[Sosfbay-discuss] Common currency... or courtesy.

[Wes Rolley]

Having the luxury of 0.5 acres, my wife and I raise a lot of vegetablesw 
and fruit.  The day hardly goes by that we don't eat something that we 
raised ourselves.  Right now, we are working on the last of our 
pineapple guava.  Our mandarin oranges are almost ready to be picked.

With such largess, we frequently share with our neighbors, at least 10 
families in our neighborhood.  Responses vary signifantly from returning 
favors (eg. lemon cake flavored with our lemons)  to "is that all?" 

I recently re-read the story of  Erwin Hansen. Hansen grew up in the 
mountains of eastern Arizona. This was the same area devastated by the 
fires of 2002. His family moved to the mountains in 1906. He had spent 
70 years there by the time his remembrances were published in the June 
1975 edition of Arizona Highways. According to Hansen, “My daddy always 
was a neighbor-lovin' man. But shucks, back in those days, everybody 
helped everybody else. We had to. For instance, if all your neighbors 
were down with the flu and you weren't feelin' so hot yourself, you'd 
still go out and try to hunt up some grub. Maybe it would be nothin' but 
a crippled rabbit, but you'd find something. You always fed your 
neighbors first. That was how we got along.”

Maybe we need to re-learn that relaince on our neighbors to create a 
significant change in society. I am not sure that a new bank handling a 
new form of currency really changes how people deal with life.  It seems 
to me like a solution to a problem that most people don't think they 
have.  At some point, we will understand that we all have to rely on 
each other just to live. Maybe Global Warming will make that happen.  
Maybe losing the water from the California Delta will be the catalyst. 

Otherwise this is just a parlor game.


-- 
Wes Rolley		 
17211 Quail Court	
Morgan Hill, CA 95037
(408)778-3024

"Happiness is to be fully engaged in the activity that you believe in and, if you are very good at it, well that's a bonus." -- Henry Moore