‘Raise Your Voice’ Archives
Cultivating Heavy Soil
By Peter Molenaar Transforming the USA along socialist lines is like propagating a garden in heavy soil. Dense soils tend to impede germination and root development. Yet, when properly conditioned, a “clay soil” is the most fertile and will produce glorious results. Marxism teaches that external factors are the conditions of change, while internal contradictions are the basis. If things are not right, the seed will not deliver us the flower. Might hard work and perseverance render our desire? As it happened”¦ An elder Korean woman from the community garden kindly gifted me several seed packets from her homeland. The English label read “Blue Bell Root.” In addition to its lovely flowers, this plant produces roots which will cure most diseases and extend our life spans. So, the work was cut out for me. Available to me were several raised beds which, since an early harvest of kimchi radishes, had been fallow beneath grass [...]
Pondering the “Potato Bugs”
By Peter Molenaar Neighborhood gardeners have begun again to taste the harvest of their labor. The season has imposed unusual difficulties, but certainly the best is yet to come. As for my potatoes, two, fifteen-foot-long mounds are joined at one end via a semi-circle. In the semi-circle, the remnants of last year”'s red fingerlings were planted. Big potatoes occupy the main rows and will supply calories for a year. But what? Potato bugs remain among us. These “enemies of the people” are quite happy to exploit our labor while contributing nothing in return. But the savvy gardener will plant reds, knowing the eggs will preferentially be deposited there. It is then squish, squish, squish with maximum efficiency. Trust me, the karma is good. On the other hand, by way of comparison, Marxists have always condemned individual acts of terror. The recent assassination attempt, perpetrated by a lost brother, is a case in point. Whatever goodness was in the man”'s [...]
Birthing the Seed
Largest Black Bean ever? Sacred to some Native American Tribes & regarded as “poor man”'s meat” beans are rich in protein, supplying 1/3 of the essential amino acids to the corn, bean and squash trinity. By Peter Molenaar Two seasons ago, amidst the typically mottled ones, the harvest of Scarlet Runner Beans revealed two completely black seeds. In their turn, these seeds would germinate and prove to be a new mutant strain. Will the largest black bean ever grown bear my name? However, in this New World, horticultural advance must largely be credited to the practice of Native American women. This is true, because the processors of the food were also the seed savers. Her gift to us was not merely that of the various beans, but also the tomatoes, peppers, squashes, melons, potatoes, pumpkins”¦and she gave us corn! We should pity the school child who has not been introduced to teosinte, the grass from which, by her hand, corn was born. In [...]
