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Page added on April 18, 2016
Habitat Loss
What happens to us as a people when the sources of knowledge are only to be found outside of our communities? When we ask the internet for gardening advice on a plot of land between Paint Rock Valley and Big Sandy instead of the farmer who has lived those conditions for eighty years? When our education is served up by the likes of the University of Phoenix instead of the slightly eccentric teacher living down the street? When childhood summers consist of structured play and digital devices instead of pirates and adventures?
Is the human spirit so easily channeled and contained? Is the knowledge needed to live so easily reduced and boxed up for our consuming pleasure and sold to us at Wal-Mart? Where does the “person” exist in that world?
I’ve been experiencing loss this last week for something only known to me for fifteen years and no doubt making a bit more of it than needed. But I have an old fashioned conservative streak running through my bones that hates change. So when the Sweetwater Fruit Market closed their doors a couple of weeks ago after thirty years I began to tally what was lost not just to me but to our community.
We lost a great source for fruit and vegetables sourced locally and regionally long before that became trendy. They were carrying heirlooms when they were still just the old-fashioned varieties everyone always grew. I grieve over the loss of their seed selection. The store carried twenty varieties of cowpeas alone, not to mention a couple of dozen varieties of sweet corn. They knew the best variety of potato for our clay soils (Kennebec’s) and when to plant. Do you think the Lowes garden department will match that knowledge or localized selection?
Theirs was a typical small town business that carried too many items with too small margins of profit. A place that dispensed advice built on their local knowledge and from local farmers. It was a business that any small town community supported easily before the era of big-box stores. The ripple effect of this closing will extend beyond the owners and the customers. It extends from the small farm providing collards and beets to the pig farmer who weekly collected the spoiled produce. And it extends to who we are as a people and what we expect from our community.
It is another in a long line of essential businesses rendered not essential by those who can’t be bothered to shop anywhere but Wal-Mart or its ilk. How many times do you hear someone bemoan the lack of civility, the loss of community? Yet their weekly shopping habits adds to that misery and increases that loss of community and civility from not knowing or being responsible to ones neighbors, supporting them so that they may in turn support you.
Our communities are suffering from what I see as a habitat loss as real as the loss in the natural environment. We collectively strip those habitats, both natural and social, of resources we cherish. And then express our disgust and amazement at their loss. No doubt I’m making too much of this small loss to our community. But it seems a symptom of something larger that does make one wonder what we truly value.
14 Comments on "Habitat Loss"
Dredd on Mon, 18th Apr 2016 9:58 am
“What happens to us as a people when the sources of knowledge are only to be found outside of our communities? When we ask the internet for gardening advice on a plot of land between Paint Rock Valley and Big Sandy instead of the farmer who has lived those conditions for eighty years?”
True enough, but not exhaustively so.
But by the same token, what happens when we ask our neighbor “why are the flora and fauna moving away” … ?
Never limit yourself as to where you may improve your knowledge base (Ents & The Entities Become Nomadic – 2).
onlooker on Mon, 18th Apr 2016 10:11 am
Good article about the loss of local community, jobs and knowledge. All making us be part of the greater system in all our roles as consumers, workers and citizens. Be compliant, be a part of the team. Only problem is the team is a bureaucratic govt. and multinationals who have no allegiance to people or places but only to the bottom line. And so we all are replaceable mere units or cogs within an all absorbing and encompassing system. A system that has lost touch with the necessity of a functioning Earth and the reality that we are losing its viability and usefulness more and more.
Makati1 on Mon, 18th Apr 2016 10:15 am
America has lost much more than it has gained in the last 50 years. Only someone alive before the big box stores and supermarkets can see it.
There were two hardware stores in the small town I grew up in. One was so old, it still had buggy lanterns in its warehouse and more spare parts than you can imagine for just about anytime made then. And even more amazing. It had clerks that had worked there for decades and knew where everything was and how it was used. Now you go into a hardware and it sells everything but hardware and the clerks are young know nothings that have no idea what you are talking about. And they never have what you need.
The dumbing down of America is about complete. It deserves to disintegrate into the less than 3rd world nation it is becoming. Most of those still living there cannot see it, but the rest of the world can.
penury on Mon, 18th Apr 2016 10:43 am
U have a device in my hand which gives access to all the knowledge of the world. I use it to watch porn.
Boat on Mon, 18th Apr 2016 11:35 am
mak,
You are so full of it. Small stores have very little choice and inflated prices. Box stores are better but with free shipping or store pickup, online shopping is the best.
You can also call in orders to a Home Depot, pick up any size order and they will have it ready to go at 7 am in the morning. Great time saver.
onlooker on Mon, 18th Apr 2016 11:45 am
You so miss the essential point of the article and what Mak and I am saying. It is about loss of any connection to the land, to your neighbors, to local knowledge about how to live off the grid etc. But of course Boat, you are not interested in all that. You are just interested like so many in the continuation of business as usual. The Event Horizon (the end) is coming up for business as usual that is why some of us wail against the System and business as usual.
Boat on Mon, 18th Apr 2016 12:09 pm
onlooker, it has nothing to do with my interests. Just the way it is. Wailing is useless. If you want a connection to the land I know a guy who needs hoeing in his garden. He has 7 goats to milk every day, 2 cows to milk. Couple of acres to mow etc. Has 20 turkeys that need slaughtered. One of these days he wants a chicken coup. He can’t seem to find the time….
onlooker on Mon, 18th Apr 2016 12:24 pm
thats funny sounds like on —
On the fourth day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
4 Calling Birds
3 French Hens
2 Turtle Doves
and a Partridge in a Pear Tree
paulo1 on Mon, 18th Apr 2016 12:34 pm
Well, my 85 year old father-in-law needed a new tv last week. He left an anxious message on our phone about it, so on a trip to town the same day I stopped in to see him. He met me at the door and the first words out of his mouth was how he tried to get service and help from the big box stores. “I called”……and on and on.
My reply was: “The problem is that you are really looking for customer service from outfits that exist and grew from undercutting traditional stores. You need to call a small local store”.
He replied, ” No one knows anything about this. I called……” blah blah blah. Again. He was really upset.
So, I got the phone book out and found the one store left that actually does installations and makes house calls.They had been around for the 30 years I have lived in the area. I called them up and said I was sending my father-in-law down to see them, and that he would need a decent tv, help setting it up + delivery, and they had to also take the old one away as part of the deal. I told the old guy that I would not go shopping for a tv with him nor would I set it up as it would take me all day and would be a nightmare, plus I didn’t want to haul the old one away. (It weighed 150lbs?maybe more?)So down he went and bought his tv.
He was so reluctant to spend the extra $100 or whatever it was going to be. I told him, “If you want a tv, take some of your money out of the bank and go buy one. How many years do you have left? You’ve got the money, go buy something that will work for you.”
I saw him Saturday and he was happier than a clam. The installation guy was coming back to take him through the commands so he could find and watch Netflix movies. He was on a first name basis with him.
The point of this comment is that even with older people who know better, they have been conditioned to buy on the cheap from Big Box. My point is that if we buy bedding plants from Costco, or tvs from London Drugs, WalMart, whatever; one day, when we really need help there won’t be any of the local service providers left. There will only be 20 year olds with tatoos and nose rings working on commission, and “Here’s a cart to get yout tv or cherry tree out to the car”.
penury on Mon, 18th Apr 2016 4:30 pm
I have found that for people born after about 1960 in the U.S. they have no interest in customer service (receiving or supplying) all they seem to care about is how much and how fast. If it breaks,wears out, or does not function at all, throw it away and buy a new one. I presume that in other affluent societies it is the same. People I know have no interest in local support for business, just price, speed and a large selection.
Apneaman on Mon, 18th Apr 2016 4:38 pm
pen, a little later than that by my count. We used to get our appliances, tv, etc repaired or the old man would do some of it up to the mid 1980’s. My nephew was born in 1984 and he has that disposable mentality – it’s all he ever knew/was shown.
Go Speed Racer on Mon, 18th Apr 2016 5:27 pm
A nation that has the kids texting on cell phones and playing splatter video games, instead of building tree forts and learning to swim, is a deeply sick nation indeed.
theedrich on Tue, 19th Apr 2016 4:36 am
Every ThirdWorlder imported by the Creature and his bribers destroys another bit of habitat. But hey, it’s want Jesus wants. And besides, “we” (i.e., you, Whitey) have to keep (sniff, sniff) extended, 50-member families (of the lower primates) together.
makati1 on Tue, 19th Apr 2016 6:08 pm
Totally agree, Go Speed. Totally agree.