these delivery runs (no pun intended), I pretty much know what/where I can eat.
I also can name the cleanest bathrooms in sixteen counties.
Every year, the United States goes $900 million more in debt from making money. That’s right. Each year, our national debt rises that much alone from making pennies and nickels. You see, it costs 1.5 cents to make a penny, and seven cents to make a nickel. We’ve all heard the saying, “it takes money to make money,” and yet in this case, a penny made is not a penny earned. For every dollar’s worth of pennies we make, we’re losing 50 cents. For every dollar’s worth of nickels, we lose 40 cents.
To you and me, the solution for this is a “no-brainer.” Use a cheaper metal to make these coins. It’s been done before.
The U.S. penny since 1982 is made of 99.2% zinc and 0.8% copper, with the outside plated with copper. Before 1982 pennies were made of solid copper, all except in 1943 when pennies were made of steel plated with zinc because copper was in short supply due to WWII.
So we changed the penny when we didn’t have the copper, can’t we change the cost to make a penny now when we can’t afford the growing debt?
It may seem simple to you and I, but today’s policy-makers and decision makers will be quick to say, “It isn’t that simple.” In fact, for more than a decade, the “what to do with the penny” argument has continued, with no agreement reached, costing us more than $9000 million dollars alone from minting pennies while waiting for a decision.
Some will argue that it would be better to just do away with the penny. Oh, I see, so you can round everything up to the nearest five. But then, it costs too much to make a nickel so then we should round up to the nearest ten – on taxes? Percentages? Now THAT seems complicated to me.
Others would argue that changing the composition would affect the copper or zinc industry, resulting in a huge loss of jobs, resulting in an increase of those on assistance, which would, in the long term, create more debt than printing pennies.
Even others would note that our money, in reality, has no value anyway. And they too, would be right. Since 1933, when President Roosevelt outlawed private ownership of gold (except for jewelry), and took our monetary system off of The Gold Standard (when the value of money was based on the price of gold). Our money became valueless. In fact, nearly all monetary systems in the world today are based on the Fiat System where, (and I quote) “money that is intrinsically useless; is used only as a medium of exchange.”
So, how does it feel to know that since 1971, when the last major world money system switched over, that the world’s money has been useless?
Today, when a dollar (or even a hundred dollars) seems to go nowhere, while policy makers discuss the condition of our “worthless” economy, perhaps it is time for us country folk to turn to another system that we’ve been using for years – The Barter System.
Bartering is a medium in which goods or services are directly exchanged for other goods and/or services, without the use of money. Folks around here call it horse tradin’. Barter usually replaces money as the method of exchange in times of monetary crisis, when the currency is unstable and devalued. In fact, these days, the worldwide organized barter exchange and trade industry has grown to an $8 billion a year industry and is used by thousands of businesses and individuals.
Up to 70% of the economy in rural communities through the world is through the barter system. In fact, some economists would say that the barter system has contributed to the downfall of our rural communities, and if we were to pay for the goods and services we require, instead of using the barter system, it would boost our local economy, and provide services for the community.
In other words, our exchange system prevents us from reaching successful levels of participation in their exchange system.
But gee, it seems to me that their system is broken, and our barter system is going to flourish.
Personally, I like the barter system. In the barter system, the only person who can tell you the value of your tomato is the person you are trying to trade with. A tomato isn’t worth $2.49. It might be worth an apple, or two apples, or an egg.
In the nation’s economy, there are those who have, and those who don’t. And what we have is worth less every day. Every dollar saved only gets us 50 cents ahead. But, in the horse tradin’ business, we all have something of value. Vegetables, skills, products, services, car parts, animals, all have varying levels of value – directly depending on the other person’s need.
Remember those 1943 pennies? The ones made of steel to save copper in our country’s crisis of World War II? Because of a simple mistake, in the changeover from 1942’s contents to 1943’s contents, an unknown number of 1943 pennies were created with a mixture of both, creating the penny collector’s “golden calf”, the copper-alloy cent. Coin experts speculate that they were struck by accident when copper-alloy 1-cent blanks remained in the press hopper when production began on the new steel pennies. The mistake happened at all three mints in the country – Philadelphia, Denver, and San Francisco.
There are fewer than 40 copper-alloy cents assumed to be left in existence today. But if you find one, a feel like trading it, what is its true monetary value?
It could be worth up to $82,000 dollars – but only if you find the right person to trade. But you can’t eat a penny, you can’t drive it. You can’t heat with it, take shelter in it, and it will not grow and produce. And if the coin collector invested his money in the stock market, he may no longer have that $82,000 to offer you. So then it’s really not even worth a single cent.
While the world tries to figure out the value of a dollar, I think we should all consider the value of a trade. Trading isn’t an “under the table” exchange any more. It is a growing, respected industry based on an exchange system that will only become more and more popular over the next several years. Businesses can legally account for trades for the IRS by assigning a monetary value to the items or service exchanged and reporting it along with all other expenses and incomes.
These days, when everyone is thinking about money, money is barely worth talking about. If you are feeling low about your current “financial worth,” put on your tradin’ hat and take another inventory of your assets. You may discover you have great worth after all.
