Approaching Thanksgiving

A little over four years ago I picked up the book "Neither Wolf nor Dog" by Kent Nerburn. Since then, I've never looked at Thanksgiving the same. Since then I've spent almost two months on the Rosebud Indian Reservation. Since then I've come to call several Native Americans friend, good friends. Quite honestly, it's difficult for me to enjoy this holiday. The ironic thing is, that on Thursday, I'll get at least a few emails from my native friends wishing me a Happy Thanksgiving, and they'll mean it. For that I am most thankful.
Perhaps what irritates me the most about this holiday more than any other is that it has come to be a celebration of our excess. We eat too much and we eat too much of the wrong things. The following day we spend too much and we spend too much on the wrong things. In these times, when we face a huge climate crisis, an economic crisis that only our parents and grandparents can even begin to relate to, perhaps we need to revist our approach to Thanksgiving. Would it be un-American to be a little less extravagent one day a year?
The folks over at Wild Idea Buffalo have been blogging alot lately, about "gentle" living. There are so many little things each of us can do, and do today, that can change the world we live in for the better. It's worth a couple of mouse clicks to read what they're saying.
May your Thanksgiving be full of family, safe travels, and food that's good for you and the earth.
Peace,
Jeff

Just Enough to Get Me into Trouble

I know just enough economic theory to get me into trouble. Economists hate that. Probably just like I tend to get a little annoyed when someone tries to tell me what is wrong with "their lake". But let me back up a bit. 20 years ago, I was just starting graduate school at Auburn University. I was lucky to be there and I knew it; my undergraduate days weren't exactly exemplary and I was fortunate to find an advisor who was willing to take a chance on me (only to find out later that he had trouble finding anyone dense enough to take on the research project I was assigned!). The project that I ended up working on was examining the role fluctuating populations of fish, in this case crappies, played on local economies. The task was three-fold, find out how predict when the fluctuations (termed recruitment) would "boom" and "bust", determine how these cycles affected fishing-related businesses and see if there was a way to dampen the "booms" and "busts" through regulations or other means. Due to the second task, my advisor wanted me to take some courses in economics. Because the School of Fisheries was in the College of Agriculture I ended up taking a few courses in Agricultural Economics. The instructor was a supply-sider, which was pretty interesting. We discussed a number of models and such and about half-way through the first course it dawned on me that not one of the models took into consideration a certain human behavior. Basically they were all predicated on everyone being honest. I recall asking how they took greed into consideration and was actually scolded in class for trying to put feelings into a deterministic model. I had no real feelings about this, I was just curious how I was going to account for human behavior in some of the surveys I was developing to assess the economic affects of a fishery. These last few months I've thought a great deal about that class and that particular day in class, wondering why in the course of 20 years apparently no one has figured out the importance of incorporating greed into our economic models and regulations. Perhaps this has been done and the results weren't what people in power wanted to hear. Who knows. It seems to me though, that until we can account for certain human behaviors it is going to be extremely difficult to move to the kind of sustainable economy that we, and the resources of this world, really need.
Peace,
Jeff