Hammer Mill Days

Well, it's been a while. Time to open the Big Green mail bag again, at long last. It's easy to forget this stuff with all that's been on our plate the last couple of years. You know, production, minor building repairs, breathing ( lots of breathing), and the like. But no matter - we'll just take a moment away from all of that, wave away the moths, and pull the first missive from its tattered envelope. Here's one from Castleton-on-Hudson, NY: Dear Big Green ... Are you the same ne'er-do-wells that used to live in that broken down house on Green Avenue? You know ... the one that looks like it tumbled halfway down the gorge and landed on its roof? Because it that WAS you guys, you friggin owe me money. -- Baldric McPlumber Hey, Baldric ... thanks for writing in! Yes, that was us, back in an earlier incarnation (or since we're talking about rural New York, maybe it should be "inTARnation"). We lived in that broken down house in 1984-5, and next ...

As Americans, we crave the simple solution. Just give us that one thing we can do to make a problem go away. There has to be an answer, right? Anything can be fixed. The trouble is, the actual world is more complicated than that. Most of our problems will not yield to easy answers. In fact, very often, if a solution to a serious problem is even possible, it is likely to be a very complex, multifaceted, and inconvenient one. That's the last thing we want to hear. And yet, here we are, faced with enormous challenges, decades - even centuries - in the making. Problems like climate change, a matter so enormous most of us just turn away. For those of us who believe the overwhelming scientific consensus there is a human role in climate change, far too many feel that this is something that can be solved by driving a Prius and screwing in a few LED light bulbs. Those are good things, but this is not the type of challenge that is going to yield to small-bore actions carried out at a perso...