Loneliness Kills

Dear Blog Reader

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. We at Flying Dirt Farms have nearly exhausted the lilac supply. With January lasting 127 days this year, we are pretty late with the peonies, nigella, sweet peas, larkspur and other hardy annuals that get us to that magical second week of June time when we can coax sunflowers, and zinnias into our flower pallet. I know peonies are perennials not hardy annuals but work with me here all of you Master Gardeners. So we have relied heavily on the lilac supply. Each week going to our favorite abandoned farm houses, skulking around back and finding the old dilapidated outhouse. It never fails. You walk around to the backside of old farm houses and there will be the outhouse and its lone sentinel; a dark purple lilac bush. It does look the worse for wear. It could use a restorative pruning; a hacking away at the old growth allowing fresh growth to come in and produce more blooms.

All of the outhouses had them. Can you image how much you would look forward to the end of winter and the start of the aromatic magic of the lilac? That sweet fragrance so strong that it meant your poop didn’t stink for two whole weeks. Our grand parents (unless you are my children’s ages; then our great grand parents) were made of sturdy stuff. To imagine that two weeks of relief would make it worth spending your Mother’s Day loot on a sweet smelling, flowering shrub is a bit amazing in this day and age of instant gratification where playing “Fortnight” will consume our children’s time for the next month before the newest craze hits the  gaming universe.

Enough about the sweet smelling, beautiful flowers that the lovely Miss Beverly is selling that the Garfield Park farmers market every Saturday from 9:00 to 12:30; May through October. 

I am here to share the concern that I have for you, my dear blog readers. Over the past two weeks or so a new epidemic has had the bright media spot light shined upon it. No fewer than four media eruptions have occurred highlighting this societal nemesis. According to the experts, it is deadlier than obesity but not as deadly as smoking; proving once again that if it isn’t one thing its another. How am I ever going to live to be one hundred and fifty years old with all of these longevity stalkers trying to track me down?

So naturally my thoughts turned to you blog readers. Are you okay? Are you lonely?

Who is this new stalker? It appears that loneliness is the latest thing dragging us down. The first article was published on May 1. I am thankful that the editor showed restraint and didn’t give the article the headline “May Day! May Day! We are All Going to Die!” The article lays out the following premises:

1: Loneliness has huge impacts on public health.

2: Loneliness is particularly bad in the US with most people (more than half) feeling lonely.

3: The young appear to be most vulnerable.

4: We need a systematic approach (read big government program) to overcome loneliness.

This study was conducted by Cigna, a mega big insurance company, and reported in Business Insider; written by Kevin Loria.

Around the same time the same statistics were spewed forth from our local Indianapolis Star. I was also listening to a pod cast where the Buddhist author was antidotally reporting that 78% of all people were lonely and . . . all of them were going to die. Unlike all other bad news coming in threes, the loneliness bad news train had four cars. Mattie Quinn reported on “The Loneliness Epidemic” in May’s issue of Governing. In the article, Brigham Young University “found that weak social connections can shorten a person’s life at roughly the same rate as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. In England, they are planning to establish a minister of loneliness. OMG.

How did this epidemic sneak up on us? I was busy exercising, riding down lonely roads on my bike at 5:00 a.m. and shunning my favorite bars that allowed me to continue smoking on guys night out, all in an effort to live a long healthy life, and I suddenly get ran over by the loneliness bus. Or, should that be the loneliness unicycle?

Let’s face it. Loneliness isn’t new. The Beatles sang their tribute to the lonely 52 years ago with Eleanor Rigby on the Yellow Submarine. Were she and Father McKenzie were patients zero and one in this epidemic. Father McKenzie was the guy in verse two but received no naming rights in the deal; lonely and no royalties. The father really got screwed.

The reason for their loneliness? I would appear that they spent too much time in church. Thankfully, that organization’s relevance has been eroded to the point that the church can’t be the loneliness virus. I guarantee that regular church attendance is less than 40% in America now. So don’t go blaming the church for this one. Marx said the religion is the opiate of the masses way back in the 1840’s. Thankfully, we have turned that corner and heroine and fentanyl are the opioids of the masses now. Phew! It is good to get that religion opioid problem solved.

I know what you are asking. “So what do you suggest that we do about it Mr. Smarty pants?” 

Two answers:

1: The answer isn’t a systematic (government program) approach. Remember the war on poverty, the war on drugs, the war the end all wars, no child left behind? The systematic approach only institutionalizes the problem and forces it’s continuation in order to maintain the infrastructure of the solution.

2: This is not my idea. In a recent reading Love Does by Bob Goff, I was impressed by his practice of making a difference. He put his cell phone number on the last page of the book. The opportunities brought about by that openness were inspiring. So here goes. My phone number is 317 519 5902. If you are prepared to carry on a conversation with an extreme introvert, I am prepared to do my part and answer the phone.

Or even better, if you show up at the end of our driveway, knock on the door. We can go out to the garden and hoe this long row . . .

Together.

Take Care

Roger

Scratching Post

Dear Blog Reader.

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. I am managing the sudden increase in Vitamin D production; no overdoses yet. Sure I had gotten a few minutes while walking along the canal at lunch the past week. However, it was nothing like an entire day in the garden at Flying Dirt Farms. We are way behind. I had bundled up for a few Saturdays and gotten the perennials set out; arms very protected with SPF sweatshirt and a knit hat pulled low on my head to protect the tips of my ears. Now, it is time to get the bi-weekly rotations started. The winter rye has to be tilled under. Potatoes, onions and peas oh my. Dirt is flying everywhere.

Speaking of walking along the canal at lunch time, it is bittersweet. The realization that you have allowed the educational system to bundle up your eight and nine year old put them on a bus and sent them to a downtown greenscape, is nice. They get to see western history at the Eiteljorg museum. They can jump up and try to climb the mastodon sculpture outside the Indiana  State Museum. Or maybe they are aping the orangutans at the zoo as they careen into my path and shatter the peace and quiet of my daily walk. It is a wonder that any eight and nine year olds ever reach mature adulthood. But we manage to hover, to watch, and to chaperone them until they can exhibit some manifestations of self preservation. Plus, I have plenty of time for peace and quiet on those January days when the high temperature was - 5 degrees.

I must admit to a bit of a mean streak when I mention the following. This is for all of the helicopter parents who look at your young’s inability to manifest self preservation tendencies and decide to protect them from all possible harm and or hardship. The ones who buy hand sanitizer by the boat load and then fret when you hear that the lack of germs suppresses their little immune systems so you make them eat probiotic yogurt by the tub full. This is for you. Your children while wondering around this beautiful greenscape; chasing one another, knocking one another down trying to get to a makeshift ball rolling across the ground are doing so in about an inch of goose poop. 

Yes, the geese have been walking around on this three acres of green space for the past two months. The surrounding buildings provided protection from the wind and held a bit more heat. The canal provided a good source of water without any alligators to eat the geese. And about three acres of slowly growing grass to provide nutrition. And where you have goose nutrition, you also have goose poop. Because, geese poop right where they eat. I have no idea why. Maybe it is a circle of life kind of thing, or maybe they have little tiny brains on top of a really long neck and they are just stupid. But they are pooping all over the place and your children are having the time of their lives frolicking in it. So helicopter parents have an nice day doing your Lucy VanPelt imitation.

Speaking of bird poop, causing havoc with somewhat compromised immune systems, we are finally emerging from two separate huge food scares. With the first, our federal government was so flummoxed by where the romaine lettuce came from that was poisoning us that they were actually in my garden trying to recall my home grown heads of romaine. Any romaine grown any where? How can you lose track of the food supply so completely? But it would appear that we don’t know where romaine lettuce originates from and that it is commingled in huge vats of lettuce mix so throw it all out.

The second incident involved 200,000,000 eggs from one farm in North Carolina. The owner of the farm, Rose Acres an egg conglomerate, is headquartered right here in Indiana. Makes you proud doesn’t it. The eggs went to seven states and were sold wherever cheap eggs can be found. It appears that eggs are tracked better than heads of romaine lettuce so they have lot numbers and know the point of sale by state and stores. 200 million eggs is a lot of eggs. I am mind boggled just a little bit by the size of the pile that would have to be to throw all of those away; not to mention the 16,666,666 egg cartons. That is a mountain of yolks, folks. The king is going to have to get more men to put that one back together.

I took the opportunity to look a bit further into these already impressive stats. The farm has 2.3 million hens and they lay about 2 million eggs a day. This tells me that Mrs. McGreedy of Chicken Run has some culling to do. Chickens should lay one egg a day. Sure some days are going to be missed from time to time but a 15% rate would seem to me to be a bit high. Get ready for some really cheap pot pies. So 2 million eggs a day and 200 million eggs recalled that means we have eggs out there that are three months old. The seems a bit old to me. That is quite a long time for salmonella to get its tentacles into a moist, protein rich, environment and multiply even if it is in cold storage.

Thankfully the media dug into the issue and provided clarity and an explanation. A couple of weeks ago the Indianapolis Star interrupted my work day with the following headline:

FDA inspectors found rodents, filth and butt-scratching workers at farm tied to egg recall

You newspaper people crack me up. Sure there was some “touching of the inter-gluteal cleft” without subsequent hand washing going on according to the inspector’s report. Do you realize how much touching of the inter-gluteal cleft would have to go on to contaminate 200,000,000 eggs. Let’s just say some one may want to have a doctor look at that. No the problem here lies in the fact that the workers continually wiped the sanitizing solution from the eggs before the prescribed time on a regular basis. Let’s face it chickens produce two things; poop and eggs, and probably more of the former than the latter. Also not to put too fine a point on it, they use the same vent for both operations. 

You need to leave the sanitizer on the eggs for the proscribed period of time. That was the problem. It is described elsewhere in the FDA report. Also the report is only describing conditions as they existed prior to the outbreak. It had little ability to assess the actual source of the bacteria that made so many people ill. However, that doesn’t sell papers like butt scratchers. I know there are newspaper people out there screaming right now “but touching the inter-gluteal cleft is butt scratching.” Yes, but it doesn’t contaminate 200,000,000 eggs. It only drives page views and clicks.

In the end, (pun intended) understanding food safety in an landscape dominated by huge agribusiness concerns whose interests are served by cutting corners with the few minutes it takes to leave the eggs in the sanitizer for the proscribed time is too important an issue to have the news media just scratch the surface.

Take care and enjoy the sunny side up.

Roger