Sunday, November 25, 2007
Farmer's Lament
OK, if you're an American farmer there's an awful lot to lament. But my years of devotion to mass media have left me with one strong conclusion, just again reinforced by this-- yet another farmer has stuck his limb into unimaginably vicious, blade-filled machinery and has had a major body part severed. And survived.
A classic American story if ever there was one. As this meta-narrative has been developed, the hero innocently crams a valuable body part into a piece of above-mentioned vicious machinery because they thought it: needed cleaning; had run over a pussycat; was turned off; was napping. Only to find that. . . it wasn't, and their foot; arm; arms; lower torso was virtually shredded; minced; lopped off like a piece of Elgin sausage; in said vicious machinery. Typically in this story the hero, well-disengorged from his mutilator, clambers into his F-150 and improbably drives to safety; shifting with his teeth and steering with his battered nose.
Now take a look it this guy, who used his John Deere brand pocketknife (he gave them a cite in the story) to CUT OFF what remained of his hand (and then arm) after it got caught in a nasty bit of farm machinery! And there was a brush fire consuming him too!!
Y'know, farming is indeed a dangerous business. It would maybe be less so if the handful of behemoth corporations who run the whole agricultural enterprise wouldn't continually demand more of the American farmer than they can be expected to give. Faster, faster, faster must be the continual voice that they hear in the back of their heads, whether coming from inside or outside from the pressures of companies making unrealistic demand or production schedules on them.
From the cattle ranch to the corn fields, agriculture is in decline. Yet people like Farmer Parker continue weather on.
I won't make a cynical retort here.
OK, if you're an American farmer there's an awful lot to lament. But my years of devotion to mass media have left me with one strong conclusion, just again reinforced by this-- yet another farmer has stuck his limb into unimaginably vicious, blade-filled machinery and has had a major body part severed. And survived.
A classic American story if ever there was one. As this meta-narrative has been developed, the hero innocently crams a valuable body part into a piece of above-mentioned vicious machinery because they thought it: needed cleaning; had run over a pussycat; was turned off; was napping. Only to find that. . . it wasn't, and their foot; arm; arms; lower torso was virtually shredded; minced; lopped off like a piece of Elgin sausage; in said vicious machinery. Typically in this story the hero, well-disengorged from his mutilator, clambers into his F-150 and improbably drives to safety; shifting with his teeth and steering with his battered nose.
Now take a look it this guy, who used his John Deere brand pocketknife (he gave them a cite in the story) to CUT OFF what remained of his hand (and then arm) after it got caught in a nasty bit of farm machinery! And there was a brush fire consuming him too!!
Y'know, farming is indeed a dangerous business. It would maybe be less so if the handful of behemoth corporations who run the whole agricultural enterprise wouldn't continually demand more of the American farmer than they can be expected to give. Faster, faster, faster must be the continual voice that they hear in the back of their heads, whether coming from inside or outside from the pressures of companies making unrealistic demand or production schedules on them.
From the cattle ranch to the corn fields, agriculture is in decline. Yet people like Farmer Parker continue weather on.
I won't make a cynical retort here.
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