Volume IV, Number
1, January, 2005
HAPPY NEW YEAR
- LET 2005 BEGIN
A highlight on Barnicle Farms is the New Year’s Day is the concert from the Vienna Symphony Hall. We hold hands and listen to the Straus waltzes. By the time it ends with the beautiful Blue Danube my eyeballs are already sweating. If you missed it you missed the best show on TV for 2005. Catch it next year. Another tradition is the puzzle we dump on the bridge table. It might be finished by Ash Wednesday.
In December I completed the Corner Market’s National Register application, we sold our home in Jefferson City and sold out our inventory of Pickled Black Walnuts. For those of you who procrastinated we have begun selling futures on next year’s crop. My classes at William Woods and Lincoln University are over for the year. What a relief! I was almost working full time in the first two weeks of December preparing the house, preparing and the grading examinations, finishing the CM application, delivering Barnicle Farm Black Walnuts, and working over the last details on MFU Credit Union Charter.
THE MISSOURI
FARMERS UNION CREDIT UNION (MFUCU)
I forgot my awful cold as I sat in the back of the MFU boardroom and watched John Smith, the Director of the Missouri Division of Credit Unions present Russ Kremer with our Credit Union Charter. A worthwhile goal is difficult but possible to achieve. It has a date on it and it is perfect if you can picture it so clearly you will know it immediately when you see it. This goal met all of these conditions. It took a team of dedicated volunteers working many hours for almost two years. They worked through the bureaucratic maze and scrutiny from the Missouri Bankers Association. The deadline was December 31st and at 6:00 PM. December 13th, 2004 we met our goal. The picture will remain in my memory next to a 1968 picture of the day in Cameroon when Simon Shang presented a credit union charter to the village of Kikai Kelaki.
But the goal is only a first step on the road to the dream. In June 2002 OIKOS opened a web site www.NeighborhoodEconomics.net and published a plan. Our neighborhood development plan is a model I learned working in the third world. It is not a new model. It was the model our ancestors followed building the rural neighborhoods, which made the United States the wealthy country it used to be. Instead of looking to government the neighborhood instead looks to itself for the resources and tools. An abundance of wealth can be found in every neighborhood. In addition, new wealth enters our national economy through neighborhood economies. In the first piece of our plan a neighborhood development credit union changes the velocity of the money that comes into the neighborhood. The second part of the plan is to create industries in every household to fuel the neighborhood economy.
More than the goal I saw a vision of the future that night. The newly appointed board, credit and supervisory committee members sitting at the conference table were volunteers I had the privilege to work with and come to know and respect over the past two years. The challenge ahead is awesome but the credit union is in good hands. And I gave myself a pat on the back. A good organizer works himself out of a job.
WE ARE ZAPATISTAS
Eleven years ago on New Year’s day 3,000 rebels took control of seven villages in Chiapas, Mexico. They named themselves after Emiliano Zapata a hero of the Mexican revolution. But this was not a 20th century “power to the people” revolution. It was the first of what I hope will be many 21st century revolutions. Their aim was not political. It was economic - to reclaim their neighborhood economies from the government and the corporations that had stolen them. Richard and Araceli Flamer live in the Tlaxcala, a neighborhood that gets our “Droppings”. You can learn more about what they do at www.SYJAC.org. My mission for 2005 is to connect the neighborhoods in our ring of “Droppings” with one another. I urge you to contact Richard at syjac@prodigy.net.mx and introduce yourself and your neighborhood. You will be amazed at how much you have in common and how much you each have to share and to learn from one another.
Volume IV, Number
2, February, 2005
IF YOU
EAT
In September 1996 I had just begun my first semester as Principal of St. Bede’s College in Cameroon when I received a telegram informing me that the Prime Minister would be touring the Kom region and would like to visit the College – on Friday! After a rush to get the grass cut and the uniforms clean we were all in our places when the PM’s a convoy of Land Rovers pulled into our drive. Despite my apprehension, Augustan Njua quickly put me at ease and then paid me a big compliment, not to me personally but to my country. He told the students how fortunate they were to have me as their Principal and how they should learn from me. “The United States is a powerful and great country not because of its military might, it is a great country because it has learned to feed its citizens and from its abundance it is able to feed hungry people who live in countries where their farmers cannot feed their countrymen.”
I remembered Njua’s talk when I recently read a USDA announcement. “In 2005, for the first time in over 50 years the US would import more food than it exports.” This is very disturbing news, not only for our families producing our food but even more so for our families eating it. If we eat we are involved in agriculture. When we pick up our forks we are using the most powerful tool in agriculture. It is an economic tool. With the fork we choose what we bring to your mouths. But do we know?
COOL
As more and more food comes into our country from who knows where, more and more people are getting more and more nervous about what they are eating. After the “Mad Cow” from Canada visited us a few years ago, 83% of the people demanded to know where the meat they buy in the store is coming from. There is a “Made in…” label on every electronic gadget and toy that comes from overseas. Yesterday Lorraine bought a sachet of garlic. It had a label, “Product of China”. Why can’t we look at a label on the beef we buy at the store to find out where it came from? One reason might be it would be impossible to tell. When you dig your fork into a hamburger on our table I can point out our window and can tell you the calf came from there, it ate that grass and except for an immunization shot, it never got a drug. If you ask where the Big Mac came from, it would be impossible for anyone to tell you. The Big Mac is not a hamburger, as we know a hamburger to be. It is an agribusiness industrial product, which contains probably the parts of over 1,000 animals, most of which were not USDA inspected.
The people demanded and the legislature voted the Country Of Origin Label (COOL) into law. Since then the agribusiness giants have been successful in blocking the law. Their latest ploy is to ask that the law be voluntary! I got a parking ticket last week. It read: “Your fine is $3.00. You can pay it if you like.” You bet!
THE MISSOURI
FARMERS UNION CREDIT UNION
The MFUCU is three things, a financial institution, a neighborhood institution and an educational institution. Its purpose is community development. This is its niche in the financial market. Now the MFUCU is chartered, I hope to spend most of my time organizing and educating people about the benefits of the MFUCU. In my first workshop we do an exercise called “Follow the Dollar”. Each family writes the amount of money that comes into their household each month. We then calculate the amount of money coming into their neighborhood each month. Until now I have only worked with low-income neighborhoods. The results have been shock when people realize how much money comes into their community each month. Last weekend I conducted the workshop for MFU members from rural neighborhoods. When I saw the results I went into shock. At first I didn’t believe the numbers. An average of $2,405,741! That’s gross! I know. Still the demonstration shows our 200 family imaginary neighborhood takes in that much every month before it rushes out. But where does it go? Get mad.
The MFUCU will succeed if enough people get mad. Join MFU www.missourifarmersunion.org. Deposit your money in the MFUCU. Call your legislator and demand COOL be enacted. While you are mad look up SB 187 and call Senator Dan Clemens (573) 751-4008 and tell him you are against this bill, which will take away all local control over agribusiness concentrated animal operations. If you care about life, tell Dan no!
Volume IV, Number
3, March, 2005
LET’S POUR GAS
ON THE FIRE
We received more comments on our February DROPPINGS than all of the other’s we’ve dropped since Vol. 1-1 in November 2002! Many thanked us for writing about the shocking USDA announcement: “In 2005, for the first time in over 50 years the U.S. would import more food than it exports.” A Cameroonian friend pointed out an error in my story. I was the principal of St. Bede’s in September 1966 (not 1996).
Most readers were upset about the Country Of Origin Label (COOL) law. 83.5% of the people are in favor of the law. 81% said they would pay more for their meat if they knew it came from a US farm. Then why has our government let the agribusiness giants blocked the law by saying its compliance should be voluntary? Four “Mad Cows” have now been discovered in Canada. Our government, to protect the consumer, will not allow us to import prescription drugs from Canada but is rushing to open our border to Canada beef. A member of a Russian delegation visiting the US wondered why our government was encouraging corporate farms and destroying family farms. The Russians are busy dismantling corporate farms and replacing them with family farms. More than any other reason, the USSR collapsed because it became dependent on food imports. Why then is our government pushing the U.S. in the opposite direction?
“Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it.” Mark Twain
A NEIGHBORHOOD AGENDA?
One reader asked if I had forgotten the purpose of this letter. Actually we’ve thought about dropping DROPPINGS and renaming it THE NEIGHBORHOOD AGENDA. So what does a sachet of garlic with a label, “Product of China” or a Big Mac hamburger with the parts of over 1,000 animals in it have to do with the neighborhood agenda? Our answer is everything.
In 323 BC Aristotle’s wrote: “Democracies are safer and more permanent than oligarchies, because they have a middle class which is more numerous and has a greater share in the government; for when there is no middle class and the poor greatly exceed in number, troubles arise, and the state soon comes to an end.” Politics, Book IV.11. President Eisenhower saw the danger. He called it the Industrial-Military Complex. Aristotle calls it oligarchy. You can call it what you like but be careful not to use the “F” word.
THE MISSOURI FARMERS UNION CREDIT UNION (MFUCU)
If the U.S. is to remain a powerful democracy it must remain a nation of neighborhoods. The neighborhood agenda, fairness, integrity, honesty, reciprocity, patience are the principles on which this nation was built. Systems work at the neighborhood level: cooperation, private enterprise, the church, and even government. Then along came the corporation and with it the opportunity to incorporate greed. Neighborhoods saw the threat and elected leaders to represent their best interests. We empowered the public sector to curb private sector greed. But our leaders forgot where they came from and entered into public/private partnerships.
There was a brief note in the business news section last week. “Bonuses for the chief executive officers at 100 major U.S. corporations rose 46.4% last year.” CEOs make 160 times as much as the average U.S. production worker earned last year. 45% voted to oust Eisner at last year’s Disney Co. shareholder meeting yet Michael was given a $7,250,000 increase! The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating John Tyson at Tyson Foods. John only got a $5,400,000 raise. In a world where half the people earn less than $2.00 a day, does an average CEO salary of $25,000 an hour pass a neighborhood fairness test?
It is our fault. Before Eisner and Tyson could get their raises we had to give them the money. That money came into our neighborhoods and we let it escape. It escapes in our savings and retirement accounts. It escapes when we shop at Wal-Mart. We are so quick to hand over our neighborhood wealth. When the MFUCU opens on May 1st we will have the tool we need to rebuild our economies one wealthy neighborhood at a time. Join MFU www.missourifarmersunion.org today and next year we can tell Tyson and Eisner we have other items on our agenda we need to take care of before we can consider their raises.
Volume IV, Number 4, April,
2005
PRO LIFE
I planned to finish our
taxes and April’s DROPPINGS this morning but I can’t get away from CNN as they
replay the Mass for Pope John Paul II. I searched for Christian Cardinal Tumi’s
face in a sea of red berettas. Christian
was the first and only priest to be ordained from my little parish in Kikai
Kelaki (see www.BarnicleFarms.com
> “WHAT A LIFE…” > Ch.2 Africa, p.49). Could he be the next Pope? The
Latin Mass brings back memories of a Catholic boyhood. Like the TV commentator
I watched in awe the outpouring of love from a crowd of over four million
people who came to Rome for the event. We all view history through the lens of
our own life and experience. No one I listened to saw what I saw, the largest
pro-life demonstration the world has ever witnessed. I remembered his
remarkable life as I joined the crowd in the Litany of the Saints, ora pro ei but all the time I felt we
should have been responding ora pro
nobis.
Sancta Maria, Sancta Dei Genritrix, Sancta Virgo virginum, what a life; poet, actor,
writer, passionate athlete, freedom fighter, priest. Sancte Michael, Sancte Gabriel, Sancte Raphael, he stood up to
totalitarian governments and “savage and unbridled capitalism”. Sancte Joannes Baptista, Sancte Joseph,
Sancte Petre, he defended the unborn, the infirm and those on whom society
would be quick to pull the plug. Sancte
Thoma, Sancte Jacobe, Sancte Philippe,
he condemned war in general and our war in Iraq as “unjust and immoral”. Sancta Maria Magdalena, Sancta Agatha,
Sancta Lucia, he opposed the death penalty, visited the man who shot him,
and forgave him. As the litany continued Sancta
Caecelia, Sancta Catharina, Sancta Anastasia, I thought; John Paul taught
us what it takes to be pro-life. Those of us who pick and choose which lives we
will defend are only semi-pro life.
Christian recently made
international news for denouncing the fraud in the recent presidential election
in Cameroon. I think he would make a good Pope and then I could say, “my friend
the Pope.” I digress.
IT’S A GOOD ECONOMIC
MODEL TO LIVE BY
In 1977 the Christian
Science Monitor ran a series of articles entitled “A Nation of Neighborhoods”.
The series profiled a variety of neighborhoods, urban, rural, suburban, from
ethnically pure to integrated, with average incomes ranging from low to high
wealth. One of the neighborhoods surveyed was concentrated within a few blocks
in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Another was a community of Eskimos living
in an area larger than New England. The study revealed a number of things. The
most important, Americans live in neighborhoods, not just physically but
mentally and emotionally. Their values were neighborhood values, safety,
security, fairness, reciprocity, cooperation. We need to redefine America a
nation of neighborhoods.
Economics is about choices
and our choices are formed by our values. In the Principles of Economics class
I took in 1950 at St. Louis University I learned a model in which the private
sector was a multinational corporation and government was needed to bridle its
greed. It was a bad model and I got a “D” in the class. Owning several
businesses over the years I have come to appreciate how important free
enterprise is and how aggravating government can be. But more important in
1965, in a village in Cameroon, I rediscovered a third sector. Kikai Kelaki is
in many ways the wealthiest neighborhood I have ever known. K4 might not have
had many chickens but it had the neighborhood values and on those values we
built a credit union which spawned a $70M(US) economy. [search “Cameroon Credit
Unions in Google] Neighborhood is the moral sector of any economy. Its values
must mediate and permeate government and industry. Three sectors, public,
private and neighborhood is only an economic model. But it is a good model to
live by.
We built the Missouri Farmers Union Credit Union on this model. MFUCU is a credit union with a social purpose. Share savings from neighbors will be reinvested in the neighborhood economy. On May first the MFUCU will open for business in Jefferson City, Mountain View and Paris (MO that is). The bad news is only Missouri Farmers Union members are eligible to join. The good news is anyone who eats is involved in agriculture and therefore is eligible to join MFU. Sign up on www.missourifarmersunion.org and join us in building a strong Missouri economy, one wealthy neighborhood at a time. [And when Christian is elected, as an added bonus, I will get you a private audience with the Pope – I digress again]
Volume IV, Number 5, May,
2005
ON BARNICLE FARMS
After 27 years in the cattle business we sold our
herd on April the 1st. It was a relief. Our cows were old enough to
vote and we weren’t ready to invest in a new herd. Like any passage it was sad
and brought back fond memories. I remembered the first time my brother Bob and
I saw Barnicle Farms. We had been looking for months and had found nothing. But
as we stood on the brow of the hill just below where our house is now, we
looked out and I swear we saw a rainbow and heard a symphony. Eureka! As we
fell on our knees in thanksgiving we noticed the ground was a little rocky.
Matt returned from eight months in Europe and spent
the month of February with us before returning to LA. Rob, Lisa and our
granddaughters, Chelsea and Delaney drove from Kansas City and we had a great
weekend with our family. Rob was five and Matt was three when we bought the farm
and our first five cows. The cows had names in those days. Pointy Head, Shaggy
Ears who chased the kids and Snowball who the kids fell in love with. I
remember the night they asked me, “What happened to Snowball?” I didn’t have
the heart to tell them. Especially while they were eating her. We talked about
everything from politics and religion to TV. Matt said pharmaceutical companies
were not allowed to advertise on TV in Europe? Now how could we tell our doctor
about the purple pill if we didn’t learn about the drug on TV?
DEMOCRACY NOW
Matt showed me a bunch of stations on our DISH TV I
didn’t know we had. Democracy Now on channel 9415 seemed interesting but habits
are hard to break and after Matt left I returned to CBS for the news. On
Monday, March 21st, as usual, I made coffee did my reading and
looked at our e-mail, which reported protests against the war in Iraq. I was
interested in finding out what happened when I turned on the CBS Morning Show.
The first thing I saw was a man walking behind Michael Jackson holding a big
umbrella over his head. Lead story, Michael was late for his court appearance!
The next story was about an abduction in Florida. The third story was about the
actor who was accused of shooting his wife. He was acquitted. The story is so
important I forgot his name. In desperation I switched to 9415 just in time to
hear Amy Goodman talking about the largest peace demonstration in history which
happened in thousands of cities all over the world during the weekend. There
were other interesting stories. One was the US Catholic Bishops were mounting a
campaign to abolish the death penalty! I still watch CBS for news about the
weather.
DEMOCRACY MEANS LOCAL
OWNERSHIP AND CONTROL
Barbara Rivera and Floyd
Agostinelli, two great neighborhood leaders and friends we met in Brightwood
died this year. (www.BarnicleFarms.com
> BOOK, Chapter 5). January 1972, when Lorraine and I began our life
together, it was a magic time in our country. Neighborhoods all over the US
were organizing to take power and control away from the public/private
partnerships which were destroying the fabric of their communities. We were in
the right place at the right time. While our government was spinning out of
control with Watergate, corporate scandals, and a nation broken by the Vietnam
War, neighborhood leaders were making history. We believed that our country’s
problems could be solved by a trickle up approach in which each neighborhood
could take better care of its social and political problems by organizing and
democratizing its capital. By 1975 our CASA Credit Union held 35 first
mortgages and had reinvested over $2.3M into a neighborhood the banks had
previously redlined. With the CASA Credit Union as our model, Floyd and I
defined the community development credit union (CDCU) in a book by the same
name.
What happened to this
powerful grassroots movement over the last 30 years? By 1976 Geno Baroni’s
National Center for Urban Ethnic Affairs was flooded with grant money. I came
to DC to work with Floyd and Geno at NCUEA. We participated in a workshop on
neighborhoods and ethnicity in the Ford White House. In 1976 Geno and a dozen
NCUA staff went to work for Carter where they opened a “Neighborhood Office” in
HUD. I went to Missouri and as the State Director of Community and Economic
Development we passed the Neighborhood Assistance Act. Four years later Geno
was fired, Lorraine and I returned to Africa, and the NAA had lost its purpose.
When we opened the Missouri
Farmers Union Credit Union on 5/2/05 it remembered how it was 30 years ago.
Neighborhoods then, like now were held in bondage by a hostile public/private
government oligarchy. I have no doubt the MFUCU will be successful. Most of the
nation’s money flows into neighborhoods before government and corporations
gobble it up. MFUCU will change the velocity of that money and neighborhoods
will prosper. The government will notice and offer help. This time around I
will put the prayer of St. Thomas Aquinas in a prominent place on the MFUCU
wall: “Lord, I can take care of my enemies, please protect me from my
friends.”
DROPPINGS FROM THE BARNICLES
Volume IV, Number 6, June, 2005
WALNUTS ON BARNICLE FARMS
When we bought Barnicle Farms in August 1977 I only knew two trees, Christmas trees and regular trees. Then in September, when the leaves began to fall, I noticed many of our regular trees had these hard round green golf ball sized things hanging on them. When the autumn wind blew our first crop fell on us. We discovered we could sell our walnuts to a “huller” in Mary’s Home for 4.5 cents a pound.
My love affair with the walnut began on the afternoon of September 24l~ that year. The Bob Barnicle and Tony Barnicle clans, in the tradition of their hunting and gathering ancestors, were crawling on their hands and knees picking walnuts. Bob’s VW had pulled the farm cart up to the tree. We were well organized until the production lines turned into a food fight and finally into a neighborhood event. The kids discovered the walnuts were great for throwing and turned our storage into an ammunition depot. The adults were appealing for order, when two truckloads of locals arrived to meet their weird new neighbors. Fortunately we found a common ground on which we could relate, beer. They had cases of it on ice. In a short time we were all relaxing in the September sun drinking cold beer and watching Junie, a man built like a Rams lineman, twenty feet up in the “Y” of our tree. His arms and legs extended to both branches and he was shaking them so hard it sounded like an approaching herd of horses as the nuts hit the ground. We made $37.50 that day and $233 on walnuts that year.
A half-filled bucket of walnuts by my desk fills our office with a fragrance that takes me back to that afternoon and many more September and October afternoons I have enjoyed over the past 28 years picking walnuts on Bamicle Farms. The smell gives me a new thought. How can I bottle it and sell it? It is so much better than any of the scented strips hanging in cars owned by smokers. Like George Washii~gton Carver’s search for new ways to enjoy the peanut, I am driven to find new ways to promote my love affair with the walnut. And what is a half-filled bucket of walnuts doing by my desk in my office on June lSth? The answer is in the attached report.
Last Sunday, Laura McNamara, a KOMU reporter met Russ Kremer and me in Fraiikenstein. Russ told us his walnut picking crew from last year must have heard we were coming and left for a fishing trip in Florida on Friday. What were we to do with a story to tell and an abundant harvest to be plucked? Russ brought his tractor with a front-end loader. So Russ drives the tractor, Laura shoots the film and I’m not about to climb into the bucket and be hoisted 20’ into a tree. “Follow me”, said Russ as he jumped on this tractor and headed down Main Street, Frankenstein Missouri. The KOMU truck followed and I took up the rear. Our parade turned into a driveway where Russ asked Travis if he minded us picking walnuts from the trees in his yard. By the time we unloaded the $8,000 camera, Brian was driving the tractor, Russ was up in the tree on the bucket, and a crowd of neighbors had gathered. Several were on their cell phones reporting to other neighborhoods: “You’ll never believe what. . . .“ The story ran on Channel 8 in Columbia on Wednesday night. The station manager was so pleased he is sending it nationwide to all the NBC affiliate stations.
FREE ENTERPRISE
In his on-camera interview, Russ framed what we were doing as one example of how a farmer can add value to something like a walnut and bring new wealth into the household and neighborhood. This is free enterprise. I thought we were just having fun. We were having fun in Kikai Kelaki when we started the credit union in 1966. Today that little project has blossomed into 267 credit unions with $86,280,188 ($US) in assets, $57,549,968 in savings and $42,122,270 in loans to farmers, businesses and families year after year for almost 40 years. I argue this has done more for Cameroon than all of the US AID to Cameron over the same period.
The key is education — and timing. Our government and big corporations have run out of people to lie to.
Enron, Tyco, WorldCom, Krispy Kreme and I-IealthSouth are fraud not free enterprise. The Downing Street
Memo is news not Michael Jackson, Terry Schiavo or a kidnapping in Aruba. We were in the right place at
the right time. It is time to
expose lies, report news, and tell pickled walnut stories.
Volume IV, Number 7,
July, 2005
INDEPENDENCE
DAY, 2005
I was up, made coffee, had my first cup, finished my morning spiritual reading, went out on the deck and by dawn’s early light I reverently placed our flag in its holder on the north east corner of our deck. For the next two hours I sat on our deck in the cool of a Mary’s Home morning and counted my blessings. If ever there is a story of freedom it is my story. Born into a loving family and a caring neighborhood, I never was rich but I always was wealthy. Although I tried hard at times to avoid them, I was given the best educational opportunities imaginable; nine years with the Sisters of Mercy in Christ the King School, nine more years with the Jesuits in St. Louis U. High and St. Louis University. The US Air Force added another two years schooling with 14 months turning me into a Pilot and 10 more months graduating me as a Communications Officer. All of this schooling should have prepared anyone to get on with life and make some money. But after six months as an Industrial Engineer under the US Steel – Atlas Cement umbrella, I discovered the values I learned from family, neighborhood, Mercy Sisters and Jesuit Fathers were at odds with the core values the Universal Atlas Cement Company management team.
In another country I would not have had the freedom I exercised when I left UACC and went back to school for another six years, two with the Jesuits studying Philosophy at St. Louis University and four studying Theology at St. Joseph’s College in London. While my country struggled with the tragedy of Vietnam, I was living my freedom dream in Cameroon as a teacher and neighborhood organizer. We can’t invent ourselves. It is our job to discover who we are and what is our purpose – with some divine intervention. I had to drive a VW off a cliff and land in Shisong Hospital for a week away from teaching and credit union organizing before I took the time to ask who am I and what am I doing?
Kikai Kelaki Credit Unions and the other credit unions in Cameroon reached a critical mass and grew into a $90M community development program serving 290 villages in Cameroon today. Their success launched me on several high-octane assignments, which I came to view as distractions and learning experiences. As the Society Superior in the US I discovered our management and the Catholic hierarchy think like the managers at UACC. As the “expert” on Development for Africa appointed by the Do-It-Yourself Development Conference in Rome I reminded myself of Graham Green’s Quiet American, “wandering the world like a dumb leper meaning no harm”. It took many lonely nights in African hotel rooms to ask again who am I and what am I doing? This time it wasn’t an accident but a phone call from Loraine asking what I did with the letter I was supposed to deliver to her. Was it providence or dumb luck that brought us together? We knew each other as teachers at St. Augustine’s College. For the last 33 years we have learned to grow together in love as husband and wife.
Like the Declaration of Independence, some would call our marriage, priest and nun, an act of rebellion. For me it was the beginning of a long and liberating recovery. Lorraine was my balcony person as I struggled with my first wage-slavery job since UACC. We worked together and with others building a better Brightwood neighborhood community. She joined me in forming OIKOS, a home business “with a mission to build a healthy national economy, one wealthy neighborhood at a time”. She raised our boys as we traveled to DC and Jefferson City on two more high-octane assignments, Director of the National Catholic Conference on Ethnic Neighborhood Affairs and the Missouri Division of Community and Economic Development. We worked together crafting the National Plan for Community Development in Cameroon. We incorporated DATA WAY. She supports my University Professor class work and my consulting with the Missouri Farmers Union Credit Union. We love living together on Barnicle Farms. Lorraine with a loving care that overcomes my logic has brought me back to a love for my church and my country. And she brought me back into focus on my purpose, which I neglected to tell you is liberating people.
My story is a freedom story but it also is a story of privilege. When you read Howard Zinn’s book, A Peoples History of the United States, you will understand freedom is precious and should not be taken for granted. It is a story of people in constant battle with oppressive government and corporate greed. If you think Zinn’s book radical, I would urge you to read The Declaration of Independence and ponder if after a “long train of abuses and usurpations … it is their right, it is their duty to throw off such Government.”
Volume IV, Number 8,
August, 2005
STORIES
I’m not big on “Buttons” or “Power Point”. I like stories. When I spoke against going to war at the State Capitol on February 15th 2003, I argued from economics. In every war “the public sector is empowered, the private sector is enriched and the neighborhood sector is devastated.” I argued none of the four conditions for a “just war” listed in my “Catechism of the Catholic Church” (p.555) had been met. In a talk following mine, John Bennett said: “Pope John Paul convened a meeting of all the worlds major religions recently and they issued a statement, all of them, declaring opposition to the war.” In the 30 months since my talk, no one has mentioned my economic or theological arguments. I suspect John’s appeal to authority has also been forgotten. But many of the 155 people in the Capitol Rotunda that day went out of their way to tell me how moved they were by my story about Amir, a boy living in a Baghdad neighborhood whose life would end in our first “shock and awe” bombing raid. I painted a picture of meeting this brown skinned five-year-old boy one day in eternity. He’s looking at me and asking me why we did this to him? It’s just a story. It isn’t true.
What’s true is in the last 30 months 1,850 of our service men and women were killed and 13,890 have been seriously wounded. Over 100,000 Iraqis have been killed, 55% of them were children. No one counted their wounded. So far the war has cost our neighborhoods 300 billion dollars. And the numbers of dollars and dead and wounded keep rising. But facts only tell. Stories sell. We were told the war was necessary. The smoking gun could become a mushroom cloud. The war would be over quickly. Our service men and women would be welcomed in Baghdad as heroes and Iraq’s oil revenue would more than pay the cost. It’s time to tell another story. Clare Schaeffer Duffy tells this one in the June-July Catholic Worker.
“A Marine reservist, Jeffery Lucey fought in the early months of the Iraq war and then came home in July 2003, seemingly fine, his mother said. But on Christmas Eve, in a drunken confession made to his sister, he called himself ‘a murderer’. After that, his family suspected something had happened during the war. In April, the following year he started having panic attacks; May became a succession of one crisis tumbling upon another. He had insomnia and night sweats, hallucinated, totaled his car. His drinking, already excessive, worsened. On June 22, 2004, twenty-three-year-old Jeffery Lucey, who had survived four months of combat, hung himself with a garden hose in the basement of his parents home.”
WHATCHA
GONNA DO?
The public and private sectors care about the numbers but the Jeffery Lucey story isn’t about numbers. Jeffery won’t even be counted in their numbers. This story is about Jeffery, the boy down the street who made his First Communion at St. Francis Church. In summer he played whiffle ball and hung out near the rope swing down by the river.
After we entered he war in March 2003 I stopped protesting and tried to go on with my life. I began helping the Missouri Farmers Union organize a credit union. It kept me occupied. I argued the MFUCU would take the money that is being sucked out of our neighborhood economies and put that money into the hands of family economists. I fantasized a time when MFUCU and other such credit unions would form an association so large the industrial military complex would be forced to come to them to ask for the billions they would need for their next war. MFUCU opened in May and is doing fine but is not yet big enough yet to stop the war. Something drastic needs to be done now.
I’ve decided to write Pope Benedict XV to ask him to help us. If the President won’t meet with Cindy Sheehan I’m sure he won’t meet with me and Kevin and Joyce, Jeffery’s parents. But he will meet with the Pope. My plan is to ask the Pope to fly into Reagan Airport and ride from the airport across the Potomac and up to the White House on a donkey. Cindy, Kevin, Joyce and I and others will form a procession and walk behind him. Everyone will be invited to join our procession. When they meet the Pope will ask our President to end this war and help us bring peace to the world.
Mad? Drastic? These are drastic times. This is what I am gonna do. Whatcha gonna do?
Volume IV, Number 9,
September, 2005
THINK GLOBALLY
- ACT LOCALLY
While we wait for the Pope to answer my letter asking him to mount a mule and ride to the White House to ask our President to end the war in Iraq, there are many things we can do locally. There are little things you can do to aggravate the oppressive powers like taking your junk mail and returning it to the senders in their prepaid return envelopes. There are bigger things like telling your representatives what you think about their voting record. I had the opportunity to respond to a caller asking me to contribute “so we can get Democrats elected to Congress”. “What kind of Democrats?” I asked. “A Democrat like my Representative who cast the deciding vote in favor of CAFTA?” I find it is much more effective when you tell them what you think when they are asking for your money. Later someone explained the CAFTA vote to me by telling a story of how companies get 100% participation in United Way drives. It seems one company CEO called a holdout to his office and told him he would be fired if he didn’t contribute. Later when his wife asked him why he had changed his mind and had written a $100 check he told her his CEO had finally explained why a contribution to the UW was so important.
We do other local things like grow our own food, stay out of Wal-Mart and refuse to participate in the Medicare prescription drug plan. Despite the severe penalties in the plan for any senior who does not sign up, I would urge everyone to read the plan and join us in protesting and boycotting this thinly veiled drug company plan to turn every last senior citizen into a broke drug addict. (Angry words to follow.)
CREATE
A BUZZ
We have an opportunity to really do something that matters. Create a buzz. The buzz is the most powerful tool in marketing. Titanic went so far over its production budget there was no money left to advertise the movie so the producers gave seats away in theaters across the country and created a buzz. In no time the buzz grew into a clamor of people lining up to buy tickets. Titanic became a top box office seller.
I am asking you to join Lorraine and me and the Missouri Farmers Union Credit Union organizers to create a buzz. In four short months MFUCU grew from its first share deposit into a $650,000 Credit Union with over $70,000 out on loans to its members with interest rates varying from 4% to 8% depending on a variety of factors. But we know there are more good loans to be made and many more people would join MFUCU if they knew they were eligible and knew how to become a member. So let the buzz begin!
“If you eat you are involved in agriculture.” Every time you pick up your fork you are lifting the most powerful tool in the agriculture industry. These are not clichés they reflect our mission to connect the family farm to the consuming family. So if you eat you are eligible to join MFU. Call or email me or call Jodie at (573) 659-4787 or logon at missourifarmersunion.org. For $20 you will receive a one-year membership in both the MFU and the National Farmers Union (NFU). Each month you receive two great newsletters, the kind you will want to read cover to cover. Now you are a member of the MFU you are eligible to join the MFUCU. A minimum of $25 is required to be a member however we encourage you to put all of your savings into MFUCU shares. Your money is safe. The National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) insures MFUCU shares up to $100,000 on each account. Whether you have $25 or $25,000 you can take your money out any time you need or want to. Now you are in we can really start buzzing.
To change the buzz to a roar let’s start promoting a CD the MFUCU is producing and is soon to be released. FOLLOW THE DOLLAR is a 5 minute video which shows how oodles of money come into even the most endangered low-wealth neighborhood community every month and how quickly this money is drained from their neighborhood economy. The video shows neighborhoods are endangered because they hold their money like a sieve holds water. The video shows how a credit union can act as a dam to stop the runaway cash.
The video is meant for community groups. It is interactive and should stimulate group discussion. At certain points the audience is instructed to turn the video off and answer the questions it poses. A critical question is: “How do we stop all this money from running out of our neighborhood?” The answer comes not from a deep voice out of a cloud, or from a hired consultant but from a welfare mother who has an epiphany. “Now I understand why there are rich neighborhoods and there are poor neighborhoods…”
Volume IV, Number 10, October, 2005
IT’S A GOOD
TIME TO BE LIVING ON BARNICLE FARMS
I’m a little stiff this morning. Yesterday, on a perfect October afternoon, Lorraine and I topped off our second truckload of walnuts. The walnuts go to the huller in Tuscumbia on Wednesday. This morning we’re off to New Franklin to gather with other nut lovers assembled to celebrate the 3rd Annual Missouri Chestnut Roast. Barnicle Farms will share a booth with the Missouri Farmers Union. We plan to serve our Pickled Black Walnut dip and sell cases of Pickled Black Walnuts like we did at the Missouri State Fair in August when we sold five cases. This June we harvested enough walnuts to produce 33 cases. After our show at Agritourism Reception on Nov. 3rd in Columbia the walnut season will be over and we expect our 2005 crop will be sold out.
It’s been a busy summer. I climbed a ladder (gingerly) and put new roofs on our farm house porch and on my work shed (a.k.a. the “wash house”). These emergency projects interrupted the scheduled rebuilding of the springhouse. The wood in the 1978 springhouse had rotted. To force myself to rebuild it this summer, I pushed it over and burned the rotten wood. That was in March. I am now racing to finish the job before the winter.
After a summer off I am back to a full load of 12 credit hours teaching at Lincoln and William Woods Universities. The two Lincoln classes and one WWU class are in Jefferson City. My Monday class begins at 6:00 in the Hannibal LaGrange College. Lorraine goes with me and after a mini vacation (e. g. our Mark Twain Riverboat afternoon cruise last Monday), Lorraine heads for the hot tub in the motel and I’m off to talk about Entrepreneurship and help the two WWU study groups write business plans. The class is the “Capstone” for the students to their 39-week MBA program. I love working with students. It is such a privilege.
B2B - I teach with stories and case studies. In the first class I promise the students they will learn nothing from me. I further pledge I will not ask a question if I know the answer. Education comes from two Latin words ex and ducare (e-ducare). We all learn by pulling information from the databases in our subconscious minds. My job is to assign the cases and ask a question whenever the discussion dies down. This Socratic method works well in the William Woods University program where students work in study teams and where the average age of a student is 40 years with many years of experience in the work world. I call the method B2B, back to basics.
I know the method works because the discussions get so intense no one seems to want to take a break. We are always the last class to leave the building. I try to avoid religion and politics. But lately, without imposing a strict censorship on the class and violating my promise to stimulate a liberating, e-ducare education experience, this has become impossible. I can assign a case on Economic Theory and in no time someone quotes the Enron Mission Statement: “All business dealings with Enron will be open and fair. Enron prides itself on four key values; respect, integrity, communication and excellence.”
I learn more from these classes than I ever could possibly teach. Four hours of free discussion with adults away from TV is dangerous. It is possible I am projecting too much of the way I feel into a conclusion that deep down we are a troubled nation. Is it just me or do the students also feel betrayed? My government should be curbing and my church should be speaking out against savage and unbridled corporate greed. Instead my church and my government appear to bless and march in lock step with the very corporations that are destroying my country. Archbishop Justin Cardinal Rigali put a capstone on my thinking when he cried anti-Catholic bias in response to a grand jury report detailing the extent of the sexual abuse by priests in his Philadelphia dioceses. A few days later cried partisan politics when Tom DeLay was indicted.
Hitler knew how dangerous B2B conversations are when he said; “What luck for the rulers when men do not think.” Churchill knew when he lamented; “The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” A B2B Membership Education Program is an essential part of the Missouri Farmers Union Credit Union marketing plan. I am convinced the MFUCU will become a powerful neighborhood building tool when neighbors begin talking with each other about neighborhood economics. The neighborhood world and not the talking head on TV will be the only moderator in the discussion. The MFUCU is producing a video on a DVD format and a power-point presentation to jump-start the e-ducare process. Order them now.
Volume IV, Number 11,
November, 2005
WHAT
ARE WE HERE AFTER
Lorraine and I launched our DROPPINGS on November 1st
2002. For four years now we have been dropping in on you (or is it dropping on
you). An anniversary is a good occasion to think about the hereafter. Having
just turned 73 I find myself thinking more and more about the hereafter. I just
walked to the kitchen and asked myself, “What am I here after?” So what are the
DROPPINGS here - after?
In Vol. I-l, we announced my book “WHAT A LIFE WITH
MY WIFE AND MY NEIGHBORS TOO”. We had just published it on our www.BarnicleFarms.com web site. We
wanted the DROPPINGS to drive you to our web site and on to read the book. A
second goal was to introduce you to OIKOS and our plan “to build a healthy
national economy, one wealthy neighborhood at a time”. www.NeighborhoodEconomics.net
is our second web site. NE.net is about the OIKOS plan and PARAOIKOS our
virtual neighborhood in cyberspace. The DROPPINGS worked. In one month the hits
jumped 30% on each site. Even I reread my book. I thought it was awful and
commenced to rewrite it, chapter by chapter. I have completed Part I, WHAT A
LIFE, and two chapters in Part II, WITH MY WIFE. I plan to finish it by the end
of this winter. We haven’t done anything to NE.net since we opened it in 2002.
Lorraine reminds me we pay $19.95 a month for it. I want to keep the domain
name in case we ever get around to building an Institute for the Study of
Neighborhood Values. In the meantime you can still look at a
neighborhood-centered world and download our OIKOS plan.
The book is filled with stories. Part I is about the
first 40 years of my life and the events which helped me discover my purpose.
The Kikai Kelaki Credit Union (Chapter 3) was a seminal experience. It is a key
to understanding me. The experience taught me neighborhood values and the
power, which is unleashed when neighbors work together to build a strong
neighborhood economy. The Kikai Kelaki Credit Union celebrated 40 years serving
the Kikai Kelaki village neighborhood at their annual meeting on the 19th
of this month.
Chapter 4 is the story of a man on the run, first
from a corrupt corporate church and then from himself. It is also the story of
divine providence, a letter that opened the door to Part II, WITH MY WIFE. Brightwood
became my new parish (Chapter 5). CASA Credit Union gave me a laboratory to
test our plan and the “Three Sector” economic model. We organized our
consulting business, OIKOS (Chapter 6) to sell the model. OIKOS is the Greek
word for household a root word found in three words, ecology, economy and the
neighborhood. I am reworking Chapter 7 now, an exciting time working in DC with
Geno Baroni and neighborhood leaders from across the US. From there the book
moves quickly until it rests at a final two chapters, THE NEIGHBORHOOD and A
NEIGHBORHOOD ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT PLAN – THAT WORKS.
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT THIS
I had hoped the book and our DROPPINGS would open a
debate on the three sectors and give me a chance to argue the critical
importance of strong neighborhoods and strong neighborhood economies to the
security, strength, and prosperity of our nation. The private sector values profit,
the public sector should control. The neighborhood sector is the
custodian of our moral values. This why neighborhoods need to be at the
table when public-private deals are made.
It took a war to get some attention. A war has three
predictable results. The public sector is empowered. The private sector is
enriched and the neighborhood sector is devastated. I made this argument in the
Capital Rotunda. I presented a resolution against the war to the Jefferson City
Council. The Council voted 10 to 0 for the war. Several readers emailed
demanding they be taken off the list. I was happy the DROPPINGS were being
read, sad my criticism was dismissed because I was a “liberal” or worse. This
month a new City Council voted 10 to 0 to approve a deal that would bring a new
Wal-Mart Super Center into our community. Except for the go-to-war vote, I
cannot think of another vote that could be more destructive to our
neighborhoods. Call me new names but before you do see the movie, WAL-MART, THE
HIGH COST OF LOW PRICE. The film will be shown in the Jefferson City Library on
December 8th at 7:00 PM.
Four years ago we promised to keep the DROPPINGS to
one page. My space is up. So is my patience. I have watched corporate socialism
for too long taking control of my government, first at the federal then at the
state level. A 10 to 0 City Council vote in support of corporate socialism is a
good place to draw a line in the sand. When a corporation is so powerful it can
pressure our state government to find $6,000,000 for an interchange that was
not a highway department priority and then lever this windfall to pressure the
City Council to find a $600,000 match, we have big trouble in River City. The
issue is not about a needed interchange. It is not about eminent domain. It is
not even about inviting a vicious corporation to come into our neighborhood.
The issue, as I see it, is much bigger. I read the vote: Neighborhoods 0, City
0, County 0, Free Enterprise 0, Democracy 0, Corporate Socialism (i.e. Fascism)
10. We need to talk about this.
Volume IV, Number 12, December, 2005
IMAGINE – PEACE ON
EARTH
Lorraine does all the work at Christmas. She buys all the gifts, wraps them and decorates the house. This year I brought her a 3’ cedar from the farm. She put our fake tree away and decorated my cedar with tinsel and some ornaments we haven’t seen in years. The tree was only one of the 1,595 I’ve cut down so far this month. Cut and burn. That’s my Christmas job.
I hope you are on Lorraine’s Christmas Card list. She sent out a newsletter and enclosed it in a card she made with a dove on the cover and the words “imagine – peace on earth” inside. More than half the cards we received this Christmas had the peace dove on the cover and those same words inside. It’s been on my mind. When you spend hours alone talking to yourself and cutting down cedar trees, ideas have a chance to cross your mind. Can it be there are others like Lorraine and me who would be willing to give peace a chance? We live in a country where the word “peace” has become politically incorrect. Our government has cautioned agencies not to use the word because of its “liberal” connotations. We have subscribed to the Catholic Worker newspaper for over 30 years. I recommend it. A copy only costs one cent. CW recently made the news as one of the terrorist organizations the FBI was monitoring. Because of its constant call for peace, the FBI labeled the CW as a “pseudo communist organization”. I have been on the FBI’s terrorist list since 1976 when I went to work for Msgr. Geno Baroni in DC. People say a conservative is a liberal who got mugged. I like to respond by showing them the letter I got from the C&P Telephone Company on 4/5/1978 telling me my DC home phone had been tapped. “A liberal”, I argue, “is a conservative who gets a letter like this.” I guess by association Lorraine is on the FBI list. I wonder if the women she quilts with at Our Lady of the Snows Catholic Church have been put on the list because of their close association with Lorraine. Ridiculous? Mother Teresa made the list!
WE HAVE A HAMMER. WHERE ARE THE NAILS?
For those of us who want to
give peace a chance it is going to be an uphill battle climb. When all
you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” We are all so addicted
to war. For starters we need to watch our language. I looked back at the last
word in the first sentence and struckout the word battle. I still have a
“Dennis Kucinich for President” bumper sticker on my car. He is the crazy guy
who ran with a half dozen others for the Democratic nomination in 2004. Dennis
was against the war but more important he said if elected he would establish a
Department of Peace. With an idea like that I am sure he is on the FBI
terrorist list. We are a nation addicted to war. Several weeks ago as I walked
among our war memorials by the Missouri River behind our State Capital I was reminded
of all the wars we have had over the years. There were monuments to the big
wars, Revolutionary, 1812, Mexican, Civil, WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam and Iraq.
The Iraq monument correctly states the duration of the war; “1991 – “. Then I
was reminded of the shores of Tripoli and so many other little wars in which
people also died. Indian wars, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guatemala, Guam,
Hawaii, Cuba (4 times), Nicaragua (5 times), Honduras (7 times), Dominican
Republic (4 times), Columbia (4 times), Haiti (3 times) and recently Lebanon,
Grenada, Libya, Panama, Kosovo, Somalia. In the words of Teddy Roosevelt, “I
should welcome almost any war, for I think this country needs one.” Is there
any wonder more than 50% of our discretionary budget goes to military spending?
Is there any wonder we spend more on our military than the combined military
spending of all the rest of the countries in the world!
We are told we should be afraid, give up our freedoms and our sons and daughters to this military machine which will defend us and keep us safe from the terrorists. How contrary is “code orange” to the angel’s first words announcing the birth of Jesus, “Do not be afraid” (Lk. 2,10). Mary’s Magnificat (Lk. 1,51-53) tells us we need not fear: “He has shown might with his arm, dispersed the arrogant of mind and heart. He has thrown down the rulers from their thrones but lifted up the lowly. The hungry he has filled with good things; the rich he has sent away empty.” If Mary were around today she would most certainly be on the FBI terrorist list.
Church leaders expressed outrage over a Wal-Mart memo suggesting “Merry Christmas” be replaced by “Happy Holidays”. Good grief! What about its sweatshops in Asia and Central America? How about asking WM to pay their employees a living wage? These church leaders need not worry about making the FBI list.
We need new tools. We also need
moral leadership as we face the battle way to peace on earth.