Tag Archives: environment

Thursday Morning Ramblings

October 6, 2011 D.A. Adams 3 Comments

I only speak for myself and don’t purport to know the motivations and aspirations of the protesters at Wall Street, but if I were among their ranks, the following would be my clearly stated goals of the protest:

I want to live in a nation that respects and rewards a person’s contribution to society fairly and justly. I would like to earn enough money to pay off my student loan debt, save for retirement, have access to adequate healthcare, and send my children to college, not feel at the end of the month as if I have to choose between food and gas. I would like to know that my contribution as a professional educator is respected and appreciated, not just by my students and colleagues, but by society as a whole.

I want to live in a nation that holds corporations and CEO’s accountable for moving jobs overseas and hiding billions in profits offshore to avoid paying taxes. I’d like to see CEO’s punished for bankrupting companies, not compensated with multi-million dollar severance packages. I want companies to be held accountable if they poison our water supply, make our air unbreathable, taint our children’s toys with lead paint, contaminate our food supply with lethal bacteria, or in any other way recklessly endanger our lives in the name of profit.

I want to live in a nation that once again embraces innovation and ingenuity and doesn’t allow other countries to outpace us in technological advancement.

I want to live in a nation that respects all people who are willing to work full-time, regardless of occupation. There is dignity and honor in contributing to society, whether that be as white collar, blue collar, or red collar. All jobs are important, and anyone who is willing to work and be productive should be viewed, not with cynicism and disdain, but with appreciation and admiration.

I want to live in a nation that embraces diversity and respects everyone’s rights to freedom. Liberty is our birthright, guaranteed by our Constitution, and these freedoms are granted to all citizens of this country regardless of sex, race, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, or any other artificial stratification created to keep us divided and bickering. We are all American citizens, born with certain unalienable rights.

I want to live in a nation that celebrates and aspires to greatness, not promotes and rewards mediocrity. Not so long ago, our music, our movies, our books were the best in the world. Today, we create paper-thin melodies with no soul, recycle worn-out franchises, and cheer poorly written, cliche-riddled narratives. We have half-baked reality shows rewarding talent-less jackasses and washed up celebrities. We promote buffoonery and incivility, while creative geniuses play street corners for handouts.

I want to live in the America I was promised as a child, a land of freedom and opportunity, a place where if you built a better mouse-trap, the world would beat a path to your door. Today, if you build a better mouse-trap, Corporate America and government bureaucracy will trample your aspirations with a myriad of confusing regulations and a maze of overbearing documentation, stifling your innovation in name of preserving the status quo.

Those would be my goals for the protests.

General Posts

Monday Afternoon Ramblings

September 12, 2011 D.A. Adams Leave a comment

Here is an update on the farm. Over the weekend, I finished the new section of wall along the far end. It’s not perfect, but it should be a decent improvement to the old wall that had gotten damaged by water, weeds, and pests. Overall, the building is coming along nicely. The flooding issue is nearly completely under control, and the outer wall should go up fairly quickly. Even though I’m far behind the original schedule I had set, I feel pretty good about the progress that’s been made so far. Right now, I hope to have the building usable in the next five weeks.

Once the building is in a usable condition, I’ll focus on getting the prototype operational. The biggest obstacle to that will be buying all of the equipment, but one way or the other, I’ll make it happen. It’s important to me to get the first unit off the ground and find out if it works efficiently. If so, things may begin to happen quickly. If not, then I’ll figure out what direction to go. The most important part is to have the prototype working so that I can know whether or not I’m on the right path.

General Posts

Thursday Afternoon Ramblings

September 8, 2011 D.A. Adams 3 Comments

I’m at and have been facing a crossroads in my life. I feel it every waking moment of each day. On the one side, I am a capable teacher with 13 years experience and a solid foundation for how to run my courses, so the job is not difficult in the sense of day-to-day class preparation. But with that experience comes a feeling of burnout, of having been overworked and exhausted by the system well before my prime. While I’m good at the job, it no longer fulfills me in any substantial way.

Then, there is the writer in me who feels stifled by the day-in, day-out grind of the system. My creative side yearns to run free and create novels full-time, but the reality of our current economic conditions makes that aspiration feel like a distant dream unlikely ever to come to fruition. Breaking through in this age, just being noticed, requires constant promotion and exposure. Even then, the monetary reward is rarely worth the effort. It’s a sickening, maddening feeling to have a modicum of talent for something but to feel as if there is no way to make a living off of that skill.

And then still, there is my third path, the one I feel calling with the most urgency and highest sense of importance. I want to farm. I want to build a self-sufficient, operational farm that at the very least can provide my family with sustenance if the whole system implodes, which every day feels more and more likely. Right now, this is what I want to do more than anything. This is where my heart is pushing me, and when I have the time to work at the property, even toiling at hard physical labor, I find a peace and tranquility hard to describe. I simply feel as if I am where I belong.

I do know that no matter what, I will finish The Brotherhood of Dwarves series. I owe it to my readers, my friends, and myself to complete books four and five. Beyond that, who knows? I may choose to continue writing, or I may not. At this stage of my life, I truly cannot say. There is another story I want to tell, but I’m not sure if it will ever be more than an idea. Only time will tell about that. What I do know for a fact is that I must choose a path and follow it because standing at this crossroads and pondering my proper course cannot last much longer. I have to move forward soon.