The Post-Partisan Emporium

Back to the Land On Generating Self-Worth Heather Heying In the Shenandoah Valley of western Virginia, Polyface Farm is a beacon. Joel Salatin, the proprietor, has created a farm so vital, the land itself seems to breathe. Unlike much modern agriculture, which relies heavily on capital, electricity, and infrastructure, Polyface Farm relies primarily on people. Polyface Farm  has beckoned me since 2006, when Michael Pollan’s  The Omnivore’s Dilemma  came out, and I, like so many others, fell in awe with Joel Salatin and his farm. I was a professor at one of the country’s most liberal colleges then, and when I assigned Pollan’s book to my students, they too fell for the promises therein: that we can and we must remember what we have been, what the Earth is, what we are all capable of, and grow our food and communities with attention to ancient and actually sustainable ways. Back then, Salatin reports, about 80% of the visitors to Polyface Farm were on the left, politically—...

Thoughts? MAKE AMERICA WORK AGAIN The political gymnastics over agriculture and hospitality workers is not about kindness toward illegals; it's about how lazy our nation has become.  We've incentivized and encouraged the public teat and I'm tired of it.                    I'm tired of working hard every day and having half my income confiscated to give people too lazy to work free medical, free food, and free housing.  Enough already.                   I propose a new movement to augment the other Make America whatevers and we have a MAKE AMERICA WORK AGAIN initiative.                    This brouhaha to protect farmers and hotels from a dragnet scooping up illegals does not indicate a pr...

  Party like it is 1975 Not all that glitters is worth it. Spaceman Spiff Some people don’t get it. They are not tuned in to how bad it is meant to be. The wars, the defeat, the existential horror of life. The decline of the nation, culture and society. The relentlessly depressing prospects for weather, the economy or relations between the sexes. Bad news sells and we have never had so many channels with which to be told the end is nigh, our own and everyone else’s. A tiny handful aren’t getting the message. Most do get it, however. They are lost in a technology maze from which they cannot escape. Fully plugged in Many are plugged in and enjoying every minute of their programming. Phones and other devices are ubiquitous. People are addicted to their feeds, oblivious to the drives that control them. We often witness compulsive behaviours in public like checking phones for phantom messages or endless scrolling. Only twenty years ago these would have been considered bizarre, certainly...