Ironically, when primitive people are ‘working’, they’re engaged in activities modern people yearn for as recreation: Hunting, fishing, picking fruit and berries, and traversing the countryside are all vacation activities highly prized.
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Here’s a fun brain game: Let’s pretend you have a kennel, and I have a dog that reproduces as though it were a bacterium, splitting in two once every minute and creating progeny that will do the same. I’ll stop by tomorrow at 11am to deliver the dog into your care. We know your kennel will be full at Noon.
What time will your kennel reach half capacity?
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This story will be brutally honest. You’ll soon know all my shortcomings.
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Find the March 2021 newsletter here
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What on earth happened to me that could affect such strong and recurring memories over a decade later?
A more appropriate question is what in earth influenced my mind so powerfully?
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A property border, however, does not eliminate the opportunity to migrate, nor do the confines prevent us from accessing the freely replenished bounties of nature.
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It was not the settling of new land that enabled Native American tribes to flourish in fecundity; rather, it was the ample rest provided to land abandoned.
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When the situational equation was balanced, the answer became clear: I was the help.
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By specializing farms, we’ve cherry-picked a fragment of an ecological whole and concentrated it, thus removing any benefit of a complete ecosystem. As a result, farmers fail to take advantage of the free resources surrounding them in abundance on their home place, choosing instead to rely on an industry of suppliers. That’s like ignoring a dump truck load of money in the back yard while walking out the front door to ask a banker for a loan. In order to take advantage of nature’s freebies, we must trade spreadsheet efficiency for natural effectiveness.
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The Ballad of John Henry is a folk song about a strong, hardworking “steel drivin’ man” who could swing a hammer better than any other man on the work crew. John is admired as a hero, and, when his legacy is threatened by the introduction of a steam drill, he challenges the job foreman that he can drive more steel than the fancy new machine.
In classic folksy man vs. machine style, the steam drill breaks down and John Henry does indeed win the contest. Listeners are satisfied by the outcome; we all want a reminder that people are significant. The song is not yet over, though:
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Creativity cannot be taught. It must be won, torn out of our minds in desperate moments when proper procedure is exposed as a ghost and abstract ideas become a possibility.
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There is a distinct difference between the people who supported us when there was another option at the grocery store and those who buy from us because there is no other option at the grocery store. It’s the difference between a deliberate vision for the future and the expectation of limitless gratification.
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The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
That's a mantra we live around here. Every individual has remarkable talent, but that talent is worthless in the absence of other people.
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Efficiency has become synonymous with convenience, and convenience is the impostor that’s distracting modern agriculture from honest effectiveness.
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