[MD] From the Forest to the Free Market

[ARLO J BENSINGER JR]

With all due respect to Case...

There is a place I wander to as well, a place that radiates the "free market" as
wondrous as the forest of SAs hauntings. It's a small brickstrown street
nestled between two city arteries. Two layers of shops line its walkways, and
here I find a butcher shop, a cheese store, a coffee house, a chocolatier,
while outside a group of local hucksters peddle their produce, picked this
morning from nearby farms. A small bookstore sits nearby and the local tavern,
Zeno's displays proudly its place "located directly above the center of the
earth".

There is a warmth and friendliness among the shoppers and the shopkeepers.
Having to compete with BoxMarts lining their perimeters, they've struggled to
appeal to what separates them, Quality in product and service and pay. After a
while sampling cheeses from all over the world, I am happy to pay what amounts
to pennies more per pound to Joe,  because I know that the money I pay there
stays in the community, helps a family actually exist above minimum wage, and
ends up reinvested in countless ways among the local folk. The same holds true
and the other shops, and by the hucksters not only do I know that I am getting
fresh, high-vitamin local wares, but I am working to preserve family farms and
green space. One local farmer advertised a HarvestFest at his farm this past
weekend to say "thanks" to those who buy his produce. All the cider you can
drink, hayrides and a respect for farming and we left better people than when
we arrived.

Back in town at the local bookshop, one of the workers, paying her way through
college (something a minimum wage BoxMart job would make nearly impossible)
calls me over and grabs a used copy of a book on Pierce. "I heard you talking
about him last time you were in, thought you'd be interested so I set it
aside". She was right. She asks about a certain professor, we talk and the talk
turns into an overview of semiotics. Soon a few others are invovled, and I've
learned of a lecture I had not heard about.

In the tavern I run into one of the owners of the new chocolatier. I ask how's
business. Good, Halloween apparently has something to do with chocolate. He
tells me how his wife (the actual maker of said chocolates) and he are
renovating a home outside town. I find he is a cyclist, and although my two
wheels have a motor, we talk about backroads out of town, small pubs and
friendly stores. He buys me a drink, and I realize again that I am happy to pay
a little more for good chocolates made by someone invested in the community.

Yes, the free market is a wonderful thing. In one block I can get coffee from
hawaii, cheese from Denmark, luscious chocolates, corn picked just that morning
over the hill, a book on semiotics, a beer from Canadian Unibroue (Trois
Pistoles), all from people who's enterprises enrich the community, rather than
bleed off its energies into the faraway pockets of a corporation that pays
pittance and sells junk.

With apologies to worshipers of BoxMart.