To the store I went.

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Online, of course. I visited Amazon, ostensibly to purchase sleep medication. I, as usual, am reminded of why I hate shopping. I found the medicine and added it to my cart, more so I would not have to dig around for it later after looking at a few books. What kind of books? Gardening books, of course. The search criteria initially investigated was "gardening Utah". I found a few good hits and two books which look to cover the material well enough. I added one new and the other used. I then wanted to see if there were general books about vegetable gardening. Sure enough and ironical too! Anyway, I thought to order one. However, the associated discount books looked good, so I added the set. Something about pairing what you grow and smaller footprint gardening (which I have heard about on a number of sites I visit). Now, after ordering those, the list below it had a book which seemed quite interesting. Then I noted many of these books are available for Kindle, a tease for me to be certain. Although, until Amazon guarantees that if a book is sold incorrectly, that they will simply bear the economic cost and not steal it from me, that no changes to the books can or will be made due to future laws (say, removing the term niger from Mark Twain books), and open up the architecture to all e-book formats, I cannot buy the device. Yeah, quite a wish list but that would be the price. Back to my notion of shopping. Oh, but I forgot to even look at the small wheat harvest book D.C. suggests! Without saying more, you can see where I am going with this, right?

I ended up with $3.95 or so in medicine, which is pretty much all I really wanted, and over $80 in books in my cart. I am not even sure that price will cover the costs of shipping? Probably, but the point is, I get lost in that maze. It is best for me not to go in. I either, like this time, realize my error and do the brave thing... I close the page and run away. Or I end up buying... more stuff. No doubt the books are informative. Would I really read through them and be able or willing to implement that knowledge? I think one of them was more organic based. And though that would be good, sort of, in a garden, it is often very impractical, more so in a TEOTWAWKI situation. At which point we will have to use what we have to use as "contaminated" vegetables are much more satisfying then starvation or huge vitamin and mineral deficiencies. If something is available, it will be used. Anyway... yeah... shopping...

Another thought in another area crossed my mind recently. I cannot say I have explored it fully. But it has presented in a dream, if I do not remember the particulars, and it has been sitting in the back of my mind like cayenne pepper from a really good bowl of chili sits on the back of the throat... not overpowering, not invisible, mostly good, a little disturbing, but certainly there. It follows as such. Though I am certain that education reduces the value of women as wives, mates, mothers, along with their interest in bearing and nurturing children and most other things domestic, does education also impact men in a manner which is negative for families?

My gut initial feeling is that it does, and seriously, impact male interest in the family. The few family men I see in the professorial line seem to be a vast minority. Most, even of these, have small groomed families much like what I have seen in many white collar families. The families almost seem more of a setting or accessory than anything else. And, from some associations, families have also been used as "cover" rather than being an actual family. When I look at blue collar compared to white collar, I also see a family difference. The larger size of the family and the more natural family is with blue collar workers. I sort of think this is the way it has always been, looking back and thinking back to the history I have read. The first modern Western intellectuals were, after all, monks. Then the Church formulated universities. Though if you read the Old Testament, and read into it a bit, you might well come off with a similar sense about scribes and pharisees and such. No, no, I do believe education is a detriment to the family, out and out and wholesale.

So, I suppose, if that is true, I must examine whether it is the education itself or the type of people who wish to attain a modicum of understanding themselves. Is it the process or the person. Is it environment or genetics. Though I favor, as a majority, environment I cannot deny genetics plays some role. If so then the number of people interested in an advanced education is creeping up which means people are changing. Though economic realities and an altered social environment add pressure to achieve an education, is that all of it? Or have we, through soy products, feminism, and some other things ultimately changed who we are as people and as a people? If so, this has been done before. Every gilded age has known this very thing, though I am not sure if they had the sciences with which to really nail the thing. Those nations, forgotten or not but all lost, have also rued the outcome of raising girly men in a terribly rude world. Imagine what even the gayest Caesar would have thought if someone had told him in the future we would have 20 percent of the Legion being... female?

We, just not I, are indeed Doomed. Fie the markets and debt, hie the infrastructure and power production, the social decay is all we ever needed to take us to our knees and shove our noses in what we rightly deserve. Boys, girls, bend and tuck, this is going to hurt.

Anyway, I am off to sleep. I love these delicate little chats. They actually do make me feel better. What was that saying, something about bounces off me and sticks to you? Only you did not instigate. Hmm, I must have been made of glue in some past life. Ah, but I am getting better. Good night, hemorrhagic fever. I may have known you well, still do perhaps?