Forbidden Fruit

 

As if a crop of settlers had been harvested and taken to market, the Old Pond Farm field, now moist, matted and barren, showed nary a sign of the village that for close to a week staked claim and payed homage to the legacy of folk music, historically-aligned with respect for the planet and its inhabitants.

A genre of music that is at its very core political and socially-conscious, Arlo's dad, Woody, had it right when he sang:

It was a bright Sunday morning,

in the shadow of the steeple, at the relief office I saw my people,

as they stood there hungry, I stood there wondering

if this land was made for me and you.

This lost, little known stanza prevented This Land is Your Land from becoming our National Anthem. Too controversial in the tainted atmosphere of the the Red Scare. Putting the fear of God into, or pandering to the native paranoia of the constituency when it's convenient or suits its needs, has been and will always be the currency of the power elite. We like to think we live in a democracy, that our vote will make a difference, but doesn't it seem like it'll always be politics as usual, that congress will be perpetually grid-locked and that its just like it says in that country song lyric, "it's the same old wine in a brand new bottle", a bottle we think will be recycled when we drag it out to the curb, only to learn it ends up as landfill when the commodity price of glass drops too low. Few among the populace are familiar with the concept of social justice, let alone the plight of the family farmer, or the obscene underfunding of public education. They're just too preoccupied making ends meet in an upside-down mortgage, and locating studs strong enough to hold a still bigger, flatter, higher res, Made-in-China TV.

Too young to vote for John, I met and shook the hand of Bobby, only to see him slain. I let the tears of hope flow when Obama defied the odds, only to find myself resigned to another disappointment.

If it sounds like I have a bee in my bonnet, you'd be wrong. Honey bees are dying in unprecedented numbers.

These divine pollinators, the unsung heroes of agriculture, are facing a crisis not of their own making – taken to its extreme it'll insure Eve is empty-handed when it comes to that part of the story when she tempts Adam.