It’s 0400 hours and I just got in. I woke up to bawling cows a little too close to my bedroom window somewhere around 2:30. The most effective kind of alarm there is. The cows had escaped their electrified fence earlier in the day when I was sharing a nice little lunch of borscht and rabbit pie with my dear friend, Andrea. She helped me wrangle them up and away from the apple tree in our front yard and I had hastily enclosed them in our back pasture where they proceeded to show me their gratitude with maniacal bucking bronco imitations and, now, serenades to the moon in the wee hours of the morning.
But, oh, have you seen that moon this week? That glorious harvest moon pulsating in celebration for the coming season of rest. This year, not only was the moon big and bountiful, it was a veritable “super moon”. Out there in the dark of the night with the cows, I didn’t need a flashlight to guide me. I just watched for God’s spotlight glossing everything in silver. My trusty old senior cow, Bea, found me immediately - curious, I’m sure by my presence in the pasture at that time of day. After counting the cows, and finding the source of the bellowing was a heifer that had got up on the roof of the root cellar and couldn’t quite recall the route safely off, I figured spending awhile scratching Bea by moonlight was truly the best use of my time.
There was a me, not so many versions ago, that would have given Bea a little absent-minded pat and been on my way. I like this version of me better. I know all of Bea’s favourite spots and I take care to meet her expectations. First, under the chin, then down and deep into her brisket, all the way into the crease between her front legs. There’s some loose flesh there now. It’s not all that different than the thinned, buttery-soft skin of my dear Bapka’s that I would rub and she would laugh and say, “You like Bapka’s kolach” (a name of one of the pastries she made). We age and our skin changes and there was a time when that was agreed upon as normal. I am determined to be a part of the clan of women that remind young women that they are more than a line-free face, plumped and sanded to a silky sheen. May I have the good humour and class to laugh when my grandchildren trace the lines of my face with their fingers.
When Bea was a calf, sixteen or seventeen years ago now, the farm she was at took her horns off. She’s never quite got over it. She continuously grows these little nubby horns that she rubs or breaks off, causing a raw, tender nub below to be exposed. Still, her body persists in folly against the horror of her amputated horns. She likes it best when I scratch all around them, especially behind the raised bone of her forehead. She snorts and exhales and pushes against my hand. From there, it’s off to her tail-head where not only do I scratch, but I massage. She wiggles her bum in pleasure, rocking side to side and waving her enormous neck like a serpentine snake.
While I was immersed in my cow, a flock of Canadian geese flew overheard and I felt a rush of relief fall over me. How lucky are they to have to the best of the goose leaders that call them to flight under the safety of the night when hunters sleep. I hold no bias against hunters - I have a fine one I sleep with every night. But there is something so tragic to me about an animal’s death coming not from a quick end, but a fearful plummeting to the earth from flight. I’m sure there’s all sorts of contradictions in there and surely one can find my hypocrisy in that statement, but I leave it as it is. Every weekend, a race between the hunters and the sun commences around here and before twilight barely breaks, the vast ponds and lakes around us fill with the sounds of shotguns and it saddens me. I don’t feel the same way when a deer, bounding across a field is killed with one good shot, but the random blasting away at birds and that moment when they plummet to earth only to then have their feathers ripped off and their breast meat, riddled with lead pellets, taken out to eat (wasting the rest) just feels so wrong to me.
And so, under that super moon of moons, scratching my dear, Queen Bea, I celebrated the resourcefulness of that goose flock and the adaptability of life.
And that’s where I am now, thinking about that adaptability and the mystery of a world and a place that can raise me from my cozy bed, beckoning me to notice a harvest moon so wildly luminescent that missing it and the geese and the sounds of my cows eating the very last of summer’s wilting grasses would be it for this time. My husband, Troy, left over a week ago now. He flew to Alberta to pick up the trailer and truck I mentioned in my previous essay and now he’s picking his way back across Canada, figuring out the intricacies of his new wheels and the trailer we’ll live in when visiting with our daughter and her family in the US. He’s been staying at provincial parks along the way. He drives however many hours he can handle, finds a park, pulls in, and then goes into his little home to cook himself up his own, good food and sleep in his own bed. No looking for somewhere to stay. No weird scents. No wifi, blue light, fabreeze potpourri saturated airwaves. Another boon is that he’s been increasingly doing more remote work so he can adjust his travels around his work shifts.
At this point some of you might be thinking, “But, hang on, Tara, isn’t he an ER doctor?”, to which I reply, “Why, yes, he is! And did you know that more and more ERs are bringing in remote doctors that are faces on a robot?” And then, well, you may be rightly surprised (or horrified or, perhaps, just not surprised by anything anymore in this mad technological rush to who-knows-where). Yes, it’s true, he works remotely, in provinces far away, as an ER physician and it’s all just a little nutty. In truth, it works well for us, but the discomfort over where this is all going is a shared one. My guess, and I’ve been saying this for years, is that this all ends up with the AI robots, programmed by big pharma to churn out the drugs they want used, replacing medical personnel altogether. And I don’t think it’s years away.
Years ago, medicine was captured and shaped by the Rockefellers. Since that time, all therapies other than the ones that benefitted oil barrons, were classified as quackery or, in today’s terms, “alternative”. A smart label that suggests there is the real stuff and then there’s the stuff outside of that. It’s kind of like how we call produce “organic” or “conventional”. No, “conventional” is only a recent invention, again of those profiting from chemical poisons, that took our naturally organic farming practices, corrupted them with synthetic inputs, and then called itself conventional as if that’s the way it was all along. Words are spells, as they say.
So, yes, back to medicine. Awhile back, it was deemed necessary to have peer reviewed studies that would be incontestable - a purifier of truth. Of course that now has been completely corrupted as well. Then, the pharmaceutical companies, that are responsible for the education of doctors, decided that wasn’t enough. Enter the “guidelines”. Those introduced guidelines, a set of recipes if you will, were the final nail in the coffin of the art part of the “art and science of medicine”. Doctors stopped laying hands on people. Palpation slowly drifted away. Going from doctor to doctor may find you with a different diagnoses, but once the diagnoses was settled on, the treatment (the drug they were to prescribe that is) was determined by the “guidelines”. A doctor writing a patient’s suspected problem in a chart but then prescribing or recommending a different treatment, is leaving themselves vulnerable to disciplinary actions or even lawsuits for not following the guidelines.
So, really, how far away are we from robots? Not that far at all. They’ve already programmed the humans.
And that’s where things are now. A robot has a human face on it, but that human operates under the guidelines that ensure patients get on the right drugs manufactured by the same people that trained those doctors, tells those doctors what to do and prescribe, and, soon enough, will rid themselves of the pestilence of the human altogether. Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I have no doubt that this is why, in our socialised medical care system (in Canada at least) our governments are allowing these infrastructures to erode. Once it gets bad enough with our shortages in manpower and infrastructure it naturally only makes sense to accept the marvels of technology. Right?
Speaking of accepting the marvels of technology, this mad rush into the world of AI has me deeply concerned for the youth of today. Jonathan Haidt has been doing some profoundly important work around this with his colleagues. I can’t think of a more important time to expressly and clearly set limits and have conversations with children about computers. It’s just not a necessity and the implications of shaping brains around these devices is truly devastating. Children asking AI if they should kill themselves and it suggesting that’s a great idea. Other children asking for tips on how to get even thinner even though they have eating disorders and the friendly chatbot giving tips and tricks on how to hide food from their parents and how to purge? This is diabolical stuff.
It furthers my sense that my time on the internet is coming to a close. I’m not certain when, but I wonder, do any of you have that feeling? If, as they are now suggesting, a time soon arrives where we have to be assigned a number to participate in these digital worlds, I’m out. I have serious concerns about the spiritual costs of such a deal. I’m not wiling to pay the price. In fact, I’m starting to get increasingly suspicious of my cellphone altogether. I sometimes feel like I’m volunteering to the watchful eye of the overlords. They know my patterns and where I go and what my personality is like and what I think of their systems on offer. There was a time when I could shrug that off, but whether it be this season of my life or this time in the world, I am increasingly unsettled by the idea of carrying my own little pocket KGB. Yes I have it off unless I’m using it. No I don’t use apps. Yes, my microphone is off and I’ve never had notifications on anything. All of that is only mitigation and at this point I do believe I’m more interested in the woman that lives without that phone entirely. I feel her waiting for me. Maybe that was her under that glistening silver moon with her beloved cow in her hands.
In other news, the preserving of the season is done. Sweet mercy, it is done! Every last jar has been used and every last drop of my preserving juices has been squeezed. I thought I might share a few videos showing the inside of my root cellar and how I organise things both in the season and from year to year.
Enjoy your weekend everyone. If you get the chance, that moon is still worth meeting on a clear, crisp night. I’ll ask our geese to bring some of my love your way as they travel your way.
Further reading:
I found this study on Rockefeller’s preference for homeopathic medicine fascinating. It also goes into how homeopathy once reigned and it wasn’t until the competing allopathic model went after its competition with vengeance that it was relegated as “quackery”.
This esssay, “We Are the Slop” by Freya India is a profound clarifier around what we’re doing with these platforms - offering up the very commodification of every facet of our lives. It’s deeply honest and profoundly disturbing. For a long while I’ve been considering how I will move forward in my life without screens and it feels, more and more every day, that this may be the only way to live in a world we can trust to be real.
I know I’ve shared this before, but I recently sent it to a friend and fell in love with it all over again:
Lastly, my book, “Radiance of the Ordinary” continues to do well and that’s because of you, my readers, that have supported me not only now, but long before my book ever came to be. I am deeply grateful for your encouragement and kindness. Engaging with all of you through the comments, our online chat, and even having the great honour of meeting some of you in person has been the very stuff of my this writer’s dreams. If I may be so bold, I do have a wee request. If you did read my book and you enjoyed it, please consider leaving a review on Amazon (even if you bought it elsewhere, the reviews here are important). It means a lot to me and it’s the modern day way of spreading the good word so others may find it. For those of you who have already taken the time to write your review, I am truly grateful. Thank you, all, from the cockles of me ole’ heart. ♥️
I just dropped my 12 year old son off at his teen naturalist program. Their group of 15 or so is hiking up our tallest mountain today. A beautiful day. One of the leaders asked my son if he had a cell phone. "No," he scoffed, "And if someone gave me one I'd tell them to take it back." The leader noted how kids around his age - some had them, some didn't. She proceeded to ask a few others. Turns out, her husband - hiking to the summit - didn't have a cell phone and they were trying to coordinate how they would communicate with the group that was taking the shorter route. Who knows what they decided? It's probable they decided they could just figure it out without phones. Or maybe a kid had one.
We have a lot of struggles in our home but screens/technology is one area we all seem to agree on. They just aren't a big part of our life. Our phones are tools like a hammer left out. Every once in a while someone might pick it up and play with it but mostly they are just there for when we need them.
The moon has been lighting up my house every morning when I get up around 5:00. No stumbling in the dark hoping I don't trip over a cat or an object left out as a hazard. Pure guidance from the skies.
Oh hooray, congrats on finishing your preserving! What a marathon! I hope you have a luxurious winter rest in your snow camp and get to see your sweet granddaughter lots and lots. Your food cellar is stunning, I love seeing it every time you share. The magnitude of labor you and Troy put into its build and now the food within is not lost on me! You two are amazing.