If anyone needs more grist, visit http://tinyurl.com/consumptiongospel, an article published in Orion magazine by Jeffrey Kaplan. It could start a riot for frugality, if not austerity.

For anyone interested in a deconstruction of the corporate (Wall Street) role in government, you could visit poclad.org (Program on Corporations, Law, and Democracy).

For more general information, there’s always thecorporation.org. Their list of links is useful for further exploration.

Myself, I am still trying to figure out what the implications are of an economic downturn over the next two years. Economic downturns are not a requirement of a poorly-lived life, but economic upswings could create mine. Business hiring could slow, consumer discretionary spending could decrease, but consumerism is not being discouraged at all. Just spending is being discouraged. I could be OK without a downturn making me too poor to pay for rent and food, but that will not happen anyway. Instead, this time of relative poverty could revamp my consumerism ahead of when my earning power increases. Yikes!

Increasing my productivity to reduce my work-hours forces me to reduce my consumption because I make less, but that is exactly what I would rather do. Hopefully this economic downturn, slight as it might be, will highlight a path to happiness that doesn’t require me to overwork and overspend for a sense of artificial ease. I am already too tired, and I barely earn a living, and I am not choking on my bad credit yet, even if the economy is choking on it.

-Noah

What the heck is MEA rambling about?

Leningrad: State of Siege by Michael Jones — my latest bedtime reading.

So far, I’ve take away three things which seem germain to my reaction to and action regarding PO and the general mess that surrounds us now.

1) I have stored an obseen amount of food — frankly, the amount of food my household of four comsumes in a week seems unreal — comared to what most people would have consumed in the entire 874 days.

2) People did better (by and large) if they banded together. Even if they didn’t surive, diaries suggest they found life less unbearable than those who didn’t.

3) Extreme times brings out extraordinary actions of courage, horror and personal choice. I’m not about to judge what anyone else did, but being aware of what other people did (which since I’m human, too, are all things for good and ill that I could do) gives me somethings to apsire to and others to try to avoid.

4) Even in the hardest times, most people need to be able to do things to help others and to feed their souls (I’m using the word here only to mean that part of us that responds to things of beauty).

There are, sadly, lots of times in history that teach us these lesson. The siege seems to resonate with me becuase once the storehouses were bombed and it was clear no relieve was coming, people could see what was ahead just as clearly as we can see it now. Actually, in someways they could see it more clearly becuase there weren’t that many options beyond freeze and starve, were as we don’t know excatly how things will playout over the next few months.

My husband and I are doing what we can as family using the skills we have. We shared the harvest from our garden with family and are saving seeds to share for the spring planting. Each week my husband repairs one thing at my folks’ home to help keep things running along (usually it’s more efficient and uses less energy). This summer it’s been the washer, dryer, well pump, and old electrical outlets. All of his work has cut their electric bill in half. Currently they will be unable to afford heat for the winter and we’re trying to find a solution. Buying new, or even used, is out of the question for them since my father is unemployed. If things continue to progress along the same course, they may end up living with us before long.

Thanks again for the encouragement. Having a course of action makes us feel much better than sitting around wringing our hands.

Jill in Michigan (the Lower Peninsula)