Adornments by Lynn

I came across a wonderful blog written by Rebecca who lives in rural Ireland. Her blog is called An Irish Craftworkers Good Life. In it, she has a post about her children going blackberry picking. First of all, I love the great way she avoids the purple stains on their clothes…she has them wear purple to start with! Very clever! 

The post reminds me of summers on my grandfather’s farm as a kid. My grandmother would give my brother and me a large wash pan to fill and we’d set off blackberry picking. It’s hazardous duty, after all, they have thorns about a half an inch long!

After a while we’d come in the house, covered with purple stains, our arms scratched all over and big purple grins. After all, we HAD to taste test as we went along, right?

Then my grandmother would make us a fresh blackberry cobbler and we’d top it off with Grandpa’s homemade vanilla ice cream. To this day, blackberries bring a smile to my face and remind me of childhood. Thanks, Rebecca, for bringing back these lovely memories today!

A fellow Blog jolter, Kelly, publisher of Blended With Salt, recently wrote a post about “The Corporation”. Her words are so close to home for so many of us these days.

I personally know more than a few people who have lost jobs to outsourcing, mostly to India. I understand we have to compete in a world economy, but do we have to do it at the expense of our own way of life? Do we really think it’s better to give our coporate CEOs multi-seven-figure bonuses each year, while the average worker hopes to keep their job long enough to actually get to retire someday?

Companies are making people take “early retirement” long before they are old enough to collect their retirement benefits, and with the economy the way it is, they are forced to (a) lower their standard of living considerably, (b) take jobs at far lower pay and benefits then they had before, (making “(a)” a strong possibility as well) or (c) starting a business simply to survive. This is all due to the shift to “The Corporation” thinking…that the price of the stock is forever more important to companies than any measly person who works for it.

Is this really progress? Is this the way we want our economy to run? All I can say is that if we don’t like this, we had better all get out and vote to change the regime to one more “For the People.”

Your vote matters! Make it count!