I’m reading The Girl in the Picture by Denise Chong. In short, it’s about the life of the girl central to one of the most famous pictures from the Vietnam War. I wasn’t alive when the war was going on (so the history and politics surrounding it are a mystery to me), but I’m pretty sure everyone has seen that picture…
I started a very small farm at my house in Kenya because I was excited about being more self-sustained and also because I plan to use what I learn when I get back to the United States. I know vegetables aren’t by any means expensive here in Tala, but it’s the principle of the matter! A bonus is being able to control the inputs to my little ecosystem; which means all my crops will be “organic.” Well, I was pretty excited about my endeavors until I came across a passage in Paul Hawken’s The Ecology of Commerce. On page 20:
All present agriculture, whether it is slash-and-burn or sod-breaking, involves the reversion of a climax system to a pioneering one.
“Holy shit,” I thought, “he’s right.” Here’s an excerpt from earlier in the paragraph giving some background: