(Here's one of the intros to Oregon Tilth co-founder Harry MacCormack's new book, Children of De-Light. Harry hangs out with Elaine Ingham and spoke a couple of times at last week's ACRES conference. I'm still working on the book and can't recommend it yet, but wanted to pass on Al's words, since they often spark some deep thoughts. You can download Harry's book at http://www.weavingroom.com/delight/ , which is where this intro came from. -AB)
A Few Words for the Poet Duality is a prison. You end up hating yourself. It destroys worlds. The ego lays wasteland to reality. "There must be some way out of here..." -- Bob Dylan -- Vanity and vexation of the spirit. We are not our bodies though we inhabit them with differing degrees of awareness, like the 21,600 daily breaths that occupy our attention, to some degree, sometimes, during the years of our lives. High density smartness, a level beady eye towards problems and their resolution, trapped in words when the problems transcend thought, grappling with the ego-dominant and eco-destructive behavior of our species, Harry MacCormack, engages head-on with many of the primary philosophical and historical paradigms that sew us up, web us in and pack us up as another to-be-pruned branch of the tree of life. Harry would give us another fate. Atropos, one of the fates, as nightshades, puts us to sleep with stars in our eyes. Coming from montane Bolivia, potatoes gave soft food to toothless people and have led to the continuing bestowal of foodplants for humanity developed by heathens/pagans/natives. Now corporate industry wants to own them, and their genes as well. Only nature outwits the vain. "The bigger they are, the harder they fall, one and all..." -- Bob Marley -- Plants are more complicated than animals. Rice has 50,000 genes, humans 32,000, fruit flies 14,400, coliform bacteria 2000, f2 bacterial virus has three. Mathematics is all nice and sweet but biological life is the center of the earthworld we now inhabit. A-light, B-light, C-light, De-light, cognitive levels of the divine illumination that informs us about ourselves, the superuniverses of time in space, as we garden biodiversity while Harry reaches beyond the veils to integrate a transcendental view of where we are and how we can grow out of our limitations. Still more people are needed on the highway of diamonds. Exercising his wit, organic farmer, playwright and outspoken critic of the status quo, Harry invites us to compost our schizophrenias in the garden of unity. He gives recipes. Violence is as old as the food system. Predation dates to bacteria. We, however, have an alternative, and there are examples. Rosaceaous fruits; nourishing, delicious, hardy in the temperate zone: cherries, apples, plums, peaches, apricots, pears allow us food and nonviolent food if we replant the seeds. Cucurbits, eat the pulp and save the seeds. Avocados, citrus, and in the roots, yacon, the Andean high inulin root related to dahlias, sunflowers and Jerusalem artichokes. Why is it a nonviolent foodcrop? Because the central crown contains the eyes used to propagate more plants while the lateral tubers (up to 2-3 pounds) have no eyes and are solely food. Protein synthesis, the cellular ability to make proteins of unique sequences of amino acids following nucleic acid taped instructions has provided humanity a model for precision building at the molecular and cellular levels. We must be careful how we use this discovery. Nanotechnology, like molecular biology and perhaps, unfortunately, like atomic energy has great promise and profound dangers. As an alien species, we divide and conquer. As parents we nurture and circumstance initiations into greater insight and self-realization. Linear is limited. An infinite universe has other designs as well. Beyond the senses is a great mystery. Only occasionally is it rational. All of us have a piece of it. Yoga stills the mind to find it. Legion is its name. Alan Kapuler - Founder of Peace Seeds, bio-diversity activist and artist
