Pacific Dreams

Pacific Dreams


now,
we sit here near the diggings,
in the forest, by our fire, and watch
the moon and planets and shooting stars-

my sons ask, who are we?
drying apples picked from homestead trees
drying berries, curing meat,
shooting arrows at a bale of straw.

military jets head northeast, roaring, every dawn.

my sons ask, who are they?

WE SHALL SEE
WHO KNOWS
HOW TO BE

Bluejay screeches from a pine. - Gary Snyder

Jim runs out the back door of his farm house home, letting the light wood screen door slam gently, a soft sound rumbles after him as he lunges into the sweet damp air of a gathering summer night. Down toward the little pond he bounds, free, nature pouring into every part of his body and soul, the voices of his parents ringing in his head.

Why do his parents have to argue? Jim slowly becomes conscious of a grapefruit-sized knot of bad feeling in his chest, he takes a big breath and runs harder, the house out of sight, down into the fading light near the pond, it feels like - perfect fishing conditions.

At the willow tree, he unjams his fishing rod from the crack in the trunk. Unhooks the barb of the hook from the handle of his spinning rod, kicks over one of the giant log rounds that he had cut last fall with his chain saw from the old fallen oak tree, and grabs a giant nightcrawler.

Sorry buddy, as he threads the wriggling worm on the hook. Jim slides the bobber so the worm hangs about a body length down and makes a giant cast - to the middle of the pond. The last ripples move all the way out to the edge of the pond - and then, complete silence, that's better.

More peaceful now, the boy becomes aware of the rhythm of the summer evening, the buzzing of locusts, a few lightening bugs start firing up and drifting down along the banks of the pond.

The bobber in the middle of the pond, backlit a little from the darker blues and purples of the fading sunlight, motionless. Big breath. His mind thinks about the wide world, New York and China, what they must be like right now, and sitting here, connected to the pond by holding up the rod with the line streaming out to the center, he can get a little emotionally centered, away from his parents and their world.

The sun must just be starting to shine on the rice paddies in China, right now. Do Chinese kids have to work on the farm, like he does, and do they get to go to school and be with their friends? Are they free, do the get to grow up and leave the farm and have adventures on the other side of the world? I'd like to go and find out, Mr. Bass, leave you and the willow trees and find out what ponds in China are like, maybe bass in China look just like you.

After all, he's really free, other than being dependent on his parents now, needing to do the things that get him through the day, and go to school, You have to go to school so you can go to college. But there are a few times like this when he can be alone with his thoughts. And being near the city, there's a highway on the horizon, and the cars with their headlights scurry along with urgency, every day so predictable and steady at this time of night, heavy with the resonsibility and cares of holding up the order of the universe, their drivers must be, like his dad, just waiting to get home, entering the second world of their day, after work, the family, and probably impatient to get some free time to be alone with their own thoughts.

Honestly, other than needing to uphold the order of the universe of the farm work and school, Jim could just go flying off right now, just pick up and go off and never come back. Like, when he was younger, lying on his back on the lawn, and seeing the big jets haul off from the city, going south, and east and west, just going off and that's all, not coming back, sometimes catching the sunlight after the sun had set, up there moving along with the sun, free and busy.

But reality always intrudes on this dreaminess. It gets dark, or cold, and you have to go back and do the work of living. And deal with other people, even though you really didn't know where you stand with them always. At least you have your friends, that is, your real friends.

At the last light, more sensing the the outline of the pond and watching the stars pop out, this is the time when your consciousness can expand way out and you just drink in the impressions from the nature around the pond.

Suddenly, the line goes tight and a high pitched zzzzz sound pierces the solitude, line is ripping off the fishing reel. Picking up the rod, a huge pull from the monster bass as it feels the hook. This is him, the master of the pond, Jim has often seen lurking just beyond the line where the willows weep down to touch the water - a black shadow, a couple of feet long, master of the shallows and the deep, unmistakenly now connected at the end of the line, in the dark now, breaking the surface of the water, almost deafening sound of a huge splash compared with the stillness after the sunset.

Jim, ecstatic, is totally engaged in the effort of keeping the line tight, now giving as the giant fish rips off more line, careful to keep tension but be patient, let the fish run and fight, don't break the line. Balanced between a desire to just bring the bass into the dark shore, but not wanting to lose the connection. Half hour later, the dark shadow of the monster is lying on his side, a few feet off the shore in the warm water, and Jim slides his hand down into the warm water, feels the slimy algae and wraps a few fingers around the mouth of the giant.

He hoists the beast in, and immediately the hook falls away. Five pounds, maybe a couple of feet long, this fish too big for the small pond. Must only be one or two this big, holding the fish, which now gives a mighty flop on the dry bank and falls toward the pond, gasping in the air.

Jim rips off his shirt, kicks off his shoes, grabs the fish and wades into the muddy pond, feet sinking deep into the muck, and swims into the darkness, holding the tired fish, which gives a mighty kick with its tail, Jim swims right out to the center of the pond, and lets the fish go.

Feeling the full stillness of the night, looking up at the stars and the banks of the pond from the center, in the cool funky water, and back at the lights of the house now, he swims back to the darkened shore. Beyond, up the bank and almost out of sight, the glow lights from the house looks warm and inviting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZsnHIKXVHE



Zuo Zhong

Zuo Zhong, from an early age, considers his biggest strength to be finding something to like about almost everyone he meets. When his teachers and new friends realize that he that he listens, and remembers what makes them special, they look forward to spending time with him, and that's when they pay special attention to Zuo's own eager outlook on life. First you seek to understand, then you will be understood.

Six years after Chinese Revolution, Zuo was born in a village in the countryside just outside of Xian. His parents were teachers at a college before the revolution, but lost their university jobs in the city after the ascension of Mao and the People's Republic and were fortunate to work as teachers at a small middle school set up by the party in a small village.

Ten years later, at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, his parents were working as professors at the medical college in Xian. His parents were sent back out to the countryside for reeducation during his teenage years, back to a small village where they were allowed to teach primary school children the basics of reading and writing. During these years, at night, his father, an English professor, and mother, a biologist, poured their energy into tutoring their son.

The Zuo family was lucky, they kept their heads down and were able to keep books around be left alone, other than attending the required political meetings and not expressing their opinions about anything political. Some of their professional friends in Xian were not so fortunate, Zuo's best childhood friend's father was stripped of his career, persecuted and beaten, and eventually ended up hanging himself from a large Sycamore tree next the the huge statue of chairman Mao out in front of the concrete administration building in front of the medical college.

What Zuo learned from his parents and the adversity of growing up in communist China was how to adapt and surive - and how to look forward to better times, which ebbed and flowed with the politics of the growing republic.

By the early 1980's, Zuo had managed to graduate from univesity in central planning, and moved into a teaching position and one of the low concrete buildings on the walled campus of the teachers college in the suburbs of southwest Xian. He was married to an intelligent and loving woman who worked as a doctor over at the medical college which was a short bicycle ride away, was father to a beautiful baby daughter, and the three of them were fortunate to live in the small two room apartment, along with his parents.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BiuIn0LmUA&feature=related


Secret of the Sea

Spending time at the Oregon coast, when the weather is right, is a process of taking all of your nervous energy and bringing it to the edge of the world, and letting it get pulled out into the vast Pacific. And then you get charged, you invest yourself by just being there, and the ocean gives back peace and feeling and energizes your soul. You take it back with you to the valley, and the more you go the more a residual peace and energy lives in you, you can call on it when you need it.

When you fly over the ocean to Asia and you're hanging in a silver tube chasing the sun during an endless day which ends in darkness and fitful sleep, crammed into your seat high above the black ocean eight miles below, you get a sense of the water's vastness and the size of the earth itself.

You can't really feel the beauty in every cell of your body until you make the trip to China, and stand on that shore near the crowded and dirty city of Shanghai and look back, and months or years later you hike out the long peninsula near Tillamook, back in Oregon, and hike down to the beach with a few beers and a cigar and you feel and hear the rhythm of the ocean. Dwarfed by a huge rock overhang and the peninsula itself, there's a trail that goes out a couple of miles through the old growth trees and thick underbrush, which themselves are dwarfed and humbled by the constant wind and the severe winter weather. This is the place of old shipwrecks and regular drownings, where a fisherman is standing on the rocks and a rogue wave makes him disapear, people say, this is where he was last seen, his car was parked nearby and his body was never found.

Out at the end of the peninsula, you are stand a hundred and fifty feet above the ocean on the end of the giant gray boulders, the cold wind drying the sweat off your body that clings and irritates - from the difficult walk up the trail. Wind in your face listening to waves being driven onto the rock face below, lost in the reverie of sun, water, the absence of man.

Take a nap on the beach, there is no one, there are no rules, the colors are primary and the deep blues and light greens of the water breaking around the rocks - dangerous waters - all of this takes away your stress and your sense of time, you could be living a thousand years in the past.

If you work up your courage enough, and the sun is warming the sand, you might want to grab your little styrofoam boogie board and wade into the freezing water, which is always around fourty five degrees. When your feet have turned blue and you're standing waist high in the turquoise water, a foamy wave will sneek up and wrap around your upper body, taking away the heat from your lungs so you almost can't breath. But you jump onto the little surfboard in front of the next wave, which is a giant wall of water that blocks out the sun - and you ride the powerful Pacific, surprised that you can actually feel the power of the wave, like the first time you fell out of tree you were climbing and knew you had to relax and hit the ground with a soft body - you ride connected and a part of this translucent miniature world all the way back to the edge of the continent, too exhausted to get up and then feeling the gentle backflow of heated water coming off the beach which the rising tide brings off the dry sand of the shore.

The first time Jim came to the Northwest was to hike West Coast Trail on Vancouver Island. Flying out from the hot and humid midlands in August, they had hiked for five days, camping, and listened to the roar of ocean and felt the cold mist, climbing up and down sandstone creek walls and walking across vast blowdown areas of giant Doug Fir, expending huge amounts of energy hiking, and the sun had never shown itself except for a few minutes during the entire trip. They had not brought enough food, and Jim had picked mussells off the rocks at low tide to boil up and eat before they crawled into their tents at night.

Returning to the midlands and dreaming during the hot summer night, the haunting power of the Pacific adventure begins to work on him. That feeling centers on the memory of sitting in small boat, captained by a native about half way through the fifty mile hike, crossing the inlet of a tidal lake which blocks the trail, the ocean sucking water out so fast there are giant whirlpools that could suck the boat under, but this Indian is skillful and guides the boat across to a giant totem soaring fifty feet out of the sand on the other side. Now, it's the color of the water, the electric blue of the whirlpools, which he can't quite picture any more, which still haunts him. This Northwest country, vast, powerful, is pulling on his spirit.

http://www.woodyguthrie.org/Lyrics/Secret_Of_The_Sea.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgdBsUjNsx8

University

The Willamette River runs all the way up the valley, from Eugene to Portland, and finally empties into the might Columbia River near Portland. It is one of the few rivers in America that runs from south to north. The cold waters of the Mckenzie river pour cold, clear mountain waters off the Cascade range, right near Eugene.

The whole town of Eugene is crisscrossed with bicycle paths, and near the university there is a little bridge for bikes and runners and pedestrians that crosses right over the river.

There are a lot of places to go swimming or rafting and ride the white water. If you're crazy enough, you can do both, without a boat. One hot day during summer school, Jim and his best friend Jerry, and a couple of girls they knew, took a picnic to the big rocks at the river at the foot bridge.

That's where you can sit on the the rocks and warm up, and jump off the bridge into the water and ride the rapids with your body. A lot of students at the university like to congregate there, and party a litlle and relax from the routine of studying and exams.

The friends were enjoying the pristine beauty of the hot summer day. Back in the day, Oregon was one of the more famous places in the country to find really potent pot for cheap. The friends were smoking and working up their courage for a ride down the rapids.

Jerry was a big guy and starting feeling the heat of the early afternoon sun first. He walked back over the rocks, and climbed up on the footbridge. He jumped feet first into the water, carefully lining up in the current to drift into the whitewater chute of water that shoots between a channel of rocks. Near the head of the rapids, Jerry paddles hard, floating on his back, keeping his feet down river and up high in the water - and hits the whitewater shoot - and disappears.

The ride should last a few seconds, but Jerry is no where in sight. Immediately, Jim is searching his brain for the lifesaving training he received at scout camp - oh my God - try to reach, or throw to the victim - then row, finally - go. No boat. Dangerous to jump in. No rope. Jim scours the bank for - a long stick that has washed down from the forests upstream, left up high on the bank by the spring floods.

He runs to the chute, and drags the long stick upstream, in the center of the channel, until it strikes something hard - if feels like metal. Jim pulls the stick over the metal object, and turns the stick at a hard angle and yanks on the object. It moves a little, feels like it is impaled on the stick. The girls are yelling, he motions them over and everyone drags the stick downriver, with the current, and the object comes free. With it, Jerry's head and shoulders pop up through the white water, he gasps for air, and goes floating downstream a little to the calm, shallow water, dragging the object, which is a bicycle that someone must have taken for a joy ride from the univerisity - and thrown over the bridge.

Jim and Jerry, exhausted, a slapping each other on the back and laughing. Almost lost you guys there. Its dark under the water. I kept thinking, this is it, this is how it ends, stoned and pinned under the river.

That night, the guys are still shaking a little and talking. Jim says, it gives you new respect for life. That river is dangerous. I don't think I'll be jumping off the footbridge into the rapids any more. Get a boat. There are a lot of things I want to do in my life. I don't think I'm going to be getting stoned a lot, either. I want clarity. I have new respect for the river, you're my friend, I almost lost you. I want to see what I can accomplish, it makes you grow up a little and see that each day is a gift. Me too.

http://www.workandlearning.com/B&A.McKenzie.pic6.jpg

China Business

Jim is working for an American company and living in Sinpapore. He represents a company that sells manufacturing equipment. The vice president of marketing is visiting from America, the man is a giant former professional football player who exerts his authority over every situation with a deep booming voice and a serious look that projects out from the big brown sunken eyes of the scotch drinker that he becomes in the evenings.

Jim and the boss are sitting in the business section of a commercial jet headed to Xian from Singapore. The interior of this aircraft is rather shabby looking and plane is small enough to land and stop on the runway at the airport. The seats in the business section are as cramped as all of the other passenger seats in the aircraft, but the flight attendants wear special uniforms and they are paying special attention to the passengers.

Before takeoff, the big man knocks back three or four doubles, and before the plane reaches cruising altitude, the flight attendant brings him another drink to carry around the cabin. A couple of decades ago, airline security was an informal affair. He stumbles up to the open door of the pilot's cabin and disappears. Jim gets out of his seat and walks up the aisle to find the boss.

The vice president is engaged in friendly conversation with the pilots. The view is spectacular from here, great tropical puffy white clouds are brushing past the cockpit, standing deep within the cockpit, right behind the pilots, you can see all around. Singapore and the warm green equatorial islands below recede and there is only brilliant sunshine and blue ocean. Paradise slips away as they head to the grimy poverty of Xian and the brown dusty winter of Mongolian desert that lies at the edge of Xian International Airport.

One of the pilots ask, what are you guys doing in China? The boss, slurry now, I'm gonna show this kid here how to sell some industrial equipment to the communists. What about you guys?

The pilots looks at each other and are quiet, and laugh. Well, did you see the flight crew? Yeah, I see those traditional Chinese skirts. We're going on to Beijing, and we're taking a couple of the ladies to see the Great Wall, except we've all already seen the great wall about ten times, so we're going to hang out at a hotel called the Great Wall, in the city, if you know what I mean.

Uh! He empties his drink with a mighty flourish, likes he hauling off a long football pass. Well, selling is like sex when you do it right. And he gives Jim that half serious dirty look and lunges back into the cabin and down the aisle to the men's room at the end of the tube.

At dark, the airplane settles into a long, low approach to Xian airport. You can actually see them turn on the lights at the airport on the final approach. A service crew pulls up to the plane and it appears this is the only plane that is being actively serviced. The passengers fall silent and file down the stairs that have been rolled up, there is thin cold rain, and they fill up a small bus which has the engine and lights and heat turned off. At the airport, through customs, all of the employees are wearing green Mao suits, most of them are men and it seems like all of the are smoking. Strangely, it feels like home to Jim - in the sense that it is familiar, feels safe and peaceful, and is totally predictable.

At the factory, the two Americans sit in a huge unheated concrete hall with green tile floors, stark walls - the first five feet up from the floor is painted dark green for practical reasons related to the dust storms that arrive in the spring - stark white walls above the green stripe that run up to huge windows that ring the room below the ceiling. Sunlight filters through these windows, and everyone, including the Americans, are enjoying Chinese cigarettes, great puffs and thin streams of white smoke cuts the sunlight into swirls and slow rivers of dreamy clouds that join other clouds, and you look down to the end of the great room and see a giant painting of retired politicians now poets drinking and relaxing at a Taoist estate, it seems these local party leaders have balanced the party flags and Mao statues that greet you when you enter the front gate of the factory.

Everyone has his own giant, stuffed chair and a little table with a blue porcelain tea cup that has a lid that gives a pleasant rattle when you lift it up a little and take a sip, the bottom thickley package with Jasmine leaves, and the factory chairman himself refills the cups. Long before the business meeting begins, there is pleasant discussions, and even silence as the men and women smoke. One of the old cadres puts his head back and is taking a nap. The Americans and Chinese are friends, this is a follow-up meeting from that last time members of the group met when some of the factory managers were visiting Jim's company in America. Finally, the factory chairman sits up tall in his chair, looks around the group, and begins the business meeting. He speaks. His name is Zuo Zhong.



Back in America

The sales job ends abruptly. He rereads the memo left by his boss at the front desk of the hotel.

Jim is staying at the hotel because he has just moved back to Oregon from China. There's a recession. The company is not doing well. The boss in out of town on a business trip to South America won't be reachable until next week.

Well, pretty scary, but nice to be back in America. Life is easier here, and he's tired from so much travel around Asia. He'll find a job and focus on survival, and enjoying life in America with his wife and new baby boy. The familiar sounds of the city, the green forests and clean air, the smell of good food and the open space, this will be okay. Welcome home.

A week later, after seeing friends, taking walks with his wife and baby under the towering old growth Douglas Firs at his favorite park, eating every kind of American food - he completes the termination paperwork and says goodbye to his friends at the company.

Jim needs work, and money, now. Living overseas was expensive, it was great adventure, but it didn't make him wealthy. There's a recession, a new family, his career.

He finds out from the newspaper (that's where they advertised for jobs in the 90's) that Emerald Footwear is hiring for a customer service position. Resumes being accept by mail only, to a post office box.

He picks up the phone in the hotel room and dials the main switchboard at Emerald Footwear. Hi, this is Jim, I'm trying to send a letter, what's the name of the customer service manager there? Thanks. Half hour later, he dials the company swichboard and asks to speak to the manager, gets her on the phone right away. Lucky.

You have to see my resume, I'm perfect for the job. Look, I just want to fax it over, and if you like what you see, you can give me a call. Okay. The next day, he calls the manager, goes in for an interview and within a week is sitting in a cubicle doing customer service work.

The pay is not so great, but the corporate headquarters is comfortable and positive and looks like a brand new college campus. Jim finds he can get ahead by keeping his mouth shut and asking a lot of questions, reflecting a lot what other people say: Oh, you're saying this, I see, yeah, I can see that.

A job opens up to do research in the president's office, he gets the job because he had lived and worked in Asia. One day he's called into a meeting, and the president asks him, what should we do with our unproductive stores in China, what does your research tell you about what other companies are doing? The president is leaning toward franchising the China business out to local owners. Jim says, the research on other companies about the best retail strategy is about split, but Emerald should keep ownership in all China stores, and play hardball with uncooperative local governments in certain Chinese provinces, including shutting down stores if necessary.

The president doesn't see the logic and sides with his retail VP. Jim persists with his arguement and the president gets angry, but after heated debate, agrees with Jim. What you're saying makes sense, I appreciate your honesty. I agree, we should go by our gut here, the facts don't quite support your position, we'll see what happens. If you lose me money, it will cost you your job, I'm making you a scapegoat - smiles - now get out of here.

Jim continues to do research and occasionally gets to sit in on meetings with the president. He mostly observes, reflects back what people were saying, and keeps his mouth shut, only give his opinion when asked.

The next product season, China sales take off and China becomes profitable for Emerald. One day, the president invites Jim into his office for a drink of Scotch. Have you got any other ideas?

From then on, Jim becomes more of an informal advisor to the president, sitting in meetings, listening to opinions, and mainly offering his own analysis in private to the president after the department managers and executives have left the room. Often debating the man and losing, but never bored, and learning new things about business every day. No fancy title, no power, just freedom to listen and think and persuade.

http://gallery.backcountry.net/albums/papabear_oregon_8-19-2007/P1010070.jpg



Corporate Jet

At the end of the year, Jim gets a nice bonus and the president personally hands him a gift of options in Emerald stock. I like the way don't BS me, yet keep your mouth shut. I like the way you think, reminds me of me. Stick around and I'll make you wealthy. Don't screw up.

Jim is invited to tour the China operations with the president and a couple of VPs. Finally get to meet the Chinese employees that he has been talking to on the phone and by email, and entertaining when they come to Oregon.

First flight on the corporate jet. The interior is all leather and wood, there's a bedroom for the president.

The president has a little ritual: a double scotch, straight up, shared with the team, the good stuff of course, bottoms up before the flight. Then he closes his eyes, reclines in the leather seat, and takes a nap until the plane reaches cruising altitude.

The little jet fire up, rolls down the wet runway smooth like ice on a Midwest lake, and pulls up hard toward the low cloud cover of the Oregon winter.

As the plane banks right, Jim sees the outline of a little farm below. Darker greens at the creek, and stands of fir and alder, and a little farm house that is heating with wood. The light green of fields of barley planted for winter - and, the farm is swallowed up in fog as the little jet punches through the thick cloud cover and lofts them over a stunning Pacific sunset, pink, purple, blue. The chairman wakes up and starts a meeting about our goals and strategies for this China trip.

After five years, Jim has earned the confidence of the president and other senior executives. He is offered the position of VP, Strategic Planning. The position means a lot more hours and travel, and a lot more money and prestige, managing a staff of seven.

He thinks about something he read about a corporate chairman, the guy was the head of a huge industrial conglomerate, rich, successful powerful. The guy was writing his memoirs in a tree house he had built on the coast of Florida, enjoying the attention of being back in the limelight after leaving the corporation. The man was rich, powerful - and he was complaining about how his kids had grown up not knowing him, how his children now despise him.

Jim rebuffs the president's offer. When you are on the fast track in a corporation, you don't turn down more responsibility. Since he is leaving the company, he is required to cash in, a "same day" sale. After withholding estimated taxes, which is paid directly to the government, the money is deposited into the money market of his brokerage account. The amount - nine hundred seventy four thousand fifty five dollars and eighteen cents.

He has been friends with the chairman, has spent thousands of hours traveling and meeting and golfing and drinking with the guy, and he knows the code: never again will he be welcomed to the inner offices or golf course at Emerald Footwear. You walk, you leave behind the lifestyle, the glamour, even some of your friends. Three days later, Jim celebrates his thirty fifth birthday with his wife at the hospital; she gives birth to a beautiful baby girl.

http://www.ballerride.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/yang-jet-1.jpg


Old Farmer

He buys an old Chevy pickup truck. Blue, like he had back in the farming days. It's a beautiful day, he takes a long drive out to the country. Finds a huge farm with a for sale sign. The farmer is on a back field, well past the old farm house and outbuildings, driving an old gray Ford tractor, dragging a single bottom plow. As the old tractor labors through the spring ground, the engine labors and revs up and down, the smell of beautiful black earth, the first furrows the center of the field turned toward each other, the farmer working his way out toward the edges of the field with rhthmic efficiency, Jim remembers the first time his dad let him plow the old pumpkin field near the pond by the willow trees. It was cool that his dad had let him plow, how old was he, nine? Later, when he told him mom, she became worried and cried a little. She looked old then, that's when he knew he was growing up and the freedom he felt the first time he drove that tractor dragging the plow, and turning over the fresh black Midwest earth - that's when he knew he would leave the farm and create his own world.

Loses track of time, the farmer ignoring him, Jim lost in thought, the tractor draws to the end of the row nearest to Jim, the old farmer cuts the engine, stiffly climbs down off the tractor, walks up to Jim who holds out his hand and shakes and introduces himself.

The farmer says, yup. I saw the for sale sign. Wife's sick, kids want us to move to a retirement home near the city. Sorry. Not so bad, hear the food's pretty good. This is what I'll miss.

I'd like to lease your farm, you can come out and work as much as you want, it's still yours. I could do that for a while, but I need six thousand a month for the home. I could do that. Jim sticks his hand out
.
Done. You can't cut down that grove of trees over there. It's your land, I'll be needing your help. You wouldn't mind leaving the retirement home and coming out here and helping me with your farm? The old farmer grins.





Portland Coffee Shop

Jim is walking downtown along the electric light rail tracks, looking for a coffee shop near the university, thinking about the farm, and the giant Douglas firs, and what the old farmer's life was like - the old man when he was young, and his wife and kids, and how they are now connected to the city - the farm is just a few miles from the terminus at the other end of the light rail, out in the county.

The thing about Oregon is there is strict land use planning. You can't just go out of the city and buy a half acre, and build a house. There's an invisible urban boundry, and where the cities and suburbs end, there are only farms, and parks, farther out, public and private forests. Between Portland and the coast, there is the wine country. Sprawling vineyards and small forested mountains, a few small towns. You get out there by just hopping on the electric train, and driving or even riding your bike out from there.

But Portland was built by logging and loggers, and by the men and women who left their families back east and came out by covered wagon and settled the rich farmlands of the Willamette Valley.

The first explorers trapped beavers back in the early 1800s, and then the brave settlers came here for opportunity - but it was dangerous, and there were no guarantees. Jim thinks, you didn't leave your family in Ohio, perhaps saying good-bye forever, selling all of your stuff and investing in a wagon and farming supplies, and claw your way through the Rockies and over the Cascades, and find your way into the cold rainy Oregon winter, and expect to walk over to the social services office and get assistance.

Why were Oregonians today looking to the government for solutions? You still have a vast territory with a relatively small population, seated on the edge of the mighty and pristine Pacific, where you can go to the beach on a winter day and walk alone, and not see another person. Oregonians are blessed, and on the other side of the great ocean, where the sun shines at night, the Chinese are making something out of nothing.

Jim pauses to take a drink out of a water fountain. It continuously bubbles fresh glacial water from Mount Hood, which towers to the east. These fountains were placed long ago by a lumber baron, so the loggers who came to town with their wages would have more than just beer to drink. Some of the spans that crossed the Willamette river in the city of bridges were built by the same company that had brought an electric steel furnace to young stumptown to make steel castings for the logging industry. Portland still has a lot going for it. He knows the coffee shops are filled with educated young people, who have come here from all over country, seeking opportunity. Smart, motivated, idealistic, but mostly unemployed.

http://www.portlandonline.com/water/index.CFM?c=48918

http://www.oregonlive.com/movies/index.ssf/2010/01/ax_men_jay_browning_responds_...

http://www.escocorp.com/about/history.html

http://www.portlandground.com/sullivansgulch/2005-12-10portlandUStoreMax.jpg

Mei

Mei walks fast along the bark trail that runs under the big trees through Forest Park. The giant park wraps the west hills of the city - there are places where you can view the gleaming skyscrapers below, where they frame Mount Hood which rises out of the layered, usually misty foothills to the east.

Conscious of the biological complexity and relative warmth of the temperate rainforest in late January, she breathes the clean air which moves off the Pacific, over the coastal range and into the city - and her mind fleets back to the Michigan winter,what a contrast with that stark, white, icy dormant beauty.

Part of her mind senses the moment, nature - then she lets herself become aware of her feelings again, begins to search them out again through her thoughts. Angry thoughts.

Mei studied and graduated from Michigan in organizational behaviour - business. Her first generation Chinese parents want her to be a doctor, had worked hard, sacrificed, drilled in into her head when she was a child, too young. Tai nian qing de. Out loud. Angry.

She had moved out to Portland, leaving her parents in Michigan for now, to honor her parents, to become independent by starting her career in a place that sits across the great ocean from China, where it had all started. Maybe she just came here to get away.

There are no jobs, no one is hiring for organizational behaviour, or anything else. The recession is getting old, the government, the schools are desperate for money. For the first time in decades, citizens have voted to raise taxes on the rich - for a single person, over $125,000. She checked the university records, back when she was born, new graduates from her university were making $25,000, with inflation, she should be getting $61,000. Half way to being rich. Many Oregionians were in a funk about how new taxes would drive away business and jobs.

Mei is tired of being poor, wants to get on with her life. Mainly, fit in - it's hard growing up second generation in a small town in Michigan, and here feels like an average Portlander, compared to who she meets and what other people are doing and saying and feeling. Comfortable here.

But she feels guilty about still being a burden on her parents, who are subsidizing her small apartment and student loans while she works in a coffee shop near the university in the city below these trails. In time, her parents will accept her life choices; she wants them to enjoy their life and not have to work as hard to help little - Mei Mei. Angry, teary eyes. Xiao Mei.

Someday, they'll have grandkids, they'll live close, not too close, closer to China, here where the winters are more like the old home province, with a river, and gorges, more Chinese people like them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9uZUVD_3bk





The Virginians

Sherry and Tom Morgan know that your choices in life determine a lot to things - you get to help create your own happiness in life, there's luck and fortune, and there's hard work and having a vision. Living in rural Northern Virginia for a couple of decades, they've done alright, she doing social work for the county and Tom working on cars at a small shop outside of Winchester, Virginia.

Not being so far from the nation's capital, there's a good mix of people around in the community, but it's hard to get ahead, competing for the better houses and just the cost of food and having fun, you have a lot of established farmers and business owners and retired federal government workers on pensions driving up the cost of life.

They both enjoy work and socializing with ordinary people. Their only child grew up enjoying a comfortable life around Winchester, good schools, lots of friends, sports and nice vacations with mom and dad down to the Chesapeake shore in the summers, with trips to New York City and camping on the Blue Ridge and even a few trips down to the Bahamas over winter break during her teenage years. Tom never attended college and Sherry had graduated from the University of Washington in Seattle. When it came time for their daugther to choose a college, she chose the University of Washington. Empty nesters.

Sherry is burned out on her social work job, managing a team of young child services workers for the county, but she knows she's making a difference, and is really good at her job. One night she's missing her daughter, ten hours away including the airport drive time, and just for fun she starts looking at job postings in Portland, close to Seattle, but not closing in on her daughter's new territory. More out of the sense of doing something and reaffirming her own sense of self-worth, she posts a resume late at night.

It turns out her experience and training look attractive to someone in Washington County, Oregon, and two weeks later she has returned from a job interview there, and a few days later Sherry and Tom are ready to head out to Oregon, filled with renewed purpose and hunger for life, motivated by the knowledge that they will live and work within a three hour drive of their daughter in Seattle.

The thing that Tom will miss most about leaving Virginia is his three golfing buddies. For years, the foursome has played at municipal clubs up and down the Shenandoah Valley, and leaving the comraderie of his friends makes him sad and apprehensive about the prospect of again finding the kind of mostly unspoken but deeply shared friendship that comes from spending hours together doing something that can never be perfected and has no economic goal - completely unlike his work of fixing cars, working for someone else for wages, always trying to please other people, some who trust you and some who may never completely appreciate or trust you and your work.

Wagon Train

Jim finds walks into a coffee house near the university in downtown Portland, where the newly installed trolley tracks cross the campus on their way to join the main light rail line. Mei is one of the young people working the counter, the place is busy around eleven in the morning.

Tom Morgan is sitting in a corner near the window, reading the newspaper, looking for a job in the city. Sherry is out in the county at her new job, which she loves - doing the same kind of skilled work in a new place with new people has refreshed her faith in humanity and in herself. Tom has settling into his new life for the past few weeks, looking for work in a relaxed mood and not worrying about the recession and lack of jobs, the Morgans have a comfortable level of savings and are renting a condo at the other end of the light rail line out in Hillsboro. Being able to walk everywhere and buy local produce at the market, and ride the train into the city, and explore the diverse nature driving to the coast, and up the Columbia Gorge, and on up to Mount Hood, has been thrilling for Tom, who worked under cars and around trucks for a couple of decades in Virginia during the child raising years. Life in Oregon agrees with the Morgans.

Jim walks right up to Mei at the counter and orders a small coffee. I'm looking to hire a few people to work on a farm out in the county, I need to ask the manager if it would be okay to make a brief announcement and hand out these cards. Sure.

About twenty heads turn when he speaks, uh, sorry to interrupt, if anyone is looking for an interesting job that pays a good wage, I have these cards and there's a web site which explains everything. If you are interested, please tell your friends. I'll be sitting over there by the window. Jim walks over and Tom stands up and smiles and takes a card, a handful of mostly young people walk over and take a card, including Mei as she hands Jim the aromatic steaming cup of fresh roasted coffee. Outside the window where Tom was sitting, it is pouring rain and the light rail whizzes by, headlights blurred through the rain, flashing in cheerful red and white colors while inside Jim and Tom engage for a long while in animated caffeinated conversation.


Chehalem Farm Day

Jim drives up to the Hillsboro light rail station at seven in the morning, as Tom steps off the train. How was your trip? Fine, I walked from the condo to the station and the whole trip took about seven minutes from Orenco. Tough commute.

Jims turn the old blue Chevy pickup west, well nows the tough part, the farm is about twenty minutes from here. The pioneers from the city should bee arriving at ten. I thought I'd show you around the property a little before they stream in. Nice Chevy, sixty four? 1965. Even I can work on the engine. Yeah, you can open the hood at sit down on the fenders and just about rebuild the engine yourself. I think I need your help, Jim smiles while making a wide turn off the main highway onto a smaller paved road that runs up Chehalem Mountain.

The two men are standing on the highest point of the property. The view is stunning, looking east over the forests and vineyards to the east, Mount Hood rises behind the west hills of Portland, and maybe fifteen miles of all shades of green, brown and grey in between them. The color spectrum runs pink and yellow as the rising sun moves up over the volcanic mountain in the east, light filtering through the thin even cloud cover down through the forest greens to the purples and blues of the valley floor. I didn't know anything this beautiful exists. Wait until you see the outbuildings, the tools and machines, everything we need is here.

Mei is a take charge person. At ten o'clock, she steps off the train and hands jim a clipboard with fourty names and a release form for each visitor. Can't be too careful, some of these folks are crazy. The train empties out and most of passengers begin circling around Mei, Jim hands the clipboard back to her and Tom is standing off to the side surveying the diverse looking group of Oregonians with a wry smile. A sleek, full size tour bus pulls up, painted brown and gold, on the side it says wine country tours. Mei gets everyone loaded in and Jim and Tom drive ahead the old blue truck. Twenty minutes later, everyone is standing in the morning sun in front of one of the many outbuildings at the farm.

The old farmer, with Tom's help, had set up a field day for the visitors - there were activity stations spread across the property. A few of the neighbors were helping out. Outside the chicken house, the visitors were encouraged to take turns catching chickens in the yard outside the coop - the young people were surprised to learn that after loud commotion and effort expended in actually chasing down and cornering a chicken, and grabbing it by its legs and holding it upside down, a chicken will remain perfectly motionless and quiet when you stand there holding it. Collecting eggs in the hen house is fun - you still have to find the eggs in the straw, and they don't look like the storebought eggs - some are larger or small, darkley colored or have very thick or thin shells.

There was horseback riding, and using the horses to move the small herd of cattle up and down the north pasture, over the neck of land between the large lake and the creek. And inspecting the cattle up front for health problems, getting used to being around the intimidating size and power of the animals.

At the plowing station, Mei and her friend Marti Day are watching a young man who calls himself Flash run the tractor up and down the field, he's harrowing the plowed area, dragging an array of sharp looking shiny circular disks over the sweet and musty smelling moist ridges and breaking the furrows down into smooth earth. Flash is a self-described geek who works on computers and telephone systems, he's obviously enjoying running the powerful machine and works the field meticulously, overlapping each long pass of the tractor and working the big black furrows of overturend earth into a fine powder that is ready for planting.

Jim walks up and starts watching Flash work, and takes in the scene of the whole farm - everyone is having a good time, and people are saying, wow, I never knew you did things like this on a farm. The old farmer has brought his wife, who is sitting in a wheelchair, next to Jim and Mei and Marti. The farmer's wife is beaming, she says, it's been a long time, since the children were young, and their friends helped with the harvest and chores, that it felt like the farm was so busy and satisfying, everywhere you looked the place was being enjoyed.

Marti is peppering the old farmer with questions - how many outbuildings are there, what equipment is working or not working, what were the production numbers when the farm was running at its peak, what has the been the market price for selling filberts and raspberries over the last decade? Jim finds out Marti is a civil engineer by training, and she has a pretty analytical mind and wants to know all of the facts. Mei is checking her clipboard and trying to faces with names and remember which guests have visited which activity areas, and watching the time and getting ready to head back out to the fields and forest.

They all stop talking and there is a satisfied silence as the group watches Flash turn up the throttle on the little Ford Tractor as he finishes up a row and cuts the wheel. He turns the tractor right in front of Mei and Marti, he flashes a big smile. He's kind of cute, says Marti.

The President

The president is pacing the perimeters of the expansive executive office on the seventh floor of Emerald Footwear, looking out over the lake, past the glittering buildings on the other side of the water, guaging a break in the clouds and wondering what it's like out on the north eighteen of the golf course. He needs to exercise, to work off the stress of the continuous decision making, steering the giant supertanker, all of the little course corrections that keep the ship safe and headed to the distant port, through the storms and bright weather, knowing you never really get there.

Needs to exercise, longing for the early days, testing and adjusting new products back on the track in Eugene, selling shoes out of the back of his car to college student runners who came to the meet from all over the Northwest - and, all of the idealistic and motivated young people who had come to Emerald over the years, a few of them staying but most of them moving with their focused inertia beyond Emerald out into to the wider world to become industry competitors, and marketing managers for companies that sold toothpaste, or high school coaches, or - what was Jim doing now that he had walked with nearly a million in cash? The president smiles, good for him, smart kid, he got out and now he's looking at world from beyond this corporate tower at Emerald.

One of the things that the president most enjoys about Jim is his spirit, he cares but he doesn't care too much. Like me, I'm not afraid to take my hands off the ship's wheel, but I what would I do with myself if I wasn't growing the company that gave form to my own creative energy, and love of life?

The other thing about Jim is that he listens, and he tells you whatever he is thinking. After a couple of hours on the squash court, exhausted from the battle with the other man, bounding up and down the small court until you fall and lie in a small puddle of your own sweat, and the other man stands over you smiling, and pokes you in the chest with his raquet, and later seated in the small executive bar on another corner of the campus, a couple of beers in to the early evening, you can pitch the guy your most pressing question, and watch his reaction, carefully putting his own thoughts together and asking you questions and getting more information, and drawing you out until you finally give him that answer that you knew was what you were planning to do in the back of your mind all along.

For the first time since Jim left the company - five short months ago - the president dials the familiar phone number, and invites Jim over for a game of squash, and a drink and dinner at headquarters.


Farm Workers

Two weeks later, on a rainy weekday morning at eight-thirty, Tom drives a battered mini van to the Hillsboro light rail station, waits for about ten minutes. The train arrives, empties. Seven passengers, led by Mei, march over to the vehicle and strap in. Enthusiastic conversation makes the twenty minute drive to the farm seem like ten.

Sitting around the old dining wooden dining room table in the farm house, Jim smiles and shakes his head. This is going to be a real adventure. You guys, I can't guarantee anything, but you have come to the right place if you want to have a shot at realizing you own potential. Don't hold back, you're here because you are a winner. Most of you are young and jobless up until now, it's a tough economy. We're all here to learn and grow, to give it our best effort. Let's go around the table, say a few words about yourself.

Mei speaks first. I just want to say thanks for doing this, Jim. I went to college in Michigan, and came to Oregon because I feel like it is my destiny. I want to get something going with China - some trade or agricultural exchange.

Tom says, you college eduacated kids, I work on cars, I'm pretty handy with a lot of things, but maybe you guys can teach me something. Jim interjects, as you all know, I am paying coffee shop wages to everyone, but, there are exceptions, - because of their years of experience, and specific skills, Tom,Pete and Marti are getting double coffee shop wages. Just to be clear.

Sarah, Anna and Kristin are college friends. Sarah is a biologist, her main interests are sustainable forestry and food production. You came to the right place to practice your ideas, grins all around. Kristin has a marketing degree from Ohio State. She's interested in marketing farm products to the three dozen or so open air farmer's markets around the Portland area. She believes relationships can be established with local vendors to brand the farms food products, and get the story behind the food out to consumers and diners at restaurants. You can wholesale to retailers or direct at a lot higher margin that just selling your filberts and berries to the grower's cooperative. Eveyone nods in agreement. Anna is a philosophy major. She spent a year living at a rural study program in Japan. I can teach you guys the zen of being satisfied with a simple bowl of rice, and I'm a hard worker. She's funny and likeable.

Well, my name is Flash, I'm a computer guy, I design online computer games and I have also done hardware work on computer and telephone systems. I have a double major, electrical engineer. Um, I really enjoyed harrowing that field during the visitor day. Everyone laughs.

Marti: my parents wanted me to be a structural engineer, when I was a kid, they drilled math into me. I worked in a company for a few years, I hate sitting behind a desk. I love engineering, I can afford to do this for a while, I told Jim, there are a few things I'd like to do for the farm, like work on engineering some specific alternative energy generators. I don't think Jim will mind my saying that he has a very clear plan for some projects, and the money is budgeted.

Finally, it's Pete's turn. I graduated from he culinary institute and have run kitchens at various downtown restaurants over the years, specializing in Northwest food creations using local ingrediants. I plan to be more my own boss a little here for a while, work on some ideas and get recharged. Oh, one minute - he walks back into the farm house kitchen and returns balancing a couple of huge trays of pastries, sandwiches, and fruit, vegetable and nut creations. After another round trip from the kitchen, he's carrying pitchers of coffee and fruit juices. I like to eat. the aroma of baked goods and cheese and coffee fills up the room.

Jim says, welcome everyone, and thanks. Obviously, this project is a social and economic experiment. My goal is to break even, apart from the capital investment in the farm, after the first year. That means, paying everyone's wages and paying for the cost of materials on stuff that gets sold or traded off the farm.

Tom, Mei, Marti and I have laid out some infrastructure. I have purchased eight used camper trailers, and these are set up in a village near the west forest. They're pretty nice, when you're inside, it feels like a small apartment. You can commute to the city on the light rail and keep your apartment or whatever your living arrangements are, or you can pay a few hundred bucks per month to live here. If you live here, your water, electric and heat are included with the trailer. Marti and Tom are working on the plans to build a boiler plant near the village, powered by a wood burning furnace that will produce lots of hot water, which will heat the trailers and provide hot water. We'll buy our electricity for now.

You're paid for eight hours a day for your labor, if you want to work longer on your own projects, no one is stopping you. There is money available, come up with an idea and give me a business plan describing the specifics and you can go for it. For example, if you want to be the chicken specialist, you may want to take over one of the outbuildings and invest in feed and equipment and sell meat and eggs at the farmer's market. You can keep a third of the profits, after material costs and the cost of your wages is deducted. It is going to take more than eight hours a day to make money on chickens, but you are free to leave after you put in your time, maybe you'd rather spend the time commuting to the city, if you have commitments. The van is be available to shuttle over to the light rail station.

My goal for the farm is to come up with some sustainable practices and systems that can be replicated, or franchised, all over the state. By franchise, I mean, having a business that runs when you are not there. You come up with the ideas and do the hard work up front, maybe you replace yourself with employees at some point so you can do on and do something else, think up new ideas or go have fun, but the business works whether you are there or not. It doesn't depend on you personally, and the equipment and procedures are standardized. Make sense?

The other thing is, Flash has been working on getting us wired, and we'll soon have satellite cable and wireless internet on the whole farm, and the cell phone coverage works everywhere. I'm throwing in a nice big flat panel screen into each camper. The farm house here will be used as a common area, Tom is helping build out another bathroom, there will be three bathrooms with showers here, as well as the campers. Tom and I will be commuting and living at our homes nearby.

Pete's going to be working on one gourmet meal every day. That's on me, at the farmhouse. We're going to be working on some product development, frozen food meals and so on, but also provide one main meal daily for anyone who sticks around, that will give us a little informal social time to meet or relax over food and process our problems and progress.

Ideally, every one is going to find one area to take charge, and then you'll have to negotiate with each other if you need help, additional labor, to make your project a success. I guess Flash is interested in running the tractor and doing some planting out in the open fields, is that right, Flash? Flash is deeply engrossed with something on his laptop, and he looks up and smiles. Uh, yeah. And I've got a new idea for an online computer game that could generate some good revenue, if anyone wants to trade for a few chickens, looks like I'll have some cash.

Jim says, nice, that reminds me, you're all free to barter with each other for goods that help make your life better here. I just want my two thirds cut on the profit of stuff that gets sold off the farm. Obviously, I have to pay for the land and equipment and supplies and your labor. That should give you an incentive to create some wealth for yourself, to pay back your student loans, or save money to buy a house in the city, or start your own farm.

For anyone who is staying here tonight, why don't you go check out the campers and get settled, and Tom will be running the van over to the train station around six. We'll put in a full day of work tomorrow.


Farm Franchise

After the three months, Jim feels that progress on the farm is on track to meeting his goals. Of course the operation is losing money, but he can see that apart from the capital invested for equipment and the land lease, the farm can break even in the first year. Most importantly, it runs while he isn't there and they are already developing some creative processes and strategies which could be useful on other farms.

He puts Mei and Tom in charge of daily operations, if the those two can't agree on a decision, Jim decides. Mei turns out to be good at holding people accountable for hitting their goals, and a hard laborer who pitches in wherever she is needed. Tom encourages and gives perspective - he has so much general experience, in things like carpentry and welding and using a chain saw - he's a great teacher.

Since they took over a working farm, there are many sources of revenue - cattle sales, chickens and eggs, a large filbert orchard, walnuts, raspberries, blueberries, apples, hay, mint, grapes from the vineyard, trout from the lake to local restaurants - the old farmer had dabbled in many crops and ventures, and part of the reason he had decided to move now was the desire to stop managing the seasonal laborers that he had been hiring to do the work. Now this work is being done mainly by - college graduates. That's funny.

Well, when you take out the cost of owning a car, what's that, about ten thousand a year, for car payments, gas and insurance - and you lower the cost of housing and utilities to a few hundred bucks a month - and you can get food for free or half price - you can afford to make less money. That's one of his big goals for his workers.

A few of the employees are on track to creating some wealth for themselves beyond their wages, selling extra production from their own projects. Pete has started a line of baked products, using ingrediants like hazelnuts, and exotic cheeses obtained by trading farm produced hazelnuts with a small dairy farm on the coast. These are sold at wholesale and traded for wine with some the wineries around Chahalem Mountain, and over in Yamhill County. Pete knows what everyone is producing at surrounding farms and the market value of bartered ingrediants.

Mei and Kristin have started a marketing program that identifies what activities will
produce the most cash flow for the farm. The eight campers are occupied, and another six employees are making the commute to their downtown Portland homes every day. A few more hearty souls have set up wall tents over wooden platforms, and are heating with wood stoves. The farm house provides a large common area, with a couple of
recreation rooms, offices, showers and bathrooms, and of course the kitchen. Pete has expanded the kitchen by knocking out a wall on the house and framing an large room which holds some used ovens and food processing equipment they had purchased.

A group of four has purchased a couple of used pickup trucks and chain saws and a hydraulic log splitter, they are working ten hour days running loads of firewood out to customers in the western metro area for cash or barter only. They seem to be pretty happy with their work, they come in off the light rail every day and go straight to work, and some days take one of the last trains into the city at night. Mei seems to be happy with their numbers, and some of the cash that is being generated is being invested in necessities for the farm - a second fuel tank had been purchased and occasionally a big tanker truck comes in and fills up, so everyone is who drives is buying their gas from the farm at a slightly reduced price, and it's convenient.

Tom has been a great teacher and hasn't had time to work on any of his own cash producing projects, but apparently he has made arrangements to share in the excess profits generated by some of the folks. He'll get a cut on some of the produce that goes to the farmer's markets, and keep multitasking on welding, teaching welding, fixing and maintaining the farm equipment, putting up new buildings - he loves the variety and he's a patient teacher.

Marti and Flash have become an odd couple, cooperating and debating various engineered projects. They are already looking at wind and solar power options, and automating whatever routine farm tasks that can be save labor time and money. Sarah and Anna have taken charge of setting up the gardens, including a tomato hothouse made of a wood frame and plastic, it uses heat from the wood burning boiler plant near the village to extend the growing season. The look forward to marketing the first crop of tomatos in the city.

New West Partners

Exhausted from an obsessive battle on the squash courts which had gone on longer than was necessary, the two men are glaring at each other over a beer in the executive dining room. The president finally cracks a smile. You're crazy, Jim. Aren't you too old for this by now?

The president is himself annoyed that Oregonians have just voted to increase the income tax on the rich. Yeah, says Jim, the definition of rich now, I was talking to one of my managers, is like sixty thousand bucks of income, if you back twenty some years, ajusedt for inflation. That's scary.

Anyway, the president continues, it's not going to make or break the state, but it sends a bad message to the rest of the country. One of the highest personal income tax rates in the world. How am I going to attracted talented managers to come live here when they are getting hosed by the government. Look at the property taxes, these are mostly people who don't care about having no sales tax here, they have already bought all of the furniture and cars and big screen televisions, they are already successful and they keep score by how much is left to keep in the bank. Who would move a going company here? What is going to happen to the tax base, a few years from now they are going to need a quarter of the school budget to pay the pensions for retired teachers. Who had been managing the state with an eye on the long term? That's why I started the farm.

What? Look, the farm runs on low costs, you don't need to make as much money to live. You still have to pay taxes on some barter and cash sales, but there is a lot less waste in taxes in a more localized economy.

Yeah, okay. So, you've got a bunch of idealist young modern day hippies out growing tomatoes in hot houses and selling wood for cash in the county. Are you happy?

No. Are you? I'd like to keep keep growing the ship here, see where it goes. No, I'm not happy. I've thought of moving Emerald headquarters to Singapore or one of the islands near Hong Kong. I feel like the the atmosphere here is becoming oppressive, everywhere you look the government is having an opinion about how you should run your life or do your business. Of course, with two hands held out in front. That's why I need your help. Let me show you around the farm, just for kicks, you could use a break from hanging over this place like a dark cloud, I notice the place runs pretty well without you. Yeah, I'd like to see your little hippie ranch. I guess we're neighbors, anyway. Yep, I can hook you up with a load of firewood. Good, you took my money and ran, I think you owe me a couple of truckloads at least. Deal.


Comparative Advantage

Jim, Mei, Flash and Kristin are meeting at the big table in the farm house. Looking out the big picture window, Jim notices the gray white tips of bare alders seem to reach out for the fading afternnoon light, especially at the top where the branches spread out between the towering firs at the edge of the woods. The bottom of the trees are thick with bright green moss, higher up, spongy jade colored lichens glow in the dim mottled shade of the final direct rays. Everything in the forest is competing for light, space, scarce minerals, water. In farm horticulture, there are certain crops that thrive in certain soils or locations on the farm. Jim muses, the secret to being a productive farmer is figuring what to do and where, and to spend your time on the things you do best.

In the past year, the group has been trading services and goods with a number of farms and small businesses in the neighboring counties. The largest outbuilding has been converted into a sort of warehouse, where excess stock from Chehalem Farm and unused goods from other farms are stored, and packed back into containers and trucks and traded with third party suppliers.

Now, the farm has established relations with the trading company that represents a machinery manufacturing plant in China -through Jim's old business contact, Zuo Zhong. Flash has set up internet teleconferencing and shipping arrangements, Kristin is working on the pricing of trade goods and Mei is managing the China relationships. The goal is to send one container, the first, over to Xian - filled with high value agricultural products from the area - non perishable products like filberts, wine, organic canned fruits and jellies, and precut wood parts for furniture manufacturing in China.

In return, Zuo Zhong's company is sourcing a list of manufactured goods from around Xian - cloths, shoes, tools and electronics - goods that are source directly from the manufacturer and Obtained at twenty to thirty percent of U.S. retail prices. This first container exchange is set up as purely a barter experiment - no money is traded - and the participants on both sides have enjoyed working on the lists and terms and getting to know each other a little through the videoconferences and emails. The Chinese are very interested in sampling Oregon certifed organic foods, and the Oregonians would like to try out certain manufactured goods at a fraction of the retail price, without having to come up with cash. These can be traded with other farms for agricultural products.

Seven weeks later, both the Chinese and the Americans have received their first container. A video conference is set up, and the new friends in both countries are enthusiastically holding up goods to the camera and showing local orders and telling stories about conversations with local customers. The exchange has been succussful in building some trust and communication between both sides - even the older Chinese managers are practicing a few English phrases, and Mei is translating and has taught the Americans some greeting and phrases. There's already talk of doubling the orders, sending two containers back to each country, for the round trip trade.

Jim and Zuo have not met in person for years, but at the conclusion of the video conference, each man salutes the other, one lights up a cigar and the other a Chinese cigarette. Zuo is laughing and says, Mr. Jim, this is your favorite brand! The whole group, about fourty Chinese and Americans, one group looking out a window at a nearly full moon, and the other standing in full sunlight, toast each other with diet colas, beer, Xian white liquor and tea. To friendship!

Small is Beautiful

( Current political, economic and environment considerations point to a solution: more reliance on small business and back to the farm living to increase motivation, quality of life, personal satisfaction, sustainability).

( US and states experience continued slow job creation, higher taxes, deficits, debt, decreased citizen satisfaction with quality of life.)

After the second world war, Americans enjoyed a period of properity and growth. Black and white television is in homes in the fifties, in the sixties color television arrives, at the end of seventies come the first computers, and in the mid 90s is the dot com boom. The turn of the century is the age of globalism, interdependency. Americans borrow their way to wealth, as good manufacturing jobs move to developing countries like China. As the boomers age, many look to the government for support - early Social Security, health care, jobs.

Diversification

( The president invests, more farms are leased, Chehalem farm is purchased with cash from the old farmer, an office building in Hillsboro is leased.)

Pressure

( U.S. deficits, debt, taxes, schools, trade protection.) The farm and affiliates start an innovative private school system, which is integrated with the economy. Children become productive while learning and growing.

Growth

( Alternative energy, health care, private equity for employees.)

Sabbatical

( Spiritual explorations. The world is increasingly complex, uncertain and difficult. But as you simplify your (economic) life, certaintly and satisfaction increases. You're life isn't easier, you may even work harder, but the balance of work and leisure, family and social life is more rewarding than livng with higher consumption and materialism. You now consume few things of higher quality, a lot of what provides satisfaction is free. Respect for diversity, transformed by faith which affirms specific choices to the exclusion of other scenarios or " anything goes, whatever happens". Taking responsibility, caring, accountability. Tough love. )

Meltdown

The government, increasingly desperate for revenues, imposes stricter trade tarriffs. Even the farm is motivated to spend more resources on self sufficiency. State government implodes, pensions are at risk. Services are slashed, with the exception of fire and police.

Affirmation

( The sustainable economic model is widely embraced as an alternative to increasing dependence on large corporations and government.)

( All over America, groups have been experimenting with private ownership and economic sustainability.)

Transformation

(The broader economy stabilizes. A higher appreciation of nature and economic efficiency and cooperation places members of the community, and humanity in a more comfortable and tenable position - but, the uncertainties of nature and time remain. Earth's population has stabilized, and the quality of life for most has improved. A Renaissance of creativity and personal satisfaction flourishes, for those who continue to choose to embrace personal responsibility and exert effort.)

(Due to trade protectionism, trade with China for goods is minimized - decreasing economic comparative advantage for goods - but also minimizing the cost and impact of fuel. Local production has replaced reliance on imports, but the community and friendship remains - using technology, there is collaboration on farm productivity, technology development, and creative projects. Wind and solar power the internet and low power 3D flat screens the size one of the walls in the living room.)


(For the members of the extended Chehalem group, the balance of work, leisure, family, community, materialism, austerity - give meaning to life. We have been surrounded by wealth and opportunity, it is the daily doing and appreciating with gratitude that many have been seeking - this is what gives us satisfaction and a sense of security.)