[MD] From the Forest to the Free Market

[Heather Perella]

Arlo,


     [Arlo]
> 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.


     Fantastic as well!!  The dilemma here might be
persuasion.  This town is full of personal faces,
local farm-life, and lively discussions.  Wal-mart
doesn't have this from my experience, too many people,
too busy, too much to sell.  I'd rather go to a town
like this where fresh air breaths down the street and
local produce.  Yet, the difficulty with both places
is I wouldn't want to live there.  I'd go, shop, and
get back to the woods.  The town will not shelter the
woods from me, but Wal-mart does, so I tend to go in
and out faster when in the latter, or avoid them when
I can.
     An occasional thunderstorm, or many of them, will
sink their teeth into a Wal-mart or any place for that
matter, but the atmosphere in Wal-mart is concrete. 
Yet, I can see how if a store evolved to where we
could find everything in one stop, I could get back to
the woods quicker, and there would be more woods since
there would be only one store to get everything.  Yet,
Wal-mart doesn't reach that kind of level.  No store
has everything.  Town stores with local produce have
fresher products and can be more craftier in what they
have to sell.  A town will also still have products
sold somewhere that come from China.  So where is all
of this taking us?  When I'm in Wal-mart I can't stand
all the people, the closed in atmosphere, and the
generic lights with dumbied down things on the
shelves.  It doesn't have an intelligent feel, I don't
know maybe it's just me.  A lively town on the other
hand, and it does depend on where the town is located,
are full of seasons that touch ya each time you go
from store to store.  Your not isolated from what the
heck is going on outside.  Each time somebody comes
into a shop you might look up, and it's as if a slight
homely feel comes across.  Wal-mart forces the smile. 
Remember when somebody supposedly had to pay a
customer $ if they (the employee) was caught not
smiling.  I go into a town store, and I've got his or
her mood personalized into the store.  Sure
salespeople want to smile and make people happy, and
even if their in a unhappy mood, they might force a
smile, but something more genuine about going into a
local town store where the workers are local, and the
owner might be at the front registrar doing what
they've quested to do for a long time - own their own
business.

     So, which one is better?  I don't know.  As long
as I can find a bunch of woods that get far enough,
and quiet enough away from these seemingly opposing
forces, maybe I'm just in the middle of something
going on.  A clash of cultures.  Such as when towns
sprung up on ranch land or farm land some time in the
past (not discounting that it happens today, too),
these towns, especially where railroads were put in,
sprung up and a slower pace of threatened to die then,
as well.  Thoreau talked about the evil days when
people will be in these enclosed boxes riding around,
and he had hoped he would never have to see that day. 
Fences went up out west.  And cities sprang up all
over the place, and cities today, such as Phoenix,
grow tremendously as the population of this country
increases.  So, in other words, I'm in the middle of
this, finding that quiet hollow in the woods, hoping I
can still get far enough away from where it's just ALL
people, signs of people everywhere.  I just feel this
need to be a part of something that is not ONLY human.
 It is the lively projections and real experiences
that peeked my interest with Case's and Arlo's story. 
It is the everyday life that reality faces us.  We
can't get around it.   

The autumn colors, with their reds and yellows are so
pretty now,
SA

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