Jammin'

This morning Dennis and I made red plum jam – 7 pints of it plus about a cupful in a bowl. I hadn’t made jam all summer because the fruit crop, along with almost every other crop from garden or field, failed this year. The weather has been mean to us. Too cold, too hot, too dry, plant diseases, all conspired to disappoint.

Our stock of homemade jam was getting low. There wasn’t enough left to last until the next growing season. We had options. We could buy many kinds of jam and jelly at the grocery store. Nevertheless, I wanted to make our own jam, so I bought 5 pounds of red plums and a bag of sugar. 

Financially it hardly made sense. The plums and sugar cost about eight dollars and the cost of heating our stove burners to cook the jam, and sterilize the jars and lids increased the cost. We both spent two and a half hours completing the task, including clean up. The value of the product was just $35. Homemade jam was not a profitable use of our time.

So, we asked each other, why did we do it? We found good reasons. We had worked for the satisfaction of carrying on tradition, the pleasure of seeing our handiwork, the ultimate pleasure of smearing the jam on our morning toast, and the perhaps irrational joy of doing it because we know how. Having made jam and jelly so many times, we move like clockwork, each of us knowing exactly what to do and when to do it. That, alone, made jammin’ worthwhile.

Copyright 2018 by Shirley Domer 

Grandma's Apology

Like it or not, climate change isn’t just coming – it’s here.  This year, along with the three previous years, make the hottest years ever recorded.* I don’t need to lay out the details for we all know wildfires are raging all over the world, people are dying from heat, and crops are failing worldwide. This, scientists say, is notthe new normal, for temperatures will continue to rise.

I’m an old woman and won’t have to live long with climate change, but I shudder to think what my grandchildren’s lives be like at the earth heats up. This is my apology to them for our stupidity and for the human weaknesses that have created this mess.

We love ease. We want machines to do as much of our work as possible. Machines wash our dishes and clothing, mow our lawns, carry us from place to place, and much more. We even need machines to help us build and maintain muscle strength, because we no longer use our muscles to perform the work of living. Machines run on electricity, most of which comes from burning fossil fuels.

We love convenience. It’s so much easier to carry a plastic bottle full of water than to fill a container from the kitchen faucet. Never mind that great-grandmother had to carry a bucket of water from the well or the creek. Poor old soul; she had to work so hard. We don’t want to bother with cooking when it’s so convenient to get packaged meals from the grocery store or carry out from a restaurant. We prefer to ride in motorized cars than walk or exert ourselves riding a bike.

We love our tribe.We are suspicious of people who look different from us or hold different beliefs, and we often make war on them. War is a tremendous waste of resources and requires clean up and rebuilding when it’s over. 

We love luxury. We must have not just one indoor bathroom, but two or three of them. We crave the latest style clothing, and discard things that are out of fashion. We want new carpet on our floors and the latest model cars in our garages. We want, want, want, and are never satisfied. 

We love money.We will happily destroy our environment to get more money. Renewable forms of energy – solar, geothermal, wind – can’t be promoted because oil has made so many people rich, and continues to do so. 

We love self-indulgence. We will do whatever it takes to immediately gratify our whims. No matter what a mess we make or how much debt we incur, we must have everything now.

The upshot, dear grandchildren, is a foul world, drowning in rising sea levels, wallowing in plastic trash, stinking with poisonous air, and awash in filthy rivers and streams. I’m sorry. 

*“The Year Global Warming Turned Model Into Menace,” page 1, The New York Times, August 10, 2018. 

Copyright 2018 by Shirley Domer