Opus 2021-272: Thanks Thoughts: Leave the Clock Alone

We keep trying to turn the clock back.  A better metaphor might be to build a worse mousetrap, you know, inventing a digital sun dial.

I got to thinking about this as I was thanking God for the coffee in my cup.  My mind turned to the preppers  and coffee snobs trying to get us to roast our own beans.  Why?  Is my life really so boring that I need to spend the time learning how and actually doing what modern life brings to my kitchen.  I can see grinding my own but buying green beans and perfecting the process seems a bit much.

You could say the same for a lot of the things people are calling for today.  I saw one headline that claimed 80% of Americans were growing some of their own food.  Since 80% of Americans probably live in large cities with small yards and HOA’s, I find that about as convincing as global warming drowning all of us in the near future.  My daughter tried putting some tomato plants in the ground a year or so ago.  We got a few tiny tomatoes but not enough to pay for the water we used to keep them alive.  It isn’t as easy as it sounds.  In addition to not knowing what we were doing there was evidence that some four legged creature was having a bit of a snack on our potential produce.

My daughter is into making bread.  Does she even consider growing the wheat?  Go ahead and laugh.  I will wait.  I asked her about buying the grain and grinding it ourselves and she gave me that look you give parents just before you take them to the nursing home.  My wife is good with a sewing machine but every time she gets the bug she looks at the price of material and the price of clothes on sale and puts it back in the closet.  

You want to ride a bike?  Good for you, but don’t ask to borrow my truck when you want to move something.  I would be glad to help you but I don’t have a truck and one reason is how people with little cars would always want to borrow it.  I find it entertaining when people want us to go back to an organic vegetarian lifestyle.  I am not sure that worked out too well for the hunter gatherers with a life expectancy of 30 years.  I am not sure there would be enough to go around today.

Home cooking can beat the restaurants but don’t count on it.  I make my own jerky but that is because I can’t find any that I like in the grocery stores and have a hard time paying $38.00 a pound for stuff on line.  

All in all I am all for modern conveniences.  I find life hard enough when I am traveling and need to stay in a small town far from anything.  I am also all for you having the choice of what you want to go without.

homo unius libri