This morning I'm noticing what a Strange world this has come to be. In the relatively short time I've been alive, I've seen our media -- now largely electronic and appearing almost real -- con us into believing that foods made in a factory somewhere are what we should be eating. Many children have no interest in the miracle of growing Food, having no idea where real food comes from. Many children's favorite vegetable is "French fries".
In some neighborhoods people who dare to grow vegetables in their front yard are ostracized and prosecuted. This is not wise, nor is it healthy. Fortunately, I don't live in one of those neighborhoods. My neighbor grows quite a lot of berries and vegetables in his front yard and freely shares with passersby and neighbors.
A big part of my life has become explaining the benefits, for diabetics and many others, of the tree Mitragyna speciosa. We live in a society run by busybodies who force us to pay them to pass and enforce laws to make certain formerly medicinal herbs illegal. It is for our protection, they say, and for the protection of our children.
I recall that, as recently as the 1970s, one parent could earn enough so that the other parent could stay home and properly raise the kids. Inflation, fueled by the Vietnam War, put an end to that. The rise in divorce has further made child-raising the job of our school system for most families, if a one-parent unit can be called a "family".
I am of the belief that letting people make their own exploratory mistakes makes them stronger and wiser. In fact, they need these experiences of freedom to choose, if we are to discover what wild, elemental Nature has to teach us.
So much of our mainstream media seem to be devoted to warn us of dangers outside the campfire circle of our "civilization". I am still reeling from an article about kratom published in Sunday's New York Times, dedicated to scaring opioid drug addicts away from a natural form of relief and back into the arms of those who offer synthetic patented drugs that are, as I'm often told, far more addictive than heroin. How is that progress?