It's been a while. We're in Eugene, OR, and last night we slept under the stars at Junction City Pond. It was a bit illicit, but it was getting late and we weren't going to make our destination of Eugene before the last bits of daylight faded.

It was a nice campsite, improvised behind a big bank of blackberry bushes to be hidden from the road and the main parking lot of the pond. We ate our fill of berries, just now ripening, for a late night snack and breakfast, then we rode to Eugene and plopped down in The Beanery to catch up on email and blogging.

Let's just first say that we have A LOT of blogging to catch up on. We've been living pretty busy lives lately, and blogging has taken a bit of a back seat. But we'll try to get a bit caught up today.

First, a note on a bit from email. My cousin John is thinking about joining the military as a chaplain. My mom sent me an email about talking to him yesterday. She's predominantly pacifist and very unhappy with the way that our military is being used now, and I know she doesn't want him to join up, both from the perspective of not wanting him to be part of a war machine, and not wanting him to be put in danger. I understand and sympathize. She asked me to write to him about joining up with the army. I'll just share what I wrote.

John,

My mom asked me to write to you about joining the armed forces, so here we are.

I can understand the allure of joining up, and I even thought about the chaplain service myself when I got out of college. I wonder how things would have turned out if I would have made that decision instead of the way I went.

This is your decision to make, and I'm sure you'll give it plenty of thought before you go either way. I'm not one to try and convince others how they should live their lives, but since my mom asked me, I'll at least share my thoughts on military service.

I'll just gloss over a lot here, but I'd highly recommend reading A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn as a good introduction/survey of US history from a somewhat different perspective than what we get taught in school.

You don't need a lot of schooling to think a bit about how the world has worked over the course of history. There have been thousands of governments all over the world that have asked or forced their citizens/subjects to fight for them. Most of them have invoked some sense of righteousness and national pride to encourage soldiers to join up. This is an effective enough tactic that soldiers have usually not been in short supply.

Thousands have wars have been fought, with soldiers on all sides thinking that they are fighting for the glory of their God and to protect their nation. All of them. That's a notion that gives me pause. They can't all be correct about what country is in the right or which side God is on. I'm not willing to fight and kill people (or serve in support of those who do) when there is doubt in my mind over which side is in the right.

When I weighed my options, I decided I was better off trying to serve in ways other than fighting, given my doubts about what was the right course of action. I tried to join up with the state department at that point (and didn't get a position), but decided the army wasn't for me. I'm sure you have good reasons for wanting to join up, and it may be a good option for you. It wasn't the right thing for me to do, and I don't regret at all not choosing that route in my life.

Take care, and don't be a stranger.

Love,
Andrew

I hope he does read Zinn's book, and I hope that he makes a decision that does well for him in the end. That might be the Army, it might not, I have no idea. I don't agree with what our government is asking the military to do right now, and I don't generally agree with nationalism or agressive warfare, so I find myself at odds with US policy all too often. It's sometimes hard to accept that there are other valid viewpoints out there, and that for some people (including my cousin), it may be that what we are doing is a perfectly valid and justified action. I can only say that for me, it is not.

Basically, the last few days we've been riding again, on our way south from Portland along the Willamette River Valley. This is one of the greenest areas in the US, and it's kind of a shame that we're now on a tight time schedule. We cruised through Salem, the state capital, barely even stopping to look over our maps.

Corvallis was more our speed, and we ended up staying 2 nights, getting a total of 4 interviews. One of my favorites so far was the home of Johnathan Carroll, a great example of retrofitting an older house with green tech to make its footprint as small as possible.


As we get closer to the conclusion of the trip, my mind is filled with the possibilities for the future, mingled with the lessons we've learned and the great things we've seen. More than ever, I want to homestead. More than ever, I believe that solar/wind and residential-level food growing is really the way forward for success.

I've been thinking a lot about the real basis of our society/civilization, and it seems so far out of whack right now. Not just the USA, either. It's just a western civilization issue. The most simple parts of human existence - what we eat, drink and breathe and how we seek shelter, have all been largely taken out of our control. There's a limit to how much we can do on an individual level to control what we breathe, but control of the other three can be taken back by someone who wants to choose their own way in the world.

To start with the food, there's a huge amount that we don't know about the "conventional" food system right now, and also a large amount that we do know that is negative. Genetically engineered foods have been shown to be unsafe in several venues, and yet our government allows all too many of them. Huge amounts of pesticides and herbicides are used in raising modern vegetables, fruits and grains. Meat and dairy products are routinely polluted with hormones. Almost none of these dangerous chemicals are required to be disclosed in food packaging. This is to say nothing of products like high fructose corn syrup, which is incredibly ubiquitous in modern foodstuffs for a material that is well-known as harmful, or at the least seems to be linked to obesity.

There's an easy solution to these problems: grow your own food. It's not hard to do. You can plant a few fruit trees one year. A year or two later they make you fruit that you can eat or store for future needs. You plant a vegetable garden. A few weeks or months later you have fresh, healthy veggies. Farming or keeping gardens is hard work, but it is work that keeps you healthy too. Too many of us, myself included, have become sedentary and inactive in our lifestyle. Getting out in the sun to plant and weed and water your future food is a way to improve your bodily health, just like eating the right food is.

The dwellings we choose to live in, and the way we power them, is a hugely important way of taking control of our lives back too. There is too much dependence on entities and people outside of our purview. Food companies are one example. We now mostly get our foods from companies who we have no direct contact with. We interact with them only through a cash register. Energy companies are largely the same way. Certainly that's the case in Indiana with Duke being the major player.

We've seen great examples on the trip of people who have engineered their own independent energy solutions. They have solar panels or wind turbines to power their homes. They have taken efficiency and conservation to heart, so they don't need massive amounts of energy to run their homes. But they have amenities that are synonymous with American life: computers, televisions, refrigerators, etc. They live smarter, they have more efficient appliances, more elegant systems for home heating and cooling, and lifestyles that don't waste so much of the energy that courses through their home. They emit less carbon emissions. They don't encourage the coal industry. They save money. They will never be under the thumb of power companies as power rates in the US keep climbing.

In Indiana, there's a big profit incentive for the energy companies to keep using coal. There's an incentive to keep building more power plants. There's not much of an incentive to start using cleaner energy or to encourage efficiency.

On an individual level, it is easy and profitable to change to renewable energy for household use. There seems to be little reason not to, except for the initial cost. With the big federal subsidies, some state subsidies, and a bit of thought about long-term energy costs, that initial cost can quickly go from onerous to extremely attractive.

Wowee. We got a call from a great host here in Eugene, OR. Gonna go ride over to his place and meet him and his family.