Y2k, Doorway to the next Millenium

Isn't it fun, go for a ride in the country, stop at an antique store, discover something you like, buy it, hire someone to retrieve and deliver it, and there, you have it. Compare this to an indigenous woman who has had to carry her water on her head since she was a little girl, now, through some program, has had plumbing installed and can simply turn the faucet and water comes out, can you imagine her pleasure?

There is a difference in the quality of the two pleasures, that of the rich woman as compared to that of the poor, and a paper could be written on that, but I will leave that pleasure to you and for your contemplation.

Time is relentless, now, and there is no turning back, watch how it turns a little boy into an ageing man almost right before your eyes.While all of humanity is caught, like as in a frenzied torrent, struggling with all our might to stay aloft, only to be dropped like the grizzly debris that lays strewn on the beach, left from the last high tide. What is the point?

What has happened to the quiet eddies and backwashes, where only birdsong animates the peace and tranquillity of daily experience and life goes on at a leisurely pace?

We are being funneled into a narrow pass, the sound of a huge waterfall is approaching rapidly, there is no getting off, is this bone-breaking descent inevitable?

The Titanic was just the first of a century of disasters, and looking back, the Titanic as big as it was, was incredibly small compared to the scale of disasters that have followed. If one had a graph or chart of all the disasters that occurred, would there be a natural progression? Could we then expect y2k to be the biggest ever? Even that would not be conclusive.

Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.

You there, heading for the waterfall, can you see,there are some people up ahead they are holding a stick or rope, can you grab it? Its your only chance. Its just some vines they wrapped together, tied it to a stone, and flung it across, it wrapped around the branches of a tree. Its your only hope.

Low-tech, homemade style self-sustainable ideas, maybe really, the only hope left.

The lemming-like death march of techno-civilization, who could guess how it would play out? One massive traffic jam? like a heart attack. A nuclear blast or series of them, rampant diseases, like aids, ebola, wiping us all out. There could be many ways, all unpleasant, to say the least.

Y2k, with its ironies, could be the best of all the worst, because we have time, a moment to respond, to save ourselves, and to get off this death march too, before its too late.

Can you see God and the devil, watching, the devil giggling, "God, I told you, those humans are such fools, you could give them all the time in the world, and they would still not save themselves." God says, fingers crossed, " We'll see, we'll see."

Partial list of low-tech, homemade style ideas for self-sustainability, both for the individual and the neighborhood, to be implemented before 2000:

---

1. Vertical gardening: Make a column out of chickenwire and tarpaper or cardboard about 3 1/2 feet high, 14 inches diameter. Hold a 4 inch diameter pipe in center and fill with sand and stones (for watering), remove the pipe, fill the rest of the area with good soil. Cut 32 inch slits around the outside thru the wire and paper in a spiral pattern. Insert seedlings in slits (40-60). Can be used on sidewalks, balconies, roofs. Sizes are arbitrary. 4 or 5 should feed a family plenty of vegetables, plant about 2 weeks apart to keep a steady harvest.

---

Local gov'ts. should be asked to bring grains from the silos across America where they often rot every year and store them in accessible places for neighborhoods in your city.

-- Tom Osher (bagelhole1@aol.com), January 18, 1999