I've Been Working on the Railroad

(Not the Underground Railroad, but maybe soon....)

Prices are getting on up there, aren’t they?

They’re not creeping up—they’re taking the express train, and on the way, the dark shadow of Greed has stepped onboard.  Because it’s not just about phony rising costs of raw materials, pretend shortages, and fake conflicts, it’s about riding that gravy train as long as “they” can.  And you know what I’m talking about.

Hmmm…..I said the word “train” twice.  Here’s a third “train” because three times the charm:  It’s called a freight train, and it’s going to hit people right between the eyes if they don’t jump off the tracks, and that includes those who are driving the gravy trains as well as their soulless masters.  You know who they are, those fear mongers who are not as clever as they might think.  Won’t it be fun when they hear that whistle?  Dynah, won’t you blow?  Dynah, won’t you blow?  Dynah, won’t you blow your horn?

Oh, that old song…..

Someone’s in the kitchen with Dynah, someone’s in the kitchen I know….  Actually, someone’s in the kitchen with Melanie.  It might be her own common sense.  Yes, I think it is.  And I know what I know.  How often will I post a photo of bread?  The answer is until the cows come home.  Until the sleeping giant raises his head and realizes what has been stolen from him.  But why? you might ask.  Because making bread (or anything) represents several things:

1.  Knowledge and skill (that I had to work for).
2.  Doing something for myself instead of expecting others to do it—accomplishment.
3.  Saving money.
4.  A sense of independence.
5.  Finding a way around the field of landmines they’ve created.
6.  Thumbing my nose at the man.
7.  Recognizing that everything we have can change in an instant.

Wow…… You might say, “Um….you got all of that out of making a loaf of bread??”  That’s right, and I get all of that every time I do something for myself instead of expecting the world to always be at my fingertips when I need it.  Maybe that’s because I’ve never had a large bank account.  If I had, I might have forgotten that you can’t eat money because it’s really just paper.  You can’t eat gold either, for that matter, although it’s lot prettier than wood pulp.

Someone's in the kitchen with Dinah, someone's in the kitchen I know.  Someone's in the kitchen with Dinah, strumming on the old banjo.  I think we’ve covered this part before in other things I’ve written—what Henry David Thoreau said:

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.

- Henry David Thoreau

I exchanged some of my energy—my life force—(which is called “work”) for the paper-money to buy the flour that the farmer grew, to pay the delivery fee for the trucker who brought it to the supermarket, to pay the salary of the person who stocked the shelf, to pay for the electricity in order to bake the bread, etc.  It’s not immediately apparent when you look at it that way, but that’s what I did.  Then I directly exchanged my energy—my life force—(I worked) to actually make the bread.  That’s more apparent, and I didn’t have to use the paper-money thing to do it.

I’ve been working on the railroad all the livelong day. I’ve been working on the railroad just to pass the time away….

We all live in Caesar’s world, so you might choose to use the paper-money thing from start to finish when you get your loaf of bread.  That’s your choice.  You might choose to buy the “end product,” which is a lot more expensive because you have to pay for other people’s life force.  But a lot of people figure, hey, I’ve got the money so why not?  Again, that’s your choice.  I choose the seven side-effects of bread-making that I listed above, because believe it or not, some things can’t be bought.

They say something is only worth as much

as someone else is willing to pay for it.  As long as someone else is willing to pay exorbitant fees, then exorbitant fees will be charged.  You can get mad at that, or you can remove yourself from the transaction as much as possible.  And you’d be surprised just how far you can take yourself out of the equation you’ve been craftily woven into.

But don’t fall into the trap of thinking you can completely walk away.  You can’t.  Human beings are social animals, and we need each other—and there’s nothing wrong with that.  I need the farmer who grows the food, and the factory that packages it, and the trucker who transports it, and the shopkeeper who buys it, and the clerk who stocks it . . .  I can make my own clothes (and I do), but I can’t make the fabric, and so on.  I need people.

And I’d like to think that maybe some people need me, too.  I write for a living—not just what you see on my blog or in my books, but people also employee me to write for them because they can’t write well.  They have their own skills, which are different from mine.  We mutually benefit.

So we all need each other to an extent, and that’s okay.

Actually, it’s kind of nice.  But what we don’t need is shady background merchant-like characters pulling strings, greedily grabbing from others (which is really just stealing—right?), and deliberately creating chaos to profit off the misery and purposely-manufactured lack of other people.  We don’t need the illusion of lack, of there “not being enough—oh my!” created by the parasites who dine on fear and misery.

Someone's in the kitchen with Dinah strumming on the old banjo.  And playing:  Fee fie fiddle eeii o, fee fie fiddle eeii o, fee fie fiddle eeii oooo, strumming on the old banjo.  Yes, I got all of that from a loaf of bread, and you can too.  You can wake up and see where this train is headed.  You can stop allowing people to railroad you into a tight position.  You can recognize the exquisite fragility of the system you currently live in and subscribe to.  And you can be thankful for others.

Then get off that train.  Tell the conductor he needs to make an emergency stop.  Tell the engineer that he might be driving the train, but you’re the one laying the tracks.  Tell them to radio ahead into Dispatch that you’re going to be catching a different train going in a direction they never heard of.

Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

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In case you missed these recent stories:

• Eight Billions Loaves of Bread - for everyone

• The Little Black Book - for paid subscribers

• Bean-Nighe - for everyone

• The Axe - for everyone

• I Need a Hero - for everyone

• The Secret Cache - for paid subscribers

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