Our near-freezing windy weather last week has brought down the
last of the deciduous leaves. It is time to prune. I love pruning,
as it gives me an excuse, many January afternoons, to climb trees
in the wintry sunshine.
Our near-freezing windy weather last week has brought down the last of the deciduous leaves. It is time to prune. I love pruning, as it gives me an excuse, many January afternoons, to climb trees in the wintry sunshine.
Our different trees have different pruning needs. The fruitless mulberry needs pollarding. My apricot needs to have the leafing shoots cut off and the center reopened to let the sun shine in. My apple needs to be freed of overgrowing morning glory vines.
January is also a great time to cull our possessions, to go through the closets and drawers and shelves and garage, to clean and put away whatever we have room for, throw away whatever is beyond repair and donate to Goodwill or the Salvation Army whatever is still in good condition but just not being used. (By the way, Salvation Army has opened a new thrift store: clean, spacious and well lit, behind Kohl’s at Gilroy Crossing.)
I prune trees not to torture them, but so that they can grow in a healthy productive way. Similarly, I cull my possessions so that I can use what is useful and admire what is beautiful. When I get too many things, I do not have time to take care of them, nor space to display them to advantage. I cannot even find them when I need them. Hoarding is wasting.
This problem could be viewed as one of scarcity, that I need a maid, a gardener and a mansion. I prefer to view it as a problem of too much wealth: too many things.
Right now, after 100 years of increasing prosperity with brief downturns, our society is experiencing a reality check. Our speculative housing bubble burst. The stock market is volatile. Some people are being laid off, some people are having their hours or salaries cut, some businesses are failing. No one is predicting a swift return to prosperity.
Because property values are down, property tax revenue is down. Because of job loss and cut backs, income tax revenue is down. Consequently, federal, state and local governments are experiencing major losses in revenue.
We view the problem as one of scarcity: too little money. It could be viewed as a problem resulting from too much credit. In good times, individuals and governments behaved very similarly: individuals leveraged their homes and lived on credit; governments mushroomed and engaged in deficit spending.
Now that the economy is going through the necessary, if painful, correction, shall we cut services or increase taxes? I firmly believe we need to cut services. Increasing taxes will hurt businesses. Businesses would have to cut salaries, lay off more employees, or go bankrupt, worsening the downward spiral.
Of course, individuals will have to rely less on government if we cut services. Minor example: we have continual complaints of people stealing recyclables out of the bins and that the police do nothing about it.
Fifty years ago, no one stole recyclables out of bins. There were no recyclables as such. Milk came in reusable glass bottles. The milkman picked up the empties the next time he made a delivery. Juice came in jugs, soda in bottles and the deposit was large enough that customers actually returned the bottles for the deposit.
With increasing prosperity, we used disposable bottles and cans more and more, to the point where disposing of them became a burden. Therefore the states exacted fees on the sale of each bottle and can, and subsidized recycling. So prosperous were we in spite of the fees people still kept buying single use containers. So garbage fees were raised and statutes were enacted to force people to recycle.
With the government subsidies, it finally became profitable for very low income people to steal recyclables out of bins.
But the fine for stealing them is about $100. To arrest and convict someone for stealing requires about $500 in police time and court costs, and is only possible if a citizen is willing to testify that he saw the perp steal the recyclables. I think we should rescind the anti-recyclable stealing ordinance until city and state revenue levels improve, maybe forever. It’s time for a lot of pruning.
