Scene One – What you Eat

Jonathan Daunt went to the grocery store, ambling through the produce section. His appetite for something that satisfied a sense of unquenched need kept him doing the grocery shopping even though he never found anything that worked. Mildred, his wife was happy to have him do the job. His experience had taught him that the tomatoes would always taste like cardboard. He ascribed that to the fact that they are picked still green for transport. Jonathan, now retirement age, was aware that the varieties grown by the big farm factories are chosen for their ability to withstand transport, not for their taste. They also come to you with pesticides, something he tried not to think about as he washed them before putting them away.

He sighed, remembering how the tomatoes tasted, fresh from the garden, on his grandparent's farm. Jonathan could almost taste the succulent, vibrant flavor that lingered on his tongue; he could see their ripe, red surfaces almost bursting with juice in the hot afternoon sun. Sometimes he was sure he could smell them. The tomatoes in the store did not smell at all.

Sometimes he had visited the local farmer's market and that was better – but it was hard to get there when you are working and the vegetables are not much cheaper.......and money was becoming a bigger issue every day, despite his salary.

After dinner, feeling curiously hungry – Jonathan sat back. He had again eaten too much because he was somehow not satisfied. That morning he had taken his vitamins and supplements, wondering briefly how people ever survived without them.

Remember when food nourished you?

Scene Two – Outsourced

Jonathan could not believe it could happen to him. They had cut his last check and closed the office the same day; when he drove over the next morning to pick up some books he had forgotten a FOR RENT sign was already up. He called Sam; the two had worked together for twenty years. Sam said he had heard that that there are questions about the 401Ks now, too. Jonathan had been looking forward to his retirement. He and his wife, Mildred, thought they were secure. Now, Marianne, their youngest daughter was moving home with her two kids; her husband just up and left, taking their savings with him. That included the money they had lent them for the down payment on the cute little starter house.

Scene Three – The Electric Bill

Two months later Jonathan had to tell Mildred and Marianne they could no longer use the heater, although it was now 15 degrees outside. “Bundle up,” he told them, trying not to cry. He and Mildred had bought the house when, “All Electric, the home of the future,” was gleaming with the promise that life could be as simple as flicking a switch and so clean you would never have to scrub. Every month Jonathan thanked God that the house was at least paid for. Their neighbors who had refinanced for vacations and improvements were slowly being squeezed out.

If they used the electric heater their bill every month was around $600.00; more than the mortgage had been. But now there was no income. So through that winter they bundled up, burning some wood in the fireplace; At least they had hot baths once a week.

Scene Four - Springtime

Jonathan had never been much interested in gardening but over the winter thinking about those tomatoes from his childhood, as their money slipped away, he started surfing the web. He found heritage seeds and shelled out the money for those and other kinds of seed that made his mouth water. All three of them were working at odd jobs to bring in cash. They had emptied the bank account and closed it just before the bank failed. They would need money to pay the Property Tax Bill this April and for that damned electricity.

The whole family got involved. Mildred and Marianne decided on more heritage seeds when he showed them those. It became their project, really. He got to do the heavy lifting as they all dug up the ratty grass lawn and the sad looking rose bushes to be transplanted. Nothing seems to have any life in it any more, the thought flashed through his mind.

By June the kids were working on making sure that the garden was kept busy. Seeds replaced plants harvested immediately. Mildred and Marianne found a nursery with half dead fruit trees and had gotten them free; that was just at the time they found the plant food from a friend in Indiana. They had managed to keep the phone connected. Now there are ten fruit trees and plans to turn the fruit into lots of things, jam, jelly, preserves, dried fruit. Marianne was determined to start selling them and had designed her own label.

The food was better than they had ever gotten in the store. Dinner had changed, with everyone interested and excited about how the food they raised was used. The heritage seeds made a difference and so did the suggestions Marianne found on line that got rid of the insect problems. They had tried pesticides but the nuisance just came back. The plant food had revived the fruit trees and they always used it now. Mildred had become the distributor for the whole area and loved seeing people and hearing about their families. Their community had changed in so many ways sometimes Johnathan had to think about how it had been. Families were working together now and, amazingly, there are fewer problems with things like gangs.

Over that winter the whole neighborhood had begun talking about the problems they faced. There was no money for welfare and the churches were also strapped with so many to help. In January the family across the street had started raising chickens and trading. Jonathan had built a hot house with scrounged glass so they had vegetables through that second winter. It had been the neighbor's son, Gordon, who organized the trading for several blocks around. Jonathan's family have a couple of hens themselves. Every day they all thank God they don't live in one of those fascist housing tracts with a Homeowners Association. Those people can't grow anything themselves.

There are a lot more problems but the Daunt family is ready to meet the challenges. They have survived and now they know that there is hope for the future.

Off the Grids

Most of us are scared. We know that the economy is out of control, the dollar is on a downward spiral that will take with it our pensions and hopes for prosperity and security. America is facing real problems – but there are solutions and those solutions can take us to a place that is much better than you imagine.

The problems above all originate in Grid Points that we have been forced onto through strategies carefully orchestrated by corporations, such as petroleum companies and power companies working with and through government. In effect, we have paid to forge our own shackles and then lock them in place. Do not think for a moment that those who are profiting did not understand where the policies we were sold over the last many years would take us.

It was power companies and government that decided that your electric company was a quasi-governmental agency without liability for anything they do. That is why when the electric company causes fires, burns out motors, or leaves you without power, it is not liable. But they are quick to turn off your power. Today most Americans live only months, or days from disaster. That must change and those changes hinge on understanding how we got here and how to move forward into a better world. It can happen and it will.

You can get off the grids and back to real security and a freedom that is true and not illusion. Endless indulgence was always an illusion. No matter what those in power said the free ride had to end, and it has.

America was seduced into believing that consumption and emotional disconnection is freedom. It isn't and it never was. Real freedom starts with responsibility and community, helping others and standing tall in the knowledge that your honor is intact because you have done right by others and yourself. That is something people like George Bush can never feel because their sense of power comes from deceit and generations of violence visited on all of us. George Bush would be funny if he weren't so dangerous. This year consider buying a Christmas card that sends a message that makes you laugh and speaks real real peace. Doing so supports our work. Also, please think about sponsoring our work or becoming an advertiser.

On Off the Grids, the radio program every week hosted by Melinda Pillsbury-Foster, the Spiritual Politician, we talk about the grids that bind us for the profit of corporations and how to step off to freedom.

This week we will be talking to August Franklin-Dunning, an astrophysicist who discovered a formula for plants that makes the garden above effectively twice as large because the plants produce more and for longer every year. That is WOW!, the plant food that made taking those supplements unnecessary. The guy who found the solution to the problem of insects without pesticides is Steve Tvedten and his book is available free of charge on line.

Off the Grids, formerly The Spiritual Politician, will air this week on BBSRadio.com at 4pm Pacific time. Next week we will have a new time at 5pm Pacific Time.

Join us to begin the journey to freedom and community as we find out how others across the country are solving the problems. Live Locally and in Community with others.