#142 – Madeline Simon: A New Years Day Reflection

It’s New Year’s Day 2010, often a time for reflection, and I guess I am feeling a little “bloggy.” That’s not foggy or hung over, and no, I am not going to start a blog.
A couple of things I pondered today:
First, I thought of a couple of wonderful large black raspberries I ate last night which had been brought by someone at the party and included in a fruit mix. Normally, we are looking at or considering a lot of issues, which I don’t need to explain, about where food comes from and how, etc. I thought today about those raspberries and pictured the sunshine, the plant, its environment, and other things necessary for the raspberries to have grown. Throughout most of human history, including our country’s, and as an important part of my own personal history, people have always known where their food came from and most often they saw and raised and picked the product themselves.
As a child I picked berries on my grandfather’s North Dakota farm, and those berries we kids didn’t eat while picking were put in pint/quart containers and loaded into the transport box lift on the back of my grandfather’s small tractor and hauled to the small grocery store in the small town some few miles away.
I also recalled my experiences sitting on a fruit crate with my babushka riding on that lift behind the tractor into town.
New Years Eve, 2009, I didn’t know where those berries came from.
We do indeed live in a “Global Village.”
Second, I was talking recently with the gardener who does tree trimming in the winter about having seen a couple of young deer in my yard with antlers engaged in practice for the first time. He told me of two deer during rutting season who were found drowned with their antlers still stuck together.
I guess nature can also tell us that you might win the battle and still lose your life.
Happy, Healthy and Peaceful New Year!!!